[...]iological 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


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