The Twenty-fifth night
From the beginning art has always been a conjurer of the dead; a two faced discipline that twists its head around demonic possessions. (39) Tableaus of art are built on historic tables of self importance, the ghosts of masters occupying the spaces of ambition.
A final eulogy for painting is now constructed, ‘The Triumph of Marx’ (40) a masterpiece in sepia monochrome, depicting Marx’s ascendency over Hegel, with a supporting a cast representing the various spectres of his intellectual history. Ten bearded white men surround a table draped in a simple cloth, on which sits a single sheet of white paper and a Smith and Wesson 617 (41) loaded with a single bullet. Marx has assumed the tabula rasa and places his right hand firmly onto the blank page, the other characters watch in silent amusement whilst in the distance the smoke of recent battle clouds the landscape.
Marx and Hegel are joined within this historic scene by Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Aristotle, Plato, Kant, Ovid, Christ and God. Together they form the Decalogue.
Hegel has suggested that in order to settle the dispute a game of Russian roulette is undertaken. The loser will of course provide the first ghost; an apparition of a specific animating principle of the mind that the survivors will have to conjure with. Only God and Christ seem happy with this solution, the others shift their feet uneasily and mumble their dissent. “It’s too late for you to get out of this.” Marx interjects, and quickly forms them into a circle with the table at its centre. They are organised in alphabetical order.
ACGHKPMNOS
The game begins.
Aristotle has no fear and is glad to be first, at odds of 10 to 1 he realises that he has a good chance of success. Beads of sweat drip from his forehead, his neck and lower face are bright red with nervous tension, now he breathes in deeply. Raising the pistol to his head he squeezes the trigger.
Click!
Christ has been through this before and is eager to move the game on. It is as if he already knows the outcome. He raises the gun to his forehead and he calmly and firmly pulls the trigger.
Click!
God is in the gun and is everywhere the bullet has been and will be. He decides that this game will go no further, he touches the gun’s hair trigger.
Blam!!
The shocked nine stare at a suddenly empty space. They had not thought of this possibility but this is the logical conclusion of their thought, now acted out as bare reality. (42) For once they are all speechless.
Marx slaps Hegel in the face, the sharp sting of pain brings Hegel back to his senses. He, like the others, is still in trauma. Something momentous has happened but they know not what it is.
The removal of the opposition between the dead and the living has now been achieved. This in itself has forged a new being; capital being conceived in exchange value; this, the speculation of these specters.
39 The Exorcist: Directed by William Friedkin: A Warner Bros Film. 1973
40 Mark Tansey: The Triumph Of The New York School. 1984
41 The Smith & Wesson Model 617 K-Frame Revolver: 22 long rifle, 4 inch barrel, front sight: partridge front, rear sight: adjustable, rubber grips, square butt, satin stainless finish, 10 round capacity, weight empty: 41oz.
Perfect for everything from home defence to small game hunting and personal protection, the Smith and Wesson Model 617 K-frame revolver is heavy-duty enough to put out some serious stopping power while also allowing the shooter to maintain maximum control and precision.
42 Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Section 125
God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?
Monday 28 February 2011
Friday 25 February 2011
Reflections on reading Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx (24)
The Twenty-forth night
The Apparition of the Inapparent
The phenomenological “conjuring trick”
We find Marx reflecting before a series of dark glass mirrors. (38) Distortions, reproductions, copies, replicates of himself are repeated endlessly, reflections of reflections each a token of his type. His shadow is unsure of which direction to take, outside it is the solar noon but inside this funfair hall is lit by a myriad of incandescent and fluorescent lights; the shadow waits, biding its time.
Marx has decided that the world needs no more fables. He is going to turn his attention to science.
The position of a ghost determines its spectral effect. However position is relative and in the case of a ghost, its position can only be measured by plotting its relationship to other ghosts. By means of quantized orbits, the spectral lines of ghost events can be mapped and relative intensities of these spectral lines positioned in relation to a "regular" matter universe. However the spectra of more complex forms won't exist here with us for very long because of the implications of pair production. In this case the ghost would be in the spectral cloud that forms about the nucleus of a spectre. This nucleus would hold the opposition pairs in stasis, with long-range interactions being sufficient to yield binding, if not scattering takes place and positioning is again impossible.
Only the corporality of the body can ingest these spectres. By living in the now the spectres of ancestors and false prophets are digested and defeated. Only by living in the phenomena of the present can we exist free of the shackles of our own shadow; by cutting it off we can stand tall in the open air, sunlit before the pure light of reason.
