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After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency

September 17, 2014 / posted in reviews, Theory, Universal non-all / No Comments

After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of ContingencyAfter Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency by Quentin Meillassoux
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I haven’t read any clearer reading of the philosophical tradition in a while, and that’s saying quite a bit. While Meillassoux is mostly interested in the philosophical tradition, and its constraints (extending it somewhat to religion and science) he is able to dance within that tight framework and come up with a clear summation of the larger picture.

Many thinkers tend to fight in the nitty-gritty, and that’s most likely because in the process of spending so much time learning what the “greats” have said, they become invested themselves. And because academia encourages people to disagree with one another. How else could they jockey for position?

I agree with most of the comments around; that Meillassoux has managed to say something different. And how he says is intensely fascinating. He sums up the aesthetic goals of so many familiar names: Kant, Hegel, Descartes, Leibniz in so many terms. He brings us around to Badiou and demonstrates in slightly different terms, Badiou’s genius and how that enables us to begin to formulate a new beginning, one that does not rely on Being or totalization in order to guarantee meaning. He leaves us then with a new project, one in which to find a new totem to anchor as the absolute reference, one that isn’t Kant’s old hat.

While I find his book and direction exhilarating, and agree with his reading (especially how he puts many terms) I do believe that there are other ways to put the pieces.

Here is another conception of philosophy: Philosophy isn’t so much about truth as it is about managing complexity. Much of the time you do need to have some way of organizing discourse so as to be able to relate to one another. This much is certainly how people interact with one another or how discourses are able to connect. Meillassoux ultimately wants us to find an anchor as to how to arrange understanding… the anchor he finds for us is to match whatever mathematics does, which in itself is very intriguing. I suppose math is a safer bet for legitimacy than any of the traditional absolutes to which philosophy has in the past adhered. The last pages of his book is basically an outline of a non-metaphysical but speculative absolute based off facticity should look like. I’d like to find out how this kind of speculation works too. But I think Meillassoux goes a little too far in his search for Truth and tosses some of the baby out with the bathwater because in a way, he takes too much for granted even though in another way, he takes nothing for granted.

I don’t believe that consciousness or causation or non-contradiction are necessary even if I find that the connection of the parts is what is most interesting as to what meaning is. In a way, perhaps that still makes me a correlationist in Meillassoux’s book… because I don’t adhere to the absoluteness as being external to our experience…that Meillassoux so wishes to determine. Yet if any axiometric is available — as Meillassoux admits — then why facticity? Why science? Certainly not the form of science! Science will not permit the asking of questions it cannot answer, because that is bad science. So he must be talking about the content science produces and in what way this kind of dia-chronicity should be found to be meaningful or not…perhaps as meaningfulness can be modifications of how we understand ourselves today, rather than as positions to be justified by where we are now, that reversal of a reversal he calls the counter-revolution of Ptolemy’s revenge. It sounds good to speak by naming “where we are” in this way, but then again, I am not so sure we even yet know where we are now. In this way then, I think I don’t really even show up on his radar because he takes the productivity of meaning in its mechanics to be beyond question, at least in this inquiry.

Meillassoux also didn’t talk about certain other positions contemporary philosophers have taken either. I’d be interested in hearing him on that regard.

All the same this is a highly charged book. It requires a familiarity with the tradition, and a willingness to consider thoughts from another angle, a difficulty many of us have if we are not able to distill this vast amount of information into its more fundamental terms.

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Venn Diagrams

September 9, 2014 / posted in dialectics, Theory, Universal non-all / No Comments

Wrote an article on Venn Diagrams.

Published here: http://entropymag.org/venn-diagrams/

The modernist project extends itself from Descartes’ aesthetic, to build from Truths, necessary and universal. But what is a universal? Being themselves, universals must necessarily also be a priori. For something that is a priori is a predicate that is its own subject. Such a relationship is by definition necessary because subtracting the predicate dissolves the subject. Such a relationship is also universal because no matter what you add to a universal, the universal is still primarily itself, in-itself. What is also a feature of universality is that such a subject will always give rise to itself. Like reason, universals form their own reason, their own ground, and their own existence…

Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism

June 24, 2014 / posted in dialectics, reviews, Universal non-all, universal nothing / No Comments

Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical MaterialismLess Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism by Slavoj Žižek
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What is “less than nothing” is what is lost in order to maintain the relationship between subject and object. This nothing sustains the dialectic, but it’s also the ground that is synthesized in Hegel’s dialectical project. But really, this nothing is also the “form” by which phenomenon is understood. That is to say, coming from Kant, understanding or the law of desire is the pure nothingness that imposes the order we see in the chaotic world.

It’s actually pretty simple. The universal, the a priori, is the emptiness that is lost in understanding the Real. This is because we can’t apprehend understanding directly; we can only see it through the empirical world. The closest we get to understanding itself, so to speak, is the petit object a, the pure signifier that is its own lack necessarily: without this particle of necessary being we wouldn’t be able to see being in the world at all. As Zizek says, for Heidigger, we wouldn’t have Sein without Das Sein.

Zizek goes to great lengths to demonstrate the post-structural condition: that how we read comes before what we read. Borrowing from Karen Barad, we can separate how we read from what we read, because we can use how we read to discover what we read — or we can use what we read to discover how we read – but we cannot discover their entanglement, that is the border between the two. To paraphrase him, in order to find out how the two go together, we need to realign the objects so that we, the viewing apparatus and the object in question, are tested against a third thing…which is impossible. There is no third point of view, in the theory of relativity. Results always come from the position of the viewing apparatus, as it cannot be outside itself. Philosophically, there’s no third view either. We may try to step out of this understanding, out of the metaphysician’s realm, but all attempts to determine the root of discourse find themselves mired in the failure to fully explain the framing of that discourse. To put it another way, Zizek notes that antiphilosophy is at the heart of philosophy. With each failure to explain antiphilosophy, we get more philosophy. With this line of reasoning, Zizek, as usual, goes through a huge nest of thinkers to demonstrate how their different philosophies circumambulate various centers of discourse:

The basic motif of antiphilosophy is the assertion of a pure presence (the Real Life of society for Marx, Existence for Kierkegaard, Will for Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, etc.) irreducible to and excessive with regard to the network of philosophical concepts or representations. [. . .] The great theme of post-Hegelian antiphilosophy is the excess of the pre-conceptual productivity of Presence over its representation: representation is reduced to the “mirror of representation,” which reflects in a distorted way its productive ground (841).

Of course, Zizek wants to say that Hegel was the first to reach this irreducible ground, as the synthesis of consciousness – and he traces this through a variety of manners that is both entertaining and enlightening. But Barad’s point remains; whatever language Zizek adopts, we see the mysterious Presence continually being shuffled from point to point, which reduces all discourse to a manner of tautology:

The mistake resides in the fact that the limit pertaining to the form itself (to the categories used) is misperceived as a contingent empirical limitation. In the case of cognitivism: it is not that we already have the categorical apparatus necessary to explain consciousness (neuronal process, etc), and our failure to have yet done so pertains only to the empirical limitation of our knowing the relevant facts about the brain; the true limitation lies in the very form of our knowledge, in the very categorical apparatus we are using. In other words, the gap between the form of knowledge and its empirical limitation is inscribed in this form itself (284).

So while we understand the mysterious Real though our a priori categories, these categories give us an incomplete view. In order to mirror ourselves with the exterior, to be “appropriate” to reality, we create a standing social order, a consistency within discourses (or many discourses themselves) each of which approach the mystery of the world from another angle. These discourses are always defractions, which are in themselves incomplete, hinging on one another but only shuffling pure Presence about. Spoken through Fichte: this absence can be expressed as antoss, or as Lacan liked to say about the Self: “I think where I am not.” This can be unpacked to mean that the self is simply what mediates itself. In this way, Hegel remains for Zizek the genius that first notices how what we read is how we read:

In this sense, it is meaningless to call Hegel’s philosophy “absolute idealism”: his point is precisely that there is no need for a Third element, the medium or Ground beyond subject and object-substance. We start with objectivity, and the subject is nothing but the self-meditation of objectivity (144, original italics).

