The browser you are using is not supported by this website. All versions of Internet Explorer are no longer supported, either by us or Microsoft (read more here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/windows/end-of-ie-support).

Please use a modern browser to fully experience our website, such as the newest versions of Edge, Chrome, Firefox or Safari etc.

Photo of Torsten Janson

Torsten Janson

Researcher

Photo of Torsten Janson

Lovers of the Rose : Islamic Affect and the Politics of Commemoration in Turkish Museal Display

Author

  • Torsten Janson

Editor

  • Catharina Raudvere

Summary, in English

This chapter explores Turkish museal display as an arena for memory-cultural Islamisation, extending beyond the walls of museums. It probes museums as spaces for exhibiting nationalism, and the burgeoning interest in religion and affect within a new museology. It discusses how Turkish expositions have appropriated aspects of such a new museology in restorative-commemorative expositions of the Ottoman past, under the auspices of the AKP government. The establishment and re-organisation of museums has co-occurred with (and extended into) a performative ritualisation of public space and education. The Ottoman-Islamic past hence is re-constructed, re-imagined, and re-spatialised, not only as a national-cultural heritage, but as ethics of citizenship. Such tendencies are developed in an analysis of the revitalisation, reinterpretation, and exposition of hilye-i sṃerif calligraphy. This Ottoman-Islamic genre, commemorating and visually conjuring the love (asṃk) for Prophet Muhammad, has emerged as a quasi-national, state-patronised, Turkish-Islamic art form, exhibited in museal-cum-ritual and affective display.

Department/s

  • Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies (CMES)
  • MECW: The Middle East in the Contemporary World
  • History of Religions and Religious Behavioural Science

Publishing year

2023

Language

English

Pages

57-98

Publication/Series

Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe

Document type

Book chapter

Publisher

Palgrave Macmillan

Topic

  • Political Science
  • History of Religions

Keywords

  • Turkey, museums, nationalism, Islam, Ottoman, calligraphy, hilye-i şerif

Status

Published

Project

  • Beyond Sacred/Secular Cities - Exploring Politics of Memory, Space, and Religion in Middle Eastern Nationalisms

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 2523-7993
  • ISSN: 2523-7985
  • ISBN: 978-3-031-08023-4
  • ISBN: 978-3-031-08022-7