[...]the “true” nature of obscure forces and their operations within empirical real-world contexts}

[ajayeb: (part of the histories of)] systematic, empirical investigation of strange events, singularities, miracles, and other types of staple phenomena ~~--> scientific method and the forms of knowledge that emerged as the foundation of an ensemble of *sciences proper to humans* --> yet has been unable to expel (the unprovable forces) considering the origins and forms of human diversity

[*]anthropology: the desire to credibly master nonsense

[with ajayeb studies i am learing to be] able to argue for a world below the threshold of perception (of medicine, biology, physics --> defined their relation to the nonsensical via a *visibility to come* ==> [embodied in new technologies:] photograph, microscope, telescope)

Deleuze --> when writing of communication between heterogeneous systems --> [we must pay attention to] what is this agent, this force which ensures communication? (<-- role of difference and resemblance)

forensic anthropology

[title]
imaging and imagining technologies


the confusion of the empirical (knowledge traversed by our everyday observations, sensations, passions) and the transcendental (construction of an ideal knower, now it is the queer) in apass

figure of man foundational to the human sciences [did not exist in classical thought ~ ajayeb] --move-to--> empirically institute the experience, witnessing, and testimony of an individual human subject = *the central linking relay between evidence, judgement, and the real* --> the ability of a human being alone to serve as the sole source of evidence in an investigation of “the real” (#feedback) [=/= Gilgamesh]
(in Qazwini's ajayebnameh the testimony of an individual human subject is ambiguous)

(Baxstrom + Foucault) *insist on rooting our form of knowledge in the figure of the human being and the human being alone --yet--> our gaze is continually drawn to a host of beings and phenomena (the witch, the spirit, the shaman, etc.) that cannot properly be enfolded back within this figure*


fabled definition (@apass relationship with defining)

fable of anthropology (a disposition with regard of the interlocutor other as truly “other”) -->
“This goal is, briefly, to grasp the native's point of view, his relation to life, to realise his vision of his world. We have to study man, and we must study what concerns him most intimately, that is, the hold which life has on him. In each culture, the values are slightly different; people aspire after different aims, follow different impulses, yearn after a different form of happiness. In each culture, we find different institutions in which man pursues his life-interest, different customs by which he satisfies his aspirations, different codes of law and morality which reward his virtues or punish his defections. To study the institutions, customs, and codes or to study the behaviour and mentality without the subjective desire of feeling by what these people live, of realising the substance of their happiness—is, in my opinion, to miss the greatest reward which we can hope to obtain from the study of man.” -George Stocking


...the field-worker must, under the signature of science, achieve the cultivated, sensed point of view of the other
@apass #feedback (a privileged relation with the unknown [of the other artist to whom one gives feedback])


(Baxstrom:) witch hunt = experiential engagement with nonsense

Malinowski --> how can the invisible be forced into visibility or sensibility? ==>
•connect the study of diverse human social practices to the seemingly nonsensical worlds of gods, spirits, and witches that were offered as explanations
•countering hierarchical and polygenetic theories of diversity
•appropriate empirical tests in the face of the doubled, impossible object of knowledge

*method = cultivated ability to craft experience and testimony into a “sensible” explanation of what otherwise would simply be ruled out as “nonsense”

15th century Europe ecclesiastical crisis:
•demons going viral (the viral proliferation of demonic power beyond the grasp of human intuition and thought)
•proliferation of witches (within the general population)
}==> growing power of Satan on earth --> (sign of impending) apocalypse
==> growing fear and great doubt [--> like today!]

Malleus Maleficarum (on witchcraft, a revolution in early middle ages) -->
1. local relation between investigative procedures
2. constitution of evidence
3. assertion of a fact
--> expertise in matters real but invisible

16th century notions of the positive element of seeing witches, sorcerers, and Satan himself

God's apparent absence *in times of great change and strife* --> an *interpretive expertise* over the concrete, secondary manifestation of God's reality (was reassuring) ==> a relief to the pious believer : “God's embrace of life =/= devil's embrace of life” =/= Heretics managed God's absence without that opposition (a luxury to imagine such a world was denied to most of the people in that period, also denied to the modern subject of the secular present)

how does one know who is really hearing the prayers [of the faithful]?
devil overhearing and interfering with even the most intimate communications


inquisitor <-- 16th century questions of theology (in a world where the trappings of belief are everywhere but there is no incontrovertibly visible evidence of god's...)


demonologists of the 15th and 16th century were not sure about:
god
man
witch: the abyss between god and man = a kind of proof, a reassurance that the evil of the world can be explained (through the various iterations of satan's power)

demonologist --> “God must exist because Satan is right in front ot me!”


***desire to believe =/= (simple) belief***
•['desire to believe’ and ‘belief'] were not the same during the time of the witch craze
•were not the same in the fast-evolving discourses of the human sciences of the 19th century and early 20th century
•are not the same today


@apass:
1. the general tendency to remain an artist ~ a myth, an effect, a warrior
2. to make anomaly the law عمومیت استثنا


hearing the name of the witch --> subject to stict verification
demonologists and inquisitors at this time desired proof <-- viral proliferation of the witch came to provide that proof

***interrogation under torture = an experimental form of knowing in crisis*** [#styles of knowing]
confession -->{ *status of witnessing = a form of truth* }~-> Boyle's New Experiments 1660 revolutionized practical experimental procedures in the laboratory (for gernerations to come...)
•experiments such as the trial by water demonstrates a deep (if not misguided) *appreciation of cause-and-effect relations* relative to the invisible forces at work in the natural world (=/= indifference to the truth, retreat into superstition) ~=> rendering of such procedures in expressive works of *art* (indispensable to nascent protoscience --today--> an essential element of science's ability to express truth)


_+***'`~~/!=-~>

***the logic of gathering evidence***
(fundamental assumption of anthropology:)
[asserted by Levy-Bruhl:] ontological difference between the nonsensical world of “primitives” and the science of Western research ==> *“natives” could not (or would not) produce a “proper” explanation of the forces around them or their own beliefs and motivations in relation to these forces* (==> testimony + experience became essential tools for ethnographers)
--> ***encounter between researcher and subject*** [was never that of good faith intercultural sharing] ==constituted==> a series of severe tests (by which the researcher could gather necessary empirical evidence in order to make a felicitous truth statement regarding what was “really” at play)
}--> the nonsense to be mastered shifted from the demonic (~ incredible forces at play for the inquisitor ديوى) --to--> ديوانه the misguided tall tales fo the native
---->{this is relevant for artistic research environment, encounter/friction between different styles of knowing
#feedback: mastering the nonsense of the other artist-researcher
@apass, research presentation: misguided tall tales artists tell themselves}

[#feedback[...]