[...]on in the postcolonial world
conditions of neoliberal global capitalism

[we have to see] disenchantment, necessarily open-ended and incomplete =/= self-consciously formulated projects of re-enchantment

[i have to be carefull with my] allusive evocation of the passing of secularity into obsolescence

my work with computre programming and database --> practices of calculability: a hallmark of the secularization thesis

subtraction stories: accounts of the emergence of modernity-secularity as merely the falling away of extraneous elements (leaving a core of foundational human experience and its self-understanding)

(Mufti > Asad --clarifying--> the ways in which) ***the very category of religious experience as a distinct and delimited domain of social and cultural life emerges out of transitions to modernity***

islamism: a return of islam, either uncontaminated by, or having shaken itself free of, the liberal thought and practice of the modern west

jargon of authenticity: (a form of thinking, to understand crisis in terms of) loss and attempted recuperation of past social and cultural forms

emergent postsecular common sense ==>{islamist practices = an expression of religious consciousness =/= the inroads of secularism ~= Western imperialism}

(?what is made to disappear from view altogether in) conceptualizing the interaction of secular and religious imaginations and spaces in modern Muslim societies

[*]enlightenment: an encompassing logic of bourgeois modernity, within and against which different social groups struggle in widely different ways (it is not something to be selected or rejected at the great salad bar of modern life)

*dialectical perception* --> revivalist claims (of whatever) are products of the very cultural logics they disavow and disown
==Mufti==> *islamist thought and practice cannot sustain their claim to be uncontaminated by the modern imperial process*


precolonial poetic traditions in the persianate sphere (influenced by persian)

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

systematic observation of the moon and its light ==drive==> development of science
studying soft moonlight =/= short-lived and blinding sensation of a flash of lightning

moon:
boundary of the terrestrial domain
bediator between this world and the next

moonlight ==>
•reflections about the interstellar order of space
•boundaries of terrestrial captivity زندان تن
•*semi-clear blurred shadows that suggest a strange and nonhuman world*


moon changes constantly --> mood changes to the moon [luna in Latin --> laune in german: launisch moody = to be ruled by changeable moods, lunatism = a form of sleep-walking by moonlight or possessed by demon]

reddish
orange
gold
yellow
white


the moon changes its course frequently because it is not able to master the cold

when moon light...
upon moon lands...


out of reach moon was an object of pure observation =/= Moghana’s moon

scorching missiles of Helios
allurement
cheerfulness
harmlessness


Lucretius on the nature of things
look upward yonder at the bright clear sky
and what it holds
the moon, the radiance of the splendour-sun

moon-dwellers

icaromenippus Lucian’s satire about the moon lamenting the lack of imagination of ancient astronomers

trans-lunar celestial spheres

great intellectual abstraction is necessary to explain the appearances in the sky

Plato creates an image if completely harmonious world structure which makes circular rotating movements by means of spindles


Aristotle’s design gave a mechanical explanation for celestial phenomena (both terrestrial & astral physics)

Copernicus (+ Kepler + Galilei) ==> anthropocentric view of the world (=/= catholics church)


ibn Heisam --> visible light originates only from the moon
moonlight to be studies

ketab al manazir

size of the angle of deflection is so small that moonlight cannot be explained as sunlight

in 1609 Galilei’s telescope had 20x magnification

(moon’s) traces and spots

rough and full cavities and prominences
“let us not thing it an offence to suppose that she is earth and that for this which appears to be her face, just as our earth has certain great guilds, so that earth yawns with great depths and clefs which contain water or murky air, the interior of these the light of the sun doe not plump or even touch but it fails and the reflection which it send back here is discontinuous”

moon and the face of the observer

“there are people who believe that they are seeing a mirror image of the oceans on earth, and others say they are the traces of the mountains and mountain ranges of our earth; there are also people who believe that what they see is a figure that has been cut out of the reflecting rays that fall upon the earth”

optical homogeneity of the regions of the moon

ibn Heisam --> the color of the body has the effect of darkening the light
*color is a result of density*
“you will not find any color without density, because a body that s extremely transparent is not dense and therefor it has no color. for this reason we maintain that the color of a body can be equated with its density”

eclipse of the moon --> “this color is dark, its nature is blackish and comparable to red”


da Vinci's report
1. vapours rise from the moon, after the manner of clouds and are interposed between the moon and our eyes
2. moon composes of more or less transparent parts
3. moon = carrying thickness or density [refractive <-- this is easily how I modeled my moon for the WIELS exhibition]
3. moon ~= mirror (<== large amount of water on the moon)

Galilei
lunar waterlands (in Kepler’s dream journey Somnium https://frostydrew.org/papers.dc/papers/paper-somnium/)
Kepler saw (in the moon craters) large circular buildings that moon
s inhabitants (endymionians) had erect to drain the swamps

science and cartography of th physical features of the moon
Hevelius
W. Gilbert


moon’s waxing phase --> earth that is in brightlight reflects light back (one third of the sunlight that reaches it) to the dark side of the moon

