From: "Edward Moore" <monsieurtexteem-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Infinite Space...
Date: Sun, 29 Jun 1997 16:31:28 PDT


... is there such a place?  ~ Emerson, Lake & Palmer (1971)


Why is it impossible for us to conceive of creation out of nothingness?  
(This is, of course, an assumption made by myself in the midst of 
silence, which is something like nothingess)  Let us posit nothingess as 
a totality -- then, all that arises out of that totality will be defined 
in negative terms, as the opposite of, or opposition to, that total 
nothingness.  Let us call it _matter_.  Perhaps "matter as an _active_ 
principle having its own autonomous existence as darkness (which would 
not be simply the absence of light, but the monstrous _archontes_ 
revealed by this absence), and as evil (which would not be the absence 
of good, but a creative action)" (Bataille, _Visions of Excess_, p. 47).  
Perhaps... but either way it will seem to be something added to the 
totality, the Void --

All matter is a supplement.

A void has no center -- therefore, all that _occurs_ in the void is 
arbitrary: centerless.  Any center, of course, would have to be both 
inside and outside this "void," (see Derrida, "Structure, Sign and Play 
in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," in _The Structuralist 
Controversy_ :Johns Hopkins, 1970), allowing it to take on the character 
of a "higher authority" (Bataille, p. 49).

It is easy to see how dualistic concepts have come into being.  When we 
speak of matter, we only speak of additions, of _supplements_ to 
"perfection" -- a perfect nothingness.  Matter, therefore, has been seen 
as base, evil, for it disrupted that perfection.  Mankind then develops 
the idea or concept of the _fall_.

The problem is, that being born out of matter (as matter), man is a 
secondary, or "derivative," stage in the disruption of the "totality," 
and only knows himself through his relation to, and status as, matter. 
So nothingness is no longer seen as the absence of matter -- the Void -- 
but rather as an ideal state, derived from the primal knowledge of 
matter: the birth out of apparent nothingess, non-memory, and the 
subsequent development of a consciousness, a sense of self -- identity 
that needs _protection_.  

We soon realize that the "structure" of our existence has no center -- 
hence, there is no structure.  So we create one, from the first thing we 
know -- that is, ourselves, our subjectivity.  We make ourself the 
center, and build the structure around that center, while standing 
outside it -- "holding our thinking self by the hand."  But the 
structure needs to be malleable, its borders need to porous, to allow 
influences to get inside, to preventing us from becoming "dead matter."  
Yet the self that is at the center of this "structure" frets, for all 
influences are sent out, or "transmitted," from other structures, and 
seek to displace the center, the self.

Because every form, every structure -- every _realm_ of an individual -- 
is a unique assemblage, it disrupts the nothingness around it: the 
nothingness that would take its place if it ceased to exist, and which 
would have remained in place had the matter not existed at all.

The primal center is nothingness.

We, by our very existence, have displaced the identity, the center, of 
nothingness... of the Void.

What of these influences?  How are they communicated?

A _reaction_ occurs when there is no meaning in the disruptions; a 
_grappling_ occurs when there is.

  ........

A word is material when it sits still... dormant like a volcano, for 
example.  We know what it is ahead of time only because we have heard 
of, or felt directly, its effects -- we have been forewarned.  

All words are "telegraphed," pre-ordained -- they are already 
contaminated when they enter the realm.  Only the word that originates 
in the realm is non-metaphorical -- a word that is pure sound and 
corresponds to a unique aspect of the realm of its origin (this is 
hypothetical and totally impossible).  As the word passes through each 
realm, it is grappled with, and it retains the marks of that 
grappling...

Metaphor is injury --

there is no uninjured word, therefore all language is metaphor -- that 
is, injured.

So we must reverse this and "totalize," by saying that if all language 
is injured, then an uninjured word would be a supplement, or addition, 
to this "perfect whole" -- it would be disruptive.  An uninjured word 
would stand for something that the injured words could not -- therefore, 
it would be a metaphor.  But it would certainly _not_ be parasitic.  
Only we should ask, then, How would the uninjured word maintain itself 
within the "closure," the synchronic totality of realms?  The answer is, 
it would not.  It would remain forever outside, on the very edge, the 
periphery of an ever-opening space.

This uninjured word is an "origin" that never was, and an "end" that 
never will be.



Edward Moore
<monsieurtexteEM-AT-hotmail.com>





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