C Plancke
Biographic Data
| ID | 16932 |
|---|---|
| NAME | C Plancke |
| GIVEN NAMES | C |
| FAMILY NAME | Plancke |
| SIGNATURE | PLANCKE C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Ghent University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8639-0668 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 32 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Introduction to ‘Contemporary Women’s Spirituality and Questioning Decolonisation’
Continuity and Change in Neo-Tantra: An Ethnographic Contribution
Critical scholarship on neo-Tantra has underscored how it has distorted Tantric practice into a consumerist pursuit of so-called sacred sex that bears little resemblance to the South Asian traditions it originates from. However, some scholars caution against simply dismissing neo-Tantra as misappropriation. Instead, they call for a nuanced investigation into its creative synthesis of Western countercultural themes with South Asian sources. This p…
Decolonising Goddess Feminism: Silenced Subjects of the Sabarimala Controversy
The article examines the theoretical gap between goddess feminism and liberal feminism. Through a discussion of postcolonial perspectives on goddess feminism, the article advances a decolonial approach that seeks to foster a coalition between these two ideologically contrasting voices within feminism. In doing so, it postulates a politically viscous, gender-sensitive, and intersectional view of feminism. The argument draws on existing scholarship…
Reclaiming Yoga as a Practice of Female Empowerment
Womb yoga is a women’s yoga practice developed in the UK from the observation that male bodies and experiences are privileged in mainstream yoga. Based on modern postural yoga, womb yoga integrates the philosophy and mythology of śakta tantra in reference to scholarly texts and reinterprets tantric traditions in line with Anglo-American Goddess spirituality. Through body practice, chanting, visualization, and ritual, female cyclic experiences and…
« Une joie qui ouvre l’esprit »: L’affectivité comme concept clé dans une approche non dualiste des danses punu (Congo-Brazzaville)
Chez les Punu du Congo-Brazzaville, la danse ikoku est conçue à travers la notion de joie. Une bonne danse équivaut à une danse pleine de joie, qui a pour effet « de faire éclater l’esprit ». Or une ouverture d’esprit analogue est attestée pour les célébrations des génies de l’eau où elle s’actualise dans des transes. Une distinction rigide entre le profane et le sacré s’y trouve battue en brèche. L’opposition corps-esprit qui sous-tend cette dis…
Sex and desire on the dancefloor: A queer post-structuralist approach on reclaiming erotic dances
In this article I intend to examine the rising popularity of erotic dances as a leisure activity practiced in a feminist dance school situated in Brussels, and question what exactly it is these dancers are reclaiming when using a discourse about sexual liberation and empowerment. To address the complexity of gender, sexuality and performance, this study uses a queer post-structuralist analysis and an ethnographic methodology when studying erotic …
Nurturing the Female Body: Notions of Wellbeing in Womb Yoga
Alternative therapies which aim to enhance women's wellbeing have been accused of contributing to healthist and postfeminist agendas which rest upon a neoliberal logic. I critically engage with this issue here through an ethnographic study of womb yoga, a women's alternative therapy developed in the UK. I argue that while being commercial and emphasizing personal responsibility, womb yoga largely works against the current neoliberal optimization …
Re-enchanted selves
Following the questioning of the secularization thesis, it is currently accepted that the secular and the religious are mutually determined. This holds particularly true when one takes into account gender and considers the continuing existence, throughout secular modernity, of a feminine domestic world where religion remained important. This chapter advances that gender similarly is a crucial dimension when considering re-enchantment in its ongoi…
Re-Envisioning Female Power
Bricolage, the mixing of diverse religious resources, has been highlighted as a key process in contemporary spiritualities. Since, in this process, historically or culturally distant and foreign traditions are self-referentially drawn upon as representatives of a true spirituality deemed lost in the materialistic West, exoticism has further been identified as its core feature. In this article, through an in-depth ethnographic study, I examine ope…
Yoni touch and talk: Sacralizing the female sex through tantra
This article examines women’s tantric retreats in Northwest Europe aimed at developing female sexual subjectivity. Based on ethnographic study and in-depth interviews, it argues that the retreats induced among participants critical distancing from socially dominant representations of (self-)objectified femininity and pornified female sexuality. It highlights how, through foregrounding a view of the female sex as sacred, the workshops fostered exp…
