The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

My Last Composition of Language


It is entirely irrelevant to the world whether we exist or not. It is
entirely relevant to us. It is irrelevant to us whether we exist or not;
that is the truth to be learned.

Nothing is relevant to the world. The world would not exist without us.
We would not exist without the world; we do not exist.

Existential statements serve an evolutionary purpose, the reification of
the self. Existential statements procure the world in relation to our
perception. Existential statements are a priori errors in relation to the
world. They disguise our truth and the truth of the world.

What occurs in language in relation to the copula or self-reflexivity, has
no effect whatsoever on the world. The world transforms with each and
every utterance. There is neither transformation nor non-transformation.
The world is an illusion of its truth.

Nothing has any effect whatsoever on the world. There is no 'world,' only
a confluence of interrelated protocols and effects. There is world and
non-world; we are ghosts looking in at the world; we are ghosts looking at
ourselves. To eliminate perception of ourselves and the world is the truth
of ourselves and the world. To see ourselves by not-seeing ourselves as
ghosts, that is the truth of the world.

Self-reflexive recognition is a form of pointing-out or gesture, in the
guise of naming (by virtue of nominalism). Pointing-out symbolizes the
recognition which takes place all the way back, beginning with retinal
learning; the pointing-out is a consensus or coherency for others, for
community. Pointing out collapses the world, just as nourishment and sleep
collapses the world. To eliminate the learning before language, to
eliminate language, that is the truth of the world.

Consciousness, self-consciousness, is a defense mechanism. Consciousness
defines and procures thought. Consciousness and self-conscious break in
relation to the world; through the broken, light emerges, that is the
truth of the world.

There is nothing to 'it' beyond this. 'It' is entirely beyond this, beyond
this and others, beyond community and communality. 'It' is already an
error of perception; forget 'it' and the truth of the world emerges.

It is a mistake to assume that consciousness exists outside of language.
Consciousness is a priori and comes with the first imminence of the world.
Immanence is neither of consciousness nor the world; nor is immanence of
language or the a prior, that is the truth of the world.

It resides in language; it is a tool which occupies or declares nothing.
Consciousness declares everything, internal or external to language. There
is nothing to declare, nothing to emerge. Declaration is false existence,
non-declaration is false existence.

Declaration occurs only in language. Physical gesture cleaves the air.
Declaration is always prior to language; gesture cleaves thought itself,
the psychogeographical substrate of the world. Declaration occurs
everywhere among gestures. Gestures declare; the world emerges without
declaration, that is the truth of the world.

Inscriptions transform the imminent world of the substrate. Inscriptions
are contiguous to the substrate at best. Inscriptions are the substrate
which must be comprehended to be forgotten; that is the emergence of the
world.

An effect already exhausts. An effect is always new; nothing repeats. An
effect has no being, no relevance, that is the truth of the world.

Culture is built on the predication that language means, and therefore
acts and creates. Language is build on the predication of the dialectic
between body and environment; culture creates, and language follows.
Following or leading make no difference; what goes before, goes behind.

Words are nothing and do nothing. The performative is a contextual myth.
Words are everything; every utterance is an active performative. The world
becomes comprehension and comprehends through language. The becoming of
the world is not the world, and the comprehension of the world is not the
comprehension of the world. Everything and nothing are nothing and
everything, that is the truth of the world.

Alarum is spread by language, just as identity precedes language. Language
comforts and transforms house into home; identity is situated in language,
just as alarum is subdued. Alarum for what, alarum hinders, ties one to
oneself, to the languaging and things of the world. Alarum ties one to
identity, identity ties one to language, to the world. Break identity and
alarum, that is the truth of the world.

"In its early stages the ballet also yielded ornaments which moved kaleid-
oscopically, But even after they had discarded their ritual meaning, they
remained still the plastic formation of the erotic life which gave rise to
them and determined their traits." (Kracauer)

We speak to ourselves. We speak for ourselves. We speak only to others. We
speak only for them. This is the erotic gesture of culture. Speaking and
eroticism tie one to broken meaning, taken for the meaning of truth, for
the truth of meaning. Break what is already broken, that is the truth of
the world. Do not break what is already broken, that is the truth of the
world.

