TY - JOUR
T1 - #IAMHUSSEINI: television and mourning during the COVID-19 pandemic
AU - Sparey, Rhys Thomas
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council via the London Arts and Humanities Partnership with support from the Society for Education, Music and Psychology Research. This article started life at a workshop held by the CoronAsur team, part of the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore. I owe them?Carola E. Lorea, Natalie Lang, Neena Mahadev, Ningning Chen?and the journal editor Michael Stausberg no end of thanks for coordinating this special issue and for offering considerable feedback. This article also owes its existence to Muhammad Lufti Bin Othman who responded to the paper and Richard Williams who recommended the workshop, as well as Katherine Butler Schofield, Constanze Neuschwender, and Edward J. B. Holland who proofread the manuscript.
Funding Information:
This article started life at a workshop held by the CoronAsur team, part of the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore. I owe them – Carola E. Lorea, Natalie Lang, Neena Mahadev, Ningning Chen – and the journal editor Michael Stausberg no end of thanks for coordinating this special issue and for offering considerable feedback. This article also owes its existence to Muhammad Lufti Bin Othman who responded to the paper and Richard Williams who recommended the workshop, as well as Katherine Butler Schofield, Constanze Neuschwender, and Edward J. B. Holland who proofread the manuscript. This research was funded by the London Arts and Humanities Partnership.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2022/4/1
Y1 - 2022/4/1
N2 - This article is a study of mourning among Shi'a Muslims during the COVID-19 pandemic through a call-in talk show called #IAMHUSSEINI. By analyzing the discourses of callers and presenters and locating them within a visual context of the television studio, this article shows how the viewership of #IAMHUSSEINI constitutes a televisual majlis (Arabic: ‘assembly') composed of more than passive asynchronous consumption and resembling what Patrick Eisenlohr refers to as ‘atmospheres'. This article argues that the COVID-19 pandemic drove #IAMHUSSEINI to recalibrate to expectations of a spatially proximate ritual, rather than sustaining a ‘natively digital' aesthetic, repurposing Richard Rogers' approach to digital methods. This change brought about a tacit understanding of the televisual majlis among #IAMHUSSEINI's viewers. This article therefore posits a difference between ‘spatial intercorporeality', in which bodies are mediated by spatial proximity, and ‘functional intercorporeality’, in which they are mediated by the material preconditions of a shared activity.
AB - This article is a study of mourning among Shi'a Muslims during the COVID-19 pandemic through a call-in talk show called #IAMHUSSEINI. By analyzing the discourses of callers and presenters and locating them within a visual context of the television studio, this article shows how the viewership of #IAMHUSSEINI constitutes a televisual majlis (Arabic: ‘assembly') composed of more than passive asynchronous consumption and resembling what Patrick Eisenlohr refers to as ‘atmospheres'. This article argues that the COVID-19 pandemic drove #IAMHUSSEINI to recalibrate to expectations of a spatially proximate ritual, rather than sustaining a ‘natively digital' aesthetic, repurposing Richard Rogers' approach to digital methods. This change brought about a tacit understanding of the televisual majlis among #IAMHUSSEINI's viewers. This article therefore posits a difference between ‘spatial intercorporeality', in which bodies are mediated by spatial proximity, and ‘functional intercorporeality’, in which they are mediated by the material preconditions of a shared activity.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85128241934&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/0048721X.2022.2053038
DO - 10.1080/0048721X.2022.2053038
M3 - Article
SN - 0048-721X
VL - 52
SP - 284
EP - 305
JO - RELIGION
JF - RELIGION
IS - 2
ER -