[...]olded’ instead of ‘complexity’ (~=? ‘the obscured social world’ @Seba)

.finding the direction of Mecca in a complex network of signifiers --> the local value of the work of science or narratology / Islamic culture of astrological experimentation ----> logical depth and enfoldedness index Baten باطن
-(living in a time of animosity,) is Seba wanting to democratize Baten?

descriptive encounters with objects
narrative encounters with objects
--> unfold what is enfolded (and enfold what is unfolded?)

how to commit to (history's) complexity's *dissipation*? and not to discover roots?

my work (now i have the feeling that) a little bit includes working on this bulldozed sites of difference/similarity between Islamic and European cultures
-I behave as if there is (a historical) continuity =/= the idea that things get lost tragically (Benjaminian?)
-we do not know what is lost
**chaotic loss --> to process through a host of errors and phantasms
what is the carrier bag theory of infinite?
عجایب --> (ajayeb's) inexplicable historical objects that suddenly turn up and refuse to be accounted for “fossils” (--> rupture =/= fold: history is deeply enfolded)
[which histories objects of ajayeb enfold and unfold?]

the origin is always complex

(how to) invert the judgment of value that informs us

piecemeal fabrication from alien forms =/= essential secret in history

positivism (esbat-gara اثبات گرا) =/= speculation

transhistorical claims about Islamic art--its ahistorical approach to Islam can contribute to Orientalism, (Nasr's spirituality) =/= to situate Islamic art within the history of ideas of its period, portrayal of a cultural worldview when they succeed (Marks)

Interpreting a cultural artifact for what it might have meant for the people of a past time is always an imposition--(to give preference to certain meanings at the expense of others)

(Marks’) existential phenomenology : one's own experience, sensory and mental, is used as a basis for analysis (to investigate), but does not assume this experience can be generalized.


code: a writing that is executable : a writing whose very nature is to carry out an action

“We are at a point where the Islamic heritage latent in Western modernism can usefully inform efforts to make information culture meaningful and responsive” -Marks


(Marks notion of) “Islamic art” --> unity (tohid توحید) of sorts -->  unity of the code ==> multiplicity or infinity --> unfolding: {directional (vector) & performative} --[D+G]--> (aesthetics of aniconism:) ‘abstract line’ & ‘haptic space’ ==> embodied perception ~=>? permeable, phenomenological, “nomadic,” contemplative subjectivity


“networks are the haptic space of our age”



qualities of latency

(in secular contexts) calligraphy, letters and words start to look like bodies
(Shii's favorite:) image latent in text --> foliated Kufic, shekaste nasta'ligh (شکسته نستعلیق), etc.
--> relationships are hidden, latent, and interpretable [--> veil]
•figures arise from text-based, nonfigurative works
•textuality and figurality


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

*relevance is hylomorphic, it imposes meaning from the outside
•to represent the nation / to critique the nation
•to self-orientalize / to critique orientalism
•to tell stories that everyone can relate to
•to be expressive / to be conceptual
•

hylomorphic nature
in which ‘matter’ and ‘form’ meld physically in myriad ways yet remain distinct linguistic categories


anamorphic: pertaining to a kind of distorting optical system, anamorphic lense, anamorphic gaze
(تغيير شکل دهنده) a notion of knowledge inquiry

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

Marks’ take on Sadra's triadic ontology of sensible, imaginal عالم خیال, and intelligible realms
+cognitive trinity of:
•mental intuition
•bodily knowledge
•spiritual knowledge
------> different human faculties perceive each real:
•sense perception --> external particulars: the sensible world of matter
•imagination --> internal particulars: the imaginal
•intellect --> universals: the intelligible
}--> with Avital i am learning technically (in language) to stay in a state of contamination (and their rewiring) of these faculties --> not to disavow the eching lines of my inherited tradition (“-->” + “~~>”)
◦sense perception ~~> universals
◦imagination ~~> external particulars
◦intellect ~~> internal particulars
◦...


*the islamic imaginal realm is (an audiovisual intangible) supra-individual and more real than matter*

Sadra argues that the imaginal realm subsists in the soul, mediating between the senses and the intelligence; it explains how extrapersonal, supra-sensory realities present themselves to imaginative perception --> نجم‌الدین کبری Najmuddin Kubra expert on visual metaphysics
تجربه شهودی
خيال و شهود
مراتب تجلّی

[*]imaginal realm: a radically pro-image concept
=/= Platonic denunciation of images (as misleading and false)
=/= Byzantine iconoclasm
=/= islamic aniconism
=/= 20th century culture of media critique
=/= iconoclasm of contemporary religious fanatics
=/= fantasies
=/= surrealism


suprasensory imaginal realm of sufism


history of imagination

world philosophy abounds with theories of the imagination

ancient Greek idea of how the imagination can make contact with a supra-individual reality --{followed & developed}--> Neoplatonist (understading of the imagination as) receptive of divine images
=/= memory images
=/= fantasmatic images --> phantasia --{i am wotking against the idea of “fantastic beast” ~-> phantasmata: post-sensory images combined in mind, independently of sense impressions ==> memory, dreams, and sensory illusion}
=/= imaginal images

هیولا hayula: the base, corporeal world

sensory-imaginal-intelligible

•a bottom-up theory of the imagination --> active intellect in the human
•a top-down theory of imagination --> pre-existing divine mind

i disagree with Marks that the (islamicated) imagination was a means to connect to a divine reality, higher truth. in ajayeb we encounter and abundance of descriptive environmental materialities.

Avital studies the interferences of:
1- the lower, sensory imagination
2- the higher, intellective imagination (that receives inspiration from above; #prophets)

ajayeb: synthesized Greek philosophy + Qur'anic thought + popular material body belief

( material body [ X ) immaterial intellect ]
“X” : imaginal مثل: (audio-visual glimpses of divine reality)
•accounts of afterlife --> gardens
•accounts of apocalypse --> sounds
•saints biographies --> performances
•


christian tradition started to view the intellect as internal to the soul ==> regard imagination as psychological: an inspiration, invention, recombination from within (and not from without) (Elen finds herself in this tradition?) ==> concept of an autonomous psychological subject

so persian subject wanted the  so much to be there, when there was no flower, that the went to a zone of beyond, picked some schizo-flowers and came back {this is Sa'di}--> iranian metaphysics
-i am more interested in the blooming of flowers, also metaphorical understanding of their morphogenesis. this tag line can be a subject of a phd study. for the last thousand years the iranian literature has been busy with this, how to describe flowers
*iranians believe in image


sufis, iranian philosophers, ... --> so poluted concepts and words


attachment to the world <--...(intelligible, barzakh)...--> presence of God
(who knows what the ‘presence of God’ means. let's not assume we know.)

Sohrevardi argues that the imagination effectively the indipendent real of images

فتوحات fotuhat --?--> illuminations

the imagination realm exercises its ruling property over every thing and non-thing. it gives form to absolute nonexistence , to the impossible, to the necessary, and to possibility. it m[...]