[...]e not unusual

shari'a was interpreted and administrated by shii clerics in Yazd, and there was always room for manipulation of the law


Ziba Khanum's situation illustrates the problem of applying western legal categories of “slave” and “free” to the lived experience of enslaved women in iran
(her legal status as a free woman had little consequence <-- she remained dependent of the family and lived in their household)

***limited value of “slave =/= free” --Lee--> when applied to the study of muslim world***
modern state ==> “slave =/= free” (presupposing a secular state that is able to guarantee the lives and properties of individuals who can claim its protection) }<-- societies that are constructed around the ideas of:
rights, citizenship, secular state =/=
   |            |           |
kinship, belonging, religious authority, hierarchies of dependence (<-- middle east)

19th century iran --> there was no ideal within the society of freedom from relationships (of kinship, household, belonging, community solidarity, wealthy patron)--with--> implications of dependence, obedience, obligation
•any such freedom would have left an individual *isolated* and *vulnerable*

****
all enslaved persons (and akk other persons) in 19th century iran necessarily were *embedded in muslim households* and moved along a continuum of whatever situation of power, respect, wealth, independence they might be able to *negotiate*
#Cinderella
****

women --> at the margins of wealth and power --> slave women most especailly (they moved toward the center by:)
1. performed valuable domestic duties
2. became the master's regular sexual partner
3. bore the master child

the goal of most women (slave or not) om 19th century iran --> to negotiate the most respected position (within the family that they found themselves attached to) <-- **the defining factor was gender, rather than slavery**
--> for example Ziba Khanum's free life after the death of her master was determined by *gender* more than her previous *slave status* or by *perceptions of race*


babi movement in 1844 iran
baha'i teachings of detachment and resignation in the face of adversity
Ghulam Ali by the end of hi life was the largest landowner in the vity and extremely influential in politics and business affairs [he had three kaniz: Fezzeh (silver), Zaffaron (saffron), Shireen (sweet)]


...complete disappearance of the african diaspora in iran (!!??)


Lee: how Ziba Khanum's life be represented and understood?
Spivak forcefully and poignantly demonstrates the appropriation of subaltern voice of the british imperialist “civilizing mission” by indian nationalists and marxist theorists in support of revolutionary ideologies --> the absent and silent subaltern can be represented in support of any position at all
Spivak suggests that a history of subaltern people (individual or conceived as a class) cannot be written at all + should not be attempted
~/=
Eve Troutt Powell --> *the danger of applying american abolitionist narratives and assumptions of atlantic slavery to very different situations in islamic realms*

(Lee making Spikvak's question specific -->) can Ziba Khanum ever speak? Lee's answer is no
we have no access to her thoughts or her inner life --but--> that does not mean her life is without meaning or value to history
*we must listen for the african voice in iran even when it cannot be heard*

siah siyah سیاه: afro-iranian children (descendants of african woman slaves served as domestic servants and concubines) who remained in iran, married local people, and could live normal lives as iranians (although they might be identified as black)
==> *some percentage of the iranian population is of african descent (especially among the wealthy clases who could afford slaves) <-- this heritage has never hardened into a clear ratial category within the society*

we must regard them as actors *even when we cannot see their choices*

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

childhood Elias chap1

[*]childhood: idealized romantic construct, with denied legal rights, reflection of adults about themselves:
•nostalgia for an individual and collective past
•
=/= children vacillate between innocence & awareness, morality & immorality, cruelty & kindness, foolishness & wisdom, , , **children act as sophisticated consumers**
--Elias--> ***children make emotional, political, consumerist choices***

how adults construct childhood --> ***aesthetic social imagination***

how adults imagine children (in idealized forms ==> evocation of emotions) ==> give meaning to (individual and) collective realities

childhood --> worry + obligation =/= adulthood --> ease + freedom

(my childhood is sometimes remembered by me so different than of my friends --> makes the universal media objects specifically precious: cartoons that were watched by us across border and time ---> go to Sina's Children's Media Watch List childrensmedia.net)

imagine children -->
•nature of emotions
•relationship to religion
•relationship to society
◦articulation of attitude towards society
•constructing concept of:
◦individual
◦community
◦nation
◦gender
◦age

Elias's notion of emotion --> a broad category to index concepts of morally, ethics, politics, aspirational acts,

(everything depends on the ways we remember our [emotional experience of] childhood)

