The Smart Sema
"The dance of the 'Whirling Dervishes,' which forms my case study, is an ancient Sufi dance (called the sema) of purely whirling motion."
by Shree Ravi
In "Culture by the Pound: An Anthropological Perspective on Tourism as Cultural Commoditization," Davydd J. Greenwood maintains that the effect on a "host culture" when its activities are "invaded by tourists" "without their consent" (173) is mainly of a destructive nature. Specifically, he argues, using the Alarde of Fuenterrabia as his case study, that the culture of the native people loses its original meaning when commoditized. The Alarde is the Spanish town of Fuenterrabia's annual "ritual recreation" (174) in celebration of its victory over French invaders in 1638. But today the true meaning of the Alarde is lost amidst its increasingly tourist-centric celebrations. Greenwood uses the Alarde as evidence to deduce that the "commoditization" (for him this means the same thing as "commodification")--which occurs when something is "bought and sold . . . treated as a commodity" (173)--of this ritual destroys its meaning. My case study of the ritual of the "Whirling Dervishes" provides an example that exactly negates the above belief of Greenwood's. It is an example of a culture that "consents" to and even uses commoditization as a tool for its own preservation. Given that Erik Cohen, in his essay "Authenticity and Commoditization in Tourism," mainly argues against Greenwood's theory, it might seem obvious that my case study, which negates Greenwood's belief, would then simply serve to illustrate Cohen's theory of the effect of culture commoditization. However, my analysis provides an interesting extension and complication of Cohen's ideas. I will argue that when a culture commoditizes itself (self-commoditization), not only does the culture preserve itself (conforming to Cohen's theory), but it can also do so by cashing in on, or exploiting, tourist mentality and their quest for authenticity. Rather than merely supporting Cohen's basic beliefs, my case study therefore introduces two new aspects, one of which is "self-commoditization," and the other being "exploitation of tourist mentality."
The dance of the "Whirling Dervishes," which forms my case study, is an ancient Sufi dance (called the sema) of purely whirling motions, performed by the people belonging to the Mevlevi Order of Sufis. It holds great spiritual significance for the dancers (otherwise known as the Semazen). As they whirl, the dancers are said to go into a state of altered consciousness and experience union with the Divine. For this particular study of the dance, I will use both a personal account of the show put up by the Destar Ensemble from Turkey at the Asian Civilizations Museum, as well as Ira Friedlander's book, The Whirling Dervishes. This book, as its subtitle suggests, is an "account of the Sufi order known as the Mevlevis and its founder the poet and mystic Mevlana Jalalu'ddin Rumi." I derive from this text much of my factual understanding of the history of the dance, which I will analyze and use as evidence for proving my argument. The history of the sema as provided by Friedlander seems to move through three stages of time--the time when the dance was a communal affair exclusively by and for the Mevlevis, followed by the time period during which it was totally banned by the Turkish Government, and finally its present form, as a paid performance for a global audience.
The sema, an integral part of the Mevlevi culture was (and still is) meant to be, as Greenwood would have described it, "a performance for the participants, not a show" (176). The Semazen undergo intensive spiritual training in tekkes, or dervish schools, and dedicate their lives to discovering the spiritual joy behind the whirling motion. Throughout the dance, the dancers practice constant zikr (repetition of Allah's name) and remain steeped in meditation. The founder of the Mevlevi Order, Mevlana Jalalu'ddin Rumi, described the sema as a "fight with one's self, to flutter, struggle desperately like a half-slaughtered bird, bloodstained and covered with dust and dirt" (Friedlander 87). The phrase "fight with one's self" has a very personal connotation to it and the sema, as described by Rumi, is obviously a very private experience between the praying dervish and Allah. It in no way reaches out to or is meant for an audience.
There also was no audience presence for the sema ritual till the Dervish culture commoditized itself following the events of 1925. In that year, the Turkish Government under Kemal Atatürk introduced Law 677 into the Turkish Republic (Friedlander 111). Not only did the law prohibit "service to . . . titles" (such as the title given to the leader of the Mevlevi order) and the "wearing of dervish costume," but it also states that "those who open the closed tekkes (dervish lodges) . . . or people who are called by any of the mystical names mentioned above or those who serve them, will be sentenced to at least three months in prison and will be fined at least fifty Turkish liras" (Friedlander 117). In an attempt to become a secular state overnight, the government therefore took the step of abolishing all the dervish orders and their communal way of practicing rituals such as the sema. The only compromise was that the dervishes could perform any rite "in private but not under the aegis of an organized religious body" (Friedlander 113). But the sema is not something which can be practiced alone by someone; as my classmate Shamima pointed out, "a person cannot just whirl on his own at home." Like any other culture, the Mevlevi culture belongs to and can be practiced only by a whole group of people, not a single individual. But the institution of the tekke, which trained the musicians, the dancers, and several other people involved in the sema, was abolished, thereby disabling its continued practice.
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