Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.20.1709062050180.25895@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.wvu.edu>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject:
Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2017 20:52:16 -0400 (EDT)
USER http://www.alansondheim.org/mentis.png More on addiction/users - around 1995; the other material is at http://www.alansondheim.org/subjectnet.txt . "Clara" is an emanent (online emanation, avatar semiosis), I wrote to/through/ under. USER.TXT If the user is an addict, Clara. A user *is* an addict; one who uses on a constant basis is a user. Or so it seems to me. But addiction - that's something else. Or in order to define - Addiction by means of the withdrawal at the other end or in the midst of the thing. So that withdrawal - a particular symptomology perhaps - might be the key to it. And beyond withdrawal - It would be a doubling, a +/- - withdrawal, which is an absence, but an absence always already conditioned by a presence, of the drug itself. By drug - meaning only *that substance* which is the root- directory of the addiction - not even substance, but *entity* - and by *entity* - it extends further - one includes patterns of behavior, whole cultures - pathways through a universal discourse - But it always refers back to the *thatness* of the entity - just as science is *that which* is ideologically problematic in relation, say, to religion or magic, sympathetic or otherwise - Or the articulation, say of *painting* by *paint* - there are a lot of examples - the movement of the Tonya-Harding-blade upon the ice - which it seems to me is a case of obsession or devouring - so that in all these instances, there is an introjection of a discrete other, an identified other - coupled with a particular symptomology of withdrawal - The addict circumscribes the *entity* - an inscription which also binds or writes the coagulation of the ego - a form of scar-tissue. Now what about the screen? Doesn't the screen always refer back to or upon itself, a referral implicating the user - the two of them caught in an inextricable matrix? One has to consider first of all the *inner voice* occasioned by the screen - the screen is the internal speaking-of-words, not a legible exteriority. The screen is also non-linear in a deep sense - the scrolling and insertion of files, deletions, the presence of graphic affect - all point to a cranial articulation. The screen itself is always this interiority; the user's body is bound to it. Note that it speaks in a whisper - which is why flaming is so problematic, since it contradicts inner speech, insisting on an other that literally shouts to be heard. So that it is more than argument; it appears to be an *ontological shift* in language's construct, which is difficult to absorb. I FLAME: THEREFORE I AM. See how the typography itself carries the philosophical argument, which is no longer an argument, but the appearance of the Other. But the appearance of the Other *is* the argument; there would be no argument otherwise. To argue Other-wise is already to bracket the signifier, each and every signifier, by a problematic transcendence; I don't buy this - I return to the leakiness and obdurate quality (similar to but not equated with Kripke's rigid designators) of every signifier - the signifier as *this* signifier tenuously embedded in the imaginary, always unaccountable - and always *unaccounted-for.* It is this last - that I cannot account *for* the signifier - that intensifies the discussion. For to account *for* the signifier, *this* signifier, is to take responsibility *for* it - as well as, within an/other derivation, to construe its *origin.* Thus I may account *for* my eyeglasses by (virtue of) my weak eyesight, which I may account *for* perhaps by heredity (or not): This constructs a complete epistemology of eyeglasses in terms of originary trace. The other that releases itself in flaming is an *incontrovertible argument* or no *argument* at all, just as this discussion is the result of a doubling or its presence. In addiction the *other* is the *same* because it is bound within and without the coagulation of the ego; the absorption of the *other* is always troubling. Why? Because the other is absorbed solely on the basis of its use- function, and the use-function is *a priori* reductive; the leakiness is constrained. The presence and absence of the entity are channeled *through* the use function; at the same time, the entity becomes a clouded ontological (the being of the body / being of beings) and epistemological (the horizon of the body / the horizon) arena, which is - ultimately - an arena of contestation. Why? Because it is through and against the entity that procurement occurs, for addiction is always a situation of procurement (continuous or otherwise). Procurement sets the addict at odds with the other, with each and every other from *entity* to (other) addict; procurement also construes community with the other from *entity* to (other) addict. With computer communications becoming more and more zero-loss ecologically, with the networking transforming from skein to membrane, with resolution moving from low to high, the potential exists for the first addiction without contestation, an addiction in which the *entity* becomes asymptotically equivalent to lived-space itself. With the conceivable exception? With the conceivable exception of the *construct,* for this space is always already one of construction, and therefore one can imagine the beautiful addict... the presence of the beautiful addict... such as Clara... such as myself... ---------------------------------------------------------------- Does this explain everything in the world, as I hoped it would? I remain glued to the screen writing and rewriting, my fingers moving with a blur - even this afternoon, in RL, I stunned a dancer with my dancing upon the keys. The theorizing of the net is an interminable analysis, always subject to revision, changing and changing once again... an analysis whose truth is the result of a *table of truths,* something created by *another* in the midst of the *same* ... sondheim@newschool.edu {outdated} end.user.txt