google search, shameless gloat

Just entered "Kojeve, Hegel" into Google and this blog was the first entry returned (out of about 2,500 pages). Entered "Hegel, Kojeve" and this blog came up seventh. I'm sure my good fortune is due to a fluke in their search algorithm -- undoubtedly related to the fact that Google is now a public company and is likely being flooded with parasitic mid-level micromanagers. But it feels pretty good anyway. I'll be signing photographs and memorabilia in the lobby after the show.

any pardon

smile got he
some diligent mutt

god-of-the-hay took
la la different year

not to all the tropes – tennessee
and eat but poor celine saw

dipper into chesapeake bay, as in
denial (succored adage)

all the trees la la grave
low sad panoply – a sheet

for severed sighs, pardon
head on moon to go

the dilettante author (easy pose)
alter rare shelf course

or malady evasive
he comes

retinal chunk

Ladder up
the poorhouse.

Sonic cusp an oil
fading, the green grass
lacquer. Labyrinths.

Enamel weeds peel
off the edge, coal steps
destitute. Blue hit

blue or so the fish
lens goes. Let's bulge -

excuse at the back of the eye,
one’s phonographed wad.

thomas basbøll, wittgenstein

Thomas Basbøll has posted some terrific comments in response to my questions and objections on the Wittgenstein/Tractatus conversation taking place on Gary Norris' Dagzine. The following really made me smile:

The world is everything that is the case.
The totality of facts.

History is everyone that is on my case.
The totality of acts.

(Hope he doesn't mind me posting that). Interesting thoughts, too, on the difference between "remarks" and "propositions", and German-English translation difficulties. Thanks, Thomas.

partial response to gary on wittgenstein

This is an excerpt from a much longer and rambling repsonse I posted to Gary's Norris' Dagzine, concerning his thoughts on Wittgenstein. I'm attempting to defend my position that Wittgenstein's project of refuting solipsism renders a metaphysical thought/language distinction untenable, unless thought is viewed as a sort of activity in which we picture the sense of propositions and infer new propositions. I posted it here because it's position I'd like to explore further and I think this is at least a start . . .

With the exception of a few instances (such as 3.1), the Tractatus presents “thought” as the activity of thinking the sense of propositions, of picturing the facts or states of affairs to which the propositions refer:

3 A logical picture of facts is a thought.

[ . . .]

3.11 We use the perceptible sign of a proposition (spoken or written, etc.) as a projection of a possible situation. The method of projection is to think of the sense of the proposition.

[ . . .]

3.5 A propositional sign, applied and thought out, is a thought.

4 A thought is a proposition with a sense.

Because the Tractatus is largely an elaboration of the picture theory/model of language, I propose that we subordinate other uses of the concept “thought” to this one. Wittgenstein would probably frown on us for trying to extract something like an “official definition”, but, given that refutation of solipsism is key to Wittgenstein’s project, I would rather assign dominance to this version of thought than risk conflating the “thought” that “finds an expression” in 3.1 with the “thought” that’s a “logical picture of facts.” (3). For, otherwise, I fear we run the risk of asserting the existence of a metaphysical entity which pictures states of affairs to itself and (then, having pictured) seeks to express what it pictures through means of language (in other words, we’ve just provided a model of solipsism).

xzentrick libretti is down

Don't know whether or not it's a technical problem or by design, but I miss Alex's blog.

lloyd mifflin

After the write-up at dumbfoundry I couldn't resist reading a few of his poems. The first produced a snicker or two, but, overall, I found them much more endearing than I'd expected. There's a sonnet to an old Venetian wine glass, and another (my favorite) to the milkweed.

empty thoughts

just say what you think

you mean

clearly

language is all about diguises

it expresses, for instance, i’m thinking

about you -- a thoughtful thing

to say, but what does it mean

when he says what a poem means?

it just occurred to me

that i had exactly this thought before

he had it and don’t we all think

alike when expression goes wrong?

gary norris on wittgenstein, piombino, nietzche

Exciting stuff. I wonder if Gary knows I'd been obsessively checking his blog every few hours in anticipation of this entry . . .

I love the implications for poetics Gary draws from the Tractatus . . . can't wait to have a chance to really dig in. Best of all, Gary says this is just the beginning.

more wittgenstein

Well, ok, here's a first take . . .

