Jinneography: Post-Soviet passages of traumatic exemplarity.

Summary

After the USSR collapsed, new migration patterns between Russia and Central Asia changed how Muslims relate to one another. The concept of ibra, an Islamic pedagogical practice of learning from worldly events, helps explain this shift. Analyzing a spirit possession session of a Tajik migrant in Russia, the author argues that collective participation in the ritual turns the trauma of Tajikistan's civil war and ongoing terror into a cipher for learning and a desire to draw closer to the divine. The session pedagogically invokes and extends post-Soviet historical experience as an exemplary passage, showing how migrants recognize each other as fellow Muslims in a theological geography formed on the ruins of Soviet universal comradeship.

Study at a glance

Abstract

While Russia has historically and geographically close ties with Islam, the second most-practiced religion in its vast territories, the collapse of the USSR changed the terms of this relationship in significant ways. One key shift is the emergence of new immigration patterns between Russia and former Soviet states. Traversing distant lands from the peripheries of the Caucasus and Central Asia to mainland Russia in search of work, migrants have come to recognize each other as fellow Muslims dispersed in a theological geography on the ruins of the universal comradeship dreamed by the Soviet utopia. I propose to study the Islamic pedagogical practice of ibra in the context of sociohistorical dynamics of education and migration between Russia and Central Asia to further locate and analyze this shift in relation to current debates on post-Soviet subjectivity. By discussing the case of a spirit possession of a Tajik national performed in Russia, I argue that the collective participation in the session pedagogically invokes, ciphers, and extends the post-Soviet terrains of history as ibra, or exemplary passage of worldly events. To do so, I first locate the Quranic concept of ibra as a pedagogical paradigm in Islamic traditions as well as an ethnographic lens in the context of educational campaigns for the Muslims of Eurasia and then apply the concept to my analysis of the possession session in order to show that in the ritualistic incarnations of ghosts, or jinns, the civil war of Tajikistan and its continuing cycle of terror is ciphered into a desire for learning, as well as a focus on approximation to the divine.