[...] --foreground--> coexistence of different temporalities in the present

postsocialist nostalgia in Romania is similar in structure to late socialist nostalgia of the 1980s in Hungary

manage feelings of dislocation ==> longing for national homes
~~--> preference for literature and high art as expressions of what has been identified as cultural nationalism (“national tradition = tradition invested in high art”) + perceived illegitimacy of popular cultural production and consumption (concealed by the allegedly rebellious “dissident” status of intellectuals) ==organize==> the contents of collective memory


Imre --> racialized underpinnings of allegedly “pure” aesthetic judgments


inherently nostalgic and pre-modern postsocialist population <==> Western Europe as the epicentre of progressive scientific modernity


television's capacity for personalization and narrativization

*demiworld of popular culture*
television’s dominant position within the domestic environment and its special appeal to an emotionally available female or feminine consumer --> television: the mass medium of the socialist period --pose--> the danger of a passive mindless consumption of formulaic narratives (a danger that has been ascribed to women’s inferior psychosocial needs and tastes =/= cerebral modernist masculinity of art) ---> go to Baxstrom's realizing the witch


Western European cultural nationalisms

the notion of nostalgic and premodern postsocialist population ==> Western Europe as the epicentre of progressive scientific modernity


West’s fanning of East European nostalgia --> a post-imperial symptom = (expression of a growing Western European awareness that) modernity is plurinodal rather than centred in European metropolitan headquarters


(postimperial European dimension of) *cultural nationalism <~÷+-> nostalgia*
...utopian national rebirth scenarios for a united Germany --> (promoted by intellectual artists) the bad idea that suppression of German nationalism ==open==> influx of American audio-visual culture (that muat be resisted in order to preserve and nourish German culture in its purest literary manifestation)
= logocentric return to the ethos of German Romanticism [Kulturnation --> certain cultural identity --> cliche-ridden elitist racist implications] + new nationalism =/= results of Western integration over the last forty years


aspirational narrative (of nation...)

postimperial power dynamic:
•western researcher --> has the political capital to afford studying popular media
•eastern researcher --> has to faithfully fulfill the role to represent their national culture (elite achievement)


(Bourdon >Imre) the most obvious European commonality --> **a focus on high culture**


national specificities of memory systems developed around television


nostalgia machine
•Putin --> TV programming to a literary Soviet heritage
•Hungarian FIDESZ --> children’s channel of socialist children’s programmes
•showcase oeuvre of popular performers from the past
•rerunning vintage highbrow content: old films, television series and documentaries
•popular music's capacity to call up depoliticized affective memories
•commercials (--trigger--> postsocialist nostalgia)
•
}--> depoliticized reminiscences ==> an image of (socialist) sociality as a natural connecting glue among citizens gathered around the warm glow of their favourite singers and cabaret actors

FIDESZ = alarming racism + anti-Semitism + drastic neoliberal economic restructuring --> television = interfaces of official state nationalism + commercial purposes of a nostalgia industry


(ghost of dictators in) humorous commercial context:
•Tito in post-Yugoslav republic commercials (as anti-capitalist and anti-commercialist hero)
•Ceausescu in commercials in Romania (old footage of him walking his dog in car tires ads)
•
}--Imre--> (blending) *top-down history lessons* + the work of *popular memory* ==> punctuate contemporary continuities with the communist regime that are taboo in official narratives but prevalent in popular perceptions of history
(==Georgescu==> counter-memory <-- does it assist coming to terms with the past, processing the paralyzing past and the humiliating present of globalization coupled with reactionary state control)

socialist advertising (--> promoted products and services that had not competition in the absence of a real market) ==now==> a sense of awkwardness (absurdity of an era) --> an oxymoron ==> (the ads’) appeal ==guarantee==> the authenticity of remembering + mutual recognition (among members of the nostalgic community) ----> *longing for a bond specific to an elusive era*


(for late socialism --Imre-->) [*]nostalgia: a popular and essential compensatory gesture to make up for the loss of a contradictory temporality
+
a mode of continuity with an era that was already nostalgic for the unrealized transformative potential (of real socialism)


(Yurchak's) *frozen present* = the time of nostalgia
}<== late socialist culture itself lived in a nostalgic mode, at a certain ironic, knowing distance from what it was supposed to be according to the memories of the heroic 40s-50s and the remnants of socialist propaganda --> *a familiar ironic mode of experiencing history vicariously* (in a way that is experienced in the imagination through the actions of another person)


(looking at televisual nostalgia -->) late socialism ==> an affect & epistemology that can only access the “authentic” through contradiction ambivalence self-reflective irony
<--Holdsworth-- expression of present anxieties about history and memory in general

...................................

___[notes Tehran 2023]___

semiotics: study of the differnce between “what you say ~/= what they understand”

(my fundamentals:)
*sharing =/= communicating*


آشپز دیو سپید
it is said that the White Div had a cook --> exploring the cosmology of Div (in Shahnameh) with food, hunting for eating, bestiary, cooking technology, taste
(inspired by anime JYfdfDU9JUY)
#short story: narrartor describes the story after the defeat of the White Div (Div-e Sefid) by Rostam. “rather than worring about the kingsmen X, he was more interested in what is for dinner...”. there is another being. a baby hayula (non-formity)... what other beings Div hunts for meat? (list, bestiary) “he would think about the next hunt X and get excited about the kabab of X...”  “immediately asked for more”

dungeons and dragons --> a non-cartographic space, there are no maps and one only learns by dying many times
dungeon has nothing to do with the medieval prison, it is a deterritorialized habitat, defined precisely by not having a map (or guide) --> are we in a dungeon?

...................................

journalism: professional discursive pursuit (of truth, of propaganda, etc.)
=/= journalism: proximity to the event + the risks that that entails

(Ghazzi's notion of) *affective proximity* : (a mode of consideration, a way) to make sense of local media practitioners’ reporting and witnessing of suffering in their country
--> a media practitioner =/= the event they are representing and participating in
affective proximity : what locals navigate to reconcile their emotional and embodied entanglement within events in their country =/= discursive

*emotional labour* of media practices of local reporters and witnesses

what the word “revolution” mediates (in Syria, Iran, etc.) [~/?= civil war]
1. an indication of commitment to a desired goal
2. an identity marker based on a past-oriented lament over what was sought but not achieved

study of affect and emotion in global news --(contextualized within)--> unequal power relations (==> journalistic roles & modes ofrepresentaiton)

user-generated-content
political economy of global war reporting
living with violence

journalism <--?---> affect

affective proximity
==shape==> the boundaries of journ0alism and activism
--> captures the feeling of being close to violence:
•fear for one's life and that of others
•having to deal emotionally logistically with deaths of loved ones (escape, exile) [--> that is why we need an *anthropology of the exile*]
}--> living-in-violence =/= encounter, exposure

(Ghazzi is too fast in favoring “affective proximity =/= western rationalism”, as an iranian I am more exposed to an *affective jurnalism* [~= activism: politically motivated and highly emotive role] =/= journalism as a modernist and rationalist institution)
“activism ~= jurnalism” ~=> they need to:
1. project authenticity and emotion onto news narratives
2. act as objective witnesses able to produce truthful accounts

(more and more i feel the iranians need for ‘activism =/= jurnalism’ --> what one wants to happen =/= understanding what is happening)--> epistemology [the question of how one makes sense of one's practices --> in the case of Syria (also Iran): *affective proximity to violence* ==> sense]

...negotiating the distance of mediation when viewers and producers in the Global North are witnessing the suffering of others