(memory = salad of) fragments of memory + emotions from our experience + emotions experienced by others + what we have been told by others about our childhood


common theory --> age between two and eleven children are most sensitive to external factors ==> most vulnerable to advertising

*age seven*
children are increasingly controlled by symbolic relationships and images (+ make judgment about things)

*under five*
{human characters ~?/= animated characters}--> belief in imaginary characters and monsters, management of emotions

*age two*
(end of) two --> children begin pretending (until age of five)

*over four*
idiosyncratic system of thinking about causality (extraordinary plays larger role than adults)


create and identify emotions in visual images

fantasizing =/= fantastical thinking

(for children) wishing = mental + magical + it exists in relatio to skill [---> go to Cinderella, waiting]


Elias's study of children images (visual material featuring children) in Persianate cultures (turkey, pakistan, iran) --> (role of) ***childhood/children = location of enacted emotion***
childhood + religion + visual culture <-- implementation of ideology in society

turkey, pakistan, iran:
•strongly ideological (like other states)
•multiethnic
•shaped by encounter with colonial empire
•strategic (=/= cultural) engagement with (west) global powers
•belief in the existence of charismatic religious authority
•belief in barkat برکت

Iran special relation to *religious visual art*


(Elias's) aesthetic: social imagination, creating reaction without words (= showing)
=/= telling
=/= nonutilitarian form of contemplation of art
=/= cognitive


Western mid 18th century philosophy ==> “aesthetics”
lower cognitive faculties
experience of sensate body
how the world strikes the body
emotional and affective response

modern aesthetics --> contemplation of beauty (superior to idleness and boredom <-- some sort of failure of moral vigilance)
“art = description of beauty”
==> Kant: aesthetics = sublime beauty (=/= quotidien)
}--> (fable of) the idea that **beauty engenders virtue** --> the beauty must be formal


(social system --> people) interacting with visual objects
making consumer choices [--(is not always)-->] interacting with visual objects in ways that further ideological formations


*religious reaction to sensory inputs are aesthetic* <-- they anticipate knowledge to be revealed in the future =/= rest contemplatively in the present
*religious gaze = apocalyptic glance*
=/= Kantian aesthetics (noninstrumental form of enjoyment)

Plato + Aristoteles ==> premodern islamic thinkers --> “beauty = virtue” (harmony of physical and moral)


(problem with) philosophical aesthetics of disinterested contemplations --Elias-->
•ignores majority of human experience
•(favors) apophatic (transcendent + ineffable غیر قابل توصیف) =/= cataphatic (immanent + experiential)

unstable & somatic ways we respond to (and seek out) everyday images

evocative & powerful (<--Sina-- nonartisitic images)

(art or not art) ***aesthetic response***


[*]children's media: aesthetic social imagination

(moral components of:)
cruelty, hurt, disgust, disdain
kindness, happiness, admiration, love

physical, material, somatic relation to the ethereal, metaphysical, intellectual

(?how can we) confidently treat “images = sources of socioculturel information”

(from) Islamic culture --to--> cultures associated with isalm


strong opposition to representational religious art <-- modern Islamic societies --> unproblematic accepting of representational religious materials intended for children

didactic islamic visual media:
•(Kuwait) the 99 --> heroes for each name of the God
•(Pakistan, India, Afghanistan) burqa avenger --> burqa clad superhero against a corrupt view of traditional religion, using veil as costume
•(Pakistan) Ferozsons publisher
•Uysal press
•Timas press (Cem Kiziltug)
•

age-graded sequences of children's religious books --> progressively decreasing use of images


questions (> Elias:)
•are there culturally specific ways of seeing --answer--> yes
•does religion requires its own categories for understanding visuality and sensory systems? --> *religion is a problematic category* <== inherently unstable {religion referring simultaneously to systematic ideological systems, atomized and multivalent beliefs, range of individual and cultural practices}--> constant flux + relative to each other =/= religion: discrete phenomena


•scholars who argue for a transcendental quality to religion
•Durkheim + Weber --> religious = behavioral
•Otto --> location of religion: a fascinating incomprehensible force outside of the human person
•Eliade --> essential unity of the religious (~= commensurate human behavior)
•Elias --> manifestation of belief and ideology in visual written emotive forms --functionalist--> [*]religion = visual art

visual material --serve-->
•aesthetic
•generator of meaning
•generator of affirmation شعاری
•icon
•talisman
•objects imbued with religious function
•token of aspiration
•instrument of aspiration (or other emotions)
•explicit reminder (of good behavior)
•gesture towards a better future : wish images
•

seeing = embodied act (---> go to Gossip Girl)
•(individuals make complicated interpretive choices concerning) what to look at & what they have seen
•*we feel through, about, from the visual* ~= visuality is embodied ~= visuality is multisensory + emotional


