Zahra Naghshband

Longing, Anxiety, and (Un)Fulfillment: The Phenomenology of Ritual Time in Shiite Practice

Time is often regarded as too elusive and abstract to be directly grasped, becoming tangible only when it approaches a moment of crisis. In capitalist life, the persistent sense of running out of time—produced by overwhelming deadlines and the accelerated pace of everyday life—is a familiar experience. Rituals, by contrast, are often imagined as an escape from this acceleration, as pauses or interruptions in which time seems to slow down or even stop. But what if rituals themselves generate a persistent sense of unfulfillment and uncertainty about time? My research examines experiences of loss, anxiety, ambiguity, and longing within ritual temporality. Specifically, I study the dense Shiite ritual calendar as practiced by Iranians, with its continuous ritualization of days and nights. I ask how the ritual subject experiences the constant anxiety of missing the virtuous moment of ritual time, and how this experience transforms when ritual is practiced within urban everyday life versus when the subject becomes a pilgrim in a sacred space.
My research is based on phenomenological ethnography conducted during Ramadan in Tehran and during pilgrimage to Karbala on the Night of Qadr, the night believed to determine the destiny of the coming year. I explore how the experience of time—and the anxiety of missing it—unfolds through spatial, bodily, authoritative, and textual dimensions. I then examine how the ambivalence of ritual time transforms the experience of resonance into a form of fulfillment that is always anticipated yet never fully realized.

 

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