As I immerse myself in my graphic guide Introducing Fractals (the kind of thing I read when I have a lot of stuff that needs to be done around the house since it doesn’t require the kind of commitment that hardcore theory does), I’m finding a lot of my initial impulses about it confirmed, that is even though there are a lot of influences that are out of my pay grade: most notably things like Cantor sets or the Mandelbrot whatever or anything that remotely resembles calculus. Grade school algebra is as far as I got. Still I’m getting a blue-collarized sense of it and its connection to chaotics. In other words, I’m getting it at a metaphorical level which seems appropriate given my background and influences. Here I would put forth the kind of fractal causality at work in the computer models that weathermen tend to work from –models, BTW, that have greatly improved their ability to predict weather patterns.
But the main thing I want to point to here is how much fractal mathematics and geometry and the resulting chaotics must have influenced Deleuze. His folds within folds outside of folds are clearly an expression of fractal causality. And we see this same influence at work in other continental thinkers such as Layotard’s model of us like ball bearings engaging in exchanges of communication that results in acts and complex systems of displacement. What is interesting here is that neither Deleuze nor Layotard nor any other continental thinker (as far as I know (ever even mentions fractals or chaotics. It’s like it was always working in the background.
I alluded to your fractionalism in the 'double edged sword ’ under the Meta forum. Hope to not impinge without your authority. Thanks. Will withdraw if otherwise directed.
In the words of Kyle from South Park: I learned something today. I learned that, according to fractal geometry, many systems that are immediately accessible to us are the composite effect of subsystems that follow patterns very similar to the composite effect of what we immediately perceive. The way limbs break out from branches on a tree is similar to the way branches break out from the trunk. The turbulence we see in an ocean is the composite effect of individual instances of turbulence within the flow and ebb of water that, in turn, are the composite effect of instances of turbulence. It’s basically about the economy of nature in that it creates complexity by repeating patterns that seem to work (and think Deleuze and Difference and Repetition here). And we see a similar dynamic at work in the brain.
And given the last point, you have to wonder to what extent fractal geometry plays a part in the psychedelic experience since a lot of what you see tends to consist of tiled images that create a composite effect. And here we need to consider Dennett’s point in Consciousness Explained that the psychedelic experience tends to work in terms of patterns and geometry because the way we normally engage with reality starts with recognizing the basic shape of things then goes on to fill in the details.
Reading Jameson, I’m starting to think that we might achieve a little more clarity if we (as Voltaire advises: define our terms and make a distinction between critique as theory practices it and criticism as it is generally practiced. Critique, it seems to me, is about bouncing off of a given text (in the fullest postmodern sense of anything that can be interpreted: enter hermeneutics (while adding a touch of one’s own. And here we’re in line with Deleuze’s understanding of critique as being both negative (that which seeks flaws in the text (and positive in that it adds something to the jam. (See his preface to Difference and Repetition: philosophy as detective/sci-fy utopian novel.)
Criticism, on the other hand, is always a value statement. It is always about whether a given text is of value or not. Compare, for instance, Roger Ebert’s site and Anthony Lane’s movie critiques in The New Yorker. Ebert’s site is clearly criticism in that it that it gives you clear sense of what movies or TV series you should watch and what to avoid –that is with some really good writing. Lane (who borders on critique in the context of theory), in comparison, seems to focus mainly on the writing. He writes all these interesting points about a given movie (bounces off of it), but always leaves you thinking:
Yeah! Yeah! Right! But did he like the movie or not?
Jameson, of course, refers to what he is doing as “dialectical criticism” when I would argue the better description would be “dialectical critique”. But the dialectic has always been one of those terms or conceptual models that the more I learn about, the less I seem to understand or know: the less clear my definition. My understanding has always felt visceral and oblique. So it may well be that Jameson’s dialectical criticism is the very definition of critique.
Meno: my intent is not to ignore you. I tend to use this board as a perfect place to edit my posts for facebook -that is given the preview function, that is even though I would really like to come back here as a kind of vacation in old haunts. I sometimes miss this board. But if you really want to continue your discourse with these posts you should find me on Open Mic in the Rhizome Cafe on Facebook under D E Tarkington.
