[...]of sacrifice and this exclusive possession of the capacity for response, is what produces the Animal

the death-defying arrogance of ascribing such wondrous positivities to the Human

(Derrida)"The question of the said animal in its entirety comes down to knowing not whether the animal speaks but whether one can know what ‘respond’ means. And how to distinguish a response from a reaction.”

the mistake of forgetting the ecologies of all mortal beings, who live in and through the use of one another's bodies
[this is against ] The naturalistic fallacy is the mirror-image misstep to transcendental humanism.

multispecies contingency

In the idiom of labor, animals are working subjects, not just worked objects.

the capacity to respond and to recognize response

We can never do without technique, without calculation, without reasons, but these practices will never take us into that kind of open where multispecies responsibility is at stake.

Engage them [the dogs] as mindful bodies, in relationships of response?

the practical labor of nonmimetic sharing(?)

[we make ‘knowing’. knowing is always a practice of making, and always embodied. the idea that thinking involves disembodiment of the knowing organ is just insane.]

“articulating bodies to other bodies” ----> disarticulating bodies to rearticulate other bodies

entangled assemblages of relatings knotted at many scales and times with other assemblages, organic and not

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

ajayeb is system imagination

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

[Naveeda Khan]

Perhaps the question could be posed as, how do we come to grips with the universal, the supra-historical, or even the cosmos within our global present, imagining a local that lays claims upon all three?

is there a Muslim environmental imaginary?

‘Islamic ecology and environmental ethics’ --> the need to center a vibrant materiality or the liveliness of things in the anthropology of Islam (that has been to date largely preoccupied with Muslim polities and subjectivities.)

It should come as no surprise that my own efforts at centering materiality comes through studying how these predominantly Muslim farmers interact with and come to acknowledge nonhuman forms of life (including the figure of Khidr خضر, dogs, river waters, silt, and lightning, to name a few). Finally, I remain concerned to explore how the singularities of these lives, both human and nonhuman, come to be hitched to the global. This research will culminate in a book tentatively titled Ensouling the Anthropocene: Riverine Life and Climate Change in Bangladesh, in which “ensouling” treats the problem of scaling up singularity to the global, intensifying efforts that began with “Of Children and Jinn.” [source: https://culanth.org/curated_collections/19-everyday-islam/discussions/20-interview-with-naveeda-khan-about-of-children-and-jinn]

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

(what i am reading in ajayeb)_with Naveeda: “Muslim cosmology and eschatology hold promoise of ecological thought, providing an unexpectedly materialist perspective on our creaturely interconnectedness.”

[ajayeb (and telegram) is full of] gestures of incorporating repugnant [offensive to the mind] others---that one sees reflections on divine creation qua [als] creaturliness


thoroughly disabused
aufklären آگاهیدن آگاییدن

expound تفسیر

incentive مشوق, فتنه انگيز

litany مناجات وعبادت تهليل دار

showmanship (نمايشگرى?)
effektvolle Darstellung, Schauspielproduktion

queasy به طور تهوع آوری لطیف مزاج

(a gedture of) ludic [playfull, spielerisch] transcendence of [the] present

obdurate سرسخت
-showing unfeeling resistance to tender feelings-
(picture of the world as) pristine nature طبیعت بکر being destroyed by humans (--> narcissistic?)
=/= view of theology/religion on ecology
=/= (stories of humans and dogs:) shared creatureliness and companionship entailing a turn to cofeasting on the flesh of the world --> mutual fate

does islamic theology (in both elite and popular belief) offers us a way toward *sensing our embeddedness in this world* ?
-might ajayeb (creationist?) narratives be generative of interconnections between humans and other animals within the predominant muslim context?
-why climate science doesn't/hasn't effect a meaningful engagement with the world? --> an image of thought that is not interiorized***
(Strauss: *thought is always in the world.* being in the world subsumes realms of both abstractness and concreteness) -->[a tradition of thought that produces (& works with): “Abstraktheit =/= Greifbarkeit"]
***how ajayeb naratives provided the filaments of (muslim) ecological thought as a perspective on our interconnectedness and mutual entanglements? [Naveeda, Anand, ]

