Folding Thought

A few names for disruption

Adam — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:42:08 +0000

Disrupt v. - To break or burst asunder; to break in pieces, shatter; to separate forcibly (OED)

Does technology disrupt the material body? Through what mechanisms can this be investigated. There are two distinct elements at play, one is the grounding of the material body, that body that exists within the world. Attaching proper names in order to investigate this question is at first tricky. Nietzsche, appears as the break from dualism. Nietzsche attempted to think outside the confines of philosophical dualism, presenting the body as an agent in the world. His thinking enables us to have a point of reference whereby we can delimit the materiality of the body. Yet this material body, a loaded as term as any, is mysteriously absent from Heidegger. Heidegger, who demarcates the experiential nature of being, especially in relation to objects in the world, also sees his project as attempt to fulfill where Nietzsche left off. As such, it is Heidegger, who presents an opening into the way that technology, techné, is utilised within the world. Through an exploration of techné, as taken up by Heidegger, I wish to position technology in relation to the material body first outlined by Nietzsche.

In posing the question what is technology, one ponders what in fact is the essence of technology. The very basic essence of technology reveals itself to us only through our interactions with it. This interaction of an individual with technology presents a core condition in the current historical epoch of the world. While technology has driven a number of advances, many beyond the scope of a through analysis, the essential question of technology still remains murky. Indeed, Heidegger attempted to tease out the essence of technology in his essay The question concerning technology. Taking this as a departure point, I wish to see how Heidegger frames technology while probing into how this relates to being.

However, engagement with this technology is related to the material human body, that agent which manipulates the technical object through the deployment of technique. Already, the technical artifact is related to the human body. The body, in its movement through the world engages with many things; bodies, objects, machines and animals. These relationships structure specific relationships that emerge from such interactions. However, in delimiting these elements, I wish to invoke the phenomenological encounter present in each engagement. For this, a development of what is specifically meant by a material body, or more specifically, many material bodies. For this, the work of Merleau-Ponty will be helpful in guiding me through a grounding of such a condition and form the basis whereby the interactions of technology across space-time can be explored in relation to the material body.

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Disruption alpha

Adam — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 13:29:39 +0000

Technology presents a disruption of the body. In order to develop this, the body firstly needs to be defined, before the affects of technology can be explored. As the body is a site of contested meaning, the relationship of the body to meaning needs to be developed. Metaphor can present a way of how we can conceptualise the body and the relations it makes to other elements. The body as it is situated in the world is bound in its materiality. The materiality of existence is bound by the world. The world is comprised of objects. These objects are present in material form. As the body engages with these object how can we mark out a point of difference in relation to time and space. The body become present, however, the body is always-already present. In wrestling with the body, it is important to situate it. There are many body, each comprising many identities.

Language is the way we construct the world. Language enables us to develop depth of meaning in any given situation. What is the language we give to the body? Is there an adequate language to describe the body? Is language that we use to discuss objects in the world, different from that utilised for objects? Does technology, or technological innovations that mark historical time to be precise, present a new challenge to our understanding of the material and immaterial worlds?

These questions shape a direction for research. Technology, techne, is related to the body. Indeed all the arts are extensions of the body. The machine takes just one place in relation to the many ways that specific bodies engage with the world. What is the meaning then invested in both the body and the machine? Time, both the time of the present and historical time come to the fore when discussing the relationship between body and technology. Time is present when discussing the always-already body that engages with technology. Both are entwined. Related to the temporal is the spatial. Space enables the opening of the body. Space reveals objects to the body. Space governs the comportment of the senses towards the world. However, the body is only emergent in one specific circumstances, as that machine which is the locus of human activity. The body, as represented in its flesh presents us with a limit, a boundary of how the body can engage with the world.

In order for all of this to fall out into a theoretical argument. Definition of each of the items needs to be achieved. Firstly, the body, before any engagement with the body can be developed it needs to be defined. By definition, noting the contested nature of the body, one needs to think of how the body relates to the world. How does it operate on the level of its senses, what is the meaning dimension inscribed to the material body. Secondly, bodies do not exist as a separate site, the are entwined within culture, inscribed with linguistic signs, rendered as objects of control and survelence, presented in a myriad of forms. Technology on the other hand employs all the objects that humans utilise to manipulate the material world. However, digital technology invoke a less than material frontier. Does this technology now mean that the materiality of the body now needs to be recast in light of digital develops that provide engagement with the body, others and community. Finally, the way these items are communicated are radically transformed. Speech, to writing, to data. Presence and the falling off of the material world for the subject to be present qua subject…

