Is it coming back to what it was before? Another round of the same old shit. Something you begin to notice when you write regularly over a long period of time is how the focus of your writing changes and shifts from certain vectors and carries along new ones, and even returning to old one’s every now and then, trying to find a footing, some stability, a certainty. I felt like I was on to something interesting last year, at least for me, when I began to write about nothing in particular, writing about wasting time, wasting whole days, weeks at a time – wasting my life away in inescapable inertia, trapped inside myself, wanting desperately to change that self, for no particular reason, really; not because I don’t like myself or because my life is particularly horrible, nor because I wasn’t happy with the way things were going… On second thought, it wasn’t that I wasn’t happy, I just wasn’t satisfied. Always restless, but never quite sure why. Looking and groping, slowly, hesitantly, tentatively, reaching out in the dark, and knowing all the while that some veil is right before my eyes, but I didn’t know how to remove it. Or maybe it wasn’t a veil; maybe it was a prism, distorting the view and disorienting me. I had no good reason to be restless. All I knew was that I wanted out, anyway, anyhow, shatter myself and smash my life to pieces, just so I could remove myself from myself, look outside the senseless, confused and paralysed mess that is my consciousness; I’d forgotten how to breathe.
What’s happened since? Too much. So the writing has changed; stopped, really. Too many things, too hectic a year.
That bloody cat is in heat, and she’s driving me insane. All I can think of is squashing her fragile little skull in my hand. Just watching her rub up against me, presenting her behind and hearing her constant pleas for some cock, my skin begins to burn, like a horrible itch I can’t scratch and that’s growing worse by the minute. It’s making me restless and horny, and I resent the cat for it. When it comes to the crucial moment, I have no sympathy for anyone. All my purported understanding and compassion – no, fuck that word. I prefer ‘empathy’, though that’s not quite right either. Anyway, whatever it is, it goes out the window; I forget all my lessons and understanding, and lose my temper. My patience fails me. I forget, I forget. I forget all too often. It’s always a disappointment, a failure on my part. I can’t even have sympathy for a cat in heat; how the fuck am I supposed to have sympathy for a human-being? What, just because I’m human too? That’s not the answer. I feel I have a much better understanding of what it’s like to be a cat than to be human. Cat’s are easier to forgive (not this cat, though. I want to squash her fragile skull in my hand).
How can I go back to writing the same stuff as last year? Has my life really changed that much that I can’t bring myself back to that state of mind? No, not really. This year has, in many ways, been one of change. Lots has happened. I started the year writing more than ever, then making the decision to cut down significantly on writing; a conscious decision. ‘Let yourself breathe. Let your ideas breathe.’ And in many ways I feel like I’m breathing again, like I’ve torn down some walls, smashed some mirrors. Not as suffocated as I felt a few months ago. Things, I feel, are going somewhere. But have I not missed the lesson? Things never really go anywhere. Maybe that’s all I meant. Yes, that’s all I meant. Things are becoming just a little bit easier and a little bit lighter every day. Yet here I am again: I have deadlines. I can see opportunities being lost again just on the horizon. ‘Next year, next year, I’ll change. Next year it’s serious’. And once again I’m not stressed about any of it, except for the odd jolt of panic here and then, but those are more like unpleasant farts or trapped wind than a crisis. And now I feel myself going back to writing about nothing and about wasting my life. And, strangely enough, at the same time I’m regaining my will to write. I feel as though there’s much I have to let out of my system, much that I might not have realised was building up. So I’ll go back to writing about wasting my life – it seems to be the only thing I can do at the moment. I’m looking forward to it.
Thursday, 26 June 2008
Wednesday, 11 June 2008
A life about nothing
What? What the fuck is life about?! The kind of thoughts that go through my head, I can’t make any sense of them. I feel stuffed after my dinner, and I feel my bloated belly and think about my dad; I think about his slight stature, his bald scalp and his droopy belly. What kind of physique did he have when he was my age? Am I doing well compared to him? I’d like to be fitter than he is when I’m his age. It’s hard to get fit though; I’m not a naturally athletic guy. Or at least, I didn’t have the right habits instilled in me to be more athletic and have more of a tendency towards it. Because potential, that may be in almost anyone, but potential means nothing without the right habits, and without the desire and dedication to achieve something. But first habits, mostly habits.
I think about my dad, and how he didn’t instil the right habits in me. And why not? Because he didn’t have those habits himself, and it seemed he never learnt their importance, or if he did, then he never managed to instil them in himself. Was it a question of strength? Was my dad just not strong enough to overcome himself? Would I be strong enough to overcome myself? Oh, but that’s surely not all it comes down to. To say that a man is or is not strong enough to overcome himself – is that not to answer the question with its own presuppositions? If we say a man is strong enough to change himself, then we are not talking about true overcoming, but about a gift he’d been endowed with by nature. Overcoming always appeared to me to consist of cultivating strength in oneself. How, then, may we ask whether a man can be strong enough to make himself strong? How are we to even phrase the question? Where are we to find this strength that precedes strength?
Then I think about my future children. Do I have the right habits to instil in them? God, no, I’m a mess. What kind of person thinks they’re ready to have kids? People who don’t feel any trepidation about the possibility of offspring horrify me; to become a parent is to be guilty of the greatest arrogance, and the greatest harm towards one’s children. Our origin sin was against our Father, when we ate from the tree of knowledge. But we commit another original sin, an original sin against our children the moment we bring them to life; did not God himself commit the original sin when he planted the tree’s seed in the ground?
To return to your question, no, I do not have what it takes to be a good parent. When will I get there? Have I not been striving for this my whole life? To reach that point where I can finally say – I am fine, I am complete, I don’t need to change anymore. But that point will never come, and I’ve accepted it long ago; so why can’t I just live with it? Why do I keep racking my brains about what it is I’m doing with my life? My life, my life; what does it come down to? Philosophy is great, but sometimes I wonder if my life goes beyond this kind of meaningless, sporadic thoughts, these little niggling anxieties and uncertainties that go almost unnoticed through my mind in never-ending loops, unable to break out of their own vicious cycles; breakthroughs come when these cycles exhaust and spend themselves. And I wonder if my preoccupation with philosophy doesn’t miss the point sometimes? Is there not something behind philosophical questions which is obscured by those very questions? Does my life not consist in precisely those little anxieties and niggling uncertainties, regrets and accusations, that are so common-place we do not even bother to consign them to our memory? I will sooner remember a trip to the local corner shop than give a second thought to the thought I had about my dad earlier.
If this was a story, a ‘proper’ narrative, would I not be recounting to you my trip to the shop, how I bought a pack of tobacco and the huge Asian man behind the till who looked ready to crush me for interrupting while a game of football was being shown on television? Some people call this kind of story ‘stories about nothing’, and tell us that those stories are about real life, as though the role of literature was to be as true to real life as possible, and as though life could be ascertained or pinned down to one quality or tendency, as though is was the tendency of life? So is life about nothing? It seems to me that this nothing, even in the most banal and repetitive of daily tasks, is a loud, noisy grind, an endless stream of thoughts and struggles, always taking form, shaping up, looking like culminating, but always disappointing, always failing.