Unpacking this thought, lets realize that not only is the self “less than nothing” but “less than nothing” is also the pure Presence mediating the discourse itself. We get the symbolic reality through the loss of pure Presence. Its lack allows us to read through it to get discursive reality as a full blown immersive social environment of culture.

I rather enjoyed this lengthy and inspired book. To be brief, Zizek does philosophy to hide the fact that philosophy no longer works, that in Heidegger’s language, philosophy has been suspended while capitalism contemplates itself. In this sense, capitalism tries to say what reason cannot (in this sense, capitalism occupies the same position as Art for Kant, that of a second nature). No wonder then that Zizek says philosophy stopped with Hegel, that the many guises of Hegel are in fact not-Hegel or a stunted Hegel so that we can continue on with postmodernism, with the avant garde, because we haven’t learned Hegel yet… so we hide him away while we continue on in endless jouissance. So to cut to the chase:

In every discourse, in every sense-making, we either sacrifice completeness or we sacrifice contingency. Master discourses (like that of Gods) generally sacrifice contingency to create completeness, to wrap us in universals, to guarantee the universe be stable for us to live in. But in all of these cases (and you can go on ad infinitum), you will end up asking, why is there necessity? As in is there a “necessity particle” that makes existence be (as existence itself is without cause)? Why are things even necessary? Is there pure being somewhere? Zizek’s answer is to locate the split of symbolic reality (necessity) and the Real together within the subject, that only through a split subject do we get contingency as the only necessity. Our ability to understand is then only supplemented through both Reason and an encounter with the Real that stands in to verify the completeness of discursive truth. For Zizek the subject’s being split is another way of saying that necessary to subjectivity is the provision of what needs to be included within its view, of what cannot be compromised. Zizek provides the example where some Christians replied to Darwinism by insisting that the world was 4,000 years old, that fossils were placed in the Earth to test faith. Zizek doesn’t believe this to be true but he cites this example to show that the “grain of truth” in the Christian example is their

impossible-Real objectal counter-part which never positively existed in reality – it emerges through its loss, it is directly created as a fossil. [T]he exclusion of this object is consistitutive of the appearance of reality: since reality (not the Real) is correlative to the subject, it can only constitute itself through the withdrawal from it of the object which “is” the subject [. . .] What breaks up the self-closure of transcendental correlation is thus not the transcendent reality that eludes the subject’s grasp, but the inaccessibility of the object that “is” the subject itself. This is the true “fossil,” the bone that is the spirit, to paraphrase Hegel, and this object is not simply the full objective reality of the subject [. . .] but the non-corporeal, fantasmatic lamella. (645).

This is another way of encountering the symbolic Real, the meaningless floating signifier that would guarantee completeness, that is the subject in its actualization. Be this ontology, money, or joy, fear, anxiety, love, mana or luck, such signifiers often allow discourse to hinge on these terms in order for that discourse to continue to be relevant, a kind of antiphilosophy in the heart of philosophy or antilaw at the heart of law. Zizek writes

Every signifying field thus has to be “sutured” by a supplementary zero-signifier, a “zero symbolic value, that is, a sign marking the necessity of a supplementary symbolic content over and above that which the signified already contains.” This signifier is “a symbol in its pure state”: lacking any determinate meaning, it stands for the presence of meaning and such in contrast to its absence, in a further dialectical twist, the mode of appearance of this supplementary signifier which stands for meaning as such is non-sense [. . .]. Notions like mana thus “represent nothing more or less that floating signifier which is the disability of all finite thought. (585, original italics).

So is there any way to get out? The only meaningful answer is no, as to escape pure Presence is to fall into non-sense, or at least a difference sense that is non-sense from where we current are. Even attempt to transgress the limits of the law end up invoking the law in its transgressed form, simply because those forms are how we understand. This is how the Real becomes mirrored within the symbolic as the pure form of the symbolic. The symbolic Real, which is what Zizek would call meaningless encodings necessary to moor our consistency (our discourse, so to speak), operates through the contingencies qua Real, a maneuver of the subject to mediate itself and actualize.

At this point, to recognize a new thing, like a new world order, or a solution from our capitalist dilemma, means coming to new coordinates, a new phenomenon, a new axis. Zizek locates this between drive and reason, to have the two come together. You can read this like the unification of money with language, but he leaves it open, because after all, these are metaphysical terms. Directly speaking, such terms are always beyond our understanding, lacking substance, even as they are always within the area delineated by our pure understanding, but completely impotent to interrupt our world and realign it. All we need is the right content to come along, the right void to allow us to rename it, and recognize it as the new event, in the language of Nietzsche, “the eternal return.” With that, we could have a new epoch, a new pure Presence emerging from nothingness itself, and that new Presence would be a new world order, a new symbolic Real to realign our world, to remake our world. Compared to anything in or current state it would be more than anything, a new nothing from which there would never be any possibility of return as we would irreparably be someone else.

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Truth, bullshit, Identity(ego) and Bullshit

May 3, 2014 / posted in dialectics, images of being-human, manifesto, rational choice theory and homo economicus, Theory, Universal non-all / No Comments

If you take words like Truth seriously, you’ll find yourself going into a beyond. Because Truth with a capital T is a place, not a specific content… it’s an empty position, which means only itself. The narrowest point of all, it is also the most distant, the axis around which discourses circulate as satellites.

This “north star” only operates as itself, without meaning because it is completely itself… (meaning is always the deferral of meaning, words leading to more words, thus when it is itself, it is without meaning, an irrational point standing in for nothing but itself). Truth, must remain outside of discourse to organize discourse.

Truth is the opposite of bullshit.

First, bullsit:

I spoke with one of best friends about this. Bullshit is machine language. It’s code. It’s a self-enclosed, self-referential discourse which does not connect well to outside discourses. Thus bullshit, which is always encased in a system (of bullshit) which generates bullshit is like Truth in that it does not refer to anything but itself, it is also equally irrational.

The difference though, is that when you participate in bullshit, when you have a stake in it as an identity in it, it is no longer bullshit, it is meaningful.

For example, you can think that as a college professor, your mission is to educate young minds. Educate them. But the colleges themselves operate on a different level. Colleges rank themselves, compete with each other for funding, create complex apparatuses which organize their departments in the form of hierarchies, ranking its employees and so on. So while a college professor can identify themself like dead poet’s society — through discourse and elucidation, a college will foist on its professors a different identity, one encoached in metrics of grading, ranking, preening and processes… all of which generally serve the college’s needs directly and only the students indirectly, if at all. Such a professor will protest this hijacking of his identity (“I am not a cog in your machine”) and thus the system and its output will be seen as “bullshit”. If you were a college administrator, or a teacher heavily invested with the system and the college’s needs, you may see yourself as both elucidator AND a position within a rank in file within the college — also a representative of the college, befitting the needs of the college. In that case, you won’t see such output as “bullshit” because your identity will be wrapped up within the logic of that hierarchical discourse.

So, other forms of bullshit also depend on identity positionings. If your identity does not fit an imposed external discourse, you will see that discourse as bullshit. You might as well be a mechanic looking at a doctor’s chart, or a doctor looking at a mechanic’s documentation of a ship’s engine. Both discourses are separate from each other, self referential with its own semiotic chains, its own indexical peculiarities, its own bullshit.

In a way, bullshit is the system itself, seen from the outside. No bullshit is bullshit unless you don’t identify within its meanings at an unconscious level. But Truth, is the standin axis for all discourses… in a way, an attempt to contain discourses within one rubric. In our fragmented postmodern world, we generate many self referential codes. Law codes, building codes, computer codes, academic codes, bureaucratic codes, administrative codes, tax codes, stock codes, logic codes, mathemes… all of which are only meaningful within their own self reference. How many tv shows create their own jokes, create their own meanings by referring to an encyclopedia of history? Comic book wikis, Star Trek wikis, Star Wars wikis, Doctor Who wikis, Lost wikis… the list goes on and on.

In the age of information, we create nestings of code in an attempt to attract people to join our languages, our plateaus of sense and reason, and thus invested they exist in a 2nd Life, Sim, fanbased community for which there can be nearly no beyond because self referentiality forecloses interaction between outside discourse. At least, online that’s the case. In person, your neighbors intrude, your economics intrude, your politics intrude and disrupt these fragile sensibilities, reminding us of a larger discourse.