“what if the atmosphere had really withdrawn to this dark face? and if air, why not water? would not this be enough to infuse life into the whole continent? why should noy vegetation flourish on its plains, fish in its seas, animals in its forests, and man in every one of its zones that were capable of sustaining life? to these interesting questions, what a satisfaction it would be to be able to answer positively one wat or another! for thousands of difficult problems a mere glimpse at this hemisphere would be enough to furnish a satisfactory reply. how glorious it would be to contemplate a real, on which the eye of man has never yet rested!” (Jules Verne, All Around the Moon)

the side of the moon facing earth is being gradually eroded by earth’s gravitation

Pythagoreans <-- one of the first recorded visions of an inhabitable moon on which animas and plants flourish, larger and more beautiful than on earth <== *it makes to sense to create a planet that is uninhabited*
“[...] for she would then appear to have come into existence vainly and to no purpose, neither brining forth fruit nor providing fir men of some kind an origin, an abode, and a means of life, the purpose for which this earth of ours came into being” (Plutarch, On the Face of the Moon)

metaphors for the silence of the space --> perennial question of humankind

the black sea sparkle with lustrous fires, like the ceiling of a vast hall of ebony encrusted with flashing diamonds
with what a soft sweet light every star glowed
no matter what its magnitude, the stream that flowed from it looked calm and holy
not twinkling
no scintillation
no nictitation
disturbed their pure and lambent gleam

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

night dreams (after WIELS's exhibition)
starting with the story of the jinn studying origin of species --> bestiaries
mix of reports from Hedayat'neyrangestan + Shamlu's ketab kuche + Marzolph's topology of persian folklore iranian stories + ajayeb stories --to--> ?

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

jin lamp
tree
scared face

book Skala:
royal fairy tales
baba jaga kostliva noha / bony legs


the first worm

death skeleton afraid of itself, of its own image
self-reflective

you are following, while being followed, and the one who follows you is being followed...

pop-up book
•endless doors (on top of each other)
•rotation: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMR4VTo8s/
•rotation: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMR4Vp8Yb/
•https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMR4Vw7qk/
•https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMR4VttgH/
•moon https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMR4VV2CC/


•Philippines --> aesthetics of poverty [culture of material poverty --> poverty as scenic design and working philosophy] (==> the imperative to eliminate nonessentials =/= my philosophy)
•Iran --> aesthetics of ?
•(?what is) Instagram or TikTok people's appreciation of beauty =/= aesthetics of poverty's coupling expression with survival and change

the idea that becoming sensitive to the aesthetic qualities of local materials ==> increasing one's power of expression

theater director = aesthetic coordinator = sensitivity + selectivity

scenography in artistic research
my early interest in stage design {~ use of backdrops in capturing the essence of a play or story --> a way to *establish setting* [=/= scene] --> sense of (not necessarily authentic) history, calling for the patina of history} ==> my recent scenic paintings --present--> *visual stream of consciousness* ~= diorama ~= to capture the essence of a practice interest optic episteme (--> establish a setting to get caught lured)

(in my work: assumption of)
symbolic use of visual elements --> collective consciousness + revitalized forms ==> vision of a larger culture : capturing a gestalt = everyone can understand



Shake, Rattle and Roll
romance, light sex, and comedy segments---laced in horror
(Tolentino)

horror genre
==> big young stars performing non-iconic roles
~= (analogue of [collective]) anxiety (of nation?) : making-do processes and mechanisms of ordinary people + imperative of profit and state formation
--> how (mis)governance get to be represented + how citizenry is enforced and embodied (at the ground level)

Philippines: from Marcos dictatorship --to--> neoliberalism: privatized, deregulated, commercialized, marketized public services

•Crane using psychoanalytical tropes --> horror = everyday terror
[*]horror: excessive communication
•Creed using trope of monstrous-feminine --> horror = gestalten deeds in adjection and castration
•Lim --> *horror = temporal critique* {fantastic local horror =/= historical time, supernaturalism, occult modes of thinking encoded in fantastic narratives}
[Bergson > Lim > Tolentino:] horror --> heterogeneous temporality, heteroglossia: multiple tongues, to disengage in certain (nation) formations

horrific real
translation of historical terror in filmic horror

historical real + filmic mobilization --render--> real as porous & artificial

horror --Tolentino--> transhistorical (transgressional) continuity of the project of desire & pleasure
--> masochistic viewing experience + trajectory of critique

(during Marcos order in Philippines -->) horror genre talks about the popular dialectics of the known & unknown, moral & immoral, inclusion & exclusion, defeat & triumph, struggle & redemption, normal & abnormal, reality & alternative realities, religious & secular
•horror provides a cultural trope for the imagination of the nation

anxious state in horror films --represent--> anxious state in ... (nation-formation, citizenship, etc.) --> irony: (the anxious state) it is not what it is
----> [*]viewing: a sadomasochistic act [you know it is frightful (or garbage) yet enjoy viewing (in KHM we called it hate-watching)] --> pervers pleasure ==> individual and social categories to remain constantly in a flux

intensification of anxiety ~=> carnavalesque moment of drawing pleasure

(in the film) history of a chosen local
logic of absence --> prohibitive history of violence + excess
ritual of horrific foregrounding

scene + coherence of meaning
*horror is performative : it needs to be restaged in order to be evocative of meaning*

sexualization of women integral to the genre of horror [aimed at its male audience, similar to Charmed]:
•sexy female leading role (in love triangle)
•man --> representing evil and underworld
•man --> representing true love (engaged in a battle for love + choice of the young woman, sexualized in the male contest)
•female viacera sucker --> female creatures need to show hidden skin [popular sex-oriented star --to--> female monstrous figure --allow--> display of prohibited body parts + heteronormative desire]

