[...]t dead, not killed, but not quite a being either
the power to turn animals into things, as of they were never anything else
recognition of playful actually --Singh--> ethics of immanent obligation
([*]collaboration: interrupt each other's train of thought)
(dramatization of) agonistic intimacy : a relationship of proximity and violence between neighboring social groups (the body of neighboring species)
--Taussig--> ritual violence (the most stunning prop is the human: the all too profane body with its various appendages, fluids, undulating surfaces, folds, exists, entrances)
--Veena--> sacrificial violence : dramatization of one's own inevitable death (there is a certain anxiety around violence that is integral to *the imagination of an ethical life* in Hindu texts and practices)
--Sina--> gamer video of zoo
condition of viscerality
a condition of being ransomed to death
Venna --> a major theological transformation (a critique of violence) in a nonmessianic nonsoteriological sense رستگاری شناختی in South Asia took place with the Mahabharata
*cruelty =/= violence*
•the feeling of noncruilty expressed in the unpredictable attachments, at times across species (companionship) in the Mahabharata (Veena) [in Attar? in Kelile and Demne?]
•companionable thinking (Cavell)
•commission species (Haraway)
--✕--> Singh's agonistic intimacy:
1. companionship may also involve forms of mutual violence
2. violence inevitability (in affinity or animus) does not remove a consideration of the mode of violence from the sphere of the ethical --> we must make space for the consideration of:
◦cruelty
◦differential vulnerability
3. certain forms of companionable noncruilty may also breed accompanying forms of cruelty
4. within conditions of death and cruelty *it is not always clear what noncruilty might be*
a bird cursing (presently taking root that will someday come to fruition) a human who is stubbornly injuring when need not, or تو نیکی میکن و در دجله انداز
(myth) asks us to think about cycles of violence
how an act never exists in isolation
chaos theory, the effect might come later
informal epic subplots narrated in improvised forms
which ritual laments are available for massive ecological shifts
...the death of others
...scene of loss (~/= milieu)
}<--Singh-- virtue, piety, self-fashioning do not help to work through this (@apass)
devastation ==> cohabitation (of species that were apart before)
Kelile and Demne --> agonistics can be comic (even if repercussions of tragic) --> mood of violence
“everything has to die”
question of routinized ritual or commercial production of killable bodies and of things ceasing to matter
animals don't die in villages, they could only be killed
anthropology of ethics
what is to kill?
what is to kill well?
what is to ber killed?
what is to be killable?
can we speak of a quality of death?
(Veena, Cavell, Harraway's) ‘companion’ is not a resolution to ethical quandaries of human-animal relations
culpability of homicide <--> veneration of sacrifice
life =/= zoo =/= bios
...................................
retro: (a postmodern sensibility firmly rooted in the present) appropriating [use + exploit, pick + mix] the aesthetics (aspects) of the past while not longing for its return =/= nostalgia: a mode of resistance against the present
retro: a mode of reading, an attitude towards the past without emotional attachment
ironic consumption...
... =/= how adults might perceive the political context
dissident discourse
(audience looking for) counter regime messages
*nostalgia + nationalism within a postcolonial Europe*
Europe's repressed imperial history --> longing for the divided Europe of the Cold War --> postsocialist nostalgia (in television [--> cultural memory])
past: retro comedy
comedy: retrospective representation
(comedy does not?) antagonize its audience ~= build a memory conflict
[*]comedy: strive for reconciliation (by focusing on the everyday life of its colorful characters)
the good soldier Svejk --> good-natured side of czech national identity
self-congratulatory narrative <-- (when you think you are always) morally on the right side
@apass
(tv series) forging resistance-based (national or individual) memory
the way in which a society understands its own past --> through culture (not a matter for politicians and legislative measures alone) that particular narratives about the past are kept alive and help to structure understandings of the present
...................................
strolling: walking in the city --> sense of belonging to the city
walking in 19th century (starting with England) --> something for the lower class
--later--> walking became a middle class pursuit (something you do in your garden ==> parks for walking)
city walking --> claiming step by step parts of the city --> practice of belonging [~ sense of place (in history = nationalism) of certainty + comfort] --> belonging is an individual imperative (something that is created by the individual on the ground) [~/=? a category of exclusion]
...................................
anger: an expression by which the observer perceives as if something *happened to the person who is angry* (a passive experience, not something that the person did)
intuition = recognition
•memory is really bad at remembering lists
•memory is really good at remembering routes through space
•(humans are good at remembering) agent-thinking =/= abstract notions
*anger ==reveals==> world*
anger ==> makes you ungly ==> prompts action
[the strange connection of: action <--> ugliness]
...................................
postsocialist nostalgia: relational expression of a heterogeneous set of desires that operate in an intercultural network
Imre
western European longing for the divided Europe of the Cold War --> Europe’s repressed imperial history
two different modes of remembering:
•history --> official, public and professional modes (associated with commemoration and musealization)
•memory --> unofficial, popular and private modes (frequently associated with nostalgia and consumerism)
literary and cinematic texts that foreground some form of preoccupation with the past
-television (amnesiac qualities) has been accused of undermining memory and perpetuating a sense of ephemerality and transience --✕--> *television is also a powerful mnemonic tool*
***television is both amnesiac & mnemonic*** --> tv's propensity to resonate in different temporalities at once
television: a vehicle for the transformation of and a source of information about the quotidian ~ primary generator of collective memory [<-- this is now social media, Instagram TikTok]
historical drama
pseudo documentary
period drama series
--> providing the viewers with a “useable past” that is always related to and relevant to the concerns of the present
in the postsocialist region, the past has especially sensitive nerve endings in the present
national regimes & individual citizens alike have tried to revive usable paradigms of identity from past periods (to clear away or at least cover up the historical debris left behind)
television as a massive archaeological site
polymorphic, undefinable identity with tentacles in several fields that makes television (and popular internet media) so confusing
(to understand who has stakes) in keeping history and memory practices separate and in minimizing the role of television and other popular media
(internet popular media) television's messy status as a medium
communist parties --> mould television to standardize citizens's everyday domestic life rhythms
•cheerleading docufictions
•educational quiz shows
•uplifting entertainment such as theat[...]