Monday, January 30, 2012
Breeding time
At 0900 this morning, three pairs of magpies were to be seen at the top of the large oak tree at the bottom of the garden. By 1000 some crows appeared and after something of a tussle things settled down with two pairs of magpies, presumably two of the original three, and one pair of more ordinary crows, probably rooks. But by 1200 we were down to one pair of magpies, 3 single magpies and no crows. Given that I read that crows are monogamous, presumably there had been some discord at the spring renewal of vows.
Before that, had finished off one Hamid Dabashi on 'Shi'ism', having chanced across a kind review in NYRB, a review which I now think was perhaps a little too kind. The book was nicely produced by Belknap and was indeed interesting, but it was heavy going: the sort of thing which would have been damned with the label 'bubbles' when I was a student; the sort of incomprehensible gobblydegook beloved by the sociologists of the day. So, opening the book entirely at random, it takes me about a second to light upon '... a subconscious that works through the mimetic consequences of alienating aesthetics, which is tantamount (but not identical) to the Brechtian ...'. Perhaps like all too many modern arts-side academics (the science-side ones have more excuse), Mr. Dabashi seeks only to communicate within his own community within Columbia University, despite the fact that he is billed as an internationally renowned professor.
But, as I say, the book is not without interest, nonetheless.
So, Shi'is have their own versions of Jesus, in the form of martyred leaders, the first in an illustrious line being the Prophet's much beloved nephew, killed in the struggles following the Prophet's death. Dabashi gets very Freudian about the whole business of son murder displacing the father murder posited as the original sin by Freud.
Generally speaking, the Shi'is seem to be much more into pope and saint like figures than the Sunnis: the Prophet and the Koran are not enough. They are also very into the sort of metaphysics which has largely disappeared from the Christian world, at least from the lay part of it. But I dare say that Jesuits still do this kind of stuff in the privacy of their seminaries.
Partly because in most places they were in a minority, the Shi'is do not seem to have arrived at a satisfactory separation of civil and religious powers, but do seem to have arrived at very literal interpretations of their various written traditions and some rather sanguinary rituals. Even in Iran, where they are in a majority, they do not seem to have done that much better. To be fair, it took us several hundred years to reach a satisfactory solution to the problem in western Europe, and perhaps only did get there with the waning of the power of the Christian church.
On the up side, there seems to be a huge corpus of Persian literature, in particular poetry, largely out of reach to us in the west, but not out of reach at all to the Muslims of, for example, 'A Passage to India', where I remember a doctor being told to ease up on the stuff in the interests of community relations. Not sure if that bit was from the book or the film now. A corpus which perhaps explains the existence, until quite recently, of a reader in ancient Persian languages at Cambridge, sadly a reader who attracted very few students. I think the post was rolled over into something more western.
There is a rather anti European tone in the book and a lot of talk of the evils of colonialism. A tone which does not pervade his discussion of the colonisation of much of the Mediterranean world by the Arabs in remarkably short order after the death of the Prophet. A little irritating given that Dabashi chooses to make his living in the US of A rather than, for example, Iran.
PS: like some other things in the Microsoft world, I am finding their search facility too clever by half. And that in Gmail does not seem to be as easy as it was. They generally work fine but today they do not work fine and I am finding it hard to be sure exactly what I am asking them to look for. Maybe quicker just to recreate the file in question rather than struggle.
Before that, had finished off one Hamid Dabashi on 'Shi'ism', having chanced across a kind review in NYRB, a review which I now think was perhaps a little too kind. The book was nicely produced by Belknap and was indeed interesting, but it was heavy going: the sort of thing which would have been damned with the label 'bubbles' when I was a student; the sort of incomprehensible gobblydegook beloved by the sociologists of the day. So, opening the book entirely at random, it takes me about a second to light upon '... a subconscious that works through the mimetic consequences of alienating aesthetics, which is tantamount (but not identical) to the Brechtian ...'. Perhaps like all too many modern arts-side academics (the science-side ones have more excuse), Mr. Dabashi seeks only to communicate within his own community within Columbia University, despite the fact that he is billed as an internationally renowned professor.
But, as I say, the book is not without interest, nonetheless.
So, Shi'is have their own versions of Jesus, in the form of martyred leaders, the first in an illustrious line being the Prophet's much beloved nephew, killed in the struggles following the Prophet's death. Dabashi gets very Freudian about the whole business of son murder displacing the father murder posited as the original sin by Freud.
Generally speaking, the Shi'is seem to be much more into pope and saint like figures than the Sunnis: the Prophet and the Koran are not enough. They are also very into the sort of metaphysics which has largely disappeared from the Christian world, at least from the lay part of it. But I dare say that Jesuits still do this kind of stuff in the privacy of their seminaries.
Partly because in most places they were in a minority, the Shi'is do not seem to have arrived at a satisfactory separation of civil and religious powers, but do seem to have arrived at very literal interpretations of their various written traditions and some rather sanguinary rituals. Even in Iran, where they are in a majority, they do not seem to have done that much better. To be fair, it took us several hundred years to reach a satisfactory solution to the problem in western Europe, and perhaps only did get there with the waning of the power of the Christian church.
On the up side, there seems to be a huge corpus of Persian literature, in particular poetry, largely out of reach to us in the west, but not out of reach at all to the Muslims of, for example, 'A Passage to India', where I remember a doctor being told to ease up on the stuff in the interests of community relations. Not sure if that bit was from the book or the film now. A corpus which perhaps explains the existence, until quite recently, of a reader in ancient Persian languages at Cambridge, sadly a reader who attracted very few students. I think the post was rolled over into something more western.
There is a rather anti European tone in the book and a lot of talk of the evils of colonialism. A tone which does not pervade his discussion of the colonisation of much of the Mediterranean world by the Arabs in remarkably short order after the death of the Prophet. A little irritating given that Dabashi chooses to make his living in the US of A rather than, for example, Iran.
PS: like some other things in the Microsoft world, I am finding their search facility too clever by half. And that in Gmail does not seem to be as easy as it was. They generally work fine but today they do not work fine and I am finding it hard to be sure exactly what I am asking them to look for. Maybe quicker just to recreate the file in question rather than struggle.
# posted by Jim @ 6:01 AM 
