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[Naveeda Khan]

Perhaps the question could be posed as, how do we come to grips with the universal, the supra-historical, or even the cosmos within our global present, imagining a local that lays claims upon all three?

is there a Muslim environmental imaginary?

‘Islamic ecology and environmental ethics’ --> the need to center a vibrant materiality or the liveliness of things in the anthropology of Islam (that has been to date largely preoccupied with Muslim polities and subjectivities.)

It should come as no surprise that my own efforts at centering materiality comes through studying how these predominantly Muslim farmers interact with and come to acknowledge nonhuman forms of life (including the figure of Khidr خضر, dogs, river waters, silt, and lightning, to name a few). Finally, I remain concerned to explore how the singularities of these lives, both human and nonhuman, come to be hitched to the global. This research will culminate in a book tentatively titled Ensouling the Anthropocene: Riverine Life and Climate Change in Bangladesh, in which “ensouling” treats the problem of scaling up singularity to the global, intensifying efforts that began with “Of Children and Jinn.” [source: https://culanth.org/curated_collections/19-everyday-islam/discussions/20-interview-with-naveeda-khan-about-of-children-and-jinn]

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(what i am reading in ajayeb)_with Naveeda: “Muslim cosmology and eschatology hold promoise of ecological thought, providing an unexpectedly materialist perspective on our creaturely interconnectedness.”

[ajayeb (and telegram) is full of] gestures of incorporating repugnant [offensive to the mind] others---that one sees reflections on divine creation qua [als] creaturliness


thoroughly disabused
aufklären آگاهیدن آگاییدن

expound تفسیر

incentive مشوق, فتنه انگيز

litany مناجات وعبادت تهليل دار

showmanship (نمايشگرى?)
effektvolle Darstellung, Schauspielproduktion

queasy به طور تهوع آوری لطیف مزاج

(a gedture of) ludic [playfull, spielerisch] transcendence of [the] present

obdurate سرسخت
-showing unfeeling resistance to tender feelings-
(picture of the world as) pristine nature طبیعت بکر being destroyed by humans (--> narcissistic?)
=/= view of theology/religion on ecology
=/= (stories of humans and dogs:) shared creatureliness and companionship entailing a turn to cofeasting on the flesh of the world --> mutual fate

does islamic theology (in both elite and popular belief) offers us a way toward *sensing our embeddedness in [...]

[...] 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]

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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 appropriat[...]

[...]support depends on a social readiness to nurture, itself a product of successful ontogeny of an older generation.)
-many myths correspond to the ontogenesis. in Ontogeny, timing is everything---narrative.
-aspect of the ontogenetic self---(the modern world has lost the ways to guide the) new person emerging at each stage
[from kinfolk complexity and elderhood to medically sustained old age] -- i myself have turned to old folk to do storytelling, as necessity(!?)

one emerging in Pleistocene, is about perceiving one's place in the scheme of things (and not sending people down the pit into darknesses)

WE NOT ONLY LOOKED ‘AT’ ANIMALS, WE ALSO LOOKED ‘INSIDE’ THEM, realizing that they were more kin than indicated by our exteriors. (it wasn't Aristotle first who was performing such procedures)

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

inheritance (DNA, etc.) calls upon human society and imagination to invent its exact expressions.

human species’ “theme” is Paleolithic

(those who are “better” live in a natural environment and a cultural system that are closer to) meeting the “expectations” of the genes

Children at age six are typically anthropomorphic

trees structure space

**imagining the possibilities of something else being in there.
(how we were doing it? before fire)

“A meditative stillness that is good for the human soul, suggests poet Gary Snyder, was invented by motionless hunters. That moment of silent reverence comes also at the final death stroke when one succumbs to the cycle of life.” (Shepard)
[from predation to hunting (there is a huge epistemological shift) (matter of representation and interpretation)]

mammalian ecology

[(let's) risk everything (instead of risk-reducing) --- issues of representation and agency in thinking ‘with’ animals. textual, metaphor animal in Attar line of thinking]

a distant call in known terrain says it is the there, not the here, where attention should be paid. [far, origins of our tropes, metaphysics? abstraction? =/=? motionless hunters invented motionless meditative worship]
-(kinfolk in) swamps, brush, and forest (in terms of discerning the *relationships between clues*)
-(indirect) dealing with the escapable (=?=> tracking strategies + symbolic thought)

a central theme: (a banquet/feast at which) the participants--eater and eaten--risk the improvements of mind against the certainty of occasional poor decisions, (faulty memory, carelessness, errors of judgment, and the decrepitude of age and disease.)
-Those who fled had to understand [the limits of distance, the intentions of the others, and] (the ability to control) the abyssal terror that itself would engulf them if they submitted to panic[...]

[...]ould afford slaves) <-- this heritage has never hardened into a clear ratial category within the society*

we must regard them as actors *even when we cannot see their choices*

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childhood Elias chap1

[*]childhood: idealized romantic construct, with denied legal rights, reflection of adults about themselves:
•nostalgia for an individual and collective past
•
=/= children vacillate between innocence & awareness, morality & immorality, cruelty & kindness, foolishness & wisdom, , , **children act as sophisticated consumers**
--Elias--> ***children make emotional, political, consumerist choices***

how adults construct childhood --> ***aesthetic social imagination***

how adults imagine children (in idealized forms ==> evocation of emotions) ==> give meaning to (individual and) collective realities

childhood --> worry + obligation =/= adulthood --> ease + freedom

(my childhood is sometimes remembered by me so different than of my friends --> makes the universal media objects specifically precious: cartoons that were watched by us across border and time ---> go to Sina's Children's Media Watch List childrensmedia.net)

imagine children -->
•nature of emotions
•relationship to religion
•relationship to society
◦articulation of attitude towards society
•constructing concept of:
◦individual
◦community
◦nation
◦gender
◦age