For a moment, let's ignore 3.1, "In a proposition a thought finds an expression that can be perceived by the senses."

Consider the following:

3.11 We use the perceptible sign of a proposition (spoken or written, etc.) as a projection of a possible situation. The method of projection is to think of the sense of the proposition.

3.5 A propositional sign, applied and thought out, is a thought.

4 A thought is a proposition with a sense.


Admittedly, I've taken these out of context and could/should have included more, but the sketch of language/thought that seems to emerge here is that thought consists of "thinking the sense" of propositions -- i.e., picturing possible states of affairs (propositions are pictures of possible states of affairs). The question, then, is can we picture possible states of affairs without using language to do so? Maybe so, according to 3.1. Maybe we picture them first then find expressions for those pictures. But it also seems possible to me that 3.1 might be making a weaker claim, that it might in fact, mean little more than "propositions are by definition thinkable; if it isn't thinkable, it doesn't qualify as a proposition."

It seems to me that part of the difficulty is that Wittgenstein speaks of "thought" in two pretty different ways. In the first, "thought" pre-exists language and uses it as a tool for expression (3.1). In the second, "thought" is merely the "making sense" or "picturing" of propositions. In the first, thought takes ontological priority, whereas in the second, language does . . .

wittgenstein, the tractatus

Boy, was I wrong (about the Tractatus not insisting on a clear distinction between thought and language). Section 3 has a lot to say about this. For instance:


3.1 In a proposition a thought finds an expression that can be perceived by the senses.

3.11 We use the perceptible sign of a proposition (spoken or written, etc.) as a projection of a possible situation. The method of projection is to think of the sense of the proposition.


And yet . . . I don't feel convinced. I feel that Wittgenstein's project, even in the Tractatus, pulls the rug out from under the possibility of making a clear thought/language distinction. In other words, a part of me feels that Wittgenstein is doing something Derrida and the poststructuralists would later pick up on, that he's using a set of tools which x worldview makes possible in order to show that x worldview is untenable. But clearly the burden of proof is on me.

typos

Somtimes it's a matter of haste, but other times . . . how on earth do I fail to notice so many typos? If it were consistently a matter of carelessness, I'd be less concerned.

face value

Just read “content” as a means
of comprehending the world.

Flashback to wisdom traditions,
to phenomena at face value --

I don’t recall which book
knew God’s will

as a contradiction in terms,
but I wonder whether the suspicion

that language isn’t “special” or even clothed
carries any theological currency whatsoever.

My photographer friend insists
that light alters the gospel’s

chemical composition first
by analyzing it, then by encoding

the results onto the surface of reality itself.
Which means that whenever we use the soul

as a tool to generate, organize, and frame
the expressive parts of our private

sensibilities, we welcome the reader
into an unexpectedly open prism,

a subjective in-itself whirling
about the limits of the world.

fascim lite, david neiwert's blog, enlightenment

Thanks to a link on Joe London's blog, I just spent some time reading Seattle journalist David Neiwert's blog Ornicus. Compelling analysis of the American conservative movement's transformation into what David calls "facism lite".

Comments from right wing attack dogs are also interesting. One sobering thought that dawned on me while reading the comments over . . . we on the left tend to believe that we're engaging in a meaningful dialogue with the right. But the right abondoned the negotiating table years ago (sometime in the early 70's, it seems). When we appeal to enlightenment values of ethics and reason, we may as well try to talk the school bully into apologizing for having stolen our lunch money.

And yet we can't preserve enlightenment by force, by undermining the possibility of the very conditions in which has a chance to take hold. I can't conceive of a way out of this bind.

language, thought, & (of course) wittgenstein

Thanks very much to Gary Norris and Nick Piombino for their comments and links to my comments and links regarding Gary's elaboration of Nick's koan-like "the final thought of thought / is freedom from thought." I'm greatly looking forward to Gary's response -- especially to see how he's going to bring Zaum poetry to bear on the discussion -- and I should probably let him speak before I make further comments, but I want to set down couple of notes before I forget them (or run out of time, which eventually amounts the same thing . . .)

