Paper short abstract:

In working across modalities and registers in body and mind, this paper suggests digital technologies and dreams as particular techniques for researching questions anthropologically. Collage-work and film excerpts are shared as part of a discussion on representation of material in these modalities.

Paper long abstract:

In working across modalities and registers in body and mind, this paper suggests digital technologies and dreams as particular techniques for researching questions anthropologically (Waltorp 2017). Dreams, among the young Muslim women in Copenhagen I work with, are understood as relating to the future. This is to be understood in connection with the concept of the imaginal realm (alam al-mithâl) (cf. Chittick 1994; Corbin 1976; Marks 2016), also described as the world of 'Images in suspense' (mothol mo'allaqa) (Corbin 1976:10). The analogy of images in suspense is the reflection in a mirror - describing the relation of images to the empirical world. This has a resemblance to the 'selfies' and other digital images in social media that my interlocutors share with others, particularly in the Snapchat platform, where an image shared will cease to exist after ten seconds. (Waltorp 2017). Through looking at this infrastructure of images, I could analyse certain events that occurred during fieldwork in Copenhagen, and interrogate how dreaming and digital technologies are ways of enduring hardships patiently (sabr), and of simultaneously seeking to facilitate a better future. Collage-work and film excerpts are shared as part of a discussion on representation of material in these modalities.