[-empyre-] nature's reserved camouflage

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

Hi Johannes, thank you for asking very interesting questions. I will answer
first by a general comment, and then in response to two specific questions.
Perhaps it is easiest to understand the idea of the "extra-terrestial" by
changing it to a questions scientists ask quite often. Suppose there is
life on other planets or galaxies, how can we assume that we will recognize
it? It may be so different--in its sustaining what "we call/one calls" life
that all our measuring yards might be meaningless. That is a theoretical
extreme at the limits of language/understanding. Of course, this does not
prevent scientists from building tentative models--presence of water,
possible locomotion, presence of certain gases, presence of carbon, etc.,
etc. These are codes that we as humans extend to the unknown ("l'autre")
hoping to find a echo there, another system that will use the same codes,
actively (by "speaking" to us) or passively (exhibiting the cheminal
characteristics we talked about. *Bu there are no guarantees we will find
those echoes.* All we can do is stretch our language to that other in
multiple ways. That conceptual extension does not have to be with other
planets. It is basically with other systems, languages outside ones, to use
a *au courant* expression, "eco-systems." In my view, every language
presents itself as extra-terrestial other to other languages. Translation,
basically of poetry where subtleties of meaning are of great importance, is
a confrontation with the extra-terrestial. How much does a translation
(even a very good one) understand the original, and how much it misreads or
distorts it?

Now two specific examples:

"What is indeed interesting I suppose to philosophers who have engaged
"Zoontologies" , animal-machines and plant-machines (Zoontologies is a book
I found on my shelf edited by Cary Wolfe, for the Univ. of Minnesota Press
in 2003, including a dense essay by Derrida from his lectures on "L'Animal
autobiographique", entitled 'And Say the Animal Responded?') may well be
the question of the other – what Murat calls l'autre. Yet Murat thinks, in
one of his examples, that the fictional character of Melville's book on
Moby Dick subverts the ideology of the whale ship by taking up a personal
revenge?  Or is the whale, that strange "animot" (why can't Derrida not pun
on words?)  enacting the revenge and responding, so to speak, to perverted
ideology and capitalist industrial expropriation business?"

What you say about Ahab and particularly *Moby Dick* the novel itself is
completely to the point. The confrontation/pursuit of the other functions
as a critique (also in subtle ways a Faustian celebration, a demonic
version) of the capitalist economics and capitalist energy. It is revealing
that capitalists themselves refer to it as "animal spirits."

"(I was watching today, in the garden, for some time, the dance of a
beautiful vigorous "bourdon" as it flew from tiny plant to tiny plant,
balancing acts in a series of strange dances that delighted, steady rhythm,
unperturbed by my presence, continuous, solid.  the bumble bees, I gather,
tend to "visit the same patches of flowers every day, as long as they
continue to find nectar and pollen there, a habit known as pollinator or
flower constancy. While foraging, bumblebees can reach ground speeds of up
to 15 metres per second (54 km/h). Biting open the stem of a flower...
...and using its tongue to drink the nectar a bumblebee is 'nectar robbing'
a flower. Bumblebees use a combination of colour and spatial relationships
to learn from which flowers to forage. They can also detect both the
presence and the pattern of electric fields on flowers, which occur due to
atmospheric electricity, and take a while to leak away into the ground.
They use this information to find out if a flower has been recently visited
by another bee......" (wikipedia)."

It is interesting how the code chosen in the description (and
understanding) of the movements of the bees is numbers, measurable units.
Mathematics is the default language of relation (potentially communicating)
with the other in the most radical forms, with beings/objects/plants, etc.
that do not seem to share the human language. The human assumption is that
mathematics is the most objective, therefore communicable with the other,
there is. This is a very strange, bewildering paradox because mathematics
is the language system most totally created in the human mind, therefore,
in an obvious way the most subjective.

In the above passage, I would like to point to two expressions: a) "flower
constancy." "Constancy" here has no connection to "faithfulness" or
"truthfulness." It describes purely a measurable event, a bee returning
repeatedly to the same flower (*for whatever reason*, most possibly
"chemical" as discussed above). b) "nectar robbing." Here "robbing" is
completely anthropomorphic, a poetical/ethical whimsy one may say, which
has no suggesting of measurement or repeated activity. Repetition seems to
be another point of contact of the human with the other.