Bodily intimacy and ritual healing in women's tantric retreats
Alternative health care and holistic spiritual practices have become increasingly popular in many Western countries, especially among women, who often claim them to be deeply transformative. This paper presents an ethnographic study of women's tantric retreats in Northwest Europe that aimed to help women reconnect with their vital sexual energy, rediscover the sacredness of their female bodies, and possibly heal from damaging and even traumatic e…
Engendering liminality: The experience of re-enchantment in wild woman workshops
According to Paul Heelas, new spiritualities radicalize the expressivist strand in modernity and, hence, not only affirm modern values but also react against them. In particular, they challenge the ‘bounded self’ as foundational for the modern being and progress. Charles Taylor, in discussing the emergence in modern times of ‘the buffered self’, points to three important changes: disenchantment, the loss of the complementary play between structur…
Introduction: Dance in Africa and beyond: creativity and identity in a globalized world
In this introduction to the special issue on dance in Africa and beyond, we review the anthropological study of dance in Africa since the 1920s and introduce the seven contributions, organized around the key themes of transformed identities (both contemporary and historical), decoloniality, new media, morality, and the problematic representations of African diasporic identities in contemporary Europe. With this special issue, we argue that the st…
Intégrer le corps en deuil fragmenté: Lamentations funèbres en milieu punu
Les études anthropologiques sur les lamentations ont accentué le côté obligatoire de cette pratique chantée et son rôle de consolidation sociale. Or, si l'on porte attention à l'expérience vécue de la pleureuse, il semble que les lamentations servent aussi à remédier à la fragmentation provoquée par la perte d'un être proche. Pareille perspective est adoptée dans cet article consacré aux lamentations funèbres chez les Punu du Congo-Brazzaville. P…
Ethnographier les affects: Captures, résistances, attachements
Intensité viscérale et vitale, l’affect s’est imposé comme sujet d’étude en sciences sociales durant la dernière décennie au point de déclencher un «tournant affectif» (Clough et al. 2007). L’enjeu de ce numéro est d’explorer l’intérêt de développer cette thématique en anthropologie et le potentiel des ethnographies de l’affect ou, plus précisément comme nous le suggérons, des affects. Nous allons dans un premier temps situer l’émergence d’un int…
Love beyond continents
.
L’amour sociologiquement vôtre
.
Sharing ethnographic love
.
Love, a search for transcendence
.
Pour l’amour en sciences sociales
.
Dance performances in post-genocide Rwanda: Remaking Identity, Reconnecting Present and Past
Since it took power by putting an end to the 1994 genocide, the Rwandan Patriotic Front has initiated the project of building a new Rwanda. The latter is conceived as a de-ethnicised nation-state which, while being "modern" and open to socioeconomic development and the processes of globalisation, remains rooted in its ancestral past. Hence, Rwandan cultural heritage is integrated in this undertaking to create a unified and developed Rwanda. This …
Donner corps au « Nouveau Rwanda: Danse et reconstruction post-génocidaire
Depuis qu'il a pris le pouvoir, en mettant fin au génocide, le Front patriotique rwandais a lancé le projet de construire une nouvelle nation dé-ethnicisée et moderne, qui, néanmoins, reste ancrée dans ses racines culturelles. Cet article examine la revitalisation actuelle des danses dites traditionnelles à Kigali, en explicitant la manière dont ces pratiques contribuent à donner corps au dessein de la nouvelle identité rwandaise et en détaillant…
Contre le relationnisme. Lettre aux anthropologues by Piette, Albert: Reviews
Affect, creativity, and community-making in aCongolese song-dance performance: Or How to Follow the Movement of the Social
In ruralPunu society, song-dance performances of rejoicing are deeply connected with forces of regeneration; they not only celebrate the sexual encounter but also, in their constituent dynamic, aim progressively to awaken a shared feeling of joy that leads to the intensification of the dancing and to the creation and diffusion of new songs. I seek to account for this regenerative potential by pursuing Turner's processual view of ritual performanc…
Rythmomimisme et gestuelle dansée: Danser à l’image des génies au Congo
Une caractéristique de la performance dansée est d'orienter l'attention sur le mouvement en tant que tel et d'induire une conscience proprioceptive aiguë. Elle a dès lors le potentiel de faire apparaître dans son accomplissement même la double action d'incorporation et de dilatation de la gestuelle humaine, identifiée par Marcel Jousse, ainsi que le rapport mimétique de l'individu au monde qui s'y réalise. Cet argument est exploré pour l'ikokudes…
