Towards a Phenomenology of Rasa

Abstract

Rasa (flavor, essence), as a concept in the Indian aesthetics of performance, is as widely known as the notions of raga and tala. Yet, the lived experience of rasa in the everyday remains seriously underexplored. This essay pursues a phenomenology of rasa by presenting an ethnographic investigation of the phenomenon of ras (rasa’s vernacular counterpart) in the practice of Sikh sabad kīrtan (sung scriptural verse). It proposes that ras can be understood as an interrelational experience that emerges in a phenomenal field co-constituted by people, objects, sound, food, ideas, memory, and aspirations. Focusing on what I call the “ethical flavors” of non-Othering in har-ras (divine-ras) and resilience in vīr-ras (heroic-ras), the essay explicates ras as the body’s mode of inhabiting the lived world. It illuminates the epistemic value of ras in gaining knowledge of self, community, and the divine, and explores the temporal dimension of ras as it accretes in the body to continue to be productive in the overlapping phenomenal fields of everyday social and political life.