[...]anliness 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* (=/= specul[...]