This book employs the framework of exoticism as a theoretical tool to define a set of relations between segments of the “spiritual but not religious” populations and those deemed as radically other. As a category, exoticism has been discussed primarily in cultural studies, the arts, and anthropology in reference to the ambivalent portrayal of others as both alluring and repulsive. In her recent work, the French sociologist Véronique Altglas introduces the term religious exoticism, which I build upon in this book. She writes,
[Religious exoticism] suggests an attempt to grasp otherness, yet what is exotic is not an “inherent quality” of particular social groups, places, ideas or practices. Indeed, no one is intrinsically “other.” Exoticism is instead relations; it is a “particular mode of aesthetic perception” that emphasizes, and to a certain extent elaborates, the otherness of groups, locations, ideas, and practices (Huggan 2001, 13). Moreover, the exotic is attractive because it is seen as being “different” (Todorov 1993, 264); exoticism makes otherness “strangely or unfamiliarly beautiful and enticing” (Figueira 1994, 1). Yet it is less about accounting for cultural differences than formulating an ideal, by dramatizing and even constructing differences. . . . Furthermore, Todorov (1993, 265) argues that, to elaborate and maintain the representations of idealized others, it is necessary to ignore the “reality” of other peoples and cultures.23
Thus, exoticism is a constructed representation of the other in service of the production of the self. In his seminal work on human diversity, Tzvetan Todorov explains that exoticism is the antithesis of nationalism. While nationalists valorize the values of their own country as superior to those of others, exoticists retort that “the country with superior values is a country whose only relevant characteristic is that it is not my own.”24 Its allure is also dependent, at least at the outset, on a lack of knowledge about the other. He writes, “The best candidates for the role of exotic ideal are the peoples and cultures that are most remote from us and least known to us. Now it is not easy to equate unfamiliarity with others, the refusal to see them as they are, with a valorization of these others. It is a decidedly ambiguous compliment to praise others simply because they are different from myself. Knowledge is incompatible with exoticism, but lack of knowledge is in turn irreconcilable with praise of others; yet praise without knowledge is precisely what exoticism aspires to be. This is its constitutive paradox.”25 In the ethnographic fields of transformational festivals discussed in this book, behaviors exhibiting appropriations of the exotic often correlate to the place on the spectrum of knowledge that participants occupy. Those enraptured with the allure of the exotic but holding little knowledge may be seen in exotic costumes playing at inhabiting the imagined identities of radical others. Those who have more experience in proximity to those radical others tend to exhibit a more tempered realism in their dress and behavior. They may still maintain the ideals of exoticism, but they are more serious in their identifications. In the religious field, this identification often takes the form of full lifestyle modifications, conversions in all but name.
Altglas notes that Orientalism, a term introduced famously by Edward Said, follows this same pattern and can be regarded as one example of a larger paradigm of exoticism.26 The adoption of religious exoticism substantiates claims of a new self, one that is autonomously governed and free from regulatory boundaries and institutional affiliations. As Altglas recounts, “[Pierre] Bourdieu (1984, 370) viewed individuals’ involvement in Transcendental Meditation, yoga, Zen, martial arts, holistic and post-psychoanalytic therapies, as well as esotericism, as ‘an inventory of thinly disguised expressions of a sort of dream of social flying, a desperate effort to defy the gravity of the social field.’ ”27 Bourdieu argued that in their attempt to break free of their finite social station, the petit bourgeoisie perform a “practical utopianism,” “which predisposes them to welcome every form of utopia.”28 The turn toward alternative utopias, including the adoption of the practical spiritual wares of religious others, is the result of a therapeutic process of self-definition and class distinction. The petit bourgeoisie engages in religious exoticism to garner distinction in efforts to “detach itself both from the non-cosmopolitan working classes and the conventional fractions of the bourgeoisie.” This process employs the domestication of otherness in efforts to “produce an emotionally and culturally competent self.”29
In this vein, the Dakota scholar and historian Phillip Deloria argues that in postmodern spirituality various codes are reformulated into complex amalgams suited to particular therapeutic desires. The dislocation of codes from their Indigenous cultural context and their amalgamation into a spiritual self becomes an index for an alternative aspiration of wholeness, established in contradistinction to the fragmented self of postmodernity. In fact, in Deloria’s view, New Age religion is greatly informed by a crisis of meaning generated by postmodernism, which abolished metanarratives while relativizing claims to truth. He explains, “Heavily based in self-help and personal development therapies, its [New Age’s] proponents await a large-scale change in human consciousness and a utopian era of peace and harmony. In New Age identity quests, one can see the long shadows of certain strands of postmodernism: increasing reliance on texts and interpretations, runaway individualism within a rhetoric of community, the distancing of native people, and a gaping disjuncture between a cultural realm of serious play and the power dynamics of social conflict.”30 The New Age further dissociated from real actors in favor of a romanticized imaginary, creating indices more malleable and controllable than their flesh-and-blood referents.
White Utopias argues that the commonplace ideals and practices of religious exoticism are directly related to the overwhelming whiteness of alternative spiritual communities. Although she does not directly address this white majority, Altglas argues that religious exoticism is dependent on feelings of entitlement. She writes that “exotic representations and discourses are overwhelmingly elaborated by the observer, not the observed (Todorov 1993, 264). This presupposes the entitlement and the power to do so (Figueira 1994, 2). . . . Practicing yoga or meditation, joining Native Americans in a sweat lodge, studying Kabbalah while expressing disdain for Judaism . . . are all contemporary practices that unavoidably presuppose a sense of entitlement.”31 As will be discussed in a forthcoming section, this entitlement aligns easily with neocolonial logics of white possessivism.
SPIRITUAL, BUT NOT RELIGIOUS
Twenty-seven percent of the US population identifies as “spiritual, but not religious” (SBNR) according to a 2017 Pew Research study, and that figure is growing exponentially.32 A similar study, also conducted by the Pew Research Center, identified that just under 20 percent of the US population responds with “none” when questioned about their institutional religious affiliation, and of those, 37 percent identify as SBNR.33 However, and somewhat surprisingly, only a small percentage of those who respond with “none” identify as nonreligious or antireligious. Instead, a large majority of them say that they believe in God (68 percent) and feel a deep connection with nature and the earth (58 percent), and a significant percentage of them say that they pray every day (21 percent).34 There is growth in SBNR populations across the various demographic groups in the United States, but the most accelerated growth and the highest numbers emerge from white women who are college educated and vote Democrat. It is no wonder then that American yogis also tend to identify as SBNR, as many of them fall into this very demographic.
There is a broad