[...]otivation==
1. considering the strangeness of life forms act as a template ==to==> think differently about life by mobilizing new ***prepositions of connection*** (with, alongside, between, sym-, etc.) ==provoke==> different theoretical insights into how society might work
2. ethical political drive to promote radical inclusivity and to challenge mindsets that fixate on identity and difference (<-- Harawayian) [--> Isabel, Sara]
3. work of decentering the human as the premier valance of the universe (may in turn) ==cultivate==> an ethics that is ecological, in the sense of global and interspecies (<-- Mortonian)  [--> Sina]
4. conceiving of the ‘other’ as planetmate, messmate, natureculture, mind-body, etc. (maybe) ==lead==> new conceptions of camaraderie, community, society, friendship [--> artistic research, apass, Viveiros de Castro]


bacteria [also: mushroom, swamp] --> poster-creatures of the flat ontology movement --> challenging classification
replacing Tree of Life with DNA-based model of life (homo sapiens: a micro-ingredient of an astonishing bacterial soup of prokaryotes, archaea, eukaryotes)

*bacteria: the ground zero life forms* -->! ***nearest we can get imagining the Lacanian Real***

we are more bacteria than human

(global) bacterial biome: para-collective (=/= “merely” biological)
*our ways of reacting to bacteria are as political as they are scientific*

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

purity & pollution + their deep-seated link with social order and its transgression --Douglas--> {from the idea of poisonous vapours (miasma [unrelated to cleanliness]) --to-->} discovery of pathogenic organisms بيمارى زا ==> modern concept of bacteria

cleansing rituals before the bacteriological age functioned to ward off spirits and restore social order and control (@Elke, @Isabel, the artist as medium)

discovery of germs ==> radical re-conceptualization of dirt (--> it is difficult to think of dirt except in the context of pathogenicity)

if we can abstract pathogenicity and hygiene from our notion of dirt --Douglas--> we are left with the very old definition of [*]dirt: matter out of place

**when we see dirt --> we see a system**
--Campbell--> when we see bacterial images we are seeing something else

***contamination = a violation of some mythical, symbolic, or political system =/= just a physical problem***

bacteria --> symptom of a disturbed system


symptomatic analysis (=/= feedback)
pioneered by Marxist critics, Althusser

symptomatic analysis of X = to open the possibility of there being unspoken, unacknowledged or disavowed content in X

symptomatic analysis --of--> (content of) antibacterial advertisement --laden--> with libidinal intensity or *visual pleasure* (= an image that is visually intense)

**consumption can be read like dreams** (a text that says more than it consciously expresses) --reveal--> repressed material (disavowed fantasies about: purity, gender, race, family, class, disease, displacement, sublimation, etc.)
◦what fantasy is upheld by presenting repressed material as bacteria (or artwork)?
--> reading against the grain of the text (Jamesonian)
--> advertising images can be read like symptoms of repressed libidinal desire

-i did symptomatic reading of Olearius (but not of ajayeb nameh?)

1- accelerating pace of industrial production
2- population growth
}==> first full flourishing of *mass consumption*

*[*]marketing: a sphere of cultural production where image conventions co-evolve with non-marketing imnages as an intertextual constantly reciprocal environment*



1. cuteness
little monsters
infant-like
with freakishly funny features
playground of bacterial frolic

cuteness
a minor aesthetic category (in comparison to its more spectacular counterparts: sublime, beautiful)
(it is minor because it is ambiguous)
•positive affects:
◦desire to protect
◦desire to touch
•negative affects:
◦helplessness
◦pitifulness
◦excessive availability
•secondary relations:
◦resentment at being emotionally manipulated
◦contempt for the weakness of cute --accompany--> desire to:
◾touch
◾clasp
◾dominate
◾destroy
◾
}--> *cute: a site of visual intensity that is both pleasurable & disgusting*

****three objects that are most often rendered cute in consumer aesthetics:
1- women
2- technology
3- children
}<-- (in psychoanalytic terms) inherently dangerous ==> in need of control****

Campbell > why is it useful to see bacteria as cute?
***cuteness as a deep link to violence***
[*]cuteness: aestheticization of powerlessness --> a necessary step in permitting its extinction [to make everybody like unto little children is not such a bad way of disposing of them]

•representing the Other (the enemy) as despicable --> powerful effect
•representing the Other as domesticated + infantalized:
◦demonstrates the sublime Otherness of bacteria
◦we are relieved of guilt <== the bacteria is rendered beneath the threshold of ethical consideration



2. overpopulation
cramming of many life forms into tiny spaces ~= (literally) an uncanny microcosm of the imagined and feared socio-economic order