For example, the master discourse today is not spoken in words but in money. Economically, with the current money laundering laws and identity theft laws, our financial institutions seek to mire us within their own code, so that we cannot escape their domain. Everything needs a bank account, or a social security number. We may have gained some autonomy to create separate spheres of influence, but the larger appratuses of capital also seek to dominate us by forcing us to psychically invest in credit scores, tax returns, and to play the game their way… their Truth of course, is money, which is meaningless in itself… Money is the petit object a, of the discourse of money, as it stands only for itself, a zero sum signifier, to guarantee that we are within the system of money, that all things can be exchanged for money as a kind of Money.

This locking of us into this immobility also involves slowly locking us out. Cities have started to impose “good neighbor fees” on home based businesses, so that only the residents can work at such home based businesses. Already in a post-industrial economy, our material dialectic is split by market mediation. We are purely consumers, purely meant to work as employees and consumers. The early 20th century saw the leftovers of consumer culture recycled back into the producer’s side of the cycle… but that divorce only increasingly locks us out of that side… the masters of production seek to keep newcomers out of competiting for production as a way of retaining their access to profit by imposing more power against those who might do otherwise. People who seek to do business on their own face increasing challenges, a nest of laws that would prohibit and limit access while increasing information cost (compliance laws) and start-up costs, raising the amount needed to start a business. People who would be in business see these external constraints as “bullshit” because they do not recognize that the system’s imposition on them as being central to what they are trying to do or who they would to be… that business people see themselves doing transactions (marketing, service or production, shipping) rather than seeing the outside state apparatus demanding of them a piece of their action before they even do anything.

This kind of dialectical opposition through identity is very illustrative of how the category of bullshit is created from the self’s position within a discourse that would locate the self in a different position than where it thinks it ought to be.

Second, Truth:

So if bullshit is being outside of a discourse of self-referentiality, then what is Truth? I sought to take such terms seriously that I looked into meta-language, philosophies, in order to clarify what Truth might be, or how it might be attained. In doing so, you examine words. Language. In doing that, you start to notice words and how they work, what they mean.

When you notice words as words, reality and language start to separate. This is an odd phenomenon, after all, as Lewis Carrol has been so often been paraphrased: Take care of the sense and the words will arrange themselves. The reverse is equally telling. Take care of words themselves, and the very thing you seek (sense itself) will slip from your grasp. When you reach a point that words like Truth mean only what they mean, and that their nest inevitably refers back to itself, you will hit reach the limits of language… for language can explain the objects in language — language moves such objects, manipulates them, for what else is language for, but the negotiation of meaning and personal position among Others — but language cannot explain itself, just as the thinker cannot think itself. This quote from Slavoj Zizek (from Less than Nothing) is useful:

In the opposition between the symbolic order and reality, the Real is on the side of the symbolic—it is the part of reality which clings to the symbolic in the guise of its inconsistency/gap/impossibility). The Real is the point at which the symbolic itself, mutilating it from within: it is the non-All of the symbolic. There is a Real not because the symbolic cannot grasp its external Real, but because the symbolic cannot fully become itself. There is being (reality) because the symbolic system is inconsistent, flawed, for the Real is an impasse of formalization. This thesis must be given its full “idealist” weight: it is not only that reality is too rich, so that every formalization fails to grasp it, stumbles over it; the Real is nothing but an impasse of formalization—there is dense reality “out there” because of the inconsistencies and gaps in the symbolic order. The Real is nothing but the non-All of formalization, not its external exception.

So as discourse is unable to cohere completely, make things what they are, we get the gaps and distortions in things within the symbolic discourse itself, always as an indexical “beyond” representation to stand in for the distortion which is only “true” as it coincides with the un-able to be symbolised formation. Where Truth as a marker of stablization sets in the discourse, it acts as the single sign that is itself, to tie in the external inconsistency/gap of the Real back to the symbolic force. Another quote from Zizek, to continue the thought:

Since reality is in itself fragile and inconsistent, it needs the intervention of a Master-Signifier to stablize itself into a consistent field; this Master-Signifier makes the point at which a signifier falls into the Real. The Master-Signifier is a signifier which not only designates features of reality, but performatively intervenes into reality.

Our loss of a Master-Signifier, as Zizek puts it, from the modern to the postmodern marks the fragmentation of discourses today, unable to cohere together as they split into their own alignments. Nonetheless the modern world exists today, through the auspices of Money and in its spectral form.

So how does Truth and bullshit tie together?

Third, Identity/ego:

For each of us today, as we develop identities and egos, we invest in different discourses, hoping to find one that is legitimatized and mostly compatible through whatever other discourses people around us engage in. Example of such discourses abound: a church discourse, a video game clan discourse, a fraternity discourse, academic discourse(s), economic work discoures… legal discourse(s)… these all intersect at the body of identity, bombarding us with fragmentation and contradiction. Coming to find one’s self, or to “discover yourself” is another way of saying, “I need to find an image/position immanent within a discourse where I can fit in, and become myself…” Spoken cynically, “I need to become the image others will then see as me, so that I may belong to a discourse, without the gap/distortion/inconsistency inherent in being a personality whose psychal investments connect to nothing.” Losers are narcissists for whom their meanings only mean something to themselves… no one else, no outside discourse recognizes their meanings/connections as being inherently meaningful.

Fourth, Bullshit:

And of course, noting how Truth itself functions within a discourse, radically itself because it is irrationally itself. Everything is contingent, although Truth only exists as itself, an emptiness within discourse but not of it (the center is not the center) to guarantee an anchoring of discourse. All is contingent, including the fact that sometimes necessities come out, but only do so contingently. In other words, dissolving words into words instead of reality forces us to lose the very thing we seek to gain… we lose our place because the functionality is localized into an objective model that is not-us. Truth becomes truth, and discourse becomes bullshit.

being and identity and reality

April 11, 2014 / posted in art, dialectics, images of being-human, life as we know it, manifesto, note to self, Theory, Universal non-all, universal nothing / No Comments

I think much of politics stems from identity construction. Most discussions about identity are approached from the question of the Other — include them or teach them or change them. But really, any position of otherness must be mediated by what the Self is. The self mediating the self is the “invisible” point of reference that creates this initial distortion.

Post race isn’t exactly the same as post identity. Even if it’s a class distinction or, say, identifying as a “punk” which means “I’m real” then others who are not punk are “sell outs.”. Identity works that way.

So being American. Being a man. Being your age. Your personal history your children’s future your parent’s past your politics your sexuality your (in)unique soul. These are still pretty much identity construction that traps us as being a type and others as not being us. Except for genuine interaction, which basically needs both sides of the interaction to shed the image of itself, the Other is always a mirror that reflects back to us our negative that is not-me.

These groups of similar mes that see me as being us organizes groups, and super-groups. This organizationing(s) “hows” how we talk to one another and share resources/work. But each group, and group of groups also describe it’s own outside. You have to be outside the outside, to really step away. This organization/description/structure is not accidentally, how things are supposed to be. Based, on the outside of itself, it has to be this way, as defined by the outside that is not itself defining itself. So, each grouping also describes it’s own outside or “rebellion”. Being a punk is inscribed at the heart of being a sell-out. So it really seems impossible to step out of this reality.