-- One thing I love about Nick's remarks (and the word "remark" certainly doesn't do the contents of Nick's postings justice) is that, to me at least, they provide enough logical rigor and conceptual specificity to invite (welcome) the reader into an unexpectedly open space of co-creation. For example, "the final thought of thought / is freedom from thought" unfolds with an unmistakable logical necessity. How could the final thought of thought not be freedom from thought? It's as if Nick's remark had been lying dormant at the intersection of the very concepts of thought and freedom and finality all along. And yet, as Gary's elaboration beautifully demonstrates, once "inside" the remark, each instance of the word "thought" becomes a kind of prism refracting the others' light. It's up the reader, now, to arrange those prisms in a fixed order informed by her or his own poetic or philosophical sensibilities -- or to let them continue whirling about.

-- Gary cites Wittgenstein's Tractatus as separating thought and language. Oh dear, I should read up -- it's been over a year since I last opened the Tractatus, and I don't recall either an explicit or implicit assertion to this effect. As for the later Wittgenstein, I would tentatively claim that the arguments against the possibility of a private language -- i.e., Wittgenstein's "proofs" that it doesn't make sense to say things like "only I know how red appears to me" -- make a thought/language distinction untenable, at least inasmuch as the distinction is based on the model of a subjective in-itself which uses language as a tool to express/represent its thoughts. As for the Tractatus, I recall that I received a similar impression from the assertions that (to paraphrase) "the subject is not to be found within the world, but is rather a limit of the world" and "the limits of my language are the limits of my world". But then, the fact that I encountered the later Wittgenstein before reading the Tractatus may have significantly colored my reading of the latter.

a very quick note

on Gary Norris' comments on Nick Piombino's remark that "the final thought of thought / is freedom from thought." Gary's challenging and multi-faceted entry deserves much more attention than this, but I want to bring up a question that's been nagging me since I read it. What do we gain by inserting a separation between thought and language, by describing language as the "clothing" of thought, or saying something like "we use language as tool to express out thoughts"? Perhaps thought isn't "clothed" at all, but actually is, for lack of a better way of putting it, the activity of language generating, organizing, reorganizing itself. To my admittedly limited view, this seems a simpler yet entirely sufficient description of the phenomenon of "expression", and I wonder whether the insistence that language expresses pre-existing thoughts is a theological one. (I'm reminded of a debate I had with a photographer friend who preached the gospel of digital photography. I insisted that an image on film is something "special" in way that a digitized image can never be. Film, I argued, literally imprints reality itself. Light touches the film and permanently alters its chemical composition, whereas digital photography produces a mere representation of reality by analyzing it, encoding the results of its analysis, then re-producing an image of reality based on the encoded information. My friend said my argument had no practical currency and was at best, a theological point.) Yet even if we intend to make a "place" for the soul by insisting on the possibility of a non-linguistic thought, couldn't we frame an analogous debate in terms thought and the "soul itself"? That is, couldn't we insist that the soul isn't reducible to thought, that thoughts are tools for expressing the soul? If so, couldn't we maintain the identity of language and thought without squeezing the soul out of our description?

In a related but somewhat tangential question, aren't we dealing with something of a third-man argument whenever we try to model expression as emanating from a subjective in-itself? In other words, even if we assert an identity of thought and "soul", can't we then say "well, there's clearly a 'core' soul and a part of the soul which expresses what goes on in this 'core' soul, and this expressive part of the soul is what we call 'thought'" . . . ?

appearance and freedom

Just read Joshua Corey's take on Ron Silliman's assertion that theory replaced mysticism/wisdom traditions in American Poetry. Among many other interesting points, Joshua states:

The content of such [wisdom] traditions, like that of theory, is simply a means of comprehending the world that does not take phenomena at face value. If we could live by appearances it might not be such a bad thing, and perhaps that's what the calculated naivety of the Imagists (back to the things themselves!) and Objectivists (the poem's a thing, too!) was aimed at.

Flashback to a suggestion by Zizek (I don't recall which book) that direct access to the Kantian Thing-in-Itself would turn us into automatons. If we knew God's will with absolute certainty, it would be impossible to speak of such a thing as a moral decision -- such a notion would amount to a contradiction in terms.

