Time, Virtuality, and the Digital Sacred
In Season 2 of the show Ramy, two Muslim American men perform umrah (the minor pilgrimage to Mecca) while sitting in an Atlantic City hotel room. Ramy is known for its bold and subversive humor in the way it addresses Muslim American identity and experiences. In this episode, two of his friends wear VR headsets. One of them, Mo, tearfully embraces the wallpaper, which his goggles have transformed into the Ka’ba, Islam’s holiest site. His friend Ahmed whispers, “It’s a miracle, subhanallah,” then adds, “and you don’t have to worry about your sandals getting stolen at the haram!” Ahmed’s joke about germs and stolen sandals acknowledges the absurdity. Mo’s tears—while also absurd—demand that we take the scene a bit more seriously. Can a pixelated Ka‘ba elicit immanence (divine copresence) or does it mostly just parody a sacred ritual? If time resists digitization even as space becomes malleable (McGlotten 2013, 46), and “time is not a semiotic isolate” (Agha, 2007, 320) how might the concept of chronotope, the intrinsic connection between time and space be useful in thinking about religious practice and the digital? Through this seemingly absurd example of a VR pilgrimage, we might better understand the notion of chronotope as it relates to the digital and how, through affect and copresence, the sacred becomes immanent (and perhaps transcendent) in new configurations, even as time “resists” digitization. (read more...)
