The aesthetics of ritual--contested identities and conflicting performances in the Iraqi Shi’a diaspora: Ritual, performance and identity change

Degli Esposti, Emanuelle

Abstract

What are the processes through which identity change takes place at the individual and collective level? How might a focus on embodied religious performance and ritual contribute to understandings of such identity change? Through an ethnographic analysis of the Muharram rituals of Iraqi Shi’is in London, I take religious rites as a starting point from which to theorise a performative theory of identity change to highlight the role of ritual and performance in shaping changing notions of identity at both the individual and collective level. Such a project necessarily engages both with processes of identity change and with the paradox of identity/difference, particularly the ways in which articulations of subjective identity are ontologically dependent on an external ‘other’. Ultimately, I argue that paying close critical attention to the performative and (re)iterative processes of micro-level identificatory practices allows a more nuanced understanding of the mechanisms through which identity change comes to take effect, both at the level of individual subjectivity and that of collective social belonging.

Citation

Degli Esposti, E. (in press). The aesthetics of ritual--contested identities and conflicting performances in the Iraqi Shi’a diaspora: Ritual, performance and identity change. Politics, 38(1), 68-83. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395717707092

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 24, 2017
• Online Publication Date: Jun 8, 2017
• Deposit Date: Feb 20, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 20, 2019
• Journal: Politics
• Print ISSN: 0263-3957
• Electronic ISSN: 1467-9256
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 38
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 68-83
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395717707092