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CATEGORIES:King's Silk Roads
SUMMARY:Mountain Media: Theologies of the Present in North
 ern Pakistan - Dr Timothy Cooper\, Cambridge Unive
 rsity
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20240126T140000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20240126T150000
UID:TALK211342AThttp://talks.cam.ac.uk
URL:http://talks.cam.ac.uk/talk/index/211342
DESCRIPTION:In Northern Pakistan\, Nizari Isma’ili and Twelver
  Shi’i communities use painted or arranged rocks t
 o write monumental messages on the Karakoram Mount
 ain range. On one side of the Hunza River\, and th
 e Gojal Valley\, mountain writing celebrates the c
 ontinuation of the Imamat\, a supra-national insti
 tution led by the forty-ninth Imam. Messages congr
 atulate the Nizari Isma’ili community on experienc
 ing Didar\, an event that puts them in the presenc
 e of “Hazar” or present Imam. In Nagar\, on the ot
 her side of the river\, Twelver Shi’i communities 
 signal their loyalty to their own system of Imamat
 \, which paused at the hidden Twelfth Imam\, Mahdi
 \, whose return promises to restore justice to a w
 orld bereft of it. Nizari Isma’ili and Twelver Shi
 ’i mountain writing is in direct conversation\, co
 ntinuing a long-standing dialogue between the comm
 unities over the relationship between the temporal
  present\, presence\, and divinely appointed autho
 rity.\n\nUsually elided in favour of burdensome pa
 sts or anticipated futures\, the present is an und
 erstudied area of the humanities and social scienc
 es. Drawn from ongoing ethnographic research\, I t
 est several ways of understanding the present(s) t
 o which Nizari Isma’ili and Twelver Shi’i mountain
  writing lay claim. First\, by understanding the m
 ountains themselves as a media form that brings wi
 th their contemporaneity a sense of precarity and 
 impermanence. Second\, by examining the materialit
 y of disclosure and guidance among Nizari Isma’ili
 s in Gojal. Third\, I look to some of the ways tha
 t these Nizari Isma’ili and Twelver Shi’i communit
 ies distinguish between one another’s present conc
 erns through the issue of mourning.\n\n\nAbout the
  speaker:  \nTimothy P.A. Cooper is an anthropolog
 ist studying religion\, ethics\, and comparative m
 edia in contemporary Pakistan. Currently a postdoc
 toral research fellow at the Department of Social 
 Anthropology at the University of Cambridge\, his 
 first book\, Moral Atmospheres: Islam and Media in
  a Pakistani Marketplace is out with Columbia Univ
 ersity Press in 2024 and was awarded the Claremont
  Prize in the Study of Religion\n\n
LOCATION:Keynes Lecture Theatre\, King’s College (and onlin
 e) 
CONTACT:Said Reza Huseini
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