An argument, or a start, a body pressed against a machine, hammering out text…

the barrier

Adam — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:38:55 +0000

The body is a contested site. Any attempt to develop meaning takes one in a multitude of direction. The positioning of the subject presents the first problem. Where is the subject located, how can I define what is meant by the body? The use of this sign, the sign of the body as a mere referent to something is the first hurdle. However, taking as given for one moment, a body that is present at a point in space and time how then can meaning be evoked? In order to enquire as to what is the body is the first question. This questioning of the body then opens up a multitude of lines of exploration. With a given body what are the effects that at first present themselves:

Inside - the mechanics of the body. Meaning that is developed through depth, the physiological operation of the body, the electro-chemical reactions inside the body that present it as a site of activity. The body as a machine
Difference - the body as different and unique. Those elements which are emergent, such as the mechanical structures of the body are all manifest in different ways. Gender, culture, expression…
Surface - the membrane between the world outside and that of the body. What is the limit of our body - the flesh? the will? the artwork?
The world - where is the body located within a sea of objects? Those elements which surround the subject, yet also shape the subject - the environment.
The other - confronting another body, what is the expected, how is this relationship negotiated?
Sense - how do the senses of the body enable the body to create meaning? What is the meaning of the body as derived from the meaning of the senses expressed in language?
Language - the signs that represent the body and the elements surrounding it
Space-time - where is the body present? What does it mean for the body to engage in spatial relations? How can a topography of the body be carved?
Meaning - the depth of meaning given to the body. How can we develop a sense of meaning? What does this meaning mean? How do we situated meaning within the conditions stipulated by the limits of the body?

These are just a handful, a non-exhaustive list of questions which emerge when beginning to position the term body. In order to investigate the body, a line of inquiry needs to be invoked through the problematising of the body through one (or two) of these elements…

This does not even enable the body to be rendered against the animal. The point of departure for championing the human condition returns when the body is positioned on Earth. Interconnection and a multitude of connections open up new topographies that attempt at once to circumvent dualism however make themselves renderable in both the one and the many. The dynamic model of existence that invokes the temporal yet grounded within its environment. Changed technology that alters the conditions where the body is situated - an enframing.

drilling deeper

Adam — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 14:20:47 +0000

How can we place our bodies? Their depth of experience, the dimension of meaning they invoke, what does it mean for a body to be deep? To be present is one aspect, here, there, at a specific point of reference, demarcated in four dimensions. Yet this body, while appearing as a object is something more, something that renders meaning over its existence. This meaning-dimension of the body is the avenue whereby the body can be positioned within time and space. However, for the sake of rendering things continual, one needs to ensure, that in developing the meaning dimension of the body, it is important that we recognise the specific role that the body has in its own agency. Yet, in order to undertake such a development, I will find that pinning down an effective meaning, a relevant referent that identifies the body, as opposed to that loose sign which is the body is developed. However, the paths to opening up the body, that questions of how we render the body, the body on its own terms as the question of what it means to be always already existent when we engage the world. Things around us that produce a limit. The world that is ingested in us - the break down of matter into energy - a machine or an animal? Metaphors of structuring the body ring through space and time… the mind, the flesh of Christ, the sacrificial virgin…

That space between

Adam — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:45:12 +0000

Each of us has a body. That body has a sense of meaning, created by us, through our senses and culture. That body exists within space, the space of the world. How then can we think of the body as positioned within the world? What does the world mean to our bodies, how does it engage with our senses and conceptualisations of meaning to deliver us a place. The representation of the world appears to us in the present through the presence of objects. Yet are these objects all that comprise the world. The body’s engagement with the world is limited, to an extent by its flesh, by a boundary that represents its physical corporeal space. Yet within this space, there are projections of the body across both space itself and time. It is this extension that presents an entwining of the body within the world, a breaking down of one discreet entity with the other. These spaces develop presence at a specific juncture of time the now, yet also linger, in the body through memory of the event, of the action, of the engagement of the senses. These indeterminate spaces are what comprise the focus of this investigation.
If the body is material and that is all there is then the point is moot. However, while the body is embedded in its materiality the body also opens up our understanding of the world through our presence in the world. The world invokes both the physical nature of the planet and the cultural world, that sphere of meaning that enables us to engage with the world. Landscape and nature wash upon our bodies, what does it mean to be a material entity on a dying planet? What does it mean to be a subject that transcends our own corporeal limitations extending ourselves through space and time? Is there an avenue of opportunity to explore the limitation of the body on the one hand and its transgression on the other?