(wanting a) most perfect creation (to leave the best part to the end*) ==> God created humans last of all ==> consigned humans to a state of *belatedness to the world*
(unapologetically) anthropocentric: *making the human drama the most important one to watch*

acts of worship (that bears witness to):
•regularity in nature
•one's own nature

(agian) Khidr, the prophet in green, who is associated with hermeticism and also has a presence [...] as a way to suggest a subterranean connection between [...] textual tradition and the everyday lives of riparian (رود کنارى) Muslims [...]

riparian context ساحل کنار ,رود کنار ,حریم رودخانه
[context =? کنار]


“BE!” بععععع بع ع ع ع ع ع ع ع ع


Ikhwan: every creature knows and speaks of creation
that knowledge is not privilege of humans
that it is the failure of humans to imagine that they live in the presence of mute nature

نکیر و منکر interrogations by Nakir and Munkar, faith-testers of deads in their graves

دجال Dajjal as a dead body returned to life, many will follow him, but as dogs!
-return of humans as dogs --> idea of rebirth --> not homogeneously muslim space
“[who is] compelled to return as if it were a cosmic debt they owed the world”
-pathos of the inability of humans to sustain cross-species companionship --> the visceral dislike of the dregs of the many existence of dogs
--> dogs’ quality of aliveness; being more or less useless other than the occasional and fitful دمدمى protection of households that made them serve as the singular sign of life, a trace of God's surplus creativity. (Naveeda's work in chauras)

one's future animal self

(هشتاد ساله) octogenarian mindful of life's finitude
-what do you say/do when your feet is one on the land breaking beneath and the other in the afterlife?
-polysemy of imagery and wordss

“earth breaks so much” --> ?>

suggesting a چاره (chareh)
inflection of chareh and fetrat
چاره ی فطرت


***ajayeb's heterogeneously muslim spaces
•traces of Hindu, Chinese, Greek interest and thought
•occasion for cross-species sentience (Naveeda's beautiful research in chars)

visiting of shobhe to the town
(shobhe gave the town a visit)
شبهه
شبح شبهه

bringing bits and pieces of songs from many places... over their cell phones... being well versed in the different types of music to be able to tell the songs apart...
(Sven, )

attention to the physical surround of the religious consciousness rather than to the inner workings of their body

.

آخرت

آخرش


smells, rotting bodies, eroding bodies, soil composition, etc.

(to imagine dogs and humans coexisting as) competting possibilities within unformed matter* [=/=? companion species]

dwindling quality of life (and diminished humanity)

(Anand, van Dooren, Naveeda wondering) how in certain geographies disappearance of species seems not to give the people a moment's pause

* what_ gives a pause ?


*species self-perpetuation is sometimes with:
•biological reproduction
•becoming
•transfiguration
•rebirth
•symbolic dispersal
•resynthesis
•


sunnat to kill (فى نفسه intrinsically evil) snakes (=/= jinn snake in Anand research/stories of saint animals)

straw, chaff, rice, wheat, lentils,
ماشوره، کاه، بوريا
سبوس
گندم
عدس

the gift of death for the animals:
•عید Eid, God in sacrifice, release from hardship and burden; blithe disposal of animal; euthanize
•چشم‌زخم evil eye or witchcraft as the cause of animal's death, if they are lost through illness, theft, or accident

bonanza
anthrax

euthanize

inoculate

cagey
•canny حيله گر کمرو
•showing self-interest and shrewdness in dealing with others
•characterized by great cautious and wariness
•reluctant to give information owing to caution or suspicion

بو
-treating smell as indicating an unsettled situation
-inadvertent stench of dead bodies disrupts the composed mental image of the ideal corpse within [...] funereal practices
*odors introduce terror or the terror of the uncontained within the social* (Neveeda > Siegel 1983)


double-edgeed prospect

common curse

“in the riparian contextm land forms and breaks with regular irregularity” [--> #entropy]
shifting its course, the river inducts new affectees into how to live (this way)
-there is a manner in which life proceeds--instead of feeling in step with it one begins to feel out of sync***

