[...]ct: 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”

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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.)

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

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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

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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)


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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.

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[*]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

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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.]

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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?

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________________

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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

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________________

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2. a better mouse trap
Cinderella

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

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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)

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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

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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 g[...]