Thomas's Taylor
... If Thomas signs on --and if we decide to continue w/ this forum-- I thought it might be interesting for T to comment on his JAC essay on Taylor.
What strikes me, after the last few mess.ages that endeavor to look at differences between Derrida, Deleuze, and Taylor, is how Thomas's work takes Taylor towards the sense of SOUND.
As I mentioned, I see much more of the sonic brick dimension playing out in Deleuze's work, and the more I look at Taylor's efforts, I see how much his interest moves towards the visual arts. (-Altarity- begins w/ a reading of Derrida's -Glas- and the juxtaposition of Hegel and Rembrandt, and it concludes with a consideration of the doodling of Kierkagaard ...)
Taylor does take up w/ Madonna in -Nots-, but Thomas's essay pushes the Brian E. angle, and in some ways begins using "Taylor" to consider dimensions of "Taylor" in new ways.
Mark C. Taylor to the sonic bricks of CECIL TAYLOR, perhaps.
(...oh, and Cecil is close Cilliers, if I might continue to weave names ... :)
What strikes me, after the last few mess.ages that endeavor to look at differences between Derrida, Deleuze, and Taylor, is how Thomas's work takes Taylor towards the sense of SOUND.
As I mentioned, I see much more of the sonic brick dimension playing out in Deleuze's work, and the more I look at Taylor's efforts, I see how much his interest moves towards the visual arts. (-Altarity- begins w/ a reading of Derrida's -Glas- and the juxtaposition of Hegel and Rembrandt, and it concludes with a consideration of the doodling of Kierkagaard ...)
Taylor does take up w/ Madonna in -Nots-, but Thomas's essay pushes the Brian E. angle, and in some ways begins using "Taylor" to consider dimensions of "Taylor" in new ways.
Mark C. Taylor to the sonic bricks of CECIL TAYLOR, perhaps.
(...oh, and Cecil is close Cilliers, if I might continue to weave names ... :)
posted by gvcarter at 9:41 AM
12 Comments:
Okay, now that I have a photocopy of the text, I can ask more focused questions.
The sense of sound should be ambience, and in re-reading the work I see that your work of ambience is something that you couple w/ Heidegger's being-in-the-world. Rather than fostering the connections of the visual arts, you seem to push an a modulation of forces.
Taylor's VISUAL art grids (Chuck Close) becomes Enos's realization that a stero "set at an extremely low level" such that LISTENING takes place on the "threshold of audibility."
1) Would you agree that your work w/ ambience is something of a corrective to Taylor's focus on visual art grids? (If someone where to characterize your work using this perhaps simplistic binary, what might you say?)
...
Of particular interest is the passage wherein you suggest that Taylor's work might be regarded as that of a "ghostwriter" wherein there is "an internal dialogue of voices from various times and personages (his 'ghosts')."
I wonder what you would say to Taylor's work as a philosopher on this score? Isn't it important for Taylor --particularly in his work-a-day texts on philosophy-- to maintain a relation of working w/ ghosts to give his efforts an ontological cast?
Even if we say that such "ghosting" puts the style of his prose in more of an "active voice" --i.e. his voice channels the ghosts of philosophers past!-- I find it interesting that one of the ways that you "switch channels" --to Enos, say-- is by way of Heidegger.
What you call an "ambient rhetoric," in other words, is traced back to Heid's sense that "Language is the house of Being."
... this house, is the 'taking place,' of Enos's Discreet Music, where "boundaries between music and environment continue to blur and bend."
I'm w/ all this ... and it is important to note your twist on the "House of Being" to the "House of Doing" ... but, it seems, perhaps, that in this switch much is left in the basement, or else Heid becomes the primary ghost, perhaps we might call Heid the basement ...
In some ways, I see a key point in your reading the paragraph that seeks to exemplify how the Houses of Being and Doing take on "impressive practical import," by way of Rodney Brooks's MIT research.
Here, instead of bringing up more and more ghosts --as Taylor might-- you consider the sheer pragmatics of programming robots and the problem solving of these robots engage in the real world.
This is a much different task from using different philosophical conceptual persona (Taylor's ghosts) to solve various metaphysical issues that might arise, say, in sorting out the differences between transcendence and immanence.