(female star rendered both strong and weak)
1. exposing and defying the horror figure (first)
2. embodying the horrific abject subject (second)

in the narrative of horror
•the moral forthrightness that makes the female subject survive, endure, move on
•they are punished but never totally obliterated into the horror scene


internalization of fear ==>? domestication =? maintaining the status quo in community fronts --Foucault--> docile ==> productive for state formation

(the survivor never fully survives and triumphs over the adversaries of the) horror scene --> open-endedness of the closure = of knowing + of being abjected

(libidinal drive in) citizenship claims in nation-formations ~= (libidinal drive in) continuing performative of the horror subject
}--> one is constitutes through but never thoroughly in power relations


white sexy female star + horror + social melodrama (= Charmed)

orally told tales of female violence
miscegenation
desire for liminal female sexuality
necrophilia
female haunting
heterosexual desire
nostalgia for truth
==provide==> template for cultural idiomatic imagination

historical experience --> futile & enunciated through the orality of retelling (+ being capable of retelling)


historical justice has not been served in actual social reality ==> the horror scene bears the constant threat and possibility of repeating itself on the future

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

#idea
namaz gestures as alchemical ruse to open portals, kill enemies, transmute objects, and other specs

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

Naveeda chapter 1 mosque

mosque =/= shell for prayers
•monumental structures built by the state

old mosque: part of complex devoted to
•learning
•dispensing justice
•channeling charity

oft repeated statement: Pakistan is a mosque [~= one has to learn to inhabit this place, aquire the right etiquette in sharing it]  (--> what it means to be Muslim in Pakistan)
•a place of assembly?
•a sacred place?

qabza, ghabze قبضه, violent seizure, forcible  possession
(depending on who you ask -->) Pakistan under ghabze by:
•the state
•venal religious figures
•unscrupulous lay muslims
•sectarian groups
•

“narratives of loss --> investment on self-betterment* (+ bettering of one's community) ~= striving

emergence of new independent mosques --> new property arrangements (+ admin + funding) --> growth of civil institutions

city bureaucracy of Islamabad ==Hull==> *uncivil politics* (سیاست غیرمدنی =/= civil society)


(like Tehran) Lahore = urban fabric palimpsest of:
•different eras of history
•political leadership
•social composition
•aesthetic styles
•modalities of social engineering
=/= dissolving the past into hypermodern

*postcolonial ~=> sectarian politics*

local mosque-related politics
سیاست محلی مسجدی


demographic change + population growth + strengthening of sectarian politics = ?


به طور قانونی غیرقانونی
legally illegal mosques
(illegal structures on land legally put aside for this purpose)

presence of bureaucrats within mosques in south Asia (since 19th century)

creating an ideal state by means of the mosque


loud zekr ذکر

mosque: (bearing) traces of the changing fortunes of its worshippers

qabza =/= voice: an individual's singular words and gestures arising from her embodiment *of hey maslak مسلک*


...civil servents
cultivating a modernist
cosmopolitan air
and their educated well-traveled
nuclear families


congregation (جماعت =/=? collective, community)
communal exchange
learning
contemplation

mosque employee hierarchy:
1. khatib خطیب the person who gives sermons during Friday prayers
2. imam امام the person who leads the give obligatory prayers during the day expect Friday
3. ghari قاری the person who had received enough training to render a pepper recitation of the quran
4. moazen موذن there person who gives the call to prayers, also responsible for cleaning the mosque


ghabze of mosque = expression of ambition (to found religious space) to forge the model Muslim community (beyond daily needs of worship)

***legal exercices & bureaucratic forms = a mode of experimentation*** (in being good [Muslim, intrinsic to Pakistan])
--> to enable civil relation (learning from Naveeda and Femke)


Islam is only one element of a complex weave of politics (involving local leadership, emergent communities of dissent and activism against an indifferent state)


flagging a social problem =/= filling a complaint


jahalat جهالت (=/= common sense + education + good breading)
resentment of uneducated
not class-coded?
--> character (determined by)
•nobility of birth =/= lowly birth
•enlightenment of education =/= ignorant
--Naveeda--> ‘maslak differences ~= grist for the art of war’


rumored
engineered
unfolding

sectarian geography of the city

mobilized in the form of bored policemen


prophet's era intermingled with Pakistan present
masjed zarar

gabze (mosque seizure قبضه مسجد) --explicit--> desire to stake a claim on a new nation-state (Pakistan) = expression of striving:
•tie religious/moral development to the nation-state development
•tie religious/moral development to the imagination of an earlier era of Islam

*expression of striving* in art: opening an art space, studio, school, or an institute (=/= create an institution as a conceptual gesture)
--> tie your development to the nation-state development and to an imagination (of change?)

