Descripción del proyecto
Una teoría de la imaginación: aspiraciones islámicas populistas en el complejo de los Balcanes a Bengala
El proyecto TAKHAYYUL, financiado con fondos europeos, es un estudio colaborativo que ahondará etnográficamente en las fuerzas imaginativas de la formación de las aspiraciones islámicas populistas en el complejo de los Balcanes a Bengala (los Balcanes, Oriente Medio y Asia Meridional). Tales aspiraciones políticas ofrecen a sus seguidores una amplia gama de referencias históricas, cosmologías religiosas, sentimientos nacionalistas y otros registros afectivos e imaginativos, con el objetivo de la resurrección del Imperio Islámico; todo esto se representa mejor mediante el concepto de takhayyul (una teoría de la imaginación). El proyecto desarrollará una formulación extensa y comparativa del concepto para establecer la base de una antropología de la imaginación y para ampliar los conocimientos antropológicos sobre el islamismo mediante el estudio de aspectos históricos, éticos y estéticos. El proyecto también fomentará un innovador diseño de investigación comparativa que combina estudios históricos y etnográficos sobre el imaginativo.
Objetivo
Imagination and dreams are often at the heart of political formations. The dream of reviving the Islamic empires has gained the Islamist political actors currency and a large following in the homes of the three greatest Islamic Empires (aka Islamdom: Ottoman, Safavid, Mughal/Timurid), even though the most recent of these ceased to exist almost a hundred years ago. Today, Islamist actors, across what is now called the Balkan-to-Bengal complex, tap into their followers’ various historical references, religious cosmologies, nationalist resentments, and other affective and imaginative registers to further their politics at the most ambitious scale, to resurrect the empire. In the former centres of Islamic Empires, the imaginative references emerge with elements of imperial nostalgia, post-imperial malaise, and political rage. The existing work has failed to capture the interconnected imaginative forces in the formation of Islamist politics for the following reasons: A) The region does not fit into foci of area studies. B) Eurocentric theories are limited to grasp and analyse the imaginative forces. This project builds on an Islamic concept takhayyul: terrestrial imagination that informs both doxastic and futuristic thinking towards developing an Islamic shared vision. C) An anthropological work with its fine-grained ethnographic method and comparative heritage, is poised to make a substantive contribution for the first time to excavate the imaginative forces in the formation of Islamist imperial dreams.
The project aims: 1) To lay the conceptual ground for an anthropology of imagination, by developing the in-depth and comparative formulation of the concept takhayyul. 2) To expand anthropological knowledge on Islamisms by pushing against the limits of modernist rationality; instead, exploring the historical, ethical, and aesthetic. 3) To experiment with an innovative comparative research design that combines historical and ethnographic excavations on the imaginative.
Ámbito científico
Programa(s)
Régimen de financiación
ERC-STG - Starting GrantInstitución de acogida
WC1E 6BT London
Reino Unido