[...]ly 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?

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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 tu[...]