So what is potential? Potential is nothing without actualisation. Potential can only be claimed in retrospect, after one has exerted one’s potential.
I think about my dad, and how he didn’t instil the right habits in me. And why not? Because he didn’t have those habits himself, and it seemed he never learnt their importance, or if he did, then he never managed to instil them in himself. Was it a question of strength? Was my dad just not strong enough to overcome himself? Would I be strong enough to overcome myself? Oh, but that’s surely not all it comes down to. To say that a man is or is not strong enough to overcome himself – is that not to answer the question with its own presuppositions? If we say a man is strong enough to change himself, then we are not talking about true overcoming, but about a gift he’d been endowed with by nature. Overcoming always appeared to me to consist of cultivating strength in oneself. How, then, may we ask whether a man can be strong enough to make himself strong? How are we to even phrase the question? Where are we to find this strength that precedes strength?
Then I think about my future children. Do I have the right habits to instil in them? God, no, I’m a mess. What kind of person thinks they’re ready to have kids? People who don’t feel any trepidation about the possibility of offspring horrify me; to become a parent is to be guilty of the greatest arrogance, and the greatest harm towards one’s children. Our origin sin was against our Father, when we ate from the tree of knowledge. But we commit another original sin, an original sin against our children the moment we bring them to life; did not God himself commit the original sin when he planted the tree’s seed in the ground?
To return to your question, no, I do not have what it takes to be a good parent. When will I get there? Have I not been striving for this my whole life? To reach that point where I can finally say – I am fine, I am complete, I don’t need to change anymore. But that point will never come, and I’ve accepted it long ago; so why can’t I just live with it? Why do I keep racking my brains about what it is I’m doing with my life? My life, my life; what does it come down to? Philosophy is great, but sometimes I wonder if my life goes beyond this kind of meaningless, sporadic thoughts, these little niggling anxieties and uncertainties that go almost unnoticed through my mind in never-ending loops, unable to break out of their own vicious cycles; breakthroughs come when these cycles exhaust and spend themselves. And I wonder if my preoccupation with philosophy doesn’t miss the point sometimes? Is there not something behind philosophical questions which is obscured by those very questions? Does my life not consist in precisely those little anxieties and niggling uncertainties, regrets and accusations, that are so common-place we do not even bother to consign them to our memory? I will sooner remember a trip to the local corner shop than give a second thought to the thought I had about my dad earlier.
If this was a story, a ‘proper’ narrative, would I not be recounting to you my trip to the shop, how I bought a pack of tobacco and the huge Asian man behind the till who looked ready to crush me for interrupting while a game of football was being shown on television? Some people call this kind of story ‘stories about nothing’, and tell us that those stories are about real life, as though the role of literature was to be as true to real life as possible, and as though life could be ascertained or pinned down to one quality or tendency, as though is was the tendency of life? So is life about nothing? It seems to me that this nothing, even in the most banal and repetitive of daily tasks, is a loud, noisy grind, an endless stream of thoughts and struggles, always taking form, shaping up, looking like culminating, but always disappointing, always failing.
So what is potential? Potential is nothing without actualisation. Potential can only be claimed in retrospect, after one has exerted one’s potential.
Thursday, 1 May 2008
The badass
We walk the streets at a sluggish pace
taking the long way home
A drunken detour at the end of a day’s drinking
and drunken ramblings
It’s still light outside
and the night is only starting for most people
With arms hanging limply around one another
we reassure each-other that we’re ok
when really we only want each-other because we
both know we can’t do any better
and we laugh desperately
drunkenly
ugly
She sees me as a consolation
because I remind her that there are people just
as pathetic as her in this world
She has to be a mess
and so must I
it wouldn’t work any other way because I am the last authentic gutter poet
I AM CHARLES BUKOWSKI
all those other kids are impostors
but I’m real
I live the hard life
and we’ll probably go back to mine
and have another three bottles of red wine
and then we’ll fuck like animals
I’ll comment on her chunky manly thighs
and slap her on the back and call her a whore
and she’ll say something about my big hairy belly
and huge ugly balls
and then when it’s done I’ll turn cold and tell her to go home
(‘cos that’s the kind of guy I am)
and then I’ll sit in my poorly lit room
and write poems about it
referring to her as ‘that dirty whore’
while chain-smoking over my typewriter
and I’ll write these simple beastly poems
that every man can read
because I am everyman
I’m just like you and the next guy along
and I hate people
not because I think I’m better than them
but because I’m an arsehole and I know I am
that’s just the kind of guy I am
I live rough
I look bad
I’m scruffy
I don’t shave for days
even weeks
and I’m always in a mood
I have no time for people
and I scratch my arse when I wake up in the morning and have a beer
BECAUSE I’M THE REAL CHARLES BUKOWSKI
The next day I might go to the racetrack and make some money
and maybe drive my car around some bars for the day
and get into a fight
or a conversation with some whore
except I don’t know where the track is in this city
or if there even is one
and besides I don't even drive
and even if there was one I wouldn’t go
because I get bored at those places
and I wouldn’t know what to do
and don’t like betting on horses anyway
I much prefer card games
I’d probably feel out of place
and wouldn’t make small chat with anyone
because I don’t have anything to do with these people
I’m not a working-man
or an everyman
or any-man
I’m more of a no-man
a simple
boring
no-one
But that doesn’t matter
‘cos I’m still the real thing
and I’m dirty
and I’m mean
got no time for in-between
I’m the real deal
I’ll smash your skull
and then I’ll write about it
BECAUSE I AM THE REAL CHARLES BUKOWSKI
taking the long way home
A drunken detour at the end of a day’s drinking
and drunken ramblings
It’s still light outside
and the night is only starting for most people
With arms hanging limply around one another
we reassure each-other that we’re ok
when really we only want each-other because we
both know we can’t do any better
and we laugh desperately
drunkenly
ugly
She sees me as a consolation
because I remind her that there are people just
as pathetic as her in this world
She has to be a mess
and so must I
it wouldn’t work any other way because I am the last authentic gutter poet
I AM CHARLES BUKOWSKI
all those other kids are impostors
but I’m real
I live the hard life
and we’ll probably go back to mine
and have another three bottles of red wine
and then we’ll fuck like animals
I’ll comment on her chunky manly thighs
and slap her on the back and call her a whore
and she’ll say something about my big hairy belly
and huge ugly balls
and then when it’s done I’ll turn cold and tell her to go home
(‘cos that’s the kind of guy I am)
and then I’ll sit in my poorly lit room
and write poems about it
referring to her as ‘that dirty whore’
while chain-smoking over my typewriter
and I’ll write these simple beastly poems
that every man can read
because I am everyman
I’m just like you and the next guy along
and I hate people
not because I think I’m better than them
but because I’m an arsehole and I know I am
that’s just the kind of guy I am
I live rough
I look bad
I’m scruffy
I don’t shave for days
even weeks
and I’m always in a mood
I have no time for people
and I scratch my arse when I wake up in the morning and have a beer
BECAUSE I’M THE REAL CHARLES BUKOWSKI
The next day I might go to the racetrack and make some money
and maybe drive my car around some bars for the day
and get into a fight
or a conversation with some whore
except I don’t know where the track is in this city
or if there even is one
and besides I don't even drive
and even if there was one I wouldn’t go
because I get bored at those places
and I wouldn’t know what to do
and don’t like betting on horses anyway
I much prefer card games
I’d probably feel out of place
and wouldn’t make small chat with anyone
because I don’t have anything to do with these people
I’m not a working-man
or an everyman
or any-man
I’m more of a no-man
a simple
boring
no-one
But that doesn’t matter
‘cos I’m still the real thing
and I’m dirty
and I’m mean
got no time for in-between
I’m the real deal
I’ll smash your skull
and then I’ll write about it
BECAUSE I AM THE REAL CHARLES BUKOWSKI
Thursday, 6 March 2008
The day I sat down and did something, except that something wasn't a productive something, so it was really nothing, and I wasted my time writing a...
