[...]an be theoretical yet anti-methodological?



...Marx is his interest in the oppressed, that is, his anti-Aristotlianism that allows us to conceptualize the self-organizing power of “matter” without the “meaning” that should overcode it.

Delanda: The political economy of Marx is entirely a priori.
[--Laclau--> essentialist conception of both society and social agency in Marxism <== holistic approache : a “founding totality” (expressed at the surface of social life) which presents itself as an intelligible object of ‘knowledge’ (in Marxism notion of ‘ideology’) =/= {relational character of any (social) identity + infinite play of differences}= discourse --> ‘the social’ always exceeds the limits of the attempts to constitute ‘society’;
& (in advanced capitalist societies:) identity = the unstable articulation of constantly changing positionalities, ‘social agent = decentered subject’ --> how can we, then, say the subjects misrecognize themselves in this kaleidoscopic movement of differences? =/= (Marxism's notion of) ‘false consciousness’; can we do without (the concept of) ‘misrecognition’?
--> (Laclau suggests) the ideological* (~=? will to totality):
•misrecognition of a positive essence = ultimate suture (بخيه bakhie)
•nonrecognition of any positivity =/= ultimate suture
(society institutes itself <==) closure: nonrecognition of the infinite play of differences }--> ‘ideological ==> social’ ~(the social is impossible without some fixation of meaning) : “utopia is the essence of any communication and social practice” --!,]
[--Delanda--> (the mode of ‘downward thinking’ when we think in terms of) ideology (~ the established relations of a particular society constitutes people's identities) ~= intrinsic: the identity is created by relations {the fantasy of ‘seamless totality'} =/= (Deleuzian) extrinsic: the relations are real but don't determine identities]

what are artists (particular <-=> general) propositions (Angebot)?
•proposition: a declarative that can be right or wrong =/= a sentence, grammatical entities
•exposition: a systematic interpretation/explanation of a specific topic
•disposition: an affective orientation, knowledge attitude
[Marx's ruthlessness: criticism must not be afraid of its own conclusions]


what are the sources of “value” in ajayeb?
(sun, photosynthetic, micro-organisms, etc.)
fermentation, photosynthesis, respiration

ajayeb is the (shared, individual, or experienced) “memory” of which organizational layer or process of which communities of practice?


rethinking “invisible hand”
(dynamic between supply and demand. “planning system”?)

... against ... the dualisms that have been transmitted to us in the history of philosophy (matter vs. meaning, micro vs. macro, inorganic vs. organic vs. social, realism vs. social constructivism, etcetera.) and argue in favor of a new ontology according to which “mechanisms are largely causal, but they do not necessarily involve linear causality”



Neo-Materialism =/= Creationism: matter is an inert receptacle for forms that come from the outside imposed by an exterior psychic agency: “Let there be light!”

--> matter has morphogenetic capacities of its own and does not need to be commanded into generating form.

one of the idealisms that have been generated by postmodernism: that we know already how all past discourses have been generated, that we have the secret of all past conceptual systems, and that we can therefore engage in meta-theorizing based on that knowledge



Delanda: I am not convinced that avoiding dualities is the key to a new way of thinking (particularly if one simply adds new ones: modernism-postmodernism, rhizome-tree, power-resistance).

reified generalities that do not really exist: The Market, The State, and The People.

The duality emerges when one ignores the zone of overlap and reifies the averages.

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

[in ajayebnameh عجایب نامه...] to map the morphogenetic changes of the real



... bewildering heterogeneity of registers in ajayebnameh عجایب نامه

... treating entities trafficking in the futures

active capacities of description

this is not a project of repopulating the social sciences with nonhuman beings

the symbolic function of language is about detecting salient features of the world that can be organized in contrastive sets
(can we think not in contrasts?)

this is not about trying to think like X, that would be transposition of a relational experience at another scale

(non-religious semiotic model)
bodily disposition ==(produces)==> perspective ==(produces)==> self

the beings in ajayeb (عجایب‌) are ‘alive’ because of their ability to ‘do things’ in the ways they come to represent and interpret through me

recruiting scores of new actants so as to render the theater of worldly interactions more complex and interesting


what is the sociocultural world we construct?


dream images, vivid mythical scenes,


form travels/passes through us

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

[Latour modes of existence]

(to distinguish types of)
incompatible truths

“truth"--is the expression of an encounter with forms of existence

to understand the others in the absence of a description of ourselves
(what is realistic?)

to direct attention towards the beings about which humans are interrogating themselves



عجایب‌ ajayeb is a ‘network’ more than anything else, in it “God” has no special privilege, is not located in addition to or beyond other beings

we are seeking to redefine the paths of beings that are unique to ajayeb without giving them substance and without jumping immediately into transcendence. (using Latour words) [transcendence is never gradual, in the places i come from, it is always a shock, happening, a truth-event]
-each word (God, Angle, Jinn جن, fog, etc.) brought into its own network,
-what are contrasts and of category mistakes particular to each
-and their crossings----and what is the vocabulary specific to each crossing

the network of associations necessary for the exercise of religion without bracketing off its ontological requirements.

explanatory rage (tavahoshe roshangari توحش روشنگری) --✕--> networks necessary for religious meaning

(the aim is) deploying the network (of ajayeb)
it is about grasping ajayeb's beings not as substances but as *trajectories*--and give them a more precise *direction.*

what is important in working these modes what kinds of possibilities are “afforded” to the investigator, myself. what kind of actor am i?

(specifications of the type of beings that the mode leaves in its wake)

**other beings necessary for its existence**
(my personal/public question, what other beings are necessary for my existence? and therefore for your existence as well.) ----> the heterogeneity of the actors needed for the pursuit of any course of action


*metamorphosis (a mode of existence first detected in psychogenesis?) what we encounter whenever we address the manner in which existents are transformed or transform in order to subsist (zist زیست)
-defined by a certain kind of continuity and obtained by a certain type of discontinuity
-metamorphosis is about crisis, possession, alienation,
-metamorphosis sharply contrasts *cure* (~= ritual)
-allowing for installing unconscious (states,) crush, posses, bewitch, kill,
-beings with specific properties that are invisible, changeable, powerful, favorable, unfavorable
-exploration of transformations
-cosmological specialties
-seniority and extension of metamorphosical beings (of elaborations carried out by all groups in met)

{that which addresses the “me,” the “ego” =/=? that which allows one to resist the forces of metamorphosis}

the iconoclastic episode we are in now, which we must work to make it as short as possible

(to specify) dualisms that make it extraordinarily difficult to maintain ontological pluralism

it is the moderns quasi-subjects (‘person’) who feel themselves to be **directly addressed,** (redressed and saved) --> to exist[...]