Buchanan points out, in Fredric James: Live Theory, that Jameson’s primary method of operation was dialectical criticism (or what I would call dialectical critique). This is further described as something that, in order to be authentic, that must administer a shock or feel like having the ground drop out from beneath your feet. That, for me, pretty much broaches what I embrace as the nihilistic perspective or that sense of being tapped in to the underlying nothingness of things. My experience of the nihilistic perspective, that of not really knowing if your feet are touching solid ground, has been a lot like what Jameson describes as a “shock”: the disorientation that comes from that dropping out. And because of this, I couldn’t help but interpret Jameson’s dialectical criticism as a kind of Derridadian deconstruction (what I think should be spelled “d.construction” (that can be defined as a Hegelian dialectic on krank in that it always assumes that the synthesis arrived at is always a momentary stay against confusion, that which must, by necessity, land in the nihilistic perspective.
And my study point in Jameson’s Marxism and Form today seems to confirm my take on it. In his critique of Adorno, Jameson points to Adorno’s embrace of a “negative dialectic” which, as I understand it now, mainly focuses on undermining a given thesis or status quo with less emphasis on what is to replace it. This is because as it sees the antithesis or any compromise that might result between it and the thesis will by necessity fail as well.
Having followed Buchanan’s lead and dived into Fredric Jameson’s Marxism and Form, I find myself frustrated to the extent that I’m not that familiar with the thinkers and books he is critiquing: Adorno, Lukacs, Benjamin, Bloch, and Marcuse (although I’m acquainted w/ One Dimensional Man). And I am getting a little relief with his chapter on Sartre as I have actually read Being and Nothingness. Unfortunately, I have yet to read Critique of Dialectics. It just feels like the book would mean a lot more to me if I were more familiar with what Jameson was referring to. I had a similar experience with Stanley Fish’s Is There a Text in This Class.
So I guess this is a general catch when it comes to literary critics –by which I mean those of an academic kind who engage in critique (that which bounces off of a given text and finds its own thoughts (as compared to criticism which tells you whether you should read a given book or not.
At the same time, when I’m reading more closely, there are times when I can extract from Jameson’s book overlaps with a lot of the continental thought I am familiar with. Every once in a while his continental sensibility does bleed through. So I’m guessing I might be better off starting with some of his later books (this one was published about 1970) such as his study of postmodernism and leave this one alone until I can do immersions in the books he is referring to.
I recently confessed to Ian Buchanan that it took me about 4 to 5 readings of his reader’s guide to Anti-Oedipus to get a reasonable understanding of what he was describing which, in hindsight, may have been kind of an insult -that is given his goal of giving people an accessible stepping-stone to the original text. And as I realized, between him, Joe Hughes’ reader’s guide to Difference and Repetition, as well as Massumi’s departures from the Capitalism and Schizophrenia series (although Colebrook does a really good job of wetting your appetite for Deleuze in an accessible way you can get on the first reading of her Routledge guide to Deleuze): that you know you’re in trouble with a given text when the professionals trying to explain it to you are just as perplexing. It sometimes feels like a lot of etherspeak about etherspeak.
However, I think I have arrived at an analogy that might put some clarity on the situation. As I have thought for some time: theory is a little like someone on psychedelics explaining their high to you. The problem is that unless you were on psychedelics yourself, there is no way you could understand what is being described. And anyone attempting to interpret it for you would (unless they were on psychedelics their selves (pretty much be in the same situation or mind frame as you.
And that is the difference with theory. Those who attempt to explain theory to us have taken the same tab of acid as those they’re trying to interpret: someone on acid their self trying to relay what the other person on acid is trying to explain. And all it took was reading a text and getting hooked.
And how’s that for metacommentary (thought to the 2nd power (or nth as Deleuze and Guatarri would put it), Ian?
But then I’m biased. I’ve always considered theory my way of compensating for my inability to handle psychedelics at my age.
I have, before, brought up Coleridge’s distinction between Fancy (that which naturally flows through the mind and is usually, if not always, based on wish-fulfillment – even when it is negative in nature when it comes to perceived threats coming from the other: think Mexican immigrants (and imagination: that which evolves from fancy by taking the effort of playing it against reality. It’s basically a process.
And it is because of this process that those who have spent a large part of their life daydreaming tends to be the best equipped to make the distinction between fantasy (the way we would like things to work (and reality: the way they actually do.
The cosmic irony of this dynamic is that those who claim to have their feet planted firmly on the ground (with their fantasies of rugged individualism and “pulling their selves up by the bootstraps” (are the ones most prone to fancy: wish-fulfillment propped up by action movies and advertisements: fancy with a complete lack of imagination. And think hard-right republicans here. It is basically their propensity towards fancy that makes them vulnerable to conspiracy theories and Q-Anon.
