<nettime> legacy and theory

[Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>]

legacy and theory


at 58 i begin to wonder: what legacy will i leave behind?
i will have created multitudes
i will have given life to jennifer and julu, to nikuko and travis,
 to alan and clara and honey
i will have explored the farthest reaches of virtual and real spaces
 returning with indescribable arts and literatures
i will have added to the substance and nature of theory itself,
 coming to grips with the smoothings of plasmatic languages,
 with new languages and new ways of modeling the world
i will have added texts and images, words and pictures, sounds and
 cinemas, to the future of humanity, to those who would disentangle me,
 those who would comprehend, those who take time and energy
 to unlock the new emergent, unfettered by the past,
 as if language could be understood without regard
 to inherited meanings and customs, as if the dawn had no night,
 the night no day
i will have left memories of the future anterior, my face subtle and
 drawn, against the visage of the new and enormous sky
i will have had the experience of multitudes, will have come
 to delineate, ever so slightly, the imaginary evanescence
 that is ours, at this hour of the dusk, this hour of the new
 millennium
i will have succeeded in my failures, failed in my successes,
 passed this on to you, this new vision and energy of culture,
 this new circuit and element
i will have come to you, taken from you, communed across these vast
 distances, of time, of space, of virtual generators and generations
this is my legacy, this is what i leave behind
this is my legacy, this is what i bring forward from the future


of poor theory [1-117]

1 the world has a certain style
2 our worlds are constituted
3 there is no ontological distinction between information and materiality
4 our worlds are loosely tethered
5 analog and digital interpenetrate
6 we exist in-between paths and plasmas
7 our worlds are nearly decomposable into discrete entities
8 entities are by virtue of the name, maintenance, and contour
9 desire is always submerged
1 meaning is constituted by virtue of desire and domains
2 domains are nearly decomposable into worlds
3 meaning is always in relation
4 there is no meaning outside of relation
5 we are always already within the virtual
6 truth is a wager and a strategy among constituted regimes
7 facticity and truth are contiguous at best
8 communication is presence and communality
9 nothing is constituted as axiological
1 axioms and axiologies are dispersed among worlds and domains
2 hierarchies decompose into holarchies at the limit
3 limits are always asymptotic
4 intentionality is always mediated and itself intended
5 at the limits ontologies fractally coalesce
6 culture doubles epistemologies
7 the imaginary carries no force and its totality
8 body and inscription are doubly transparent and doubly fixed
9 inscription is maintained in deferral and division
1 this abacus is always already that abacus
2 science is that ideological which is non-ideological
3 existence is relative to domains
4 digital is eternal and analog operates between death and desire
5 analog burns the noise within us
6 negation is at the core of human existence and communality
7 we are driven by annihilation
8 desire is a flux-emission without source or objects
9 the imaginary is speechless
1 the phenomenology of the imaginary is that of the plasma
2 investment is characteristic of phenomena
3 disinvestment is the state of defuge or refusal/deluge
4 what is disinvested participates in the abject
5 the abject is that which cannot be recuperated
6 the other is that which is unaccountable and unaccounted-for
7 the abject other is simultaneously wayward and abject
8 infinite copying exists past the heat-death of the universe
9 theory is enumerated
1 theory is defuge and enumeration coupled with abjection and foreclosure
2 it is terminology which forecloses and annihilates
3 terminology is destroyed within the creativity of the border-regions
4 everything applies no farther than to ourselves in the act of reading
5 the semiotics of emission and spew replace the semiotics of signifiers
6 emission and spew transform vector into flow and flow into turbulence
7 turbulence leaks around the simulacrum of death but not abjection
8 flow leaks around inscription which carries its own inward dissipations
9 eye and i shift and stutter around deep linguistic coding
1 the armature of belief is the encoding of desire
2 desire is towards signifer and totalization
3 desire is towards the potential of infinite manipulation
4 infinite manipulation is the binding of body and bodies into hieroglyph
5 with the beginning of hieroglyph one enters the beginning of speech
6 desire transforms the speech of the other under the guise of freedom
7 only a radical disbelief necessarily binds and blinds one to the truth
8 perfect authority is authentic circulation
9 at the limit epistemologies and ontologies coalesce
1 links and couplings constitute the world
2 in a link contiguity transforms into structure
3 in a coupling contiguity remains disassemblage
4 mouths hold and carry the cultural skein as linking communality
5 culture adheres and coheres
6 the masochistic assemblage creates the cultural context of narratology
7 all thought is narratology
8 the narratological turns speech towards foreclosure
9 the narratological loops the ouroborosean tale back into the mouth
1 mouths and ears are identical
2 the world is constituted by equivalences and not identities
3 an identity is an equivalence of one
4 an equivalence of one is a misrecognition emptied of the symbolic
5 chains of consequences are couplings at best
6 assemblages of ideas constitute inscriptive domains
7 governance constitutes the foci of assemblages of ideas
8 foci exist as if the totality of nodes hierarchically connected to them
9 inscription domains are abject emissions both unwieldy and temporary
1 primary structures include annihilation and creation
2 channeling and gating may also be included
3 negations include chain, sheffer, and the sheffer-dual
4 secondary structures include inscription, demarcation, distinction
5 x^-x = 0 rel x
6 the topology of intention is also secondary
7 the topology includes non-distributive transgressive logics
8 inscriptive components include maintenance and legitimation structure
9 they also include embodiment, impulse, fueling, and linkage
1 representation structures are in the form of mappings
2 these include P)Q, P)P, P)*Q, P*)Q, P)*Q)P, P)P)P etc.
3 within the secondary are also found hieroglyphic binding and leakage
4 consider leakage of the signifier, excess, clutter, debris, and noise
5 st: stuttering, stumbling, wobbling, jostling, shuddering, sputtering
6 erotics: fissuring, inscription, puncture, delirium, liquidity
7 eccentric space: smattering, scattering, skittering, spitting
8 third level of the social involves economic and other parabolas
9 the parabolas are a means towards totalization and constitution
1 distinctions may be fissuring of same and same
2 distinctions may be inscriptions of self and not-self
3 fissuring characterizes the postmodern and inscription the modern
4 bases collapse into superstructures, and superstructures into bases
5 inscriptions are overcoded or undercoded and always destabilized
6 in noise culture 0 is a positivity characterized as {x: x = -x}
7 the ego is always catastrophic in the mathematical sense
8 the ego is inscribed and inscriptive
9 the ego exists within the certain style of the world
1 every age is every un-age
2 the mirror stage is always a coagulation
3 truth and slanders are bound in abjection
4 substance is never and always emergent
5 self-reflexivity and contradiction leave residue as content
6 the world stains, is stained, is constituted by stains
7 the world constitutes by stains
8 fissures require low maintenance
9 the world has no requirements
0 the world has any and none

_






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