[...]retext” : its function is to provide a reason for going (partir) elsewhere [<-- i have done this]


getting involved --to--> martyrdom


author-turned-ethologist --> classic genres of ethological literature

(a matter of) *performing through narration the passing obligation that is now mine*

(Latourian) *amateur: a person who likes and cultivates her tastes and does her best to cultivate a kind of becoming-sensitive to the world*

in ethology (and in animal sciences) monologues make terrible narratives

[@Femke, @Pierre, ?can we do without] the philosophical tradition of: **searching for traces of ideological and political contamination** in the work of scientific naturalist (or whatever other field) --> you (often) find a perfect target for this sort of critique
•(pay attention to) what makes a perfect target for your sort of critique (@Laura's Jane Fonda, etc.)

[zoological bird:] sociobiological literature prepares you to accept a certain kind of fact about this bird =/= Zahavi's babblers however do (altruism & cooperation) in a remarkably more inventive and diversified way and for entirely different reasons that sociobiological birds

anthropocentrism (credit birds with complex intentions, and [why?] complex intentions always seem human)
to see birds as “dancing” and for fairly complex reasons could only have been a result of the fact that the observers projected onto the animals their own frameworks and experiences


Despret observing the birds + their ethologist --> the birds made Zahavi interesting

(Despret discovering that) any theory of representation was at once partial and totalizing, because it proposed to elucidate the complex work of relations and encounters from the sole standpoint of the human

(how Despret became) interested in actual practices (with Stengers and Latour), in the way they articulated questions and responded to questions

****stories that scientists [and Disney or Hollywood] develop about animals are also our stories**** --> these stories transform humans and their animals
--Stengers--> sciences (of the contemporaneity) for which: **production of knowledge = production of a way of being** ==> (they do not reveal what animals are, rather) they follow and accompany an act of becoming together : *an act of becoming with the stories that we construct concerning them* (good or bad)
•birds will have been far more interesting starting from the moment that Zahavi proposed to connect their stories to others [~-> how Cinderella became interesting for me when her stories became connected to other stories =/= restructure her story to make her fit my contemporary political correctness]
•sheep will have been far more sophisticated starting from the moment that Thelma Rowell asked them interesting questions

**to ask interesting question: to create conditions in which sheep [beings, your subject] are able to demonstrate an interest in these questions

**interesting research: looking at the conditions that allow beings to become interesting


{ how scientists made their animals agents = how scientists created the conditions for certain responses with respect to what was being asked of the animals }--Despret--> how these changing animals *became real* by way of the very *test of transformation* that had been proposed to them (~ how they were involved in the “process of verification”) --> *to understand the system of truth that was ay the heart of these tests* (=/= to produce an umpteenth critical analysis of “representation” @Pierre)
==> you are under the same constraints as those in whom you had placed your confidence

@Sina: do not construct knowledge about your mother behind her back! --> getting to know what matters (to them, to her) ==> allows transformations to occur
-i usually did both (as mentor in apass), construct knowledge behind people's back [psychosis] & getting to know what matters to them [paranoia]

(Despret discovered) one (unignorable) thing that mattered to scientists was: how animals take an active part in the knowledge that is produced about them


(why working on ajayeb bestiary involves becoming interested in sciences:) you work on animals --immediately--> you are marking on scientists

i remember the way i anticipated where a pigeon, a cat, spider, or ants, would make a home, a niche, in my childhood house...
the difference between ‘what i imagined’ & ‘where the nest actually appeared’ ==> made the world far more interesting
--> looking at the perception of animals (when you are child)


inventive and remarkable birds
happiness of sheep
sadness of captive wolves in a park in the Lorraine --> *not because they were captive but because captivity had transformed them into stupid and cruel beings*

[it is good to be able to say that] certain scientists not only do “bad science” (which remains a way of keeping distance) but that they do “science badly”


creatures that happened to be animals
creatures that happened to be ghosts
creatures that happened to be ...