The dog returns from its wandering, it is not without intelligence and has an inner ear for inner dialogue. It inwardly muses; “Reason is itself a ghost born of a logocentric fallacy, as you hunt one ghost down another rises in its place, as you catch one another escapes. Smell is all there is and in smelling the craft is all. This craft is what makes the dog and in this making we create our own culture. Therefore a true understanding of our nature comes through the unselfconscious creation of another dog; this egological position being ecology’s tragedy".
The narcissisms of youth are its own comedy. Only the young watch their own bodies. They catch themselves in shop windows, every reflective surface a mirror for their vanity. Each glance releasing a ghost from the very edges of sight; ghosts barely glimpsed but with great future presence as they will feed upon the mourning minds of those who lament their passing adolescence.
Narcissus will always drown in his own tears, he mourns himself.
An innumerable, unnameable gathering of ghosts surrounds each mortal soul all through its mundane life, filling that vacuum thick with invisible fine layers and empty skins that fills the hollow space between the things that tether us to materiality and ourselves. As we walk we push our way forward through these ghosts and spectres as if through tall fields of corn, stalks and husks broken in our wake as we walk.
The identity of a specific spectre is lost in the generality of spectreness. Marx is fading away, he is not sure of what he has just heard.
“The ghost in the identity”
Or
“The ghost is the identity”
Identity loss is the key, as it disappears it leaves an empty body as a host for the ghost.
38 Corinthians 13:12 "For now we see through a glass, darkly."
The above text is taken from the King James Bible, the original 1611 edition being printed by Robert Barker, son of Christopher Barker, printer to Queen Elizabeth I. He also co-published the ‘Wicked Bible’ which states: “Thou shalt commit adultery”.
The Apparition of the Inapparent
The phenomenological “conjuring trick”
We find Marx reflecting before a series of dark glass mirrors. (38) Distortions, reproductions, copies, replicates of himself are repeated endlessly, reflections of reflections each a token of his type. His shadow is unsure of which direction to take, outside it is the solar noon but inside this funfair hall is lit by a myriad of incandescent and fluorescent lights; the shadow waits, biding its time.
Marx has decided that the world needs no more fables. He is going to turn his attention to science.
The position of a ghost determines its spectral effect. However position is relative and in the case of a ghost, its position can only be measured by plotting its relationship to other ghosts. By means of quantized orbits, the spectral lines of ghost events can be mapped and relative intensities of these spectral lines positioned in relation to a "regular" matter universe. However the spectra of more complex forms won't exist here with us for very long because of the implications of pair production. In this case the ghost would be in the spectral cloud that forms about the nucleus of a spectre. This nucleus would hold the opposition pairs in stasis, with long-range interactions being sufficient to yield binding, if not scattering takes place and positioning is again impossible.
Only the corporality of the body can ingest these spectres. By living in the now the spectres of ancestors and false prophets are digested and defeated. Only by living in the phenomena of the present can we exist free of the shackles of our own shadow; by cutting it off we can stand tall in the open air, sunlit before the pure light of reason.
The dog returns from its wandering, it is not without intelligence and has an inner ear for inner dialogue. It inwardly muses; “Reason is itself a ghost born of a logocentric fallacy, as you hunt one ghost down another rises in its place, as you catch one another escapes. Smell is all there is and in smelling the craft is all. This craft is what makes the dog and in this making we create our own culture. Therefore a true understanding of our nature comes through the unselfconscious creation of another dog; this egological position being ecology’s tragedy".
The narcissisms of youth are its own comedy. Only the young watch their own bodies. They catch themselves in shop windows, every reflective surface a mirror for their vanity. Each glance releasing a ghost from the very edges of sight; ghosts barely glimpsed but with great future presence as they will feed upon the mourning minds of those who lament their passing adolescence.
Narcissus will always drown in his own tears, he mourns himself.
An innumerable, unnameable gathering of ghosts surrounds each mortal soul all through its mundane life, filling that vacuum thick with invisible fine layers and empty skins that fills the hollow space between the things that tether us to materiality and ourselves. As we walk we push our way forward through these ghosts and spectres as if through tall fields of corn, stalks and husks broken in our wake as we walk.
The identity of a specific spectre is lost in the generality of spectreness. Marx is fading away, he is not sure of what he has just heard.
“The ghost in the identity”
Or
“The ghost is the identity”
Identity loss is the key, as it disappears it leaves an empty body as a host for the ghost.
38 Corinthians 13:12 "For now we see through a glass, darkly."
The above text is taken from the King James Bible, the original 1611 edition being printed by Robert Barker, son of Christopher Barker, printer to Queen Elizabeth I. He also co-published the ‘Wicked Bible’ which states: “Thou shalt commit adultery”.