•anything could be believed about a certain imam
•when someone (or group) attack you, they transform from human to animal
--> skeptical turn towards the world

neighborhood = ties + tensions

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

Naveeda chapter 2 Iqbal

Naveeda's ethnographic example of a scene of aspiration:
•librarians sit around a table (in a public library) engaged in a heated religious argument that threatens to spill into accusations of blasphemy
•Lahoris resolve to build mosques for their neighborhoods only to preside over the dissolution of their communities in their fights over the mosques
<-- sites of dissonance + aspiration

aspiration --> efforts at being Muslim (in the ways one knows or attached to) marked by a striving to an as-yet-unattained self without presuming that this next self is the final one
<-- tendency (=/= social program)
(=/= see these examples as the lack of consensus in Islam)


Iqbal --Naveeda--> theory of creative workings of time

Naveeda constructing a Pakistani Iqbal

Iqbal presence within:
•everyday acts of striving to be Muslim
•state exertion (official rhetoric)
•public culture of Lahore

**synthetic mode of thought**
--> how South Asian intellectuals created zones of thought by assimilating the work of thinkers from different times and parts of the world to their own ==> (develop and sustain a) *cosmopolitanism* [that exceed the limits places on imagination by colonialism, nationalism]
(--in--> both locatedness and translocal ambitions --understand-->) *the openness and connectivity that characterizes the socal*


Iqbal's mode of self-experimentation: he put himself in relation to dynamic individuals and emergent movements and institutions to see how they sat with him and he with them
--Naveeda--> *experimentation does not require the creation of the new* but rather new ways of inhabiting the fundamentals (of religion in Iqbal's case) --toward--> producing the readiness for change


-attitudes of toleration comes with belief in dogma


Mohammad
the prophet's return is creative : insert himself into the sweep of time with a view to control the forces of history ==> create a new world of ideals

*prophetic consciousness: a mode of economizing individual thought and choice by providing readymade judgment, choices, ways of action


Islam is strongly informed by *teleology: final causes and ends
•(a tradition of) biding worshippers to act in this world with the knowledge of brevity of earthly existence (and the certainty that they will meet their maker)
--> perception of time


Bergson --> enabling change in the human perception of time so that humans could see how their present was charged with open-ended potential
(1934:)
•duration: reality of time as a dynamic continuity
•intuition: imaginative means by which humans could perceive duration

(picture of) life = vital impulse through matter
--> (positive account of) evolution: continual discharge of creative ideas (and tendencies) moving through a world of matter

[*]metaphysics: a technique to avoid “false problems”

Bergson's understanding of intellect: denying humans the experience of time as duration ==> Iqbal

how Iqbal rendered (Bergson's) vitalist philosophy (which denied teleology) acceptable to Islam (which strongly is based on teleology):
the idea of a forward-looking aspect to the intelligence permeanting life --> for a Muslim an “ought to be” stands in the forefront inflecting the present well before any final end

human-God copartnership --imply--> advancement of the self as the object of striving {the self arcs towards God and partners with God in order to advance}==> change in the world

“the finite ego must be distinct, though not isolated, from the infinite”
(Iqbal)

Iqbal's striving:
•the end of one's striving is one's *next self*
•nonprogressive: one's next self could lay ahead, alongside of one, or in one's past
•not to part with their finitude too quickly (no fana dar hagh)


Iqbal's pholosophy -->? aesthetics of the self (~ creation of personality)
--(preoccupied with)--> *muslims crafting and tethering their subjectivity to the commentary world*

Iqbal's self-seeking individuals : actualize qualities attribited to God [(impersonal qualities:) majesty, beauty, grace] (to the best of one's ability) --Naveeda--> (individual impersonality) ***individuality marked by a certain impersonality*** : the more impersonal the qualify that is manifested the more unique one is
=/= [*]modern identity : right-bearing citizen in nation-state, a subject distinguished by the peculiarities of his or her own way of life or point of view or a specific interiority
#integration
=/= Cinderella's (aim and process of) individuation --Sina--> impersonal individuality
[Cinderella's shekayat شکایت]


Iqbal's nonintuitive pairings (=/= contradictions):
•experimentation / convection
•fidelity to one's past / seeking one's future
•prophetic guidance / human freedom
•reason / revelation
•teleology / open future
•duration / transcendence
•freedom / finitude
•individuality / impersonality
<-- elements are drawn to each other, mutual attraction (that does not detract from the plenitude of each)


(Sir Sayyid:) “religion = revelation + reason” --Iqbal--> affirmative picture of existence after revelation had ceased

Muslim thinking in need of biological renewal ==Iqbal==> revolutionary Muslim thinking
}--> a theory of human perception + intelligence + their place within the larger picture of natural evolution

