Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2005 04:49:29 -0400 From: NZ <pretzelworld-AT-gmail.com> To: deleuze-guattari-driftline.org-AT-lists.driftline.org Subject: Re: [D-G] Awakening from the Nightmare of History James is such a poet. yes, It IS like intermingling tree-structures. If only we could have Yggdrasil to explain our situation and guide us thru, but those are old-fashioned mythologies. Where is that old rhebus(!?), indeed, D-G seem to provide fragments of it. But, here is some more nightmare-sleep-fantasy... "In Norse mythology the Einherjar or Einheriar, were spirits of warriors who had died bravely in battle every day. In the morning, they are woken by Gullinkambi, a rooster, and march out to the great field of Idavoll in the heart of Asgard to fight against each other in merry (and mortal) combat. At dusk, when they are all cut to pieces, save perchance a few, they are miraculously healed, and march back into Valhalla, where Andhr=EDmnir, the cook of the gods, has prepared a meal for them from the pork of S=E6hr=EDmnir, a pig that is reborn every day, and the mead milked from Hei=F0r=FAn, a goat feeding on the leaves of Yggdrasil. [...] A tree whose leaves and twigs reach down to the roof of Valhalla and provide food for the goat Hei=F0r=FAn and the stag Eiktyrnir that both live on the roof.)" -there's more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einherjar ------------------- If Stanislaw Lem says so, I am, truely dreaming or sleep-living (rather than just plain "dead" like Tollund Man (300.b.c)), then i must necessarily have a concept (no matter how bad) of The Absolute through which I can interact with the realworld. For Tollund Man it could very likely be the Goat, Hei=F0r=FAn which connects us as Einherjar to Yggdrasil. I am sure Bill Moyers could deconstruct the whole "Goat-thing" in western civilization better than me, but the part I like is imagining "us as the Einherjar, subsisting off hamburgers and beer served to us by the fine babes at Hooters BBQ, playing the endgame with Duchamp during the day." No thanks. As our reality takes on the literal aspects of our abstract cultural myths, we too often loose the context for that original myth. Through time those mythic-cultures become "re-territorialized" as products sold back to us. (don't marketers have their own imagination to rape?) Even as paradoxs of market psychology these myths fulfill a latent economy of meaning that indeed leaves an imprint on historical consciousness (but that is not real even if the imprint is). So why then are we still sucking ass all day? A concept of absolute allows for that economy to be governed consciously, but without a concept of absolute that economy is subject to virtually any BwO whether or not it is conscious or not. Hitler targeted the Thrall suckers. One problem I have (which is why I am not an anarchist) that a capitalist BwO is most likely not conscious either.... and yet we, who are "becoming", must absorb that excess economy and redistribute it ourselves, it is a cruel act. Coming back to NYC from Poland & germany last week, made me realize how few Americans have a sense of identity outside of culture-industry (or their insular Satre-groups). It isn't an identity-crash, there was no soaring identity, its a calm calculated identity-landing, with Herve Vilechaize greeting me. I mean, the county is made by people who could not work out their problems back home and needed an imaginary blank slate on which to begin, that makes a perfect target. Like Rawls' original position, it reflects an impoverished moral conception of the person. In what scenario would I want my concept of identity to compete with my concept of justice? None, thanks to my persona-culture those are mutually exclusive for me, so it is the nightmare of such a scenario that makes me paranoid. Heracletus saw the absolute as fire, chaotic but adaptable (it can only be, so long as it is there), plato saw it divided by the knowable (that being known+unknown) and "nothing", as did Anaxagoras. Xeno easily showed how difficult it is to move forward without a concept of absolute. And since then, Plato's "nothing" has been filled by twinkies, electron microscopes and bikini wax, and promptly transfered into the "knowable". Without a concept of the Absolute, then that economy of transfer (from nothing to unknown-knowable, and then to known-knowable) is taking place in an unconscious realm of our identity, which leaves it vulnerable to virtually any logic, especially Xeno's. Culture was not always in the unconscious realm. Ideas like the rhebus and the kenning allowed it to have meaning. I am starting to think that fact that English lost its genderized nouns also fits into this. "a martini is made with dry vermouth, so your soul can't get wet." Heraclitus the Bartender _______________________________________________ List address: deleuze-guattari-AT-driftline.org Info: http://lists.driftline.org/listinfo.cgi/deleuze-guattari-driftline.org Archives: www.driftline.org
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