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