-in order ot make islam political they have to reject the supernatural (miracles, keramat, etc.) ---> go to Corbin's critique


*striving to overcome the (so-called) sickness of modernity* --> (now in Europe artists want to become -->) *physician of moral community* (hakim al umat)


habits of Allah
•miracle
•


Iqbal --> the question is not of evidence (whether miracles did not did not happen), rather: whether belief in miracles is usefully to a community : miracles ==> intensify sense of supernatural ==> hold together --> society with *ideal nationality* (not territorial nationality)
}--Naveeda--> (Iqbal is saying that) just as Muslims needed to understand the capaciousness of nature (to be able to engage and value human striving), so too did they need to accord existence to the supernatural <-- quality of striving


Maududi's picture of aspiration
modern Muslim citizenry <--Maududi-- should be created by the state (the idea that state must mould every aspect of human life on consonance with its moral norms and program of social reform ==> *true Islam =/= muslim Islam*
~= Islam is perfect, muslims not


•Asad --> muslim self-transformation (self-directed changed) ==> perfect form of islam
•Maududi --> (Muslims who know themselves to be weak by constitution -->) one erect a state to install change in oneself ==> perfect form of islam
•Iqbal --> striving: individuation without individuality ~= potentiel without concrete ~= experimentation on self


producing the concrete environment within something to make it available to X : enabling =/= entailing

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

Naveeda chapter 3 law

Naveeda:
•mosque = site of striving
•law = state's efforts at striving (and inflecting muslim aspiration) [=/= law: site of colonial codification and ossification]

Foucault --> (when the state asks you for) registration: disinterested bureaucratic procedure = state's securing its authority
~/= Derrida --> law = a horizon of aspiration through a register of justice


munir report
semitic theory of state (Jewish, Christian, or Islamic): the object of human life is to prepare ourselves for the next life --> strive for human conduct which ensure for a person better status in the next world
*state --> act upon Muslim bodies to secure their afterlife* (by means of prayers and good work)
}--> define a Muslim:
1. identify the material body upon which am Islamic state is compelled to act (to ensure its afterlife)
2. to protect non-Muslims from the state
3. to protect the state from non-Muslims (kofar)


(for me there is a big difference between:)
•islam: achievement of the Arabian nomads (that make the musulman of today live in the past)
•islam: a tradition of intellectual imagination of those who were conquered


Pakistan 1972 constitution --(for the purpose of the constitution of the law)--> non-muslim: a person who does not believe in the absolute and unqualified finality of prophethood of Muhammad, the last of the prophets or claims to be a prophet, in any sense of the word or of any description whatsoever, after Muhammad or recognizes such a claimant as a prophet or a religious reformer


something akin to copyright (trademark law) --> disable non-Muslims from encroaching upon Muslim rights over their tradition (undertaking muslim modes of worship: use of honorific titles and modes of address specific to the prophetic community, building mosques, calling azan, citing from Quran or hadis, etc.)

khatam anbia --> khatm: seal --> aspects of Islam as sealed off and exclusive to muslims

(Pakistan supprim court's affective legal feedback loop) copyrighting islam = affirmation of Muslim nature <--Naveeda-- *a horizon of striving*
}<-- an example of (Iqbalian) reason + revelation


institutionalizing blindness


Iqbal on ahmadies:
•Tipu sultan collapse by the British 1799 = mark of political and psychological subjugation of Muslims --Iqbal--> Ahmadiyya messianic movement = subjugated people explaining to themselves their state of decline (negative enlightenment)
•tolerance = indifference

striving =/= progress

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

Naveeda chapter 4 jinn


strident --> engaging speech with vivid imagery
differential --> differing knowledge to proper authority

lack of consensus on what X is (among its varient constituents) ==> (problem of) loss of tolerance
(for example Pakistan:)
contradictions between commitments to:
•existing hierarchies
•tribal ties
•universalistic religion (whose version of community transcends those ties)


(Naveeda) thinking of the potential lines of movement among entrenched differences, cited texts, and possible positions generated by selves encountering others in the world

intensities that burn within you + openness to conversation

attention to time --Naveeda--> draw a consistent picture of an Islam with open future

disputation = a form of experimentation: doing and undoing of known forms (in the spirit of striving) [=/= experimentation: innovation in self-making, or social arrangements]
@apass

disputation: a form of interaction (with risks and ill effects [risk of alienation, estrangement of others])
--> [*]becoming: coming to terms with the trajectories and crystalization of tendencies within the transcriptions of the state and in public culture --> **excavating the resources (that this way of being Muslim) give to itself to reflect upon and evaluate (--> renew its inheritance of Islam)

•approaching history from the perspective of plenitude
•approaching history from the perspective of lack


(upsurge of excitement accompanying the creation of Pakistan --Smith--> a tendency [=/= social movement for example reform or piety with identifiable advocacies and trajectories] called) [*]aspiration: sustaining the striving towards an ideal final form (a state, society, self, etc.) =/= achieving

the aspiration of making Pakistan --> to aspire an islamic state ~~Smith--> muslim way of saying that Pakistan should build for itself a good society
--Naveeda--> demand for a state = demand for a society ~= demand for a self

how to read Pakistan's historical records shaped by the *aspiration to strive as Muslims*?


