Rudolph Ware
Research project
Corporality and epistemology in Islam: the human condition of Islamic sciences.
Project summary
Classical education in the Muslim world was first and foremost a pedagogy based on discipline, memorization, internalization of texts (corporally and intellectually) and imitation of an embodied, practical example of the faith.
This epistemology remains dominant among Muslims in West Africa. Research into the bodily aspects of knowledge transmission challenges the division inherent in the formulation “human condition of science”. Traditional West African Islam is based on the idea that the human form can serve as a matrix for encoding science, a vehicle for transmitting it, and a codex for decoding it.
At Iméra, I plan to develop the methodological, conceptual and epistemic implications of such a corporeal exploration of the constitution and transmission of Islamic knowledge.