Nietzsche, that writer whose corporal state permeates his philosophy presents a starting point, how do we think of our bodies and our consciousness there historicity. Here, two elements are at play one of our body’s that exist within space, and then rub up against other spatial objects which is revealed through the senses and that of a specific presence whereby meaning is collated within the flow of time. Through the exploration of metaphor, the attempt will be to develop how Nietzsche presents the body as both a representation and explanation of culture—the attempt to overcome metaphysics or that distinction between the body and the mind developed by Plato. This overcoming has a lot at state for until we can think of our bodies as corporeal entitles fuelled and transformed by the planet yet part of it an object within an object yet our own specific subject. The world that envelops us, nurtures our individuality also breaks with our place in the planet as animal as custodian of the planet. If there is one thing that separates the human from the animal is that we have the ability to destroy our home in spectacular fashion. Time and the limitations of space—the Earth, now, more than ever present themselves as a point whereby the difference of our body and mind as discreet, as a special form, needs to be brought back to Earth understood in the material condition of emptiness that comprise yet also destroys our body. With flesh as a starting point, the ramifications of meaning emerge if a body is regulated by the political and the threat of violence, is not our own very existence limited by the Earth?

Figuring through this condition, the historical sketch is just a mere blip on the radar for the presentation of objects is just a marker of our existence. Time therefore is that which is emergent. As time is become compressed, so to is space. What were once boundless open plains, for wealth to share—the Commonwealth the figure now is that boundaries are the planet (for some).

In invoking the body the exploration through the extension of space is the indeterminate figure presented through the boundary between the body and its object.

Three steps off Monday

Adam — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 14:31:29 +0000

Thinking of the position of being, one can only pause to ponder the level that it is situated in. Divine revelation comes from a certain angle—the oblique. The subject then is left to wrestle with the problem of both their own being and that of the objects that envelop there world. What do I call that object that is situated in front of me. Is there a permeable boundary between the extension of my body and that of the world. The world, the sum of objects, material and immaterial. There confronting me in time. The change of time, the flow of representations and the possibility of becoming. The world of metaphysical thinking envelops my mind, like the fog on teh horizon, that northern fog. However, it is from the moors that I turn and take on the heat of the desert. For it is the arid landscape, one that is naked in front of me, except for the twisted branches of Mallee Eucalyptus breaking up the sky.

Trees that have stood the test of time, a representation of the Earth in its physical form presented to me at this specific juncture in time. Space cannot be thought without time. Time is the marker of our existence. An urgency marks the planet through the limited amunt of time available. The cosmological constant and the relative perception that marks our presence and enables both our action and the world to come into being for us. Rest presents a disjointed figure. The rhythm of time, that is not linear but instead shuffles along to the beat. It is the syncopated march through differing moments that figure the positioning on the subject.

Drawing on a corpus of work, where is the beginning? One can turn to Nietzsche for some preliminary remarks upon the human condition. The relationship of health and living. What distorting effect does faulty vision present to the world. It is given that Nietzsche is a point of origin, for his tracing of origins. However, the condition that we are situated in need to think that our conceptualisation of time is already prefigured by the always already conceptualising subject. How does the progression of time effect those that withdraw from the world in the dry? Is this just a precursor to a different demarcation. Seven days, develop along, Monday through Sunday, work and rest a whole permutation of things that appear, disappear yet remain, in there form solid, structured, hopeful—waiting for that glance that will bring them back into my world, back into any world….

Act 2 is harder. What theme to develop? Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God. A fitting not to ponder on this, the weekend of that circus occurring in the Emerald City:

In “God is dead” the name “God,” thought essentially stands for the supersensory world of ideals that contain the goal that exists beyond the earthly life; they determine it thus from above and so in certain respects from without. But when the pure faith in God as defined by the Church fades, when theology in particular, the doctrine of faith, finds itself curbed and forced to one side in serving its role as the normative explanation of beings in their entirety, then in no way does that fundamental structure breakdown in accordance with which the goal set on the scale of the supersensory has dominated the earthly life of the senses.

