[...] absorbing the world and being put into motion by its constituent medley of humans and nonhumans

-becoming with (Haraway)
-orienting toward (Ahmed)
-bodily reasoning (Shapiro): the dynamic process through which knowledge of individual spaces of chronic exposure is somatically attained

women's accounts of self-monitoring for bodily dysfunctions (--> feminization of body care)
[Shapiro discovered] men's active indifference to slight somatic abnormalities (rejecting the possibility that their bodies wear permeable --> masculine self-image)


olfaction --> take displeasing scents as primary indicators of environmental contamination
--but--> smell recede from perception over time as they become incorporated into new senatorial norms (sensitivity down-regulates in a process of olfactory adaptation)


microscopic encounters --sensed--> less nameable and more diffuse sensory practices

exposure: an affective space, at the limit of the phenomenal, the somatic proceeds and then is entangled with the rational


sublime (in chemistry): transform from solid to gas bypassing the intermediate liquid form

*nuclear sublime*
weapons scientists felt the blast bore into the being, into their faces, register of the power of the bomb
spectacular, brutal, and lightening-fast sensorial pummeling, tossing them to the ground
=/=
*chemical sublime*
formaldehyde sedate speed of chemical off-gassing and the regular human breathing; (not signalled by overwhelming sensory stimuli rather) indicated by a thickening veil of indistinction as perceptual faculties became occluded
...the bodywork employed to apprehend the qualities of indoor air

(Masco & Kant's privileging of) sublimity's correlation with public, spectacular, and violent events =/= (Shapiro's sublimity:) *profundity and density of widespread, private, indistinct, chronic, and fragmented phenomena*

chemical sublime = انباشت استدلالهای جسمانی accrual of bodily reasoning
irritations --> agitations ==> attenuate the effects of vast toxic infrastructure


(masco nuclear) sublime ==translate==> resounding ethical call
chemical sublime ==> ?

...industry's mobilization of law, science, capital


Shapiro: we must look at how the sublime has brokered relations between exposure and the status quo since at least down of the enlightenment

(quintessential of enlightenment project) Kant's sublime: the immensity/might first overwhelms our imaginative capacity (or indicating the fragility of human body yielding a sense of helplessness and distress) then this feeling is countered and ultimately overcome by reassuring one's self of power of the mind ==> reason sets humanity apart and above the physical world
[*]sublime: *internal turmoil and sensuous displeasure is elevated into the delight and superiority of reason* --> humanity's continued progressing

(Shapiro + Gene Ray: ideological function of the aesthetic category of the) sublime within Kant's critical system is anxiously bound up with deep *metaphysical optimism*

formulation of sublime:
•form (space, time, and intensity) of exposure
•the relation between the supersensible (mind) and the sensible (matter)
•orientational movement (from without to within or vice versa)
•political reckoning

*bodily reasoning =/= object (of sublime) held at a distance
*sublimation of toxicity =/= mental mastery (over perceived threats)
*amplify =/= extinguish (the tensions, agitations, dissident potentiality of large-scale hazards)
*coalescing of underrecognized disturbances =/= compensation
*beginning of a confrontation =/= resolution

foil of human triumph: “transforming the worst into the best” <-- not possible anymore
...~->? potentiality of living otherwise (---> go to Tsing's contaminated diversity, Chen's queer toxicity)


...in these spaces where *enduring and knowing* are coterminous, the feeling of a living dead seeped into the margins of life for those with even minimal symptoms


(chemical phenomenology)
molecular cohabitants who physically hold our world together also encourage our unravelling*** [Shapiro] becoming a pupil of the air [Sloterdijk] is to attune to the aerostolized material culture and more-than-human semiotics [Kohn] within which one is immersed
***


chemical sublime (does not merely refigure a form of sublime in philosophical discourse but) poses an alternative **schema of eventfulness** (or call to action)

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

[title]
kulturgeist

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

Zizek - Organs without Bodies. Deleuze and Consequences

(i am still at the title:) in your efforts to make ‘body without organ’ (the emergent, non-hierarchical, inclusive, flexible, smart, liquid good object) you might end up creating ‘organ without body’ (monstrous, hierarchical, authoritative, soulless, archaic bad object)

functional specificity of organs =/= to release the decoded and deterritorialized flows of [*]desire: a process of production without reference to any exterior agency (--although--> ‘fascism = desire’)]

an example of body without organ is the ‘ocean’ for Marialena
(for Marialena) ocean [~=? fluid women] (an unstratificated, non-coded flow, sex organs sprout everywhere, no organ is constant as regards either function or position) =/= (male fantasies of) armored body