Tuesday 22 February 2011
Reflections on reading Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx (23)
The Twenty-third night
A Good Friday agreement is made for the resurrection of the dead; proof that miracles do happen. A precise location is required; one that is in sympathy with local lay lines and that can channel the earth’s energy at its maximum potential. The area is marked out and cut off from the rest of the territory. It resembles a seventeenth century hunt tableau as provided for the kings of France when in their pomp, when deer and boar were herded into fenced off areas, so that their majesties could not fail to slaughter creatures at their will. Marx can see the parallels and believes in the eating of ghosts as a type of spiritual nourishment. He has though yet to determine the site’s exact location.
Marx is unfolding a large map, as he opens it out, we begin to realize it is huge, its scale 1:1, each page opening out onto the world until eventually an exact correspondence is made. He is going to use this map to plot the route for the hunt, but as he opens its pages he is becoming enmeshed in brambles and tree branches, soaked in the waters of streams and up to his knees in muddy riverbanks. He is lost in his map, trapped within a useless topographical depiction, a man who has no backwoods knowledge and no survival skills.
The stalking and the shooting and the snaring will go on without him. The hunt is for the word made flesh, the hunters looking for that other, that in turn will mimic them. That other with a clever camouflage that apes the huntsman’s gait and stalks the stalker with his shadow; mimesis and alterity, the two sides of his game.
Marx is still trying to unfold the map. He believes in its veracity, even though he is very aware that all truths are simply narratives of conviction. Each more detailed sheet of the map reveals another layer of the world, and eventually atoms are seen; gradually as Marx peers into freshly unfolded pages he sees their quantum split and watches the waves of the positronic field that holds him in his space. Dimensions unfold as he opens the map, energy replaces matter and dark spaces unfold into dark matters, each fold of the map opening new universes and more dimensions of time and space. Minutes become hours and hours days, each unfolding now taking weeks and months for each page to unfurl its mysteries. Finally, in the dark recesses of space-time, Marx now has a vision of the specters and ghosts that haunt his dreams. He sees their form and knows their shape. He recognizes the old patterns from the dreams of his youth, he sees his death and stares at his own soul as it escapes his dead body shifting and morphing into new forms ready for the hunt.
Marx realises he was stalking himself. Setting traps for his own words, words that are rising in value by the minute as his stock begins to soar and his shadow overshadows all the ends of histories.
A Good Friday agreement is made for the resurrection of the dead; proof that miracles do happen. A precise location is required; one that is in sympathy with local lay lines and that can channel the earth’s energy at its maximum potential. The area is marked out and cut off from the rest of the territory. It resembles a seventeenth century hunt tableau as provided for the kings of France when in their pomp, when deer and boar were herded into fenced off areas, so that their majesties could not fail to slaughter creatures at their will. Marx can see the parallels and believes in the eating of ghosts as a type of spiritual nourishment. He has though yet to determine the site’s exact location.
Marx is unfolding a large map, as he opens it out, we begin to realize it is huge, its scale 1:1, each page opening out onto the world until eventually an exact correspondence is made. He is going to use this map to plot the route for the hunt, but as he opens its pages he is becoming enmeshed in brambles and tree branches, soaked in the waters of streams and up to his knees in muddy riverbanks. He is lost in his map, trapped within a useless topographical depiction, a man who has no backwoods knowledge and no survival skills.
The stalking and the shooting and the snaring will go on without him. The hunt is for the word made flesh, the hunters looking for that other, that in turn will mimic them. That other with a clever camouflage that apes the huntsman’s gait and stalks the stalker with his shadow; mimesis and alterity, the two sides of his game.
Marx is still trying to unfold the map. He believes in its veracity, even though he is very aware that all truths are simply narratives of conviction. Each more detailed sheet of the map reveals another layer of the world, and eventually atoms are seen; gradually as Marx peers into freshly unfolded pages he sees their quantum split and watches the waves of the positronic field that holds him in his space. Dimensions unfold as he opens the map, energy replaces matter and dark spaces unfold into dark matters, each fold of the map opening new universes and more dimensions of time and space. Minutes become hours and hours days, each unfolding now taking weeks and months for each page to unfurl its mysteries. Finally, in the dark recesses of space-time, Marx now has a vision of the specters and ghosts that haunt his dreams. He sees their form and knows their shape. He recognizes the old patterns from the dreams of his youth, he sees his death and stares at his own soul as it escapes his dead body shifting and morphing into new forms ready for the hunt.
Marx realises he was stalking himself. Setting traps for his own words, words that are rising in value by the minute as his stock begins to soar and his shadow overshadows all the ends of histories.
