Irrationalities in Islam and Media in Nineteenth-Century Iran: Faces of Modernity
Irrationalities in Islam and Media in Nineteenth-Century Iran: Faces of Modernity
by Arash Ghajarjazi
Amsterdam University Press, 2022 eISBN: 978-94-006-0443-8
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
This book deals for the first time with the cultural history of media in nineteenth-century Iran, a history that deals with how modern techniques of representation and communication were received in the Iranian Shiʿa society. This reception history is examined in religious photography, military reforms, Persian passion plays, Shiʿa medicine, and the burgeoning telegraphic culture. The problematic relationship between Shīʿa Islam and 19th-century media is conceptualised and contextualised, especially through the lens of the first Polytechnique college (Dār al-Fonun, 1851) in Iran. This college is conceptualised as a media laboratory, where the technological sphere in Iran was fundamentally transforming. It is also contextualised in the age of reform, a period in which the Middle East was undergoing widespread social, political, and military changes. Islamic (art) history, Iranian Studies, and cultural analysis form an interdisciplinary analytic framework to create new knowledge about the historical complexity of 19th-century Iran.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Arash Ghajarjazi received his PhD from the department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Utrecht University. His work deals with the relations between Islam, sciences, and media technologies in the Middle East from the 19th century onwards. More broadly, trained both as a cultural analyst and a historian, he explores how Islamic traditions have evolved in and as media. He approaches histories of Muslim material cultures and ideas together. His work seeks a balance between historical contextualisation and philosophical conceptualisation.
REVIEWS
This is a very concise and thought-provoking study on the crossroads and intersections of Qajar intellectual history, history of sciences and medicine, religious studies, media studies and Shiite Islamic studies. It does not fit smoothly into narrow disciplinary definitions, and this is what makes it so compelling, and at times challenging. – Christoph U. Werner, University of Bamberg
The manuscript is written well and is original and very compellingly argued. The subject offers brilliant insights into the ways Iranian Shi’i belief systems, habits and praxis intersect with and adjust to new technologies and appropriate their potentialities to naturalise, through ‘the absurd’, those new ways of sensing the world. – Sussan Babaie, University of London
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS List of figures Transliteration table Acknowledgements Preface
INTRODUCTION A SHORT OVERVIEW OF EARLY REFORMS THROUGH THE LENS OF DĀR AL-FONUN Print media Photography Military sounds Telegraphy ABSURD AS THE LIMIT TO MEDIATION MEANING, PARADOX, AND THE ABSURD IN ISLAM: PUSHING SHAHAB AHMED TO THE LIMIT NOTES ON THE METHODS
1. RESURRECTIONAL MEDIATIONS SHIʿA ESCHATOLOGY AND PHOTOGRAPHY THEOLOGRAPHIC MEDIATION IN RESURRECTIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY The hereafter and the embodiment of deeds The mediated imagination of the hereafter PHOTOGRAPHY AT THE LIMIT: FROM MIMESIS TO EVIDENTIALITY A WORLD OF MEANING IN THE PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGE
2. MOURNING MEDIATIONS TAʿZIYE PERFORMANCES AND MILITARY SONIC TECHNIQUES MILITARY SOUNDS Military sounds in Iran Manuals of reform THE CULTURAL INFLUENCE OF THE MILITARY TAʿZIYE: A SHORT HISTORY CUEING AND ORGANISING: TAʿZIYE RECONSTRUCTED Prologues Main acts THE AFFECTIVE MODE OF TAʿZIYE
3. THERAPEUTIC MEDIATIONS SHIʿA MEDICAL IMAGINATION AND CHOLERA CHOLERA IN CONTEXT: MEDICAL INSTITUTIONALISATION AND AETIOLOGIES THE CASE OF CURE OF CHOLERA (ʿELĀJ AL-WABĀʾ) The taste and smell of cholera Talismanic methods COUNTER POINTS: MODERN PROPHYLACTIC APPROACHES TO CHOLERA The case of Tholozan The case of Schlimmer
4. SPIRITUAL MEDIATIONS SHIʿA DEMONOLOGY AND TELEGRAPHY HAPTICS OF THE JENN A brief history of haptics Narratives of haptic jenn in Majlesi and Fozūni SPIRITS AFTER TELEGRAPHY In lieu of the telegraph: The universal fluid The séance with Amir Kabir and the issue of mediation DIMINISHING HAPTICS IN IRANIAN SPIRITISM