[...]()
2. configuration (kingdom of the “as if”)
3. refiguration (integration of the imaginative or “fictive” or “as if” into actual) of the field of action;
‘reading’ is configuration (Ricoeurian)
•use of symbols : being able to grasp one thing as standing for something else;
•narrative: competency in the temporal structures governing the syntagmatic order of “followability”
...empirical means to locate the boundaries of capitalism
(to enclose something -->) ontology of the Accounts Book --> Attar's Tazkirat al-Awliya's story of the boy, bird, butcher, accounts book, and the theme of repayment, quittance.
to place everything it does not take into account outside the enclosure and everything it does take into account and that properly belongs to him inside
--> origins of property
...................................
growing interest in *ecology* ==> growing interest in *theology* (--> granted a new relevant)
(Latour's notion of) ecotheology [~= ajayeb]
(how not to consider your self secretly--even under the self-reflectivity--as) the chosen people
renegotiation of values and features:
(if) recently european stopped having been modern ==> the ‘others’ have also stopped having been ‘other’
*the planet will no longer be modernized* (Latour shouting)
geopolitics of difference
“europe" = the modernist great narrative --or--> produce an alternative great narrative of what european cultures (and natures) have been
}--✕--> *contrasting *traits* (that have been elaborated in the course of european history)
“here is my *treasure*, here is my *heart*, if you deprive us of one of these contrasts, we are no longer humans”
to be sensitive to different original origins (=/= eurocentrism)
[different origins that speak also truthfully]
(Olearius drama:) dramatic encounter between the (early) anthropologist's gaze and the various cultures (and natures) he have discovered
...painful history of the anthropologist's gaze
[*]value: what one is ready to die for / what makes life not worth living if one is deprived of it
european history tied to the elaboration of:
•science as value (--✕--> apodictic truth, social construction, etc.)
•law as value (--✕--> power, rhetoric, etc.)
•politics as value (--✕--> [*]social: the name of what is assembled--associated)
•
•
scientific ties
legal ties
political ties
=/= social associates
so difficult to enunciate something religiously because of *the ease with which it is accounted for by other types of explanation* (especially social explanation)
in apass we need to practice saying: “I don't want to take that or this contrast into account any more” (because you want to do something else for a moment)
--> you return to a project --and--> i have been fighting so that (myself and) you **don't become modernist again** (~ that means you engage in the conflict of values that has characterized modernist history)
(with work on ajayeb) i am engaged in the project of ***disentangling the entire set of values that constitutes my rightful inheritance***
(the question of) “what treasure have we inherited? how can we claim it?” --> it is so dangerous to answer those questions alone, without each other ==> selfish identities and origins
(eurocentrism, or the former ‘others’ answering it for everyone, without you)
ecologizing
ecological consciousness =? your entire way of life must be modified or else you will disappear as a civilization
(not being the heir of) emancipatory tradition
(if) modernism is Promethean, then green bio economy and clean technology is Promethean even more
(the bad idea of and hype of) technological solution to ecological crises
*renewing everything here and now* is first of all a religious passion
?@Leo
-what modernism did to science is worse than what it did to religion
it deprived it of its energy, restricting it, to *mere furniture of the soul* [--> Iron Man's idea of technology-human relation]
modernism's politicization of science
speaking of science scientifically ==> a scientific ‘worldview’ is deployed
speaking of religion religiously ==> a vague assemblage of pious moral vacuities is taken as an ‘alternative worldview’
}--> they both accept an* unscientific science* and an *irreligious religion*
Latour (quickly dissolving nonsense that accrues as one opposes ‘knowledge’ and ‘belief’):
•science = reference chain (what allow access to the far away) [nothing is out of the reach of reference chain]
•religion = presence (what allow access to the near)
science ~/= concrete, worldly, matter-of-fact, present-at-hand, domain of knowledge (<-- political activism has to work with that kind of knowledge)
what use is it to save your soul, if you forfeit the world? --> sci-fi's real frontier & Noah's project
the transcendence and transubstantiation of science
when nature enters, religion has to leave. in two equally fatal exit strategies:
•to limit itself to the inner sanctum of the soul
•to flee into the supernatural --> that religion will try in vain to imitate scientific instruments (<-- The Magicians TV series) + misinterpreted science [==> taking Bible as if it were geology book (<-- look at the rising Hollywood films that scientifize the events of Bible) -- projects of connecting religion to the world]
‘exit religion’: it will have lost any pretence of influencing the course of events, its impact will only be decorative
(Descola:) ‘naturalism’ is only one of four ways in which connections between humans and nonhumans can be established
contrasts:
*reference chain*
*reproduction*
(Latour use of the term) *contrast* = mode of existence
immutable mobiles: to reach something far away through long arrays of instruments, you need to make sure that *necessities and constants are transported* with as little transformation as possible ==> to “reach” those entities
geometry, mathematical entities, inscriptions of all sorts ==> carry heavy-duty immutable mobiles
(Hoda's immutable mobiles are: [?])
[*]matter = highly elaborated, historically dated, and anthropologically situated hybrids***
(=/= ‘transportation of indisputable necessities through chains of cause and effect’ <-- a category mistake)
(for physicist:) “the ways we know the world = the ways in which the world behaves”
(less for chemist)
(not at all for engineer)
([in a way my work has been about investigating vectors and] *directions*) from knower to what is to be known
the beings of ajayeb face lots of causes and lots of effects
metaphysical consequences of evolutionary theory
***(Latour's positive veiw on) to be a Darwinian: you have to abandon the notion that all of those ‘organisms’ rest in ‘nature’ --> [*]organim: a hybrid production of representation & reference
*the widespread ideology of the *blind watch maker* : a blind cause acting from behind and reaching the optimum haphazardly
(has substituted the ‘mere transportation of indisputable necessities’ for *the risks taken by individual organisms to perpetuate, sustain, and reproduce themselves*)
&
*the widespread ideology of the *intelligent designer* :an intelligence dragging organisms towards the optimum by some predefined plans
}--> both are grounded in the *ideology of making and mechanism* ==>
•organisms are erased as individual actors
•organisms are transformed into the carriers if indisputable necessities
--> both tried to save individual organims from their apparent meaninglessness by adding to them an overarching narrative recited by an otherworldly divinity
(‘necessities’ are often imported)
(Assmans's) *mosaic division*
(=/= a sort of relaxed attitude towards truth)
divisions ahad never beed asked before whether or not they were the “true” ones. they could be added to one another, translated into one another, piled on top of one another for additional safety --✕--> *contesting the claims to existence o[...]