(in Iran) activism + art = the human body as tool, medium, symbol, metaphor

[*]affect: circulation + stickiness of emotion (onto and between bodies, texts, objects, experiences) (Ahmed)

journalism = represent + narrate

(the ‘trick’ of) relying on the *outsourcing of emotional labour* to non-journalists (by:)
•having them express their emotions
•having the journalist describe them

(Ghazzi conceptualising the emotional field in journalism -->) ***unequal power relations ==> emotioal labor***

proximity (--> what i heard so much when i went back to iran: to ke inja insti nemiduni تو که اینجا نیستی نمیدونی)

*aesthetic of authenticity* in news reports (<-- mobile phones)
political economy of foreign reporting
politics of hope (with an ambition to inspire all Syrians to rebel)
...emotional attachment to political goals


*revolution: the event that changes people's lives and in relation to which they locate themselves politically
•conflict in Syria began as an uprising, it ended up an international war, which in 2020 appears to have mostly concluded in the favour of the regime =/= revolution
•the word “revolution” means something else to activists in Syria (how the meanings projected on the term changed in accordance to circumstances)
◦(most of the time, artists and activists) ****use a word to galvanise their emotions and bodies**** and inspired them to take actions they would not have imagined to pursue [use of words --> what people hope =/= descriptive]
◦word (for example “revolution”): a marker of an *inward-looking description* of belonging to a broad political community defined by opposition
•“the revolution” --> affectively consumed the pursuit of truth
•an identity-marker (based on a political orientation) --> an inward-looking signifier to mark who one is + what political community they belong to [--> a politics of what one had wanted =/= describe what one observes]
•(revolution:) personified and humanised as a well-meaning political agent (that sometimes strays from its goals by committing errors)
•motivating people to get involved in activism
•

(Said's Orientalism -->) subaltern others (are typically considered) living within a constant state of violence <-- much older Western regime of representation perceived them as culturally close to violence

(Ghazzi > Badiou >) some events are felt as historic as they galvanise the energies of political actors who imagine themselves as ‘mounting the stage of history’ --Koselleck--> acts of information dissemination are engulfed by the event and are aimed at bridging the temporal distance between the desired and experienced ==> “journalism ~= activism”

...................................

collective memory --> historical victimhood --> consolidating power
(meta-history -->) a view of history as a series of junctures where good fought evil ==Ghazzi==> historical victimhood

global rise of populist politics ==> tropes of self-victimisation
•revolutionary
•resistance
•nationalism
•populism
•neo-fascism
}--> operationalize victimhood (by whom / against whom)

one is wronged, targeted, injured (by the elite, the media, external enemies)
•self = true underdog --> victim
•opponents = inauthentic adversary --> oppressor
= homogeneous + antagonistic
--Laclau--> chain of equivalence: (from) corruptions =/= origins --to--> traitors =/= patriots --to--> intruders =/= natives --to--> faithless =/= faithful --to--> *submission  =/= heroism* and ...
}= *populism* (political dialectic)

(storytelling)
•the question of *what* a society remembers -->{highly formulaic plot structures --for--> narrating the past}
•the question of *how* a society remembers -->{powerful actors push for particular kinds of story forms that shape the ways they tell all stories}

zigzag structures of a rise and fall and/or fall and rise of the nation
--> future dramatically takes one of two routes: (in the direction of) either a golden age or the dark ages
}--Ghazzi--> forked historical consciousness : (an understanding & speaking of) “history = a series of junctures scattered across time”


(the problem is) ***historical consciousness*** --> orientational
“bestows upon actuality a temporal direction, an orientation that can guide action intentionally by the agency of historical memory” (Rüsen)
1. make specific references to historic events (compare them to the present [==guide==> political action])
2. *making references to “history” at large*

[*]zigzag memory structure: deploy mnemonic spins to reframe historic events
•establish equivalent between the present and the past [--!--> (fundamentally despotic?) technique that i also use in lecture performances]


authoritarian populism


(Hegelian) [*]action: pursue one aspect of history + breaking away from away from another
1. (modern) revolutionary: telling a new story, (--populist--> focus on) *exclusionary politics*, once the leader is in power the objective is to prolong the idea of historic juncture --justify--> continued exclusion

populist --Laclau--> (invocation of)
•people = empty signifier
•leader = embodiment of people's agency

***rhetoric of resentment*** --> victimhood
[*]resentment: an emotional-moral framework --aim--> continuously regenerate the felt intensities --underwrite--> demands for revenge + lamentations (of victimhood)


***nationalism ==> populism***

(many countries) national identity (& militancy) is intertwined with:
•narrative of self-victimization --
•invocation of trauma

victorious victimhood ==fuels==> aggressive militancy
for example --> Israel: nothing counts as evidence as one's own empowerment, one is always under threat, if Israel cannot maintain the omnipotent position that its victory offered (1967) it would be under existential threat

anticolonial nationalism (or postcolonial populism)
•past injury (“We have been oppressed” ==> “re-empower ourselves again”)
•decades after independence --still--> fixated on the anticolonial moment ==> perpetuate a sense of victimhood }--> to mask authoritarianism

victimhood
•Hindu nationalism --> reformulated history from a focus on colonialism and postcolonial nation-building into a narrative of victimhood that blames historic Muslim invasions for the decline of Hindu civilisation and nationhood
•China --> reformulated its school history textbooks to stress victimhood and humiliation through the idea of China's “100 years of humiliation” in reference to Western and Japanese invasions
•United States --> nationalism often takes the shape of antipathy to government that is enmeshed with an ideology of liberal individualism
•
}--> ***logic of empowerment*** (--permeate--> economies of visibility)


***memory narrative***


iran --> shohada شهدا martyrs of iran-iraq war --> after the war became the picture of collective victimhood (“heroes = us”)

Erdogan's speech
“we have been tested by fire” (--?--> Siavash's fire trial is populist?)
~= “we have been tested by enemy”
~= “evil forces”


(from) populism --to--> neofascism
(from) generic rhetoric of an unidentified enemy --to--> articulation of an identifiable foe (who is met with political violence)

authoritarian state apparatus [= political system + culture + institutions + ?] --allow--> smoother way of operationalisation of narratives (about the dangers of adversaries)
-exactly what kind of state apparatus we have in iran?


historical victimhood --> resurgent populist discourse
•people have been enduring victimhood for too long
•fateful junctures throughout history
•authentic great path
•urgency of message
•

animating rhetoric with self-victimhood ==produce==> divisions (men =/= women, us =/= enemy, etc.)



exclusionary politics <-- homogeneous community (=/= alien intrusion, outside forces, immigrants, minorities, etc.)

...................................

Kundera
is humor modern?
*humor is not ancient* (?!)
“whatever humor touches it ambiguites”
humor = ambiguitor

...................................

globalization =/= cold war
globalization =/= enlightenment (“universal humanism + rationalized tech ==> freedom for all”)

cold war = a meaningfull relation between ideology & power [==give==> orientation + identity --> normative approach to global phenomena]
geopolitc + ideologic borders
=/=
globalization --> completly different political behaivor (definitions of national goals, friend and enemy, etc.) --> pluralist democracy (differences + contrasts) =/= social democracy (erasing differences)

globalization = attitude حالت =/= meaning
[cold war: “world ~= (a sort of) problem” --> behaviors had] meaning ==> (base for) power

cold war: war ==> identities
globalization: conflits =/=> identities

...................................

two points
•artistic research: a form of art that uses knowledge as its main medium
•artistic research has no relation to the unknown (=/= an idea of research im in which one faces something unknown or new therefore needs to research)
•my work (in general) has been about the critique of engineering (the talent of engineering)


...................................

thinking with traps [working title]
Allow me to make you a trap. I think traps and lures are interesting to think with when one is oriented toward a nontransportive investigative work. What I mean by nontransportive investigative work is a mode of approach to “getting to know” something [*call it research] where your subject does not speak plain to you, and you, nor your work, do not intend to transform them. The question of “what is interesting for them?” raises up immediately. This question emerges in all sorts of domains of social life. As a bullshiter [*a technical term for performance-lecture: an art of interweaving logos] and program-coordinator and educator in the art sector (ZUYD Toneelacademie Maastricht), I am permanently positioned to ask this question. For this I have found the notion of trap particularly useful to think with, especially in environments where participants entice each other in their subjects of knowledge by means of an adaptable cunning intelligence.