(the influence of) Anglo-Saxon animal studies [on me]


(in Despretian way) learning to think from love


(the bad) fable of coming out of the closet
there is no closet. there are transformations.
falling from a horse, on a path that no longer leads to Damascus

(the story of) Saul does not answer God; he politely asks him to wait two minutes while he comforts his horse. let God wait; other things matter <--Despret-- this is where true conversation takes place

(a philosophy, or thought) one of: obligation =/= distance
(Stengers:) obligation =/= requirements -->{*a distinction that is to be made*, to be created, to be invented, not acknowledged as already manifest in the state of things}
obligation (is much more demanding than) =/= right
(Sina:) obligation =/= commitment
[*]being obligatet = agreeing to expose oneself to failure, refusing to construct the words of order that would protect oneself from the requirements of the activity
{not all activities arise from obligations = not all activities put themselves at risk, not all activities make an effort to present themselves politically}


Haraway's writing technique: a remedy for indifference and contempt --> *becoming attached to the multiple threads that make up the fabric of the world*

(Despret obligated to hear) the blackbird sang as if the world itself depended on its song --and-->
*the importance of things came to dwell in its voice*
*the blackbird made importance exist in another way*
*importance became incorporated in the world*

and this importance rises like a question [a question that comes after “what matters for..."] --Despret--> how can i now write in such a way as to be worthy of what matters, with a similar insistence, for another being? (my question in Cinderella diaries)

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

my history (of continuous interest, or what created the next “-->”):
iran / visual arts --> germany / lecture and performance --> research / heritage study --> case / ajayeb bestiary --> epistemology / animal --> science / anthropology

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

home funerals put into practice an important dimensino of the lives lived by the deceased --> participates actiively in the instauration of their existence
-instauration: [re-storying] restoring, participating in a transformation that leads to a certain existence = to more existence, in the case of the deceased: both a biographical supplement and the accomplishment of an existence in another realm of reality ==Souriau==> brilliance of reality (of the dead): regards of the existence of the deceased, provided we agree on the right regime of reality that can be granted to them --> (envisioning definition of the mode of existence)==enable==> to account for what the deceased do and what they have others do ==> describe how they interfere in the lives of the living --✕--> (we avoid the trap of) the tradition that captures and generally freezes the problem, separating the ways of being into two categories: “physical existence =/= psychological existence” ==> the deceased = non-existence, fantasy, belief, hallucinations... (<-- bad for ajayeb)

vigil
the deceased retain thier full relatinoal capacity
the midwives stress that it is important to carry on talking to them, with love, soflty, carefully choosing one's words...
death --> passage --> a medico-scientifice time frame in which the living have work to do (=/= the work of mourning)
body remains vibrant matter <== communication remains possible

taking care of events through their affects

(Despret asks) what do we know about what the body continues to feel and causes the person to feel once it has stopped breathing?


death midwives
share the conviction that death is not a matter of all or nothing
[people] can still talk to those who remain through memories or thoughts that arise in their presence
signs --> remain open to the possibility of being understood differently

death affects the face muscles in such a way that it produces a post-mortem smile (لبخند شهید) --> *smile (that comforts) ==> ‘deceased: a particularly robust being’ that unifies two ways of being:
1. he becomes an expressive relational being
2. his body becomes matter for expressions

midwife ==> a possibility in the sense of “or else, also” (=/= “either or”), in the valuable grammatical register of conjuctions: and, and, and...


these expressive modes that require *only recipients*, [=/= explanation: to give the phenomenon its scientific imprimatur] they just call for one to take into account
-this is tricky if you are in Iran's shia martyrdom culture or in the presense of Western authoritative sensual teacher. can there be a deliberate coexistence [an additive epistemological engagement --> *affirmation of the possibility that multiple and contradictory versions coexist*] of (the current enchanted version:) لبخند شهید and (the comming disenchanted version:) secular imprimatur in present iran?]