"Time is a matter of fact,
and it is gone and it'll never come back,
and mine
is wasted all the time"
-Daniel Johnston
It's not every day one gets to choose how to pass the time, and let us pray it stays that way, for nothing is worse than the guilt incurred upon us by the wasting of valuable, potentially productive time with idleness. God didn't give us hand so we can stick them in our pockets, and he didn't give us pockets without giving us things to fill them with. Fill them with tools if you're a labourer, money if you're a trader, or even stolen goods should you be a thief; whatever you do, don't be idle, and don't put your hands in your pockets!
Alas! I have been cursed with so much spare time! I've have long ago become an idler. It wasn't my fault, but the conditions into which I was brought, you see. Time is to man what food is to a dog: he needs someone to regulate it for him. If a dog is given infinite amounts of food, what's to stop it from stuffing itself to an unhealthy degree? It doesn't know any better. And time, I fear, may be infinite.
I try to fight it, god knows I do. Why do you think I'm writing this pointless... I don't know if I can even call it a story. Shall we say an idle rant? But it doesn't matter how many things you find to fill your time, there'll always be more time. You do your best to keep up with it, you put up a good fight; let no-one call you an idler. But at some point you have to stop (you're only human, for fuck's sake), and while you stop, time just keeps running and slipping through your fingers.
Time is infinite, as I suggested above, but our time most certainly isn't. Maybe that's why we're so concerned with it. I dare say that if I was immortal I'd never get anything done. "What's the rush? I have all the time in the world", I'd say, and mean it. Maybe then I could actually enjoy life?
When did I become like this? All the signs were pointing the other way. I come from a family of doers. Honest, good, hard-working, dumb doers. My grandfather worked in factories for as long as he could remember. He only retired when they finally shut the factory down. For the remaining few years of his life he rotted in idleness, not knowing what to do with himself. He'd sit around all day watching German tv, probaly thinking about working. His wife, on the other hand, never did a thing in her life. For as long as I can recall she watched American soaps, with the occassional interval for sleep, so she could gather more energy to watch some more soaps. I'd almost respect her if she wasn't such a stuck-up princess. She never quite came to terms with marrying a blue collar worker. She would pretend she could speak French and English, throwing random words about, which she'd probably picked up from the soaps. She had a brain like you're still interested in this story.
Time! Won't someone take away my time?! No, don't! What a funny creature we are: we hate having time on our hands and keep looking for ways to avoid it, yet as soon as we get our wish and find a way to kill 8 hours a day we start complaining and asking for more time. We haven't come a long way from being young children, paying no attention toa boring, dispensible toy, but damned if we let anyone else have it!
and it is gone and it'll never come back,
and mine
is wasted all the time"
-Daniel Johnston
It's not every day one gets to choose how to pass the time, and let us pray it stays that way, for nothing is worse than the guilt incurred upon us by the wasting of valuable, potentially productive time with idleness. God didn't give us hand so we can stick them in our pockets, and he didn't give us pockets without giving us things to fill them with. Fill them with tools if you're a labourer, money if you're a trader, or even stolen goods should you be a thief; whatever you do, don't be idle, and don't put your hands in your pockets!
Alas! I have been cursed with so much spare time! I've have long ago become an idler. It wasn't my fault, but the conditions into which I was brought, you see. Time is to man what food is to a dog: he needs someone to regulate it for him. If a dog is given infinite amounts of food, what's to stop it from stuffing itself to an unhealthy degree? It doesn't know any better. And time, I fear, may be infinite.
I try to fight it, god knows I do. Why do you think I'm writing this pointless... I don't know if I can even call it a story. Shall we say an idle rant? But it doesn't matter how many things you find to fill your time, there'll always be more time. You do your best to keep up with it, you put up a good fight; let no-one call you an idler. But at some point you have to stop (you're only human, for fuck's sake), and while you stop, time just keeps running and slipping through your fingers.
Time is infinite, as I suggested above, but our time most certainly isn't. Maybe that's why we're so concerned with it. I dare say that if I was immortal I'd never get anything done. "What's the rush? I have all the time in the world", I'd say, and mean it. Maybe then I could actually enjoy life?
When did I become like this? All the signs were pointing the other way. I come from a family of doers. Honest, good, hard-working, dumb doers. My grandfather worked in factories for as long as he could remember. He only retired when they finally shut the factory down. For the remaining few years of his life he rotted in idleness, not knowing what to do with himself. He'd sit around all day watching German tv, probaly thinking about working. His wife, on the other hand, never did a thing in her life. For as long as I can recall she watched American soaps, with the occassional interval for sleep, so she could gather more energy to watch some more soaps. I'd almost respect her if she wasn't such a stuck-up princess. She never quite came to terms with marrying a blue collar worker. She would pretend she could speak French and English, throwing random words about, which she'd probably picked up from the soaps. She had a brain like you're still interested in this story.
Time! Won't someone take away my time?! No, don't! What a funny creature we are: we hate having time on our hands and keep looking for ways to avoid it, yet as soon as we get our wish and find a way to kill 8 hours a day we start complaining and asking for more time. We haven't come a long way from being young children, paying no attention toa boring, dispensible toy, but damned if we let anyone else have it!
Thursday, 31 January 2008
Romanticism has never been properly judged. Who was there to judge it? The critics!! The Romantics? who prove very clearly that the song is very seldom the work, that is to say, the idea sung and intended by the singer.
For I is smeone else. If brass wakes up a trumpet, it is not its fault. To me this is obvious: I witness the unfolding of my own thought: I watch it, I listen to it..."