Somewhere between fairytale findings, animal associations, and dictations from Benjamin Alberti, Eva Hayward, Marcel Detienne, and Vinciane Despret, I am thinking about traps as zoo-anthropo-biomorphic artifacts, made-up things that entice meaning across species. Trap-making is the forms of knowledge of the back-tracking of a fox, of building a fishing net, skills of a weaver, a carpenter, polymorphism of an octopus, and the rhetorical tricks of a crafty charlatan. The trap-maker imagines what is the perspective of a radically different being. If you make a trap for other animals you are fully engaged in multi-species perspectival game. You think about their bodies engaged in a perspectival communication. I argue, lures are needed to convey meaning. In this sense, lures and traps are mimetic devices, they are enticements of meaning, and we have mimetic participation with them. Mimetic is the opposite of semiotic. In mimetic participation, one does not ponder about the symbolic relations hidden in the game, but rather one is caught in its form. But this form can still be meta and not literal. In my understanding and use of lure one is not necessarily fossilized by this seizure. It is a form of figuration by trying to enact. It demands enacting something outside of you. A mimetic preoccupation is something that you cannot stop following. [*The fashion industry, marketing, conspiracy theories, art, psychology, and hunting, are all about mimesis.]


One mimetic form that I have been caught in is an old figure of children's fairy tale, Cinderella--during her confinement with the evil step-mother and two step-sisters. Cinderella is my ancestor and heritage. I was exposed as a child to Disney’s version of Grimm’s recollection of the story, which was the very last Disney movie that was officially dubbed in Farsi before the Iranian revolution. Cinderella’s voiceover in Farsi was the continuum of an actor-training that originated in the Tehrani cabaret voice-performances. Her voice has a radically different feeling than its English original. In contrast to how “childish” the mice sounds in the movie, Cinderella's articulations are perceived much more “adult,” sexually textured, of how a young female sounded like in the Iranian consumer culture of the 1950s. Recollecting that Cinderella now reveals something else that corresponds with my research, an attic bestiary, a mini universe of meanings and beings with whom she is in conversation with and in a permanent collaboration of worlding.


Cinderella lives with the precarity of a family who torment and insult her on a daily basis. I kept asking myself, why doesn't she become estranged? Cinderella is circumscribed in all sorts of ways, yet she is capable of knowing new things about the animals she lives. She incorporates a form of transhumanity that lies in (1) the way she is inhabiting and composing with a place that she is not a master of nor can she escape from, and (2) in the way animals give her power and meaning. Can we think of Cinderella as an amateur ethologist? A skilled practitioner of attention to animals, for whom the ways that attention is addressed matters. A Cinderella who does her job is bizarre. It engages us in a totally different manner than a Cinderella who is the victim of evil circumstances. Not considered as a victim, she becomes much more present, inviting more interesting questions about her labor of knowledge production. This opened for me a space to think about her inhuman gesture of endurance, her know-how of being in a world that proliferates with chaotic zones of improvisation with animals. From Cinderella one can learn cross-species politeness and exploring ways of imagining what animals are capable of, with and because of her labor. This is her mice-trap. Steeped in routines of schizo-affective hallucinating with talking animals, her technique of trap-making is not a category of human behavior, but a model for a form of intelligence. I argue that as a lover and interlocutor of mice, her traps are in the form of a net in which her subject becomes entangled. Lures are frequently needed to prompt meaning to an animal. Cinderella to the mice, is an alluring producer of sociality. Her mice-trap produces the meaning of the social. The mouse is captured not as prey but as material comrade and ally.


[....]


Sometimes there is no maker behind the trap. They are created by the world, by random, emergent, coalescence of elements in the environment. In a witness-fable by Kelileh o Demneh we have a moment of problematization of cunning intelligence. The story goes, once a fox was walking down his forest when he noticed animals were escaping from something. Upon further investigation he found out they were running from a special sound that scared them, a loud drum. At this stage, he is curious but vigilance and not afraid, because he knows the forest is all deceit and trickery. His inner thought is opportunistic or playful, he thinks there must be something juicy there that I can get my hands on. Lured in the other direction than other animals, he goes to the source of the sound, and puts his paws in it. He realizes that the sound was created by the force of wind moving a tree branch to hit the remains of an animal fat and skin caught in the branches. Disappointed and victorious, he calls the illusion and moves on. Here we have the fox revealing the techne of the lie: an assemblage of skin, fat, tree, and wind, that others are trapped in. What is the problem with the fox? What kind of wit or intelligence does he possess? Is the fox detached from the mimesis of the forest? How do we not get caught in certain traps? My question here is, in which context do you say yes to the trap?


The fox of Kelileh o Demneh is smart, someone who embodies “metis.” Metis is ancient Greek for wiley intelligence. Metis [pointed out by Detienne] refers to patterns of thought relating to an effective adaptable cunning, the exact opposite of contemplating about unchanging essences. The art of metis encompasses a coherent body of mental attitudes and intellectual behaviors that cultivates shohood (intuition شهود), makr (cunning مکر), ferasat (perspicacity فراست), farib (dissimulation فریب), badiheh (improvisation بدیهه), hushiar (vigilant attention هوشيار), be-ja (timeliness بجا). In the world of Kelileh o Demneh you are a hunter and the world is made of traps and animals are full of cunning. This is precisely the metis’ field of operation, a world of movement and ambiguity in the battle of perspectival will. For the Greeks and Kelileh o Demneh, continuous metamorphoses is the name of the game. A disconcerting divided shifting world of multiplicity that creates (1) polymorphous monsters (mistrustful mobile elusive beings) and (2) metamorphing minds (mistrustful mobile elusive minds).


The notion of metis that we have is articulated in Greek deities powers. It is the form of knowledge of Athena, Hephaestus, Hermes, Aphrodite, Zeus, and Prometheus. The Greek gods often found themselves in either position of victory or as vanquished. Metis is the power of binding in situations of confrontation.


The fox and octopus master of bonds


Trap is polymorphism, the opposite of what it seems to be, in Greek, dolos mechanos. Dolos readers to cunning, that which is woven, braided or interlacing. It is about the ancient techniques of fitting together different pieces that articulates a whole. A skill of making knots, meshes and nets that surprise, trap and bind. A net is the invisible (mesh of) bonds, the favorite technique of metis. Bond is the combination of two things, weave and twist.

...................................

[*]bond = weave + twist
[*]net: invisible (mesh of) bonds <-- favorite technique of metis


arm = bond
every part of its body is a *bond* which can secure anything (but nothing can seize)


*fox = a living bond* (can bend, unbend, reverse its own position at will)


Oppian is all about bonds, ropes, cords

...................................

Cinderella’s position neither victorious nor vanquished.


I use the word “trap” because it is more problematic and dangerous than lures


[For the record, Plato completely opposed the idea of hunting with traps, because these techniques were thought to cultivate cunning and duplicity which were against what a virtuous political man should be. For Plato embodiment was a form of distraction to true knowledge.]

...................................

The cunning of “getting to know them” [...]
You politely approach in order to get to know them, research as a lure for yourself to be transformed by the encounter. The nontransportive investigation is in fact full of transformations.