the dead body is both *biological & sacred*, object & subject, disenchanted & enchanted

disjunctive and controversial (یا “or else”) --(replaced by)--> “and” that challenge medical epistemology (each version “adds” to the current versoin rather than erase it)
•the fact that a smile can be a “natural” phenomenon does not prevent him from having wanted to comfort his family
•the “and” introduces a non-polemical challenge (an *open challenge* that opens up to other narratives) in terms of “there is always something else" = a commitment (that transforms ways of thinking and ways of feeling) [=/= Holakouee's روشنگری enlightened secularism]

the deceased:
•they invite themselves into dreams
•****they make presence of presence felt**** --> through stratagem (ruse of genre, skill in devising plans or schemes)
•they play on coincidences --> (as far as they are connected) anything can be used to make a sign <== **they are opportunists of enigma**
•they thwart all attempts to give meaning to the action
•they do have regularity ==> (it is possible to constitute) *a science of the deceased* [that fits them, one that describe them, that can interpret in the sense of guiding a reply to what they want or request] --> the deceased have:
◦an ecology: milieu is a cruicial issue for them (we sometimes witness real extinction in highly unfavorable niches)
◦an [*]ethology: (a practical science of) ***what beings do and get others to do*** = (a practical science of) **what they are capable of doing** (==> the facts that it describes should only be described using the infinitve) [Despret > Deleuze > Spinoza =/= classical ethology = behavioral biology: studies primarily specific instincts and invariants]

}<--Deleuze-- [ajayebnameh عجایب نامه:] *a practical science of the manners of being* interested in what the thing or the animal can do --> (the bestiary ajayeb's authors) made a kind of register of the powers of the animal (powers of the world) : an *alimentary regime* that is about the modes of existence (including inanimate things: the diamond, what can it do? what tests is it capable? what does it support? we define things by what they can do ==> it opens up forms of experimentation = my ajayeb, Cinderella diaries, Telegram bestiary, Despret's ethology) [=/= interested in what is called the animal classification, one will define the animal above all, whenever possible, by its essence (by what it is)]
--Latour--> reinstituting nature, *one does not learn from beings turned into zombies* (deanimated) ==> (ethology is required to) address an animal defined as non-indifferent: an animal for which the way it is addressed matters
--Despret--> [*]ethology: a practical science of the modes of interrogating and experimenting with ways of being = ****a practical science of the modes of attention**** (that are required by the ways of being of those it aims to study)

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

working on:
•[with Despret and Katie] How my “special things” belong also to others, and how in this belonging i can unlearn something about my things, call it heritage
•in my own performances, the proposal that “story” and “medium” do not need to fit... is also why my lectures don't produce similar joinings (for the audience)


every phenomena is at the same time experienced, resisted, measured, enunciated, performed, narrated

politics, poetics and affects of finitude

fossil nihilism

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

Frankenstein: an all-purpose modifier to denote technological crimes against nature--a criminal only after being left alone by his horrified creator
--Latour--> we have failed to care for our own creations : Frankenstein as a parable for political ecology

to be coextensive with...
to become compositionist: one that sees the process of human development as a process of becoming ever-more attached to nonhuman natures (=/= fallen from nature)

story of modernity:
•humankind's emancipation from nature
•***progress (forward movement of the arrow of time) = indifference to the past*** ==> “past: an archaic and dangerous confusion”
•the confidence of being able to differentiate clearly what in the past was still mixed up: facts & values

green politics ==> gloomy asceticism, a terror for trespassing nature, and diffidence toward industry, innovation, technology, and science

my work has been against the notion of “nature = a hierarchical totality”

emancipation =/= attachment =/= intimacy

*environment: what appeared when unwanted consequences came back to haunt the originators of collective modernizing actions
*environmentalism: when the unwanted consequences are suddenly considered to be a monstrosity (#apocalyptic) ==> abstain & repent --> Leo:

environmentalist logic: “precaution = abstention”

‘global warming’ is an unintended consequence (like anything in earth) <-- narrative of attachment =/= an scandal, end of the world (<-- apocalyptic narrative of emancipation, modernist myth of mastery)

pristine nature =/= our nature ~= national park: a rural ecosystem complete with post offices, well-tended roads, highly subsidized cows, and handsome villages