Monday 21 February 2011
Reflections on reading Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx (22)
The Twenty-second night
Freed from his past, Marx has decided to realise his true potential. He will reinvent himself as a prophet, become the new messiah and wear Roman robes. He imagines himself standing heroically on the steps of the White House, gazing down on the populace, who genuflect in his presence. They look up towards him and roar their approval, Marx raises his arms in acknowledgement, and the crowd responds with a repeated shout, “Long live Marx!” “Long live Marx!” “Long live Marx!” As they shout Marx gazes out over the sea of heads. He realizes that the crowd are wearing masks and helmets and that they shade their eyes with visors, they soon begin to shift uneasily under the scrutiny of his gaze. The people are haunted by ghosts and spirits of past revolutions, and their attention wanders. They see specters and ghouls starting to emerge from the dry ice effect that surrounds Marx in his classical pomp. Marx tries to regain their attention, “Let the dead bury the dead and let the living bury the living” he cries, but the crowd are worried and some people are pointing to a shadow below him, which descends slowly down the steps towards them. It had started beneath his feet but was now detached and has set forth looking for another body and the crowd sense its intent and rapidly start to disperse. The shadow that has lost its body is a dire thing. It will soon wander free into the world, and will cast its dark cloud over future events, souring revolutions and spoiling ballots as it passes through the future world.
Marx slips away before the crowd turns nasty; a dog chases its own shadow down the white steps of the White House.
Marx reemerges in London. He knows that only the secret revolution can be a revolution. He has infiltrated the New Labour party as a first step towards his goal, he is though soon denounced as a police undercover agent and expelled. He soon finds himself alone, unemployed and starving, unable to get dole he is forced to seek any work he can get. The only job on offer is as a gravedigger, a job he reluctantly takes up, but which he soon realizes he enjoys. He digs each grave with great determination and enthusiasm, rejecting mechanical aids in favour of good old-fashioned hard work. His hands are soon hard and callused, for the first time in his life he has the hands of a workman. He feels at home amongst the dead but watches carefully for signs of resurrection. He is apprehensive for the future and even more wary of the specters from his past.
Freed from his past, Marx has decided to realise his true potential. He will reinvent himself as a prophet, become the new messiah and wear Roman robes. He imagines himself standing heroically on the steps of the White House, gazing down on the populace, who genuflect in his presence. They look up towards him and roar their approval, Marx raises his arms in acknowledgement, and the crowd responds with a repeated shout, “Long live Marx!” “Long live Marx!” “Long live Marx!” As they shout Marx gazes out over the sea of heads. He realizes that the crowd are wearing masks and helmets and that they shade their eyes with visors, they soon begin to shift uneasily under the scrutiny of his gaze. The people are haunted by ghosts and spirits of past revolutions, and their attention wanders. They see specters and ghouls starting to emerge from the dry ice effect that surrounds Marx in his classical pomp. Marx tries to regain their attention, “Let the dead bury the dead and let the living bury the living” he cries, but the crowd are worried and some people are pointing to a shadow below him, which descends slowly down the steps towards them. It had started beneath his feet but was now detached and has set forth looking for another body and the crowd sense its intent and rapidly start to disperse. The shadow that has lost its body is a dire thing. It will soon wander free into the world, and will cast its dark cloud over future events, souring revolutions and spoiling ballots as it passes through the future world.
Marx slips away before the crowd turns nasty; a dog chases its own shadow down the white steps of the White House.
Marx reemerges in London. He knows that only the secret revolution can be a revolution. He has infiltrated the New Labour party as a first step towards his goal, he is though soon denounced as a police undercover agent and expelled. He soon finds himself alone, unemployed and starving, unable to get dole he is forced to seek any work he can get. The only job on offer is as a gravedigger, a job he reluctantly takes up, but which he soon realizes he enjoys. He digs each grave with great determination and enthusiasm, rejecting mechanical aids in favour of good old-fashioned hard work. His hands are soon hard and callused, for the first time in his life he has the hands of a workman. He feels at home amongst the dead but watches carefully for signs of resurrection. He is apprehensive for the future and even more wary of the specters from his past.
Sunday 20 February 2011
Reflections on reading Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx (21)
The Twenty-first night
Neither a borrower nor a lender be, because the line between the two is unstable, the one predicates the other, only in inaction can action be taken. The ability to cease transactions, to shut up shop, being at the centre of a movement set up to deny the law of supply and demand.
Luther had his own Epiphany, one that Marx would inherit via a German translation of Catholic protestations never accepted in the South but lionised in the North.
The great wars of religion have mutated into wars of consumer attraction. Political war, wars of nationalisms, ethnic war and wars on Global terrorism are now consumed within the all out capital war that sets out to dominate all economic life.
