[...]dy. 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

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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 propositions of intentionality:
•one makes say (@Sven)
•one makes ask
•one puts oneself ‘in’ the place of
•one doesn't interpret
•one experiments
•
--> these are perhaps non-immediate form of knowledge
--> these practices inscribe the animal and human in the world of “speaking” [@Marialena]
--> these are “perspectives” that “populate” our world

(each) [*]perspective is made up of translation of intentions*
(animal breeders are perspectivists)


situations of the exchange ~= situations of subjectivity --> adopting perspectives (--> <--) judge intentions }--> ‘response’

[*]intersubjectivity: accepting the proposal of subjectivity; becoming what the other suggests; acting in the manner in which the other addresses you [--> my apass bow and arrow, was about this suggestivity]

the apparatus of question (that you suggest,) activates some modes of existence rather than others

...shared perspectives, shared intelligences and intentions, resemblances, inversions and exchanges of properties (between humans and animals)

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

my practice and work on ajayeb is grounded in the history and materiality of scientific practices

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

(ajayeb's) particular and exceptional nature

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

(Despret)

“anthropo-zoo-genetic” : a practice that constructs animals and human

(how can i design an apparatus for ajayeb) to perform availability?
(build) questions that construe and construct signs that ‘make a world’ for the animal (entity of the ajayeb)
-how can i offer possible interesting becoming to the animals of ajayeb, in offering a way for them to articulate the system, (not to make a system that articulates them)

(in experimenting with ajayeb) how can i involve my body, involve my knowledge, involve my responsibility, involve my future?
-how to let them adopt me?
-to produce an ajayeb body to allow a ajayeb world to affect me

the world of ajayeb is a richly articulated world =/= a world of enthusiastic automata (one who is only moved by itself) observing strange and mute creatures

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

[Mersad al-ebad] tabaye-i طبایعی (materialist)


historical specificity(s) of animal-human relationship



(worst-)translated science

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

[Haraway, Queering the non/human]

‘companion’ [she starts by showing the danger of the term like any other term]

reducing type is among other things at the heart of racism
types: colonised, enslaved, non-citizen, animal, refugee, [etc.], typological female reduced to her reproductive function,

secular semiotics (never nourished us?)

queering: the job of undoing ‘normal’ categories, [sorting operations]

...patterning, consequences, and the possibility of response.
queer, off-category, sf worlding
(what are the SF worldings of ajayeb?--SF as building alternative ontologies. finding absent but possible presents--whether presented as elsewheres or other times. “[...]an elsewhere from which different [...] articulations of naturecultures and alterity could be explored.”)

“The one who would be normal, in a category of his own” --> ends badly

(human scientist's) deadly one-way test: unable to recognize the presence of the trapped one --> (for him) no one is at home in the categorically Other


[Seed Bag]

...the problem of destruction and wounded flourishing--not simply survival--in exile, diaspora, abduction, and transportation--the earthly gift-burden of the descendents of slaves, refugees, immigrants, travelers, and of the indigenous too.

(In the feminist SF mode,) matter is never “mere” medium to the “informing” seed;

Homebody / traveler

...disruptive details of good stories that don't know how to finish

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

[Barad]

[...] remembering is not a replay of a string of moments, but an enlivening and reconfiguring of past and future that is larger than any individual. [...] The past is never finished. It cannot be wrapped up like a package, or a scrapbook, or an acknowledgment; we never leave it and it never leaves us behind.

Barad's mother's question: “what good is there in offering recognition that can't be recognized?”

[...] there is only the ongoing practice of being open and *alive to each(other)* meeting

“How to disrupt patterns of thinking that see the past as finished and the future as not ours or only ours?”



*measurement
** the nature of nature depends on the apparatus that measure it
***--> which measurements are at use in ajayeb?
(what constitutes a measurement for what?)

the strangest idea: that we have access to cultural representations and their content (that we lack toward the things represented) (=/= “agential realist ontology” barad-posthumanist.pdf) [Foucault's “words and things” is the name of the game] [--> @Aela, perhaps we can begin with a different starting point, other than the old idea of “hum[...]