In Badiou’s Logiques des mondes, the shift is from the axis Being-Event to the axis World-Event. What this means is that, in Logiques des mondes, Being, World and Event do not form a triad: we have either the opposition of Being and World (appearance), or the opposition of World and Event. There is an unexpected conclusion to be drawn from this: insofar as (Badiou emphasizes this point again and again) a true Event is not merely a negative gesture, but opens up a positive dimension of the New, an Event IS the imposition of a new world, of a new Master-Signifier (a new Naming, as Badiou puts it, or, what Lacan calls vers un nouveau significant). The true evental change is the passage from the old to the new world. One should even make a step further and introduce the dimension of dialectics here: an Event CAN be accounted for by the tension between the multiplicity of Being and the World, its site is the symptomal torsion of a World, it is generated by the excess of Being over World (of presence over re-presentation). The properly Hegelian enigma is here not “how is an Event, the rise of something truly New, possible?”, but, rather, how do we pass from Being to World, to (finite) appearance, i.e., how can Being, its flat infinite multiplicity, APPEAR (to itself)? Is it not that this presupposes a kind of “negativity” that has to be somehow operative in the midst of Being itself, some force of (not infinity, but, on the contrary) finitization, what Hegel called the “absolute power” of tearing apart what in reality belongs together, of giving autonomy to appearance. Prior to any “synthesis,” Spirit is what Kant called “transcendental imagination,” the power to abstract, to simplify/mortify, to reduce a thing to its “unary feature,” to erase its empirical wealth. Spirit is the power to say, when it is confronted with the confusing wealth of empirical features: “All this doesn’t really matter! Just tell me if the feature X is there or not!” Maybe, a FOURTH term is thus needed, which sustains the triad of Being/World/Event, a negativity (“death drive”) reducible to none of the three.

From Karnac Books in London:

Synopsis: Psychoanalysts make the best detectives! When it comes to divining motives, deciphering ambiguous pronouncements, detecting delusions, and foiling the tricks memory plays, famed French analyst Jacques Lacan – turned self-proclaimed retired Inspector Quesjac Canal – is second to none (apologies to Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, Edgar Allen Poe’s Dupin, and Umberto Eco’s William of Baskerville). Reluctantly drawn into helping hapless New York City police detectives with crimes reported by luminaries like Rolland Saalem, music director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and involving prominent personages like Tobias Trickler, Mayor of New York City, and Sandra Errand, Vice-President for North American sales at YVEH Distributors of Spirits, Canal solves cases that are anything but what they appear to be and mends tears of the heart and soul at the same time.

Description: The Psychoanalytic Adventures of Inspector Canal includes three intrigues that weave together psychoanalytic themes, historical mysteries, and contemporary issues in a unique manner. In “The Case of the Lost Object,” the conductor of the New York Philharmonic becomes obsessed about the theft from his Lincoln Center office of the slow movement from a precious original musical score. In “The Case of the Pirated Formula,” a hard-charging businesswoman is determined to stop a Chinese counterfeit version of the famous green Chartreuse liqueur her company distributes from flooding the American market. And in “The Case of the Liquidity Squeeze,” the sex life of the beloved mayor of New York City becomes fodder for public consumption and derision when he is accused of paying for his visits to a so-called massage parlor from public coffers. The psychoanalytic themes of love, desire, and loss intertwine as important relationships develop between Canal and those he assists.

