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The Emergence of the Mimetic Body: Transfigurations of Subjectivity and Memory in Contemporary Sufi Ritual
Abstract
Based on ethnographic and textual research, this paper examines the role of the body within contemporary zikr rituals of various Sufi orders throughout post-revolutionary Iran. The zikr ritual, as the name implies, is above all a ritual of remembrance, one in which the participants try to become as conscious and mindful of their God as possible, accomplished in part by disregarding the external world. How such a metaphysical endeavor is achieved, however, is through a highly sensorial process, characterized primarily by bodily movement and chanting, which aims to illustrate and make tangible the internal process of remembrance. As such, this paper will explore the relationship between intentional listening (sama) and the body, with specific attention given to the role of motion, transfiguration, and the role of mimesis. Beginning with a brief discussion of prescribed vs. non-prescribed bodily movements within Sufi orders, the focus of this paper will be understanding the role of the material body within zikr as a space of metaphysical mimesis (Taussig 1992). Ultimately, my suggestion is that through the listening act, the body is activated to come in contact and hence act in accordance with the auditory elements of the ritual. The paper will henceforth focus upon a discussion of the relationship between the thematics of annihilation (fanaa), mimesis, listening, and with what al-Ghazzali decreed the “third station” of listening: motion. Representing the highest state of enlightenment on the Sufi path, the episode of annihilation provides a crucial space for the emergence of a metaphysical event, one of desolation and openness—that which remains after the eradication of self—that in turn allows for the formulation of a new ontology. In effect, this annihilation conveys the listening subjectivity into a state of vulnerability and absence, whereby once evacuated of the concept of self, it becomes amenable to the remote possibility of a divine transfiguration. It is in this way that we return again to the thematics of transfiguration within the zikr, as we may gradually come to understand the transfigurative event here as a form of mimesis (i.e. imitation arising from contact) that may ultimately offer an alternative to the Foucauldian disciplined body.
Discipline
Anthropology
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