Reaching Allah and shifting away from God: religious experience in the field

Abstract

In this article I will analyze the process of conversion to Islam, during my first fieldwork experience, while I was gathering ethnographic information with a muslim community in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. I will make use of the notions of religious subjectivation, corporeity and embodiment, parting from my position as an anthropologist and catholic agent. The analysis problematizes how our schemes of being in the world are affected, and it brings the attention to both an academic subjectivity and a religious one taking part of the scholar-religious practitioner’s imbricated corporeities; the first one considering from the mistakes, difficulties, and the personal and professional ethic dilemmas confronted in the field, while the second one from relational and embodied experience with/of the Catholic God, objectified in sensorialities, affections and dis/enchantment with the sense of the world after reaching Allah through conversion.