Moreover, w/ Heid serving as something of a the basement, I wonder what other conductive hauntings might be lost --or at least seem a little overwhelmed-- by a sense of kairos unfolding in external encounters.
For example: The basement is, of course, my play --not yours-- on the House of Being/Doing. To be sure, you confort the dichotomy by saying that this house is NOT a duplex.
But, I am playing w/ the sense of hauntings, and I am asking if Heid is not hiding in the basement?
Why is this a concern? For me, the basement is un/just Kate Millet's book -The Basement-, which may be said to haunt my sense of an upcoming work that will take that would take up a sense of that book.
Given my investment in the proliferation of names, the basement is precisely the site of more and more hauntings such that Heid's house becomes a two-tiered Baroque house. (This Baroque house, of course, evokes Deleuze-Leibniz, and this sense of haunting, perhaps, carries me off towards Castricano's -Cryptomimesis- ...)
I agree w/ what you say --particularly in the conclusion about the writer being channged by their own writing-- but why can't the sense of haunting do this too?
Is it that Taylor --in acting as a ghostwriter-- is not startled by ghosts? As a philosopher is he un/just too aware?
I don't know. Thinking of programming robots in the real world probably scares me the most. And yet, it was un/just so difficult to read Millet's book on Sylvia Likens. To confront these names! To confront these horrors! ... why put yourselphs through it? ... why these hauntings rather than something else?
My question, if I've asked it yet, almost gets down to this: How does the sense of historiography change in moving from the hauntings of the past to the ambience of the future?
Certainly, we're more accustom to the former than the latter, and perhaps I am simply revealing my own predilications for being not as taken as by Heidegger's ontology as those of others, or that I am simply playing advocate to Taylor to get a sense of your drift.
In short, if I dwell in the house of being, my current interests are in the (hauntings?) labyrinths of the basement.
But, man, I --too-- can appreciate the importance of ambient sound, and elsewhere in this blog I tried to do some work to see in the difference between Taylor's visual grids and Deleuze's refrain.
...okay, this was too long. and I'm not going to revise it, so feel free to ignore the parts that may well need ignoring! sigh....;)
Now that I think of it, Heidegger's ambience is rendered in the above basement as a sense of Bass.ment ...
After posting on Zizek's Christian/Jewish readings, I wonder if my concern over ghosts doesn't carry w/ it the ENIGMA OF a sense of the HOST ...
Let me try to unpack, and perhaps clarify what I was working through above:
One of the things I am claiming for Taylor Ghost's is that he is surprised by them, not simply engaged in an "internal dialogue of voices" as Thomas suggests.
One of Thomas's key concerns, I think, is expressed when he asks "where the physical world, as abode, and where language, also as abode" operates in Taylor's claim that "writing is alive with voices from the past and present" (903).
The key question is "TO WHAT EXTENT IS THE OVERALL ENVIRONMENT PRESENT IN SUCH WORK?" (903).
... now, the example that T gives, eventually, is an adaptive environment of robotics ... I understand this ...
But, I want to hang back a minute in T's characterization that "Taylor's writer writing is alive with voices from the past and present" ...
This sense of ALIVE is one that I would perhaps use to challenge T's claim that Taylor's ghostwriting but another sense of an "autonomous willing subject."
What if the sense of writing that alive with all these voices from the past and present --one that Taylor claims a writer plays HOST too-- create the conditions of speaking in ways that makes the sense of "the overall environment" difficult to determine.
See: this is why Heidegger presents a difficulty, because one of the ghosts that I am playing host too is Deleuze. How do Deleuze and Heidegger differ in terms of thinking of an ABODE ... Deleuze, of course, is so nomadic! Heid, too, is nomadic, in some sense -- H's "Holtzwege" or un-marked woodland paths have a rhizomatic dimension-- but I wonder if his ontology is not as different from Deleuze as, say, Christianity is in terms of thinking of the ENIGMA WITHIN and Judiasm thinking of the ENIGMA OF.
Or, any number of other tensions between conceptual persona that might be said to haunt our work and who might be said to create all sorts of uncanny (unheimlich) dis/connections.
The sense of being ALIVE as a writer, perhaps, are all these encounters --some of them surprising, some of them scary-- that is, too ... strangely ... encounters with the DEAD.