to effect experimentation <==
•disputation (jadal)
•argument (bahs)
•disputation (monazereh)
•debate + polemic
•building mosques
•

tradition and ethics of debate and disputation


Carl Schmitt --> political theology
*politics discovers its modernity by repressing the theological foundations of its concept and practice*

theology was always about worldly politics <--> religious transcendence }==> run analysis both ways:
•transcendental coming into play (in some instances)
•worldly life coming into play (in some instances) [immanent quality]

--Singh--> self-making & self-perfecting

}--Naveeda--> religious argumentation : expressive of ongoing striving

**one works on oneself by revisiting and reinhabiting theological conundrums (through words and practice)** [same in artists as well?]


perceived eagerness for debate among lay muslims --> (anxiety over) disputation ==>
•indulgence in abstract thinking
•undermine the tenacity of individual faith
•reduce the hold of the daily obligations of ritual worship
•lead to a diminishing attachment to worldly life or stakes in the social


Veena, Cavell > skepticism:
•philosophical efforts at securing one's knowledge of the world unmediated by sense experience (<-- classical)
•human disappointment with our earthly condition of being distinct and separate from others (<-- social)
•efforts to secure unmediated knowledge of others (<-- social)
•

[Veena (giving historicity and ethnigraphic precision)-->] skepticism ==>
•renders other vulnerable to suspicion
•unsettle social relations
•produce the conditions of possibility for suffering and violence


skepticism <--> aspiration

aspiration =/= clear vision of ends

Pakistan:
•idemtifies itself as an ideological state (Islam) [==Naveeda==> (the possibility of) some experimentation within its apparatus : ***articulation and dispersal of ideology is not linear or cumulative*** it flows in directions other than from the top down]
•inherits the colonial administrative structure + imperatives of government (postcolonial state)

(Sina -->) to be ideological about X : driven to ascertain and adjudicate the others relation to X
(certainly as an achievement)

in islamic ideological states (like Pakistan and Iran) you are allowed to experiment on what is it to be a Muslim
(+ skepticism with respect to those who strive)
•skepticism transforms into an *impersonal force* (that can emerge anywhere and strike anyone) [<-- disembodied aspect of skepticism]


discourse of spiritual diagnosis
(takes place through an evaluation of one's physiology)

Deleuze's symptomatology: a creative act bringing about a change in health + affirmation of a way of life
•striving --> good health

Iqbal --> attentiveness to thr physiological as a means to gauge whether one's spirituality is on the right track
•with Bergson --> concern for the futurity of Islam
•with Nietzsche --> concern for the spiritual health
◦Nietzsche: physician of culture, (understood as political act) “striving and self-diagnosis ==> implicates the individual in the world ==> produce charges in the world”


Naveeda's ethnography method of interviewing:
1. locate traces of X in (context:)
◦everyday life
◦public culture
◦
3. see how this tendency crystallizes
◦at particular points
◦within particular persons
◦within particular texts
◦
5. study this crystallization
◦comes to be overlaid
◦expressed through lived experiences
◦be productive of
◾further movements of the tendency
◾countertendencies
◾its dissipation
◦

jinn <--> striving
Naveeda shiwsyin her research a single worshiper's choice of striving: relay upon a jinn for guidance on better ways to be a Muslim

*striving --> put collectivity (for example family) in jeopardy*
*@apass

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

(state pronouncements of) correct way to [?how to] *attach to the prophet*

becoming a knowledgeable religious disputant

Naveeda > Iqbal > the weary self that could not be roused to piety by religious zeal strikes a posture as much of resignation to sin by a nonpracticing Muslim as of a certain pride of withholding oneself from conformism.
--> of one goes to prayer in a mosque it is by one's own choice

...to dismiss differences = the political expression of the petit bourgeoisie


Iqbal's disapproval of guidance --variance--> (Sahib) seeking guidance from a jinn for pious pursuits

singularity of Sahib's efforts at improving himself as a Muslim --> (Iqbalian aspiration) posture of the nonconformist

state's fears that the milieu was pervaded by non-Muslim others posting as Muslims --jinn--> [made vivid] *skeptical experience of everyday life as a place of illusion and trance* (go to --> my work on Relaxing Horror Tales for Children and Adults)

bedat بدعت
accretion of customs in the form of innovation


jinn
-what nature of influences jinn introduce into human lives?

•library of religious commentary
•prophetic tales
•magicians’ manuals
•folklore
•ethnography
•
--> characterization of jinn

human ~= jinm --> endowed with passion, rational faculties, responsibility for their actions, etc. they eat, grow, procreate, die

constantly evolving relationship between humans and jinns

from pre-islamic --to--> Islamic
both good & bad ascribed to jinn's constitution --to--> to be much more unequivocally associated with evil

the little mischievous nafs نفس that make up a self --> Muslim interiority (projects?)

