Unknowing and the Everyday: Sufism and Knowledge in Iran

by Seema Golestaneh

Overview

In Unknowing and the Everyday Seema Golestaneh examines how Sufi mystical experience in Iran shapes contemporary life. Central to this process is ma’rifat, or “unknowing”—the idea that, as it is ultimately impossible to fully understand the divine, humanity must operate from an engaged awareness that it knows nothing. Golestaneh shows that rather than considering ma’rifat an obstacle to intellectual engagement, Sufis embrace that there will always be that which they do not know. From this position, they affirm both the limits of human knowledge and the mysteries of the profane world. Through ethnographic case studies, Golestaneh traces the affective and sensory dimensions of ma’rifat in contexts such as the creation of collective Sufi spaces, the interpretation of Persian poetry, formulations of selfhood and non-selfhood, and the navigation of the socio-material realm. By outlining the relationship between ma’rifat and religious, aesthetic, and social life in Iran, Golestaneh demonstrates that for Sufis the outer bounds of human thought are the beginning rather than the limit. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478024170
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	12/26/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Seema Golestaneh is Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments  ix
Prologue  xv
Introduction  1
1. Sufism in Iran, Iran in Sufism  29
2. Unknowing of Text, Unknowing of Authority  59
3. Unknowing of Self, Unknowing of Body  96
4. Unknowing of Memory  135
5. Unknowing of Place  165
Postscript  189
Notes  193
Bibliography  211
Index  225

What People are Saying About This

Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi

“Unknowing and the Everyday is a brilliant, counterintuitive work of phenomenology. Seema Golestaneh takes the reader to a universe of ambiguity through which her Sufi interlocutors practice a clear sense of being in the world, acting upon it and building relations with others. Together, her beautifully crafted ethnography and rich historical analysis bring to light the hermeneutical practice of mysticism in the politically charged environment of Iran without ever reducing them to mere political acts.”

Knot of the Soul: Madness, Psychoanalysis, Islam - Stefania Pandolfo

“Unknowing and the Everyday is a fascinating ethnography of the idea of mystical knowing (erfan in Farsi), which from the perspective of the living can only be described as a kind of unknowing, unlearning, and disassembling of the certitudes and ideological layers of our lives that reconfigures notions of self and reality. Tracing the multiple interpretations and concrete deployments in people’s lives of the concepts of mystical knowledge, the remembrance of God (zekr), and the dissolution of the self and identity (fana) through a number of Sufi sites and congregations in contemporary Iran, Seema Golestaneh gives us both the attuned description of a world and an anthropological ‘improvisation’ on it. What can the unlearning of the unreality of the real toward the (impossible) encounter with a divine Real do for the experience of young Iranians today confronted with the official memory of the Iran-Iraq War, the selective commemoration of martyrs by the state, and the petrification of traumatic cuts?”

Jinnealogy: Time, Islam, and Ecological Thought in the Medieval Ruins of Delhi - Anand Vivek Taneja

“A poetic and original contribution to the conversation about selfhood and ethics in Islamic studies, Unknowing and the Everyday opens up remarkable new ways to think of the role of literature in ethical life, the role of authority in the discursive tradition of Islam, and perhaps most crucially, ways of being that are outside the taken-for-granted conceptions of the modern liberal subject. Seema Golestaneh’s sensitivity to how the texts and practices of classical Sufism continue to inform and be in dialogue with contemporary Iranian life is a model for what the ethnography of religion can be. This is an outstanding work which will add greatly to the study of Iran and to the anthropology of Islam.”

Editorial Reviews

"Golestaneh’s writing throughout the book is lucid and effective, frequently poetic. ... A beautifully crafted memoir of a wandering Sufi of an academic, lost in the charmingly mystical landscape of contemporary Isfahan."

—Guangtian Ha, International Journal of Middle East Studies

"This theoretically rich and analytically compelling book weaves broader themes of text, body, memory, and place together to interrogate scholar’s approaches to Sufi conceptual paradigms of zekr, sama‘, and, importantly, ma‘rifat. This strikingly written monograph centers the voices of Golestaneh’s interlocutors to engage complex Sufi states of being and knowing through accessible narratives of their everyday life. It is a must-read for scholars interested in Sufism and Islamic mysticism and anyone with interest in Iran."—Merin Shobhana Xavier, Journal of the American Academy of Religion

From the Publisher

"This theoretically rich and analytically compelling book weaves broader themes of text, body, memory, and place together to interrogate scholar’s approaches to Sufi conceptual paradigms of zekr, sama‘, and, importantly, ma‘rifat. This strikingly written monograph centers the voices of Golestaneh’s interlocutors to engage complex Sufi states of being and knowing through accessible narratives of their everyday life. It is a must-read for scholars interested in Sufism and Islamic mysticism and anyone with interest in Iran."

Journal of the American Academy of Religion - Merin Shobhana Xavier

"Golestaneh’s writing throughout the book is lucid and effective, frequently poetic. ... A beautifully crafted memoir of a wandering Sufi of an academic, lost in the charmingly mystical landscape of contemporary Isfahan."

International Journal of Middle East Studies - Guangtian Ha