It is important to think about traps not as something great and necessary, but in a sense that we should be able to recognize and choose sometimes not to do it. I think we need lures, because the world is transient, shifting, disconcerting, ambiguous, and so are we. The question always is which trap are you caught in? How does it look like? Are you alone in it? Which Cinderella is making you a trap?

...................................

________________

...................................

points
* define cunning intelligence
   * greek notion of “metis” (you are a hunter: the world is made of traps and animals are full of cunning)
   * bonds --> fox + octopus
   * fox forest story kelile demne
      * is fox detached from the mimesis of the forest? Is this what critical intelligence looks like? by putting his paw and breaking that fragile assemble of skin, fat, tree, and wind. he reveals a lie. what other animals are trap engagers?
      * in which context you say yes to the trap?
* differentiate metis from Cinderella’s mouse trap (mechane, techne)
   * * trap as research method, but it has a double bind, it is as much as a lure for oneself as for the other
   *



my mimetic preoccupations --> with memory


(from mnemonic devices) to mimetic devices (lure)
mimetic participation with X
(with lures and traps we have mimetic participation)


a useful and necessary difference, synthesized by the Greeks--Plato and Aristotle
diegesis =/=? mimesis
(telling) -- (showing)
(recounted) -- (enacted)


you don’t get necessarily fossilized by it


mimetic =/= semiotic
enacted showing other than you (=/= telling)
figuration by trying to imitate
to copy = mimesis + techne
(summoning =/= mimesis)
getting caught in a form
it is form, but it is not about form
industry of fashion is about mimesis
problem of realism =/= problem of mimesis

...................................

________________

...................................

2. a better mouse trap
Cinderella

...................................

and now I tell you...
what exactly a trap is made of...
text: condensed, everything

...................................

1. mouse trap
◦diary of Cinderella, a lover and interlocutor of mice
who is a mouse lover, a mouse career, a mouse interlocutor (somebody who listens and tells stories), but she is also a shepherd.
◦“which trap are you caught in?” is always relevant question
2. spider web




1. Benjamin Alberti
◦minoan culture (pottery in ancient Greek)
◦artifacts and appendices --> traps
2. Eva Hayward
◽animal thinker
◽transanimality
◽[*]trap: a mouth, a mode of utterance, the “O” curve of lips and throat that sounds out and names the apprehension of being embodied
--> ***positionality ~/= situatedness = to be trapped*** (to speak and receive ranges of sensuous input from one's environment) --> *our bodies are not endlessly available to intentionality*
3. Marcel Detienne
◦[*]metis: intelligence which operates in the world of becoming, in circumstances of conflict = forethought perspicacity + quickness and acuteness of understanding + trickery + deceit
◦[*]trap = polymorphism (the opposite of what it seems to be)
◦dolos mechanos
◦(dolos -->) [*]cunning: woven, braiding or interlacing, *fitted together* <-- ***ancient techniques that use the pliability and torsion of plant fibers to make knots, ropes, meshes and nets to surprise, trap and bind*** <-- the idea that ***many pieces can be fitted together to produce a well-articulated whole*** (~=? art)
4. Vinciane Despret




dictionary of crafts and arts (D+A)
extraordinary gesture of collecting and describing in details the skills and techniques of not the elite but the ordinary craftsman
older styles of trap-making
it is important to include the violence (asymmetry) of trap-making, that it is not a consensual relation to the other


kelile demne
indian courts to teach the young princes the art of cunning
putting your paw in the source of the thing (fat)
what is the problem with the fox?
what kind of wit or intelligence is that?
are there other ways of reading random combination of environmental elements that signal something accidental to you and orient the other animals in the forest?


once you starting thinking with trap, you start to see them everywhere?


you are always trapped, the question is which trap are you caught in?
can it be dismantled? do you bring others in it?
do you move with the trap while being stuck in it?
which Cinderella is making you a trap?


--> a way of thinking about ways of being with technical objects without mastery or understanding them or being an engineer. we are not in a engineering relationship with traps, we are in heuristic relation with something that catches you long enough.


teasing with the negativity of traps (the entrapment)

...................................

we are not having engineering knowledge about the technicality of the object (trap), we are moved by the heuristic fascination for it.
temporarily
“the negativity of the trap” :
violence of trapping
not voluntary
surprise

...................................

kelile demne
fox sound in forest story


we are always related, composed into something
the bullshit of “freedom”: if you’d be free, you’d have no story, no connections, no memory.
it is a kind of story that more than anyone the marketing industries today wants us to be free --> freedom is the cornerstone of consumer culture


for me: trap is at the core of understanding knowledge, of the relationship to the other, to crafts, to art


trap: corpus of zoo-anthropo-biomorphic artifact
the trap-maker imagining what is the perspective of radically different being
if you make a trap for other animals you are fully engaged in multi-species perspectival game
the body is fully engaged in a perspectival communication


perspectival battle of will
construction of affect
being in relation to “variety”
when you are in the business of trap-making you are in the realm of knowing different things (differential, different things that have little to do with each other)


incite, to cite, to bring the source of others
to incite: to encourage violent behavior by unorthodox behavior

...................................

trap research
1. physical body, sensual relationship
2. (literal/virtual) abstraction: you turn the environment into an abstraction to construct something through it
1. abstraction: an erotic lure for the soul
3. mimesis: how meaning is formed
(--> propositions)


lure
in the sense of house of candy in Hansel and Gretel


to be able to be caught in traps, even if their are accidental, just created by random, emergent, coalescence of elements in the environment. sometimes there is no maker behind the trap.


making images as lures for my research
“making” is not an expressive medium (not a medium of communication), but a research tool
(Line) “gentle trapping towards something you want”

...................................

Despret
she asks how scientist relate to animals when they do field study
your test experiment is a form of a trap that you gain knowledge from
is there a way that we can ask the animal what interest them?


if you are investigating, how to make conjectures? conjecture: a kind of temporary hypothesis that allow you to go to the next
investigative research: your subject does not speak english to you --> what is interesting for the other


art of the lure
art of learning from those whose enigma you are trying to solve (and have no intention in helping you)
to solve the enigma (of the raven, or the artwork of the student) --> you have to make interesting and radically speculative choices in how you produce knowledge about the work of others


fishermen and hunters, at the edge of the forest or the shore, where animals come to check out the other realms, is where they build the trap
--> fishermen and hunters are the original thinkers of this kind of intelligence, you transform knowledge by learning from animals. it is prolonged, practical, and crafty

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spider
expert at waiting ---> go to Cinderella’s waiting
building environment from body liquids --> becoming bodily = the near-by-ness of things
=/= fox: suspicious

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being lured into desiring and trusting <-- this is basically the game (at the school)


critique is an art that tangles with what you are proposing
fox --> lure
octopus --> best lure-engagers (they love the trap, they can’t get enough of it)

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the O
the curved lips
apprehension of that which to be embodies


to be trapped = to be situated
situatedness =/= positionality

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we are not fully intentionally engaged with things
what we do is not intentionally all the time

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all of this is not contextualized in adult political discourse, but I put it in children fairy tales (the Cinderella)
this is where I want the notion of trap to be situated (comprehended).

...................................

________________

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Enrica's transcription



trap in relationship to knowledge, art

...................................

Trap is a zoo anthropo biomorphic artifact
if you make a trap for another animal, you think from trans species perspective
it is a dangerous game
a body fully engaged in a perspectival communication

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perspectival battle of wills


trap making = in the realm of bridging different sort of knowledge that has nothing to do with you
•To cite =/= to incite (unorthodox behavior)




Searching paths:
•bodily capture
•violence of the construction
•mimesis : how meaning takes form




But also traps get me trapped
lore - hansel and gretel’s house: doesn’t look like a trap but …
sometimes there is no maker behind the trap (is this a scandal? is this emptiness?)

