Paper short abstract:

This paper explores contemplation practices within Islamic revivalist movements in Turkey, suggesting Muslim ontologies and related theologies should be seen as sources for broadening anthropological theory and not just as an interpretative tool to understand our “religious” interlocutors better.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores contemplation practices within an Islamic revivalist movement in contemporary Turkey and how they affected the anthropologist during and after fieldwork. The paper takes "seriously" the researcher’s reflection on his experiences of transcendence in and just after the fieldwork as they raise both methodological and theoretical questions. Methodologically, they invite the researcher to "surrender" to other modes of knowing they disclose, undoing conventional ways of thinking and practicing the ethnographic experience. Theoretically, these experiences question the secular logic that still underlies most interpretations of religious phenomena within anthropology and beyond, inviting researchers to take a more bottom-up, ontologically grounded approach to "theory". In this light, the paper suggests that Muslim ontologies and related theologies should be seen as sources for broadening anthropological theory rather than merely as interpretative tools for understanding the anthropologist's religious interlocutors.