(Deleuze and Guattari suggest) dismantling of the organism (~ molar organic body) ==>
•hypochondriac body (suffering from imaginary symptoms)
•paranoid body
•schizo body
•drugged body
•masochist body <-- my favourite
•
}--> these are all about the body from the point of view of its *potential* [=/=? method]
}--> we are at (an anthropological / psychoanalytic discourse of) excess and transgression --Artaud-->{ organs: functional articulations forced on the body }==> separation, determination, representation

body without organ =/= body image http://ajayeb.net/?q=body+image

-what feminist theory has to say about that? --Irigaray--> is not the body without organs women's own historical condition?
...the machinic, the inorganic, as well as the notions of loss of self, dispersion, and fluidity are all too familiar to women
(and to non-western subjects, i would say. Tasavof has been advocating body without organ within the context of mysticism in Iran)

are Deleuze and Guattari “cyberpunks, constructing fictions of terminal identity in the nearly familiar language of a techno-surrealism”? ~-> (to dissolve the body ==>) will to regain the world <~~--> [death of the auratic object ==> subject: a condemned and useless vestige alongside the simulacra that precede and envelope it]

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

(?we need) political metamorphosis

the tensions between:
[*]artist's “special task” (to oppose intellectual divisions) {(art of) forming, inventing, fabricating concepts (<== Deleuze and Guattari), (a “task” that) proceeds with a plane of immanence (or consistency) ~= self-referential (=/= referential) --> syntagmatic (word associations)}
and: [*]the increasing difficulty to ask questions (as a result of the constant increase in the specialization of the knowledges --> science) {propositions in discursive systems, (a “task” that) proceeds with a plane of reference --> paradigmatic (a worldview) ==>? to *confront chaos* ~= to provide chaos with reference points [<-- artists need to learn this]}****

(my work in lecture-performance: to provide chaos with reference points)

Barad, Stengers, <== stable foundations of physics had broken up and it is time for science to become philosophical

science becomes philosophical philosophy becomes artistic art becomes anthropological anthropology becomes poetic poetry becomes biological biology becomes archaeological archaeology becomes speculative speculation becomes scientific science becomes aesthetic aesthetics becomes adventurous adventure becomes rigorous rigor becomes Iranian Iran becomes German Germany becomes Arabic Arab becomes Egyptian Egypt becomes animalistic animal becomes fabulous fable becomes political politics becomes...

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

(Baxstrom + Meyers highlight a productive gap between intent & outcome in) Christensen making a case of witchcraft (in his pioneering, bizarre, and lavish project of Häxan):
•misidentified nervous disease
•incompatibility of superstition and religious fanaticism with modernity and science
•bringing “errors of belief” in the 15th and 16th centuries into our view

living cinematic tableau, Häxan's excess =/= socially constrained thinking, discursive mode of analysis

Christensen's thesis concerned/gripped with abnormalities, events, and causes ==provide==> diagnosis
(like Favret-Saada) he was an un-witcher at once caught & catching

witch =? epiphenomenon

(to bring the ajayeb to life “objectively” is nonsense)

[Häxan = spectacle + argument ==> *to make nature speak*] drove efforts to locate & combat witches, and it served to shape similar aporias between *sense & distance* imbricated in:
•the invention of modern hysteria in the 19th century
•the “discovery” of the “native's point of view” by anthropologists in the early 20th century

for Christensen: “witchcraft = unrecognized manifestations of clinical hysteria and psychosis”

excessiveness of Häxan's reenactment --> construct the witch's material, invisible, mobile force
(Häxan's objectivity) had no expectation that the real will simply “speak for itself”

Häxan's reception in the 1920s --> to energize a negative, conceptually dogmatic discourse that formed and hardened cinematic taxonomies [particularly the division between “documentary” (nonfiction) and “feature” (fictional) films]

experimentation + evidence making

sexual intercourse, cannibalism, cauldron --solemnize--> pact with the devil

evidentiary thinking

elaborated visualization of the witch stereotype

--> complex nature of *sensual explorations of the flesh* through masochism and exorcism

demonic influence
genres of transfiguration and metamorphosis

Christensen shows how those who were once identified as witches are now the objects of medical and social concern in modern life --> shows the potency of her various forms over time


--> Baxstrom + Meyers
(my work on ajayeb is based on that) [there is a largely] unacknowledged historical tendency and predisposition within the human sciences with roots in much older practices of:
•defining social facts
•discovery, interpretation, production of the real itself
[such as bestiary]

method that allows the researcher to sense
interpret and master forces that appear to be nonsensical (yet held to be present: held to be essential to the reality of everyday social life) --> an epistemological concern

privileged space of the irrational in medical discourses in 19th century: (Jonathan Strauss -->) irrationality (nonsense) was a legitimizing force for medicine in that the very incomprehensibility of the mad created a mysterious and extra-social language that the rising medical profession could adapt to its own purposes

“nonsense” of “the native” [--> my start-up engine in Islam lecture series, a privileged site of mysterious incomprehensibility allowed me to to form the methodological basis for a fieldwork for unknown forces of irrational life in distant societies...]

