Farah Karimi

Ali Ashraf Darvishian and Simin Behbahani

Ebrahim Nabavi

Iran After the Elections

Today I received a call from someone I hadn't heard of for 6 years. He asked if I am thinking of going back to Iran, and tried to show the top tip of a pie in the Iranian sky offering some good job with unimaginable income. And all the time he tried to say: "try to understand what I say, I can't say it on the phone."
Yesterday I attended the conference. Many of those participants were well-known: Karim Lahiji (Human Rights Watch), Simin Behbahani (Iranian poetess), Amir Ashraf Darvishian (Writer and first secretary of PEN IRAN), Ebrahim Nabavi (Satirist in exile), Alireza Nourizadeh (dissident journalist from London), Farah Karimi (Iranian member of Dutch Parliament), and parliament members from Germany, Belgium and France plus EU representatives and some EU parliament members.

indecisionism

Decision is Madness[1]

Trying to force back some of the issues from my missing article I came up with a couple of new points only to keep my spirit high not to lose heart all at once.
The most important point I’ll dilate a bit more on here is the question of decision when decision is worthy of the name. Then, in between, the issue of free will and justice are looked at with regard to Derrida’s “Force de Loi” and J Hillis Miller’s lecture in Gent (“Who or What Decides? For Jacques Derrida” 23.04.05).[2] I haven’t yet had the time to overload the pack with Sartre’s “Man is Free and Responsible,” nonetheless, if need be, I’ll paste something to this piece. Writing is an eternal indeterminable activity—never absolutely determinable or limited-- (without intending to allude to Derrida’s remark in Margins of Philosophy: “ A written sign, in the usual sense of the word, is therefore a mark which remains, which is not exhausted in the presence of its inscription, and which can give rise to an iteration both in the absence of and beyond the presence of the empirically determined subject who, in given context, has emitted or produced it…by the same token, a written sign carries with it a force of breaking with its context, that is, the set of presences which organize the moment of its inscription,” [its significance—and in the mind of the writer]) and is a continual op-end.”
To tell the truth, I was terribly shocked when I heard Miller say that “the moment of decision doesn’t exist” all the more disappointed to learn that justice was totally something other than the sheer application of law to a case by a subject. I should confess that seriously seeking to bring a smile of complacency to my face so as to a final understanding of the distinctions between determinism and fatalism, I had since last year started to contrive all my faculties to arrive at a balancing point concerning these controversial and complex terms. And indeed I arrived there. However, shocked by Miller’s lecture, no less severely than shell-shockedness(!), I have become so touchy choosy fastidious of the invisible load of words (denotations and connotations and their intentions and interpretations), while they sit next to one another, that I can’t simply define terms like decision, justice, life, free will, will, law and shit. They all seem to have paradoxical nature resisting any conclusive definitions. On the other hand, the persistence of clarification for myself is pressing me constantly. What has happened to me? There is not enough sun shine in this country, otherwise I would say I had been staying in the sun shine for too long.

What is “decision?” How do we know that we have made a decision? How do we know when we have made a decision? For instance if a person wants to nominate himself for presidency, what are the factors which bring him to the brink of such decision? What makes the people of a country to decide to elect a president out of several candidates? Is election all the time a matter of deciding or choosing in its orthodox sense?
I am well prepared to admit that the previous posts on determinism and fatalism and the possibility of free will in the mechanism and the machinery of decision making were not totally just and right—the recurring assessment of conduct and a tragic non-conformity and consensus to decisionism.
My argument is that when Swidler is speaking of “tool-kits” (culture/repertoire) as the given possibilities on the way of the “ghetto kid” (as means to construct lines of action) to his final goal (indirectly supporting Itamar Even-Zohar) having already had a destination in mind (unlike Even-Zohar who holds the end controls the possible ways of applying repertoires) with a little difference with Bourdieu so as to the quantity of freedom and the power to manoeuvre over freedom of choice (Bourdieu is a bit more open handed in bestowing the individual with liberty), I found myself of another opinion and it was the fact that the “ghetto kid” has available repertoires as means which enable him to choose the end simultaneous to the assumption that the very end itself is influential in contriving the “tool-kit” repertoires (the available means) as lines of action. To me from the very beginning the relation, as such, between the repertoire as “tool-kit” (available means) and the target (the end) was a two way road in eternal give and take show levering, levelling and controlling each other like connected pipes theory.

