Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0908140248140.11699@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: @X
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 02:48:32 -0400 (EDT)
@X give a number X, let's say it's reflexive with itself, and phenomenolog- ically this constitutes identity. not the signifier of identity, but identity per se. let A + B = X, and let C + D = X. then clearly A + B = C + D - equivalence is transitive. but now let us define a sign @ such that A + B -@ C + D. in other words, let's say that the two additions are fundamentally different processes, say for the subject carrying them out. so that one might write X(@)A+B -= X(@)C+D - in other words, beneath or within @, the additions are dissimilar. now we are dealing in a classical realm within which history is preserved. this is what I was working on as a child. let's go further; we might abbreviate A + B as V and C + D as W. then V and W have different histories, i.e. of abbreviation as well as symbol content. we don't need X to say that if W = V then @W -= @V or equival- ently, W -@ V. unpacking W or V again adds history: in fact, _every_ operation recontextualizes its objects. we are also dealing in a quantum realm in which history is altered by the processes of perception. this is all so simple. it's a problem of notation. if notation implies notating, notation is always an entanglement, always entangles. notation builds up hierarchically, holarchically; every return adds another layer. one can think of this in terms of _immersive_ and _definable_ hierarchies (something I thought about in my 20s, building on my child's work). a definable hierarchy is such that if A + B = X = C + D then A + B = C + D and if A + B = V and C + D = W then V = W = X and this is reversible of course and we're working with traditional mathesis, propositional logic, and the like. on the other hand an immersive hierarchy inhabits time (is inhabited by time) and (perhaps) organism, intentionality, consciousness; it's a different phenomenology altogether. the difference is in the differance which lies in @. @ is an opening to Lacan and Kristeva, for example, not Sokal: it is what _makes a mess of things,_ mathematically and otherwise; on the level of the uncanny, presence is involved. this presence abjures notation, inasmuch as notation is employed. notation _escapes._ in this sense one might even write @X -= @X or equally X -@ X - identity is problematized. what of this? that @X -= @X involves a _split_ and _nothing can be done with this split._ every mark is always already being marked, and being marked is always already being marked otherwise. (of course hierarchy and holarchy disappear as well.) and of course there's more: it's always possible to construct formal phenomenologies of immersion and @, phenomenologies of continuous organic transformations. but the constructing per se is on the other of @ itself, and substitutions have to stop somewhere, in order to avoid indefinite regress: either way, mess appears. (and responsibility, since moving away from definability means the preposterous strategy of taking organism _seriously._) http://www.alansondheim.org/jordanbing1.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/jordanbing3.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/jordanbing4.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/jordanbing5.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/jordanbing6.jpg [note that -= is "not equals" and -@ is "not @".]