Modernity, Sloterdijk and Private Semiologies

Erik1 · December 14, 2014, 1:06pm

Just as according to Aristophanes, contemporary man, in Plato’s Symposium, is the mutilated half of an originally rounded being which is whole; also according to Sloterdijk, humans originally comprised a two-part wholeness this side of the confrontative separation of subject and object. Sloterdijk employs the term Mit (With) to designate this state, which is hard to describe because of its prelinguistic origin. The fetus and its placenta are connected to each other like Orpheus and Eurydice. Every Orpheus is forced to leave his Eurydice. On parting, the latter bestows on him a space, “in which substitutions are possible.” The vacant space that the lost “primal companion” leaves behind in man, becomes the starting point for a consistently renewed search for new companions and new substitute spheres. The Eurydice of the placenta also leaves behind the navel, the bodily trace that points to our original bipolarity, for the Orpheus-like half-human.

For Sloterdijk the problem of the history of mankind begins (as does the problem of Sloterdijk’s version of this history for the reader) with the “excommunication” of this primal companion. Instead of being honoured as the lost half of man, the future of the placenta was either to be utilized by the cosmetics industry, or even, having been turned into granulate, to be used to accelerate combustion in waste incinerators. According to Sloterdijk, a “seamless alliance of silence” has formed, whose aim it is to make humans forget their original companion, the placenta, and to condemn them to an “absence of togetherness” (Mitlosigkeit). At this point, following Sloterdijk’s train of thought, modern individualism enters its hot phase. A “gynecological inquisition” has brought forth the the lonely modern subject. This condition in turn is to have facilitated the formation of totalitarian nations. “The birth of totalitarianism out of the spirit of midwifery? Someone here has apparently taken an overly hot bath in amniotic fluid” (transl. fr. German), as one critic jeered.

Erik1 · December 15, 2014, 2:18pm

Interfacial Spheres:

Erik1 · December 16, 2014, 1:02pm

Negative Gynecology:

For Sloterdijk, therefore, phenomenological analysis
has to be preceded by a philosophical gynecology, or what he calls in the first
volume of Sphären, a negative gynecology (1998: 275) that is an analysis of
the process of being ejected from, thrown out of the uterus. We are thus strange
and estranged (verfremdetet) creatures, who must arrive to a world, but who in
arriving it and already abandoning it. We are creatures of distance—not always
at home in the world (see 1993a for a lengthy treatment of this dimension of
neoteny). Still, for Sloterdijk, human existence begins with the unfathomable
pain of being exiled from the maternal womb. We are mangled creatures, who
survive because of the generosity and gratitude of the Other, who welcomes us,
who nourishes us, who gives us an abode and refuge. We are born of someone,
and someone receives us. We are loved and we are lovers. Coming to the world
is a form of coupling; being-with is a being-with-another which forms a couple.
But being born before time means we are always arriving in the world. This
arrival is met with the project of fashioning dwelling. To come to the world is to
build a home. In contrast to Heidegger, for Sloterdijk the Mit-sein is always
being-alongside-others in a dwelling that has been built and in which we are
enclosed. Being-with is always being inside of a dwelling. Dasein‘s neotony and
always dwelling alongside another means that the subject is always in a process
of auto-genesis that is simultaneously a making of worlds. Dasein‘s ex-stasis, its
being always ahead of itself, is simultaneously a worlding, a bringing-forth of
worlds, whether they be poetic, literary, or material and real, such as glasshouses,
palaces, or caves.

Lump · December 17, 2014, 5:47pm

What he said ^
Bunch of incoherent words, mixed with too fanciness.

This isn’t philosophy, please move it to somewhere else.

Erik1 · December 17, 2014, 6:16pm

Listen, I’m not going to condescend in my prose. If you don’t understand a term, then google it. It’s simple. This is a place for higher learning, so view augmenting your vocabulary as ancillary to your philosophical endeavors.

