For postsecular space

Abstract

Conflicts over formal and informal mosques constitute one of the dimensions upon which patterns of Islamophobia are enacted and experienced. Fostered by discursive arrangements embodied in everyday encounters with difference, such conflicts affect Muslims’ access to the public city. This article advances two arguments. First, by understanding postsecular space through Doreen Massey’s [2005. For Space. London: Sage] concept of throwntogetherness—the coming together of a multiplicity of imaginative trajectories of inhabiting human and non-human worlds—it argues for the centrality of imagination in thinking geographically. The article maintains that to challenge Islamophobia’s embodied knowledge requires to challenge imagination, framed as the capacity of mediating discursive thought and sense-perception. Second, the article argues for a postsecular thinking that exceeds the search for consensual paths of interreligious cohabitation and instead looks to publicly negotiate conflicts by pluralising imagination, identities, aesthetics, city forms, and theologies. These arguments are illustrated in reference to the multidisciplinary participatory project, “Reimagining the Mosque, Opening the City”, I conceived and co-curated with Muslim and non-Muslim scholars and artists in Rome and Bologna, Italy.

Keywords:

• Islamophobia
• mosque
• postsecular
• Italy
• imagination

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers, the CITY editors and the editors of this Special Feature for their comments and suggestions. I also would like to thank all the collaborators involved in the project “Reimagining the Mosque”: Yiota Demetriou, Francesco Chiodelli, Luca Gullì, Giulia Sudano, Alessio Scala, Valeria Fabretti, Piero Vereni, Shagufta K Iqbal, Shaheen Kasmani, Ayesha Gamiet, Ali Tanveer, and the Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The named used are pseudonyms chosen to be characteristic of those interviewed.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Giuseppe Carta

Giuseppe Carta is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Urban Studies at the Gran Sasso Science Institute, Italy. Email: [email protected]