[...]t
(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)

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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

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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)

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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

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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 b[...]