...................................

how to make you interested in my trap/chapter?
images making/painting as a research tool/assemblage
gentle trapping yourself to where you like to stay

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Vinciane Despret, “What Would Animals Say If We Asked the Right Questions?”
a conversation between scientist and animals in wild
your text experience is a trap, something that you gain knowledge from. Is there even a way to politely ask animals a question?
investigative research - how to deal with another subject that doesn’t even speak English to you? what trap am i being constructed into? what is the raven interested in?
and we are different things


the art of the lore and the tricks, learning from enygma - I’m interested in how do you produce knowledge from the work of others? [Sina, in the position of coordinator of the Master/educator]
edgy (transsectoral worlds): the edge of the forest, where sea and forest meet - where hunters/fishermen meet (...)


FOX suspicious - someone who s smart
“Sina, don’t be tricked!” my mom would tell me
a lore into desire
my needs =/= lores


OCTOPUS
best engagers
tentacles

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Abstraction as an erotic lore of the soul
eroticism is here in the book
an open trap in the forest as an open mouth that names the apprehension that embodies
to be situated (how you are trapped/Haraway, how do you receive ranges from the environment you are caught in) VS positionality (i’m white, 40 years old, Italian, … and than you speak from that - it actually excludes possibility of hybridization)
we are not available to intentionality all the time [i need to take some time to think with this sentence]


time focuses on individual
trapping implies relationality
a trap/trapper/the trapped ones

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a story from Kalila and Dimna: rabbit, mouse, frog are trapped together and they bond about how to get rid of it. eventually they start to move from within it (not from escaping the trap) as a monstrous hybrid.


Fables: Cinderella precarious situation
I want to break with Artaud idea (“to be powerless” is a bad idea): plea for traps:
care, writing, work happens when you are trapped!

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________________

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trap


[*]trap
(enigma of the apparently inexplicable behavior) --> *how to ask the ravens, with the same politeness, to take a position in relations to all the possible conjectures of the investigation?* how to ask them to teach us the good explanation, the right motive? ==> the researcher will have to learn the ***art of the trap and the net*** = the art of the lure and the trick = ***the art of learning from those whose enigma you are trying to solve*** (and have no intention of helping you) --> ‘how that which counts can count for them’
•*the art of metis / cunning intelligence* : the particular form of intelligence that the greeks (learning from hunters and fishermen) cultivated = intuition شهود + cunning مکر + perspicacity فراست + dissimulation فریب + improvisation بدیهه + vigilant attention هوشيار + sense of timeliness بجا (<-- this type of “getting to know” was constituted exaclty to be found in a domain where human intelligence is constantly at grips with the land or sea animals in an are where humans saw their intelligence and techniques transform in learning from animals**** [-how to prolong the possibility of this transformation?]) <-- *it is the only way of getting to know that can hope to address intelligent highly flexible* (Despret > Heinrish) = ravens who require of those who want to know them the same flexibility and the same intelligence
}-->[reading ajayeb bestiary as enigma; Bambi's mother studies; little mermaid; (using Despret's ethological research to think about) art of feedback ~= getting to know you =/= audience engagement]

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strange politeness
art of cunning (lures + manipulation) --> enticing ravens
*seeing without being seen*
obliging them : luring them to actualize the choices : ***creating situations as if they were natural*** (so as to let the birds do the talking)
(it is a matter of) rendering them more robust [giving them the occasion to resists, of giving them *the power to send the researcher/storyteller to work* =/= to disarticulate (what Ferdosi does in Shahnameh to the Div)]

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to find an enticement that interests them ~= to let himself be recruited by them
[from Latin “cresc-” grow, rise ==> crescent, crew, decrease, crescendo, recruit]


to trust them = to act like them
@apass feedback (differential knowledge that is created because of not trusting)

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the lure could be used to respond to this question: the ravens fall for the trick
...not only do the ravens not respond to questions but they pose new ones

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---> the story of birds entrapped escape away with the cage

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THE prey and THE visible (both are categories of forest life survival stories. also have high stakes in iranian culture, thought, and philosophy)
--> what is important for a living self?


(bab-e) hekayat-e dusti-e kabutar o zagh o mush o bakhe o aahu o ...
بابِ / حکایت دوستی کبوتر و زاغ و موش و باخه و آهو و ...
[everyone?]
[the story of the friendship of these animals; the quality, properties, and pitfalls of relation]
•what is (re)activating the *imaginary friend*? (is it really fully on shut-down?) ---> trap to abstract thought? ---> this ‘abstract thought’ is dangerous for “sadness” to get lost in it, but it is amazing for “joy”
•how much we need sadness?


why jackal is so persistent and play-full (full of “plays”) in Kelile o Demne's bestiary?

...................................

bird people
,
fox people


,


‘shekar’ [شکار prey] and ‘ashkar’ [آشکار visible], two entities in play, like the game of stone-paper-scissors, a link in our shared literature that relates the perceptible to the subject of hunt. in a discourse of friendship and enmity, the visible anticipating itself as target for violence, becomes meaningful when we approach it in a game-theoretic-semiotic linkage, relating and tying together issues of voyeurism, surveillance, violence, mediation, and predation in poetic itineraries.


reading and greeting

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________________

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metis

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speeches (logos) and artifices (mechane)


dolos, mechane, techne, kerdos, apate, aiolos, poikilos, haimulos
quick, supple, wiley, deceitful, to confront the unexpected on every occasion,


wiley intelligence: effective adaptable cunning =/= contemplating unchanging essences
(patterns of thought relating to metis:)
craftsman's skills
theogony
myth
sovereignty
metamorphoses of a marine deity


metis: Zeus’ first wife


metis =? zerang زرنگ, rend رند


[*]wiley: a mind able to twist and turn in every direction


forms of knowledge of Athena, Hephaestus, Hermes, Aphrodite, Zeus, Prometheus --?-->
•a hunting trap
•a fishing net
•skills of a basket-maker
•skills of a weaver
•skills of a carpenter
•the mastery of a navigator
•the flair of a politician
•the experienced eye of a doctor
•the tricks of a crafty character such as Odysseus
•back-tracking of a fox
•polymorphism of an octopus
•solving of enigmas and riddles
•beguiling rhetorical illusionism of the sophists


(Greek's) ancient technical traditions --> particular type of intelligence: *objects which must be dominated by cunning*
(Detienne's research) to define one major category of the mind


practical intelligence manifested in the skills of the artisan (---> go to 3D hacker)


metis: coherent body of mental attitudes and intellectual behavior which combine flair, wisdom, forethought, subtlety of mind, deception, resourcefulness, vigilance, opportunism, various skills, and experience acquired over the years --> applied to situations which are transient, shifting, disconcerting, ambiguous


routine
chancey inspiration
changeable opinion
charlatanerie


dexterity
sureness of eye
sharpwittedness
}--Plato--> belong to a type of cognition which is alien to truth and quite separate from episteme, knowledge =/= Aristotle's “practical intelligence”


Plato
skill: *starting from the Forms, produces in the world of Becoming* creations that are as real, stable and organized as is possible


greek deity ~= ***Powers (power of binding) in a situation of confrontation*** --> find themselves in either position as victors =/= as vanquished (=/= Cinderella’s position neither victorious nor vanquished)


reality whose limitless polymorphic powers render it almost impossible to seize ==> cunning intelligence ([*]askew: adopt an oblique course, to bend intelligence, ready to go in any direction)
*intelligence attempts to make contact with an object by confronting it in the guise of a rival(= connivance + opposition)*
cunning intelligence (metis) ~/=? trickster, deceiver


