Re: [-empyre-] I once ate a pea : l'ellipse

[Christina McPhee <christina112@earthlink.net>]

Aliette writes,


Ce que je propose bêtement c'est d'en faire radicalement l'ellipse...



> In mathematics, an ellipse (from the Greek for absence) is a plane  
> algebraic curve where the sum of the distances from any point on  
> the curve to two fixed points is constant. The two fixed points are  
> called foci (plural of focus).

(wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipse


Let's think about the space of digital communication (including art  
practice) as a slip:  elliptical and sidereal speech space .   
Christiane Paul brought in Chantal Mouffe's description of the social  
space of the net as 'agon' or agonistic', eg requiring two or more  
equal subjects engaged in an 'equal' discourse.   In contrast,  there  
is the argument that there is no such equal (agon) space possible, at  
least I guess that's the paradox of hypermodernity that Erik has  
described so eloquently.  At the end of all of this you'd have a  
world of endlessly proliferating semantics (adwords, pace Bruno and  
Google) all tagged.  But something remains elusive and untaggable, it  
seems.  A spiritual jouissance, something aside.  the place of x, or,  
consciousness untagged.  We feel this or we wouldnt bother to be  
writing now.
This beyond or (sidereal) to the tag/brand may remains '"Real"  
possibly unnameable . Or   thought x is always put in motion, thus, x  
plus, or x minus,  the ellipse.   "Inside" the ellipse (if you want  
to think of this is as a space, of speech), is a place where "Real"  
speech occurs.  In the negative (or 'missing' condition, ellipsis, or  
absense (not adsense!) .   If all places are hybridized as semantic  
code-beings,  no place lacks an 'adword" :  analogically, we agree,  
as above, 'the sum of distances from any point on the curve to two  
fixed points is constant", meaning, there is a constant sum, like the  
"sum of all possible Adwords. still, I agree with Brett, there's  
still another Real, certainly, sidereal, anyway :   where people are  
constantly migrating proliferating moving and where the earth is in a  
tremendously speeded up feedback loop of climate changes.  You could  
think of this dynamic as an active 'elllipsis'.  So you've got at  
least two kinds of Real , both of them indeterminate, dynamic and  
living in the slip.   One, the Real that exists alongside/sidereally  
to objects of desire, (anarchitecture, untagged) as a struuctural  
consequence of the subject-object structure of language; two, the  
indisputable fact that human induced environmental change is  
proceeded on such a rapid and massive scale, that the concept of  
place, or place holder in space, net or not, is structurally fluid  
and unfixed.  Any attempt to name everything, like old Adam in the  
Garden of Eden, will fail and we are continually kicked out of   
(Benthamite Panopticon) Paradise.

Can we speak inside this space of the slip?   Does the net itself  
speak here?  Does it say something more than what its masters (let's  
say, Google) want ?  Is the speech of structural impending failure a  
truth speech?  I argue yes.   Can we say that the discursive space of  
the net  that we're in right now (digital communications) is aphasic  
(stuttering, incomplete, slipping, failed) and has parrhesia  
(fearlessness in speaking the truth) in the architecture of the space  
itself?  All attempts to dominate discourse, to tag everything, by  
the "masters" is thwarted by the presencing of the "slave" , we in  
the space of the net,  ialways moving beyond being taggable due to  
its constant morphing, proliferation and breakdowns (glitch, failure  
to thrive) .  Our very condition of being trapped in the 'constant  
sum' of the ellipsis, and yet always moving (infinite variability =  
infinite absences and reapparences) .  Our aphasia gives rise to a  
language that speaks, or bears witness to a truth condition beyond  
tags and brands.  In "Fearless Speech" Michel Foucault riffed on the  
ancient Greek sense that true speech arises only in conditions in  
which the speaker is in a condition of unequal power (not agon)  
relative to the receiver of his or her message.  Thus the agora  
(space of agons) gives rise to debate but not 'truth'.   The  
'parrhesiastic' speaker is one who speaks knowing that his or her  
speech may cause the receiver to kill her or him.  The parrhesiastes'  
speech is true as a structural consequence of being 'enslaved'.  So  
where Lyotard despairs, I have hope, no, more, conviction that   
language, even our language, here, always already escapes commodity.   
We are already in the place of x, the Real, just by generating this  
conversation in the medium of the net.  Perhaps I resonate to the  
ancient Christian (Pauline) political insight, that slaves are the  
bearers of true speech.

(apologies for the manic density of this comment and its many  
illogical  moments)

 Christina

PS These musings are at the root of some artist=writings (i'd  
hesitate to call them theory) that inform some takes on place,  
sublime and speech in digital art.


Aphasia+Parrhesia: Code and Speech in the Neural Topologies of the  
Net" in several takes , a short one is

> http://www.christinamcphee.net/texts/Aphasia+ParrhesiaCMcPhee.htm

and earlier, on naxsmash and architecture of the invisible at

> http://arch.virose.pt/

(click on writings, to get flash popup, then scroll to bottom.  )