Dreams That Matter – Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination - Hardcover

Mittermaier, Amira

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520258509 ISBN 13: 9780520258501

Publisher: University of California Press, 2011

Synopsis

"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.

About this title

Review:

"Engaging, theoretically sophisticated and ethnographically rich." -- Anthony Shenoda Social Anthropology 20120217 "[This] exploration of Egyptian dream life is a unique, if not compelling, one." Bidoun 20110208

About the Author:

Amira Mittermaier is Associate Professor of Religion at the University of Toronto.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0520258509
• ISBN 13: 9780520258501
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 278