...in the belief of jinns:
•complex arrangement of cultural memory
•political strategy
•mental illness
•individual subjectivity
•
--✕--> *Naveeda taking the existence of jinn for granted ==> (her effort) to learn more about the family that adopted them and their efforts at striving*

*taking the existence of X for granted ==to==> learn about the people who adopted X*


“Muslim children - how bring them up?” vol 3
(in Islam) child: bring without aghl عقل + ability to communicate with divine beings, without sin
--> always under the threat of being easily led astray

eight-year-old Maryam
-attuned to ways in which this world and the jinn world were mirrored and intertwined
-would look into the palm of her hand to see what the jinn would have her to see
-relayed the requests of human world to the jinn
-bringing forth advice, instruction, expression of desire (from the jinn)

relationship of ventriloquism (between Maryam and jinn)

there was an accepted contiguity of jinn and human selves & possibility of a plurality of voices in Maryam's mediation --> enjoin her family to attend closely to her words

coterminous
هم مرز، هم زمان
Ahmadi in Pakistan
each Muslim group claimed itself the truest of all <-- the idea that *to accept the X's claim to be Muslim = accept one's own annihilation as Muslim*
--Naveeda--> question the limits of contiguity of different forms of life (when copresence was tolerable? when copresence was made intolerable?)


imitato Muhammadi
emulating X (to experience X) --through--> passionate love and ecstatic identification with the X
(for example the prophet: seeing the prophet on one's mind's eye + imitating him)
•sufist approach: prophet is immanent in the world
•varied affective relations to the prophet:
◦ecstatic love
◦reverential love
◦respect
◦

jinns having a dynamic disruptive presence within the human world

Sunni Deobandi's belief that the prophet is alive in his grave in Medina ~= Shia's notion of the hidden imam


*several (competing) bodies of knowledge*

Naveeda --read--> Sahib taking cues --on--> prophet's example --from--> faceless voiceless jinn --with--> little child surving as its medium


-parental disappointment with sons
-children possible abandonment by their fathers
-wife's estrangement from her dying husband
--> ambiguities that undergrid lived relations

“Maryam rushed to greet him at the door of the house but then she fell back screening. apparently a thirty-feet-tall churail (witch) had followed Sahib from India. Sahib immediately dropped his bags at the doorstep and without pause rushed to the mosque to say his prayers. when he returned home, Maryam assured him that the witch had left him.”

Sahib allowed the entry of jinn into his home without the armature of the average amil (who undergoes considerable pain and deprivation to be able to lay claim upon particular force, and undertake continental exercises of the body and mind to control it)
--risk--> potential disruption of the family
--abdicate--> his position of authority within his family --to--> attend to his daughter's words of guidance

*his turn towards Maryam = turn away from the present* (of his everyday life not having the spiritual richness & *authoritative accounts* [he desired to make himself a better Muslim])

from a pedagogical figure --to--> pupil to his daughter

pursuits of the self ~=> incorporate the unexpected --extent--> abdicating full control of oneself

in bringing a jinn into his life --> it became a version of him joining other versions of himself with whom he was bound

--Iqbal--> striving to one's next self


in the famous tale of Aladdin and the magic lamp, a child found a genie and could be literally pulled out of a humdrum existence to soar the skies
•Maryam shared the jinn's joy in discovering human food
•she got to whisper her secrets into his ears
•make him complicit in her projects
•she got to temporally take leave of her body that was changing beyond her control

(Naveeda asks) was Sulayman (the jinn) about the inability to acknowledge friendship over time?

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

Naveeda chapter 5 mulla


graffiti --> awareness of X at the level of gesture and affect

participation in change

(Agamben -->) [*]gesture: inhabiting of potentiality



Naveeda four scenes of aspiration:
1. librarians engaged in argumentation over the nature of the prophet's body after his death --gesture--> argumentation
2. neighborhoods embroiled in fights over mosques in attempting to prescribe the rightful atmosphere for prayer --gesture--> seizure
3. the state drawn into theological disputation and legal experimentation over how over should attach oneself to the prophet --gesture--> legal experimentation
4. a pious man trying to seek guidance on how to be Muslim from an invisible being (jinn) --gesture--> search for guidance
}--affect--> accompanied by intensity of seriousness, sincerity, excitement, disappointment, sense of loss
}--commitment--> friendship, neighborliness, familial ties

large arsenal of off-color jokes about specialist fogures of all religious traditions in the popular culture of the subcontinent...
•horror stories
•psychological profile of mullas
•weekly skewing of mullas
•mulla jokes
•cartoons
•
political commentary <--> criticism
--> mulla was to blame for everything that was perceived to be wrong (in Pakistan) --> *pervasive skepticism* [also in Iran]

skepticism shadows striving (?)


the other of the striving muslim in Pakistan:
•shadowi Shia
•deceiving Ahmadi
•bad-tempered mulla بدمزاج


mulla:
•Iqbal --> ossification of the institution of ulama
•Pakistani state --> ossification of commentary upon Islamic texts