Ciao,
Murat

On Wed, Jun 17, 2015 at 12:47 PM, Johannes Birringer <
Johannes.Birringer at brunel.ac.uk> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>
> dear all
>
> this is part 2; I am following up on a comment made by Murat
> after Patrick wrote:
> >
> what I was trying to ask is whether our turn to the nonhuman actually
> dislocates the human as the center of our inquiry. Or is a turn to the
> nonhuman just another symptom of the human? To Murat, I love
> the way this project challenges our current ideology (by altering our
> prevailing ideas about language and perception).
> >
>
> Murat then suggested (June 6):
> >
> when I said "humanist" or "humanism" are ideological terms, I meant that
> the terms come with their own (quite specific and historical) sets of
> assumptions. "Extra-terrestial" is a term to break down those assumptions.
> It may need to point to new understandings (necessarily ultimately still
> human), new territories, a consciousness Rimbaud calls "l'autre," Ahab's
> subverting the prescribed purposes of his ship (to kill sperm whales
> for their oil to light houses) for a different undefined purpose
> (whiteness), an activity basically a-social but still human.
> >
>
>
> Whereupon Amanda, at the beginning of the week (refering to text titled
> *Plants: The Ultimate Alien*) proposed:
> >>
> However, there are still great limitations to this [media "translations"
> of plants], what I mean by that is that we are really only talking about
> translating the processes that have similarities to our own processes; for
> example plants are said to have a highly developed method of chemical
> communication, but how can we even capture let alone translate this data?
> I think that this is where art comes into the picture; that we are not
> trying to produce scientific results, but engage with them, and with
> philosophy, with the unknown-ness of plants, challenge our anthropomorphic,
> anthropocentric tendencies and imagine what they are capable of.>>
>
>
> I question the idea of translating plants.
>
> Thus I guess I am wondering what plant art does;  and i also would like to
> engage further, and take a closer look, at these ideas of the
> extraterrestrial (which as I mentioned earlier, makes no sense to me), the
> other, the ultimate other, the alien, etc.    I think Amanda wisely
> cautions us about the media applied to plants, and the capture and the
> usage.
>
> What is indeed interesting I suppose to philosophers who have engaged
> "Zoontologies" , animal-machines and plant-machines (Zoontologies is a book
> I found on my shelf edited by Cary Wolfe, for the Univ. of Minnesota Press
> in 2003, including a dense essay by Derrida from his lectures on "L'Animal
> autobiographique", entitled 'And Say the Animal Responded?') may well be
> the question of the other – what Murat calls l'autre. Yet Murat thinks, in
> one of his examples, that the fictional character of Melville's book on
> Moby Dick subverts the ideology of the whale ship by taking up a personal
> revenge?  Or is the whale, that strange "animot" (why can't Derrida not pun
> on words?)  enacting the revenge and responding, so to speak, to perverted
> ideology and capitalist industrial expropriation business?
>
> The animal, Derrida writes, does not know evil, lying, deceit. It may not
> have the "dansity" of feinte, tromperie, camouflage, pretense..... the
> capacity to pretend and deceive by a kind of dance, lure, or parade.
>
> And say the plant responded?
>
> have we not heard of biomimicry and camouflage amongst plants and
> animals?  and thus perhaps plants collaborate as well, react or respond,
> allowing us to ponder what the distinctions might be between reaction (as
> in on-off interactive systems) and response (as in responsive behavior and
> speech worlds?)
>
> (I was watching today, in the garden, for some time, the dance of a
> beautiful vigorous "bourdon" as it flew from tiny plant to tiny plant,
> balancing acts in a series of strange dances that delighted, steady rhythm,
> unperturbed by my presence, continuous, solid.  the bumble bees, I gather,
> tend to "visit the same patches of flowers every day, as long as they
> continue to find nectar and pollen there, a habit known as pollinator or
> flower constancy. While foraging, bumblebees can reach ground speeds of up
> to 15 metres per second (54 km/h). Biting open the stem of a flower...
> ...and using its tongue to drink the nectar a bumblebee is 'nectar robbing'
> a flower. Bumblebees use a combination of colour and spatial relationships
> to learn from which flowers to forage. They can also detect both the
> presence and the pattern of electric fields on flowers, which occur due to
> atmospheric electricity, and take a while to leak away into the ground.
> They use this information to find out if a flower has been recently visited
> by another bee......" (wikipedia).
>
> rather amazing, the more i read. in the garden, I got distracted by a more
> violent noise high above me in the old oak tree, two crows seemed to engage
> a mating ritual, I watched a rigorous flapping of wings and then only saw
> the motion of wings, high up, as branches and foliage seemed to be sprayed
> and scattered, amongst the shrieks of the ecstatic birds.
> The bourdon did not note any of this; and I cannot be sure what kind of
> dansity I witnessed above me, and on the ground level, where the tiny
> plants opened themselves to the robber, ever so gently.
>
> How then do plant scientists approach plants and humanists, Murat? And are
> sets of assumptions about plants changing (sets about otherness? about the
> code of the other?)
>
>
> regards
> Johannes Birringer
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/attachments/20150618/10f37d13/attachment.html>