I mean, we talk about Heidegger's abode as though he has never left, and, so too, in evoking Deleuze, it's as though he might be invited over.
How does one play host to Christian and Jews and Arabs? What does it mean to host a party where you invite Mark Taylor and MIT researcher Rodney Brooks?
I mean, when it comes down to it, I like the idea of AMBIENCE, and perhaps --if I might continue to stretch-- I could say that nobody wants to host a party IN THE BASEMENT.
That kinda of hosting would be no fun.
And yet, when the conversation moves to actual environments --to robotics, say-- I can't help but think of the basement's enigma.
Maybe I am more Jewish on this score, though I was raised Catholick.
... in any case, it's clear that Thomas's work has struck a chord, and again I'll say that that the basement is also a sense of BASSment that perhaps makes these concerns no concerns at all ...
"What? Me Worry?"
Of course your work is not found wanting in terms of haunting ...
The comment of mine you note is curious because it suggests that you have somehow miss something that Taylor does not ...
I put it poorly.
I did not mean to suggest that you should do what Taylor says he does.
Perhaps it would be better to think of what you're saying by way of robotics as a sense of phenomenology as it extends to Heidegger, but pushes the sense further by way of "less is more programming" that is able to adapt to the environment.
Certainly this sort of robotic adaptation has implications for a sense of the world, and perhaps in worlds (such as Mars) that we might yet explore.
... If I had to say what I have against robots, perhaps it is the prospect of these un-manned projects to other worlds. At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, I have to say that I am not overly moved by DEEP IMPACT Nasa probes...
Of course, space-age robotics have also been a part of prostetics, and I have to say that such complex augmentation seems to hold much promise.
There is an interaction between such deep space and missing limb technologies, I know, and so if I take issue w/ robotics, it is not the TICS that are the difficuly. It's not even the humanistic --I, Robot-- fear of Mr. Roboto.
No, my issue is w/ thinking of the "base material" in terms of a particular phenomenological perspective, which in this case is informed very much by Heidegger.
For me, the sense of hauntings --which I will address in detail in a subsequent post-- finds, in addition, to spiritual split of SIN or MARX the sense of competing ontologies, even ontologies that claim a sense beneath grund/abgrund that has no syn whatsoever, and that turn every citation into a kind of assemblage that makes it very difficult to negotiate various conceptual persona w/o --well-- being at the right place, being at the right school, being w/ the right mentor, etc.
Perhaps everything is "all right," particularly on these last three points, but as I think of my role in FYC, I continually ask, "How would I know? You tell me."
That is, all the other hauntings come before --and are always to come-- forms of materialism, perhaps even (so-called) "mystical materialism," which --of course-- (or! --alas--!) I have the deepest sympathies with.
I don't know. I don't think we're at too great of odds. This may well un/just be my own odd concern.
On Haunts:
My investment in the spectral --particularly Taylor's ghosts-- is that I regard his move as a variation on D&G's conceptual persona, and therefore the "bloc/ks" of my diss.
To be sure, Taylor and D&G are each doing different projects, and conflating ghosts w/ conceptual persona is a disservice to the disintanglement that might be thought through if there was an audience for such an encounter.
For now, however, I will shorthand such a discussion this way:
My investment in ghosts is wrapped up in the PERISHING that is FYC.
Without trying to sound nihilistic, I can see that between the commonplace of "publish or perish" that for the most part the sense of "composition" is impoverished to the extent that what goes on in an introductory writing class is so PSEUDO as to be but little more than a perish ...
And yet, in this perishing, students are interested in bringing in all sorts of ghosts, even if they are the pop culture (Jimi Hendrix) and historical examplars (MLKjr) that are widely known.
Interests in these figures seem TIMELESS, and in a certain sense the students fascination with them is that they are names that will never perish.
Everyone, for example, KNOWS who George Washington is.
What the students do not know is that BIOGRAPHY is but one form of thought (or publishing), and that in my academic circles there are other, less well known names (Solomon Maimon) and there are other genres or styles for publishing (podCasting).
Part of the reason I am invested in ghosts is that I see as my role in FYC as continous re-motivation of styles and names that the students might encounter, but w/ the realization that my introducing these names and styles is but a sense of perishing.
