popular and learned interest in monsters
(in the 16th century & 17th century Baconian scientific program: ) treatments of nature and natural history must have included (with rigorous selection) monsters (~ aberrations in the natural order: new, rare, and unusual nature, both exotic & domestic)
[*]nature: an ingenious craftsman ——> [*]monster: nature’s most artful work (——> they bridged the natural & the artificial)
—— corresponded to the activities of nature =/= types of subject matter, methods of investigation
—— interest in irregularities (=/= end of 17th century interest in nature’s uniformity and order)

(Daston –> a case study of) the changing relationship between popular & learned culture

…monsters began to lose their religious resonance
(from) fear ——to——> delight
(from) prodigy ——to——> wonder
(from) sermon ——to——> table-talk
(from) horrible, terrible, effrayable, espouventable ——to——> strange, wonderful, merveilleux (marvellous جالب)
(from) final cause ——to——> proximate cause (physical explanations and the natural order)
==> nature began to assume the role of an autonomous entity with a will (and sense of humour of her own) ~~> natural wonder

The Scripture sayth, before the ende
Of all thinges shall appeare,
God will wounders straunge thinges send,
As some is sene this yeare.
The selye infantes, voyde of shape,
The calues and pygges so straunge,
With other mo of suche mishape,
Declareth this worldes chaunge.

(monsters ——> shift from) signs of God’s wrat ——to——> signs of nature’s fertility
(by the end of 17th century) ——to——> comparative anatomy and embryology (teratology)
(from) اعجوبه prodigy ——to——> examples of medical pathology

earlier tradition of interest in monster:

[with Avital]
*modalities of dealing-with:
-parasitism
-(under the spell) drugs =/= struggle (according to Marxian protocol: one is drugged and disabled [Date-rape-drug as an incapacitating agent] and neutralized by state apparatus, drugs are administrated and spend in all sorts of insidious ways.)
on the discourse of stupidity: Marx (in writing to Engels says that he) believed that proletariat are stupid. Marx’s insight to replace the other drugs that have put so many into a stupor. people with Religion are not around, they are praying somewhere to some hallucination [this is Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, and others in 20th century] ——> ideological stuporous drugs, ‘everyone is stoned on something’ =/= alert and lucid. [highly problematic!]
-this is about a body recognizing its ‘enemy’ (the figure of enemy for every and each of us and the way we “recognize” it, as historical bodies and minds inheriting the boys of 20th century.) ——- the state of the struggle depends on certain metaphorologies on ‘clean’ that are problematic and phantasmatic and on the loose. ——> [the issue is that there is no “clean body”.] how to do dirty work? (——> for ‘morality’ and ‘clean’ go to Freud on the origin on morality: morality began as we stopped sniffing our asses and stood erect, nose in the air, away from the dirt [that we are] ——> morality’s phobic appropriations and designations, [Lacan: from the genital order to the sublime; az kun be fayakon از کون به فیکون %——> #ouroboros #serpent], [so when we stood up, stood erect, our genitals became center, exposing ourselves to the other, sexually centered exposure], [], [],)
-Marxian: language/tool/art as a virus that infiltrates ideological structures
-Lacoue-Labarthe: in 20th century there are three fundamental modalities of “dealing-with,” three modes of relatedness to our concerns, our anxieties, our worries, our work, our projects [three major motifs for the thinkers that continue to provoke our thoughts]: (1) *struggle* that would be the Marxian motor, the modality in terms of concern for social justice. [Delanda on Marx ——> a model of synthesis: a conflict of opposites] (2) *mission* as introduced and lunched by Heidegger, who was on a mission: we have a mission, we have a mission of transmission, we have a mission to inscribe things——not from God but from what has happened to us and been left to us after the death of God (as Nietzsche has announced.) {yes, without a proper address, a state of epistemic alert, and so on} and (3) *task* associated with Benjamin. the Aufgabe is that which inscribes in itself ‘giving up,’ the Aufgabe, it means it is impossible, we take it on as a kind of ethical, political obligation, but in the word Aufgabe is also ‘Gabe’ meaning ‘gift’ in German, it is gift and giving-up. [Derrida beautifully asks to negotiate endlessly with the ‘given,’ even if the Gift that is given is poisonous.] ——>{ we can see how operate but also how they contaminate (and leak into each other.) we might have a sense of three of them}
-ontology of “struggling” a way out of aporia [denotes, in philosophy, a philosophical puzzle or state of puzzlement] ——> we can’t! ——> we must try to work to locate modalities of stagnancy (rokud رکود) without necessarily seeing the exit. how do we live with these catastrophic markers that mark us?

(Stengers) connecting materialism with struggle ——> (in apass) we are descendants of this trope

paleonymics: a certain operation according to which one continues to put old words to work. The use of a pre-existing word in a new context. —— we are stuck with old pomping meanings.

we are seeking to redefine the paths of beings that are unique to 'ajayeb without giving them substance and without jumping immediately into transcendence. (using Latour words) [transcendence IS NEVER gradual, in the places i come from, it is always a shock, happening, a truth-event]
-each word (God, angel, jinn, fog, etc.) brought into its own network,
-what are contrasts and of category mistakes particular to each
-and their crossings——and what is the vocabulary specific to each crossing

explanatory rage (tavahoshe roshangari توحش روشنگری) —✕—> networks necessary for religious meaning

the network of associations necessary for the exercise of religion without bracketing off its ontological requirements.

نسبت دادن attribution =/= explanation (behavior assigned to its cause) =/= inference (quality/attribute assigned to the agent’s observed behavior)
-can we do without *explanatory style*? (a person’s causal dimensions of stability and globality) ——> past dealing (optimism, pessimism, etc.)
-can we do without *locus of control*? (a person’s locus conceptualized as internal) ——> future dealing (fate, hope, etc.)

'ajayeb is a ‘network’ more than anything else, in it “God” has no special privilege, is not located in addition to or beyond other beings