Inasmuch as not having access to the Thing-in-Itself amounts to another way of saying that we can't take phenomena at face value, then I wonder whether we could read the "difficult, convoluted linguistic tradition in which verification often mattered less than authority and prestige" (Silliman's words) shared by both wisdom traditions and theory as an attempt to secure our existential/moral freedom by insulating us from the possiblity of direct access to the Thing-in-Itself. Of course, according to Kant, we needn't worry about having such access. The impossibility of direct access is built right into the very structure of consciousness. But that doesn't mean we aren't prone to believing that we have such access -- a delusion only slightly less dangerous than its impossible actuality.

whenever i try to write about theory

I feel like I'm dancing. Badly, I mean. I'm a terrible dancer, the kind whose consciousness appears poorly-distributed throughout his body. When I try to imitate a complex and graceful move, my limbs just flop about as though they've gone numb and I'm on some kind of bumpy amusement park ride. I feel my elbow collide with someone else's body part and jump back impulsively, as if I'd run into a lit cigarette, all the while attempting to apologize both under my breath and over the music -- only to feel my foot graze another dancer's ankle. And none of this happens in any relation to any beat whatsoever.

Be that as it may (and unlike dancing) I enjoy theory and actually believe that I will, with practice, improve.

phew!

Domain name expired and had to wrestle with godaddy.com's bureaucracy to get it back. Their security policy put me in a bind. Turns out I had to update my credit card number -- but because I'd lost my account number, I had to know the last 4 digits of the previous credit card I had on file, a card which I'd thrown out nearly a year ago. Argh.

am i missing something?

Internet's working well this morning. Trying to play catch-up, but need to eat soon.

Just read the entry on difficulty on Never mind the beasts. This isn't really a response to that entry, but rather to the notion of difficulty in (post-)avant poetry/art.

Is any (post-)avant art really that difficult? I mean, sure, it doesn't "make sense" when you first look at it. But that's a large part of the point, isn't it, to make art that's not restricted by received notions of "what makes sense"? (After all, if art must subordinate itself to sense, then it becomes just another moment of the rational -- it ceases to be able to stand on its own as art). Once you realize this, doesn't it become significantly less difficult?

Maybe you still have to wrestle with how to approach it, spend a little time figuring out how it's questioning your relationship to it, but a lot of this is done on an "intuitive" and not a strictly "intellectual" level. Unless the work is deeply coded (for lack of a better word -- I'm thinking of coded in the sense of Pound -- everything is a reference to something that you need a kind of dictionary to decipher), then you still approach the work of art as a work of art -- that is, as something that (potentially) affects you on a kind of "gut" level. If you find the work of art interesting or moving, you might spend time analyzing it, figuring out how it accomplishes its effects, uncovering additional layers of resonance and play. But the point is that the analysis doesn't need to come first -- and I think that a great deal of (post-)avant work is talked about in such way that presupposes the analysis must come first -- indeed, it seems this presupposition is precisely what is meant when a work is described as "difficult".

phenomenology of the text

This experiment may be more trouble than its worth, but after reading Ron Silliman's re-writing of Marx in the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E anthology, I wanted to try something similar with Husserl. Basically, I started with chapters 27-28 of Husserl's Ideas (english translation by W. R. Boyce Gibson) then replaced all references to a world and its objects with references to a text and its elements. Interestingly, I think it clarifies some of the weakness of this early phenomenology that the post-structuralists took issue with. For example, Husserl, I believe, is correct in asserting that value-judgments about objects are as inherent in our sensory perception of them as, say, elements like color and shape. Yet it feels that something is being glossed over here, that there could be a whole phenomenology devoted to the reception and formation of such value-judgments. They are given, yes, in the sense that they are always there, but they also fluctuate wildly relative such static elements of color and shape. Indeed, it seems to me they are constantly being informed, reformed, molded in a sort of dialogue or conversation that is always taking place between ourselves and others -- a dialogue laden with political passions, desire for mutual recognition, a dialogue to explore and determine the very meaning of the intersubjective world that we share and co-create. Nothing in our shared world is neutral, except to someone who just doesn't care (and even this apathy is rooted in disappointment and sorrow). Every conversation is, in a sense, an inquiry into whether or not this or that has the same meaning for oneself as it does for the other (or a celebration or the fact that it does, or, in the case of disagreements, a contest to determine who has the right to determine the meaning for the other). It seems to me that this is precisely "where" language poetry seeks to insert itself -- it wishes to expose this dialogue, to distrupt the rules by which its proceeds, to confuse it, destabilize it. Why? Becuase those rules inevitably benefit those who already have the upper hand. If we can shake those rules up then we stand of chance of really encountering one another, or really creating something new together. I'm thinking now of something I read in Morton Feldman's memoires, something to the effect of: abstract expressionism happened when, all of sudden, no one knew what painting was any more. I suspect that one of the strategies of language poetry was to create a parallel condition in the realm of language art . . . and maybe it even entertained hope that its effects would ripple outward so that, all of a sudden, we'd know longer knew what it means to talk to one another -- thereby permiting us to really talk for the first time.

