Images have low priority in the study of Islam, despite their ubiquitous proximity to lived experience. This chapter argues for an exploration of images in contemporary Islam. It proposes a dynamic... Show moreImages have low priority in the study of Islam, despite their ubiquitous proximity to lived experience. This chapter argues for an exploration of images in contemporary Islam. It proposes a dynamic approach towards the relationship between Islam and the image by engaging with the concept of provocation. The chapter proposes that provocation helps us to draw attention to a multiplicity of emotions that images may engender, from feelings of joy and enlightenment to terror and rage, and from mixed feelings and feelings of indifference to a sense of shame. The chapter suggests that provocation helps to map how Muslims navigate and make sense of the overwhelming abundance and multiplicity of sounds and images in the religious public sphere today. Show less
This study aims to better understand how international cultural funding shapes opportunities for organizations to grow as generators of creativity able to provide transformative experiences for... Show moreThis study aims to better understand how international cultural funding shapes opportunities for organizations to grow as generators of creativity able to provide transformative experiences for local audiences. It analyzes the experiences of four cases located in the Middle East and North Africa region, namely L’Atelier de l’Observatoire (Morocco), Clown Me In (Lebanon), Bantmag (Turkey), and Volunteer Palestine (West Bank). Although the Prince Claus Fund, Hivos, and European Cultural Foundation (ECF) have sought alternatives to the neoliberal instrumentalization of their funding measured according to the rubrics of impact, our research shows that organizations still struggle with the need to appeal to international funding bodies while also focusing on their work as embedded in local conditions. Show less
This essay probes the intersection of irony and affect. Contrary to approaches to irony as an intentional strategy and to the ironist as a detached sovereign subject, this essay foregrounds a kind... Show moreThis essay probes the intersection of irony and affect. Contrary to approaches to irony as an intentional strategy and to the ironist as a detached sovereign subject, this essay foregrounds a kind of irony that issues from a vulnerable subject and from transmissions of affect that exceed the speaker’s intention. This irony unravels through a close reading of the diary that the Greek Alexandrian poet Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933) – a master of irony - kept from his first trip to Athens in 1901. Revising previous approaches to Cavafy’s irony, the essay reads his diary as an ironic text that yields a non-sovereign ironic subject. While the diary consists of dry, factual information and commonplace descriptions, blocking access to the author’s personal experience, its language is haunted by embodied forms of knowledge that draw attention to text’s other: the poet’s body. Irony emerges when the detached mode of writing is disrupted by manifestations of bodily demands and affective forms of knowledge that thwart the writing subject’s desire for control. Proposing the figure of the reluctant ironist, the essay shows how irony springs from repressed physiological forms of knowledge that disrupt a text’s regulatory mechanisms and the speaker’s integrated self. Show less