‘Inspector Canal’s missing score wins highest marks on my music stand. Fink gives us here a novel with a witty tempo, combining suspense and intelligent entertainment that are bubbly, light, and tasty – not just like Perrier but with the kind of good taste only French Champagne can deliver. This is the work of a great maestro conducting sophisticated characters with psychological mastery. The reader can only clap enthusiastically and cry “Encore!”’ – Luz Manríquez, Carnegie Mellon University School of Music, winner of the Diapason d’Or in 2008 for “Music for a Summer Evening”

‘Edgar Allan Poe may be the founder of the modern detective genre, but he is also the creator of the most famous French detective begotten by American writers’ imagination: the Chevalier Auguste Dupin. Like Dupin, Bruce Fink’s Quesjac Canal, who lives in an enclave of extreme refinement, where upper-class tastefulness reigns, comes to the rescue of perplexed local inspectors. His approach to solving mysteries is an interesting combination of psychoanalysis (he spontaneously analyzes anyone with whom he comes into contact), flirtatiousness, and reliance on the curative effects of gastronomy. Who could object?’ – Pierre Verdaguer, Professor of French, University of Maryland, author of La Seduction Policière: Signes de Croissance d’un Genre Reputé Mineur (“Detective Seductions: Signs of Growth in a Reputedly Minor Genre”)

Notes about the author(s): Bruce Fink is a practising Lacanian psychoanalyst, analytic supervisor, and Professor of Psychology at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He trained as a psychoanalyst in France for seven years and is a member of the psychoanalytic institute Lacan created shortly before his death, the École de la Cause Freudienne in Paris. He is also an affiliated member of the Pittsburgh Psychoanalytic Society and Institute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is author of several books on Lacan, including The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance and A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique

My people, if my presence among you and my reminding you of God’s signs is too much for you, then I put my trust in God. Agree on your course of action, you and your partner-gods—do not be hesitant or secretive about it—then carry out your decision on me and give me no respite.[i]

These few words by Noah encapsulate such a great deal of direction that it would be a pity to view it as simply negligible. The operative word in the first sentence—in my estimation—is “presence”. This word has in many ways been a focus of an entire tradition of political thought. Notwithstanding the meandering that has taken place concerning its precise conceptualization and the perennial threat of representative modes of democracy, it can be said that an authentic and truly inclusive political arrangement must take into account the substantial weight of presence. It is this factor that is constantly elided by the observer qua necromancer. On the one hand, when the observer gives the shrouded being a facelift, we are immediately within the realm of perfunctory representation. Presence is only accounted for when the observer is overwhelmed. Revolutionary upheaval—specifically proletarian modes—is perfectly analogous in this instance. This is the presence of something that is beyond reproach or reconciliation. No matter how vigorously the appendages of ideology seek to disrupt the movement through distortion, the built up momentum is almost infallible. Thus, the practice of elision conducted by the observer coincides with its internally conceived failure. We are not dealing with the Lacanian notion that repression and the return of the repressed is one and the same thing, though it may be mistakenly conceived in this manner. What is elided is not a signifier.

The last sentence is of particular importance because it signals the cognizance and acceptance of what is about to befall Noah. In a similar gesture, the shrouded individual allows for the onslaught of meaning to befall her as a form of acquiesced retribution. But why is there a need to permit perpetual signification? Why, because the initial stage of primal exposure was deemed shameful on the part of the Muslim woman. We have now discovered two specific levels of shame.

It is only that which is revealed that inherits the function of the revolutionary subject’s respiratory apparatus. This, of course, is the “earth that would not purchase the deluge for a drop of water.”[iii] There is always a degree of separation that distances the veil from being. It should never be treated as an appendage, as it is often done so today. In fact, it is the “corrupted water that had forgotten its divine origin in the rain and rivers sent by God.”[iv] Of course it must be conceded that the veil is an instrument of particular discursive regimes, but one must look to its divine origin and ultimate meaninglessness. It is only in fact a simple shroud, meant to serve as a guide to that which is of ultimate meaning.

[ii] The Qur’an, trans., M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, 133; 10:73.

[iii] Roy Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran, 267.

[iv] Roy Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran, 267.

