Seite - 9 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Band 07/02

Editorial | 9www.jrfm.eu 2021, 7/2, 7–14 This critique of postcolonial theory opens up a range of new questions and reconsiderations in media studies, not least the need for more sustained attention to the role of religion, which so far has been under-researched. We will use the remainder of this introduction to map out some of what we consider to be particularly pertinent questions for the field of media and religion in postcoloniality, gesturing towards initial considerations as well as avenues for further research. The contributions collected here touch on some of these questions and they will also, we hope, inspire further re- search. One issue relates to the notion of “global” media itself, with its assump- tion that media produced in the west and globally distributed are perceived to be truly “global”, i. e., received as formative meaning-making narratives everywhere. However, this notion perpetuates the binary of the (former) colonizer as the producer of cultural meaning and the colonized as its pas- sive recipient. As Bornet in this issue shows, the stories of production and reception of media (in his case engravings and photographs) are much more complex and implicate multiple sites and subjects, with consequent shifts in representation and significance that are not always easily pinned down. In order to more accurately account for these movements and re-significations, it might thus be helpful to speak of “transcultural”, instead of “global”, me- dia and media studies, and to look at the contextual and local sites of media production and consumption.7 Other questions relate to the epistemological dimension of media and religion: How do their stories and images with their affective and cogni- tive power shape our understanding of the world and of others and – more fundamentally – our understanding of reality itself? How do they not just reflect but also create reality, a reality in the service of colonial powers, or one that resists them? Varela Rios’s critical analysis of the painting El Velorio shows for example the crucial differences between a colonialized view of the represented material reality as “chaotic” and opposed to the immaterial sacred and a decolonialized understanding of it as complexity and dynamic movement, and as participating in the sacred. Discussing media in a postcolonial context also raises the question of media ownership and requires a reconsideration of notions such as “prop- erty” or “individual ownership” when media images or religious traditions are exchanged and travel across contexts, often without stating the original 7 An example of an ethnography of “global media” in local contexts is Murphy/Kraidy 2003.