Date: Sat, 9 Sep 1995 10:38:59 +0100
From: destanley-AT-teaser.fr (douglas edric stanley)
Subject: Re: The desert is growing(no?)


Paul,

I've gone to the library to read Ruyer once now but since I haven't found
it at any of my libraries I cannot check it out. Still looking, but while I
was there I read the chapter on absolute survol, and took a lot of notes.
I'll get back to you on this, because I just don't have all that much time
right now, but it's quite in line with what I too am doing research on.
Although there is a lot to discuss, because this idea of a consciousness of
seeing, a survol that does not take place simply in the observational field
of the eye-as-optique, seems to limit certain things that I have myself
been pulling from Deleuze and Guattari to speak, justemment, on the eye. My
research is not on "vision" per se, but rather on optics as seen from the
eye - and not even a seeing-eye, mais des yeux-vitesses, des
yeux-intensités, des yeux-lignes, des yeux-rythmes, etc. So, we'll have to
discuss this question of the eye and the survol that does not "observe" the
eye's information but rather scans it, almost submerged in it without
distance.

But again this is something slightly different than Deleuze's haptic
smooth-space. Or as well what he has to say in 1000 Plateaus about a Rieman
space: "Riemann spaces are devoid of any kind of homogeneity. Each is
characterized by the form of the expression that defines the square of the
distance between two infinitely proximate points...It follows that two
neighboring observers in a Riemann space can locate the points in their
immediate vicinity but cannot locate their spaces in relation to each other
without a new convention. Each vicinity is therefore like a shred of
Euclidian space but the linkage between one vicinity and the next is not
defined and can be effected in an infinite number of ways. Riemann space at
its most general thus presents itself as an amorphous collection of pieces
that are juxtaposed but not attached to each other."(p.485). Juxtaposed,
but not attached. This is somewhat different from the absolute survol which
I had the impression (in my quick reading - or "survol" - of Ruyer's text)
was something more of a non-differentiated space.

Anyway, I just wanted to give you a few (I've many) of my first
impressions. You see the importance of page numbers! Right away I was able
to go through some of the book.

As concerns Bill Viola, yes, I know the film. And your zen comment is as
well quite appropriate for an understanding of this "survol" notion:
especially when it comes to (like the protozoa) an organism's capability of
enjoying itself, or experiencing itself without distancing itself as an
object. Za-zen is so much about this non-objectification of the self, while
none the less folding in on oneself, allowing the folds of consciousness to
multiply. I could not help but think of certain yoga-practices in which one
creates a disengaged gaze. A non-spatio-temporal gaze. Again, this would
all have to be "looked" into.

You wrote,

>ps. Does anybody talk about Guattari's 'Chaosmose' in your loose affiliation?

Well, none of us has any money! And that book is expensive. Something like
350 francs. I think, I can't remember. I don't know where you are, but
that's about 60 U.S. dollars! Books are expensive here. Perhaps I'll get
around to buying it soon, and I just found a copy at a library around here
but it was checked out (good sign - quite rare to find readers of these
type in France). Why, is there something specifically interresting to our
current discussion? Or is it just a nice book to work with?


Douglas Edric Stanley
Paris. 8 Septembre, 1995



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