Physiology of Enthusiasm

I like to juxtapose this character-focalized definition of eroticism as "a collusion of rhythms" [I think it's "collusion" and not "collision"] from Julia Kristeva's novel The Samurai with this excerpt from the chapter "Prophet Dances" in Alice Beck Kehoe's book, The Ghost Dance: ethnohistory and revitalization

Some of the parallels between Christian and American Indian religious behavior go deep into human physiology. Building up rhythm and loudness of speech from slow and soft to fast and loud tends to catch listeners up, their own heartbeats increasing in rapidity along with the speech rhythm to produce a feeling of excitement. [...] Gestures may focus listener's attention on the speaker to the point where the audience is almost hypnotized. Changing the pitch of voice, now high, now deep, induces subconscious mood changes in listeners. Frenzied dancing tends to induce hyperventilation and cause that mental dissociation we term trance. These basic human physiological responses are likely to have been independently discovered in many societies and also to have facilitated borrowings of rituals from culture to culture. Thus human physiology makes it probable that societies will discover and institutionalize "enthusiast" behavior.

Metaerotics automagically!

And so for day 217
19.07.2007