Arthur Rimbaud, Letter to Paul Demeny, 1871
For I is smeone else. If brass wakes up a trumpet, it is not its fault. To me this is obvious: I witness the unfolding of my own thought: I watch it, I listen to it..."
Arthur Rimbaud, Letter to Paul Demeny, 1871
Tuesday, 31 July 2007
Potential
- Larval is right, I am invariably influenced by every text I read. I’m guessing he would also agree that by text I mustn’t necessarily limit myself to written words, but any film, event, piece of music, or even piece of news coverage in how they mould my perception of the world as I grow, how it styles my own personal discourse in an endless process, and – touching on his reference to the idea of eternal return – how the manner of my absorption of each new text must surely be determined by the events and perceptions which preceded it. In other words, any new fact or perception that inscribes itself in me must necessarily enter through the gates of an existing discourse in the subject's mind. Even if one is a blank slate at birth, he is sent on a particular and irreversible direction from the first sensible experience. I remember, for example, how watching films about the Holocaust shaped my perception of myself as a Jew when I was young, in a way that was entirely unintended by the film makers and which went on to affect my reception of any new image or text (more on this in a future post). In other words, we can say that any object has the potential to become many different signs, depending on the subject's already existing mental map. Each individual may react to such texts differently, depending on the utterly unique discourse which they already occupy (I am painfully aware, as I write this, of the crude manner in which I'm expressing myself. I lack the appropriate reading and terminology to convey my thoughts eloquently at this time, so any recommended reading on the topic would be most welcome).
An article in Scientific American from 2004 discussed the effects of different experiences on the the neurological processes which take place while listening to music. It's been a while since I read the article, but I believe experimenters monitored the response of gerbils (could have been some other unpleasant rodent) to certain note sequences, then administering an electric shock to the gerbil each time a note was played so as to completely alter its reaction to the sequence of notes as a whole. This may seem unimportant, but it's just one small example of how perceptions and neurolgical reactions may be dependent on past experiences.
> I finally understand what Nietzsche meant when he said “blessed are the forgetful”. I’ve just scared the shit out of my housemate by trying to philosophise with him. He was telling me about a Kiefer Sutherland film where angels of some sort would transform events in real-time, though the mortals involved would be unaware of the change even happening. A man walking down the street may be transported to India and to him it would be as if he’s been in India forever. Maybe it was that I was off my face, but I was fascinated. –‘What if you’ve just been placed here in the middle of this conversation and you don’t even realise it because your memory now tells you that you’ve been here the whole time?’ I asked J. Ideas came rushing into my head from reading and thinking about Derrida so much lately and gradually I became more animated. The more I talked the more excited I got, the more excited I got the more I talked. Lately I’ve been talking only to people with an interest in philosophy, and I’m finding it difficult to talk about other things. This was it, J. was under attack from a maniacal barrage of words and images of me trembling in a fit of geekiness and he didn’t know how to get out of its way. –‘What do you believe in, J.?’
-‘What do you mean?’ he says nervously, as if unsure whether I’m asking an innocent question or preparing the ground for another attack.
-‘I mean what are your interests? What are your opinions or beliefs on anything? I want to get to know you, J. We’ve lived together ten months and I still don’t know you!’ I hate these kind of questions, but can’t resist discomforting others with them. He looked at me for a moment and then began to snigger nervously. J. is scared. What is he supposed to say? What’s the right answer? What does one do in a situation like this? J. was knee-deep in shit and no-one could help him. It’s up to him now. He stutters a little while trying to say something, before managing to force out –‘Well, I like technology. A lot of people think it’s bad and destructive, but I think they just don’t realise how much it benefits us..... I dunno…’ he sounded unsure. –‘No, no, that’s a good answer!’ I assured him. I contemplate this for a moment and continue: ‘Have you heard of Derrida?’ He hasn’t. So I try to explain some Derrida to him and go into binary oppositions, and how in each particular discourse exist binary oppositions which are constructed through language and in which one end of the spectrum is privileged over the other. ‘These all operate unconsciously,’ I assure him so as to avoid sounding silly, and tell him how one side may invoke notions of authenticity or ‘presence’ to justify itself. I can't help but think that any system, anything 'logical' and rational decision or belief is fundamentally based on incommensurable contradictions which must remain hidden for the sake of sanity and order. This makes me think about Nietzsche when he said that everything we do is the result of a myriad wills vying for dominance. I think about how I would get angry and defensive when I was younger each time someone would point out a mistake or contradiction in something I said, or in some way questioned my conduct. I guess every time I felt angry it was because something in me felt threatened, some notion of wholeness, of a unified narrative, ordered and logical, and after all. I am almost tempted to say that if there’s one thing that’s fundamental about every consciousness it’s that something about it aims solely at the creation and maintenance of such illusions of unity. I used to think that whenever someone pissed me off in such a manner it was because they threatened to undermine something of my fragile identity, but now I’m convinced that what’s really defending itself is a logic which knows that underneath it there is nothing, so that when one threatens to remove something of my identity by pointing it out to me some goddamn self-defence mechanism is triggered to try and ward off the assailing thought, this attack on my personal logic or discourse, because if it doesn’t defend itself then it will be exposed for the collection of contradictory wills that it is, grounded in nothing. We are nothing but endless contradictions trying to disguise themselves as unity, because the one principle or need that appears to govern all human-beings is the need for unity, for order, for logic.
By this point I was already half-mumbling to myself, with Johnny sitting in his chair staring uncomfortably at the floor the whole time, until he took his advantage of a short pause to make his excuses and leave. –‘I’m actually pretty tired now. I think I’ll go to bed,’ he said and just left me there with all these ideas. Maybe that Kiefer Sutherland movie was stupid, and maybe these were stupid ideas, but I finally realised what Nietzsche had meant by “Blessed are the forgetful”. Yes, he may have meant it in the context of amor-fati. But isn't amor-fati a demand to remember and embrace rather than forget? What could he have meant by 'forgetful'? It seems to me that the philosopher must be one who can see something new and interesting in that which is most familiar, even the most seemingly absurd points, who no longer views things in as healthy or unhealthy, good or bad, good art and bad art, and I remembered how Nietzsche had written that one day he wished only to be a ‘yes’ sayer and see that which is essential and valid in everything, not merely as amor-fati, I suspect, but as some sort of creative nihilist who, in spite of his nihilism, has more spirituality than the most religious person because he places creativity above all else and sees everything as creative; this is why even a Kiefer Sutherland film will appeal to me as intriguing. I, too, wish to be a 'yes'-sayer. The next day I remembered how some guy in first year asked wouldn’t it be great if we could forget a song each time we heard it so that each time would be the first and last time I heard it, and how fascinating that idea seemed to me then and now it seemed more fascinating than ever, and that all Nietzsche was doing was warn us against overlooking the obvious. I thought about this and I walked through the quayside on a sunny day when a butterfly white as a flapping summer’s cloud got in my way as if begging to be noticed and saying look at me, I carry within me a trace of true beauty! Are you? I thought to myself. But butterfly, surely any notion of beauty is always socially constructed and if that’s the case then what is this trace you carry? Only the infinite trace of earlier conceptions of beauty with no origin from which these conceptions may have originally been derived, because everything, every single concept and event in time is but an interruption of infinity, a time without beginning, a time of time’s absence – everything starts in a moment of infinity, an instant laden with infinite potential where everything is possible, but that spark of infinite possibility can only manifest itself within a system, within a moment of striation, within some finite order, so that discourse works like some kind of filter or sieve , imposing stability and allowing controlled doses of potential inside so as not to upset the system too much, because a system requires stability, but nevertheless the system only survives because it never remains the same, because it is not allowed to stagnate and turn to stone, because it always allows little pockets of difference to seep through the sieve every now and again, and how these pockets of chaos, while being subdued by stability, nonetheless carry with them a trace of infinity, of infinite potential, and a mark of that moment when it passed through the filter, and how discourse, the resonance of ideas, is always marked with each and every single one of those moments, and each idea is thus infinite but at the same time not entirely original, depending on the existing discourse through which it comes into existence, for nothing ever exists without finitude – without finitude there is only existence, there is, il y a. I thought about how it is that changes come about in the first place. Why is it that certain thoughts are allowed to filter through while others are filtered out? Then I thought back to the idea that each system insists on defending its apparent stability and unity by defending each and every one of its multifarious components in an illusion of cohesion.