•Merleau-Ponty --> prereflective bodily consciousness: ‘body = instrument of comprehension’ (all material and other objects are woven into the body's fabric) --example--> blind man's stick
•[Groz --> phantom limb]

(Asad > Elias) power of things is their ability to act within a network enabling conditions (physical + mental --> feeling, remembering, hoping) -->{capacity of objects ==> society and politics become vitally material}

(the idea of power:) objects have agency in the complex web of interactions that joins them to other [--> object having itinerary] =/= objects have abilities or sentience that they use autonomously [--> object having life]

}--Elias--> critique of the idea of scopic regime


Elias furnishing the minimum information necessary to create an informed context (to frame of discussion) =/= give comprehensive history (about iran, pakistan, or turkey)


objects --> *affecting presence* (objects elicit affects)
[*]object: location of emotion, happiness pointer (---> go to index finger)
visual object: signifier of individual and collective emotion and aspiration


index
we do not have access to reliable system of deductible reasoning that assures us of an accurate interpretation of one value to the index --> lack of precise causative relationship between *observed phenomena* and their *affective consequences* (manifested on individuals and human societies)
}<-- this plagues visial material cultural studies


(Gell's notion of) abduction: a form of reasoning to abduce a possible (=/= actual) agent or effect
abductive reasoning (=/= deduction, communication, translation)
--> ***to analyze and experiment in the lack of data or causal relationships*** (which happens most of the time)
(i have been using the term speculation as synonym for abduction)
abduction = informed abduction : you need as much contextually relevant information as possible


(learning from Elias)
•specificity of emotions and affects <-- much more interesting
•specificity of objects or people

[*]emotion: object of (unintentional) human manufacture ==> location of human meaning & motivation

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

childhood Elias chap2

philosophical notions of selfhood in late antiquity (= islam + europe) ==> study of emotions & feelings

Platonic + Aristotelian : “emotion = ambivalent urges need to be disciplined and harnessed through some process of education” ==> islamic ideas of body & mind

favorite emotion (~ religious expression + motivator) in islam [+ sufism]: love & virtue [--✕--> my interest in hate & monster]

it was only one and half a century ago that William James argued that human mental states were incapable inseparable from our bodily forms (=/= “mind =/= body”)


modern theories of emotion:
•universalism <-- sentimental desire to believe in the essential community of all human beings + appeal of neuroscientific inquiries into the biological bases of emotions + certain linguistics theories [--> for example (the fable of universal emotion) *fear in the face of the enemy* transcends time and space]
•social constructivism <-- 80s sociology and cultural studies

using clinical data for humanistic arguments <-- problematic and unpersuasive


*******generation of new knowledge --approached-->
humanistic method (also applies to art?) --> authoritative: establishing control over the previous scholarship in the field + incremental advancement to collective knowledge
(*written as eureka moments of the revelation of knowledge* --> book: definitive work that closes discussion)
=/=
scientific method --> testing hypothesis, expecting one's own hypothesis to be proven wrong or incomplete in a very short time
(*written as progress reports on findings in ongoing research* --> article)

}--> this makes it dangerous for humanity scholars to take advantage of scientific research

[*]emotion
cognitive psychology --> humanistic + social-scientific theories of emotions --promoting--> (fables of)
•universal basic emotions: happiness, anger, disgust, fear, sadness, surprise [--> regardless what these terms might be in other languages other than english, or even if there are equivalent concepts]
•emotions do not occur in language but are physically manifested in the face [--> micro-expression in business negotiations]
•(the fable of) artworks can convey emotions accurately and reliably across time and culture [---> go to the fable of *unmediated response* + emotional appeal of “great art"]
•distinguish the essential from the optional, to capture the invariant, to break complex concepts into maximally simple ones [conceptual primes + lexicogrammatical universals] (<-- Wierzbicka's NSM)

=/=

•emotion --> Joseph leDoux 1996
•emotion --> Klaus Scherer 1979
•affects --> Deleuze and Guattari 1980
•perasaan hati --> indonasia 1980
•affect --> Massumi 2002
•emozioni --> Cesare Lombroso 1976

social constructivism approach:
•emotional experience is not precultural but preeminently cultural --> Lutz

anth[...]