© Arshavez Mozafari – Ph.D. Candidate – Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations – University of Toronto. None of the ideas expressed here can be reduplicated in any shape or form without the explicit consent of the author: a.mozafari@utoronto.ca

Aristotle (who seems to have done a lot to improve the dream life of Islamic thinkers of these centuries) appeared to Sohravardi in a quasi dream and confirmed that the mystical and visionary strain of thought was the only true philosophy. In this dream Aristotle—whom Sohravardi calls not only by his usual title, “the First Teacher,” but also “the succor of souls, and the guide of wisdom”—first gave Sohravardi a long, rather scholastic lecture on essence and existence, then “praised his teacher the divine Plato in a way that amazed me. Then [continues Sohravardi] I asked him: ‘Has any one of the philosophers of Islam attained to his rank?’ He answered: ‘No, not to a thousandth part of his rank.’ Then I enumerated a group I knew about and he paid no attention to them. Then I mentioned [the Sufis] Bistami and Tustari and their like and it was as if he rejoiced. He said: ‘It is these who are truly the philosophers and sages! They did not stop at formal knowledge but went on to participatory, unitive, experiential knowledge … They spoke what we have spoken.’ Then he departed from me and left me to weep at his departure.”[v]

[ii] Roy Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran, 93.

[iii] Roy Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran, 153.

[iv] Roy Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran, 152.

[v] Roy Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran, 153.

© Arshavez Mozafari – Ph.D. Candidate – Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations – University of Toronto. None of the ideas expressed here can be reduplicated in any shape or form without the explicit consent of the author: a.mozafari@utoronto.ca

There is an apparent contradiction that requires resolution. While the shrouded personality’s isolation is redoubled, she is readily identifiable. If she is readily identifiable then this must annul the supposition that she is isolated beyond identification. When a composite sketch is ordered, all that is depicted is her anonymity, thus resulting in a self-defeating procedure. Thus it is her anonymity that is identified. How is one certain that she is a she? It is this indecisiveness that produces the chagrin of the biopolitical apparatus.

A counter-claim arises: Although at a formal level it is the principiality of anonymity that is identified, practical application quickly disputes this claim. One comes to discover that the personality exists within particular socio-cultural coordinates, partly due to the compulsion of universal economic imperatives and partly due to other factors. As such, the figure is not identified as anonymous but as someone situated within a particular hierarchical schema. This being so, it is nevertheless based on the harshest of contingencies. The personality must be thoroughly autopsied to determine the accuracy of the initial charge. This is based on judgement and is thus beyond our concentration upon atemporal illumination. In any case, without this examination, an enduring sense of doubt remains.

In order to dispel this simple yet ubiquitous approach, one can simply devise a contrary circumstance. Is it not true that the same form of doubt can take place in relation to those who are not fully shrouded? It is claimed that the underlying content of any individual may not cohere with their symbolic mandate—they may have adopted a cynical disposition in relation to symbolic authority. However, all that is doubted are particular characterological traits. Never is the individual’s total manifestation questioned. In this way, the identification of pure anonymity is not universal. It is only applicable to those of pure existence.

© Arshavez Mozafari – Ph.D. Candidate – Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations – University of Toronto. None of the ideas expressed here can be reduplicated in any shape or form without the explicit consent of the author: a.mozafari@utoronto.ca

On the morning before his first day in the madreseh Ali spent a long time on the roof trying to stare down the stork in a nest on the neighbouring house. The stork would put forward first its right, then its left eye, and its only reaction to all distractions, even the noises of Kazem banging the ashes out of the samovar, was to look a little haughtier and to raise a few feathers on its head. When Ali’s older brother came to take Ali to the front of the house, Ali asked him: “What is the stork thinking?”

“He’s asking himself, What is that little boy who’s staring at me thinking?”

“Now I will start thinking, Why is the stork thinking What is the boy thinking? And the stork will start thinking…”

“Yes, dear Ali, it’s an infinite regress.”[i]

© Arshavez Mozafari – Ph.D. Candidate – Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations – University of Toronto. None of the ideas expressed here can be reduplicated in any shape or form without the explicit consent of the author: a.mozafari@utoronto.ca