Dreams that Matter explores the social and material life of dreams in contemporary Cairo. Amira Mittermaier guides the reader through landscapes of the imagination that feature Muslim dream ...interpreters who draw on Freud, reformists who dismiss all forms of divination as superstition, a Sufi devotional group that keeps a diary of dreams related to its shaykh, and ordinary believers who speak of moving encounters with the Prophet Muhammad. In close dialogue with her Egyptian interlocutors, Islamic textual traditions, and Western theorists, Mittermaier teases out the dream’s ethical, political, and religious implications. Her book is a provocative examination of how present-day Muslims encounter and engage the Divine that offers a different perspective on the Islamic Revival. Dreams That Matter opens up new spaces for an anthropology of the imagination, inviting us to rethink both the imagined and the real.
Drawing on fieldwork at a large charity organization in Cairo, this article describes a bureaucratized Islamic ethics of care. Founded in 1975, the Mustafa Mahmoud Association today offers free and ...discounted medical services, funds micro-projects, and provides financial support to about 10,000 families each year. The bulk of that financial support comes from donors’ private donations in the form of obligatory and voluntary alms (zakāt and sadaqa). By taking a close look at three offices—the donation, intake, and disbursement office—I untangle the regime of care that shapes the daily transactions at this Islamic charity organization. In particular I highlight a significant gap between “caring for” and “caring about.” Donors view caring for those in need as a duty and frequently frame their donations in calculative terms, as a way of “trading with God.” Less central is a language of empathy or compassion. While this seemingly careless care-less? Careless means not careful, sloppy. form of caremight seem cold and heartless, I suggest that it offers a powerful alternative to the liberal illusion of “compassion.”
Giving to God examines the everyday practices of Islamic giving in post-revolutionary Egypt. From foods prepared in Sufi soup kitchens, to meals distributed by pious volunteers in slums, to ...almsgiving, these acts are ultimately about giving to God by giving to the poor. Surprisingly, many who practice such giving say that they do not care about the poor, instead framing their actions within a unique non-compassionate ethics of giving. At first, this form of giving may appear deeply selfish, but further consideration reveals that it avoids many of the problems associated with the idea of "charity." Using the Egyptian uprising in 2011 and its call for social justice as a backdrop, this beautifully crafted ethnography suggests that "giving a man a fish" might ultimately be more revolutionary than "teaching a man to fish."
Drawing on dream stories from a Sufi community in Egypt, this article probes the limits of the paradigm of self-cultivation which has come to be widely employed in the anthropology of Islam. While ...the concept of self-cultivation has complicated the equation of agency and resistance, its emphasis on intentionality and deliberate action obscures other modes of religiosity that centre neither on acting within nor on acting against but on being acted upon. Far from reaffirming a self-cultivating subject, narratives of visitational and divinely inspired dreams are profound reminders of the unpredictability of divine interventions and the contingency of life itself. Through an analysis of Egyptian dream narratives and in conversation with anthropological literatures on an ethics of passion, this article traces a relational understanding of subjectivity which poses an even more radical challenge to the liberal model of the autonomous self than do practices of self-cultivation. À partir des récits de rêves d'une communauté soufie égyptienne, le présent article explore les limites du paradigme du développement personnel que l'on rencontre largement aujourd'hui dans l'anthropologie de l'islam. En même temps que ce concept de culture de soi compliquait l'équation de l'agency et de la résistance, l'accent mis sur l'intentionnalité et l'action délibérée a occulté d'autres modes de religiosité qui ne sont centrés ni sur l'action « dans », ni sur l'action « contre » mais sur le fait de subir une action. Au lieu de corroborer l'idée d'un sujet qui se cultiverait lui-même, les récits de rêves de visitation et d'inspiration divine rappellent fortement l'imprévisibilité des interventions divines et la contingence de la vie humaine. Par l'analyse de ces récits de rêves recueillis en Égypte et en dialogue avec la littérature anthropologique consacrée à l'éthique de la passion, cet article retrace une appréhension relationnelle de la subjectivité qui remet en question le modèle libéral du soi autonome, encore plus radicalement que ne le font les pratiques de développement personnel.
Resala, Egypt's largest volunteer-driven charity organization, engages in a range of activities, from distributing food in slums to visiting orphanages. Although its volunteers may appear to ...participate in a global moral economy of compassion, many of them articulate an Islamic voluntarism that contrasts with what they see as a Christian approach to suffering and with the more secular motivations of so much civic and humanitarian work today. Focusing on three Resala volunteers, I look at how Islam is imagined and mobilized to compel, make sense of, and justify giving in particular contexts and in practice. The volunteers' stories reveal the multilayeredness of their ethics and trouble the link between compassion and voluntarism. By foregrounding religious duty, the volunteers offer insight into a nonliberal, nonhumanist ethics of voluntarism and question the centrality of compassion as a mobilizing force in the world and as an explanatory force in anthropology.
The weight of the future Mittermaier, Amira
Anthropology and humanism,
December 2023, Letnik:
48, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Summary
In this “hundreds” honoring Kathleen Stewart, I reflect on how a turn to affect can attune us to the emergent, to unfinished worlds, to futures as they throw themselves together, to things ...slipping in and out of existence, and to what lies nascent in the atmosphere. In darker moments, such as the aftermath of revolutions, the weight of the future can become unbearable.
BREAD, FREEDOM, SOCIAL JUSTICE MITTERMAIER, AMIRA
Cultural anthropology,
February 2014, Letnik:
29, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
‘Aīsh, huriyya, ‘adāla igtimā ‘iyya (“bread, freedom, social justice”) were key demands of Egyptian protesters in early 2011. Whereas the call for bread evokes immediate need, social justice is often ...associated with structural transformations and a better tomorrow. In light of this temporal tension, this article calls for a critical rethinking of an orientation toward the future by dwelling on the ethical and political potentials inherent to traditions of giving, sharing, and hospitality that are fundamentally oriented toward the present. Drawing on fieldwork in Cairo during 2010 and 2012, I think about an ethics of immediacy that is embodied in seemingly non-revolutionary everyday practices, but that also emerges from stories about Tahrir as a space of togetherness and solidarity. I argue that such an ethics is obscured in dominant neoliberal concepts of social justice, which foreground individual responsibility, productivity, and economic growth. Concretely, the article places the Tahrir utopia in conversation with a Sufi khidma that provides guests with food, tea, and a place to rest. Both spaces, I suggest, gesture toward modes of being in the world which rupture the state’s monopoly of politics, enable alternative forms of circulation and distribution, and encourage forms of relationality different from capitalism (in both its welfare and neoliberal renditions). By bringing these spaces into conversation, I seek to problematize a pervasive neoliberalization of social justice and to contribute to an anthropology of the otherwise.
During the Egyptian uprising in 2011, a TV crew accidentally filmed a ghostly horseman in the midst of protesters. This essay takes the ghostly horseman as a starting point for thinking about the ...possibilities of an anthropology of
al-ghayb
, the invisible and unknown. Drawing on fieldwork in Egypt, as well as online reports and contestations of apparitions, visions, and dreams seen during the uprising, I suggest that accounts of the unseen pose a profound challenge to (and open up new possibilities for) doing ethnographic research, writing ethnography, and thinking anthropologically. Inspired by Michael Taussig, I suggest that the challenge is not to undo the invisible but to find a language that runs along the seam where the visible and the invisible connect and disconnect.
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