A vivid, artfully crafted, and deeply hopeful account of one community's struggle to rediscover and reinvent itself after a century of genocidal loss, dispossession, and displacement
To the extent that Middle Eastern Christians register in Euro-American political imaginaries, they are usually invoked to justify Western military intervention into countries like Iraq or Syria, or as an exemption to anti-Islamic immigration policies because of an assumption that their Christianity makes them easily assimilable in the so-called "Judeo-Christian" West.
Using the tools of multisensory ethnography, Sonic Icons uncovers how these views work against the very communities they are meant to benefit. Through long term fieldwork in the Netherlands among Syriac Orthodox Christians-also known as Assyrians, Aramaeans, and Syriacs-Bakker Kellogg reveals how they intertwine religious practice with political activism to save Syriac Christianity from the twin threats of political violence in the Middle East and cultural assimilation in Europe.
In a historical moment when much of their tradition has been forgotten or destroyed, their story of self-discovery is one of survival and reinvention. By reviving the late antique Syriac liturgical tradition known as the Daughters and Sons of the Covenant, they seek a complex form of recognition for what they understand to be the ethical core of Christian kinship in an ethnic as well as in a religious sense, despite living in societies that do not recognize this unhyphenated form of ethnoreligiosity as a politically legitimate mode of public identity.
Drawing on both theological and linguistic understandings of the icon, Sonic Icons rethinks foundational theoretical accounts of ethnicization, racialization, and secularization by examining how kinship gets made, claimed, and named in the global politics of minority recognition. The icon, as a site of communicative and reproductive power, illuminates how these processes are shaped by religious histories of struggle for sovereignty over the reproductive future.
Industry Reviews
In this erudite and reflective ethnography, Sarah Bakker Kellogg adroitly captures the vocal kinship and gendered discipleship of Syriac Christians uprooted from the Middle East but determined to preserve their ancient religious traditions. With both empathy and precision, she shows us how the living echoes of theological disputation in their liturgical singing guide their explorations of a resolutely secularist European environment--an environment where, as they discover, irritation with the unfamiliar easily morphs into casual racism.---Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University
Sonic Icons offers a most welcome addition to earlier historical and anthropological studies of Syriac Orthodox communities. Sarah Bakker Kellogg takes her starting point in the often overlooked choir practices of young women which embody all the crucial elements of the moral communal formation that is at the heart of this migrant community. While discussing the complex interactions of sonic iconicity, patriarchy and kinship, she addresses urgent issues of secularism, race and religion in ways that should resonate far beyond the study of the Syriac Orthodox community in the Netherlands.---Heleen Murre-van den Berg, professor of Global Christianity at Radboud University in Nijmegen, and author of Scribes and Scriptures: The Church of the East in the Eastern Ottoman Provinces (1500-1850)
Sarah Bakker Kellogg masterfully blends rich storytelling with insightful anthropological investigation in her exploration of the Syriac Orthodox community in the Netherlands. Through vivid portraits and personal narratives, especially those of young women, Bakker Kellogg offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of individuals navigating identity and belonging. Her compelling narrative invites readers into a deeply emotional journey, making it hard to turn the pages without shedding a tear or two.---George A. Kiraz, Princeton University, Institute for Advanced Study, and Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
An icon is an object that stands for another object on the basis of resemblance. It's also an image, rendered in pigment, painted in song, that weaves the past into the present. Every icon is the outcome of a series of replications beginning with the moment of incarnation, when the divine took human form. Sarah Bakker Kellogg draws together these meanings, and more, in this remarkable study of how Syriac Orthodox women reproduce a community, a religious tradition, and a connection to a sacred past, through song, service, and a commitment to a unique way of life. This is a book that refuses to take short cuts when it comes to making sense of the migrant experience in Europe. In Bakker Kellogg's hands, religion and ethnicity are not identities to be taken for granted, but the product of interpretive work, undertaken by people buffeted by the weather systems of imperialism, colonialism, and secular modernity. Covering everything from the impoverishing logic of European racism to the politics of anti-Chalcedonian sects, Sonic Icons is deeply empirical, deeply reflexive, and unfailingly original. A challenging and rewarding book.---Danilyn Rutherford, author of Living in Stone Age: Reflections on the Origins of a Colonial Fantasy
