Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0907210250400.3031@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: Notes on the Aetiology and Phenomenology of Magic
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 2009 02:50:51 -0400 (EDT)
Notes on the Aetiology and Phenomenology of Magic (for a course at School of Visual Arts this fall.) EARLY outline, then a few LATE statements - Jung: Synchronicity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity Bell's Theorem - action at a distance Empathetic Magic: Inhabiting the fetish subject inhabiting (user) fetish inhabiting the subject object/subject inhabiting (animal/spirit) Parallel structures Physical parallelism (parameters) Memory parallelism (punctum) (not sure what I meant here) Personal parallelism (introjection/projection) entering/entraining Semiotics of Magic: Immersive/definable hierarchies: hierarchies of data, of experience: analog and digital hierarchies Parallelism/Anti-parallelism Antiparallelism: dual - i.e. becomes the same through difference, perhaps becomes different through the same (vampire, the uncanny) Creation/Annihilation (to and from zero / virtual particles) Transitive/Intransitive actions - A done to B by virtue of C, i.e. _through_ C. C = channel; incantation = parasitic communication. Resonances and recursions A _signal_ as a resonant _symbol_: no time to stand for anything! Performativity: k8% date Fri Jul 10 21:38:59 EDT 2009 action _at a distance_ sleep command - action at a _temporal distance_ (interval) think of field phenomena wave/particle dualities computer programming: what is the ontology of information? how is information transformed within the machine? machine states / entropy - in opposition to a materialist approach (recursive): the phenomenology of magic: (not sure what I meant here) the operations of the fetish: the fetish through the fetish ========================== LATE STATEMENTS - Start over. Some operations: Empathy - inhabitation of the other / dwelling. Sympathy - exteriority and identification with the other / living Correspondence: metaphoricity, metonymy. And let's think about the _symptom,_ the _trope,_ while we're at it. Doesn't the trope and symptom depend on regularization? What constitutes the system from which they devolve? With the symptom: Already a _standard_ is at work: symptoms deviate. See below: Some formal operations: Resemblance: Think of the following characteristics of operators: Reflexivity - X can resemble itself; all magic is reflexive, resonates. Think of the reflexivity of magic in terms of cybernetics with positive or negative feedback loops. Combine positive feedback loops with a fold catastrophe; pass a threshold and the thing is done. Transitivity - if X resembles Y, and Y, Z, X need not resemble Z: a kind of fuzzy logic dominates, things are always already lost along the way. Attributes disappear. Commutativity: if X resembles Y, need Y resemble X? Think - If a mandrake resembles a man, does a man resemble a mandrake? - not necessarily, there's an economic of surplus at work here (think Bataille). (This is slightly different, in any case, from formal commutativity.) Think of resemblance as _broken equivalence_ - therefore within and without the _abject._ Is there a difference between resemblance and correspondence? If A corresponds to B, does A resemble B, B resemble A? Think of corresponds as co-responds, therefore to a kind of _call._ In terms of an overarching structure, one might argue that if and only if A is called, B is called, and vice versa, then the resemblance becomes an equivalence 'under' the overarching structure. How do markov chains fit in? Typifications, type mathematics, standardiza- tions, dimensional analysis? Think of onomatopoeia, mimickry - how, if at all, do these tally with 'action at a distance'? Neither empathy nor sympathy, but formal equival- ence within bounds. Think of interjections and the use of phonemes not ordinarily found in the spoken language: non-equivalence, performativity simultaneously within and without language. (See Roazen, Echolalia.) Then religion - what sort of interiority, susceptibility, is required? The necessary entanglement of 'spirituality' and 'magic.' One signifier out of place and science either expands or collapses. Popular press: "Scientists astounded!"