Nicolas Elias, "The Raw and the Cooked: Uses and Meaning of an Antinomian Trope in Alevism and Bektashism"

Cu, 04/03/2022 - 02:59 — onder.ondes
09/03/2022 17:00
Turkey

Among Hacı Bektaş Veli's followers, the empirical categories of 'raw' and 'cooked' are elaborated into theological concepts. By analyzing some uses of these categories, in both historical and ethnographical sources, this presentation will aim at exploring their religious meaning as well as their role in conceptualizing the antinomian stance prevailing among Alevis and Bektashis. It will be argued that the dialectic of the raw and the cooked is a counterproposition to a core dialectic of Sunni Islam – that of the pure and the impure.

Nicolas Elias is an anthropologist, Assistant Professor at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (Paris). He has conducted fieldwork among musicians and dancers of the Pontic Mountains as well as among the Alevi-Bektashi communities of Turkey and the Balkans.

The seminar will be held both in-person (at Nafi Baba Building, 103) and online. 

Please contact nafibabamerkezi@boun.edu.tr to attend the seminar.
Please click here to join the seminar online.