...everyday assertion that one's religiousity is superior to others


mulla = full-fledged maleficent persona


skepticism of daily existence
1. ...(they become skeptical) about his rationality and grounds for his beliefs
2. ...(at some point) anything could be said or believed about him
3. ...(he felt like) everyone around him had turned to animals
4. ...(he presumed) everyday life was one of illusion and appearances [go to --> kelile demne این همه سودا است، مجاز]
}--> actualize the potential for *skepticism that existed in the social fabric*
=/= chance encounter
=/= pervasive condition


figure of the mulla [~= collective fear + revulsion] --traverse--> the fragmented public culture of the city


[*]ulama: guardian, transmitter, interpreter of shari'a
+ specific claims of knowledge upon:
1. تفسیر tafsir (commentary upon the Quran)
2. فقه figh (jurisprudence)
3. حدیث hadis (sayings of the prophet)
4. کلام kalam (speculative theology)
+ (in Pakistan) personnel in mosque:
1. امام imam
2. خطیب khatib (Frida sermon)
3. قاری ghari
4. موذن muezzin

mulla --derogatory--> one who is overzealous in upholding the letter of the shari'a
(+ additional connotation:)
•ignorant master [go to --> mulla nasruddin: religious master who gets by in life through hypocrisy and cunning + outsmarting those of noble birth and high cultivation]
•gabza agent (seizure of property)
•sodomizer (one who rapes men)
•a naive fool out of step with his time
•


colonial politics in south Asia --> British colonial administration in India see ulama as outdated, deliberately obscurantist, jahel ==> negative stereotype ----> post-colonial period

mullaism:
•Pakistani state --> fossilized state of knowledge on Islam
•Iqbal --> mullaism =/= freedom of ijtihad


(Talal Asad -->) Islamic diskursive tradition is grounded in *argument that anticipates resistance* in the form of doubt, indifference, or lack of understanding ==> it employs the force of reason to bring forth the *willing performance of a practice*
}==produce==> domain of orthodoxy (+ relations of power)


(for Naveeda) anxiety or skepticism ~= sign of aspiration for striving


labbaik: i am here (to follow your orders)

theatrical unteality

...animus lies in the world
[later he] identitues this animus with thr workings of iblis (satan)
...this is a city of whispers [waswasen], a city of mad possession [shar], a city of deviation [ilhad], a city of anxiety [tazadzud], a city of dispersion [intishar]

the ability to smell oneself --> to experience oneself as other


how public culture can ability skepticism as a pervasive condition


mulla jokes --> horror stories = fear + revulsion

(Freudian) eruptive quality of jokes --> joke erupts into everyday life as of from elsewhere

political cartoon: maximum effect through a minimum of details

(mulla) jokes, horror stories, political cartoons --Naveeda--> *exiling the foreignness within*


stories of:
1. mosque in an upscale shopping center
2. sexually predictory mulla
}--> (speaks of:)
1. the perception that there were places in Pakistan where vise was allowed to grow unchecked
2. the menace the ulama introduced into everyday life
}==> (the effect of:)
•keeping public attention upon possible sites and agents of corruption
•putting the everyday life into question (as to whether it was what it appeared to be)


political cartoons --imply-->
•Pakistanis are caught in someone else's game
•growing unfamiliarity of Pakistan


(charges of)
sinfulness
sexual voraciousness
cunning
gluttony
political ambition
worthlessness
corruption
self-destruction
--> continuous efforts to set the mulla outside of oneself (=/= everyday familiarity with the ulama)

***negative stories and cartoons --express--> various degrees of skeptical orientation to the world***
jokes --(descriptive density)--> full expression to skepticism
--{also in Iran}--> making (mulla) grotesquely other ==> inconcevable to imagine any points of relatedness (to mulla)



•scatological jokes
•reworking of official rhetoric for ludic effect
•exaggerated performance of power
}--Mbembe--> “relationship of conviviality with the realm of official power”

vulgarity ==long-term==> *zombification of official figures* (robbed of their humanity --> they cannot be apprehended except through their caricatures)

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


to loosen some terms carefully: memory, form, order,


[The arts of memory- Comparative perspectives on a mental artifact. Revised and updated by the author Carlo Severi. Translated by Matthew Carey - Severi - HAU- Journal of Ethnographic Theory]


memory as a domain of social life

archive
“order” constitutes a principle to engender other forms of knowledge

totem poles, simply records the different circumstances that marked a particular social group, were comprised of organized series
occupied with the transmission of ‘names’, but necessarily, paralleled by a form of logical power, implies sequential ordering of different forms of knowledge.

the “art of memory” applies different types of relationships or archival techniques that are not limited to mere numerical calculation: mnemonic, iconographic, and logical techniques.

provide a convincing account of the complex process of ordering

in a measured rigorous way...

what characterizes the system

development of taxonomic principle
system endowed with a high degree of logical power

the idea of pure quantity, based on decimal numbers applicable to wide range of categories: people, objects, units of time or space, etc.

an “art of memory” possessed of rudimentary form of visual salience and an extremely complex ordering of representable knowledge

what matters are system's logical implications and not[...]