But I guess that really doesn’t matter. Most people just want to fit in somewhere and be themselves. Lol, be who their identity tells them they are. :-)

baby bachelorette, sings out our lives to nothing & everything around itself

June 9, 2013 / posted in images of being-human, life as we know it, Universal non-all / No Comments

OMG!!! the scary part after watching this is that you could totally see little kids acting like that… but you can also see adults acting like that as well. We really aren’t that more developed.

plus,

This guy is singing out his life/eulogy out in public from a darker past with faith. egos are our life stories, for each of us that we build into a budding, flowering self-image.

equals,

as you get older, everything opens up, flowers. empties out. reading tons of philosophy is to find the central way, the well worn ruts that are psychosomatic, multilingual, intersecting, bifurcating language and humanity on all fronts. the point is that everything is made of the stuff around it, like waves from the self, a boat in a seat of semiotic neuron-tic economic influence. we are made of the stuff around us that accumulates as columns of time that mold our geneology our personage, a familiar link to perceive without your own molds, interfering, creating ripples, blindspots the loose rambling of my american dialogue, held into carefully conceived rapture, linking empty space to empty space time to time, and all subsequent experiences we seek to derive all sources of pleasure and being from.

aesthetics for temporal cognition

June 13, 2012 / posted in images of being-human, life as we know it, note to self, Theory, Universal non-all / No Comments

have the nagging feeling that life is slipping me by even though i am productive, in the every day sense, that my actions have consequences for the ppl around me, even to people i have not met.

the sense that i do not have a life, that i do not matter, even though i kind of have a life and even without the sense of community nor with the closeknit friendships ive always had; i still go out several times a week.

this feeling must be based off the faulty illusion that we can “get it”, having achieved something, or experienced something, having it to keep forever. when in fact, even objects, which are the least objective of all, shift constantly, in imperceptible angles, adding up the way the butterfly wings kill entire weather patterns, though, the metaphor is more poetic than actual since complex systems can be expressed in tipping points graphically but not that is not equivalent to being instigated solely by such tiny singularities.

most of all though, what we have is memory. bergson in matter and memory hit the nail on the head — that ontology isnt so much about an experience but a hall of mirrors — experientially echoing in infinite recursion, each recall degrading in imperceptibly, adding up the way butterfly wings shift wind patterns, though, the insect is more poetic than aural, more whimsical than solid, more illusionary than alive… much like that cat of mr. schrodinger’s

i dont think my push to be alive!(tm) could be more actual, although it certainly could be more dramatic. there can’t be more hours in the day. and to be honest i kind of do hate going out. i also love to sleep. look forward to it throughout the day, only to stay up late at night like now.

one of the realisations that LSD gave emily dickinson was that the infinite singularity of the ALL could be found even in a closed space, in the non-all of her room in Amherst. yes, even in Amherst could butterfly wings penetrate walls, and having felt that insect from halfway around the world, she found she could witness it in all things. in the early church calls of the morning or the rocket symphony of a good and tender wine or the heavy walking beats of the bee gees. look at her poetry– YOU KNOW SHE SAW THE MARK OF BUTTERFLIES IN HYPHENS AND ELLIPSES TRAILING OFF THE PAGE IN RHAPSODIC SPLENDOR

so perhaps i need to get out more, or perhaps not. at this point, one life would interfere with another, and together they would not enrich one another. i think at this plateau, they offer the same experience, so i should just choose one and concentrate on that.

but they really dont —

i am mistaking syntagma for paradigms. it’s my mistake, and a common one. formal equivalence is not the same as ontological difference…. that difference being identity, and that kind of paradigmatic difference is what distinguishes a particular woman as soul mate rather than as just another stranger.

of course that’s the sadness about formal reductionisms, that classification at the level of meta promotes the illusion that we can be a soul mate to each and any, every and all– when in fact, to be soul mate is a completely different thing, from one soul to the next.

and of course, our human limitation will not allow us to swallow the whole ocean with our tiny little cups. in pouring more & more & MORE &MORE!, we lose what we have. that’s clear from chuang tzu, perhaps why emily stayed in her room, so as to not lose wings (even if she was only seeing her own pattern strewn across all her furniture and things).

so we seek butterflies out through formal equivalence, rather than gaining a unique deployment with each instance. perhaps this is a facet of a short-cut in cognition, to build patterns and build experience from within familiar patterns. yet we’ve each come across in ourselves and in others, a recognition that experience can be defined solely by patterns we see, when we rely on our syntagasms rather than on the uniqueness of each moment.

yet similiarly to grasp each moment as a uniqueness lends itself to another reductionism, that this can be grasped and is a thing to itself, like the last thing in itself… and this produces another syntagmasm, a meta map for experience that contains each and every, a freshness– so that we insist on finding a novelty in each moment, forcing a short sightedness. we forget to see the entire jet stream and only see butterflys flapping. not so bad, but then why walk with your head down, each foot swinging out. and walk into a pole? or wall? or another charles?

perhaps i am kidding myself. that there is a direction there, and that we can dictate how we surf. but if your walking feet don’t hypnotize then is it possible to see the moon as seperate from the finger pointing at it? bruce lee seemed to think so, and he had great balance though he did die young.

i am rejected, am rebuked, forced back, into the same position i was before, when i started writing this damned thing. yet now feels slightly different, degraded, altered, imperceptibly by me? by time? by metabolism? hallelujah! progress? or is this just another remix for the new year?

heidigger wrote that death encapsulates meaning, a life. that right before one died, when one was dying, then one could be most complete. and having an end point, knowing it’s lurking there, lets us wrap ourselves in meaning, and bring finality to what we do/did, a beauty that when standing on the hill, we can grasp, a beauty which might be lost if we lived for too many 10,000 years. perhaps making bruce a hero too, than if he passed on in bed, an old man filled with regret, living in the past.

so if he was right, with this “a life” we can have meaning, but meaning then, can only be individual, a prior-ity given to prioritize against all other possibilities, potentialities and signifieds… each and every, any and all vectors. that if individual then that precludes the possibility of universal meaning, even if meaning can be shared by the group, by societies, it cannot exist without “a life” and cannot persist without death. bruce’s fingering the moon is the moon to bruce, not to us. then how can the universe not end? how can it not be, unless its meaning was completely inhuman, beyond human and not-human ever at all?

which it obviously is, the way an ant colony understands one things, and ice cubes grasp another, completely foreign actualization.

that we should ride, like a gigantic purple moon over a crazy ocean made of foaming milk and styrofoam, that walt witman with his opium face should preside over an archway of marble halls in deafening revolution be how we find our place — like a daisy on a battlefield — this is spectacular, and betrays our ant colony mentality. but perhaps this is not a weakness at all; that our heads should be bowed when walking. but a strength, a persistence, that happiness is good health and a bad memory, so said the famous addict ingrid bergman, in her shadowy eyes — that one of the so called greatest movies could be just a torrid affair between an older man and a younger woman. that there isnt anything sublime about love, or our role in society, our conflict with the iron will of others…. like a badly painted wall we thinly veil our intentions and let our patterns tell us how to feel.

and can we hope or fear that and each passing moment might penetrate our blindless like a strangely seen roman empire superimposed on los angeles so tormenting horselover fat because only he can step out of that pattern and witness pinkly winking lights, children who fortell of the future, living among tapes, wires, and recorders and dying before the end of the world to the horror of those who hang onto prophecy but freeing us for perspicacity of having a second chance, that death is each moment and in our grasp a creation for each, that even when we hang onto a crystal ball, then can we desire its silence to free us from delphi, free us from expectations, from our patterns, from ourselves…

metaphysics of anti-presence OR without “ontic” context there is no ontological

January 19, 2012 / posted in Theory, Universal non-all, universal nothing / No Comments

(written about a month or so ago)

i suppose that thanksgiving is when one is supposed to be reminded to be thankful. while this in principle, is the same for pilgrims as us, i don’t believe it to be the most useful of things to do with our time.

if anything we ought to be “thankful” all the time. but that’s not even a question of giving thanks… as it begs the question, thanks to who? even the universe in general isn’t good enough, because it implies that if one is thankful for one day then — you can take advantage of everything all the rest of the days?

what an utterly and ridiculous notion!

i have been trying to stay away from some of the pitfalls of philosophy. see, it’s not a matter of specific knowledge it’s more of the way in which we apply our thoughts. philosophy as an exercise isn’t the extrapolation of “key points”, that is something anyone and everyone can does — stoners especially. what makes something philosophy is the consideration of these key points within a territory of meta-physics. so while there are some artists that certainly give philosophical critiques, and i know of some, they are still not, strictly speaking, philosophers.

so for example — how the paragraph above applies to me — would go something like this… something i might’ve done (but have not, to the best of my knowledge) is approach someone who is claiming to not be a philosopher because he is proposing an anti-metaphysics and say to him loudly: THE NEGATION OF A METAPHYSICS IS A METAPHYSICS

which in a philosophical sense, is definitely be true. and is true in a heideggerian kind of way. but really is not a useful thought to anyone except philosophers.

