‘Don't be so serious’: ethical play, Islam, and the transcendent

Abstract

Modes of play and playfulness are central to ethics, yet have not been as rigorously considered by anthropologists as have more earnest forms of ethical life. In this article, I argue that attention to play reframes recent anthropological debates about ethical transcendence and immanence. I do so through a consideration of the Islamic discourse of ‘calculation’ (ḥisāb), an idiom by which Muslims articulate their hoped-for state in the hereafter through the imagery of a divine accounting of good and bad deeds. Drawing on ethnography from the Indonesian province of Aceh, I show how ḥisāb cultivates forms of epistemological play through which Muslims explore the inscrutability of transcendence. Such play reveals the socially and theologically emergent qualities of transcendent truths and values, suggesting hidden affinities between transcendent stances and more immanent forms of ethical life.