-Spurious quotes Deleuze and Guattari:
'We believe that narrative consists not in communicating what one has seen but in transmitting what one has heard, what someone else said to you. Hearsay[....] The 'first' language, or rather the first determination of language, is not the trope or metaphor but indirect discourse[....] Language is not content to go from a first party to a second part, from one who has seen to one who has not, but necessarily goes from a second party to a third party, neither of whom has seen.'
Is this not how Heidegger concept of the-they operates? By endless impressions and reflections of impressions? I can sympathise with Plato's notion of the cosmos, and of our world as mere mirage - at best, an approximation.
Spurious goes on to add:
'Not 'I speak', the linguistic cogito then, but 'we speak'. But not that, either, for it is not that a collective subject replaces the individual one. An assemblage is not a 'we', a collection of individuals; when I speak it is to engage the 'one speaks' of language - to engage, speaking in the first person, but also to be engaged, so that it is language that speaks of itself. Of itself: but as that structure that cannot be reduced to the individuals that speak it, which has a consistency, a patterning confirmed and deepened by those movements of feedback between us.'
Spurious is right, it’s something between I and WE which speaks. But is it necessarily language of itself? I’m always fascinated by how new words pop up in idioms, how small groups of friends might create their own terms and words. And mostly, how is it that a new word might come about in the first place? Does it not originate in something outside of language? An affect which precedes it? The last time I visited some family in Argentina I was foiled in my attempts at deriding Argentine television by the absence of an equivalent to the word "cheesy". I could not think of a satisfactory replacement. What did people do before they had this word? Did they still feel something similar without having a word for it? Or, and I find this more convincing, do new affects appear in each new era? in each new Heideggerian 'world'? Affects which are singular and could appear only in this 'world'? Of course new words eventually tend to striate, and create a new, more homogenous signification through a process of approximation. But do these concepts not finally settle and striate precisely because it appears in roughly similar fashion in several individuals at round about the same time? A word could not become a concept if it alluded to an affect experienced by just one single person. "Cheesy" is thus a new concept because the affect has only surfaced recently. It may,however, contain many elements of earlier concepts which have become sublated in a new affect conceptualised as "cheesy".
Larval subjects says:
“Deleuze’s account of static genesis, actualization, or individuation allows us to explain the movement from structure to actuality or the mechanics and type of “causality” required by structural thought. However, as important as the idea of static genesis might be, it is nonetheless ultimately dissatisfying as while it accounts for the genesis of actualities it does not account for the genesis of structures themselves.”
> But of course, I thought to myself, each individual contains within himself his own logic and version of discourse, does he not? Then can we really speak of a social discourse? An episteme? It would be tempting to accept that each individual logic is singular, but I remembered my recent conversations with Ibitsu, as we were obsessed with the problem posed by the impression that people’s ideas are not entirely random, that they all seem coherent and as though they’re all alluding to the same thing. How can that be? And then I realised that each logic, while being entirely subjective, nevertheless gives the impression of being objective and timeless, and that this is a necessary condition of any logos or system. How does it achieve this? Any facet of logos or discourse is always reinforced by searching for signs of itself in other people, it looks for marks and traces of something similar to itself. The same, however, must occur in the person being observed as he observes me in return, looking for signs of sameness and approval, so that in fact what ends up happening is that each individual discourse continually feeds off another in an endless process of exchange and mutual shaping. Is this why people appear to be talking about the same thing – because they’re constantly approximating each-other, never quite reaching unity or perfect commensurability because in each individual there occur constant new thoughts beyond his control, instants of infinity which constantly strives for expression? Is this the only way discourse can be said to exist, only through he countless networks of inter-woven relations, logos within logos, creating ever new and endless logoi and possibilities, never present to itself, forever renewing, regenerating? But a renewal which occurs only as part of an attempt at stability and at legitimizing a logos’s own claim to unity and truth.
And how would these new thoughts make their way through a system that aims at stability? I recalled my conversation with Ibitsu about how a musician or performer may introduce a new element to performance which may appear genuinely new yet is embraced by a majority of people. And now I wonder – is a new idea or gesture embraced because there is already something recognisable in it which has occurred in others, or because there’s something truly new about it? I suspect the answer must lie somewhere between the two possibilities. Nothing can be entirely original if it passes through the filter of discourse and is thus marked by it. In fact, it can only be through discourse, through a system, as system and logos, that anything may be produced out of those moments of infinite potential. For that potential to become actualised and manifested it must give in to order and must give up the infinite amount of possibilities open at the time. Could this be something similar to what Heidegger had meant by Dasein’s already being-guilty in every decision it takes, or Derrida’s idea that each moment of decision is a moment of madness. Because at each moment there’s an infinite amount of possibilities, and ultimately no “objective”, fundamental justification for any decision over another, or for holding any belief over another. Beliefs are generally adopted insofar as they are conducive to the reinforcement of one’s existing discourse or belief system. Yet, once taken, no decision is truly mad, for it is made within a contingent discourse which provides the foundation for all decisions. But foundation is always contingent, we say. Perhaps this explains why some ideas may be born in such a manner that appears to almost escape and defy discourse. I’d like to think that these moments are the moments of writing in the Blanchotian sense, where the world falls away and one is left facing the Other. But then again, most trends are embraced precisely because they’re not so Other at all. Surely a shift in paradigm or episteme is something much more severe, yet at the same time subtle and unfelt?
