Page - 14 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 02/01

14 | Alexander D. Ornella and Anna-Katharina Höpflinger www.jrfm.eu 2016, 2/1, 9–14 change the human voice into something “unnatural” – or even supernatural. Based on these observations, Heesch asks what implications such technological changes in popular culture might have for anthropological questions: Is a vocoderized recorded voice still “human” and how do such popular cultural processes transform the idea of the human? Milja Radovic explores “film as a socio-political and artistic-transformative cultural practice” in her article “Activist Citizenship, Film and Peacebuilding: Acts and Trans- formative Practices”. Looking at films by Serbian director Srdan Golubovic (Circles [2013]) and Saudi Arabian director Haifaa al-Mansour (Wadjda [2013]), she argues that the medium of film itself and the practice of film making can be forms of social activism. Both explore Otherness and question political practice from within rather than as a Western hegemonic imposition. Religion is present in the article (and the films) largely on an implicit level, in identity negotiations, as symbolic fragments. But it is this very lack of religion that makes these films, as Radovic argues, very religious. In her article “Images of the Muslim Woman and the Construction of Muslim Identity: The Essentialist Paradigm”, Elham Manea critically engages the argument, that a Mus- lim woman who chooses to wear the veil is exercising her religious freedom and that the veil can function – at least in the West – as form of female empowerment. She further argues that the notion that the veil does not conceal, but reveal authentic re- ligious identity, is also a construction of the Muslim Woman that hides actual Muslim women and their experiences. Most importantly, Manea suggests that any discussion around the veil and female empowerment or oppression must take into account the role that fundamentalist Islam plays “in mainstreaming the idea that the veil is part of Islamic religious identity and in constructing the Muslim Woman and that it is her obligation and/or right to wear the veil”. BIBLIOGRAPHY Berns, Jörg, 2007, Himmelsmaschinen. Höllenmaschinen: zur Technologie der Ewigkeit, Berlin: Semele- Verlag. McLuhan, Marshall, 1964, Understanding Media. The Extensions of Man, New York: McGraw-Hill. Morgan, David, 2010, Introduction. The Matter of Belief, in: Morgan, David (ed.), Religion and Material Culture. The Matter of Belief, London: Routledge, 1–17. Ornella, Alexander Darius/Knauss, Stefanie/Höpflinger, Anna-Katharina (eds.), 2014, Commun(icat)ing Bod- ies. Body as a Medium in Religious Symbol Systems, Baden-Baden/Zürich: Nomos/Pano. Whitman, Walt, 2010, Leaves of Grass. The Original 1855 Edition. Bold-Faced Thoughts on the Power and Pleasure of Self-Expression, ed. by Laura Ross, New York/London: Sterling Innovation.