(Latour giving the example of theology:) ‘mastery ==> attachment’ : “the christian God gets folded into, involved with, implicated with, and incarnated into his creation.” =/= a master who is freed from dependents
}--Latour--> dominion means attachment

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

Mi You

modernization process of European societies ==> secularity ==> “religion = only one option among other ways of self-fulfilment and human flourishing”

*self-sufficient humanism has never existed on the same scale before in European societies before the Enlightenment*

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#writing for mini-series bestiaries
inspired by the https://www.instagram.com/ajayebedidani/
1. https://www.instagram.com/p/CPYnbZnH2w3/ short episode at night in country X there is a talking apple that speeks in unknown language. character acting, location garden, animation, play with mixed CG architecture
2.


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borderline animals --in--> medieval bestiary

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*alegorical world* --> eastern fables + easter & western animal lore + christian Physiologus [not ancient sciences?!] ~=> bestiary

Physiologus, bestiary --> popular source for sermon writers [<-- relevance for lecture performance]



[email to Mona]
bebin man ye chizi cherto pert sareham kardam. in gharare bere tu catalog alan
*working title for the lecture at Mona's project “Rat Race”:
The Pray and The Visible -- An animal escape case
*short description:
the lecture-performance approaches the idea of the animals’ “friendship” in a historical and speculative look at the anthropomorphic geography of fables from middle-south Asian bestiary till pettube.com uploads.

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

...political satire
Obeyd Zakani - mush o gorbe



some of us are woman, child, animal
(coded as a girl)

(man up! woman up! child up! animal up! etc.)


the world that is claiming me, recruiting me, ...

if you are an iranian child you would know some violences...
endangered being, endangered animal, if you are then you know what is a violent care.
*leaving unprotected*


becoming attached, making friends, putting together a family

like other anxious creatures, I can exhibit friendliness (=/= keeping my stubborn alterity intact. how much space for the utter strangeness we are allowed or able to hold?)

an iranian default position


داستانِ dastan-e


according to Heidegger:
thinking <---> thanking
complaining <---> explaining
(to explain =/=? to thank)
(to complain =/=? to think)
[explain : from Latin explain? ?(“I flatten, spread out, make plain or clear, explain”), from ex- ?(“out”) + plan? ?(“I flatten, make level”), from planus ?(“level, plain”); see plain and plane.]


afformations

sexual arousal, and its presence in freindship,
normalcy codes, and institutionalizations of friendship (--> friendship insures the modeling of all sorts of vital ethical and political dispositions)
(#harem)

pro-ject, intro-ject, and ob-ject
the things we introject,

fb

good example, bad example, etc.

if you “understand” someone you are off friendship
understanding presuposses distance and difference
friendship must include disidentification
empathy replacing understanding? (do we really want an “empathic non-understanding”? to enfold the spectator with..)
[empathic non-understanding: a relationship that gives up the self's need for constant affirmation (Laura Marks) --> pulls us instead into a “meterial understanding” of our connection with other animals] ==> challenging the ontological primacy of centers (in general and not only human center stage)
“you are thrown off by this narcisistic extension that the other appropriated by your identification has become” (Avital)
-disproportion is always present and operating



i am not sure if there is an iranian pop song we can agree to like (or to hit ‘like’)



symbolic language
attaching sounds to things/animals/species when they were not visible
(“Never ignore a sound!”)