*anthropology: (a distinct human science from the desire to credibly) master nonsense*
(Baxstrom + Meyers)

anthropologists claiming to have assumed the “point of view” of another (~ fieldworker must achieve the cultivated sensed point of view of another) --> distillation of method & disposition (?) <-- when confronted with the question “who are you?” and “what do you do?”
(according to Malinowski: this) privileged relation to the unknown must emerge through the ability to test what is asserted to be real --> a series of subjective trials subsumed within the rubric of “fieldwork”
*presumptions:
•experiential disposition of the analyst ==> understanding of a phenomenon other wise held to be imaginary and fictional
•witnessing and testimony ==> evidence as to the reality beyond the direct experience of the researcher

([Malinowski updated and secularized a much older epistemology of] Luther:) faith = a commitment to the representation of a truth --> Western Christianity's own efforts to discern truth and the nature of the world


proliferation of witches in 15th century Europe

reassuring relief for the pious believer: force Satan (and his followers) from the shadows through an interpretive expertise over the concrete secondary manifestations of God's reality --✕--> (most had no luxury to imagine) *the embrace of life that the devil urges in binary opposition to that of the good*
--> Devil interfering with the most intimate communications with the Divine
-how does one really know who is speaking when prayer is returned?

[for] the demonologists of the 15th and 16th century --> “God must exist because Satan is right in front of me!” : reality of witches ==> Satan
Institoris, Sprenger, Johannes Nider,
the name of the witch ~=> sacrilegious and inhuman deeds (subject to verification)

*inquisitors believed that what was reported to them was possible* (still they desired proof) <== interweaving of learned demonology into the fabric of a dominant theology (<-- sovereignty of God ratified primarily through the worldly evidence of Satan) + invisibility of the spiritual world was expressed as an essential given

{for the inquisitor (witch hunter) it was never enough to simply “believe” <==> a narrative must be produced that at least partially satisfied the demands of evidence}--> *interrogation under torture = an experimental form of knowing in crisis*

truth value of a nonsensical confession made sensible --> human belief, action, and social practices

ethnographic style of early French ethnographers --> **learning truth from lie** was essential to representing the “primitive” reality in order to interpret it in its true picture
-Marcel Griaule's approach to fieldwork: “The crime is the fact, the guilty party the interlocutor, and accomplices are all the members of this society. [...]the abundance of pieces of evidence serving to convict appear to facilitate the inquest, but in reality they guide it into labyrinths--labyrinths that are often organized. [...]The inquest must be treated like a strategic operation.”
--> nonsense to be mastered had shifted from the demonic, incredible forces at play for the inquisitor to the misguided tall tales of the native interlocutor [--> same mistake that Federici does in her book Caliban and the Witch. Federici, in search of the manifestations of misogyny, aggressively frames the scene of a feminist encounter with witch-hunt as a kind of antagonistic trial of social organization of the Middle Ages in transition to early capitalism... a mode of attention that is equally didactic and forensic as the witch inquisitors]

recognition of the struggle that lay at the heart of raising testimony to the status of the “really real” --Avital--> Griaule aggressively frames the scene of ethnographic encounter itself as a kind of antagonistic trial (whereby the ghosts and gods of the natives are forced out of the shadows and made concretely apparent to the senses of the anthropologist)
*fieldwork ==> knowledge of hauntings that is itself haunted*

imaginative result of “I-witnessing”

*paradoxical necessity of an expressive element within an objective test in relation to what would other wise be nonsense* is evident in many of the examples of 16th century visual culture --> ajayeb bestiary


trial by ordeal
(illustrated in Eduard Fuchs)
the case: if the woman floats she is clearly able to contravene the nature and is therefore a witch or heretic; if she sinks, she has made no such pact with Satan
-procedural expertise --> trial by water here functions as *experiment as much as a punishment* designed to reveal an other wise invisible truth

testimony + experimental results + expert inquisitorial interpretation ==> early version of the ‘case study’ (synthesized as evidence in service of accounting for variation that exceeded general laws regarding relations and phenomenon in the world)
Baxstrom + Meyers

(ajayeb's) individual cases: an effective strategy in providing analytic (and empirical) purchase for phenomenon that were other wise invisible to even the discerning eye of the expert <-- **to move away from a reliance on metaphysics**


**medicalization of the invisible**
[...]