Latent Cosmologies, Latent Media: The Material Temporality of Twelver Shi'i Media Practices in Mumbai

ABSTRACT:In this essay, I argue that the temporal figure of latency is central for an understanding of the material temporalities of media. Latency as a temporal figure is built into the material functioning of sound reproduction and audiovisual media. The discussion shows how latency underpins technical processes of storing and reproducing sounds and moving images in a broad sense, while analyzing mediatic latency in Twelver Shi'i media practices in Mumbai. The focus on latency as a key temporality of media is also useful for thinking about Twelver Shi'i ritual life and media practices because the temporal figure of latency features very prominently in Shi'i eschatology and ritual life. Mediatic latency and the latency built into Shi'i ritual life and cosmology interact in highly significant and productive ways, reinforcing a complex of piety and ritual commemoration that nowadays is thoroughly integrated with audiovisual media practices. The media practices studied mobilize different affordances of contemporary media, such as creating contemporaneity with the non-contemporaneous and the invocation of linear progress for different religious ends.