Date: Sun, 15 Feb 1998 13:40:30 -0800
Subject: MB: Sensibility and complex turbulence




Edward Moore wrote:

> A pity:
>
> Do you remember that lesson imparted to youngsters via Sesame Street, in
> which there were three cookies on a plate, and they told the
> youngster(s) that no matter how those cookies were arranged on the
> plate, there would still be only three cookies?
>

Sounds like _amor fati_ to me -- which is a lesson full of virtue taught to
us by Nietzsche? Munch, munch. A cookie monster, a beast of prey has no pity
when it comes to eating cookies -- but before this event, if it ever
arrives, there is always the play of rearranging. Such foreplay, in
interrupting the appetite of the cookie monster only intensifies his/her
pleasure which is a good thing, no? Is reading not a sort of eating and in
that sense is not communication also a consumption? Digestion involves a
break down, a dissolution into finer elements which is the "Great Work" of
fire. Blanchot remarks with regards to Holderlin and "the immediate" or "the
impossible" (take note Edward that was I-M-P-O-S-S-I-B-L-E) that "... all
communication comes from fire, but fire is the incommunicable" ( _The
Infinite Conversation_  pg. 293). To turn (trouver) phrases in this style is
to immerse oneself in "the in-between." Caught between shores is to be at
the limit (the impossible) _before_ language (when it is read as the
expression of a proposition, of a naming act that destroys the greatness of
the moment or the encounter of events). In this 'sense,' which is actually
an errant, aimless drifting which is why it involves play, the complex
turbulence of my style is at sea, in the menstruum and, in the truth,
_outside language_ and full of possibility as a potential (propensio in...)
-- as fire. So what is going on Edward? It seems to me we need to go over
our Gnostic/Alchemical/Hermetic ABC's, no? Since after all you really asked
for a little lesson in Gnostic manners didn't you? Research for us is
"precisely without an object" (_IC_ pg.25) It is a manner of 'to find'
(trouver) as a turning where erring is "to give oneself up to the magic of
detour. One who goes astray, who has left the protection of the centre,
turns about, himself  adrift and subject to the centre, and no longer
guarded by it [] -- a verb without a complement [] One who goes astray moves
steadily ahead and stays at the same point; he exhaust himself while under
way, not advancing, not stopping." (_IC_ pg. 26) As such I _find_ my self,
to put it somewhat surrealistically, in an obscure forest walking like a
crab through touch only, through sensibility which Serres in _Le
Tiers-Instruit_ writes is "a word which signifies possibility and capacity
in all senses." Research then pushes the limits constantly when one finds
oneself in-between shores, vibrating while plunging into the white waters:
"sensibility haunts a place that is central and peripheral: in the form of a
star [venus in Dante?] " (Serres _Le Tiers-Instruit_ pg. 27-30). In
'Speaking and Not Seeing' Blanchot, wrongly it seems to me, suggests that
night is the space of the "magic of detour" where we are between the visible
and the invisible -- but isn't this space rather that of twilight as
Nietzsche suggests?    At any rate, the crab-like (also chuang-tzu's dream
of the butterfly) movement absorbed in whirlwinds, in Persephone's curls
seeing with the eyes of stars is what Zizek would call a "traversal of
fantasy". But Blanchot counters Lacan when he writes that an amalgam "will
not remedy the split [ between speech (the thing said (written)) and sight
(the thing seen)]. To see perhaps, is to forget to speak; and to speak is to
draw from the depths of speech an inexhaustible forgetfulness. Let me add
that we do not await just any language, but the one in which 'error' speaks:
the speech of detour." (_IC_ pg. 29) Blanchot writes that what he is seeking
is an "obscure speech" that does not relate to light so that things don't
show themselves yet they do not hide. Speech belongs to the realm of dreams
then, which "reveal by re-veiling" (_IC_ pg. 30). It is t/here... that
speech vibrates with images that fascinate. An image in this sense, Blanchot
writes, is a limit between the visible and the invisible -- a 'matter' of
fantasy.

Edward, you suggested that we forget ideas, well an image is not an idea in
the sense of being that which lends itself to theoretical perception which
draws a horizon around what is seen and so territorializes what is seen
constructing a ground, a principle, or reason behind the free play of
appearances or simulacra. This is how I read Blanchot when he writes, still
in 'speaking is not seeing' (pg. 25- 32) which I have been analyzing,
"Perception is a wisdom rooted in the ground and standing fixed in the
direction of the opening; it is of the land, in the proper sense of the
term: planted in the earth and forming a link between the immobile boundary
and the apparently boundless horizon -- a firm pact from which comes peace.
For sight, speech is _war and madness_ " (my emphasis, _IC_ pg. 28)
Deterritorialization then, is a forgetfulness of the hallucination of ideas
where we plunge into white waters and begin hearing the clamor of the sea
and start writing fantasy while completely ignoring the truth/fiction
distinction. The quotes at the very beginning of _Infinite Conversation_
makes clear what _the topic_ is:

this mad game of writing (mallarme)

speaking is a fine madness; with it man dances over and above all things
(Nietzsche)

As far as an emphasis on forgetting, well that of course takes us to
Nietzsche and the pages that Lucio suggested we take a look at the other day
-- 'forgetful memory' pg 314-318 which I can speak about with appropriate
obscurity another day. Edward you write with such style sometimes but what
do _you_ suggest we do? Surely you don't want us to start talking about
Blanchot's biography with the specialists which is what properly speaking
makes a stupid myth out of great writing?


in the white waters,
Ariosto Raggo