At the first glance it seems that there is no moment of decision and I am desperate to fabricate the explication de motes so that I end this writing happily quite dissimilar to what I am going to do next, which is applying the theory to the notion of TRAGEDY weaving a network of sustenance round The Human Stain. Decision making doesn’t happen in one certain moment like a snap in the mind. It rather begins to be shaped and reshaped (Derrida warns us against assuming eternity trait to it—the second aporia*) until in a certain moment of illumination a phenomenon is reached at which we may call decision, “if there exists such a thing” Derrida keeps repeating. But how is it reached at and when?
Decision is not simply taking or leaving an option. The first step is to recognize the impossibility of deciding and experiencing the situation as an undecidable given. No need to mention that prior to this stage we need to have a consciousness of the situation which necessitates taking the labour of working through it for a decision. Then the painful process of determining a decision begins. Thus decision making is not a ready-made set of options out of which we may draw one final solution. Confronted with certain issues and events in life (in Coleman Silk’s case the discriminatory behaviour of the world outside his clan towards his race and ethnicity) a subject acquires consciousness of the circumstances. This moment of illumination is very painful as it’s only then that the subject sees the naked truth. Then in order to upset the existing balance if he sees the possibility of bringing a change to the existing system (to ask for a place of action and have his own say), he turns to the existing options. If there is no possibility of a sudden clarification as far as he is concerned to make his mind, we say that he is confronted with an impossible moment of indecisionism which means he has to undergo--he feels the urge to--the ordeal and the agony of making up his mind.
When the situation of undecidable is reached at (in every decision “the undecidable is caught and lodged,” Derrida says), one can see the presence of many enforcing factors exerting their cause each to push the final current to one side diverting the flow constantly—what leads a subject into deciding. I wanted to recite Derrida where he says “we are all mediators and translators” concluding that the character is a medium to gauge the weight of each force to finally balance the gravity in a focal point like one translating the event into a conventional action like a machine which processes data and releases a naturally-expected compromise. In that case decision making is the procedure of assessment (gauging and evaluating) of the present elements for the sake of a concluding remark without detailing in their values and without taking the pain of interpreting the data—it’s a mechanical automatic response to the necessity of the case following a rational, logical line of argument. But the evaluation is an argumentative process in itself. “The decision moment is always undecidable.” Decision making moment is not a perlocutionary force (Austin’s Speech Acts) as decision is not made per se at the very moment of uttering the sentence ‘I decide.’ “The moment of decision is paradoxically unrepresentable.” Miller suggests it’s better to say “I have decided” as the verb is not performative, it’s rather declarative by which we only mean that our mind is made and now we only declare a result. In other words we do not decide right at the moment of saying that we decide (spontaneously deciding). There is a long process of quantifying, estimating, judging, surveying, and determining to reach such a moment. We assume, resume and interpret until we are enabled to judge (see the final phase).