[*]dominate: to enclose it/them within the limits of a single, unchangeable form within (his control) + he proves himself to be even more multiple, more mobile, more polyvalent than his adversary

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Zeus’ metis
nothing can surprise him
nothing can cheat his vigilance
nothing can frustrate his designs


Iliad's man of metis: vigilant premeditation (=/= impulsiveness)
•displays a greater grip of the present (where nothing escapes him)
•more awareness of the future (several aspects of which he has already manipulated)
•richer experience accumulated from the past


(Iliad's art of the charioteer -->)
pukine: *dense rich compressed experience*
kairos: fleeting opportunity
metis: catch kairos by surprise (to seize)
poikilos: shimmering sheen and shifting movement [--> *the fox has a mind which is poikilos* ~~> crafty]
aiolos: many-colored (versicolor), marked with colors that overlap [--> all creatures whose wriggling and moving mass is never still: worms, horseflies, wasps, swarm of bees] ~~> he whose cleverness enables him to turn his hand to anything


*comparing the future with the past*
*too look beyond the victory*


Prometheus: the one who reflects in advance =/= Epimetheus: the one who understands after the event (Prometheus's twin brother, his double and opposite)
--> prometheia of man: radical ignorance of the future


cunning's field of application: the world of movement, of multiplicity, of ambiguity (==> metis)
(for the greeks:) continuous metamorphoses is the name of the game + only like could be affected by like
==> a polymorphous monster (mistrustful mobile elusive being)
==> a metamorphing mind (mistrustful mobile elusive mind)


shimmering nature of metis is a mark of its kinship with the divided shifting world of multiplicity


[*]poros: the discovery of a way out (water is very good at poros, finding passage)

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semantic field of cunning intelligence (metis of Iliad + Odyssey)
1. look beyond the immediate present
2. multiple (many-coloured, shifting)
3. duplicity of the trap


dolos --> cunning
kerde --> tricks
kairso --> ability to seize an opportunity

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Treatise on Fishing (Oppian)
Treatise on Hunting (Oppian2)


hunting and fishing (originally) provide the model of intelligence


baits, nets, weels, nooses, snares


dolos, techne, mechane --> in the world of animal & human


**relations of force are constantly upset by the intervention of metis**


metis of fish can take a thousand forms


angler-fish
tongue disguised as food
fleshy appendage growing on the fishing frog is a true fishing bait and as such has a double character: to the little fish it looks for all the world like food but it is food which soon changes itself into a voracious maw


fish = ambiguous creature
sea (...the world of animals) = world of metis
human = hunter/fisherman confronted with a world of traps and at grips with animals full of cunning


Oppian --> it is by *techne* that the octopus merges in with the rock to which it clings


hunter:
1. agility
2. dissimulation: the art of seeing without being seen (dokeuein: to be on the lookout, on the watch)
3. vigilance (mind full of finesse [like fine sugar])


Plato violently condemns line fishing, the hunting of aquatic creatures, the use of weels, the hunting of birds and all forms of hunting with nets and traps, he does so because all these techniques foster the qualities of cunning and duplicity which are diametrically opposed to the virtues that the city of the Laws demanded from its citizen.
(Detienne)

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*fox* and *octopus* -->
in Greek thought serve as models, the incarnation of cunning in the animal world
fox --> reversal (technique of reversing oneself)
octopus --> polymorphism (symbolizes the unseizability that comes from polymorphy)


reversal
•the way fox catches bustards --> it droops its head downward and gently wags its tail, deluded bustards approach this object which they mistake for one of their own kind, fox suddenly turns round
•(foxfish?) fish turns itself inside out like a glove, so that the interior becomes the exterior: the hook falls out


fox
[...]it lives, in its intelligence, in the depths of an earth which is admirably laid out. The dwelling that it digs itself has seven different entrances linked by as many corridors and the openings are situated a long way from each other.
[...]The fox is not to be captured by ambush nor by noose nor by net for it has no equal in smelling out an ambush; it is clever at severing ropes and escaping death through the subtlety of its cunning tricks.
(Oppian > Dettienne)


fox's escape = olisthcinein (in greek: an athlete whose body, rubbed with oil, slips through the grasp of his adversary)


--Detienne--> *it was not in nature that the Greeks found this type of reversal behavior in animals, but rather in their own minds (in the conception that they formed of metis)*
(metis is not something that is “out there”? ---> go to ajayeb bestiary)


octopus
(to the Greeks) octopus = a knot made up of a thousand arms, a living, interlacing, network, a poluplokos being (coil چنبره snake with its coils and folds, labyrinth, Typhon: multiple creature “with a hundred heads” whose trunk tapers out into its eel-like limbs)
*octopus mechane: enables it to merge with the stone to which it clings
*octopus logos: poluplokos
-it too knows how to disappear into the night, but it is a night which it can itself secrete (the ink, this dark cloud, this impenetrable night which defines one of the essential features of the octopus and of the cuttlefish)--> *pathless night* --> metis: only they can discover a poros
cephalopod -->  *oblique creatures*: they have neither front nor rear, they swim sideways with their eyes in front and their mouth behind, their heads haloed by their waving feet ==> confusion of directions --> aporia (aporai)


living traps --> they exploit a device (that Plutarch calls) sophisma: fish lurer


fox + octopus --define-->
•a type of human behavior: *present a different aspect of yourself to each of our friends*(!)
•a model for a form of intelligence (i call it *coiled intelligence* هوش مارپیچ) --trap--> the net in which his adversary becomes entangled [=/= chamaeleon: metamorphoses produced by fear]




fox + octopus --> *master of bonds*
[*]bond = weave + twist
[*]net: invisible (mesh of) bonds <-- favorite technique of metis


arm = bond
every part of its body is a *bond* which can secure anything (but nothing can seize)


*fox = a living bond* (can bend, unbend, reverse its own position at will)


Oppian is all about bonds, ropes, cords
pieces are joined end to end to form the “well twisted withies” (which the good hunter always carries with him)


Hermes: living web of interweaving (sumplekein), stations himself *close to the door*, mobile as the mime


[*]lecture-performance: art of (bending and) interweaving logos


the fisherman's “cloud” is the unyielding answer to the “cloud” of the cuttle-fish
*It is only by himself becoming, by means of his net, a bond and a circle, by himself becoming deep night, endless aporia, an elusive shape, that the man of metis can triumph over the most cunning species in the animal world.*
(Detienne)


[*]metis: intelligence which operates in the world of becoming, in circumstances of conflict = forethought perspicacity + quickness and acuteness of understanding + trickery + deceit


[*]trap = polymorphism (the opposite of what it seems to be)
dolos mechanos


(Detienne's research: recognize and explain -->) stability of terminology


world of appearance + Becoming


by means of rhetorical ploys sophist can make the weaker argument triumph over the strong ---> go to Kelile Demne cunning intelligence


(dolos -->) [*]cunning: woven, braiding or interlacing, *fitted together* <-- ***ancient techniques that use the pliability and torsion of plant fibers to make knots, ropes, meshes and nets to surprise, trap and bind*** <-- the idea that ***many pieces can be fitted together to produce a well-articulated whole*** (~=? art)


pliability انعطاف
polymorphism
duplicity + equivocality
inversion + reversal
}--> *attributes of curve*


ultimate expression of curve --> the “O”, circle: the bond that is perfect because it completely turns back on itself, is closed in on itself, with neither beginning nor end, front nor rear, and which in rotation becomes both mobile and immobile, moving in both directions at once
--> giving birth to its opposite
“machines” --> properties of the circle