You see: There is the old adage that "those who can't, teach." We might specify that even more by saying "those who can't, teach FYC."
For FYC, it seems to me, is PRECISELY the site of perishing, or ghosts.
All other courses have a SUBJECT, and unlike FYC they are classes that students have some CHOICE in taking.
But, FYC is a course without a subject, or perhaps with a million tiny subjects that are, on one hand, precisely the widely "known" hauntings of GWashington and Cleopatra, but also all the unknowns, who students might encounter, find interesting, and not know what to do with (yet) (if at all).
These million tiny unknown subjects --which, in some sense takes up w/ ECadava's philosophical anthology "Who Comes After the Subject,"-- is, for me, a rippling of texts that takes any starting point as fine, but in so doing, finds getting back to, say, Heidegger, phenomenology, and Taylor's co-adaptive complexity difficult.
It's not that I don't find Heidegger un-interesting. No. As I tried to RIFF earlier, his work --as much as Thomas's-- may well be a key chord, or BASSment LINE.
Heid may be grund, or base.
But! Heid is but a haunt. A student, by chance, may evoke any other name from Nietzsche's "all the names in history," and it is from there that I un/just must drift.
I must drift, even though "where" that student may well be headed is a PERISHING ...
Without a subject, I un/just cannot help them do anything other than perish in their ("own most"?) wayves ...
Only by having a subject could I ever hope to help them PUBLISH.
If I were in a philosophy dept, for example, I might be "expert" enough to help them w/ the form necessary to publish on a given spectre.
But, in FYC, there is nothing but spectres; each student finds each ghost.
There is not, as in, say, a SEMINAR class, a specific ghost to HOST.
That's why I can, but cannot take Heid as Host. Sure, I've got the HOTS to HOST Heid in some sense, but insofar as the students would not necessarily choose this ghost, he must be hidden --and perhaps he will have emerged to haunt-- in other ways.
FYC, as I have come to understand it, is more about the HOTS than the HOST. Maybe, too, when I think about ghosts, I am thinking of SHOT glasses, wherein students bring in whatever style and names, and what I do is continually set the bar w/ some more ...
Getting drunk w/ ghosts is about perishing, and it doesn't have the carefulness of, say, building a robot.
Of course, folks can get too drunk. This is why I say that i have sympathies w/ the "mystical materialism," and yet, perhaps I would have been better served by focusing on a PARTICULAR examplar at the "right school."
I mean, everything is "all right," and yet, I find that everything I do is perishing. Maybe after I publish I will know better what it is that remains. But for now, it seems any effort to instantiate a particular ghost --even Taylor or Deleuze-- is bound to be swept away.
So: I un/just go w/ the flooooooow, and that means to the sense of perish ...
#13 Lance Parrish
... he's still alive, former Tiger catcher and Angel coach, and yet his signature haunts, even if such haunting is un-publishable.
Saying that Parrish is part of my perishing is perhaps to say something to an 'oddience,' rather than an 'audience.'
I don't know. You've asked why I am interested in the spectral, and this is what has come out.
Oh, why the Basement rather than the Attic?
The AtticISM, of coure, was one of the great debates during Cicero's time: The high ATTIC (the old rhetoric based on the imitation of the ancients) and the modern ASIATIC language.
Were my ghosts in the attic, perhaps, I would be a specialist that was able to keep an ORGANIZATION of the old better than the the modern CONSISTENCY of the Asiatic.
As I think about it, the basement, for me, of course, has the sense of -Misery-, whereas the Shel Silverstein affords the sense of a -A Light in the Attic-.
I've been drawn to -The Basement- by Vitanza and Millet, but, yes, there are ghosts in the attic as well.
Perhaps these are precisely the two floors of Leibniz's baroque house. One that is comprised precisely of an attic w/o windows and a basement with labyrinth folds.
I don't know. I don't know how to reconcile Heid and Leibniz or Deleuze and Leibniz or Vitanza and Heid and Deleuze and Leibniz, if I were to name some haunting bloc/ks.
I don't know exactly how to think of the House of Being and Doing along these multiple lines, though I am trying to accomodate it by way of bass lines ...
Bass lines and borderlines ...
That's w.here I am drawn, and that's what I am trying to render.
