[...]formance?
(seeking the) ambivalent pleasure (not without violence) of having a secret unmasked

acolyte
to ensure a line of vision between the medium and his audience

broadcasting device = recording device

authorship --(displaced by)--> a logic of *tracking of traces without a subject* (<-- reduction of representation and inscription)

modern mediumship ~= [*]automatic writing: (most associated with surrealism, in Western contexts) the writer seeks to merely transmit his or her unconscious thoughts and, in the process, to disavow the notion of authorial agency... [it marks a more general transitional moment in the history of representation --Morris-->] ***the production of meaning ceases to be a function of writing --> actuality or facticity becomes the primary object of inscription***)


confessional performances
denunciation of possession performance
untranslatable utterances [**increasing performance of untranslatability, glossolalia غريبه گفتارى --> contemporary spirit possession performances ==> the truth of the spirits in the mass-mediatized world is not referential and certainly not universal --✕--> the truth of the spirits centers on questions about the difference between noise and information]
mediums embrace technology
mediumship proliferates
mediums and the media provide each other with metaphors
(mediums seek to escape the relationship altogether) in forms of ecstatic nonrepresentation or absolute renunciation


Chuchad cutting his tongue --> disavow disavowal
“[...]he rendered himself voiceless, and the only sounds he could make were those of exhalation and inhalation: sounds of the body as machine”
...the crowd gasped and then repeated --> confused awe & automatism

[a fable:] “Chuchad placed the tongue on a piece of white paper, and the blood quickly diffused into the fibers. For a moment it appeared as though the tongue was writing a blunt, indecipherable hieroglyph. Chuchad then held the paper to his mouth so it was covering his face and pressed the tongue back into its original place. This time, he seemed to be rewriting, or rather, writing in reverse, and the glyph was inscribed on the tongue as though the tongue had been transformed into paper and the paper into pen. Thus did writ- ing make speech possible. The medium pulled the paper away, folded it carefully, and then, with only a little blood reddening his lips, began speaking.” (Morris)
•tongue excision = performative repudiation of mediumship
•voice = the vehicle of a simple exteriorization
•[*]fable: staged risk in the form of a bad example ==> “object of transmission = the truth”
•[*]confession: a mode of accession or conformity to the message


in Buddhism of premodern cosmologies --> a domain of natural signification where there is *a pure identity between signifier and signified*

auxiliary hell جهنم کمکی

[a fable:] scrutiny ==> (meritorious beings:) people in question become miraculously equipped with memory

recorded on luminous jewel-encrusted gold tablets

quaint traditions عجیب و جالب
(i am learning from Morris how not to) reject the cosmology as a symptom of superstition or a relic of bygone times

ubiquity alone is inadequate to demonstrate relevance

(in the story of Yama) in the evildoer's case, speech is not the mere instrument of truth: it is both a symptom and a cause of sin

where the law rules ==>
•there is no difference between *object* and *sign*
•there is no difference between *speech* and *voice*

the language of truth (personified in the speechless child) =/= corruptions of human utterance : {truth's silent ideality =/= sin's “over-naming"}

mediumship's representational function: transmission of a referential truth + repeated registration of the mere technique of its transmission

(Chuchad's) instrumental “writing”
(like Chuchad, many performance artists are today) inhabiting the era of ***technique's fetishization*** = (Heidegger's era of) technology

occult returning in the guise of transparency

nationalized discourse of modernity: (oppositional terms of) science =/= magic

redolent of... حاکی

when *observation* (propelled by desire =/=) become a form of *attention* (propelled by labor)

[Morris > Kittler on “discourse network” of Freud, Simmel, Rilke:] writing = an exhaustion that endlessly refused to end (=/= miniatures of meaning)
--> “writing is nothing beyond its materiality” and people who practice this act simply replace writing machine ==promis==> *mystical union of writing and delirium*

(from) actual magicality of script --to--> the representational capacity of inscription --to--> a deployment of writing in the mode of mathematics (bureaucratic list poetry)

incorporation of technologies of mass mediatization into the language (and performance of possession --by--> the discourses of lost tradition)

-what kind of mediation is (not simply the inscription of its technique, but) a renewed transmission of meaning?


