We can discover the perceptual contexts of Islamic art beyond history.
We can interpret them. They are no less measurable than names and dates,
materials and trade routes. And if in the process of our interpretation we
come to disagree, the ensuing discussion is precisely the discursive space in
which these cultures come to life–not frozen as legacies attached to
geographies, but in the layered space built up between the notes that
embody culture. If we are to know Islam, or any culture, through its
creations, this discursive space is where it will reveal itself not as nation
or identity, not as religion defined and described from outside or legislated
from a self-appointed internal absolute authority, but as a realm emerging
through its articulation.
The study of Islamic perceptual culture is distinct from, yet dependent
on, art history. It respects the knowledge gained from a secular approach to
the cultures of Islam, but questions the premise that a secularism gleaned
from Christianate roots can apprehend a culture in which everything can
be conceived within a relationship with the Divine. This inquiry renders
contingent premises such as the centrality of vision, the role of the image,
the importance of the object, the linearity of history, the centrality of
matter, and the authority of perspective. In their stead, this study of
perceptual culture looks to Islamic discourses for an alternative language
through which to conceive the human encounter with the created world.
On the one hand, these new concepts expand our understanding of Islam
in its relationship with antique philosophy and neighboring religions. On
the other, these methods transcend the category of Islam, providing poten-
tially useful tools through which to develop transcultural epistemic models
for global art history.
Featuring the agency of works over their physicality, the study of Islamic
perceptual culture expands the concept of‘art’to include music, dreams,
visions, and mirrors, both real and metaphorical. The shift from art to
perception, production to reception replaces the exchange value of the
commodity with the interactive sharing of discourse. We become lesswhat
we make thanhowwe make, and what we do with that making. Rather than
annealing history in the preservation of forms, the discursive preservation
of ideas enables that which has been to persist in what becomes. Bergsonian
duration gains methodological centrality over Hegelian historicism.
This study is not limited to the theorizations in this book. It emerges in the
interplay of theories responding to the vast resources of interacting stories,
secured in texts and enacted in practices that perennially bring Islam into
being. This Islam is not a noun–a scripture, a history, a religion–but a verb.
Grammatically a verbal noun, Islam is a speech act–an utterance that
Out of Perspective 327