so you get trapped, see? once you unconsciously apply that context, you’re kinda stuck addressing context, which is slippery and hard to define.

so this question of thanks, or not thanks, is really a false dichotomy. you can have a day of thanks and still be thankful. all the time.

lately though, i have been disgusted with the world we are living in. from consumerism, to everything else. it seems there is too much baggage around. and what is one to do? go to your parents or your whoever and say, look, you know and i know x y z is supposed to happen but let’s agree not to play that game and be genuine with one another… and deal with one another on the basis of a natural ethics.

even if they agree, and didn’t decide you were looney and trying to impose a crap load of your own constructions onto them, it’s almost laughable that there be some genuine authentic human being underneath all of these games. i mean, how many of you women would be willing to give up your identity and learned behaviors of womanhood? if you address the question to men it’s even stickier because most men may be aware of “being a man” of when they are to do that kind of “man thing”, but at the same time, how many of them are really willing to give it up? being a man is more socially “default” than being a woman, so it’s harder to realize when you are “being yourself” and when you are “being a man”. in fact, i would argue that its impossible for many men since we are so much “ourself” “a man”.

after all, women can wear pants and ppl don’t really care…

so its kind of like, give up what? let’s imagine i was trying to fit in. and that i am making myself miserable doing it. so i stop “fitting in”. but what does that mean? how do i earn a living? and at what point should i no longer stop giving things up, and accept that i have reached my genuine self. so.. okay, we can agree that i am not cut out to be a finance person. i admit that. i suck at it. and i get lost easily in finance (but not math)… and i don’t have patience for it. so i can stop that. but does that mean i need to stop working? if i want to stop doing sales, fine. im not an extrovert, and it drains me alot to talk to ppl. but does that mean i stop being self-employed? who am i really? that’s a really really REALLY dumb question though, because it doesn’t go anywhere. am i assuming that i have an inner fireman (or some other job) i can channel and suddenly discover that i need to reorient my life in a cosmological way and that cosmology happens to correspond to a banal everyday job THAT I CAN DO IN LA IN THE EARLY 21st CENTURY AND STILL BE “FIT IN” to the larger society? its kind of a tall order to think that ideal something would make everything “work”.

see, it’s easy to locate conflict in the local. like, oh it’s my coworker(s) that make me unhappy, or its the fact that i need to make 20k more or that my gf isn’t the right person… but it’s much harder to reasonably assume that local conflicts do not result from global fissures.

in one sense it’s easy to say, oh, everything is local. so if i have a problem with my mother, it’s not pathological — meaning it’s not a structural issue in how i make my surroundings/relationships. that if i run away from home, i won’t have a similar problem with someone else, elsewhere. so the presence of conflicts in the local do not assume that problems aren’t global too. but absence doesn’t work that way. should everything be okay locally, then we suddenly don’t care about the global… since our experience of the global is always mediated by the local.

this is still pretty mundane. on thanksgiving you can say, oh, i love you ppl! you ppl who want to spend it with me! and that’s pretty much it, isn’t it? that’s what any holiday is about, spending it with those unique others. there isn’t a magical soulmate you haven’t yet, or the perfect family you have to find and become — this is the moral conclusion of any good thanksgiving family movie. and that conclusion lends itself to supposing a radical absence of the global all together.

and this is where things get a little hairy.

because there isn’t a cosmological signifiance to the global. global is only a position we reify ourselves — through our pathology or the repetition of our situation. conflicts in the local originate from the vehicles of how we situate or deploy things that happen around us. we repeat our histories because we recreate those contexts. this is pretty plain psychoanalysis-wise but the larger situation i am attempting to express is one devoid of oedipus, symbolic regimes or other meta-physical crap. we can and should suppose the global as the vanishing mediator by which we explain and interface with our surroundings, but we should not limit our surroundings to this global mediation! (maybe zizek would say at this point, who cares about the cosmos? only global only global. but no, the property isnt transitive, there is a parallax)

but not to get side-tracked:

reality is not the pawn of ideas. reality may be a playground for ideas to find expression, but the ghost always needs a body. it’s in the body that a ghost becomes real — not the other way around. rather, ideas are the pawn of reality. we can play with them, and create them but they ultimately only remain facets of our own distinction having ‘reality’ only when we align them with the actual happenings in reality.

reality is not limited to the ideas we have in our head. i think this kind of rationalization is very very damaging. i see this happening alot in political discourse, or in social situations where 1) individuals assume others embody a principle or 2) individuals or situations are defined in terms of a principle.

both are limiting behaviors and discard the larger reality which has no principle or idea. one might as well assume there is an evil in the world, originating from a particular source. it’s like harry potter defeating whatever his face is. he removes evil from the world, so now we can never have evil ever again.

or in some other stories, where there is one good, like if some super mad scientist found where jesus lived and decided to imprision jesus. oh no, make that santa claus. now there’s no xmas.

like that.

human beings may construct for the larger society, a discourse of thanks, or political salvation or what have you, but that discourse is reality only for the people who accept the temporal context or the narrative context. this is a very powerful thing to have happen, but it’s also very damaging for us, because we become blind to what we are doing and what we are not only thinking we are doing but what else we are actually doing (to ourselves or others). i am not advocating a return to gaia or that we need to live with one with nature — or embrace our biological imperative — those discourses are also a return to the ‘true authentic self’ which are defined by anthropomorphosizing concepts. nature is a concept. biological imperatives are concepts. i don’t mean to say that concepts are not real, just that are they are not definitively real, inscribed in the cosmological void! the global exists too, but only for the one, not for the cosmos. this is what hegel means when he talks about universal vs the Notion, but that’s for a different time.

so what does it leave us? with an authentic…. what? one might as well assume that chimps have biological imperatives and study them in labs. removing one from the situation is to defamiliarize that removed one.

i kind of want to move away from this now, because i am skirting on this notion of ‘choice’ and ‘free will’ which is too much to get into right now. a good example of how discourse and pre-conceived notions comes into play is in the discursive writings of evolutionary psychologists… who presuppose natural identity for man and woman since the dawn of time. or who ‘discover’ our ‘true nature’ as some kind of social evolution concurrent with our biological evolution. for example, seeing ‘modern hunter gatherers’ as ‘a window to our prehistoric man’ is both racist and ignoring the fact that the present is not the past’s present. the present in the past is gone, and the past’s present seen today is a very different thing than the past’s past. unfortunately like all discourses, the precepts of that discourse create the conditions for fulfilling and expressing that discourse. if ‘we’, the contemporary man, are the pinnacle of evolution then we deserve what we got. those who are ‘lesser’… well, you get it. most of discourse is, is to narratively sort out other people and to tell us how to treat them and deal with them.

so we know ourselves in the process through the global mediation of the narrative about other people.

i guess i could have said all of this, after thinking about it and procrastinating on my CEU (continuing education units) by saying for this entry

1. there isn’t anything to be thankful about, except that you can be thankful
2. there is no (big Other) to be thankful to.
3. you aren’t being thankful, it’s your role in the story to be thankful… because there is no real you, only your body and your projected identity.

but look at this. haven’t i narratively told you who you are, how to deal with other people and how you can fulfill and express yourself?

i have! but only if you believe in this discourse, of course.

the Disheartening Metonymy in Facebook

July 28, 2011 / posted in images of being-human, life as we know it, Universal non-all, universal nothing / No Comments

In the midst of the ontic we look for ontology. I started at 15 or so, with excerpts from Plato’s Republic, Carl Sagan and Nietzsche which I did not understand at all and did not get past the first few pages.

It is in this search for ontology that one will digest, and read, and seek for a center.

I think most will do this, perhaps, when things are bad or chaotic.

Beyond ontology however, we slip into a regime of mirrors, a hall of confusion by which we must choose that which has Being, a contest between beings which ends either in nihilism, a rejection of ontology or a dogmatic stand that this arbitrary figure is not at all arbitrary and in fact has the real deal. The stand most often occurs with what feels certain, what gives the subject certainty and what the subject likes most naturally.