Lump · December 17, 2014, 7:34pm

Just because you think/wish that what you have written in OP makes sense, doesn’t necessarily mean it does make sense.

Most of us have a sufficient understanding of the words, but bound together in the wrong way, the meaning falls apart.

Erik1 · December 17, 2014, 7:38pm

It makes sense - you just need to enter into the Sloterdijkian semio-sphere. Careful, though - or else it will pop.

Lump · December 17, 2014, 7:42pm

Ancient Greeks would have a term “diluted” when thoughts are a stray and doesn’t make sense.

Erik1 · December 17, 2014, 7:45pm

So, are you really saying you didn’t comprehend the OP? Not even the gist?

If you really want me to, I will dumb it down for you.

Lump · December 17, 2014, 7:48pm

OP is very clear, and it’s even more clear it’s pure fantasy, not suited for philosophy, more suited for Harry Potter movies.

Erik1 · December 17, 2014, 7:50pm

Yeah - you are a troll.

First you insinuated it was inscrutable; now you claim it’s perfectly fathomable.

You will be ignored, until you show evidence of sincerity and maturity.

Erik1 · December 18, 2014, 1:15pm

‘Even Lacan’s tragically presumptuous theorem about the mirror stage’s formative significance for the ego function cannot overcome its dependence on the cosmetic and ego-technical household inventory of the nineteenth century - much to the detriment of those who were taken in by this psychological mirage’

He argues that in order to prove the valence of psychoanalytic theories in any cultures other than the Western ones we would have to first demonstrate the presence of mirrors (he argues that even until the Modern age few had mirrors and they were cloaked in secrecy – for much of human history S. argues that most of the human race had not seen their own faces [I think he oversimplifies here – e.g. reflection in another’s eyes for example ‘the other thus acts as a personal mirror’ p.200 – but there is certainly something interesting to be said about how the ‘interface’ of mirror technologies opens up new modes of self-encounter – ‘they no longer require completion through the present other, but can complete themselves through themselves so to speak’ p. 20] – says something similar about writing in thought transmission]), and then the emergence of mirror-subjectivities. S. also argues that if we reread the narcissistic mirror-narrative with this intervention in mind, we actually arrive at the stark opposite of narcissism in ‘pre-reflection’ cultures: the visage in the water is not an image of the self, but of another – ‘Looking at the entire history of human faciality, one can say that humans have faces not for themselves, but for the others’ p.192. So through this example we return again to the issues of ontotopology, spherological being and technicity which are of central concern to Sloterdijk’s Spheres

Erik1 · December 21, 2014, 2:04pm

The structural implication of the current earth-encompassing network - with all its eversions into the virtual realm - is thus not so much a globalisation as a foaming. In foam worlds, the individual bubbles are not absorbed into a single integrative hyper-orb, as in the metaphysical conniption of the world, but rather drawn together to form irregular hills.

Referring to a pathology of spheres displays a threefold focus: a politicological one, in so far as foams tend to be ungovernable structures with an inclination towards morphological anarchy; a cognitive one, in so far as the individuals and associations of subjects can no longer produce any complete world, as the idea of the whole world itself, in its characteristic holistic emphasis, unmistakably belongs to the expired age of metaphysical total-inclusion-circles, or monospheres; and a psychological one, in so far as single individuals in foams tend to lose the power to form mental-emotional spaces, and shrink to isolated depressive points transplanted into random surrounds (correctly referred to systematically as their environment). They suffer from the immunodeficiency caused by the deterioration of solidarities - to say nothing, for the moment, of the new immunizations acquired through participation in regenerated sphere creations. For sphere-deficient private persons, their lifespan becomes a sentence of solitary confinement; egos that are extensionless, scarcely active and lacking in participation stare out through the media window into moving landscapes of images. It is typical of the acute mass cultures that the moving images have become far livelier than most of their observers: a reproduction of animism in step with modernity.

Orbie · December 21, 2014, 4:47pm

But i would imagine that dilution would have had imminent and not transcendent ramification(s) You are talking about the Homeric age, not the Platonic?

