Dreams That Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination

by Amira Mittermaier

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520258518
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	12/16/2010
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	328
Sales rank:	1,039,201
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Amira Mittermaier is Associate Professor of Religion at the University of Toronto.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
On Transliterations and Translations
Prelude

Introduction: Studying Dreams in Undreamy Times

1. Dream Trouble
2. Thresholds of Interpretation
3. Seeing the (In)visible
4. Poetry and Prophecy
5. The Ethics of the Visitational Dream
6. The Royal Road into the Unknown
7. Virtual Realities, Visionary Realities

Afterword: On the Politics of Dreaming

Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Engaging, theoretically sophisticated and ethnographically rich."

—Social Anthropology

"[This] exploration of Egyptian dream life is a unique, if not compelling, one."—Bidoun

Editorial Reviews

Engaging, theoretically sophisticated and ethnographically rich.

Social Anthropology - Anthony Shenoda

[This] exploration of Egyptian dream life is a unique, if not compelling, one.

Bidoun