The Spirit's Wish: Possession Trance and Female Power among the Punu of Congo-Brazzaville
Among the rural Punu of Congo-Brazzaville, possession trance is an essential part of the mainly female celebrations dedicated to the bayisi or water spirits. It is a privileged medium through which these spirits reveal their wishes and conditions their willingness to assure the community's well-being. On the human side, in order to be possessed an 'opening of the mind' is requested and needs to be activated through collective song-dance performan…
On Dancing and Fishing: Joy and the Celebration of Fertility Among the Punu of Congo-Brazzaville
Among the Punu of Congo-Brazzavilleikokudancing is perceived through the concept of joy. In line with the privileging of the emotional experience, this article intends to consider the dance as an emotive institution - that is, a socially organized activity that creates culturally meaningful forms of emotion within which an understanding of self, as well as social identities and relations, are shaped. Inikoku, a succession of dance sessions, embar…
Introduction: Dance in Africa and beyond: creativity and identity in a globalized world
In this introduction to the special issue on dance in Africa and beyond, we review the anthropological study of dance in Africa since the 1920s and introduce the seven contributions, organized around the key themes of transformed identities (both contemporary and historical), decoloniality, new media, morality, and the problematic representations of African diasporic identities in contemporary Europe. With this special issue, we argue that the st…
Dance performances in post-genocide Rwanda: Remaking Identity, Reconnecting Present and Past
Since it took power by putting an end to the 1994 genocide, the Rwandan Patriotic Front has initiated the project of building a new Rwanda. The latter is conceived as a de-ethnicised nation-state which, while being "modern" and open to socioeconomic development and the processes of globalisation, remains rooted in its ancestral past. Hence, Rwandan cultural heritage is integrated in this undertaking to create a unified and developed Rwanda. This …
Donner corps au « Nouveau Rwanda: Danse et reconstruction post-génocidaire
Depuis qu'il a pris le pouvoir, en mettant fin au génocide, le Front patriotique rwandais a lancé le projet de construire une nouvelle nation dé-ethnicisée et moderne, qui, néanmoins, reste ancrée dans ses racines culturelles. Cet article examine la revitalisation actuelle des danses dites traditionnelles à Kigali, en explicitant la manière dont ces pratiques contribuent à donner corps au dessein de la nouvelle identité rwandaise et en détaillant…
Affect, creativity, and community-making in aCongolese song-dance performance: Or How to Follow the Movement of the Social
In ruralPunu society, song-dance performances of rejoicing are deeply connected with forces of regeneration; they not only celebrate the sexual encounter but also, in their constituent dynamic, aim progressively to awaken a shared feeling of joy that leads to the intensification of the dancing and to the creation and diffusion of new songs. I seek to account for this regenerative potential by pursuing Turner's processual view of ritual performanc…
Nurturing the Female Body: Notions of Wellbeing in Womb Yoga
Alternative therapies which aim to enhance women's wellbeing have been accused of contributing to healthist and postfeminist agendas which rest upon a neoliberal logic. I critically engage with this issue here through an ethnographic study of womb yoga, a women's alternative therapy developed in the UK. I argue that while being commercial and emphasizing personal responsibility, womb yoga largely works against the current neoliberal optimization …
Bodily intimacy and ritual healing in women's tantric retreats
Alternative health care and holistic spiritual practices have become increasingly popular in many Western countries, especially among women, who often claim them to be deeply transformative. This paper presents an ethnographic study of women's tantric retreats in Northwest Europe that aimed to help women reconnect with their vital sexual energy, rediscover the sacredness of their female bodies, and possibly heal from damaging and even traumatic e…
On Dancing and Fishing: Joy and the Celebration of Fertility Among the Punu of Congo-Brazzaville
Among the Punu of Congo-Brazzavilleikokudancing is perceived through the concept of joy. In line with the privileging of the emotional experience, this article intends to consider the dance as an emotive institution - that is, a socially organized activity that creates culturally meaningful forms of emotion within which an understanding of self, as well as social identities and relations, are shaped. Inikoku, a succession of dance sessions, embar…