Let the grand correction commence. (37)
The old hog-headed monarchy still haunts the politics of the West. Tears of the masses shed at Diana’s funeral, falling like rain on the dormant seeds of feudalism.
The Queen is dead; long live the Queen. Long live the Queen; the Queen is dead.
Historically we are all trespassers in our own homes; the modern demand for home ownership, a fetish that mystifies our relationships with others and deviously skews our lives towards isolation and a fortress mentality; is but a brief candle that will be snuffed out by the winds of a coming socialism.
Marx has become a stranger to himself. He looks into the mirror and doesn’t recognise the features that stare out at him. His reflection appears out of synch and he makes small unpredictable movements with his mouth, he grimaces and watches this stranger attempt to do the same. He is out of step with his twin. He begins to recite from his own writings, but cannot remember exactly what he wrote, but this doppelgänger has no problem. Marx isn’t sure anymore who wrote the words that he is hearing spoken in his head. “Who wrote these words, him or me?” he asks. He will never know, all words when read become the property of the reader. Marx slowly realises he has had all his property stolen, every last word now looted by anarchists and revolutionaries.
37 A refrain taken from a Chris Wood CD, Handmade Life (R.U.F Records, 2009) the particular track is called: "The Grand Correction"
Neither a borrower nor a lender be, because the line between the two is unstable, the one predicates the other, only in inaction can action be taken. The ability to cease transactions, to shut up shop, being at the centre of a movement set up to deny the law of supply and demand.
Luther had his own Epiphany, one that Marx would inherit via a German translation of Catholic protestations never accepted in the South but lionised in the North.
The great wars of religion have mutated into wars of consumer attraction. Political war, wars of nationalisms, ethnic war and wars on Global terrorism are now consumed within the all out capital war that sets out to dominate all economic life.
Let the grand correction commence. (37)
The old hog-headed monarchy still haunts the politics of the West. Tears of the masses shed at Diana’s funeral, falling like rain on the dormant seeds of feudalism.
The Queen is dead; long live the Queen. Long live the Queen; the Queen is dead.
Historically we are all trespassers in our own homes; the modern demand for home ownership, a fetish that mystifies our relationships with others and deviously skews our lives towards isolation and a fortress mentality; is but a brief candle that will be snuffed out by the winds of a coming socialism.
Marx has become a stranger to himself. He looks into the mirror and doesn’t recognise the features that stare out at him. His reflection appears out of synch and he makes small unpredictable movements with his mouth, he grimaces and watches this stranger attempt to do the same. He is out of step with his twin. He begins to recite from his own writings, but cannot remember exactly what he wrote, but this doppelgänger has no problem. Marx isn’t sure anymore who wrote the words that he is hearing spoken in his head. “Who wrote these words, him or me?” he asks. He will never know, all words when read become the property of the reader. Marx slowly realises he has had all his property stolen, every last word now looted by anarchists and revolutionaries.
37 A refrain taken from a Chris Wood CD, Handmade Life (R.U.F Records, 2009) the particular track is called: "The Grand Correction"
Saturday 19 February 2011
Reflections on reading Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx (20)
The twentieth night
There is a false parade of solidarity marching past the Vatican. Lost in party politics the soul can eat itself, each member bodiless and craving other’s bodies as its own, creating hybrid monsters of totalitarian desire. These are the creatures of the night that come in dreams and vote the party line; their manifesto a manifest of mealy men in mannered moulds that make martyrs of the flesh. This cannibalistic credo is a manifleshto of the dead.
During the day Marx is being recreated by his makers; monarchists, imperialists, republicans and capitalist money launderers. They sculpt him from red clay and intend to raku fire his body in a sawdust pit. Left to cure at night, his body stirs, the spirit is within him. The secret name of God emblazoned on his brow, he rises with the morn, his inner fire glows white, his eyes now blaze with Heavenly light, he stands, opens his mouth and flames belch forth with his first words, “They know not what they do”, (36) in his heart he knows morality is the darkest of conspiracies, he steps out into the abyss of freedom, hoping that fantasy will fill the gap before he falls. He is terrified of what will come, frightened of the consequences of his actions and yet determined to see this day out to its conclusion.
36 a. For they know not what they do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor. A book by Slavoj Žižek, that attempts to grapple with the disintegration of state socialism, and the rise of hedonism. Like Derrida, Žižek often quotes Shakespeare, in this case he refers to Brutus and his anxiety before setting out to murder Caesar. In the popular radio four program, 'Desert Island Discs' participants are always given a copies of the Bible and Shakespeare to take with them. It is presumed that everyone would want to take these two texts. These texts it is presumed stand at the heart of Western English speaking culture.
