Dreams That Matter

Amira Mittermaier

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780520947856
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Dreams that Matter explores the social and material life of dreams in contemporary Cairo. Amira Mittermaier guides the reader through landscapes of the imagination that feature Muslim dream interpreters who draw on Freud, reformists who dismiss all forms of divination as superstition, a Sufi devotional group that keeps a diary of dreams related to its shaykh, and ordinary believers who speak of moving encounters with the Prophet Muhammad. In close dialogue with her Egyptian interlocutors, Islamic textual traditions, and Western theorists, Mittermaier teases out the dream's ethical, political, and religious implications. Her book is a provocative examination of how present-day Muslims encounter and engage the Divine that offers a different perspective on the Islamic Revival. Dreams That Matter opens up new spaces for an anthropology of the imagination, inviting us to rethink both the imagined and the real.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• On Transliterations and Translations
• Prelude
• INTRODUCTION: STUDYING DREAMS IN UNDREAMY TIMES
• 1. DREAM TROUBLE
• 2. THRESHOLDS OF INTERPRETATION
• 3. SEEING THE (IN)VISIBLE
• 4. POETRY AND PROPHECY
• 5. THE ETHICS OF THE VISITATIONAL DREAM
• 6. THE ROYAL ROAD INTO THE UNKNOWN
• 7. VIRTUAL REALITIES, VISIONARY REALITIES
• AFTERWORD: ON THE POLITICS OF DREAMING
• Notes
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index