**the fantasy of a return to meaning**


[Morris submits that] (direct marketing ~=) *pyramid schemes* are the economic counterpart of *mediumship*
= the mode of retailing in which the function of distribution and resale (and indeed the movement of capital) is masked in the *rhetoric of directness*
•[*]directness: withdrawal of an infrastructure of mediation into the person of the distributor + مستتر کردن occulting of technique in the very moment of display
•[*]pyramid scheme: a structure in which retailers recruit more retailers --> (mainly serves the interests of) multinational entities parading as local entrepeneurialism

grotesquely functionalized room

abandoning the ontology of mediumship (for...)
putatively unmediated truth (of...)


magic's metamorphosis entailes a repetition

([Morris analysis of Chuchad:] a medium becoming) a middleman disavowing the mediations that he performed in order to produce the illusion of value, or meaning, or truth
•working only in the repression of its own operations --> truth-effect of marketing

--> *the market can substitute for magic*, the media can be itself, the very nature of money (its abstractions and its generality) can compensate for the differences it effaces

*rhetoric of asian family*
occult network: networks that are not publicly disclosed
(in environments that are believed not to operate as an open economy --> economies are dominated not only by particular families but by the logic of family [exclusive and unassailable ties between small communities])
=/= rationalization of local economies, market liberalization,,
•anachronistic imaginary of transnational capitalism and the racialized family (of asian nations) --> idealized
•metaphorical ruse of kinship's discourse
•*neocolonial fantasy concealed in the dream of immediacy* --> Amway: theologically informed market liberalism--pursuing a noiseless world where feedback is impossible

confessional disclosures of new capital
rhetoric of transparency
mediumship's (enthralling) dramaturgy of disclosure

(Morris asking) what else is transparency in the massified world? a mediation so total that it has become invisible (?)

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

•to challange them
•to break with their own gesture
•to inherit from them

*Socrates --> alleged epistemo-sociological enquiry ([the tradition of] asking people what they know and how they think) --Savransky--> (hallmark of social sciences today:) *ethics of estrangement*: ‘becoming estranged’ from the realm of appearances made available by direct experience in order to ‘gain access’ to a realm of facts and causes**** ==Whitehead==> *bifurcation of nature*: a mode of understanding whereby experience only discloses that which is apparent, whereas the ‘relevant’ factors in the process of knowing the world must always lie, and be sought, somewhere else
*=/= Alice in Wonderland
*=/= Cinderella [--> harem girl, hallucinating with animals, not becoming a psycho (angry), arrested]
*=/= William James: inquiry is about **the way some people cultivate an expertise**, **how they hesitate**, **how they think**, **how they complicate a problem** [#feedback] (for example)
◦*religious experience: to address his questions to the ones who know, the ones whose expertise could help him learn something new and often unexpected --> passionate, even if problematic, experience of living in a world where God matters*
◦*emotional experience: with theater actors, who know about creating, discriminating, disclosing, and sharing emotional experiences*

***from whom should we inherit our practices, and how?***

learning from Despret's *anachronism* (her field philosophy)
اشتباه در ترتیب حقیقی وقایع

(heritage of Socrates) form of epistemic and ethical bifurcation ==> search for hidden causes (underlying the conduct of actors)
Socrates's “you think you know, but actually, you don't know and you don't think” ==created==> ***[1]a device that inhabits thinking and produced only mental paralysis***

--✕--> (Despret:) investigators rarely ask the question of how the people they interview might be interested in the questions addressed to them

*relevance = adventure*
there are many examples of how a piece of abstract knowledge that looked like devoid of any imaginable consequences came to matter (acquired an importance nobody would contest)
-relevance may be lost in translation
*ecology of dynamic and fragile patterns of relevance, of modes of mattering for oneself and for others (Savransky)
[*]relevance: a sense that there is value beyond ourselves (something that is not ourselves, matters) --Stengers--> (daring to connect the) speculative + ethical + practical
(risk of) to renounce *knowledge as a right* + embrace *knowledge's achievement as an event*


[title]
(ego engineering)


***[2]device of anonymity (“to protect people”) ==> distributes expertise, and builds induces performs an asymmetry of roles
•the imperative of deontology
•(can be) a regime of insult

“you, the refugees” --> an anonymous mass marked with **an identity that they had not chosen, and from which they cannot invent themselves**

risk of disclosing
risk of separating
risk of isolating
risk of making people talk while silencing
risk of stealing the words
risk of of drawing the words out from the speaker
risk of retying the secret to its etymology [secretus: to separate, to isolate]


(what we like to think about in apass) to reflect on what anonymity can produce in other research situations
[instead of asking “what the body does/produces?” =/= what Sina's body does for the spider in his room? what Ninja Turtles body does for Iron Man? what anonymous refugee body does for Xiri? what Jane Fonda body does for Laura? etc.]