Act 2 Scene 1 Julius Caesar: Brutus contemplates his immanent actions:
Since Cassius first did whet me against Caesar,
I have not slept.
Before the acting of a dreadful thing
And first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream
The Genius and the mortal instruments
Are then in council; and the state of man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection.
36 b. Luke 23:34: Then Jesus said, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do".
There is a false parade of solidarity marching past the Vatican. Lost in party politics the soul can eat itself, each member bodiless and craving other’s bodies as its own, creating hybrid monsters of totalitarian desire. These are the creatures of the night that come in dreams and vote the party line; their manifesto a manifest of mealy men in mannered moulds that make martyrs of the flesh. This cannibalistic credo is a manifleshto of the dead.
During the day Marx is being recreated by his makers; monarchists, imperialists, republicans and capitalist money launderers. They sculpt him from red clay and intend to raku fire his body in a sawdust pit. Left to cure at night, his body stirs, the spirit is within him. The secret name of God emblazoned on his brow, he rises with the morn, his inner fire glows white, his eyes now blaze with Heavenly light, he stands, opens his mouth and flames belch forth with his first words, “They know not what they do”, (36) in his heart he knows morality is the darkest of conspiracies, he steps out into the abyss of freedom, hoping that fantasy will fill the gap before he falls. He is terrified of what will come, frightened of the consequences of his actions and yet determined to see this day out to its conclusion.
36 a. For they know not what they do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor. A book by Slavoj Žižek, that attempts to grapple with the disintegration of state socialism, and the rise of hedonism. Like Derrida, Žižek often quotes Shakespeare, in this case he refers to Brutus and his anxiety before setting out to murder Caesar. In the popular radio four program, 'Desert Island Discs' participants are always given a copies of the Bible and Shakespeare to take with them. It is presumed that everyone would want to take these two texts. These texts it is presumed stand at the heart of Western English speaking culture.
Act 2 Scene 1 Julius Caesar: Brutus contemplates his immanent actions:
Since Cassius first did whet me against Caesar,
I have not slept.
Before the acting of a dreadful thing
And first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream
The Genius and the mortal instruments
Are then in council; and the state of man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection.
36 b. Luke 23:34: Then Jesus said, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do".
Friday 18 February 2011
Reflections on reading Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx (19)
The nineteenth night
The artist seeks the invisible through the visible. He is however worried by iconoclasts and wants to ground his position in theory.
At the Second Council of Nicaea in 787 (33) after much debate and argument it was decided that the more frequently images of God and saintly holy men are seen in representational art, the more are those who see them drawn to remember them and long for those who serve as models. The argument was in particular related to the earlier Epitome of the Definition of the Iconoclastic Conciliabulum held in 754 which declared: "Supported by the Holy Scriptures and the Fathers, we declare unanimously, in the name of the Holy Trinity, that there shall be rejected and removed and cursed from the Christian Church every likeness which is made out of any material and colour whatever by the evil art of painters.... If anyone ventures to represent the divine image of the Word after the Incarnation with material colours, let him be anathema! .... If anyone shall endeavour to represent the forms of the Saints in lifeless pictures with material colours which are of no value (for this notion is vain and introduced by the devil), and does not rather represent their virtues as living images in himself, let him be anathema!"
The Edict of Yazid was also debated at the Second Council, and the fact that the Islamic Caliph had supposedly declared that every representational painting be destroyed and thoroughly abolished, was used as a political argument to support the fact that a Christian edict should determine a necessary difference in doctrine.
Despite awareness that history repeats itself (34) and that religious doctrine can be determined by political realities the artist has decided to continue with his quest. He sets out to describe an invisible spirit and begins to create a series of small dashes that gradually define the outline of a female human form. (35) Within these lines he paints the continuation of a landscape that appears to be seen through the woman’s figure. He believes he has hit upon a unique form of popular religious painting that also recognises the role of nature and the spirit of Rousseau. However, when there is nothing to see, what do we see? Perhaps entoptic phenomena are the only images that have travelled with us from the earliest times, the artist’s lines a bear close resemblance to dashed lines in Paleolithic art.
33 The Second Council of Nicaea in 787 issued a statement to this effect: ... we declare that we defend free from any innovations all the written and unwritten ecclesiastical traditions that have been entrusted to us. One of these is the production of representational art; this is quite in harmony with the history of the spread of the gospel, as it provides confirmation that the becoming man of the Word of God was real and not just imaginary, and as it brings us a similar benefit. For, things that mutually illustrate one another undoubtedly possess one another's message. ... we decree with full precision and care that, like the figure of the honoured and life-giving cross, the revered and holy images, whether painted or made of mosaic or of other suitable material, are to be exposed in the holy churches of God, on sacred instruments and vestments, on walls and panels, in houses and by public ways; these are the images of our Lord, God and saviour, Jesus Christ, and of our Lady without blemish, the holy God-bearer, and of the revered angels and of any of the saintly holy men. The more frequently they are seen in representational art, the more are those who see them drawn to remember and long for those who serve as models, and to pay these images the tribute of salutation and respectful veneration. Certainly this is not the full adoration in accordance with our faith, which is properly paid only to the divine nature, but it resembles that given to the figure of the honoured and life-giving cross, and also to the holy books of the gospels and to other sacred cult object.