In the past few days, given my difficulty for Heidegger, I have done what I always do --attempt to acquire more of a taste-- and it is along these lines that I am re-beginning to see that what Thomas is talking about by way of AMBIENCE is, perhaps, a sense of APPROPRIATION.
In a footnote, Thomas makes clear that Heid's -Being and Time- is important to "dismantling" the "subject/object dichotomy."
In a latter work, -On 'Time and Being'-, Heidegger endeavors to "leave metaphysics to itself," perhaps "cease all overcoming" of metaphysics.
What is desired in both these movements, I think, is what Thomas is saying by way of a "permeability of boundaries" (subject/object; overcoming/not overcoming; metaphysical/non(or antic)-metaphysical) such that an "osmotic quality" begins to emerge.
In -Time and Being-, this osmotic quality --so far as I can tell-- is the sense of Appropriation, or event, or Ereignis.
"In the sending of the destiny of Being, in the extending of time, there becomes manifest a dedication, a delivering over into what is their own, namely of Being as presence and of time as the realm of the open. What determines both, time and Being, in their own, that is, in their belonging together, we call call: Ereignis, the event of Appropriation."
From what I understand, the sense of destiny --or what Heid later in the essay calls "that which makes any occurence possible"-- seems, perhaps, akin to T's haunted house, or unheimlich.
If -Being and Time- helps allow for osmotic follows between Subject/Object, -Time and Being- helps allow for osmotic follows between time/Being.
But, so what?
Somehow I am trying to think of Heid's time --Thomas's unfolding ambience-- across Taylor's "feedback and feedforward loops [which] become more complex" and that a tipping point is reached.
Thomas characterizes these loops as one where "CHANGE ACCELERATES" (902), but I wonder what is gained in thinking of change as VERY SLOW.
...
I am struck by the example in the footnote of the speed at which a dolphin learns to swim (924).
What i am saying by way of the basement is much slower than the dolphin, if only that I am a slow learner when it comes to try and think myself into a system.
...
Ambient music, of course, is not music known for being particularly fast. Indeed, from what I've heard, it's slow and unfolds by way of incrimental variation.
So what?
I think what I am trying to say is that reading Heid's later work on time allows me to better appreciate -Being and Time-, and therefore Thomas's building out of that text.
When I first encountered -Being and Time- I was frustrated that Heid did not hook up what he was doing out of other conceptual persona, or ghosts. He makes some references to other philosophers, but nowhere near as many as Taylor or Deleuze.
Reading -On Time and Being-, however, I see him situating his work more, and the text that I have has an additional essay, "My Way to Phenomenology" that details Heid's first encounters w/ Husserl, a teacher that he honors in this work, though I am given to understand that he disavowed him latter. (See: That's another reason I have a difficulty w/ working out of Heid. He doesn't do justice to his precursors enough.)
So: In reading -On Time and Being-, and thinking through more of the sense of Ereignis, I can see Heid's sense of the Event better. This helps me put him in relation to other thinkers of the event such as Deleuze and Badiou. In doing this, the sense of the ghosts that I wish to preserve are less threatened ... if they ever were.
Ambience, perhaps, moves towards a sense of appropriation, or "letting be," in ways that I did not see in thinking of the pragmatics, say, of building robots.
So, too, the ambience-kairos link that Thomas makes need not be lightning fast, but perhaps emerges over the sense of crumbling, as in Bergson's sugar cube dissolving in water.
Of course, Thomas has said some of this already, and so --having perhaps reached a tipping point myself-- I will quote him here:
"...I am pushing for a different inflection of the kairotic middle, one that sees the ambient environment in terms of a robust interaction that folds --and in folding, dissolves-- subjectivity within it. Or, to put it differently, I want to pursue as far as possible the implications that obtain from dismantling the interior/exterior opposition, which perhaps means that the concept of the middle is itself transformed, or perhaps even effaced."
No doubt, the sense of betrayal --which Deleuze speaks of by way of giving birth to a monster that his precursors had never intended, but nevertheless create conditions for-- can be found even among scholars who otherwise appear to be working in tandem.
Speaking of Zizek, I am reminded of his apposite dedication to JCopjec to his work that gives birth to Deleuze's Hegelian monster.