-In reply to Ibitsu on Reading – can we not say that, while one does not experience reading or the work as an 'I', the 'I' is nevertheless irreversibly transformed by this experience? After all, the experience always occurs as a relation, and event, between the text and the reader. On a neurological level, perhaps the relation is an interaction of sub-conscious traces with the text that’s being encountered. Meaning, what really encounters the text is not strictly a conscious and immediate “I” , but rather the collection of conceptions, presumptions, images, meanings and significations which are already found in me, or in the brain (or wherever they may be inscribed) as a result of a lifetime of previous experiences. I think what I’m trying to say is that the “I” of the everyday (which never remains the same) is in someway founded upon and motivated by an endless array of traces, traces with no beginning and no clear or intelligible locus in the body, which make up the "I". In other words, the “I” is founded on, ultimately, nothing. This is not a radical point, Levinas makes it, and even Heidegger does in a way. Every such experience of an interaction with a text, then, occurs on a largely subconscious level, which in turn shapes the way in which the conscious “I” would interact with any future texts or signifiers. Ibitsu points, quite rightly, to the fact that it is never an “I” which experiences the work, and asks: “Is it subsequently this death we ignore when we speak of neurological and psychological impacts of reading, whereby an ‘I’ endures what l’œvre inscribes upon it? Are we not thereby assimilating the il y a of language into the mediating and dynamic logic of the Hegelian Aufhebung?” Ibitsu would say, as is suggested in the above quote (and I can speak for Ibitsu here because we agree on at least this much), that the notion of the “I” has for a long time been a mirage, a construct of language – a simplification of consiousness. What I fear is that Blanchot’s work may lead to an equally simplified misinterpretation by creating a new concept: the il, or the ‘he’, or ‘it’, or whatever you’d like to call this. Of course, this is a non-concept, and Ibitsu is in no danger of reification, I’m sure. What I am afraid of is that with the notion of the ‘he’, we create too clear-cut a distinction between ‘he’ and ‘I’, which may be misleading as to the intricacies and complexities of consciousness and neurological operations. Why make such a distinction at all? Does such separation not in fact reinforce the very notion of the ‘I’ of which we pertain to be so wary? I believe we must begin to assume, or at least entertain the possibility, that no such distinction exists. From day to day and moment to moment, one does not experience things or relations as either ‘I’ or ‘he’, but as something that constantly hovers between the two, sometimes leaning more towards one end of the spectrum, and sometimes towards the other. The spectrum itself is not determinate either. So that in any experience, even in that of reading, and even in the experience of reading or writing in the Blanchotian sense, one does not make a clear transition from one mode to another. The ‘I’ must always be ‘present’, as it were, in the experience, even if only in a marginalised capacity. Thus, the ‘I’ can never come out unscathed. I would therefore have no qualms about using the Hegelian notion of Aufhebung, so long as we critically revise its significance to us. It must not be seen as part of a dialectical process pertaining to the Absolute, but rather an endless, and in someway senseless, process of infinite subsuming of trace after trace after trace, each trace being subsumed and absorbed in a manner which is dependent, if not entirely dependent, on the traces which precede it. Ibitsu chooses an eloquent quote from Thomas Wall when he says: “…the “he” who is never anyone-never anyone other than I, myself, but without me.” Indeed, even in the experience of the ‘he’, there is a ‘mineness’. And as Ibitsu himself so aptly and concisely puts it: “A collection of inscriptions from that which we have read, a collection which is constantly renewing and becoming, effected in each singular moment detailing our perpetual overturning of myself. An ‘I’ is penetrated by reading not as ‘I’ qua identity, but as the potential to be an ‘I’."
An article in Scientific American from 2004 discussed the effects of different experiences on the the neurological processes which take place while listening to music. It's been a while since I read the article, but I believe experimenters monitored the response of gerbils (could have been some other unpleasant rodent) to certain note sequences, then administering an electric shock to the gerbil each time a note was played so as to completely alter its reaction to the sequence of notes as a whole. This may seem unimportant, but it's just one small example of how perceptions and neurolgical reactions may be dependent on past experiences.
> I finally understand what Nietzsche meant when he said “blessed are the forgetful”. I’ve just scared the shit out of my housemate by trying to philosophise with him. He was telling me about a Kiefer Sutherland film where angels of some sort would transform events in real-time, though the mortals involved would be unaware of the change even happening. A man walking down the street may be transported to India and to him it would be as if he’s been in India forever. Maybe it was that I was off my face, but I was fascinated. –‘What if you’ve just been placed here in the middle of this conversation and you don’t even realise it because your memory now tells you that you’ve been here the whole time?’ I asked J. Ideas came rushing into my head from reading and thinking about Derrida so much lately and gradually I became more animated. The more I talked the more excited I got, the more excited I got the more I talked. Lately I’ve been talking only to people with an interest in philosophy, and I’m finding it difficult to talk about other things. This was it, J. was under attack from a maniacal barrage of words and images of me trembling in a fit of geekiness and he didn’t know how to get out of its way. –‘What do you believe in, J.?’
-‘What do you mean?’ he says nervously, as if unsure whether I’m asking an innocent question or preparing the ground for another attack.
-‘I mean what are your interests? What are your opinions or beliefs on anything? I want to get to know you, J. We’ve lived together ten months and I still don’t know you!’ I hate these kind of questions, but can’t resist discomforting others with them. He looked at me for a moment and then began to snigger nervously. J. is scared. What is he supposed to say? What’s the right answer? What does one do in a situation like this? J. was knee-deep in shit and no-one could help him. It’s up to him now. He stutters a little while trying to say something, before managing to force out –‘Well, I like technology. A lot of people think it’s bad and destructive, but I think they just don’t realise how much it benefits us..... I dunno…’ he sounded unsure. –‘No, no, that’s a good answer!’ I assured him. I contemplate this for a moment and continue: ‘Have you heard of Derrida?’ He hasn’t. So I try to explain some Derrida to him and go into binary oppositions, and how in each particular discourse exist binary oppositions which are constructed through language and in which one end of the spectrum is privileged over the other. ‘These all operate unconsciously,’ I assure him so as to avoid sounding silly, and tell him how one side may invoke notions of authenticity or ‘presence’ to justify itself. I can't help but think that any system, anything 'logical' and rational decision or belief is fundamentally based on incommensurable contradictions which must remain hidden for the sake of sanity and order. This makes me think about Nietzsche when he said that everything we do is the result of a myriad wills vying for dominance. I think about how I would get angry and defensive when I was younger each time someone would point out a mistake or contradiction in something I said, or in some way questioned my conduct. I guess every time I felt angry it was because something in me felt threatened, some notion of wholeness, of a unified narrative, ordered and logical, and after all. I am almost tempted to say that if there’s one thing that’s fundamental about every consciousness it’s that something about it aims solely at the creation and maintenance of such illusions of unity. I used to think that whenever someone pissed me off in such a manner it was because they threatened to undermine something of my fragile identity, but now I’m convinced that what’s really defending itself is a logic which knows that underneath it there is nothing, so that when one threatens to remove something of my identity by pointing it out to me some goddamn self-defence mechanism is triggered to try and ward off the assailing thought, this attack on my personal logic or discourse, because if it doesn’t defend itself then it will be exposed for the collection of contradictory wills that it is, grounded in nothing. We are nothing but endless contradictions trying to disguise themselves as unity, because the one principle or need that appears to govern all human-beings is the need for unity, for order, for logic.