Now as the element of decision is a major factor in a tragedy, I’d like to suggest that it’s not the sad end of a play or novel that makes the hero tragic, it’s rather the moment of decision making which is tragic as it’s this moment which causes the plaintive consequential loss and death. It is suggested that a tragic hero is an ignorant character who can not “see” the reality of the moment and his vision is blurred which makes him lose his mind and end tragic.[3] Saying that would be like refusing to apply responsibility on decision. My footnote to this assumption is that it’s a bit more paradoxical than such an easy jump into conclusion. A tragic hero is both ignorant and conscious: he sees but doesn’t see at the same time. He sees the urgency and the need to do make a decision (once he commits himself to his work) but the final moment is of the ‘lemming’ effect for him as he ignorantly and absent-mindedly comes up with a decision whose outcome is nothing but a terrible and horrible end. Thus, he is in a learned-ignorant twilight zone conscious that he can’t let the world define his life for him and destine him meanwhile he blindly follows his destiny and fate. One is tempted to say even this consciousness is fake and part of the conspiracy against man’s residues of free-will plotted by fate and determinism. The ignorance in my opinion is the result of the experience of the impossible and the undecidable situation making the subject oscillating and vacillating in a catch-22 dilemma; going through the feat of the undecidable (the condition of non-decisionism, an impasse), not to mention that a just decision is made under a completely free condition and in freedom—what constitutes a good decision. What makes a tragedy tragic, then, is not that we face such burning moment of hesitation once in life time, but the proliferation of the exigency of decision along with its terrific sense of responsibility which make it tragic. We make decisions all the time. Does this freedom ever exist or is the character obliged to reach for one out of many of the options in a mad mood exhausted by the complications of such affliction as to deciding? Derrida says “when the path is clearly given, when a certain knowledge opens up the way in advance, the decision is already made, it might as well be said that there is none to make: irresponsibly and in good conscience, one simply applies of implements a program…in that case, one must acknowledge this and stop talking with authority about moral or political responsibility.”[4]
The moment of seeing the exigency of going for an option is the moment of consciousness of an existing need, but the final coda of it is a matter of (subjective) approximation as finally the character seems to base his decision on an interpretation. Such moment of certainty never exists. The final moment of uttering a decision (the peculiarity of a decision which is worth the name) is the corollary of a system of co-working and interaction of forces (compatible or refreactory) causing a product called decision—if ever such a thing exists. It’s like attempting to climb a mountain to reach the invisible and unseen climax. However, like judgement and the first aporia of Derrida in “Force of Law” (first aporia) justice is not the mechanical application of law to the event or case, but a transcending of the law (a suspension of the law) which requires deliberation. This can hold for decision, too:

To be just, the decision of the judge, for example, must not only follow a rule of law but must also assume it, approve it, by a “reinstituting act of interpretation” as if nothing previously existed of the law, as if the judge himself invented the law in every case. “In short, for a decision to be just and responsible, it must, in its proper moment if there is one, […] conserve the law and also destroy or suspend it enough to have to reinvent it in the reaffirmation and the new and free confirmation of its principle.”[5] (emphasis added)

Decision is never present, it must be reached at. It is rather transcending the impossible moment of the undecidable. To decide, then, necessitates “reinstituting act of interpretation” to follow the determining forces of participating elements (and considering the force of the invisible/absent elements) until suspending them all at a moment to “reinvent” an ultra, non-previously existing, action (verdict) as a force or cause (not completely being an effect per se as then “decision” loses its name) by a human subject. It’s totally and finally the person who exerts (and not follows—after considering all extrinsic forces and causes he pauses for a moment to reach a finalising point) his will (intrinsic: competence, background, education, psychic mental map) and translates it into a manifesto (a quasi-effect but certainly a completely cause in itself too): “reaffirmation” of a “new principle.” Nevertheless, still that subtle moment of suspension (interpretation) is subject to the context under which the interpretation gets formed and shaped. It is subject to the intrinsic agency which itself is under the influence of the extrinsic agency. That’s why “the moment of decision is madness,” because such a moment can’t be realised to become concrete. The clash keeps going and reciprocation between intrinsic and extrinsic agencies never end because nothing in the field is constant. When the final verdict is uttered (the decision is made), it only pertains to the moment of its conception and delivery as: in that context under those circumstances with the presence and availability of those data the decision is determined and finalised. It may, however, change in one other context under different circumstances as it’s not only the laws and logic and their application to the case which deliberates a decision and judgement but the interpretation, which is constantly changing in various conditions, determining a final solid ground.
Derrida’s second aporia goes like this:

Just decision never consists simply in its final form. It begins with learning, understanding, interpreting the rules, and even with calculating—that is, with deciding between two undecidables […]. Every decision must go through the “ordeal of the undecidable” and once it is reached it has again followed a rule, invented and reinvented it[…]. “There is apparently no moment in which a decision can be presently and fully just: either it has not yet been made according to a rule, and nothing allows it to be called just, or it has already followed a rule—whether received, confirmed, conserved or reinvented—which in its turn is not absolutely guaranteed by anything; and, moreover, if it were guaranteed, the decision would be reduced to calculation […].” (p.24)[6]

The dead-line of decision. As to the time span which is never enough for the sake of gathering data and information, Derrida in his third aporia suggests immediacy as we never have enough time to get all the facts. “It must not wait in order to gain infinite information, the unlimited knowledge of conditions and rules that justify it. Every decision is structurally finite. Seems that somehow the subject, after covering the whole ordeal and procedure of assessment, when he is in the interpreting moment, has to “rush blindly into a decision.” That’s why Derrida says “the moment of decision is madness.” There is a tendency for the non-existence of the moment of decision as non-decisionism is of more powerful impact exerting the elongation of time to acquire more knowledge and criteria and the need for processing them. However, there is always a dead-line for every consciousness which is to culminate in a decision. In one way or another, we declare our final decision and in one point we make our minds, yet it seems to be like a blind jump out of the agony of vacillation towards a deliberation. Therefore, we are right if we claim a just judgement (justice) is never reached at as the process to achieve it is an op-end game of reciprocal trading between constantly appearing facts (process of accumulation of data; evidence) and the transcendental interpretation of them. Every time a new set of evidence pops up, the balancing scales are upset and the burnished moment of illumination like epiphany keeps being repeated but each time with a new representation.

A bride’s reply to the priest asking if she accepts the offer is not a decision; saying yes then doesn’t mean that she has made her mind because once inside the church the bride is only expected to say yes. That’s not a decision then.
The population of a country choose a certain candidate out of several not because they have decided—the candidates are never at the same level enforcing the people to encounter a hesitation in option—but because of the amount of propaganda accelerates the populace to name someone.

[1] Kierkegaard. Also cited as an epigraph to Derrida’s essay “Cogito and the History of Madnese” in Writing and Difference.
[2] International seminar on “Rhetoric, Politics, Ethics” at Gent University 21-23 April, 05
* A form of paradox from which one has no way out.
[3] Hans-Thies Lehmann (Universität Frankfurt am Main) lecturing on “Theatre without tragedy? Heiner Muller’s postdramatic theatre and the fate of representation” at the International Colloquium ‘The Tragedy, the Tragic, and the Political.’ RITS Brussels : 23.03.05.
[4] As quoted from Derrida’s “The Other Heading,” page 41 in “Reading Derrida’s ‘Force of Law: The Mystical Foundation of Authority,’” by Vladimir Dokié, Philosophy Department, Louisiana State University. (“Philosophy and Sociology” Vol 1, No 5, 1998 pp 449-454)
[5] ibid
[6] ibid

adieu my Iran

Mahmood Ahmadi-Nezhad's election represents a complete and finalised (surreptitiously arranged like a pogram) cultural, social and political onslaught of islam on Iran for the third time in our history after our great Persian King Dariush: the first time was a thousand four hundred years ago when the arab moslems occupied Iran and pillaged our land; the second time was in 1979 (assisted by the foreign forces represented by Ayatollah BBC and the gay philosopher Ayatollah Michael Foucault and the like) sacking our cultural heritage and confiscating our economy (the brain drain)...; the third phase happened on Friday 27 Khordad 1384 (June 17th, 2005) which will show its fascist-nazi nature to the world once the nuclear bomb (islamic bomb) is ready.
One can't stop sharing the imaginary horros of Philip in The Plot Against America by Philip Roth only that we should replace the horror of Jews from American hardliners with the horror of the intellectuals from Islamic hardliners in Iran (the followers of Osama Bin Laden). I say the intellectuals as I know the ordinary people will simply admit the situation--the tsunami of human catastrophe--under a sigh of "the determined fate and destiny by God, we can't go against HIS will; this should be as He wills"; what will be will be (Dorris Day's song in the 50's). This makes me more furious when I think of the stupidity of the common people who paint any catastrophe with religious sense of acceptance. Fatalism (sponsored by their God) applied to times of disaster is horrible. I remember Voltaire and Rousseau and their clash over the lisbon earth quake.
We deserve more than that as we are always proud of our past but ignorant of the present pouncing of our souls. We are metamorphosed. We are gone with the wind. Good bye my country, in a matter of some years your name will disappear on the map and these pretentious religious people would call it God's will.