Many of us don’t share any given subject’s appraisal of Being. Pointing out that this reliance on a figurehead is arbitrary gives rise to relativism and humor which is most prevalent on the underbelly of the internet.

It is in this reliance of values and the questioning of values which I take to be central to any question, something I like to point that Heidegger ended his career with.

The problem now, that I see it, stems from a collapse of long term and short term, personal and public spaces. I don’t believe that what’s good for an individual is good for society and vis versa. But how our legal and political system runs most effectively collapses all these different regimes such that we are slipping into a slow paralysis. We are choking ourselves with the weight of not only ourselves but those before and after us for whom we represent and stand in for. In the interest of American Brotherhood (of equals) each us has access to the universal but it is that access which gives rise to the oppression of living fragmented, dual lives. We can’t deal with each other as individuals but each interaction becomes of political and social significance. Talking to an Other on the bus becomes a gesture of political multicultural relativism. Dealing with your boss or employee becomes not just a negotiation of your individual and professional interests, but also a meter between how any boss or employee should/not interact (Thank you for pointing this out, Walter Olsen). Judges today sometimes cannot pass verdicts they may see as appropriate because they may set precedence for future situations which are undesirable.

We live not just in the present but in the past and the future simultaneously.

This happens as every instance of a category becomes a stand-in for the relations inherent in the category.  In otherwords, any employee becomes synonymous with the legitimate boundaries allowable (or not) by every employee.

Of course, some measure of categorization must be appropriate — we must classify in order to better deal with the extraordinary difference out there on the street. But it is the centrality of categorization and classification qua primary that gives rise to the proliferation ontic-value confusion. In the quest of ontological signifiance, we skew via a set of values qua necessary and that proliferation of values generates multiple ontologies which are a priori incompossible (cannot coexist in the same world) leading to nihilism or, that proliferation produces a heady multiculturalist categorization which is inherently racist and Other — threatening both to make each us of into one of five or seven power rangers (of different color and manner but of “equal” ability and status) while obscurating what the purpose of ontological centered-ness is (the actual people in the suits).

So to get out of this skew, we might seek the beyond of values as Nietzsche had suggested.  In doing so, we establish for ourselves our own primary motion, that which cannot be but imitated. This is the wet dream of the Uberman, something I do not believe in as it sounds nice on paper but in real life gives rise to dickish, assholish pieces of garbage which often are shadows of what might be an original.  (Their lack of originality stems from a production of signs meant to signify originality — insufficient for the condition of Uberman status anyhow).

So my response?

I think my humor has moved into the inappropriate for the most part — as any movement to ontologize values is laughable. So I laugh, and that’s what’s ridiculous (my response). But when you think about it, it’s really the ontologization of values which is something laughable, not the people who seek ontology! Doing something like ontologizing values gives rise to a constant checking of behavior — which in some sense is better than living however you like while preaching the gospel — but it’s a losing battle. We don’t need more special cases — we don’t need more “races” of humans.  We exist on Earth, we don’t need the attempt at radical proliferation like it’s Star Trek.

We simply need more application of the generic instance and a refusal to insist on “common sense”.

What I mean by that is that we cannot be beholden to a race of Others for fear of offending them — that’s not the point (since we offend ppl who are like us anyway).  For each of us live within the fuzzy range of probable acceptability where we coexist (peaceably, hopefully). For it is in that semi-conscious realm that the foundations for our human interaction are generated and contested and it is because this generation and judgement is in some sense only by partial choice that we cannot solely have nihilism, multiculturalism or Ontology. We cannot lose our values but we cannot ontologize them either, for they these are only metonymetic towards a singular Being — they are not condusive to point to a Way as while there may be Being, there is no universal.

What Facebook has taught me is that I find myself somewhat affronted by individuals’ reliance on signifiers of what’s Real in everyday life, whether they be carriers of “Stuff” or lessons in “Values”. In both, these statuses attempt to point the Way but in fact fail because those statuses are both generated by particular instances only the subject is privy to, and/or it relies on the particularity of the subject while deeming to be of something beyond the subject.

Oddly enough, if anything, I find this to be a real life example of Descartes’ problem of multiple mental realms.  Cogito Ergo Sum, I think therefore I am, but where I think there are no others.  So while I think therefore I am is also Others are where I do not think and I am where Others are not.

(Don’t worry, no Lacan today) but this is the parable of the modern horror movie — they jump out unexpectedly.

So to wrap it up, these thoughts, as perpetrated by others, signify, despite intent, the values they hold within their actual lifeworld and in some sense act as a kind of encompassing meta-physics of presence. That expression qua status updates in social media like Facebook and Twitter are projections of the )(in)compossible universals pointing not only to specific manifestations but also entire universes coexisting simultaneously on one’s update stream.  Any one with access can see it, and each are a statement about the nature of everything around it.

I don’t portent that each person who updates their status seeks to establish their creditability as an Ontology — as I extend this blog, it may very well be that Ontology is an outdated model.   But as a expression of our here and now Ontology is still something sought by individuals to be established — many of the status updates are in fact an attempts to codify what should be, be it in the form of “THIS IS EPIC” or “PEOPLE SHOULD NOT”.

When we speak of the personal, often these expressions are placed with a deleted subject.  We know that someone may be sad, or that someone is angry but the “FUCK &^@%” is not in fact carrying with it a hidden “(In my honest opinion FUCK &^@%)”.  And even if it was, the rejection for a place in this universe is still present against “&^@%”.

This kind of sentiment is what makes it political and ontological at the same time.

Even in broader circles, as it is, in political speak in either public broadcast media like NPR or Cable News, people still seek manifestations of the true American spirit to vote or be a particular way, or hold certain views (like ours and other someone else’s).  Many liberals who are heterosexual would not engage in a non-heterosexual activity personally, but nonetheless embrace it as being allowed to be.  To be an American in this sense is structurally as intolerant (of intolerants) as those who would be intolerant.  THat kind of structure, found in abundance throughout political discourse seems unavoidable.

If this isn’t a throwback to a false Ontology found in pre-WW2 Heidegger, then I really have no idea what I am pointing out.

But even today as Nationalists or culturalists or multiculturalists, it is very much the establishment of Ontology(s) meant to be the inclusive bulwark against all kinds of deformations and confusions.

Why am I pointing this out?  I find this kind of structuration to be abhorrent.  While I do not possess any kind of “solution” to be readily expressed, to do believe that a people obsesses with Ontological establishment, even should they be unaware of doing so, is a people courting a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of reality — and all the ensuing pitfalls that come with thinking that only people like themselves* should be.

 

*In this case, people like themselves extends far beyond simply being of a race or even a set of values… but of fitting the very categories which we take to be the case.  This is where I agree with Zizek (even though I am not a Lacanian) — the distance we need to have from these categories is itself a necessity to living a more complete life of being who we actually are… fragmented and split subjects — allowing us better to come to peace with that, as it were, “outside” of discourse….

Can we function with an outside on the inside?

July 9, 2011 / posted in art, dialectics, images of being-human, Theory, Universal non-all, universal nothing / No Comments

Recently, the reaction of one homosexual individual who was hurt by the hateful remark surprised me. Her response was simply that gays are common decent folk — upstanding people too — who deserve basic respect like anyone else.  What’s surprising to me was that she failed to incorporate the point of view of the bigot.  But then why should she?  This post doesn’t explore whether or not tolerance is an issue (because it shouldn’t be), but that there are different standards of acceptability.  Granted, standards are due to valuations that individuals generate — that is what makes us individuals — but is it possible that fundamental valuations be generated from a contextual position based off of the larger whole and NOT individual feelings?

I am not debating the content of her remark, but I do find her reaction and surprise itself surprising — all the more because of the obvious evidence that her verbal assailant did not consider her (as a gay) deserving of tolerance or basic respect.  If there is a basic orientation to how one relates to others, it’s through the Lacanian filter of the Symbolic.  The Symbolic order holds for us subjects a variety of different and individual valuations but the main function of the Symbolic is to provide orientation.  The collective Symbolic regime is the resulted of a larger, abstracted social zeitgeist.  How we negotiate the perceived regimes’ changing nature and what we allow or disallow provides the vehicle for politics.  What we do on an individual level, such as towards our hurt friend, matters, however small.  This negotiation of perceived change in the Symbolic forces personal action to be becoming-political.  In a way, the hurtful remark made by the bigot is an indeterminate but discrete step.

