[NetBehaviour] Short prolegomenon to philosophy ii

[Alan Sondheim]

Short prolegomenon to philosophy ii


Others have demonstrated the absurdity of mathematical or physical model-
ing in philosophical or psychoanalytical discourse. If issues of capital
are on one side, and fundamental cosmological structure on the other, I
side with the latter. Hence the issue of parallel transport of a vector,
"borrowed" from general relativity theory, is problematic; what I need to
do here is translate this into a series of autonomous semiotic operations
that cover the same ground; these operations may be considered operators
in the sense that a discourse or sememe might be subject to them.

I began with the idea of constructing a closed curve on a surface; I now
transform this into an _inscription_ in the classical sense, which, as a
phrase or sentence for example, inheres within a fuzzy domain of discourse
- in other words, the inscription _translates_ one way or another - it is
a discursive moment among many - it has no particular bounds, but it has a
subject, or rather it "subjects" for different subjects, it behaves as a
fuzzy operator. Thus every inscription is _dynamic._ Now consider a
circumscription of a particular inscription; this does not mean that an
inscription is a member of its circumscription in the sense of a set, but
that, for some grouping within some socius, the circumscription carries an
inscription with it. Inscription: "This sentence is a tree." Circumscrip-
tion: "I consider the inscription 'This sentence is a tree.'" Again,
circumscription: "We consider, for the purposes of analysis, whether 'This
sentence is a tree.' can adequately represent the potential of a sentence
referencing, not a mathematical tree (where it might apply to grammar for
example), but a physical tree, an oak for example."

So a circumscription in this sense is a reinscription of, pointer towards,
or objectification of, an inscription: it is a mentioning which is also an
operator. Oh there are so many loopholes here! Close them up!

Now consider the space of the semantic domain, discursive domain, sememe,
within which this is an occurrence. What does it mean to create a closed
curve in relation to circumscription?

Well, one way, you might think about an analysis which seems complete - an
analysis as a space-time event, from which one proceeds. In this sense,
the analysis is constructed as a temporary totality in memory, that is,
within the discursive enunciation and phenomenology of the subject, who
proceeds from this.

All of this is construed to some extent as a rough guide to cause and
effect, classical domains, limitations, vectors, enumerations of relation-
ships, organizational structures (Knuth for example after example). By
classical domain, I mean the closure that occur in the distributive laws
of Aristotelian logics; I imagine even Bohm's implicate order follows
through here.

So that I can think of inscriptions, circumscriptions, and analyses, all
as dynamic objects with porous and fuzzy boundaries, with a "sense" of
closure, which lends itself to phenomenological psychoanalytical analyses
"beyond" in the sense that the Lacanian objet petit a is "beyond." Let us
assume that there are namings, meanings, intentionalities, and semiologies
within consciousness that open even for Husserl, reams of text and the
appearance of _something being done._

The closures are twisted, which means, here, that moving through an analy-
sis or circumscription always arrives _somewhere else_ that is inherently
at odds with what was perceived to be an origin or originary inscription.
The sememes or discursive formations themselves are non- Euclidean; they
are simultaneously vectorized (in the same of trees) and n-dimensioned
with n > 1, which means there are closed 2-spaces, 3-spaces, and the like,
of interpretation. These spaces are striated, multiply interconnected, not
smooth, possessing singularities - a kind of topological foam. So on one
hand, there is the _appearance_ of closure - on the other - the continuous
and inherent opening, spewing within and without (in the sense of fractal
current transports) any region, an conceivable circumscription as well as
the circumscription of circumscription, and so forth.

So from the beginning to the end of analysis, I return to somewhere else
with a twist which, in this case, does not permit the recuperation of the
original inscription. What does this "somewhere else" tell us? For one
thing, it is here that the play of deconstruction occurs - within the
foam-like curvature of inscriptive domains, however defined. For another,
the modeling itself parallels that of the World Wide Web's holarchy, in
the sense that tangled skeins can never be recuperated, but continue a
journey which is _impossible to bring to closure, impossible to bring to
an end,_ no matter how exacting the analysis appears to be. In yet other
words:

One is always beside oneself, one is never a totality nor a shifter, nor
that of the other, but always elsewhere, elsewhen; "I is not an Other" but
always a twisted opening. Look at the periphery - the twist becomes
visible, and analysis collapses - even continuous Freudian analysis -
there is never a mark to be found, there is no demarcation. While the
space of relativity is classical in the sense that it's topologically
coherent, the space of discursive formations, of enunciation, of the self,
of analysis and self-analysis, is inconceivably complex: Every analysis,
every critique is _a priori lost,_ - at the same time tending towards the
uncanny/fictivity of _an_ originary inscription, _an origin,_ as if the
word were Word, said anything, made anything at all.


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