[...]eed 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
[...]