#start a geographic learning, riparian thought; thinking by rivers (& not countries)

_->{.\_,;,_/;-=,/


rural cosmology
cosmology of modern science

human conception: flirtation with the failure to arrive


#two moveis:
•Exodus: Riddly Scott + Creation Bible + Big Bang + extinction theory + fluid animation research
•Noah: Nolan + Creation Bible + Darwin + motion graphic research
--> solving a problem proposed by _?_ }--> “the dream catcher” !!!
(in these cinematic examples we see the society imposed to the same spatiotemporal representational framework that science “discovers” in nature)


the insistent entanglements of physicality with the metaphysical

soil: earth rendered in the scientific register

“The alluvial sediments that come in the waters of the Jamuna river either become deposited as silt across floodplains or fall in the river to become ‘chars’” (Naveeda Khan 2014)

...the time of the arrival of clay is not assured
the inability to perpetuate human life*

the materialist metaphysics of Creation in non-elite belief

“you should not let a dog lick you.”
or “pigeon feather containing 40 different microbial diseases.” #clean
or “they are very dirty and will pass their germs to you.”

cross-species fraternity to the assertion of superiority over all animals

pragmatic + theological spoke:
1- divine privileging of humans
2- human right to transcend the ordinary (--> to aspire to God's position)

...lush growth of eucalyptus trees at the edge of the market
--> yesssss things that grow on the edges <-- my life-long attention (the cat who entered the house, the ants, the plants in Tehran, ...) [<== because of my own marginalized being?]


being fated (together)

...although the earth breaks, it reconstitutes
people find themselves in diminished form, or occupying a lesser form of life, or having the status of the resurrected dead, but they will nonetheless always find themselves here at this place in this moment****

...End Times bringing a fearful apocalyptic future into the present, evoking the eternal quest for union with a beloved without end, while not focused on a specific horizon


*foreshprtended horizons*


intensification of existing scenes of suffering

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

[Delanda]
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/o/ohp/11515701.0001.001/1:4.2/--new-materialism-interviews-cartographies?rgn=div2;view=fulltext

topology =/= Aristotle's geometry (his “genus” and his “species.” )
genus =/= species as a contingent historical individual
species =/= topological animal (a body-plan)

topological properties like connectivity (=/= metric space)

“[...]I surely reject the idea that morphogenesis needs any “mind” to operate. I also reject the neo-Kantian thesis of the linguisticality of experience. [...] Are we to assume that those ancient hunter gatherers lived in an amorphous world waiting for language to give it form?”

“rejecting the linguisticality of experience (according to which every culture lives in its own world) leads to a conception of a shared human experience in which the variation comes not from differences in signification (which is a linguistic notion), but of significance (which is a pragmatic one).”

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

*refraction* (vajje.com/search/کسر)

it is insane how the cold-blooded fact of the modern science has singled out individuals and species in a manner of objective study. the idea that one must individualize the subject of research is unacceptable. how we have allowed ourselves to separate the whale from the spontaneous whirlpools that surround it, from its larger group of species. the difference between environment and species is a constructed fabulated “fact” by frontiers of science since the 19th century. the book of ajayeb cultivates its objects with their stories, it fosters compounds and assemblages. not excluding the refractions, fantasying the illusion of so-called objective clarity that tends to categorize life into its own brand of differences (individual and environment, object and subject, live and dead, etc.), but including the ways agents of interpretation are playing part in a compound.
the story captures the rays in their refracted representations, the stories are interpretive objects, objects of engagement

[Eva Hayward]
***things do not have fully determinate boundaries or properties. Things happen ‘in’ and ‘by’ encounter--refraction is one critical mode of encounter***
-the object is always troubled by obscuration
-through refraction, the object is altered by *scale* and *encounter* --> the altered scale allows the object to reveal its specificity, its particularity; boundaries are rendered indeterminate and exist only to the extent that they are continually enacted.
-in ajayeb we can see these forms of refraction in descriptive acts

agential intra-acting: “phenomena do not merely mark the epistemological inseparability of ‘observer’ and ‘observed’; rather, ***phenomena are the ontological inseparability of agentially intra-acting ‘components’” that is, phenomena are ontologically primitive relations--relations without preexisting relata. (Barad)
*mutual constitution of entangled agencies*

never complete, never whole, but deep in composition--materially and semiotically--of conjoined forces that matter.