"To Joan Copject, with the coldness and cruelty of a true friendship."
Being-alongside was never n.ice.r.
It would appear that Marc Bloch helped found the Annales School.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FRbloch.htm
Wanting to post on ambience by way of of GSt.Hilaire and Abbe Croizet --"The species is not fixed and does not reappear in its forms, similiar to its parents, except for the reason that the conditional state of its AMBIENT MEDIUM is maintained; for, according to the bearing and under the influence of the variations of the latter, there are scarecly any changes that are not possible with respect to it."
Thought that was neat, and then, too, this:
"Just as the robot is programmed with minimal rules, therefore moving/evolving through its negotiation of the variables of its surroundings, so too is the scholar (programmed by the 'simple' rules of higher education such as 'critical thinking' and mere literacy, not to mention the rules of scholarly conventions) must negotiate the variables of philosophy’s ghosts as his/her surroundings."
... this can't help but to strike a chord w/ Derrida --a sig, incidently, that even JD asks "But who, me?" in -Limited Inc- (31)-- insofar as his "Passions: 'An Oblique Offering'" is un/concerned in -Derrida: A CRITICAL READER- .
T.here is the sense of crisis . . .
"What crisis? Was it predictable or unpredictable? and what if the crisis even concerned the very concept of crisis or critique?"
The sense that is being explored is the sense of "critique" insofar as it has been leveled as the proper name, "Derrida," and in particular the FORM of -Derrida: A CRITICAL reader-
"Some philosphers have got together or have been gathered together by academic and editorial procedures familiar to *us*. Emphasizing the critical determination (impossible because obvious, obvious to you, precisely) of this personal pronoun: who is 'uw' who are we precisely?"
... what is suggested is that these philosophers --even in their critical thinking- "are known and nearly known [to] each other"-- and this, to me, echoes another sense from -Limited Inc- wherein, in a reply to John Searle (-cum-Sarl), JD sez -- of JR Searl's acknowledgement page and copyright-- one, in which JSearle acknowledges DSearle and H. Dreyfus-- JD sez of the signature "JSearle":
"What a complicated signature! And one that becomes even more complex when the debt includes my old friend, H. Dreyfus, with whom I myself have worked, discussed, exchanged ideas, so that if it is indeed through him that the Searles have 'read' and 'understood' me, and 'replied' to me, then, I, too, can claim a stake in 'action' or 'obligation' the stocks and bonds of this holding company, the Copyright Trust."
... to unpack this, --across the sense of ghost-- part of what I hear Derrida saying here is that he is obliged to respond to fragments of his own ghost. He holds "stocks and bonds," in the proper name "Dreyfus," who --alas-- haunts the proper name Searle, who --in -Limited Inc- -- will have become "Sarl," and ... thirdly, will have become the signature "Derrida."
Again. In the chapter "Passions: 'An Oblique Offering'," part of what I see Derrida doing is taking up how his signature has un/just become a cite of the "critical." In this work chapter, then, Derrida is also thinking through a sense of an offering that will have been OBLIGED.
... OBLIGED - OBLIQUE ...
There is more to be said on the sense of "will have obliged" --particularly across the sense of "Levinas's" signature-- but i am not sure i am up for unpacking that sense this evening, or if it can be unpacked.
"who is 'US', who are we precisely?"
not 'uw'
Insofar as K's second post on "agency," I am thinking here of Robert Leston's recent blog post where he bemoans Louise Wetherbee Phelps sense of "agency" in a book or article.
Ulmer's chapter on "Agent Cooper" came to mind, and Robert responded to me by saying --yes-- there's a diff between "agents" and "egents."
... the latter spelling is the sense of "agent cooper," and i will post more on this later, but the discussion can be found at the following under the heading "notes on emergence":
http://leston.blog-city.com/
... funny including this link as i sent rl an invitation to this blog as per our discussion that we might invite others ...
why shouldn't this blog link, tho?
Re-reading what I wrote above last night, it strikes me that I could make some better connections:
1) To go along w/ Kristen's notion of a philosopher who "just ran into Heidegger," I wanted to suggest via Derrida that part of what D claims obligation for is how his own efforts to describe his project are picked up by someone else (Dreyfus, for example) and then return to him by way of someone else.
