Re: [-empyre-] Accidents (was for example)

[eugenie <eugenies@onetel.net.uk>]

all,

more than likely i'm having a little moment of panic over semantics here,
but jim's suggestion that....

> a gesture, for instance, if it is remembered, is
> remembered via some inscription of it somewhere (or multiple places) in the
> body. Whether we want to call it writing or inscription or coding or
> whatever, doesn't matter. Aspects of the gesture are coded in the body as
> information, in some way that makes them memorable, ie, recallable, ie,
> decipherable later on as the gesture. Readable later on as the gesture.
> 
> In other words, the information is coded in a language that is inscribable
> and, later, decipherable or readable, amenable to interpretation according
> to some rules regarding the language.

.... seems to reduce gesture - and embodied perception more generally - to a
sort of call-and-response activity linked to a relatively limited repertoire
of codes - a definitional framework that aims not just to construct the body
but to prescribe 'every possible signifying and countersignifying move as a
selection from a repertoire of possible permutations on a limited set of
predetermined terms'

.... that last little bit is lifted from Brian Massumi's 'Parables for the
Virtual', and i'm roping him in here because he argues much more eloquently
than i do against frameworks which propose a determinitive structure (i.e. a
code) first, and movement or gesture second. these sort of models leave no
room for change - qualitative material transformation. in other words they
suggest that embodiedness itself is historically static and the only things
that change are the codes/inscriptions that make it legible.

> the human perceptual crevice is only a sliver of temporal and spatial
> phenomenon

i'd agree - and given this it seems a bit optimistic to suggest that sensory
information is coded and readable like any other language

eu