-gu --> used to indicate curving
-kamp --> used to refer to whatever is curved, pliable or articulated
the fossil of fire goes back before the wild-life

the history of fire related to the history of forest

In the 1950s, government officials in Sierra Juarez of Oaxaca--in southern Mexico--blamed forest destruction upon the local indigenous communities. Fire, as a symbol of disorder, became the target of state control and the subject of a state-sponsored discourse of environmental degradation. [...] Fire suppression frequently has been part of state policies of social control. [...] The vision of fire as destructive, part of the state narrative [...] How has the memory of the traditional use of fire by indigenous communities been suppressed? [...]State political myth has obscured community memories of fire as a force in the forest, and as a tool for human use. [...] Why the indigenous communities of the Sierra Juarez no longer talk about the long-term history of their forests. Clearly, the communities internalized parts of the state-sponsored degradation discourse. (However, discourse analysis is not enough; it is all too easy to treat discourse as a monolithic structure of ideas[...] ) [...] These discourses require a threat, a source of chaos and disorder to which the moral regeneration of the progressive discourse can provide a solution. In the case of the Sierra juarez, forest fires provide this opposition. [...] It is exactly this resistance of the natural world to discursive domination that is one of the themes of this article. [1]

[1]ANDREWSA LVADORMA THEWS - suppressing FIRE AND MEMORY: ENVIRONMENTALDE GRADATIONAN D POLITICALRE STORATION INT HES IERRAJ UAREZO F OAXACA, 1887-2001

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Jinn older and Man

ecology of the Jinn


(Qur'an)
raging fire
scorched by burning fire
striking sparks of fire
and roasting at hell-fire
the fire of Allah, kindled
...



bringing together of two homogeneous blocks of material in a given, already-inhabited space

as if we knew what space and time mean



“the desert bighorn is an animal shaped by ice. [...] the design of wild sheep is very much an expression of arctic cold.” (Meloy)
(what the design of fire is as expression of? what shaped fire? ice?)
(we are shaped also by fire)

how you go from lizard to bird?
it must have been through the behavior of lizard that ‘birdness’ has come to be possible. a certain trait of behavior have allowed the lizard find itself in the air.


ice age
story of fire, story of grass, ...

after the establishment of a land-based flora (Middle Ordovician period, 470 million years ago) and permitting the accumulation of oxygen in the atmosphere it permitted the possibility of wildfire.

Fire also became more abundant when grasses radiated and became the dominant component of many ecosystems, around 6 to 7 million years ago;

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electrical fire



conflict between the “junk” and the “text” that seemed to fascinate

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how to write cold with fire? the medium of fire is incompatible with that of the paper. paper burns fire off! the combustion emerging elements energized by their contact fuels a sudden blow of increase in their excited entropy. flame. action is the breeze that death digs. foam knows no halt. the focus is noised and seeds location. place penetrates in shattery nozzles originating from thousands of nowheres. inferno's insurance is about aggression of hot.

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A) Accident, Action, Adrenaline, Aggressive, Aid, Aircraft, Alarm, Alert, Ambulance, Apprehension, Arson, Ash, Assess, Assist
B) Bad, Barricades, Battle, Blacken, Blame, Blanket, Blast, Blaze, Blister, Blow out, Breeze, Burning, Burns, Bystander
C) Car, Careless, Catastrophe, Caution, Challenge, Char, Chimney, Choice, Claim, Conflagration, Consume, Consumption, Contain, Control, Coordination, Crackle, Crash
D) Damage, Death, Destruction, Detect, Dig, Direction, Dirty, Dispatch, Drama
E) Electrical, Embers, Emergency, EMT, Engulf, Experience, Explode, Extinguish
F) Facts, Failure, Fared, Fascination, Fell, Fierce, Fire-break, Firefighter, Fireplace, Flames, Flammable, Flash, Foam, Focus, Fright, Fuel
G)
H) Halt, Happening, Holocaust, Home, Hose, Hot, Hot spot, House, Hydrant
I) Inaccessible, Inferno, Injury, Insurance, Interfere, Investigation
J) Judgment, Jurisdiction
K) Kindle, Knowledge
L) Laboring, Life-threatening, Lightening strike, Limitations, Lives, Location, Losses, Luck
M) Malfunction, Matches, Mechanical, Medical attention, Memory, Mesmerize, Misery
N) Needs, Nine-one-one, Noise, Nozzle
O) Observe, Odor, Ordeal, Origin
P) Paramedic, Penetration, Place, Police, Potency, Potential, Prevention, Progress, Prone, Pumps
Q) Quench, Quick
R) Reaction, Repellent, Requirement, Residue, Risk
S) Safety, Scenario, Set, Shatter, Shelter, Siren fire truck, Situation, Smell, Smoke, Smoke jumper, Smokey the Bear, Smoldering, Smother, Sprinkler system, Statement, Stop, Strategy, Strength, Stressful, Stretcher, Suffering, Susceptible, Swath
T) Tactic, Target, Terror, Thick, Threaten, Trailer, Training, Trees, Trench
U) Uncontrolled, Urgent
V) Victim, Vigilant, Volunteers
W) Watch, Water, Weakness, Weather, Wilderness, Wind, Worse
X) X-ray
Y) Yelling
Z) Zone



(Ajayeb)
Know! That I saw in fire many benefits, insomuch benefits that ‘he’ set in fire, the intellects of India and Greece erred and prostrated this fire-thing and this betrayal stayed in magus [Zoroastrians] and they became fire-worshiper until it became certain that the God's guidance offers and just with reason alone work cannot be done fully and if they worship fire of its benefits then in mud there is more benefits than that and in water more benefits than there is in fire and if The Creator wants to make wanderers of a folk he infects them with a substance as he infected the Indians with worshiping cow and Christians with worshiping the hoof of Christ's donkey and the pagans with worshiping idol and matter
and we shall mention the attributes of fire and its properties:
Know! That fire has taken the whole world of universe and no stone and no wood is not uncharged with fire. If a fool takes a piece of wood and asks “where is fire?” I say the way of everything is in manifestation as when two woods strike together made of Margh and Afar,[1] fire will appear or hit stone to metal

[1] According to Jashn-e Sadeh recalls the importance of light, fire and energy; light which comes from God is found in the hearts of his creatures. --> Hushang and the origin of fire

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we are too abstract, we are thinking yes there are things out there wild or whatever. then we must be surprise to see that the abstract far thing is made of flesh, quartz, or fire.

unlike camels and rats and sheep, other four legged or mammals, fire is not designed for something, the way organisms evolved to have meanings and representations to each other. fire embodies a vast place in our material and industrial and semiotic world but itself is not a creature of evolution. it knows nothing of symbiogensis nor of molecular compartmenship. fire is an elementary radical reaction to closeness. the third person. pure manifestation.

every mountain range have personalities. rock is arrange by evolution. it tells you about itself when you feel it firm in your hand pressing to your ear, asking thousands of questions, exploring with imagination. stone is not a social creature, maybe that's why we listen to them. fires are social beings, death sentences.
their society and ecology
reaching access to the literacy of fire-work