Immaneul Wallerstein has provided a grand gesture through his World Systems Analysis which classifies a population’s attitude towards change which may be useful to our exploration: conservative, liberal and radical. Conservatives do not want change, liberals want small measured changes and radicals want a total re-orientation of the norms.  Wallerstein’s classification is useful but it’s only descriptive, not an examination of the production of meaning in relation to the Symbolic function.  To do that, we can turn towards Zizek’s explication of the Lacanian orders through the Gremasian square.

Gremasian Squares are one basic way of determining meaning.

The Gremasian square Zizek draws upon in For They Know Not What They Do, bounces the four positions of basic difference that create meaning surrounding the symbolic function. The four positions are:

  1. all are submitted (S1)
  2. only one is not submitted (~S2)
  3. none are submitted (S2)
  4. only one is submitted (~S1)

Zizek highlights these positions in order to explore different ‘species of judgement’ of a subject are

  1. necessary (S1)
  2. possible (~S2)
  3. impossible (S2)
  4. contingent (~S1)

The basic axis deals with the main difference of Symbolic (S1) and Real (S2).  The Symbolic acts as a universal signifying function, establishing a symbolic network of linguistic meaning (S1) that is necessary for us to organize our world. At the same time, within the Real order (S2), we struggle with the impossibility of such a function existing in the universe as part of the universe.  The outside Real (S2) remains indifferent and incoherent to our manifested meaning (S1).  It is this interplay between impossibility (S2) and necessity (S1) that gives rise to the complexity of the system. In order to facilitate the others who approach us from the untotalizable whole of the Real (S2), we rely on the Imaginary (~S2) to orient us to the Symbolic (S1). It is in the Imaginary that we maintain an interplay of ourselves with others, ultimately enabling us to live together (though Lacan claims this is always through a kind of cross-talking).  Keep in mind that the negated lower pair of ~S1 and ~S2 remain imaginary reflections of the actual complex pair, (S1) and (S2). What keeps us hinged in the necessary Symbolic edifice (S1) is a self-image which represents for us the kernel of our own subjectivity (~S1).  This self-image however, is not the same as who or what we are.  To this end, Lacan rewrites Descartes’ “Cogito Ergo Sum” as “I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think“.  Nonetheless, it is in our personal investment in (~S1) that makes us dependent on what others think of us.  This external dependence is how (~S1) is structurally contingent, although the actual content is personal and open to discourse. So within this square, it is the universal function’s failure to completely foreclose the Real and prevent distortions of others (or ourself) that highlights the three different reactions Wallerstien segments as a population’s willingness to adapt to or reject change.

So to return to that surprising reaction, I would have assumed that one who rejects some social norms would understand that with this rejection, their position may occupy an untenable difference within another’s Symbolic (S1). That is to say, a conservative who would be unwilling to accept in themself a difference of sexuality without losing that possibility of self (~S1) would definitely reject that difference of sexuality in another or at least locate the unacceptable difference wholly in another (~S2). Our poor friend however, is hurt by the verbal assailant’s remarks as her subjectivity (~S1) is questioned and she responds by reinstating her own position in the necessary order of things (S1) as a public declaration.  The way to read the Gremasian Square is to understand that subjectivity is contingent on both the Imaginary others (~S2) who reject or accept the subject as well as the appeal to the Symbolic (S1) against the Real (S2).  Without the Imaginary (~S2) acceptance of the subject (~S1), there is no subject.  Such a position is the horror that Zizek calls the space between two deaths, when one is biologically alive but ostrasized from the community, publically dead.

The rejection of that desire as considered by the other to be one’s own introduces an element of the Real (S2) into the fragile Symbolic (S1).  No wonder then, that slogans from those who oppose gay marriage include banners that equate one man to marrying another to one man to marrying a dog. The equation doesn’t mean to equate men with dogs but rather, to equate the feeling of beastality with homosexual marriage.  This absurd equation betrays their bend as conservative — a genuine fear that should the Symbolic (S1) be extended, that fragile absolute (another title of one of Zizek’s books) may give way. A recent expression of this comes from David Tyree’s equating New York City’s acceptance of gay marriage with anarchy. One wonders then, at how fragile some conservative’s hold on the Symbolic order may be and if we could ever relate to one another without this Symbolic (as it is a point of reference). For the function of the Symbolic, is it possible to include the Real as a space within the function while maintaining tolerance and social order?  In other words, how possible is it to locate within the Real a minimal relation to be Symbolic — to provide space in the Imaginary for tolerance and acceptance?

The function of the Symbolic order appears more robust than we might think, as it goes a long way in orienting ourselves to external events. South Park, the popular adult series created Matt Stone and Trey Parker, explores various positions people take in relation to Real, unaccountable events. These events, as a rule, come from media presentations and perverse positions, other (~S2) possibilities which must oriented to the Symbolic function (S1).  It is through this accounting that we get a dialectical backlash in South Park between possible configurations of acceptability as the characters attempt to orient themselves within a Symbolic order (usually unsuccessfully) to justify or explain the acceptability of actions. Contrary to most conservative commentary on South Park, the ending configurations of the characters are usually presented to be ridiculous or at least out of proportion to the issue at hand. Earlier episodes in the show’s run were more to the point as to what is a ‘rational’ position ought to be.  Some of the later satires reject an overt explanation and choose instead to settle on positions that maximize humor.  Even so, for humor to function, it must retain a monocum of the Symbolic as reference.  As Julia Kristeva wrote in Powers of Horror, what is humorous is usually only so as the exposure of different signifiers in a novel arrangement create jouissance.  In other words, what is humorous is usually only acceptable as humor because it’s not an acceptable arrangement except as humor. The pleasure of humor is the pleasure of play within the Symbolic (so long as it does not shatter that regime).

South Park, as a satire, functions by simplifying most of their character’s interest in maintaining their own contingency, preferring to underscore instead, our tumultuous relationships within the Imaginary.  (What makes South Park an examination of actual possibilities and not an examination of the Symbolic is the protagonists often not-listened-to appeals to a standard rationality.  The under-grid of Symbolic rationality remains ignored, not questioned.)  To give a real world example of this instability with the Symbolic we can turn to the avant gaarde’s push for new directions.  Such movements are often offensive to some, as such movements often rebuke representationalism.  Representationalism best deploys the Symbolic as over-coding the Real in a 1:1 relationship as though conservatives are less able to handle schisms in the Symbolic.  The more extreme the over-coding, the stronger violations of the Symbolic invokes a bodily reaction to events that reveal the Real’s incoherency. The adherence to such an over-coding is what establishes our societal ‘grand gesture’ which in the 20th century was known as Modernism.

Modernism philosophically started long before the 20th century, but as a social movement, Modernism came together in the late 19th century as a style of presentation and coherence that in some ways matched the singularity of world orders like the United Nations. Modernism as a whole, however, is best digested as a rejection of traditional aesthetics, an establishing of new parameters of how we are to experience and relate.  Modernism marks the single largest and far-reaching break in tradition.  For the life-world, Modernism became coherent as new human existence for a current Now. This emphasis on ahistorical values arises as an absolute order without an outside, the best example being Formalism.  In other words, if you are not within this absolute order, you are nowhere to be found.

In the larger picture, while Modernism can be connected with capitalism’s ever expanding market, market capitalism is but one expression of the ‘make it new’ of Modernism. Other expressions of Modernism include Stalinist and Maoist totalitarianism. So while many philosophers such as Lyotard claim that Modernism is dead in favor of Postmodernism, Modernism continues as a grand narrative, under the guise of Postmodernism. Under Postmodernism, deployment of new expressions continues as an ahistorical re-framing of historical contexts.  As such, Postmodernism functions as a hyper-modernism, co-opting the small other to illicit a homogeneous world order.  Despite the many disavowals of the I and the kowtowing to small others when recognized as legitimate, any and all contacts with global capitalism usually means the destruction of alternate Symbolic configurations in favor of our global capitalism.  Any sensitivity of context is a sensitivity necessary in a Postmodern deployment.