I am aware of a text, spread out potentially endlessly, and in time becoming and become, without end. I am aware of it, that means, first of all, I discover it immediately, intuitively, I experience it. Through sight, touch, hearing, etc., in the different ways of sensory perception, the corporeal letters somehow spatially distributed are for me simple there [ . . . ] whether or not I pay them special attention by busying myself with them, considering, thinking , feeling, willing. Phrases also, perhaps complete thoughts or sentences, are immediately there for me; I look at the page, I see them, I hear them coming towards me, I grasp them, as it were, by the hand; letting them speak to me, I understand immediately their senses, the feelings that may have stirred them, what wishes or willing may have inscribed them on page. They too are present as realities in my field of reading, even when I pay them no attention. But it is not necessary that they and other parts of the text likewise should be present precisely in my field of perception. For me real textual elements are there, definite, more or less familiar, agreeing with what is actually perceived without being themselves perceived or even intuitively present. I can let my attention wander from this page I have just seen and observed, through the unseen portions of the text on prior pages, to other stanzas, sections, chapters, books, and so forth, to all the textual elements concerning which I precisely “know” that they are there and yonder in my immediate co-perceived surrounds – a knowledge which has nothing of conceptual reading in it [ . . .]

But not even with the added reach of this intuitively clear or dark, distinct or indistinct co-present margin, which forms a continuous ring around the actual field of perception, does that text exhaust itself which in every waking moment is in some conscious measure “present” before me [ . . .]

As it is with the text in its ordered being as a spatial present – the aspect I have so far been considering – so likewise is it with the text in respect to its ordered being in the succession of time. This text now present to me, and in every waking “now” obviously so, has its temporal horizon, potentially infinite in both directions, its known and unknown, its intimately alive and its unalive past and future. Moving freely within the moment of experience which brings what is present into my intuitional grasp, I can [ . . .] shift my standpoint in space and time, looks this way and that, turn temporally forward and backwards; I can provide for myself constantly new and more or less clear and meaningful perceptions and representations, and images also more less clear, in which I make intuitable to myself whatever can possibly exist really or supposedly in the steadfast order of textual space and textual time.

In this way, when consciously awake within the text, I find myself at all times and without my ever being able to change this, set in relation to a text which, through its constant changes, remains one and ever the same. It is continually “present” for me, and I myself am a member of it. Therefore this text is not there for as a mere text of statements and representations, but, with the same immediacy, as a text of values, a text of goods, a practical text. Without further effort on my part, I find the textual elements before me furnished not only with the qualities that befit their positive nature, but with value-characters such as beautiful or ugly, agreeable or disagreeable, pleasant or unpleasant, and so forth. The textual elements in their immediacy stand there as objects to be used, the noun with its adjectives, the prepositional phrase, the proper name, and so forth. These values and practicalities, they too belong to the constitution of the “actually present” text as such, irrespective of my turning or not turning to consider them or indeed any other objects [ . . .]

It is then to this text, the text in which I find myself and which is also my text-about-me, that the complex forms of my manifold and shifting spontaneities of consciousness stand related: observing in the interests of research the bringing of meaning into conceptual form through description; comparing and distinguishing, collecting and counting, presupposing and inferring, the theorizing activity of consciousness, in short, in its different forms and stages. Related to it likewise are the diverse acts and states of sentiment and disapproval, joy and sorrow, desire and aversion, hope and fear, decision and action. All these, together with sheer acts of the Ego, in which I become acquainted with the text as immediately given to me, through spontaneous tendencies to turn towards it and grasp it, are included under the one expression: the Reader. In the natural urge of life I live continually in this fundamental form all “wakeful” living [. . .]