By this point I was already half-mumbling to myself, with Johnny sitting in his chair staring uncomfortably at the floor the whole time, until he took his advantage of a short pause to make his excuses and leave. –‘I’m actually pretty tired now. I think I’ll go to bed,’ he said and just left me there with all these ideas. Maybe that Kiefer Sutherland movie was stupid, and maybe these were stupid ideas, but I finally realised what Nietzsche had meant by “Blessed are the forgetful”. Yes, he may have meant it in the context of amor-fati. But isn't amor-fati a demand to remember and embrace rather than forget? What could he have meant by 'forgetful'? It seems to me that the philosopher must be one who can see something new and interesting in that which is most familiar, even the most seemingly absurd points, who no longer views things in as healthy or unhealthy, good or bad, good art and bad art, and I remembered how Nietzsche had written that one day he wished only to be a ‘yes’ sayer and see that which is essential and valid in everything, not merely as amor-fati, I suspect, but as some sort of creative nihilist who, in spite of his nihilism, has more spirituality than the most religious person because he places creativity above all else and sees everything as creative; this is why even a Kiefer Sutherland film will appeal to me as intriguing. I, too, wish to be a 'yes'-sayer. The next day I remembered how some guy in first year asked wouldn’t it be great if we could forget a song each time we heard it so that each time would be the first and last time I heard it, and how fascinating that idea seemed to me then and now it seemed more fascinating than ever, and that all Nietzsche was doing was warn us against overlooking the obvious. I thought about this and I walked through the quayside on a sunny day when a butterfly white as a flapping summer’s cloud got in my way as if begging to be noticed and saying look at me, I carry within me a trace of true beauty! Are you? I thought to myself. But butterfly, surely any notion of beauty is always socially constructed and if that’s the case then what is this trace you carry? Only the infinite trace of earlier conceptions of beauty with no origin from which these conceptions may have originally been derived, because everything, every single concept and event in time is but an interruption of infinity, a time without beginning, a time of time’s absence – everything starts in a moment of infinity, an instant laden with infinite potential where everything is possible, but that spark of infinite possibility can only manifest itself within a system, within a moment of striation, within some finite order, so that discourse works like some kind of filter or sieve , imposing stability and allowing controlled doses of potential inside so as not to upset the system too much, because a system requires stability, but nevertheless the system only survives because it never remains the same, because it is not allowed to stagnate and turn to stone, because it always allows little pockets of difference to seep through the sieve every now and again, and how these pockets of chaos, while being subdued by stability, nonetheless carry with them a trace of infinity, of infinite potential, and a mark of that moment when it passed through the filter, and how discourse, the resonance of ideas, is always marked with each and every single one of those moments, and each idea is thus infinite but at the same time not entirely original, depending on the existing discourse through which it comes into existence, for nothing ever exists without finitude – without finitude there is only existence, there is, il y a. I thought about how it is that changes come about in the first place. Why is it that certain thoughts are allowed to filter through while others are filtered out? Then I thought back to the idea that each system insists on defending its apparent stability and unity by defending each and every one of its multifarious components in an illusion of cohesion.
-Spurious quotes Deleuze and Guattari:
'We believe that narrative consists not in communicating what one has seen but in transmitting what one has heard, what someone else said to you. Hearsay[....] The 'first' language, or rather the first determination of language, is not the trope or metaphor but indirect discourse[....] Language is not content to go from a first party to a second part, from one who has seen to one who has not, but necessarily goes from a second party to a third party, neither of whom has seen.'
Is this not how Heidegger concept of the-they operates? By endless impressions and reflections of impressions? I can sympathise with Plato's notion of the cosmos, and of our world as mere mirage - at best, an approximation.
Spurious goes on to add:
'Not 'I speak', the linguistic cogito then, but 'we speak'. But not that, either, for it is not that a collective subject replaces the individual one. An assemblage is not a 'we', a collection of individuals; when I speak it is to engage the 'one speaks' of language - to engage, speaking in the first person, but also to be engaged, so that it is language that speaks of itself. Of itself: but as that structure that cannot be reduced to the individuals that speak it, which has a consistency, a patterning confirmed and deepened by those movements of feedback between us.'
Spurious is right, it’s something between I and WE which speaks. But is it necessarily language of itself? I’m always fascinated by how new words pop up in idioms, how small groups of friends might create their own terms and words. And mostly, how is it that a new word might come about in the first place? Does it not originate in something outside of language? An affect which precedes it? The last time I visited some family in Argentina I was foiled in my attempts at deriding Argentine television by the absence of an equivalent to the word "cheesy". I could not think of a satisfactory replacement. What did people do before they had this word? Did they still feel something similar without having a word for it? Or, and I find this more convincing, do new affects appear in each new era? in each new Heideggerian 'world'? Affects which are singular and could appear only in this 'world'? Of course new words eventually tend to striate, and create a new, more homogenous signification through a process of approximation. But do these concepts not finally settle and striate precisely because it appears in roughly similar fashion in several individuals at round about the same time? A word could not become a concept if it alluded to an affect experienced by just one single person. "Cheesy" is thus a new concept because the affect has only surfaced recently. It may,however, contain many elements of earlier concepts which have become sublated in a new affect conceptualised as "cheesy".
Larval subjects says:
“Deleuze’s account of static genesis, actualization, or individuation allows us to explain the movement from structure to actuality or the mechanics and type of “causality” required by structural thought. However, as important as the idea of static genesis might be, it is nonetheless ultimately dissatisfying as while it accounts for the genesis of actualities it does not account for the genesis of structures themselves.”
> But of course, I thought to myself, each individual contains within himself his own logic and version of discourse, does he not? Then can we really speak of a social discourse? An episteme? It would be tempting to accept that each individual logic is singular, but I remembered my recent conversations with Ibitsu, as we were obsessed with the problem posed by the impression that people’s ideas are not entirely random, that they all seem coherent and as though they’re all alluding to the same thing. How can that be? And then I realised that each logic, while being entirely subjective, nevertheless gives the impression of being objective and timeless, and that this is a necessary condition of any logos or system. How does it achieve this? Any facet of logos or discourse is always reinforced by searching for signs of itself in other people, it looks for marks and traces of something similar to itself. The same, however, must occur in the person being observed as he observes me in return, looking for signs of sameness and approval, so that in fact what ends up happening is that each individual discourse continually feeds off another in an endless process of exchange and mutual shaping. Is this why people appear to be talking about the same thing – because they’re constantly approximating each-other, never quite reaching unity or perfect commensurability because in each individual there occur constant new thoughts beyond his control, instants of infinity which constantly strives for expression? Is this the only way discourse can be said to exist, only through he countless networks of inter-woven relations, logos within logos, creating ever new and endless logoi and possibilities, never present to itself, forever renewing, regenerating? But a renewal which occurs only as part of an attempt at stability and at legitimizing a logos’s own claim to unity and truth.