It's almost as though D is claiming to be already in the system of the signatory "Searle," or in the case of the "critical reader," already in a discourse that, too, is "overdetermined."
2) Kristen locates a sense of spirituality in the ghosts that I posit. Perhaps this is so, and there are thinkers such as Philip Goodchild's rather good book -Deleuze and the Question of Philosophy- that tries to consider the sense of "spirituality" in his work. It is worth noting, however, that in a letter Goodchild includes, Deleuze sees PG as quite apart from his (Deleuze's) MATERIALISM.
... Insofar as what I am saying insofar as -The Basement- is concerned, I can say only that I am drawn to Vitanza's preface to his still un-published work, which I know little more than what appears in this preface. Insofar as I have tried to read-write w/ this preface in mind --and have done readings *in the preface* w/o knowing where V will go w/ them "exactly" ...
(--and it might be said that he continues to re-write this work--)
... *this* is a way of reading-writing that I am nevertheless drawn.
I describe this elsewhere (also un-published) as a sense of historiography that runs from SYBIL to SYLVIA. (The former is The Sybil who Heraclitus quotes, and whos voice he hears over the span of a thousand years.)
(*Note: There is, even in this description, further historiographic complications that might be un-packed. Without going into detail about why Sybil-Sylvia might not "work," I might nevertheless use such an approach to broach more complex questions of rhetorical historiography. This is perhaps not so unlike drawing on Goodchild's sense of the spiritual, say, to get at Deleuze's material differend.)
Sometimes I think that my work w/ signatures relies on a kind of faith that is, in part, an effort to re-begin "thinking into a system," perhaps in a way not so unlike Solomon Maimon. Some systems are resistent to the "play of language," and some systems are resistant to the sense of "transcendence."
Are either caught up in the sense of the "spiritual"? I don't know. For me, lately, the watchword is CONSISTENCY. I am interested in thinking into a system so as to find a sense of consistency, not organization.
In my recent readings of the debate between Geoffroy St. Hilaire and George Cuvier, for example, I was fascinated to find how the former --under the tuteledge of Huay, a mineralogist-- even though GSH suggested a sense of a "unity of composition" in organism, and in some sense is caught up in discussions that lead to Darwin's thought --and, too, Deleuzes--, GSH's work is nevertheless caught up in the ORGANIZATION of the "great chain of being."
When one encounters Deleuze reading this debate, you get some of the STYLE, but you un/just must do "the work" to see how some of these names fit together. Although GSH is helpful in some sense, in other ways he might be abandoned.
For me, that's the way of the rhizome. It carries thinkings thought, but then becomes ossified, or in GSH's case, crystalized, as much of his thinking was formed by his teacher (Huay) who, again, was a mineralogist.
3) Finally, what I was trying to get at by way of agent/egent is add Ulmer's SQUARE to readings, say, of the ghost of Heidegger.
I think that K is right when she says there are "rules of scholarly conventions," particularly insofar as publishing work on proper names such as "Heidegger."
But, though I am drawn to these texts --they do offer a line of consistency on such concepts as "ereignis"-- I am not strictly interested in "Heidegger."
Maybe this has been a problem w/ my scholarship thus far, because part of what I am trying to do is think through Ulmer's SQUARE (the quadripodes of discourse) that he put forth in -Heuretics-. Part of what this allows for is a movement from "Heidegger" to "Agent Cooper," or philosophy to popular culture.
The two come together in terms of a MOOD (Heidegger's STIMMUNG), but these moods are different depending on what scenes one's EGENT (Agent Cooper) plays out.
Here's what I quote from Ulmer and put on Robert's blog:
"As an alternative to the book metaphor for the computer interface, it has been proposed that some components of AI (artificial intelligence) in the form of "agents" be included in a database (conceived as an information environment or landscape in an annotated movie). Personifiable as residents of the environment, an agent may operate as a guide, coach, tutor, to help the user manage the overload of information."
... for me, the popcycle is a kind of ecosystem, and, if i had to say, it is where I am diverting --and causistically stretching-- much of Taylor's work on emergence and co-adaptive systems ...
I am, in short, --as w/ everyone else-- keyed into a sense of getting to the dissertation and getting 'er done.
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