[...]tach 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 its visual manifestations
salience
(colors, shapes of knots, folds)
the qualitative categories (meant to be named)
(finding) the organizing principles
precisely calibrated
oriented space
(geometrically?)
what constitutes the logical poles of the vast spectrum of the projects in the archive (people, objects, units of time or space, etc.)
(concerning the archive) we can negotiate two types of knowledge: lists and narratives
to identify a series of key elements that allow us to rethink a wider chronology
textual archaeology - evaluates and decrypts, layer by layer
discovering (evidential) mnemonically oriented means of organizing traditional knowledge
(Montesinos's book:) “list of one hundred kings”
should we abandon the conventional term[...]