Elias's notion of emotion --> a broad category to index concepts of morally, ethics, politics, aspirational acts,

(everything depends on the ways we remember our [emotional experience of] childhood)

(memory = salad of) fragments of memory + emotions from our experience + emotions experienced by others + what we have been told by others about our childhood


common theory --> age between two and eleven children are most sensitive to external factors ==> most vulnerable to advertising

*age seven*
children are increasingly controlled by symbolic relationships and images (+ make judgment about things)

*under five*
{human characters ~?/= animated characters}--> belief in imaginary characters and monsters, management of emotions

*age two*
(end of) two --> children begin pretending (until age of five)

*over four*
idiosyncratic system of thinking about causality (extraordinary plays larger role than adults)


create and identify emotions in visual images

fantasizing =/= fantastical thinking

(for children) wishing = mental + magical + it exists in relatio to skill [---> go to Cinderella, waiting]


Elias's study of ch[...]

[...]eeda shiwsyin her research a single worshiper's choice of striving: relay upon a jinn for guidance on better ways to be a Muslim

*striving --> put collectivity (for example family) in jeopardy*
*@apass

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(state pronouncements of) correct way to [?how to] *attach to the prophet*

becoming a knowledgeable religious disputant

Naveeda > Iqbal > the weary self that could not be roused to piety by religious zeal strikes a posture as much of resignation to sin by a nonpracticing Muslim as of a certain pride of withholding oneself from conformism.
--> of one goes to prayer in a mosque it is by one's own choice

...to dismiss differences = the political expression of the petit bourgeoisie


Iqbal's disapproval of guidance --variance--> (Sahib) seeking guidance from a jinn for pious pursuits

singularity of Sahib's efforts at improving himself as a Muslim --> (Iqbalian aspiration) posture of the nonconformist

state's fears that the milieu was pervaded by non-Muslim others posting as Muslims --jinn--> [made vivid] *skeptical experience of everyday life as a place of illusion and trance* (go to --> my work on Relaxing Horror Tales for Children and Adults)

bedat بدعت
accretion of customs in the form of innovation


jinn
-what nature of influences jinn introduce into human lives?

•library of religious commentary
•prophetic tales
•magicians’ manuals
•folklore
•ethnography
•
--> characterization of jinn

human ~= jinm --> endowed with passion, rational faculties, responsibility for their actions, etc. they eat, grow, procreate, die

constantly evolving relationship between humans and jinns

from pre-islamic --to--> Islamic
both good & bad ascribed to jinn's constitution --to--> to be much more unequivocally associated with evil

the little mischievous nafs نفس that make up a self --> Muslim interiority (projects?)

...in the belief of jinns:
•complex arrangement of cultural memory
•political strategy
•mental illness
•individual subjectivity
•
--✕--> *Naveeda taking the existence of jinn for granted ==> (her effort) to learn more about the family that adopted them and their efforts at striving*

*taking the existence of X for granted ==to==> learn about the people who adopted X*


“Muslim children - how bring them up?” vol 3
(in Islam) child: bring without aghl عقل + ability to communicate with divine beings, without sin
--> always under the threat of being easily led astray

eight-year-old Maryam
-attuned to ways in which this world and the jinn world were mirrored and intertwined
-would look [...]

[...]es and pieces of past or anticipated memory in dialogue with the names, places, and forms on the map[...]

(Olearius drawings and frontispieces) establishes a geography, manufactured from cartographic elements

When a geography is given a sense of identification, of difference, doubt, a discerning gaze, or a critical reverie [the people, animals, subjects in the map cannot see how they are being mapped]


(how certain places are made to become the) simulacra of others*

perspective, visual style, narrative economy, scale, [...], the stakes of mimesis, and reception


story about the demise of nation and its cartographer:
(Dreamtigers by J. L. Borges)
In my childhood I was a fervent worshiper of the tiger: not the jaguar, the spotted “tiger” of the Amazonian tangles and the isles of vegetation that float down the Paraná, but that striped, Asiatic, royal tiger, that can only be faced by a man of war, on a castle atop an elephant. I used to linger endlessly before one of the cages at the zoo; I judged vast encyclopedias and books of natural history by the splendor of their tigers. (I still remember those illustrations: I who cannot rightly recall the brow or the smile of a woman.) Childhood passed away, and the tigers and my passion for them grew old, but still they are in my dreams. At that submerged or chaotic level they keep prevailing. And so, as I sleep, some dream beguiles me, and suddenly I know I am dreaming. Then I think: this is a dream, a pure diversion of my will; and now that I have unlimited power, I am going to cause a tiger.
Oh, incompetence! Never can my dreams engender the wild beast I long for. The tiger indeed appears, but stuffed or flimsy, or with impure variations of shape, or of an implausible size, or all too fleeting, or with a touch of the dog or the bird.

****
The one that is in the other forever betrays its differences with respect to its surrounding milieu in the field of the frame.


cartography at the time of its emergence in early modern print-culture [...] maps were tipped into books to call attention to the aspect and format of a medium for which seeing and reading were of a same character.


toward productive, critical, and even creative speculation


a map in a movie begs and baits us to ponder the fact that who we are or whomever we believe ourselves to be depends, whether or not our locus is fixed or moving, on often unconscious perceptions about where we come from and may be going.

To be able to say who one is depends on believing in the illusion that consciousness is in accord with where it is felt in respect at once to itself and to its milieus.***

maps ==> that we are naturally in the world

ontology is a function of geography

*** Figures in a topographic field a[...]