34 A reference to the opening sentences of Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852). The actual words were: "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce."
35 The animated TV series Rugrats, introduced a parody character, Miss Invisible, in the episode "Mega Diaper Babies"; in the same episode, another invisible character appears called "Dotted-Line Girl". This character is in turn a knowing reference to how Susan Storm the Invisible Girl of Marvel Comic’s Fantastic Four was usually depicted by the artist Jack Kirby. Rugrats: Season 3, Episode 21 First broadcast: 13 March 1994.
The artist seeks the invisible through the visible. He is however worried by iconoclasts and wants to ground his position in theory.
At the Second Council of Nicaea in 787 (33) after much debate and argument it was decided that the more frequently images of God and saintly holy men are seen in representational art, the more are those who see them drawn to remember them and long for those who serve as models. The argument was in particular related to the earlier Epitome of the Definition of the Iconoclastic Conciliabulum held in 754 which declared: "Supported by the Holy Scriptures and the Fathers, we declare unanimously, in the name of the Holy Trinity, that there shall be rejected and removed and cursed from the Christian Church every likeness which is made out of any material and colour whatever by the evil art of painters.... If anyone ventures to represent the divine image of the Word after the Incarnation with material colours, let him be anathema! .... If anyone shall endeavour to represent the forms of the Saints in lifeless pictures with material colours which are of no value (for this notion is vain and introduced by the devil), and does not rather represent their virtues as living images in himself, let him be anathema!"
The Edict of Yazid was also debated at the Second Council, and the fact that the Islamic Caliph had supposedly declared that every representational painting be destroyed and thoroughly abolished, was used as a political argument to support the fact that a Christian edict should determine a necessary difference in doctrine.
Despite awareness that history repeats itself (34) and that religious doctrine can be determined by political realities the artist has decided to continue with his quest. He sets out to describe an invisible spirit and begins to create a series of small dashes that gradually define the outline of a female human form. (35) Within these lines he paints the continuation of a landscape that appears to be seen through the woman’s figure. He believes he has hit upon a unique form of popular religious painting that also recognises the role of nature and the spirit of Rousseau. However, when there is nothing to see, what do we see? Perhaps entoptic phenomena are the only images that have travelled with us from the earliest times, the artist’s lines a bear close resemblance to dashed lines in Paleolithic art.
33 The Second Council of Nicaea in 787 issued a statement to this effect: ... we declare that we defend free from any innovations all the written and unwritten ecclesiastical traditions that have been entrusted to us. One of these is the production of representational art; this is quite in harmony with the history of the spread of the gospel, as it provides confirmation that the becoming man of the Word of God was real and not just imaginary, and as it brings us a similar benefit. For, things that mutually illustrate one another undoubtedly possess one another's message. ... we decree with full precision and care that, like the figure of the honoured and life-giving cross, the revered and holy images, whether painted or made of mosaic or of other suitable material, are to be exposed in the holy churches of God, on sacred instruments and vestments, on walls and panels, in houses and by public ways; these are the images of our Lord, God and saviour, Jesus Christ, and of our Lady without blemish, the holy God-bearer, and of the revered angels and of any of the saintly holy men. The more frequently they are seen in representational art, the more are those who see them drawn to remember and long for those who serve as models, and to pay these images the tribute of salutation and respectful veneration. Certainly this is not the full adoration in accordance with our faith, which is properly paid only to the divine nature, but it resembles that given to the figure of the honoured and life-giving cross, and also to the holy books of the gospels and to other sacred cult object.
34 A reference to the opening sentences of Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852). The actual words were: "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce."
35 The animated TV series Rugrats, introduced a parody character, Miss Invisible, in the episode "Mega Diaper Babies"; in the same episode, another invisible character appears called "Dotted-Line Girl". This character is in turn a knowing reference to how Susan Storm the Invisible Girl of Marvel Comic’s Fantastic Four was usually depicted by the artist Jack Kirby. Rugrats: Season 3, Episode 21 First broadcast: 13 March 1994.