***new technologies to visualize the world ==produce==> new imaginateis of life itself*** [<-- my research on bestiaries]

microscope (19th century) --> microbial visuality --Latour--> new modes of interacting with and ingesting/consuming the world

bacteriology as a discipline emerged at the same time as the (so-called) transformation “from industrial capitalism --to--> market society”
•overpopulation
•bacterial proliferation
--> a trope in visualizing contemporary bacteria

bacteria live in obscene proximity to each other --> *bacterial intimacy =/= individualizing force of modernity*

the fantasy of there is some sort of “away” which can absorb what we overproduce

removal of excrement (in all its quises) --> demonstrating the urbanites class distinction --> (an apparent) desire to reorganize urban space according to a logic of repugnance مغايرت (--> this is why i am so uncomfortable with “clean” streets)
•the idea that a veritable subterranean system delivering *shit-free cleanliness* ==> citizen's physical, moral, sipritual cleanliness --with--> materila markers of the civilized society: cubicles, toilets, drains, sewers

(Lacan > Morton > Campbell >) the problem of human society : what to do with one's shit

anti-bacterial advertising --> fantasy of awayness

keeping nature at a distance ==Morton==> (act out an imagined preservation -->) dumps on the rest of the world
[sadistic admiration] putting something called nature on a pedestal and admiring it from afar (for the environment) ~= what patriarchy does for the figure of the woman

bacteria adhere to each other and to their environment --> *they make any environment cohere as itself* : without bacteria there is no environment



3. lower classes
overweigth
bad skin
bad teech
criminally deviant

griminess سياهى
slick sheen ليز
dinginess چرکى
slouch اويخته
decay

in advertisement:
bacterium suicide bomber
ear-picking homeless man: the incarnation of bacterial cross-infection

**community <--> infection**
(health of the community is theatened by undesirable members)

*bacteria ==> community can come into full self-expression*
bacteria = disruption of social order ~-=> bacteria stabilizes the social order

***bacterial threat = biological model for a political necessity***

(familiar terrain of) hand: a vast and foreign bacterial colony

in a world of microbial resistance [in which common infections and minor injuries can kill <-- real possibility for 21st century and not a apocalyptic fantasy] --> *antibacterials carve out spaces of near-perfect security*

bacteria:
•overwhelm us
•outnumber us
•outclassify us
•exceed us
•pre-date us
}--> concealed by antibacterial discourse

good bacteria exists in the gut: their market-sanctioned place
*good bacteria: fantasy of the efficient worker*



4. deviant sex
bacterial sex

bacteria **propagate in the most ancient way : they have sex by contagion** = endosymbiosis, symbiogenesis --> ‘prolonged symbiotic associations ==> appearance of new organism’ (massive contagion that moves across phyla and lineages across biotic and abiotic spaces ~/= Darwinian natural selection)

1940s --> monomorphism: (in bacteria sex, proposing that) male and female are separate but visually indistinguishable

categories of inside/outside, host/guest, parent/child, original/copy, female/male --> organize civil life =/= bacteria
==> in advertising bacteria propagation appears “deviant” (in non-productive forms) --> antibacterials confer moral righteousness

Karin's germ management ♥

(Karin) “good germ management =/= good parenting”
(Dettol:) “good germ management = good parenting” [when a mother at home protects children from contact with the floor]

(in iran:) contact is contagion

Campbell assuming women tolerate germs more than men --> not in iran

**staging the unbacterial woman**

*body is a closed private property =/= contagion emanates from bodies that are not properly closed or private*

“community = the single biggest source of threat” (our sovereign cleanliness) --> *bacteria as other people* مجاز مرسل metonymically (not just metaphorically)
•degenerate human
•homeless man
•transvestite
•street sweeper
•

(cleanliness is always sovereign)


if ”(deep) ideology =/= (critical) thought” --then--> fantasy =/= ?

‘deviant’ mobilizes deep-seated fears and fantasies ==> images that are visually intense + build exceedingly successful brands

critical analysis can move from thinking about symptoms as indirect expressions of deep ideology (paranoia) --to--> *indirect expressinos of structurating fantasies*

(brands know that) ***fantasy =/= ideology***
•Lacan --> even when patients could articulate their symptoms it didn't seem to dissipate ==> symptom was a constitutive core of their own subjectivity
•Zizek --> ideology: fantasy structuring out social reality itself =/= an illusion masking the real state of things
•Marx, Freud, Zizek --> symptom =/= a thing behind which secret content is hidden
for Marx *the secret is in hte form of commodity itself** (<--but-- commodity as a central symptom of capitalism) --Sina--> in the form of the hair-styles in The Magicians TV series


from symptom (veil) --to--> sinthome (screen)

*sinthome* is not directly analysable --Campbell--> images of bacteria are symptoms of the Real, not the symbiotic order, because the Real unsymbolizable
sinthomes organize the subject (without them the subject would be obliterated, Zizek)

