Defeat and Glory

Social Media, Neoliberalism and the Transnational Tragedy of a Divinized Baba

Bibliographic Data

ID3219980
AuthorsRonie Parciack (0000-0002-0544-292X, Tel Aviv University, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume14
Issue1
Pages123
Publication date2023-01-16
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueReligions (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/rel14010123
OpenAlexW4316465739
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited30

This essay addresses the intersection between the Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tik-Tok and Pinterest social media platforms and a contemporary religious leader/teacher who exploited them to rise from subalternity to the status of a deified celebrity. It examines his underprivileged disciples and followers and rival formal and informal levels, within Indian Sufi circles. Employing a combined perspective of ethnography, media studies and textual analysis, I discuss the transformations engendered by this social media celebrity and the impact of neo-liberalism on religious teacher-disciple (peeri-mureedi) relations. I show that this transformation involved a commodification of peeri-mureedi relations, leading to a neoliberal morphing of religious practices into marketable products. In so doing, I provide a critical reading of Mazzarella's social media as "re-enlightened" or "inclusive capitalism" that gives voice, agency and new economic possibilities to capitalism's most marginal subjects, who aspire to break the grip of what I term the "economies of despair

Agency (philosophy · Capitalism · Commodification · Economy · Media studies · Neoliberalism (international relations · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Social media · Social science · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Gender Studies · Law · Socioeconomic Development in Asia · South Asian Cinema and Culture

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