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(...) --> the black-box --> ka'ba --> an intermediate mechanism to reach beyond the door-knob --> dark medium of worship --> the jinn --> ontology of the envelopment --> an interiority that is exterior --> talking-fire --> mediums of the beyond --> put your ‘thing’ in the fire --> going through the fire --> test some fossils --> ice age --> databases that survive --> promises of futurity --> tech --> black-box is always about the-envelope and the-beyond --> going back to the cave --> monotheism invented darkness (praying in the dark marked singulaity of worship as the begining of subjectivity) --> there is a sudden big shift from telling-stone to talking-fire (introducing the spectacularization of truth-event, where risky aesthetic of fire coded as masculine is traded for a mutuality of slower wilderness a more feminine trope. the telling-stone proposes a totally different ecological model than the survivorship narratives encoded in the trial of the talking-fire. truth became untouchable visual spectacle that can burn and annihilate charging off the haptic closeness of the stone to the ear. truth became the matter of untouchable, visual. the angry truth god came with the fire both as tool of worship and punish (human taking lessens and used fire to discipline the forces of nature) --> the darkness that enveloped the worship, made the absence of light crucial for constructing interiority [note: before going to light-fire the worshipers must wash themselves in Vozu, in Namaz the worshpers wash themselvs before going to the darkness of prayers---is this water that we make vozu the same as ‘abe heyvan’? before going into the hyper space, the ritual plays a key role and a key hole. like all hyper spaces that forwards you yo the beyond the box as well is about deliverence (to the lover?): (for the sake of) salvation ‘rastgari’ is about delivering ‘you’ (--> Ma'ad --> masaleye “enteghal” [be alame digar] [dar tarikh falsafeye eslami irani ---> go to footnote in Motakhabat 2nd volume page44]) --> for *Rumi people is firewood, hizom, inflammables; fire is the present tense, its light is about the future and its ashes about the past: we like ash to perform our archiological readings of old fires and we like its light becsuse it helps us to push through and constatly make-imagine-lighten the future, i this model the present is untouchable.] --> the beyond is beginning to loosen its materiality --> accumulation of synonyms (before language) --> metaphors given birth slowly --> from the Pleistocene to Ordovician --> the accumulation of oxygen --> fire was permitted to exist --> etc.
(keeping a fire burring for a long time is a very strange thing to do. it is utterly Paleolithic to do keep fire, making it stone. it was Muhammad who turned off the lights, literally. when he was born, one the oldest Zoroastrians fire temples suddenly extinguished for no apparent reason. the blessed dark. the box, fire, both are means to have access to the inaccessible. #Muhammad inception/birth had to be connected to a supernatural event.)

(talking) fire --> speech
(telling) stone --> written

in the history, the leg-less-stone and the lying-visage have been together. a study of apparition must include the physical material as well, not as counterparts, rather as its play-mate.

(fire suppressing) an older ecology of reflection (namely the stone)

the telling stone is the same as spirit stone(?)---non-animal container (@Karin)
(stone is related to the spirits of the ground. the prisoner who throw a pebble into the pit, the pebble's sound is going to tell about the depths and darknesses that the human, on death sentence, does not have a long enough rope to carry too. so the rope is never enough, the linear connection, the closed chain of links, but the throwing stone can risk a disjunction between that mother->king->prisoner->darkness)
--> sending a guy into the pit is not typical for the cultures of Pleistocene: (using linear connection, darkness ~= unkown, and so on)
[Shepard] Prehistoric humans were autochthonous, that is, “native to their place.” (related to the earthly stone =/= fire that perpetually evacuates) (it is not that of the introvert stone and the extrovert fire, but the opposite, stone was social and fire allied interiority, it sent/banished the subject to the land of the mediated, ‘from now on you are coming from mediation.’ (Where the subject comes from? it comes from the mediation.) --> use me --> industrialize with me --> technologize with me --> stone-tech are 1.5 million years earlier than fire-tech --> with stone you can't reach the sky but by controlling combustion you can go up ==> alienation as the touchstone of humankind --> then comes the “reflective consciousness” of humankind --> and later the invention of the very strange object: the mirror [---> go to amazon#2DifficultForests] ==> a change in the “structure of existence” --> then the idea of “selftranscendence” by monotheist religions --> adventures of power and ideology --> then a very bad idea called “history” was introduced---an active, psychological force that separates humankind from the rest of nature because of its disregard for the deep connections to the past.[Shepard 2004] --- Lévi-Strauss points out, historical thought is analytical and concerned with continuity and “closing gaps and dissolving differences” to the point that it “transcends original discontinuity.”)
[in east mirror was never used as mean to self reflect, rather it was weaponized agains evil, although this evil was female and men used mirror to defeat it. unlike the western thought since the greeks in the Narcissus story where mirror is the foundation of self-absorbance and knowledge and madness, the easterns since they did not posses the same brand of selfhood they found mirror strange and uttelized it in curious ways, another optical problem ---> go to mirror and the laughing snake - mar-e ghahghahezan, img]
...through the speaking fire, events “on earth” were finished except for a final judgment by fire --> invention of sin, spiritual existence : selftranscendence. anthropoce separating themselves from earth and its processes
-‘essence’, ‘appearance’, and ‘change’ became sources of anxiety
-other forms of life are now irrelevant to humans
-from now on “you cannot be two things, in two places, or in two times, at once.” , no more overlapping identity ==> alienation from (the domains of) nonhuman life
-the “Persian” new mind, (intanced by fire,) divided the world into material creation and infinite spirit that would shape the philosophy of the civilized world. (Shepard 2004)
(-in my amazon book i am pointing out: Esthetic distancing also made possible the landscape arts and connoisseurship and commercialization as scenery painting, tourism, and recreation. To the credit of the Greeks, they resisted converting the landscape into scenery and wilderness into an aesthetic experience.)

we are not directed towards a measured location, (as his-story tries to make belief)

“After you die, others live.” (Sina)

old world's arboreal simians, monkeys

Anthropos

cultures of Pleistocene
-Pleistocene was the time of glaciation and ice. Much of the world's temperate zones were alternately covered by glaciers during cool periods and uncovered during the warmer interglacial periods when the glaciers retreated. it is when the evolution and expansion of Homo sapiens and by the close of the Pleistocene, humans had spread through most of the world.

Agonic / Hedonic --> my Köln group, agonistic doctrine challenges that mode of personality

ontogenesis---extended in human (the specialized and scheduled development of physical and psychological traits that appear, disappear, or stagnate during the life cycle of the individual.) --> Neoteny (a “state of newness"--a retardation of certain parts of the maturing process.) preprograms life stages, so that our becoming is a lifelong process.
-developement of the self in terms of harmonious relations to other species and nunhumans.
-ontogenetic agenda --- (The agenda is a given; the support depends on a social readiness to nurture, itself a product of successful ontogeny of an older generation.)
-many myths correspond to the ontogenesis. in Ontogeny, timing is everything---narrative.
-aspect of the ontogenetic self---(the modern world has lost the ways to guide the) new person emerging at each stage
[from kinfolk complexity and elderhood to medically sustained old age] -- i myself have turned to old folk to do storytelling, as necessity(!?)

one emerging in Pleistocene, is about perceiving one's place in the scheme of things (and not sending people down the pit into darknesses)

WE NOT ONLY LOOKED ‘AT’ ANIMALS, WE ALSO LOOKED ‘INSIDE’ THEM, realizing that they were more kin than indicated by our exteriors. (it wasn't Aristotle first who was performing such procedures)

attaching sounds to things/animals/species when they were not visible
(“Never ignore a sound!”)

inheritance (DNA, etc.) calls upon human society and imagination to invent its exact expressions.

human species’ “theme” is Paleolithic

(those who are “better” live in a natural environment and a cultural system that are closer to) meeting the “expectations” of the genes

Children at age six are typically anthropomorphic

trees structure space

**imagining the possibilities of something else being in there.
(how we were doing it? before fire)

“A meditative stillness that is good for the human soul, suggests poet Gary Snyder, was invented by motionless hunters. That moment of silent reverence comes also at the final death stroke when one succumbs to the cycle of life.” (Shepard)
[from predation to hunting (there is a huge epistemological shift) (mat[...]