“dynamic (re)configurings of the world, specific agential practices/intra-actions/performances through which specific exclusionary boundaries are enacted” (Barad)

(now ontologically) spectatorship =/= representation =/= referent
(still? in ajayeb) reader ~= representation ~= citational non-evidence

(Hayward-->) if we recognize that clear vision is always predicated on distorted, bent, and otherwise refracted (and diffracted) light, how might we reconsider theoretical investigations (filmic, philosophical, etc.) that *rely exclusively on untroubled reflectivity*. yes, “clear” vision is secured by corrective measures in the eye (and elsewhere) but conversely sight is always multiply altered and realtered by transmedium movement of light.

there is an embedded conceptual tension in refraction between *lucidity* and *degradation*

“as it is” --> the object is always troubled by obscuration

***things do not have fully determinate boundaries or properties. things happen ‘in’ and ‘by’ encounter--refraction is one critical mode of encounter

object is altered by *scale* and *encounter* (through refraction)
--> “empirical perspective” : the *altered scale* also allows the object to reveal its specificity, its particularity; boundaries are rendered indeterminate and exist only to the extent that they are continually enacted.

(Hayward > Barad:)
Phenomena do not merely mark the epistemological inseparability of “observer” and “observed”; rather, phenomena are the ontological inseparability of agentially intra-acting ‘components.’ That is, phenomena are ontologically primitive relations--relations without preexisting relata. [*relatum: one of the objects between which a relation is said to hold. *relata: would-be antecedent (tabar تبار) components of relations.]


reverie of reflectivity =/= refraction (--> makes explicit transforms the tendency of the image to orient representation, foregrounding the threaded visual space between the image and the spectator.)

***dynamic (re)configurings of the world, specific agential practices/intra-actions/performances through which specific exclusionary boundaries are enacted***
(Kaja Silverman, the subject of semiotics)

spectatorships =/=! representations =/=! referents
(ontological distinction: “=/=!”)

the surreal technoscientific look --?--> allowing wondrous but material extensions into the ajayeb domain

in creating a “look” for ajayeb: whether or not a used/user interaction can have ethical dimensions?


refraction is not framework, but a pathway. it engages patterns of interference and exchange



the xeno-sensual in the ajayeb
different differences that are sensed and mediated

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

poetic historiography
(historiography: the study of the writing of history and of written histories)

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

to begin writing about ajayeb with the citational, ‘avardeand ke...’ (...آورده‌اند که)
citation, an important characteristic of fables, is about relational histories.
absence of definitive source (in my old childhood favorite radio show, by bring an endless list of fantastic source and bodies of lures) allows monsters to flourish and me the full range of my passionate crafts. ajayeb's compelling mystery demands (from me) an unorthodox and omnivorous approach (hame-chiz-khar همه چیز خوار).

اما راویان اخبار و ناقلان آثار و طوطیان شکرشکن شیرین گفتار و خوشه چینان خرمن سخن دانی و صرافان سر بازار معانی و چابک سواران میدان دانش توسن خوش خرام سخن را بدینگونه به جولان در آورده اند که ...

•Mirabile dictu... (miraculous to say...)

towards Despret's talking parrots
parrots (shekar-shekan) (and philosophers) really like to control the exchange, to keep control of a conversation : their refusal to let another individual choose the topic of conversation
***(parrots have) a pragmatic rather than a referential conception of language
[am i also referential (=/= pragmatic) in my conception of language?]--> to teach a being to speak presupposes not only a tolerance of but also *a profound interest in misunderstanding* (this ‘profound interest in misunderstanding’ is precisely both cognitive and political aspect of what I am trying to bring forth) ~-> (how language-learning with animals can help us learn) restating and inverting the question of control

*exchange can only be achieved when there is “a continous reprisal of translations and betrayals of meaning”* ==> understanding itself is compromised
[*]ajayeb: a non-stop betrayal of translations (of perspectives) and continuous redressal of meanings (of things)

