MediTransCulture: Mystical legacies and cultural transgression in the contemporary Euro-Mediterranean writing, CY Initiative for Excellence, CY Advanced Studies (Cergy-Paris University); duration: 10 months (1.10.2020-31.07.2021).
research project 2020-2021
The objective of the project is to study transcultural literature in the present-day Euro-Mediterranean zone, exploring the potential of literary construction of transgressive patterns directed against rigid cultural codifications and oppressive cultural legacies resulting in sharp, conflictive identifications. The texts forming the working corpus, i.e. essays and novels of Abdelwahab Meddeb, Fatema Mernissi, Fouad Laroui (main outline), Kamel Daoud, Bensalem Himmich, Malek Chebel and others (context, parallels and developments), have in common the exploration of a transgressive and liberating legacy, that of Sufism and transreligious Mediterranean mysticism. I will build upon my competence in pre-modern mysticism acquired at Leiden University over the last two years to study the ways how this legacy is evoked and developed by the contemporary Francophone writers. They translate mystical vocabularies (stages of spiritual quest, so called “names” of love) as well as sacred and profane textual references (Coran, hadith qudsi, pre-modern mystical poetry and treatises) into a secularised vision of political and private (intimate) liberation. The central question I would like to address is the metamorphosis of mysticism into a new kind of quest, transgressing and interrupting the cultural frontiers in search of individual freedom and authenticity. What was originally the search for the divine beyond the frontiers of human rituals and religious systems bearing the mark of cultural particularism becomes a quest in which secular values such as freedom and authenticity appear as the central stake. As a result, a peculiar, enriching form of trans-denominational spirituality seems to emerge as a novel legacy issued from a distant and apparently forgotten past. The project will help to develop an adequate critical response to a fascinating, yet often hermetic sector of contemporary Francophone literature through its confrontation with Arabic pre-modern texts and traditions (Rabi'a al-Adawiyya, Ibn Arabi, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya). On the other hand, this project is inscribed methodologically in transcultural studies, building upon the hypothesis of “dissolution of cultures” formulated by Wolfgang Welsch (1992), the approaches to “transculture” and transcultural writing by Michail Epstein (2009), Arianna Dagnino (2015) and others, as well as my own previous effort at defining “transcultural condition” (2018). The novelty of the project consists in putting in the limelight the continuity of individualistic struggle against the limitations inherent to cultural condition of man, i.e. human inscription in culture contemplated both in its positive aspect, as a repository of transmitted values, and in the negative one, as a source of oppression exerted through constant invitation to repetition, ready-made patterns of thinking and behaviour, ritualistic and literalist formulae of spirituality.
The novelty of the project consists in putting in the limelight a pre-modern – post-modern continuity. It is the continuity of individualistic struggle against the limitations inherent to the cultural condition of man, i.e. human inscription in culture contemplated both in its positive aspect, as a repository of transmitted values, and in the negative one, as a source of oppression exerted through constant invitation to repetition, ready-made patterns of thinking and behaviour, ritualistic and literalist formulae of spirituality. Although communicating with the field of reflection in transcultural studies, my project aims at enlarging the scope of the existing research, treating the Epsteinian “transculture” as a phenomenon that may be traced back to remote periods of history and associated with pre-modern legacies as a source of legitimisation for the attempts at transgressing cultural limitations and boundaries. That means that it should not be associated exclusively with contemporary phenomena, such as globalisation or the dissolution of social links caused by migrations. As I claim, it should also be seen as a trans-historical phenomenon of individualistic revolt against cultural limitations and the result of extra-communitarian aspirations of man, that struggles to differentiate himself or herself from the group and the tyranny of its collective rituals. At the same time, the crucial difference between the solitude of an Andalusian mystic and that of a post-modern man consists in its valuation as a spiritual choice. Transcultural aspirations, even a hypothetical extra-cultural dimension of an effectively lived experience, postulated and reported by the mystics striving to transcend their own culturally marked and shaped identity, are an inherent, ever-lasting part of our humanness. Contemporary transcultural lens permits to re-examine them across the East-West divide. On the other hand, the search for extra-cultural becoming of man through mystical experience, contemplated as something coming from the past, remains an open, transformative potential for the future. Conceptualising with increasing clarity the cultural as a sphere with boundaries and inherent limitations, striving to provide cognitive tools for a meta-cultural outlook, I hope to create a new opportunity for examining both the pre-modern heritage situated at the frontiers of religious orthodoxies and its contemporary validity in transcultural writing.
The novelty of the project consists in putting in the limelight a pre-modern – post-modern continuity. It is the continuity of individualistic struggle against the limitations inherent to the cultural condition of man, i.e. human inscription in culture contemplated both in its positive aspect, as a repository of transmitted values, and in the negative one, as a source of oppression exerted through constant invitation to repetition, ready-made patterns of thinking and behaviour, ritualistic and literalist formulae of spirituality. Although communicating with the field of reflection in transcultural studies, my project aims at enlarging the scope of the existing research, treating the Epsteinian “transculture” as a phenomenon that may be traced back to remote periods of history and associated with pre-modern legacies as a source of legitimisation for the attempts at transgressing cultural limitations and boundaries. That means that it should not be associated exclusively with contemporary phenomena, such as globalisation or the dissolution of social links caused by migrations. As I claim, it should also be seen as a trans-historical phenomenon of individualistic revolt against cultural limitations and the result of extra-communitarian aspirations of man, that struggles to differentiate himself or herself from the group and the tyranny of its collective rituals. At the same time, the crucial difference between the solitude of an Andalusian mystic and that of a post-modern man consists in its valuation as a spiritual choice. Transcultural aspirations, even a hypothetical extra-cultural dimension of an effectively lived experience, postulated and reported by the mystics striving to transcend their own culturally marked and shaped identity, are an inherent, ever-lasting part of our humanness. Contemporary transcultural lens permits to re-examine them across the East-West divide. On the other hand, the search for extra-cultural becoming of man through mystical experience, contemplated as something coming from the past, remains an open, transformative potential for the future. Conceptualising with increasing clarity the cultural as a sphere with boundaries and inherent limitations, striving to provide cognitive tools for a meta-cultural outlook, I hope to create a new opportunity for examining both the pre-modern heritage situated at the frontiers of religious orthodoxies and its contemporary validity in transcultural writing.
