[-empyre-] Poetry and/or poetic

[Pall Thayer]

You both appear to be addressing something that didn't make it to the
list. Are we missing something?

Pall

> This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
> 
> 
> I am arguing that all language, being a discrete system, is effectively
> digital, using an expanded definition of language here, including all
human
> languages as well as other phenomena.
> 
> I am not employing the word digital here limited to its use in
computing but
> in the sense that any discrete system or phenomena can be described as
> digital.
> 
> The question remains whether it is possible to signify without or
beyond or
> prior to language. It is unclear if this is possible, but there are
> certainly cases where it is unclear where the significatory origin of an
> event lies. There is probable value in taking a relational approach to
this,
> considering all signification to be a function of the relationships
between
> things and that meaning cannot arise where there are no relationships (can
> anything be situated without a set of relationships?). These relationships
> (which may themselves be divisible) are discrete (this is probably a
> tautology) and so are functionally digital systems. Similarly, poetics
> indicate the dynamics of these relationships. Poetry is a very
specific case
> which I am not addressing here.
> 
> I am not that familiar with Badiou¹s writing. I am rather comfortable with
> the orthodoxies of postmodernism and apprehend the Zizek¹s and Badiou¹s of
> the world as over-bearing in their certainties. In your reference to his
> writings I am not sure what you are intending to mean when discussing an
> event and its relationship to our finite rules. What finite rules? In what
> sense breaking away? Aren¹t events the dynamic interaction of things,
> occuring as a result of their relations? How can something escape those
> relations and be at the same time of them? I don¹t think I understand what
> you mean here ­ unless you are seeking to consider these things as a
> politic. I doubt the value of totalising an apprehension of human
> interaction and applying it to other kinds of relationships, although I
> might be tempted to attempt the inverse.
> 
> Regards
> 
> Simon
> 
> 
> On 11/3/09 01:00, davin heckman <davinheckman at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > I do not mean to quibble, but are you saying that since poetics must
> > find their expression in some discernible phenomenon that it cannot
> > escape the digital?  I would say that the poetic "event" can be
> > provoked through digital media and its passage can be marked in
> > digital media, but neither of these are the same as the event itself.
> > 
> > If we take it in light of Badiou's writing (and, since I am a lunatic,
> > I may very well be misreading him), an event is what happens when
> > things break away from those things which are bounded by our finite
> > rules.  We can always go back, after the fact, and write the equations
> > that can account for the event.  But the event itself, happens outside
> > of the set of hypothetical possibilities.  And, so, I don't know if
> > this means poetics escapes the digital.
> > 
> > I would say that while the digital (or any system of order) must
> > always either incorporate revolution into its system or become a
> > incorporated into the new system, I would say that the event, when it
> > happens, runs contrary to any system of order that cannot contain it
> > at the moment of its occurrence.  So, maybe escape is only a fleeting
> > thing.  But even fleeting things can alter a person's entire
> > relationship to a system of order.  (Look, for instance, at the life
> > of a junkie--all life potentially becomes recast in light of a single
> > event, which is always pursued but can never be reclaimed--an eternity
> > of struggle captured in a single, indelible mark of ecstasy, that is
> > nevertheless written and re-written in the succession of hope and
> > disappointment.)
> 
> 
> 
> Simon Biggs
> Research Professor
> edinburgh college of art
> s.biggs at eca.ac.uk
> www.eca.ac.uk
> www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
> 
> simon at littlepig.org.uk
> www.littlepig.org.uk
> AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk
> 
> 
> Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland,
number SC009201
> 
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Pall Thayer
artist/teacher
http://www.this.is/pallit
http://130.208.220.190
http://130.208.220.190/nuharm
http://130.208.220.190/panse