The Spirit's Wish: Possession Trance and Female Power among the Punu of Congo-Brazzaville
Among the rural Punu of Congo-Brazzaville, possession trance is an essential part of the mainly female celebrations dedicated to the bayisi or water spirits. It is a privileged medium through which these spirits reveal their wishes and conditions their willingness to assure the community's well-being. On the human side, in order to be possessed an 'opening of the mind' is requested and needs to be activated through collective song-dance performan…
The Ritual Experience of Continuity: Flow and Participation in Punu Twin Dancing
While focusing on its dynamics, Bruce Kapferer considers ritual as a means for readjusting the flow of life, thus undermining Claude Lévi-Strauss's vision of ritual as a vain search for continuity. This article shows the potential of Kapferer's approach for understanding the dance rituals that the Punu of Congo-Brazzaville dedicate to twins, who, as waterspirits, embody the source of life. Advancing Victor Turner's attempt to account for the gene…
Rythmomimisme et gestuelle dansée: Danser à l’image des génies au Congo
Une caractéristique de la performance dansée est d'orienter l'attention sur le mouvement en tant que tel et d'induire une conscience proprioceptive aiguë. Elle a dès lors le potentiel de faire apparaître dans son accomplissement même la double action d'incorporation et de dilatation de la gestuelle humaine, identifiée par Marcel Jousse, ainsi que le rapport mimétique de l'individu au monde qui s'y réalise. Cet argument est exploré pour l'ikokudes…
Affect, creativity, and community-making in aCongolese song-dance performance: Or How to Follow the Movement of the Social
In ruralPunu society, song-dance performances of rejoicing are deeply connected with forces of regeneration; they not only celebrate the sexual encounter but also, in their constituent dynamic, aim progressively to awaken a shared feeling of joy that leads to the intensification of the dancing and to the creation and diffusion of new songs. I seek to account for this regenerative potential by pursuing Turner's processual view of ritual performanc…
Donner corps au « Nouveau Rwanda: Danse et reconstruction post-génocidaire
Depuis qu'il a pris le pouvoir, en mettant fin au génocide, le Front patriotique rwandais a lancé le projet de construire une nouvelle nation dé-ethnicisée et moderne, qui, néanmoins, reste ancrée dans ses racines culturelles. Cet article examine la revitalisation actuelle des danses dites traditionnelles à Kigali, en explicitant la manière dont ces pratiques contribuent à donner corps au dessein de la nouvelle identité rwandaise et en détaillant…
Contre le relationnisme. Lettre aux anthropologues by Piette, Albert: Reviews
Love beyond continents
.
L’amour sociologiquement vôtre
.
Sharing ethnographic love
.
Love, a search for transcendence
.
Pour l’amour en sciences sociales
.
Dance performances in post-genocide Rwanda: Remaking Identity, Reconnecting Present and Past
Since it took power by putting an end to the 1994 genocide, the Rwandan Patriotic Front has initiated the project of building a new Rwanda. The latter is conceived as a de-ethnicised nation-state which, while being "modern" and open to socioeconomic development and the processes of globalisation, remains rooted in its ancestral past. Hence, Rwandan cultural heritage is integrated in this undertaking to create a unified and developed Rwanda. This …
Ethnographier les affects: Captures, résistances, attachements
Intensité viscérale et vitale, l’affect s’est imposé comme sujet d’étude en sciences sociales durant la dernière décennie au point de déclencher un «tournant affectif» (Clough et al. 2007). L’enjeu de ce numéro est d’explorer l’intérêt de développer cette thématique en anthropologie et le potentiel des ethnographies de l’affect ou, plus précisément comme nous le suggérons, des affects. Nous allons dans un premier temps situer l’émergence d’un int…
Engendering liminality: The experience of re-enchantment in wild woman workshops
According to Paul Heelas, new spiritualities radicalize the expressivist strand in modernity and, hence, not only affirm modern values but also react against them. In particular, they challenge the ‘bounded self’ as foundational for the modern being and progress. Charles Taylor, in discussing the emergence in modern times of ‘the buffered self’, points to three important changes: disenchantment, the loss of the complementary play between structur…
Introduction: Dance in Africa and beyond: creativity and identity in a globalized world
In this introduction to the special issue on dance in Africa and beyond, we review the anthropological study of dance in Africa since the 1920s and introduce the seven contributions, organized around the key themes of transformed identities (both contemporary and historical), decoloniality, new media, morality, and the problematic representations of African diasporic identities in contemporary Europe. With this special issue, we argue that the st…
