[...]any economic or institutional analysis of apparatuses of image production is rendered obsolete by Baudrillard's notion of an almost self-generating and monolithic machinary of image production [...] (<-- Laura should be very aware of this)
Baudrillard's society of simulation does not allow for such distinctions ... simulation, after all, may simply be the latest version of the ideology of the end of ideology
}--> part of the theoretical apparatus of *anticolonial ideology*
one immediate danger of this approach is that it recklessly dismisses anything associated with the other side of the binary (of West/East, self/other, first-world/third-world, modern/premodern, etc.) ==> overlook the subversive utility and democratic accessibility of certain technological innovation --> evident in Shariati's ultra-atavistic endorsement for an aesthetic tradition: “intrusion of the machine into the humna-half may go so far as to paralyze man; it destroys creativity. imagine a type-written page that can be imposed upon millions of people, while before the advent of the typewriter everyone was free to use his creativity to the utmost in calligraphy” --Mohaghegh--> it is not reflecting on the historical reality that the exercise of calligraphy was always linked to a feudalist class structure, and often exclusively to the confines of the palace court, whereas the printed word open to a more widespread audience independent of material status
--> anticolonial ideology ==>
•carries out the presupposed will of modernity by homogenizing its very own constituency, diminishing any possibility for individual initiative or insubordination
•precludes the advent of outsider radicalism independent of some religio-civilizational confrontation with modernity
--> “there can be only one diagnosis ==> only one elixir” ==> produce an antidote that is equally colossal in scope, shape, and execution

}==> ***the local is no longer accepted by anticolonial ideology as a worthwhile site of contestation***

}--> (Sa'edi + Akhavan + ...) ~=> *messianic defender* of the national history : the sole harbinger جلودار of a *return to the real* ☠ [=/= cheerleader]

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*disease becomes temporary cure* (--> practiced by Al Ahmad, Shariati, artists [as irony and with the always problematic conception of the “masses” توده مردم mardom]:)
“[let's] re-employ the same reactionary elements in order to stir the masses, to restore awareness, and to fight superstition”
[still very common within critically-minded humanist social science schollar artists is the tendency to use critical theory (as diverse as it is) *to interrogate reality*
for us ([left inheritance] as postcolonialist, feminist, or biopolitician) the modus operandi of critical theory is to derealize, is to say: “this is an expression of paar.” “this is discursive formation.” “this is material assembly of objects.” ~= (an attempt to say) “this isn't real.” <-- this has been essentially a really powerful force and set of political strategies of the left @apass; this modus operandi is a killer blow for climate change from a leftist perspective (because the climate change is very real) (=/= speculative realism)]

Khomeini's cassette-tape revolution (radio medium infused with anticolonial propaganda) demonstrates the insufficiency of Benjamin's stance that “mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses toward art...”
the symbolic fury of Khomeini's voice is only magnified in its cult-value through its transmission over the air waves, testifying more to MacLuhan's interpretation of the persuasive impact of radio
--> technological media in iranian anticolonialism does not elicit the democratizing effect anticipated by Benjamin


from--> metaphysical awe --to--> banalized horror

each year the islamic republic itself reenacts the arrival of the Khomeini in tehran airport through a procession of myriad cardboard interact and converse with these mock-images of the imam in a kind of makeshift, state-run passion play



post 1979 iranian cinematic renaissance
•medium of film achieved in the decolonized space
•hooked into the contemporaneity of the localized apocalyptic (infinitesimal becomings)
•present as close an interpretation of the unthinkable strangeness of reality as possible
•on an ongoing desertion of the real

Adorno: “works that make socially univocal discursive judgments thereby negate art as well as themselves” @Laura's judgment on the fascist body (--> can consumption be resistance? @Laura: becoming fascist body ==> ? )

the medium of film-making in present-day iran attempts solely to bring the crypto-vantage of the everyday into obscurity-ridden view (to leave less clear --> my pre-2012 videos ‘Vagabond,’ ‘Constant Prince,’ and ‘city of domes’), allowing for a critical distance on the part of the spectator to examine one's own being-in-the-world in raw, blurred form (the truth is haze itself --> Hoda)

exoticization of the local --> reduce it to a nativist enterprise

(Mohaghegh > Tomlinson:) the everyday culture has ingested foreign elements from exogenous sources, with the various elementss gradually brcoming “naturalized” within it =/= image of pure, internally homogenous, authentic, indigenous culture


Sharjah art foundation of the Emirate's *postcultural imagination*


literary front
Hedayat, Yushij, Shamlu, Forough

Hedayat's The Blind Owl variants of a “will to chaos”

middle eastern avant-garde's vision of the writing-act --sketching--> a fugitive postmodern map of escape from its grasp

[in] moments of great social disorder
==> secret societies, iconoclastic trajectories, a type of consciousness that perceives the catastrophic-apocalyptic hint at each turn

(how an eastern or third world vanguard characterize itself in the heart of major historical tremors:) [listen to their *tone of aggression*:]
Nima: “with my poetry i have driven people into a great conflict; good or bad, they have fallen in confusion; i myself am sitting in a corner, watching them: i have flooded the nest of ants”
Forough: “all those who are involved in creative work have as their motive ... a sort of need to confront and struggle with annihilation”
Shamlu: “the children of the depths,” “the children of the storm,” “the horsemen,” “the bold ones,”

--> definition of the poetic world as a protosectarian space
رابطه مریدی مرادی
دار و دسته
قبيله

(Ali, to a subculture of) persecuted and endangered

==> peripheral narative (marginal leadership) become a force of intrigue and seduction (among iranian youth)

-how did poetry respond to historical events of atrocity and transition
-did the poets understand themselves as resembling a mystical, criminal, mercenary, or revolutionary edifice?

amorphous, obscure, versatile (thinkers and writers launching an intellectual-existential offensive against the disenchantment of the modern age)
along archetypes:
•power
•hostility
•banishment
•solitude
•desire
•sacrifice


contradictory experiences of the modern cityscape of the middle east --> at once a site of:
•autocracy and insurgency
•concealment and detection
•connectivity and alienation
•integration and crumbling
•gesticulation and idleness


Setareh's topics:
experiences of upheaval, hysteria, sabotage, collective suffering
--> Sana's topics:
existential-spatial understanding of questions of cruelty, betrayal, torment, annihilation


(poets finding themselves consumed with) the distinctive emergence of “the martyr”:

[-]Akhavan writing/witnessing at the time of reterritorialization of urban space during Mossadegh era: the subdivision of streets, districts, and neighborhoods into dueling sectors of power and resistance.
Akhavan's lament in “Winter”
disenchantment, bitterness, semiotic disorientation
touch = final sensory prism
Akhavan's task: to protect the domain of radical individuality (==> Ali's subjectivity)
(Mohaghegh asking:) *is the artist [...]