…

Whatever is thus going to be in place of the supersensory world will be variations of the Christian-ecclesiastical and theological interpretation of the world, an interpretation which adopted its schema of the ordo, the hierarchical order of beings, from the Hellenistic-Judaic world and whole fundamental structure was established through Plato at the outset of Western metaphysics. (Heidegger, Nietzsche’s Word: “God is Dead” in Off the Beaten Track p. 165).

Hence the continual return to origin as the origin of metaphysics. That which demarcates a point in time, that which needs to be explored through its escape in the rendering of our being and the presentation of time.

The blank page

Adam — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 13:25:58 +0000

The page rests in front of me, with unread books and no clear starting point. Coursework that has moved somewhere left field, a mind that is waiting to engage with theory, yet no defined starting point. Grappling with specific states, I find myself hesitant. The plan brought forward, just a fraction. The impending sense of a deadline thrust upon me. All the more, slipping with the relationship of theory to actual thesis. This breakage, helped along by attention to the mechanics of public policy and general administrative duties has wanted me to seek out sun as opposed to structure.

The winter lull, a gathering of thoughts to make the page appear again, to make text come alive and flow, conveying the relationship that the subject of being, the subject for being has in their temporal dimension and the metaphors that we utilise to understand this concept. For being, this site, the movement away from metaphysics to ontology is only one opening. Others, planned and thought, will tease themselves out. Slowly, in the corner, waiting to appear like the first warm breeze from the North or that sense of a lingering afternoon wasted away in the sun.

Until then, until soon, the blank page is what confronts me. The struggle is to fill it with meaning…

Moving, marking, making

Adam — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:32:50 +0000

Well the semester has drawn to a close. There has been movement and administrative arrangements (no internet). A range of paid employment tasks (namely marking) and the wrapping up of my own engagement with Nietzsche. Hence, this space has been quiet. Helped in part by a rather unexplained and problematic outage from the web hosting company. If there wasn’t something compelling in hosting my own solution I would go to wordpress (something to remember in future - with full DNS control). However, that is another story.

Mid year delivers a point whereby analysis of what has occurred can take place, while also move towards the end of the year and the warmer weather. This winter has me longing to sit on a beach in Northern Australia and read, eat and drink… more on that another time…

After a number of revisions and edits, the latest issue of Colloquy - Issue 15, was launched a couple of weeks ago. I am excited as it contains my book review on Mark Poster’s Information Please (pdf). As I return to the art of research honing my project and working towards confirmation, this first step is something to mark along the way. More to follow (provided there is an element of stability).

Marking: inbetween policy and theory

Adam — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 01:48:56 +0000

The semester is drawing to a close. As such, the level of work has ramped up to an astronomical scale. A number of policy papers to mark, a heap. This is in conjunction with attempting to be carving out a critical position in relation to Nietzsche. However, the time taken up by the papers has meant that it is not until this week that i could return to Nietzsche. There is a blank. A gap, where one ponders how rational stages works or the ladder of participation in relation to participatory policy making. This is an aside, yet, one that currently I feel able to explore. This is distracting. A further absence from here will be evident as the process of writing and working again consume all the hours of the day. They leave me with nothing. Struggling through the day, looking at texts that have been misplaced, scattered and diffused. The mental energy consumed has lead to a pause on future tutoring and a renewed focus to return to research and communication.

The sporadic nature of entries will continue. That being said, randomness is something that has come to be expected with this blog… until next time as I attempt to untangle thought, a thought that is bound tight that needs to have one strand unpacked and written out.

Read, write, judge

Adam — Sun, 18 May 2008 13:27:08 +0000

Three aspects that are taken as the whole. The life element projected in text. The lingering question of what a Nietzschian Public Policy would look like. Jumping from text, the attempt to sketch out a plan that has meaning, that has an argument that centred upon the metaphors of Nietzsche as they play out upon the body and space. The assessment of assignments. Each 3,000 words judged on its merits within a cohort of students. Conflicting priorities, convergent deadlines. Both of these elements will consume many hours in the coming weeks.

These trying times, salvation from the cold is all that one can hope for. The continual counting down of the days that appear, emerging one after the other, trailing into the sunset. (Repeat) Written text that is just a proxy for clarity of expression, basically the continual denial of a relationship back into some form of being. The pencil that is continually diminished. The judgements made on a paper. A close reading of the text, a mere point of distraction.

Things on the horizon that fall into place. Visions in time, a projection, a contraction an abatement…