And how would these new thoughts make their way through a system that aims at stability? I recalled my conversation with Ibitsu about how a musician or performer may introduce a new element to performance which may appear genuinely new yet is embraced by a majority of people. And now I wonder – is a new idea or gesture embraced because there is already something recognisable in it which has occurred in others, or because there’s something truly new about it? I suspect the answer must lie somewhere between the two possibilities. Nothing can be entirely original if it passes through the filter of discourse and is thus marked by it. In fact, it can only be through discourse, through a system, as system and logos, that anything may be produced out of those moments of infinite potential. For that potential to become actualised and manifested it must give in to order and must give up the infinite amount of possibilities open at the time. Could this be something similar to what Heidegger had meant by Dasein’s already being-guilty in every decision it takes, or Derrida’s idea that each moment of decision is a moment of madness. Because at each moment there’s an infinite amount of possibilities, and ultimately no “objective”, fundamental justification for any decision over another, or for holding any belief over another. Beliefs are generally adopted insofar as they are conducive to the reinforcement of one’s existing discourse or belief system. Yet, once taken, no decision is truly mad, for it is made within a contingent discourse which provides the foundation for all decisions. But foundation is always contingent, we say. Perhaps this explains why some ideas may be born in such a manner that appears to almost escape and defy discourse. I’d like to think that these moments are the moments of writing in the Blanchotian sense, where the world falls away and one is left facing the Other. But then again, most trends are embraced precisely because they’re not so Other at all. Surely a shift in paradigm or episteme is something much more severe, yet at the same time subtle and unfelt?
-In reply to Ibitsu on Reading – can we not say that, while one does not experience reading or the work as an 'I', the 'I' is nevertheless irreversibly transformed by this experience? After all, the experience always occurs as a relation, and event, between the text and the reader. On a neurological level, perhaps the relation is an interaction of sub-conscious traces with the text that’s being encountered. Meaning, what really encounters the text is not strictly a conscious and immediate “I” , but rather the collection of conceptions, presumptions, images, meanings and significations which are already found in me, or in the brain (or wherever they may be inscribed) as a result of a lifetime of previous experiences. I think what I’m trying to say is that the “I” of the everyday (which never remains the same) is in someway founded upon and motivated by an endless array of traces, traces with no beginning and no clear or intelligible locus in the body, which make up the "I". In other words, the “I” is founded on, ultimately, nothing. This is not a radical point, Levinas makes it, and even Heidegger does in a way. Every such experience of an interaction with a text, then, occurs on a largely subconscious level, which in turn shapes the way in which the conscious “I” would interact with any future texts or signifiers. Ibitsu points, quite rightly, to the fact that it is never an “I” which experiences the work, and asks: “Is it subsequently this death we ignore when we speak of neurological and psychological impacts of reading, whereby an ‘I’ endures what l’œvre inscribes upon it? Are we not thereby assimilating the il y a of language into the mediating and dynamic logic of the Hegelian Aufhebung?” Ibitsu would say, as is suggested in the above quote (and I can speak for Ibitsu here because we agree on at least this much), that the notion of the “I” has for a long time been a mirage, a construct of language – a simplification of consiousness. What I fear is that Blanchot’s work may lead to an equally simplified misinterpretation by creating a new concept: the il, or the ‘he’, or ‘it’, or whatever you’d like to call this. Of course, this is a non-concept, and Ibitsu is in no danger of reification, I’m sure. What I am afraid of is that with the notion of the ‘he’, we create too clear-cut a distinction between ‘he’ and ‘I’, which may be misleading as to the intricacies and complexities of consciousness and neurological operations. Why make such a distinction at all? Does such separation not in fact reinforce the very notion of the ‘I’ of which we pertain to be so wary? I believe we must begin to assume, or at least entertain the possibility, that no such distinction exists. From day to day and moment to moment, one does not experience things or relations as either ‘I’ or ‘he’, but as something that constantly hovers between the two, sometimes leaning more towards one end of the spectrum, and sometimes towards the other. The spectrum itself is not determinate either. So that in any experience, even in that of reading, and even in the experience of reading or writing in the Blanchotian sense, one does not make a clear transition from one mode to another. The ‘I’ must always be ‘present’, as it were, in the experience, even if only in a marginalised capacity. Thus, the ‘I’ can never come out unscathed. I would therefore have no qualms about using the Hegelian notion of Aufhebung, so long as we critically revise its significance to us. It must not be seen as part of a dialectical process pertaining to the Absolute, but rather an endless, and in someway senseless, process of infinite subsuming of trace after trace after trace, each trace being subsumed and absorbed in a manner which is dependent, if not entirely dependent, on the traces which precede it. Ibitsu chooses an eloquent quote from Thomas Wall when he says: “…the “he” who is never anyone-never anyone other than I, myself, but without me.” Indeed, even in the experience of the ‘he’, there is a ‘mineness’. And as Ibitsu himself so aptly and concisely puts it: “A collection of inscriptions from that which we have read, a collection which is constantly renewing and becoming, effected in each singular moment detailing our perpetual overturning of myself. An ‘I’ is penetrated by reading not as ‘I’ qua identity, but as the potential to be an ‘I’."
Friday, 13 July 2007
A glimpse of infinity?
Jack Kerouac pays the price for a months-long drinking binge in Big Sur:
"All my self saying suddenly blurting babbles so the meaning cant even stay a minute I mean a moment to satisfy my rational endeavours to hold, control, every thought I have is smashed to a million pieces by million pieced mental explosions that I remember I thought were so wonderful when I'd first seen them on Peotl or Mescaline, I'd said then (when still innocently playing with words) 'Ah, the manifestation of multiplicity, you can actually see it, it aint just words' but now its 'Ah keselamaroyot you rot' - Till when dawn finally comes my mind is just a series of explosions that get louder and more 'multiply' broken in pieces some of them big orchestral and then rainbow explosions of sound and sight mixed."
"All my self saying suddenly blurting babbles so the meaning cant even stay a minute I mean a moment to satisfy my rational endeavours to hold, control, every thought I have is smashed to a million pieces by million pieced mental explosions that I remember I thought were so wonderful when I'd first seen them on Peotl or Mescaline, I'd said then (when still innocently playing with words) 'Ah, the manifestation of multiplicity, you can actually see it, it aint just words' but now its 'Ah keselamaroyot you rot' - Till when dawn finally comes my mind is just a series of explosions that get louder and more 'multiply' broken in pieces some of them big orchestral and then rainbow explosions of sound and sight mixed."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)