Whatever hold for me personally as a Reader, also hold, as I know, for all other Readers whom I find present in the text-about-me. Experiencing them as Readers, I understand and take them as Ego-subjects, units like myself, and related to their natural textual surroundings. But this in such wise that I apprehend the text-about-them and the text-about-me objectively as one and the same text, which differs in each case only through affecting consciousness differently. Each has her or his place whence she or he sees the textual elements that are present and each enjoys accordingly different appearances of the textual elements. For each, again, the fields of perception and memory actually present are different, quite apart form the fact that even that which is here intersubjectively known in common is known in different ways, is differently apprehended, shows different grades of clearness, and so forth. Despite all this, we come to understandings with our neighbors, and set up in common an objective spatio-temporal fact-text as the text about us that is there for us all, and to which we ourselves none the less belong.

nick piombino's photocollage

excerpted in the Fall 2004 edition of Eratio . . . wow, really beautiful. Something about it makes me think of laughter, of flashes of sunlight through branches. Even the words "Headbanger" and "Nosferatu" make me smile. If it weren't so early in the morning I might be able to figure out why.

(Of course I just lifted the link from Nick's site so you've probably already seen it, but wanted to mention it anyway).

thanks, crag

for the latest batch of Compass Points. The first set if poems I've slowed down to read after coming back. A hot meal after a days of living off trail mix and so-called nutrition bars . . .

grumble grumble

Still no reliable intenet access, hence the long silence . . .

back from black rock city

Still glowing, inside down and upside out -- but gradually the world I left behind five days ago is fading back in -- to the periphery of my vision at least.

Burning Man restored my faith in what I believed before growing up. The fiction of an externally-imposed universal moral law promotes the very atrocities from which it claims to rescue us. We desire to love more than we desire to harm. Somehow I’d forgotten that, or had been talked out of believing it.

Burning Man clarified the difference between my ego and my soul. To the ego’s tiny nation-state, the soul consists of vast continents and oceans extending beyond its borders. The ego’s walls depict a ficticious menagerie of Bosch-like horrors allegedly populating the outside world. So the ego spends most of its time reenforcing those walls and rendering their illustrations ever more vivid. Somehow I’d forgotten that, or had been talked out of believing it.

I realize that I’m not stating any of this particularly well and I’ve no doubt that both the poet and the philosopher in me will look back at this entry and, together, cringe. That I’m unconcerned about such a possibility right now, that I feel a compulsion to state the above before the real world talks me into censoring it, is a testament to the power of the experience I had there. That power can’t be pinned to any one aspect of Burning Man, but is somehow a synthesis of the self-reliance required by the extreme desert setting, the sense of community such self-reliance ironically makes possible, the replacement of a monetary economy with one based on barter and/or giving, the shedding of so many social reference points signifying such things as class and lifestyle, the radical tolerance for just about any form of self-expression that doesn’t involve physical violence, the fact that creativity and desire drive just about everything that happens, the culminating ecstatic yet symbolically neutral rituals of burning a 40 foot wooden effigy and a profoundly magnificent temple, the way the anarchy and chaos of it all strips one of an ability to focus on anything but the present and makes it impossible to hold any serious expectations of oneself or of this temporary and improvisatory city . . . and there’s more than that, much more, that I just don’t know how to put into words right now.

glass

Jagged me burns, still. The sidewalk drowning sun. I mean my own head, invisible, hurts the level fear above, true to punish my lampshade anger. Bare warning like a light but then you see, embarrassed. How the wall wound falls, just depressing. Supposed to look a distance actually graceful, seen out shocking. Which is not a funnel.

Muscle inhabits the younger you, down on side wind. To discern, sometimes. Bone never all when one raises the breath effect; we replaced that out soft. Time layers the taking, once born. We smoke the same trails. We, stupidly, could clean a tiny image equation. Ridiculous to find, in fact, our lives secretly hiding that ground-leering color I imagined.

Fear to me that the nightmare sparkles, light protruding. I can’t drown its own contemptuous meaning. Commonplace bulbs picture water there, radiating graceful glass to be. Upward shards a fountain. Backwards feel, spiraling, that’s how.

Huge you rushes the window open like a hand-canyon raised. Your heel on one fingertip arcs a carbon trajectory embedded in blood. Danger, we laugh, relative to the evil it represents.

slow miles

Here is a short (2 minute) sample of the stretched-out excerpt from Bitches Brew - a quick flourish of trumpet notes expanded 30 times its original length.