Erik1 · December 21, 2014, 5:16pm

My previous entry was in regards to the post-metaphysical age ( modernity ), the age of " foam " ( people rubbing up against each other with their own private semiologies ). The semiotics of imminence was in the pre-metaphysical age ( from the paleolithic till Plato ).

Orbie · December 21, 2014, 5:19pm

Well Yes, and i was referring to the other one,(not your comments) in terms of the broadening of meaning. Cross references are not that unusual?

Orbie · December 21, 2014, 5:22pm

But i was trying to idemnify Your Lacanian application as more then imminent(modern), by reducing it similarly, to the idea, the narcissitic dilemma, hence Narcissus’s fate, of a pool of water being reflective. So no dissent there.

Erik1 · December 21, 2014, 5:26pm

Ah - you were talking to Mr. idiot boy ( Lump ).

Gotcha

Arminius · December 23, 2014, 12:08am

Erik_:

According to Sloterdijk, the contemporary age is an age of foam, i.e., a multiplicity of people, who rub up against each other with their own private semiologies. The metaphysical age was a bubble, i.e., God as the transcendent signified, who encased the Earth, like a dome. This divine macro-sphere provided a psychological immunization to the Lacanian ’ real '. But now, since all the grand meta-narratives and transcendent signifieds have been deconstructed, in the contemporary age, we are in a state of existential nakedness, exposed to the Lacanian ’ real '. The grand bubble has popped and now what remains is foam, the multiplicity of semio-spheres, which contain their own idiosyncratic logic and meaning. Understanding this macro/micro symbolism is conducive to the understanding of contemporary art. Much of modern art is extremely perplexing and ambiguous, even absurd - it isn’t confluent with the metaphysical grand narratives and transcendent signifieds. The deconstruction of the transcendent signified has allowed room for play, as Derrida would say - the signifiers can now play around and create their own semiologies. Once you understand the personal bubble of the contemporary artist, his logic and meaning, you can begin to become part of his semio-sphere.

amazon.com/Bubbles-Spheres-M … 1584351047

You don’t need to refer to Lacan or Derrida in order to understand what Sloterdijk means. But it is useful to refer to Leibniz’ monadology, especially when it comes to understand the meaning of Sloterdijk’s „hubbles“ and „foams“.

For example: „Foams“. What doese Sloterdijk’s foam theory mean?

Peter Sloterdijk wrote:

„Die Schaumtheorie ist unverhohlen neo-monadologisch orientiert: Ihre Monaden jedoch haben die Grundform von Dyaden oder komplexeren seelenräumlichen, gemeindlichen und mannschaftlichen Gebilden.“ (Peter Sloterdijk, Sphären III - Schäume, 2004; S. 61 **).
Translation:
„The foam theory is openly neo-monadological oriented: Its monads, however, have the basic form of dyads or more complex formations of emotional rooms, communities and team unions.“ (Peter Sloterdijk, Spheres III - Foams, 2004; p. 61).

Peter Sloterdijk wrote:

„Die Schaum-Metapher bietet den Vorzug, die topologische Anordnung von kreativ-selbstsichernden Lebensraumschöpfungen im Bild zu erfassen. … So evoziert die Schaumvorstellung sowohl die Ko-Fragilität als auch die Ko-Isolation der in dichten Verbänden gestapelten Einheiten.“ (Peter Sloterdijk, Sphären III - Schäume, 2004; S. 255 **).
Translation:
„The foam metaphor offers the advantage of the topological arrangement of creative-self-securing habitat creations to gather the image. … In this way the foam idea evokes both the co-fragility and the co-isolation of the stacked units in dense associations.“ (Peter Sloterdijk, Spheres III - Foams, 2004; p. 255).

Uccisore · December 23, 2014, 12:29am

Thought you were gonna ignore him. Don’t call him “Idiot boy”. Makes the forum look shitty.