A Mughal Treatise on Essence and Existence

This article presents an annotated translation of The Equivalence between Giving and Receiving (al-Taswiya bayna al-ifāda wa-l-qabūl), a short Arabic treatise on essence (dhāt) and existence (wujūd) composed by the South Asian philosopher-Sufi Shaykh Muḥibb Allāh Ilāhābādī (996–1058/1587–1648). Although modern scholarship has habitually referred to Muḥibb Allāh as an ardent defender of the doctrine of waḥdat al-wujūd (“unity of existence”) associated with the figure of Ibn al-ʿArabī, such generalized formulations fail to do justice to the uniqueness of Muḥibb Allāh’s intellectual contributions. Most authors who had set out to provide a philosophical defense of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s teachings – including the well-known likes of Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī, ʿAfīf al-Dīn al-Tilimsānī, ʿAbd al-Razzāq Kāshānī, Dāwud al-Qayṣarī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī, Mullā Ṣadrā, and so on – had tended to prioritize a philosophically utilizable formulation of wujūd or “existence.” Muḥibb Allāh, in notable contrast, favors a presentation of the divine Reality in terms of “pure essence/quiddity” (dhāt/māhiyya maḥḍa), at times going to considerable lengths to uphold his alternative formulation. Such a strategy of argumentation is uncommon amongst philosophical defenders of Ibn al-ʿArabī, the distinctiveness of which is further enhanced by Muḥibb Allāh’s peculiar mode of disputation, which straddles the line between metaphysics and natural philosophy/physics. The Taswiya occasioned at least sixteen commentaries and refutations; this translation benefits from consulting the earliest of these, composed by Mullā Maḥmūd al-Jawnpūrī (d. 1062/1652) and Khwāja Khwurd (d. 1073/1663), as well as three later commentaries by Ḥabīb Allāh Paṭnaʾī (d. 1140/1728). Most significantly, this translation makes extensive use of Muḥibb Allāh’s own Persian auto-commentary, the Sharḥ-i taswiya, which is a critical aid for deciphering the author’s at times opaque manner of expression and argumentation.

Towards a postmodern national narrative? The Algerian war memorial and contemporary French landscapes of memory

Based on the analysis of files from the Department of Defence, and drawing on interviews with veterans and on their associations’ press, the article focuses on the Algerian War National Memorial in Paris, its long gestation and particularly its double, paradoxical status: that it is at the same time new and old, post-ideological and hyper-ideological. Thanks to its palimpsest configuration, this ‘third millennium memorial’ – as it was described by its creator (the artist Gérard Collin-Thiébaut) – has demonstrated itself to be perfectly tuned to that peculiar mode of relationship to the past that we can define as ‘postmodern’, a mode that is characteristic of what historian François Hartog called the presentist ‘regime of historicity’.

Walls, Attractions, and Media

This chapter examines pre-twentieth precedents for big screen displays in public spaces to demonstrate how media culture has never been segregated from outdoor milieus of distraction. It addresses largely ignored histories of public displays, including trade signs, banners, broadsides, billboards, and early dynamic displays including magic lantern shows. The chapter contextualises outdoor screens within this history to argue that public media culture is a peculiar mode of spectatorship that must be apprehended as element among many that vies for the attention of individuals within public spaces, including aural, physical elements, and other visual elements. It argues that the tendency to characterise large screens as an incursion of the private into the public fails to address the history and context of public displays, which are instead more productively apprehended as sites where the distinction between public and private is renegotiated.

Assimilating American Indians in James Fenimore Cooper’s Novels?

The article employs critical concepts from sociology and anthropology to examine the stereotype of the Vanishing Indian and disclose its contradictory character. The article argues that in James Fenimore Cooper’s late novels from the 1840s a type of American Indian appears who can be regarded as a Vanishing Indian in many respects as he displays some slight degree of assimilation but at the same time he can be found to reveal a surprising amount of resistance to the process of vanishing and marginalization. His peculiar mode of survival and his mode of living demonstrate a certain degree of acculturation, which comes close to Gerald Vizenor’s survivance and for which I propose a term critical integration. I base my study on Susquesus (alias Trackless), Cooper’s less well-known character from The Littlepage Manuscripts, a three-book family saga.

The ‘Intellected Thing’ (res intellecta) in Hervaeus Natalis

This paper analyses the ontological status of the ‘intellected thing’ (res intellecta) in Hervaeus Natalis. For Hervaeus an intellected thing is not a thing in the outer world, but something radically different, namely an internal, mind-dependent entity, something having a peculiar mode of being, ‘esse obiective’. While Hervaeus often says that the act of intellection is directed upon real things, this does not mean that the act is directed upon things existing actually outside the mind. Hervaeus argues that the act of intellection is directed upon things existing ‘aptitudinally’ outside the mind, not actually outside the mind. A thing existing aptitudinally outside the mind is a mind-dependent entity, something having esse obiective. In order to establish this point, I will explain how the property ‘being intellected’ (esse intellectum) should be interpreted in Hervaeus’ philosophy. This property is a peculiar type of relation, namely a relation of reason that gives a peculiar ontological status to its bearer. To neglect the distinction between actually outside and aptitudinally outside could falsely lead one to ascribe to Hervaeus a theory of intellection where the mental act is directed upon mind-independent entities.

THE ROAD TAKEN (AND NOT TAKEN) IN THE MATHEMATIZATION OF ECONOMICS

The work of K. 'Vela' Velupillai has illuminated the debate on the mathematization of economics by providing a broader view of the universe of mathematics and its possible applications in economics. The theoretical and policy consequences from the peculiar mode of mathematization in economics is another important theme in Vela work. Alternative modes of mathematization are offered with a call for an "Algorithmic Economics" in the future.

Knowledge, identity and ideology in stances on GMOs

Various scientists and social movements are involved in the controversy over GM crops. This paper examines the controversy in Brazil, where the issue may in the future be defined internationally, given the expanse of the country’s arable land. It focuses on a central actor in the dispute: the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), a peasant organization that takes a firm and active public stand against GM crops. It aims to understand how the movement came to develop this stand against such innovations, and addresses the main events in the history of GM crops in Brazil, the actors in the debate and the arguments they deploy. A complex series of events and interactions in the MST’s history is presented to explain the organization’s commitment to agroecology and its opposition to GMOs, and to specific conditioning emerging from its own peculiar mode of social organization of agricultural production.

Taboo: Time and Belief in Exotica

In the 1950s, exotica was a genre of pop music that specialized in depicting imaginary exotic paradises and conventionalized natives. By the late 1960s, exotica pop had disappeared, but its tropes of temporal and spatial disjuncture persisted, structuring the music, visual art, and social theory of the utopian counterculture. While 1950s and 1960s kinds of exotica differ in their preferred imaginary destinations, both raise the question of what intermediate shades between belief and disbelief are demanded by aestheticized representations of human life. This essay theorizes exotica as a mode of representation governed by a peculiar mode of reception——one of willed credulity enabled by submission to its spectacle. What exotica demands is what intellectuals are least likely to give, though, and the peculiar pleasures of exotica spectacle are denigrated or rendered invisible in the hermeneutic regime.