Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.00.1401301459210.22650@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.wvu.edu>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: Roger Williams and Originary Mythos
Date: Thu, 30 Jan 2014 15:01:21 -0500 (EST)
Roger Williams and Originary Mythos For the first time in my life, I was able to see, and photograph, the founding document of a city I've lived in. The images here are of original manuscripts at the Rhode Island State Archives, and the archivist was kind enough to open up the acid-free boxes with some of Roger Williams' papers, including one of the founding charters of Providence. I'm fascinated by Williams' life, theories - and here, his hand- writing, which is very different from anyone else's in the documents; it's jagged, hurried, stuttering, and beautiful - all this from the early-mid 17th century. His life was astonishing, and his writings are a mixture of theology and what today would be called an open- source commons; in the beginning there wasn't even a church in Providence Plantations, which was open to people of any belief, including atheists. Below are some of the images I was able to take, quickly and without flash; the reflections are from the fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling. Note the Native American settlements on the map (which is currently on display); Williams had good relations with them, and, at one point after fleeing Massachusetts, stayed in them for three and a half months. In any case, these documents are the legal pivot of religious and secular separation in the United States; this is still under attack. When I think of the virtual worlds of the spirit, and perform- ative language in programming and Second Life, these documents seem uncanny, as if the words were written with the flesh of Williams, the concrete symbol always a surplus designation, opening up the terrain of the body, the physicality of the chartered space. Everything becomes punctum, neither here nor there, the dual of the (logical) Sheffer stroke, revealing territories of flesh and communality. What he achieved through writing, and what was taken away, through war, is incredible - in a sense a forgotten page within the history of empire, but one which at least keeps gnawing at some of us. http://www.alansondheim.org/williams02.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/williams04.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/williams06.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/williams07.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/williams08.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/williams10.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/williams11.jpg (the other signature is that of the king)