Only one ½ hour into my immersion into Buchanan’s Fredric Jameson: Live Theory and, already, I’ve discovered a major oversight on my part. I had recently pointed to the changes in content that occurred in cinema due to the development of color film: the way it initially changed the content of film by making real world landscapes less feasible and staged ones more so, that which resulted in a temporary suspension of the Western genre and the popularity of musicals full of dance routines.
I had previously pointed to this as an example of what Jameson called the reflexivity form of critical dialecticism. But come to find out, the example was being presented as useful but problematic to the extent that it was it was shaped (and thereby biased (by a perspective that came after the fact and was specifically focused on the technological aspect of it. As Buchanan put it (via Jameson:
“It gives us a false view of the past as an underdeveloped foretaste of the present and makes all other forms of literary production seem like unconscious precursors of the novel, when in fact present patterns of literary production would not have been suited to periods before their own.”
In other words, it makes everything that happened before us seem as if it only existed to get us where we are now. And that seems kind of arrogant (almost Capitalist); doesn’t it? And isn’t this how any conceptual scheme with the prefix “meta” works? The thing is that now I might have to reconsider my interpretations of Buchanan’s use of the movies Jaws and The Dreamers in his reader’s guide to Anti-Oedipus.
Once again, I come up against one of the main obstacles to my process: a lack of confidence in my own process (my own ability to analyze and say something legit about the reality I face (without a full understanding of what the established icons of theory have said. I went through it with Deleuze (that Goddamn Frenchman), and now I’m going through it with Jameson. And mind you: it’s not Jameson’s actual text that brought me to this point of despair, but Buchanan’s interpretation and explanation: his secondary text.
The problem is that I keep coming up with all these schemes to bring me to the kind of understanding a Buchanan has when all I can really do is keep reading it and other rhizomatically connected texts and see what happens in terms of what tools I can use to further my own process. Theory is, after all, democratic in nature to the extent that its opaque nature and oblique approach to meaning is meant to evoke understanding in the reader –sometimes, I believe, through a kind of osmosis.
The problem with my schemes is that they end up trying to force something that is visceral by nature. It tries to make science of what is basically a poetic and hermeneutic (a slow unraveling (process of what is like a relationship with a friend or a lover, something that takes time, that will resist your moving on but always be there when you come back.
Dear Diary: During my immersion in Rorty and the current stage with Heidegger and Other Essays, I’ve struggled with his (via Heidegger: ontological/ontic distinction. However, today I finally got it and (as often happens with philosophy: felt like an idiot. It pretty much came down to another distinction made in the book (once again via Heidegger: between Being and beings.
What really made it connect was the better understanding I got of the de-ontic as concerns Kant’s Categorical Imperative: a transcendental assertion as compared to an imminent one to put it in Deleuzian terms. As Rorty also points out: ontology is a-historical while the ontic is situated in the historical, the domain of “beings”. However, this presents a problem. Given that Kant’s categorical imperative does not exist in the ontic domain, cannot be thought of as a “being”, should we consider it an ontological statement? An expression of Being?
In Dosse’s biography of Deleuze and Guattari, I came across a reframing of several concepts I was previously familiar with: “consciousness of something” (the phenomenological understanding associated with intentionality and Husserl) and “consciousness as something” which can be associated with D&G’s materialism (nodes of exchange in a rhizomatic complex (as well as Deleuze’s emphasis on immanence as compared to the transcendent.
We can, as well, see an overlap with Daniel Dennett’s Consciousness Explained in which he attempts to undermine the Cartesian Theater by offering a multiple draft theory in which information is passed around the various nodes of the brain and put through a revisionary process until a given reality is brought to realization. In other words: Dennett works in the “consciousness as something” much as Deleuze (w/ and w/out Guattari (did.
Still, my criticism stands as concerns Dennett’s “multiple drafts” theory and the Cartesian Theater: all Dennett really did was make the actors the spectators as well. So I’m not sure we can totally dismiss the “consciousness of something” at work in Husserl’s intentionality. We can still see the possibility of an ultimate ego at work in those actors in the Cartesian Theater; we can still see the possibility of a pure perceiving thing at the bottom of all experience witnessing what it produces.