We never speak. Language has never been 'employed.' We always speak;
language always employs the other as our master. Speaking negates the
world; speaking is always busy. In silence is the world's truth, after
employment and non-employment.

The self-reflexivity of language is the routing of resonance; all objects
and cultures are resonant holdfasts for our existence. Nothing depends on
language, which derails the resonance of the world. Dependency and
resonance, already an investment; eliminate dependency and resonance,
eliminate investment, that is the truth of the world.

Neither objects nor cultures exist. Objects and cultures exist in spite of
ourselves, others, and the symbolic resolution of language. More
hindrance! more hindrance!

"The cornered vessel (ku) has no longer corners. What a 'cornered' vessel!
What a 'cornered' vessel!" (Confucius)

The ku has never existed. The ku has always existed; it is Confucius who
has disappeared. Confucius exists and does not exist; the ku exists and
does not exist. So many objects! Forget existence and non-existence, that
is the truth of the world.

Language infiltrates speaker, spoken, and spoken-to with its semantic
skein. Likewise, the skein does not exist. Language deludes the speaking
of the body; the skein of culture exists a priori to language. The sememe
itself is a priori. Skein and sememe, all these structures; what else
emerges? What emerges, does not emerge; what does not emerge, emerges.
Forget emerging, in silence, that is the truth of the world.

Speaking, spoken, and spoken-to, are correlated actions in the world.
Speaking, spoken, and spoken-to, are mutually incoherent; they signify the
breaking of the world, the tendency towards dissolution. What they hold,
is released; what they confine, is loosened. Coherency is the skein of the
self; non-coherency is the skein of the world. Coherency and non-coherency
are joined by others and the spoken-to. The world fragments among the
assumption of contraries, divisions, typifications. Forget coherency; the
world coheres. Forget non-coherency; the world falls apart.

They have no relevance. They are relevant; it is their byproduct and
phenomenology, their glance, that describes everything. The description of
everything is the falsehood of the world; the truth of the world is
neither description nor non-description.

The correlation is nearly decomposable. Every speaking is a composition.
Every composition is an appearance. Every appearance is an illusion. The
correlation falls to pieces. Every speaking breaks with self, world, and
others. Every breaking is immeasurable. Every breaking alludes. Breaking
interferes; what is broken, has edges; what has edges, longs for
completion. Forget composition and decomposition; be a ghost! Illusion and
reality, all the same, that is the truth of the world.

Illusions are subject to entropy and dissolution. Neither the appearance
nor the illusion exists. What does not exist, disseminates, dissembles,
dissimulates. Speaking is subject to joining. Speaking, by measure of its
breaking, is substrate to appearance. What disseminates, dissembles, dis-
simulates, returns, assembles, seminates, within the broken of language.
Breaking and coming together, as of the spheres, that is nothing.
Semination and dissemination, that is nothing but the seduction of the
symbolic. Forget stasis and process, entropy and non-entropy, equilibrium
and non-equilibrium, they are naming, and naming is not the province of
ghosts. Be a ghost, that is the truth of the world.

Our existence is an illusion. Our existence is the only real. Our
existence is our non-existence; our illusion is our real; our real is our
illusion, our non-existence is our existence. Be a ghost, that is the
truth of the world.

The world is neither an illusion nor a copula. The world is all that is
neither an illusion nor a copula. The world coheres through the breaking
of the copula. There is no copula without division, a white horse is not a
horse, pairs never unite, that is the truth of the world.

Nothing is relevant to the world. The world is nothing. Everything is
relevant; the world is everything. The relevance of the world is the
beginning of politics. The beginning of politics is the end of politics;
the world is neither relevant nor irrelevant, nothing or everything. Be a
ghost! That is the truth of the world, be a ghost!


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