(psychoanalytic paradigm --> emerging research in marketing:)
•sustainability practices’ fetishistic disavowal of reality can serve to exacerbate ecological catastrophe
•the inherently narcissistic nature of the consumer needs others to suffer in order to derive pleasure from (consumer) objects
•reinvestigation of consumer desire as jouissance --> a perverse pleasure in the “mad destruction” of our bodies and minds
}--> examples of critical marketing pursuing emancipatory unveiling procedures
--✕--> sinthome can offer:
1. an *analytic strategy for feeling out* the contours of symptoms
2. directing us to a new *question we may ask of texts of all kinds* --> ***why do they take the form that they do?*** [=/= what ideology is beneath them --> at the level of the latent contents (meaning) of a symptom] --bacteria-->
◦why do fantasies about community, sex, death, deviance take the form of the bacteria?
◦what is it about bacteria that is so compelling that it provides a structure for this array of phenomena? (<-- we can ask that at art/artists use of biology)

***the problem of bacteria for humans = the problem of living with others***

bacteria --think--> the problem of surviving in large, alienating, cross-infecting, co-dependent populations --> *metonymy between immunity & community*
•مجازمرسل metonymy =/= structural similarity تشابه
==reveal==> disciplines of *biology* and that of *political organization* are closely related [--> to understand fundamental concepts such as individuality and agency we need to frame the immune system not as a biological but a politico-psychic-physical phenomena]


*munus: public service, duty
{munus = onus + officium, obligation + office --> root of communitas}
co-munus: to be part of a community = to be a giver and receiver of the munus, which has a kind of coercive connective power
-anyone outside this gifting cycle is described as “immune” (@apass)
-munus: a gift (a contractual obligation that one has with the community) that marks one's entry to social life


the immunity/community dynamic is a negative aporetic dialectic پویایی دیالکتیک آپورتیک منفی (=/= dichotomy دوگانگی) ~= immunity: a process that always involves an open system of self-definition that consistently produces self and other


antibacterial sinthome gives form to this ambivalent position as individuals in market society --> our lives are preoccupied with *identifying and controlling enemies* and *incorporating allies*
•combatting computer viruses
•fighting terrorism
•containing immigration
•controlling pandemics
•choosing consumer objects
}--> *immune mechanisms: identification, location, incorporation, expulsion* (<-- we all do it, Sina, Pierre, etc.)

[*]bacteria: indirect way of talking about the overpopulated, deviant, teeming, dissolutive world we live in --> terror of overwhelming disintegration of our individual being (<-- artists want this?!)

[*]autoimmunity: when the human body + body politic goes into an overactive defense, seeking to strike at the enemy and cause harm to itself

life has become a complex of protective systems that in turn attack us --Derrida--> democracy: an autoimmune system

how autoimmune systems can be interrupted?


biophilic fantasies of bacteria as *messmates*


*when we worry about bacteria, we worry about others*
*to have contact with society is an unavoidable, necessary, disquisting, all-embracing gift*

(in West and elsewhere) individuals who identify their fellow citizens as undesirable obstacles to their freedom, health, wealth --> antibacterial brands

(in Germany) integration --> overdeveloped sense of our own immunity

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

[Mary Douglas]

bring bewitched (in Sudan, Azande) ~= finding oneself the victim of embezzlement اختلاس (for modern person)
=/= fear (category of horror)


dirt = disorder

eliminating dirt is a positive effort to organize the environment (--> we are not removing something) --> creative movement

cleaning: to relate form to function, to make unity of experience
~~> part of the project of religion (atonement)

pollution:
1. instrumental --> change someone's behavior
2. expressive --> (a general view of) social order

pollution --> claim & counter-claim to status


sex pollution <--> body pollution

sexual danger --> symbole of relation between parts of society (hierarchy, collaboration, distinctiveness of social units)


expressive oversystematizing --> (sometimes) necessary to interpret beliefs

cosmologies with pollution symbol

reflection on dirt = reflection on relation of order to disorder, being to non-being, form to formlessness, life to death

rules of purity ~= comparative religion

(primitive:) sacredness ~= uncleanness


[an idea of] sanctity = (a little more than) prohibition }--> to protect profanity from divinity

hindu --> relative notion of pollution
cow dung is relatively pure to a Brahman priest, impure to a god

*respect <--> pollution*
•khak-e pa خاک پا (feet's dirt)
•dirt/dust as cleansing agent
•


Frazer > Robertson Smith (old testament scholar)
taboo: restriction of man's arbitrary use of natural things + supernatural penalty (--inspire--> fear + precaution) ==> rules of uncleanliness

uncleanliness -->
•supernatural danger
•spiritual state of unworthiness (christianity)
•


i have a savage explanation...