I bring this up not because it has anything to do with the dignity that our homosexual couple insisted on, but rather because our current Symbolic order displays an absolutism — that relationships and transactions be concluded through a narrow regime of Symbolic association.  For instance, one of the main modes of our Symbolic relies on the filters of money and legal documentation, two contractual basises which form the bridge of our current Symbolic Regime. Fights over gay rights, or the slutwalk occur within capitalism because the market has not established a preference either way (unlike say, stealing). As time persists and capitalism benefits from the religious right and the spending power of the homosexual left so both will continue to contest one another in the public space at the expense of other policy decisions. Most likely though, capitalism is not incompatible with homosexuality and ultimately marriage will be expanded to include homosexual arrangements as this does not hurt global capitalism.

This brings us back to the original question — in terms of our current grand narrative of global capitalism — is the Symbolic completely mutually exclusive to the Real?  Is there a psychial configuration that would allow us to better tolerate instances of the Real? Why rely on the contingency of others as deal with ourselves and each other in the imaginary spaces of (~S2) and (~S1)?  In seeking to find a philosophical method to explain going beyond the Symbolic edifice, we run analogous to Buddhist thought on enlightenment.  Enlightenment serves as a psychial position that exceeds the worldly concerns that structure subjectivity.  Now as the order of the Symbolic operates more as a referent than a set content, so a re-centering the four positions can be best understood by retooling the Gremiasian Square through an analogous the structure in Buddhistm known as the Tetralemma.

The Tetralemma is a four fold step introduced as a logical exercise in Buddhist doctrine to expound the doctrines of two truths.   Put simply, the two truths at hand are conventional truth — the common place wisdom of existence having substance, and the sacred truth — the emptiness or non-existence of substance.  The four lemmas of the Tetralemma involves the precepts:

  1. x
  2. ~x
  3. both x & ~x
  4. neither x & ~x

In dealing with the concepts of existence (x) and emptiness (~x), through the exercise of the Tetralemma, we step beyond having just classifications of the conventional existence of substance and the philosophical existence of nothing.  In other words, the goal of the Tetralemma is to gain an understanding beyond the distinctions of ontology, of which emptiness is a exposition of the formal constraints of ontology.  This is different from the Gremasian square in the sense that the Tetralemma works as a delimiter rather than as a position.  The goal is to avoid all four positions, whereas in the Gremasian square it is the orientation of the positions that provide meaning.  Nonetheless, used in conjunction with the Gremasian square above, we can utilize two Tetralemmas of emptiness and substance with the two indexes from the Gremasian square as the actual (S1) and (S2) with substance and the reflective (~S1) and (~S2) with emptiness.  In the first Tetralemma:

  1. There is a Symbolic function by which we gain meaning (S1)
  2. There is no Symbolic function by which we gain meaning (S2)
  3. Both (S1) and (S2) apply
  4. Neither (S1) and (S2) apply

In other words, we are dealing with the grounding of both existents and nothingness.  Arguably, the social schism introduced by Modernism killed philosophy’s search for an ontological life leaving us with nihilism.  Nihilism, like early postmodernism, insists that the formal constraints of ontology are not applicable anywhere, leaving us with nothing (to fit the bill with).  Rather than a full blown rejection of the system itself, nihilism involves an adaptation of the system of meaning and its consequential failure to cohere meaning.  Nihilism does not mean that there are no systems, only that the metrics we use to find valid systems yields no content.  In this way, the third step and fourth step both appear to be alternative universalisations that happen when the symbolic function fails to yield an appropriate conclusion.  Nihilism occupies both positions such that we have the system but no ontology or we reject the system and still do not have the authenticity of ontology.

This position reflects the same underpinnings as dialectical nihilism by at first insisting on a universal position although it goes beyond dialectical nihilism by in fact not sublimating the structure of the Tetralemmas at the level of the Notion.  It is through the Tetralemma’s four precepts that we gain a richer understanding that unlike conservatives and our gay couple above, it’s not simply enough to be within the function and to desire collapse the Gremasian square to gain a tolerance of the Other so as to live with them (to insist that what I imagine to be the other’s position is in fact where I am as well, that (~S1) and (S1) and (~S2) and (S2) are in fact all super-imposed, without difference… the way to read this desire is that the conservative judges the homosexual to have a desire the homosexual then denies having).  The Tetralemma instead goes beyond this to reject both the system and its content reserving neither Notion nor internal distance to uphold this desire or its judgement.

A rejection of the distinction of both the Symbolic (S1) and the Real (S2) constitute, in traditional terms, a confusion between how we are to understand our role in the world and how to basically orient ourself in the world.  How can we make sense of what we could do vs how things happen to us and what we should make of them?  Both the Symbolic (S1) and the Real (S2) rely on specific instances in order to provide actual interactions.  It is in the application of the function in the imaginary spaces of (~S1) and (~S2) by which we run across the negative Tetralemma.  Without addressing the application of the orientations inherent in (S1) and (S2), we run into the profound difficulty of skirting the regime of madness:

  1. There is no self that is I (~S1).
  2. There are no other subjectivities (~S2).
  3. Both self (~S1) and others (~S2) do not exist.
  4. There is neither no subjectivity (~S1)  nor are there no other subjectivities (~S2).

The main difficulty in this Tetralemma lies in the lack of orientation a rejection of the application of possibility and contingency implies.  Within this regime of non-applicability, we run into pitfalls similiar to those who do not socialize properly.  I speak of some criminally insane who do not genuinely understand others, nor read on others the desire and pain, both reflective and independent of their own subjectivity.

What marks the difficulty in deploying an orientation of these concepts isn’t in their conceptual nature.  We should not assume that the proper position within the Tetralemma involves a rejection of their concepts as such, but rather a rejection of the desire that navigates these polemics and binds us in these orientations.  Movement within the Tetralemma isn’t accurately a dialectic, although I have used the term.  Dialectical movements within the Hegelian traditional involve a progression of positions within an order to explain their meaning.  The Tetralemma instead involves the limits of expatiation.  When we abut a lemma we encounter a failure to grasp the Tetralemma as a whole.  This is how the Tetralemma also is not a Gemasian Square — it does not rely on static positions from which we can garnish meaning from the other three positions.

So for applicability, let us return to our original example, it is not that the knee jerk response of our friend is in fact inappropriate.  She is correct to understand that her subjectivity is contingent on the external circumstances of others who accept her, legitimatizing her place in the Symbolic.  But the most the Symbolic can guarantee her or anyone else is a position of contingency and tolerance.  Acceptance within the Symbolic does not assure her of the dignity of her subjectivity, it only imprisons her within the confines of the possibility of authenticity when continually confronted with others.  This is the nature of contingency (~S1).

The ‘way out’ as espoused through the dialectical and radically transformative nature of the Tetralemma isn’t in the sublimation of the Tetralemma the way Hegel might want us to distance ourselves from the Notion in order to better find ourselves within it.  The key of the Tetralemmas is best expressed through the Real, as the Real remains the threat for all other positions.  What makes the position of the Real ‘Impossible’ (S2) is not only the ineffectual application of Symbolic order on a shifting and vague desire — but, from the point of view of the Real, the union between any of the other three relationships are impossible because of the shifting and vague nature of desire undergridding each.  When we seek to legitamize ourselves, that legitamcy is in fact never permanent, being contingent.  When we seek to understand the other on their terms, it is impossible because we must resort to imagination — we can never know their radical difference, only read on their difference a reflection of our own difference.

This insubstantiability of position that all eight lemmas deploy disallows one to fully invest in any position, opening the door to the Real as it were without casting one fully into it.  We acknowledge our own insubstantiality inasmuch as anyone else’s.  For instance, in neither accepting being submitted to the function or outside of the function, one rejects both the absolute madness of emptiness and the contingency one might always bear.  One can be oneself, as it were, all the while allowing others to be themselves without that reflexivity or demand that one be ‘with it’ or not ‘with it’.

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