[...]lluminate the world differently


*we need better construction of past for building truly decolonial community* <-- is my antagonism needed for this?


anthropology: a mode of heightened attentiveness to life
(Singh)

Foucault, Benjamin, Derrida, Deleuze --> a loss of anthropologically generated theory

(more than once in a single day i find myself paused to wonder at) how thought moves

(long-standing philosophical between) dialectical and nondialectical genealogies of thought
-to be drawn to nondialectical is not the negation of dialectical, it is a way of thinking about the “meta"-physics (Singh)

philosophy reconciders this: ‘concepts come more explicitly to the surface as impressions grow into thoughts’ --> no! no!

how philosophy relates to and draws on nonphilosophy (is usually geographical*)

more differences:
•geographical: western/non-western
•naional: indian/french
•subdisciplinary: analytic/continental

(trajectories of Derrica, a tradition of) negative transcendence: différance, an absence that transcends “a” and “not a” [=/= (trajectories of Deleuze, a tradition of) affirmative immanence, the self-differentiating intensities of “a”, compresence of “a"]

some Deleuzian terms:
•assemblages
•deterritorization
•becoming
•multiplicities
•excess
•schizophrenia (~ nondialectical thought, a nondialectical expression of different polarities held together. use ‘split’ to create a philosophy, [the ‘split’ metaphore is] an argument for the dynamism and temporality of the structure =/= dialectical historism and the Freudian unconscious) -- schizophrenia marks an unresolved, nondialectical tension
}--> giving me a range of concepts with which to inhabit a plenitude of life --> we need to create/borrow/steal/appropriate a range of concepts with which to inhabit the plenitude of life (in Tehran) that exceeds all the time. (that which the political consciousness of contemporary Tehran fails to grasp.) ***between moments of (my) departure and return (to Iran) lay a whole world, full of life (and hope)***

Deleuze's hostility to dialectics
“we will misunderstand the whole of Nietzsche's work if we do not see ‘against whom’ its principal concepts are directed”
[*]dialectics:
1- the idea of a power of the negative as a theoretical principle manifested in opposition and contradiction
2- the valorization of the “sad passions” as a practical principle --> “the unhappy consciousness is the subject of the whole dialectic” (Nietzsche)
3- the idea of positivity as a theoretical and practical product of negation itself
•Hegelian: a determinate negation, followed by a “higher” synthesis
•Badiou 2000, Jameson 2009, Zizek 200k, a counterwave of contemporary dialecticians
dialectics: a habit of thought--variably expressed in anthropology and philosophy and critical theory

postcolonial theory, critical theory, cultural studies <--(descendants of)-- negative dialectics =/= affirmative nondialectics

to notice (over time) in Tehran:
•relations involving intergenerational servitude and nonnegotiable indebtedness
•expressed relations of power
•other modes of spiritual and material relatedness (that would be lost if i were to tell a story that was only a variant of a master-slave dialectic)*
•ascetic qualities
•activist qualities
•*ways in which state power is implicated (behampichidan به هم پیچیدن) in the lives*

how do we piece together a world?

ajayeb.net =/= catalogue of ethnographic curiosities (<-- be very carefull with this kind, #wunderkammer)

encroachment tajavoz تجاوز


super important questions for Iranians:
•(the question of) *how we conceive of the state* and the hopes and disappointments that issue from those conceptions
•are there other ways to conceive sovereignty? [other than the Agambenian conception: the sovereign power exerts a near totalizing force over an abyss of “bare life" = state. (Agamben's) decisionist totalizing authority <-- (Schmitt's) secularized theological concepts <-- (Hobbes’) theological assumption of an omnipotence god] (--✕--> Singh's very nice criticism:) “Agamben's transcendentally negative dialectical concept of sovereingnty entails a totalizing elevation of Varuna (the terrible) in such a way as to wholly eliminate the potentialities, threats, and possibilities of Mitra --> in its contemporary political philosophy most iranians tend this way (in everyday life and forms)
•how might we imagine a political theology that enfolds more ambivalent potentialities? ****
•

(Agamben swinging between the heightened extremes of redemption and catastrophe [@Lenna] =/= ) Singh's bipolar concept, reconceptualization (of Dumezil arguing, *force* and *contract* together constitute sovereignty):
[*]Romulus (& Varuna) --> warrior ambitions --> terrible and violent aspect of sovereignty; Varuna (--Foucault-->) as punitive power and force morph into a range of disciplinary mechanisms [*in a way Foucault's entire carrier can be understood as a way of engaging Varuna in different forms]
[*]Numa (& Mitra) --> peaceful elder --> embody contract, the friendlier, pact-making aspect of sovereignty (==> rule of law), producer of welfare and health and productive economy


khoshunat + refah خشونت و رفاه
we have to engage paradoxes of state power: capacity and incapacity (--> my point: the state in Iran is ambiguous.)
#workshop: Studying State Power---in Tehran we must explore theoretical alternatives to the concept of force: consent, contract, Singh's bipolar theory of force and contract, varying ideas of the “magic” of the state, Foucault's governmentality --> contemporary anthropology of the state, we examine varying pictures of state incapacity
•requirements: willingness to engage challenging concepts and texts, weekly online comment, class presentations and participation
•aims: a final essay: to make a coherent argument drawing on anthropological and theoretical literatures on state power
•axis: i work with Singh: that “there is no one correct answer we hope that students will come away with a better sense of the paradoxical coordinates of power such as violence and welfare, central to the making and unmaking of global modernity”
•reading: we will gradually build up towards the more difficult texts and ideas.
•note: You will not necessarily receive a better grade for any external research or new information you bring in but on how well you relate to the texts and ideas we have discussed in class. two student presentations. often a quieter, more considered response will be more highly valued.


[Singh seeks to signal] a wider range of forces (of which “repression” sarkub سرکوب would be one) and forms of contract (modes of give and take that are not exactly captured by the idea of “compassion” rahm رحم) [=/= VOA or BBC's dangerous notion of “informing” iranians’ political awareness]
-these two forms exist as potential tendencies of power, two forms among others that **power over life may take**
*tendencies* are not static or ahistorical [- Foad's “tendencies” (to destiny)] --> tendencies may morph and take new shapes --> they can also turn toxic when they are disappointed --> we oscillate from redemption to catastrophe =/= [this is the kind of political act/project we need:] “with Mitra and Varuna (~ region of structural-potential tendencies) we are not giving up hope, but the project becomes more specific: to track the particular degrees of force (many of which may be morally objectionable) and the modes of contract that are available in a polity” -Singh
...gestured to tendencies of thought

@iranian friends
to inhabit Mitra and Varuna is to not give up all political hopes and criticism (=/= dialectical political logic ==> a final purifying battle [~ Mehdi's totall earthquake offering a “higher” synthesis to his Tehran in a destructive scenario])

*** the locus of disappointment (& hope) [for iranian] ***

a concept can:
•shift or reverse the locus of our hopes and disappointments
•gives us coordinates along which to pay closer attention


nondialectical thought =/= law of noncontradiction : you are either for or against (Islam, state, ...)


a kind of life-force that an older generation of social science would have called “agency”:
“she is fearless and has an amaz[...]