Excel.eration.

If you've ever written a physics exam, you'd know that strange aftermath, during which you can't so much as pour a glass of water without theorizing all of the forces, work and gravitational factors involved. Philosophy- and specifically metaphysics- is much the same. This semester has brought me to a new level of inspiration. It may be a snore for most people, but I just feel a stronge urge to share the names and thoughts of brilliant minds that have enabled me to transcend an intellectual frontier in the most delightful way..

I feel as though the more I learn, the more I realize how tiny a piece of the puzzle I have in my hand. There's something that is at once fulfilling and frustrating about knowing that there is no end to discourse, to dialoge and to the deliberative way of being.

In the spirit of reflection and In no particular order, please allow me to present...
5 Hottest theorists and ideas from this semester:

1) Aristole's The Politics.
This is my fourth go at this text, and yet never have Artistotle and I bonded as we have this time around. His overarching metaphor of nature/biology lends this incredibly natural element to institutions as controvercial as slavery and even drive me to questioning the basis of our morality in believing that we have risen above this practice. I believe this to be a horrible act of injustice, but I am awed by my ability to step outside of my own vaccum, if only for a few moments, and consider Artistotle's ideas about how organic and natural slavery is to the household, as the most fundamental pre-political unit. Most notably, his Doctrine of Causality has been a source of endless interest on many bus rides and long walks to and from school. The 4 causes are:
1) Matter (or material)
2) Form (the formal cause)
3) Agency
4) Final/Purpose (or telos)

The interplay between these ideas goes something like this: The telos is the beginning and end product of this process. It informs the agent of the right material and form that the final product must take. The telos is not inevitable, but depends upon the ability of the agent to select the appropriate material with which to generate the form required to fulfill the purpose. This is all still very underdeveloped, but even this skeletal understanding left me breathless for more. My love affair with the Politics has left me with passion and curiousity anew. Who knows, maybe I'll even read Nicomachean Ethics...for fun!

2) Ibn Khaldun's al-Muqaddimah(the Introduction)
When I began to read and learn about this historian and sociologist, I felt as though I was meeting an old friend. He espouses a view on social change that calls in to action a phenomenon he calls "assabiyya". This term has been translated as "kinship", "tribalism" or "social cohesion". Khaldun explores how assabiyya draws people together and likening it to a symphony orchestra, my professor explained that within his framework of a stratified society, all players in the symphony, along with the conductor (Caliph) could play with glory and skill when pursuing the instrument to which they were best suited. Like me (and I'm sure at least one or two others out there) Khaldun was heavily influenced by the works of Aristotle, brought to the Dynastic Muslim world by the great philosopher, Alfarabi. As such, Khaldun engaged with the metaphor of nature as well, in his explanation of the cyclical nature of social change and cohesion:

"One should then take a look at the world of creation. It started out from the minerals and progressed, in an ingenious, gradual manner, to plants and animals. The last stage of minerals is connected with the first stage of plants, such as herbs and seedless plants. The last stage of plants, such as palms and vines, is connected with the first stage of animals, such as snails and shellfish which have only the power of touch. The word 'connection' with regard to these created things means that the last stage of each group is fully prepared to become the fist stage of the newest group."

3)Stuart Hall "Encoding, Decoding".
Stu and I didn't get along very well at first. He was old and british, I am young and still haven't reconciled with my ideas about post-colonialism. But hey, I'm a charitable girl and found that there was some room in my heart for a man with a brilliant theory on the encoding/decoding process that defines cultural production and practices. Hall formed the backbone of my cultural analysis on Gatorade (paper) this semester, as I shyly interacted with his methodolical approach to "semiotic analysis in a social framework". All that really means is looking at a commercial, campaign, ad or product and situating it; historically, economically, and politically. Once you've got that part down, look at it, look through and it render visible the social relations within its imagery and wordplay. For example, I looked at Gatorade and the cultural conditions in which it is marketed, I look at its strategic use of certain ethnic athletes, I deconstructed the meaning of that creepy coloured sweat in its ads and even look at how the shape and colours of the bottles themselves contained hidden symbols that reinforced gender and social hierarchies that exist in its cultural-historical context.

This man is wickedly intelligent. Wickedly!

The final two theorists will have to come in a later installment, as I have been assaulted by a scholastic hangover and am taking the balance of today to recover from a week of extremely late nights, lack of exercise and generally woeful deficiency of fun. Whoa is me!

I will conclude here by introducing the above photo of some really delicious cookies I made last week. I seem to have misplaced the random phone message on the back of which I cryptically scribbled out exoskeleton of this recipe. I will post it one day, I promise! I don't know how they could possibly taste the way they do, given their amazingly healthy constituent elements (that's you, yes you) but who am I to question the inner workings of al cosmos.