The jungle is a social space. {biological real, disciplinary boundary making stories}


Children at age six are typically anthropomorphic

...youth “hanging out” in age-specific gangs they are “growing themselves up,” often in a milieu of violence and power

deprivation of (avuncular and) grandparental care =?=> lifelong hostility to one's parents

elderly functions have been lost in disintegration

.

ok. let's put the whip down. the point is just to mention the word whip, and since you are all well trained, it does its job. we are all trained animals, gathered here, calm and curious, want to investigate what or who is training us, whipping our asses, associating our senses with signals he or she or it sends to our bodies, being petted or molested by it...
•strong strangle-holds and deadlines


Tintin and Milou companionship (Milou is the name of Hergé's first girlfriend)
Milou's his internal monologue (addressed to the reader) until Haddock came in the series in The Crab with the Golden Claws.
Hergé always draws Snowy at particular angles
(Tintin in the Land of the Soviets)
[i am relating to my stay at Belgium]

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

which orifices are opening up to which kind of phallus?
(the phallus of confession; I open up to you, you are prior to me, you impregnate me,)

my repetition compultions


what offers me hospitality and shelter?

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i am sorry to have to perform some iranian Tarof maneuvers in order to move or move on ironically Tarof temporarily blocks the movement
-Tarof belongs to the tropes of (less violently appropriative or even nonappropriative[?]) greeting (in strictly iranian sense,) “Greeting rellects the double movement of approach and withdrawal that issues in a passage tracking the movement in history that defines the conditions of historical existence.” (Avital)
[if you don't greet me i vanish in thin air! i am not kidding! i am also freaked out by those who pretend cool and that their arrival and existence dosn't depend on the other greeting them. or, are the already greeted by some other mechanisms that are not immediately visible to me?]
-postponing the encounter
-as a greeting ritual, Tarof at once performs and tests the reliability of social links
-Tarof has everything to do with the poetic act
-i like to open another trackline of research: does Tarof appropriates the Other? (its relations to violence?)
-Tarof-greeting establishes a relationality between... texts and historicity?
-can we understand Tarof that it originates the relation between man and the divine? ---"infinity after you!” (unendlich nach dir!)--intense intimacy of infinite belonging.
-merger of the sacred with terrestrial destinies. you are made a demigod at the moment of Tarof
-a temporary co-belonging, in possession of the Other
-in which sense Tarof offers trace of a relation to an ungraspable alterity?
-between what and how it holds separation? (Tarof's very task is to hold together the separation)
-its relations to the sacred?
-what kind of encounter takes place under the sway of the Tarof?
-repeatability of the Tarof is built into its singular occurrence
-Tarof, a *reciprocal promise* that aims to correspond to the most essential level of the other.
-the greeted is first and newly returned to his essence
-Tarof corrupts greeting
-the story of turtle and two storks in Kelile Demne (کلیله و دمنه): friedship due to adjacency and terms of nearness or farness to the other. (Tarof is activated by and sustains adjacency) --- delicate trajectories of greeting
-how do we greet a dog. the submission necessary in greeting. we submit to it when we greet the dog. hi dog. what would a practical Tarof with dog look like? do we have Tarof with animals? The Tarof's affection itself cannot be separated from a desire to dominate.

Levinas narrates a greeting, when he was in a concentration camp in germany, they call them dog. then a stray dog shows up and they call him Bobi. when they came back from the dehumanizing labor of the camp, Bobi would run to them every day and greet them. and that was what rehumanize them.

tarof and complaint
(is tarof capable of forming a protest?)

using tropes of traffic in different cultures with relation to tropes of technology, mobility and constitution of freedom. in Germany talking about ‘rail’ and ‘track’, changing tracks, shifting tracks and so on, meaning there is a predefined trajectory systematically mobilizing the individual in plain of possibilities. in US people more use cars and car can go anywhere, park or decide when and in which speed to move on, including complete autonomy on the direction and velocity of movement, accompanying the North-American notion of freedom and relation to destiny. in Iran the movement is also based on personal cars but everyone is stuck in traffic, so there is a freedom of choice implied and is initially available but then on the plain of possibilities there are all sorts of technologically situated block-roads that traffic in and hinder motility. this is also a condition of Tarof. “shoma befarmayid!” (after you!)

*Tarof might be as well a mode of resistance in order not to enter the economy of the other (--> at the mercy of the other), when they say “it's on me.”


•رودربایستی <--> ? a [در رودربایستی گیر کردن] (a --?--> حیا)


shah: one who sits while others[...]