*separation*
clean = set apart = holy

“primitive =/= advanced” :
**hyper attention to the material circumstances of an act** =/= christian (rules of holiness --> motive & disposition of agent is important)

contact with corpse
contact with blood


theology: god man relationship ==> assert (a definition of) nature of human


*most thinking men in the second part of 19th century were amateur anthropologists*
--> confused dialogue between anthropology & theology

(Tylor:) the theory of progression: “civilization = gradual progress from an original state similar to that of savagery” --> the idea of general continuity of human culture [---> go to integration]
“man = long process of (cultural) evolution”
what we do & believe is fossil (petrified appendages)

•Tylor --interest--> what quaint relics can tell us about the past ==found==> folklore
•Smith --interest--> common elements in modern and primitive experience ==found==> social anthropology


Green
theory of moral progress
existence and recognition of specific duties
self-sacrifice
reverence
man = unrealized ideal of a best (God)
*religion <--> ethical values of community life* (=/= speculative thought, exotic mythology, arbitrary relationship of an individual person to supernatural power...)
...


(moralizing human society = community)
(intellectual asset)


Durkheim
fictive abstract nature of religious entities [with no material reference] (==> fluid liable contagious sacred ==> rituals of separation & demarcation)
•gold and purple style of writing (Golden Bough)
•“ethical meaning =/= magical meaning”

non-sacred magic =/=? sacred
magical belief <--> primitive hygiene


two assumptions of English nineteen century thought:
1. ethical refinement is a mark of advanced civilization
2. magic had nothing to do with morals or religion
}==Frazer==> assigned evolutionary assumptions to human culture three stages of development -->{ “magic: primitive science” --to--> “religion: priestly & political fraud” --to--> “science” }<-- Hegelian dialectic
}--✕--> wisdom and philosophic depth of primitive cultures



Babylonian + Assyrian --> “sin = material impurity” --> blood: sin-remover

(during Homer) Greek thought --> relatively free of ritual pollution
pollution concepts emerge later (expressed in classical drama)

clean and polluted --> man's destiny
(it seemed always we had a clean future)



the bad idea of *medical approach to symbolism*

comparative religion =/= medical materialism
(for example Jewish and Islamic avoidance of eating pork is explained as due to the dangers of eating pork in hot climate)

*hygienic basis* of (some) ancient rites


Moses's dietary rules ~~✕~~> enlightened public health administrator

Yoruba (cult of smallpox diety)
left hand to handle dirt
right hand to eat


(source of impurity -->) all bodily emissions ~/= eating <-- a person is in the middle state of purity

india --> ground does not act as a conductor
iran --> ground acts as a conductor

ritual pollution
ideas of dirt --Douglas-->(also) express symbolic system

European ideas of defilement:
1. dirt avoidance is a matter of hygiene or aesthetics (not religion)
2. the idea of dirt is dominated by a knowledge of pathogenic organisms (<== 19th century discovery of bacteria)

(context of) pathogemicity

(old definition of) [*]dirt: matter out of place
}==>
1. *where there is dirt there is system* (dirt is not an isolated event) -->{ systemic ordering & clarification of matter ==byproduct==> dirt }--> symbolism (symbolic system of purity)
2.


ominous compendium (a garbage collector)

schema: pattern-making tendency of perception
a filtering mechanism which at first only lets in sensations we know how to use


rituals of separation ==> boundaries, margins, internal links --> total structure of thought ==> pollution ideas



book of Leviticus
list of abomination:
•clean: frog,
•dirty: camel, hare, rock badger, some locusts, mouse, hippopotamus,
•?: chameleon, mole, crocodile,

eatable:
any animal with hoof
cloven-footed
chews the cud (partly digested food return to mouth for further chewing)

don't eat:
raven after their kind (in agreement with one's nature)
night hawk after their kind
the little owl, the great owl, the water hen
stork after their kind
hoopoe and bat
all winged insects are unclean for you
all clean winged things you may eat

everything in the water that has not fins and scales is an abomination to you

whoever touches their carcass shall be unclean until the evening

__they are unclean to you__

among the swarming things that swarm upon the earth

the weasel, the mouse, the great lizard according to its kind

whoever touches them when they are dead shall be unclean until the evening
and anything upon which any of them falls when they are dead shall be unclean

every swarming thing that swarms upon the earth is an abomination; it shall not be eaten. whatever goes on its belly, and whatever goes on all fours, it whatever has many feet, will the swarming things that swarm upon the earth, you shall not eat; for they are an abomination.

}-- Douglas--> (intent is) disciplinary =/= doctrinal


...as X ... disposed to believe Y

clean animals
animals animated by other beings (superhuman, demonic, etc.)

the idea of allegorical exegesis --> “each law about forbidden foods has its deep reasons”
“cloven-hoofed animal which part their hooves : all our actions must betray proper ethical distinction and be directed towards righteousness”
“chewing the cud : memory”

old testament
•blessing: source of all good things
•withdrawal of blessing: source of all dangers


xxxxxx

[...]