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Dialectic of Embodiment: Mysticism, Materiality and the Performance of Sufism in China

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Dialectic of Embodiment: Mysticism, Materiality and the Performance of Sufism in China PI 3 (1+2) pp. 85–101 Intellect Limited 2014 Performing Islam Volume 3 Numbers 1 & 2 © 2014 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/pi.3.1-2.85_1 GuanGtian Ha University of London Dialectic of embodiment: Mysticism, materiality and the performance of Sufism in China abStraCt KeyworDS This article attempts to contribute to the study of religious – particularly Sufi Islam Islamic – structuring of the body from two perspectives: on the one hand, it pays Sufism attention not merely to the disciplinary dimension of the Jahriyya Sufi training in Jahriyya northwest China, but also to the specific processes that build this training around embodiment the corporeal acts of ritual consumption. On the other hand, this article also exam- mysticism ines how the structuring of embodiment specific to Jahriyya Sufism is intrinsi- sainthood cally linked to a strongly eschatological conception of time that greatly intensifies the disciplinary power of training. Rather than reduce the question to one of ritual rigidity or nostalgia for spiritual grandeur lost to a past presumed to be perpetually unchanging, the article argues that the specifically Jahriyya eschatology, marked by the insistence upon the sealing of the sacred genealogy, dialectically sublimates sainthood, elevating it from the concrete and corporeal to the symbolic and sublime. This symbolization and sublimation is located at the centre of Jahriyya mysticism and forms the definitive drive that structures the pious Jahriyya body. Based upon this ethnographic discovery, this article challenges the current tendency in anthro- pological and religious studies of Sufism and Islam that locates the body completely 85 PI_3.1&2_Ha_85-101.indd 85 8/25/15 9:00:57 AM Guangtian Ha 1. This article is based within the space of ethical and performative practice. It argues that the dimension upon fieldwork of the symbolic and the sublime, irreducible to the practical, bears its own specificity conducted between 2011 and 2012, and an that demands our analytical attention. ongoing ethnographic project among the Jahriyya Sufis in China’s Ningxia Hui For a pious Jahriyya Sufi in China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region,1 the Autonomous Region that began in late 2014. configuration of the spatial body in a regulated ritual space must be supple- I thank The Wenner- mented by a careful calculation of the flow of time. A demanding disciplinary Gren Foundation procedure is intensely sustained under the panoptical gaze of a presumably for Anthropological Research, Social omniscient god. Those intent on completing and perfecting daily prayers with Science Research the weekly .sala-t al-jum’ah (Friday prayer) often have to decide in advance Council, the Department of where they should sit in the hall in order to imbibe the edification of the Anthropology and routinized sermon. They must remain still in their position once a decision is Weatherhead East made, and the obligatory show of respect – for the lecturing imam as well as Asian Institute at Columbia University, for God – requires that they sit with legs firmly crossed for however long the and The A.M. sermon might last (it often lasts 30 minutes, with a highly formalized Arabic Foundation for their khutbah recited separately after the Chinese language sermon). The time left generous financial . support during the for standing up and in line with others in preparation for the collective prayer 2011–2012 period. My after the preaching concludes is inconsiderately – perhaps intentionally – ongoing ethnographic project is funded short. It is often the case that, not until seconds after the imam has already through the ‘Sounding begun to recite the holy Qur’an, most followers would be able to raise their Islam in China’ hands for the intonation of takbı-r that officially marks the commencement of collective research programme based at the prayer. the music department Where one sits – and stands up – often determines how much time one of SOAS, University would have to get ‘in line’. An experienced Sufi often knows how to pick a of London. I thank Dr Rachel Harris for her pivotal position so little movement is needed when such adjustment would insightful comments inevitably delay others. The secret, as some devout Jahriyya disciples told me, and extraordinary editorial help. Needless is to sit two rows behind the imam and near the central axis that divides the to say, all errors remain prayer hall into two equal halves – sitting too near to the imam (e.g. in the mine. first row) would be an exhibition of disrespect and arrogance, while sitting either too far back or too far to the side would considerably increase the time for adjustment. One has to pick the golden spot – a secret not many know – in