***anonymity ==> identity***
(the position of “subject” in an investigation is created by erasing the name)
•“feel free to say anything you want” or “speak without fear" = your words will have no consequences
•they are always at risk of putting people in situations where they are unlikely to be interesting & unlikely to be interested

Despret's interview where an exchange really meant something =/= Mette's notion of nothing means anymore except the absurd gesture that announces meaninglessness of itself


inquiry = experience & experimentation, *testing & putting into continuity an ensemble of experiences*
Kimiavi in his film The Garden of Stones, his subject by the very fact that they are now part of the conditions of the environment in relation to which investigator develops skills, desires, knowledge or science
|
*inquiry: set of transformations that the very process of inquiry imposes, concrete and existential transformations for the objects studied just as much as the inquiring subject --> (Kimiavi's) logic of creative experimentation =/= logic of logic of discovery
|
*creative dimension (of every fieldwork):
•(it may) take the form of a device that sparks the creation of thoughts
•(it may) transform the relationship between the enquirer and the one she is addressing
•(it may) disclose some dimensions of the situation that were not visible or felt
•(it may) completely redefine what people actually docile
•


positivist sociological approach: to discover a reality already given, already stabilized + procedures asserting this stability + questions wanting to be neutral + a large and distributed sample + a modest investigator: who disappears behind the strength of the data (Haraway)


[*]inquiry: studies what it creates while studying it, and the changes it provokes (<-- we know this in art, @apass)

-can i no longer develop knowledge behind the back of those that i have questioned (my mother...)?

apass, #feedback
it is up to them to make the connection between what they think and what determines their particular way of thinking


summoning =/= mimesis (@Marialena)


@Pierre (from) critical analysis --to--> pragmatism
***we do not think or act “because” of social determination, but rather “with” them*** ~= better Cinderella (learning pragmatism from Cinderella: how to think and act with the evil sisters?)


amateur: the one who develops an expertise, a love, a taste [--Stengers--> dare to taste =/= dare to know]
Leibniz addressed his inquiries to the ones who know, because they have cultivated a particular relationship (of the amateur) with the very issue he wanted to learn about (=/= to address inquiries to the ones who know by virtue of being a mere authority)
•Leibniz proposed that woman should be addressed about the most important problem, that of the love (appropriate to give God) [...] because they are competent in the matter
•Leibniz = the master of abstraction --made--> [*]abstraction = a politeness of thought**♥, [*]politeness = a constraint on creation**
•****(why ask women about love? because) [*]woman: the ones who refuse letting a duty to ‘speak truth’****
--> a real interest in thinking about and with love (=/= “school of love”)

when you do *field philosophy* --Despret--> [*]field: a field-to-be, a milieu, a collective, a situation =/= field as something that preexists our inquiry

(how in apass i did field philosophy and field inquiry --> i made many times) situation-becoming-a-field (where you can learn something) needed:
•imagination
•tact
•daring
•opportunism
•humour
•

Despret > Claverie on pilgrimage with the Virgin of Medjugorje
she offered to those whom she addressed the most unexpected mode of response
she became interested in the very sophisticated way they think
(=/= social scientist's need to determinate the causes of something [designates it as an anomaly ==> impoverishing the object of study] --> asking “why people believe?” or “how can we explain such an odd thing as people believing in a supernatural being?”)
(she explored and learned with people how they think -->) ****how they take care of what matters for them with thoughts**** --> takes the form (in the pilgrims experience) of [*]hesitation: a sign that identifies that thought is occuring & this thought is taking care of something that matters [---> go to Attar Tazkirat al-Awliya]
forms of hesitation:
•openly contradictory alteration of positions
•a critical position (the apparition is not there)
•a position of belief
•using semantics or syntactic devices that introduce ambivalence
--> Claverie learns to hesitate with them
--Stengers--> ecological practice: a practice that takes into account the fact that the inquiry participates in the ‘milieu’ of those it addresses --> *the practicioner is herself taking care of what matters with thoughts and learns to create (what Despret would call) the relevant *milieu of thought*



Matrix world: “consumer victim =/= resistant hacker fighter” and nothing else

if you are a student of ghosts --> you are competent in sensing the taste of ghosts

{ancestors ate too much salt ==> descendants desire water}--> *intersubjective nature of remembering*
-[Despret > Kwon] true human desires are not those of an isolated individual. it is the individual who feels the desire, whereas the origin of the desirem, like the spirit's phantom salt, may be with someone else, for it is in the presence of this other that the water becomes salty --> ***the desire to remember can be a desire that rises somewhere between the past and the present***
[...]