Less critical, because the answer is given impromptu, and, as I know from my own experience, when we're in the "space" of our topic in lecture, we sometimes remain there, even though audience questions seeks to take us somewhere new, from 1:30.35 to 1:35.11, there's an exchange in which an audience member is seeking to better understand one of our "dominative narratives": that yoga was "brought [to the West] in a coercive way." He says Mark "countered that narrative" by describing how yoga spread to Euro-America "in the hands of Indian practitioners" and he wants to understand that better. Mark says some fascinating things in his response, tracing the movement of ideas from a sense of shared world religion (Perennialism) to our present circling-of-the-wagons. This is being done by such diverse groups as right-wing Christians, right-wing Hindus and those in secular Global Studies. Here, yoga is seen as other, owned by India, and "culturally appropriated" by the West. He adds that we're in non-colonial times now, and so the appropriation critique is partly miscast. These are compelling points, but more critical to the audience member's question, Mark passes over the fact that, yes, indeed, the East passionately "colonialized" the West with a great variety of yoga practices through a consistent "evangelical" effort from 1893 onward, as first Vivekananda (1893) then dozens of other gurus--some more effective, some less--landed on occidental shores to propagate Eastern practices. This lengthy list includes Abhedananda, 1896; Ram Tirtha and Premanand Bharati ,1902; Yogendra, 1918; Yogananda, 1920; Hari Rama and Devi Ram Sukul, 1925. These were early arrivals. From mid-century onward, Haridas Chaudhuri, 1952; Yogi Gupta, 1954; Brahmananda Sarasvati, 1955; Iyengar, 1956; Vishnu Devananda, 1958; Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, 1959; Amrit Desai, 1960; A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, 1965; Satchidananda, 1966; Swami Rama and Yogi Bhajan, 1968; Muktananda, 1970; Bikram Choudhury, 1971; and Jois, 1975, all taught yoga very prominently in America, often getting tremendous attention from the media, publishing books, founding one or more centers and conscripting hundreds of thousands--if not millions--of followers . This rooted yoga in American soil, and this work continues in the present-day activities of Shri Shri Ravi Shankar, Sadguru and many others Indian gurus have worked tirelessly to "appropriate" Euro-American converts to both Hinduism and yoga for well over a hundred years. Acknowledging this, the "dominant" cultural appropriation narrative the questioner asks about, has very little basis in fact.
Mark is one of the most creative, meticuluous, and cutting-edge yoga scholars, and this is a wonderful, wide-ranging lecture, but sometimes I'm mystified by his omissions. I know he knows about certain facts and material, yet fails to acknowledge them. For example, at 31:12, he states that scholarly study of Modern Postural Yoga all started with two 2004 books, Elizabeth De Michelis', History of Modern Yoga, and Joseph Alter's, Yoga in Modern India, but he's well aware of the 1996 scholarship of Sjoman's imperfect, yet groundbreaking The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace--an investigation that focused on Krishnamacharya's yoga sequences (initiated in the 1930s) and the c. 1840 illustrated yoga text, the Sri Tatttvanidhi. Though an outlier effort, Sjoman's book is the true beginning of proper scholarly work on the modern tradition. Though the field has moved on and expanded immensely, Mark and most other prominent MPY scholars still discuss Sjoman, and The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace can be found in the bibliographies of both his 2010 Yoga Body and 2017 Roots of Yoga.
Im really very sadened by the amount of deference Mark Singleton is given in this field of study at the academic level. His work is through that of a historical lense, based on what he considers "proof". There are so many holes in the way he presenta his findings that I scarcely know where to begin. I honestly hope authors like him and David Gordon White are one day revealed to be the reductionist eurocentric mouthpieces that they clearly are.
Less critical, because the answer is given impromptu, and, as I know from my own experience, when we're in the "space" of our topic in lecture, we sometimes remain there, even though audience questions seeks to take us somewhere new, from 1:30.35 to 1:35.11, there's an exchange in which an audience member is seeking to better understand one of our "dominative narratives": that yoga was "brought [to the West] in a coercive way." He says Mark "countered that narrative" by describing how yoga spread to Euro-America "in the hands of Indian practitioners" and he wants to understand that better.
Mark says some fascinating things in his response, tracing the movement of ideas from a sense of shared world religion (Perennialism) to our present circling-of-the-wagons. This is being done by such diverse groups as right-wing Christians, right-wing Hindus and those in secular Global Studies. Here, yoga is seen as other, owned by India, and "culturally appropriated" by the West. He adds that we're in non-colonial times now, and so the appropriation critique is partly miscast.
These are compelling points, but more critical to the audience member's question, Mark passes over the fact that, yes, indeed, the East passionately "colonialized" the West with a great variety of yoga practices through a consistent "evangelical" effort from 1893 onward, as first Vivekananda (1893) then dozens of other gurus--some more effective, some less--landed on occidental shores to propagate Eastern practices.
This lengthy list includes Abhedananda, 1896; Ram Tirtha and Premanand Bharati ,1902; Yogendra, 1918; Yogananda, 1920; Hari Rama and Devi Ram Sukul, 1925. These were early arrivals. From mid-century onward, Haridas Chaudhuri, 1952; Yogi Gupta, 1954; Brahmananda Sarasvati, 1955; Iyengar, 1956; Vishnu Devananda, 1958; Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, 1959; Amrit Desai, 1960; A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, 1965; Satchidananda, 1966; Swami Rama and Yogi Bhajan, 1968; Muktananda, 1970; Bikram Choudhury, 1971; and Jois, 1975, all taught yoga very prominently in America, often getting tremendous attention from the media, publishing books, founding one or more centers and conscripting hundreds of thousands--if not millions--of followers .
This rooted yoga in American soil, and this work continues in the present-day activities of Shri Shri Ravi Shankar, Sadguru and many others
Indian gurus have worked tirelessly to "appropriate" Euro-American converts to both Hinduism and yoga for well over a hundred years.
Acknowledging this, the "dominant" cultural appropriation narrative the questioner asks about, has very little basis in fact.
Mark is one of the most creative, meticuluous, and cutting-edge yoga scholars, and this is a wonderful, wide-ranging lecture, but sometimes I'm mystified by his omissions. I know he knows about certain facts and material, yet fails to acknowledge them. For example, at 31:12, he states that scholarly study of Modern Postural Yoga all started with two 2004 books, Elizabeth De Michelis', History of Modern Yoga, and Joseph Alter's, Yoga in Modern India, but he's well aware of the 1996 scholarship of Sjoman's imperfect, yet groundbreaking The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace--an investigation that focused on Krishnamacharya's yoga sequences (initiated in the 1930s) and the c. 1840 illustrated yoga text, the Sri Tatttvanidhi. Though an outlier effort, Sjoman's book is the true beginning of proper scholarly work on the modern tradition. Though the field has moved on and expanded immensely, Mark and most other prominent MPY scholars still discuss Sjoman, and The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace can be found in the bibliographies of both his 2010 Yoga Body and 2017 Roots of Yoga.
Im really very sadened by the amount of deference Mark Singleton is given in this field of study at the academic level. His work is through that of a historical lense, based on what he considers "proof". There are so many holes in the way he presenta his findings that I scarcely know where to begin. I honestly hope authors like him and David Gordon White are one day revealed to be the reductionist eurocentric mouthpieces that they clearly are.