order to receive in full the blessing of merciful God; one has to calculate each step with much care so that the demandingly short interval will not deter one’s effort in pursuing God’s pleasure. A good Sufi must be a good planner, and felicitous discipline calls for the method of analysis (i.e. breaking down the whole procedure into discrete elements) to which both space and time must be subjected. The formulation of the intricate rules that structure the pious body of a Jahriyya Sufi bears a particularly significant relationship to the specific notion of time that threads throughout the world of Jahriyya Sufism. Allegorically corresponding to the foundational tenet of Islam that Prophet Muhammad is the final and ‘sealing’ prophet in a long and not-fully-known sacred genealogy, the Jahriyya order insists that their own silsila ended after the eighth genera- tion of its murshid (‘guide’, leading saint or sheikh of the order) passed away in 1960. Continuity of the order was violently disrupted as time (guangyin) was forever ‘frozen’. This notion of guangyin (literally ‘shine and shade’, poeti- cally describing time as the alternation between day and night) is marked in the order’s memory in terms of the eras of each of the previous murshid. The tumultuous era defined by the continuous presence of successive saints and the spread of the mystical truth are now in the past; yet the trail of this past 86 PI_3.1&2_Ha_85-101.indd 86 8/25/15 9:00:57 AM Dialectic of embodiment extends into the future. One ‘waits’ for the End, suspended in a period that 2. Studies of Sufism often concentrate upon somehow follows upon the closure of time itself. ‘Now’ is perceived by many the complex and rich pious Jahriyya followers to be ‘faster’ than it was before – after all, the world sense-scape of ritual will eventually (perhaps soon) end, as promised in the Qur’an and confirmed performances that induce trance and by the passing of the eight generations of Jahriyya murshid. The evanescent ecstasy among their temporality of the present is only reinforced by the sealing of sainthood (i.e. pious participants. the end of the genealogy). This strong eschatology is the organizing force that For recent work in this regard, see structures the world in which the pious Jahriyya body is inevitably embedded. Harris 2014; Kapchan ‘I don’t care what others say and do’, a Jahriyya Sufi in his 70s remarked to 2007; Hagedorn 2006; Spadola 2008; Wolf me, ‘I do as it was done in the guangyin of the last murshid’. 2006; Frembgen 2012; This article explores the specific structuring of embodiment that links with Kirkegaard 2012. this strongly eschatological conception of time, one that greatly intensifies the disciplinary power of religious training. Rather than reduce the question to one of ritual rigidity or nostalgia for spiritual grandeur lost to a past presumed to be perpetually unchanging, I argue that the specifically Jahriyya eschatology, marked by the insistence upon the sealing of the sacred genealogy, dialecti- cally sublimates sainthood, elevating it from the concrete and corporeal to the symbolic and sublime. The figure of the murshid has not disappeared as much as it has acquired its apotheosis in the negation of its corporeality. The rules laid down by the spiritual masters obtain the strongest of their disciplinary power by virtue of this logic of absence: death paradoxically reveals the gaze of the murshid to be that of the all-seeing divine, while also doubling, supple- menting and recharging the force of God. The ‘guide’ is not merely a medium that bridges the profane and the sacred. The force of God constantly needs to be supplemented and reinvigorated, and its intensification depends both upon the extension of the Sufi silsila and its definitive sealing. In locating the Jahriyya body within this dialectical conception of saint- hood and divinity, this article shifts our attention from the topic of Sufi ecstasy and trance to a more careful tracing of the pious body, a body that not merely recites and chants, prays and preaches, listens and voices, but is also reconfigured through practices of carnal consumption.2 The body spans and spreads, pene- trates and absorbs. It eats and digests, converting food instilled with piety into acts that perform reverence. Consumption is not external to the training but forms an indispensable part of it, yet how one eats and what ‘eating’ is in this particu- lar context necessarily undergo critical shifts. Chi (吃), the conventional Chinese term for eating, is replaced by koudao (口道, ‘to [imbibe] Dao with mouth’) when it comes to ritual dining: a practice that is framed primarily by the specific catego- ries of food prepared and the exacting procedures strictly observed in the course of preparation. Consumption may also follow unconventional patterns: certain kinds of food might be wrested away from their commonplace use, transformed in their material form, and re-integrated into a different system of consumption.
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