what else remains to be trusted when the world plays a dirty game with you?



PS
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
...
Congratulations to myself and you
let's hope for the best to come and not be afraid of anything
let's make the best of it till we have the time
love, liberty, loyalty, responsibility, promise
My new life begins...

27 Khordad and 17 June 2005

saints do not smoke

furiously smoking myself into a shriel

I am sore, sad, bitter and angry. This morning I started smoking again.
Last night I wrote what I can call the best piece of my life on philosophical questions of decision, determinism and justice but while posting it to this page it was deleted! gone with the wind leaving a traumatising suture on my mind. It was a rare moment of ilumination whose outcome was an excellent piece of writing with beautiful words having perfect cohesion and coherence sitting next to one another to nearly solve my long challenging conflict with explication de motes. I was on the verge of solving the problem of determinism and justice and decisionism for myself after months of trials and tribulations. But it was all gone! As I was giving my whole heart and thought to only scribling the piece, I couldn't later piece up the picture again and that was terrible. I couldn't sleep. I wanted to kill myself with rage. What a shocking experience.
It may take months again to come to such a subtle moment of epiphany.
Let's pin in another coffin nail.

rage rage against the dying of the light

summer is almost here and people are arranging to take journeys to Frech coastal cities. I am planning to move to a new place and if chance, mood, time, context and a hundred other elements agree, I'll go for a swim in one of Leuven's swimming pools!

mijn idool

vanaf september dit jaar ga ik beginnen met Philip Roth. Ik find hem al een rare schrijver die geeft realiteit aan de droge woorden. Hij is mijn idool, hij is mijn mentor. Als ik een wens kan hebben, zal ik kiezen naar hem op bezoek gaan en over mijn leven spreken. Ik ben er helemaal zeker van dat hij een nieuwe romans over mijn verhaal zal schrijven.

The Last Dinner

Last night we went to STUCK to watch the film only because it was gratis! but next time I am ready to pay for it as I found it a bitterly comic film having no theme, and aiming to teach no morality.
Some of THE friends were there, too. doostani behtar az aabe ravaan!

how does theology look at sex?

I want to go back to my Paul
clean
clean
clean
no
no
no
*********
fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me

No (yes), Nein (ja), Non (oui), Niet (ja), Nie (tak), Na (ari)

How can one react to or differentiate a no in various contexts? In other words, is a no to "would you like a cup of coffee?" conveying the same weight as a no to the Proposed European Constitution? what does every person who says a no or hears a no formulate in mind according to their competence? how much is the value of a no? is a no or a yes gradable? how far is the distance between a no and a yes? where is the borderline between them? why do people say no more often than yes? what is the relationship between a no and success? is a no to life the same as a yes to death? what is the relationship between yes and no? why is normally no often similar in different languages than yes in the same frame? what is in between a yes and a no? what is the difference and distance between a no of a man to a question with the no of a woman to the same question? is there a thermometer to gauge the degree of intention by a no? how far is a no a no? how far is a no reliable? how far is a yes reliable? what is the relationship between saying no and authority? what is the difference between a no said to a question in one context and the no said to the same question in one other context? is a no the sign of denial or negation? is a no in negation (Freud) equally nostalgic as a yes? la différence est similation? nein oder sein? sein oder nicht sein? nothing? nothing comes out of nothing. no?