This talk recalls the recent phenomena of the murder of physicians in Jordan and Yemen, and the rise in altercations in Saudi Arabia between physicians and patients and their family. Aiming to work on the physics of affinity, the binding and unbinding of ethical relationalities, within the patient-doctor relationship the physicians claim to be prophets and reintroduced alghayb (unknown, God’s knowledge) into the clinic in order to prevent the arrogation of power to them and counter the demand of patients for them to deliver the cure. This talk prompts us to ask what kinds of ethics emerges with Alghayb in view? In dialogue with Abu-Hamid Alghazaly, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Sigmund Freud, and Jacque Lacan’s work on affinity, transference, savoir, and alghayb, this paper explores the auto-erotics within ethical relationalities in the clinic. It provokes us to reexamine the anthropological reduction of affinity to a preoccupation with aggression, moving us toward understanding the asymmetries of exchange and relationalities.

Ashwak Sam Hauter is an assistant professor of medical anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of “Fright and the Fraying of Community” published in Cultural Anthropology and “Madness, Pain, & Ikhtilāṭ al-ʿaql: Conceptualizing Ibn Abī Ṣādiq’s Medico-Philosophical Psychology” in Early Science and Medicine. Her manuscript in progress details scenes of Islah (reform) within medicines in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan aimed at securing demands for ‘afiya (holistic well-being), recentering the health of the individual body around the political, economic, and spiritual dimensions of the community (umma). Her current project centers around examining mental health and the work of culture amidst the war in Yemen among Yemeni artists, poets, filmmakers, and psychologists.

Presented by the Center for Cultural Studies and co-sponsored by the Center for South Asian Studies and the Department of Anthropology Colloquium. This event is open to all students, faculty, staff, and members of the public consistent with University policy and state and federal law.

Spring 2026 COLLOQUIUM SERIES

THE CENTER FOR CULTURAL STUDIES hosts a weekly Wednesday colloquium featuring work-in-progress by faculty & visitors. We are pleased to announce our Spring 2026 Series. Sessions begin promptly at 12:15 PM and end at 1:30 PM (PST) in Humanities Building 1, Room 210.

Staff assistance is provided by The Humanities Institute.