“as if” has to do with misunderstanding

“meanings are constructed in a constant movement of ‘attunement,’ which makes them emerge.”
(Despret, animal breeding practices)

(my work on ajayeb is also much about) *language-learning* [...]in its pragmatic function: it is an effective means of acting and of making others act


keep your end up


[*]type: identifying language use with modes of existence [Wittgenstein's mistake] (maybe useful to reanimate the question of ‘becoming’ for Marialena)
the mode of existence of lions is subordinated to that of an essence “lioness,” guaranteed by the identity of the species and the stability of its repertoire of behaviour ==> a burdensome conception of the naturalness of animals
***the question is not what ‘is’ a lion, but “how does one become a lion,” not only in lion community and species, but also in the work of scientists, constructing what it is to be a lion.
--> this is about becoming: of that of which the animal is rendered capable by the apparatuses that interrogate it

how can what I say about lions or baboons (or oceans or jinns) be authorized by them?


[*]we: constituted by the assemblage of different (animal-, nonhuman-, machine-, human-)beings equipped with an apparatus aimed at making them talk well --{by taking an interest in what constitutes the appropriateness of a material apparatus that transforms those it interrogates}--> fully agreeing to situate oneself in a regime of transformations and accomplishments =={that mingle with and give form to}==> *desires*
-researcher's desire is one the modes of their efficacity
-“our” problems are not a priori

a “we”:
+ “know full well”
+ “are different”
+ “who work”

rhetorics of pronouns, acts of crude generalizations: something is being specified and something generalized. [@Xiri's “I am the one who... your...” the specificity and generality of “I” and of “you” in her text. how the difference of “you” and “I” was envisaged in her poem?-->{I, the effected by =/= you, the haver} how can this I/you impose itself not as the effect of a strong-arm tactic? =/=? I want to find out how to live together; refuse to deepen the contrast between “us” and “them"] [in Xiri's poem: who/what makes her pronouns?] [to address people ‘as’ refugees, subjugated, poor, or victim, to recognize them by these identities, only repeats the process of exclusion(?) could be experienced as disabling.]


*/ generalization is constructed bit by bit

(that which constitutes) an expression of the parrot's opinion in relevance to what it is asked, the fact that it engages with, accepts and activly transforms what becomes a part of its world, translates an extension of this world and therefore an extension of its subjectivity as “parrot-with-human”


-when an animal escapes me, in fact it is making a form of the “judgement of relation” that animals make about humans


[*]anonymity: (a certain manners of presenting oneself,) that unquestioned condition of research that translates a certain type of relationship and a certain manner of defining those whom one addresses

I am against “feel free to say what you want” because it means actually what you say will have no consequences ==> (radical) asymmetry of expertises:
•researcher-author --> knows better
•social actor --> interchangeable holders of opinions


“scientist”: that who “knows better”
(if the fish cannot become a scientist, then I also don't want to --> let's change how one becomes a “fish” or a “scientist”)


(Laleh) could ask her subjects: “so, in your opinion, ‘as a child,’ how do you think I should construct my question so that it has a chance of being understood and of being interesting?”
•the question, that was my responsibility, that of difference, formulated in different ways
•“they” [your “subjects"] might unproot your question, displace it, modify its ambit (hoze حوزه), and when they find the right way of formulating it, they answer*

[*]asking ~= constructing interest ~=> (a chance of) interesting answers
•ask your subjects to construct interest
•the appropriateness of question
•problems are only interesting if they interest (?)
•(all) apparatuses create subjectivities


to attend to animal “paying attention” --> good translators of intentions
(how did I become interested in this?)


in farms, “talk is incessant. And because there is talk, there is talking back.”

talking back and forth --> exchange judgments about intentions --> adjusting the intentionalities (between human and animal; relevant also for Varinia's dog relation [--> ‘I know that you know what I intend to do']--)--> language as a mean for creating an overlapping awareness between two speakers (Despret, Hearne, Sennett) =/= language “populates” each of the beings present with perspectival propositions, which are so many proposi[...]