Intégrer le corps en deuil fragmenté: Lamentations funèbres en milieu punu
Les études anthropologiques sur les lamentations ont accentué le côté obligatoire de cette pratique chantée et son rôle de consolidation sociale. Or, si l'on porte attention à l'expérience vécue de la pleureuse, il semble que les lamentations servent aussi à remédier à la fragmentation provoquée par la perte d'un être proche. Pareille perspective est adoptée dans cet article consacré aux lamentations funèbres chez les Punu du Congo-Brazzaville. P…
Re-enchanted selves
Following the questioning of the secularization thesis, it is currently accepted that the secular and the religious are mutually determined. This holds particularly true when one takes into account gender and considers the continuing existence, throughout secular modernity, of a feminine domestic world where religion remained important. This chapter advances that gender similarly is a crucial dimension when considering re-enchantment in its ongoi…
Re-Envisioning Female Power
Bricolage, the mixing of diverse religious resources, has been highlighted as a key process in contemporary spiritualities. Since, in this process, historically or culturally distant and foreign traditions are self-referentially drawn upon as representatives of a true spirituality deemed lost in the materialistic West, exoticism has further been identified as its core feature. In this article, through an in-depth ethnographic study, I examine ope…
Yoni touch and talk: Sacralizing the female sex through tantra
This article examines women’s tantric retreats in Northwest Europe aimed at developing female sexual subjectivity. Based on ethnographic study and in-depth interviews, it argues that the retreats induced among participants critical distancing from socially dominant representations of (self-)objectified femininity and pornified female sexuality. It highlights how, through foregrounding a view of the female sex as sacred, the workshops fostered exp…
Bodily intimacy and ritual healing in women's tantric retreats
Alternative health care and holistic spiritual practices have become increasingly popular in many Western countries, especially among women, who often claim them to be deeply transformative. This paper presents an ethnographic study of women's tantric retreats in Northwest Europe that aimed to help women reconnect with their vital sexual energy, rediscover the sacredness of their female bodies, and possibly heal from damaging and even traumatic e…
Nurturing the Female Body: Notions of Wellbeing in Womb Yoga
Alternative therapies which aim to enhance women's wellbeing have been accused of contributing to healthist and postfeminist agendas which rest upon a neoliberal logic. I critically engage with this issue here through an ethnographic study of womb yoga, a women's alternative therapy developed in the UK. I argue that while being commercial and emphasizing personal responsibility, womb yoga largely works against the current neoliberal optimization …
« Une joie qui ouvre l’esprit »: L’affectivité comme concept clé dans une approche non dualiste des danses punu (Congo-Brazzaville)
Chez les Punu du Congo-Brazzaville, la danse ikoku est conçue à travers la notion de joie. Une bonne danse équivaut à une danse pleine de joie, qui a pour effet « de faire éclater l’esprit ». Or une ouverture d’esprit analogue est attestée pour les célébrations des génies de l’eau où elle s’actualise dans des transes. Une distinction rigide entre le profane et le sacré s’y trouve battue en brèche. L’opposition corps-esprit qui sous-tend cette dis…
Sex and desire on the dancefloor: A queer post-structuralist approach on reclaiming erotic dances
In this article I intend to examine the rising popularity of erotic dances as a leisure activity practiced in a feminist dance school situated in Brussels, and question what exactly it is these dancers are reclaiming when using a discourse about sexual liberation and empowerment. To address the complexity of gender, sexuality and performance, this study uses a queer post-structuralist analysis and an ethnographic methodology when studying erotic …
Reclaiming Yoga as a Practice of Female Empowerment
Womb yoga is a women’s yoga practice developed in the UK from the observation that male bodies and experiences are privileged in mainstream yoga. Based on modern postural yoga, womb yoga integrates the philosophy and mythology of śakta tantra in reference to scholarly texts and reinterprets tantric traditions in line with Anglo-American Goddess spirituality. Through body practice, chanting, visualization, and ritual, female cyclic experiences and…
Art (18 works) · Philosophy (15 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Aesthetics (12 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Gender Studies (10 works) · Anthropology (8 works) · Diversity and Impact of Dance (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (7 works)