Thursday 17 February 2011
Reflections on reading Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx (18)
The eighteenth night
The sublime aesthetics of the lost battles of Marxism are debated in the halls of the learned, while the art of the real fights it out on the streets of the Middle East. These are insoluble contradictions but there is no mourning while the battle rages, only in its aftermath will the grieving begin; hands will then be washed to remove the stains of compromise and in the cleanliness affirm their political legitimacy.
The antithesis rises, a spectre from history, it cuts through dogma like a knife, plunging its blade shaft deep into the body of Capital, seeking an end to this vampire of the vanities. But ghosts are ineffective killers, only an exorcism conducted by the Holy Pope himself can be effective, only the word of God as spoken by his representative on Earth will work.
Behold, he is given the power to tread upon serpents and scorpions and upon the full force of the enemy and nothing will harm him. (31)
He commands the spectre as follows:
I command you, spectre of Marx, along with all your minions now attacking these servants of God, by the mysteries of the incarnation, passion, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, by the descent of the Holy Ghost, by the coming of our Lord for judgment; that you and all your demons, ghosts and wraiths depart. I command you, moreover, to obey me to the letter, I who am a minister of God despite my unworthiness; nor shall you be emboldened to harm in any way this creature of God, or the bystanders, or any of their possessions. (32)
Marx and the Pope face off, they are about to lock horns when the Pope’s head swivels around and his glazed eyes look back towards the inner sanctum. His mouth opens, a gravelly drawl of "Ave Versus Christus" now spills from his lips; he is the corrupted one and only Marx can save his soul.
Marx bends down to pat his dog. The dog wags its tail in simple gratitude and looks up towards the Holy Spirit descending in the embodied form of a dove. These late vestiges of animal worship are both reluctant to leave the stage. The dog is reminded of those happy days when Marx would dance with animals and how they would watch the dawn sunrise together after long intoxicated nights of cave rumbas, tangos and foxtrots.
31 Luke 10:17 The seventy-two returned rejoicing, and said, "Lord, even the demons are subject to us because of your name." Jesus said, "I have observed Satan fall like lightning from the sky. Behold, I have given you the power 'to tread upon serpents' and scorpions and upon the full force of the enemy and nothing will harm you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice because the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice because your names are written in heaven."
32 Excerpts taken and adjusted from: PRAYER AGAINST SATAN and the REBELLIOUS ANGELS Published by order of His Holiness Pope Leo XIII
The sublime aesthetics of the lost battles of Marxism are debated in the halls of the learned, while the art of the real fights it out on the streets of the Middle East. These are insoluble contradictions but there is no mourning while the battle rages, only in its aftermath will the grieving begin; hands will then be washed to remove the stains of compromise and in the cleanliness affirm their political legitimacy.
The antithesis rises, a spectre from history, it cuts through dogma like a knife, plunging its blade shaft deep into the body of Capital, seeking an end to this vampire of the vanities. But ghosts are ineffective killers, only an exorcism conducted by the Holy Pope himself can be effective, only the word of God as spoken by his representative on Earth will work.
Behold, he is given the power to tread upon serpents and scorpions and upon the full force of the enemy and nothing will harm him. (31)
He commands the spectre as follows:
I command you, spectre of Marx, along with all your minions now attacking these servants of God, by the mysteries of the incarnation, passion, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, by the descent of the Holy Ghost, by the coming of our Lord for judgment; that you and all your demons, ghosts and wraiths depart. I command you, moreover, to obey me to the letter, I who am a minister of God despite my unworthiness; nor shall you be emboldened to harm in any way this creature of God, or the bystanders, or any of their possessions. (32)
Marx and the Pope face off, they are about to lock horns when the Pope’s head swivels around and his glazed eyes look back towards the inner sanctum. His mouth opens, a gravelly drawl of "Ave Versus Christus" now spills from his lips; he is the corrupted one and only Marx can save his soul.
Marx bends down to pat his dog. The dog wags its tail in simple gratitude and looks up towards the Holy Spirit descending in the embodied form of a dove. These late vestiges of animal worship are both reluctant to leave the stage. The dog is reminded of those happy days when Marx would dance with animals and how they would watch the dawn sunrise together after long intoxicated nights of cave rumbas, tangos and foxtrots.
31 Luke 10:17 The seventy-two returned rejoicing, and said, "Lord, even the demons are subject to us because of your name." Jesus said, "I have observed Satan fall like lightning from the sky. Behold, I have given you the power 'to tread upon serpents' and scorpions and upon the full force of the enemy and nothing will harm you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice because the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice because your names are written in heaven."
32 Excerpts taken and adjusted from: PRAYER AGAINST SATAN and the REBELLIOUS ANGELS Published by order of His Holiness Pope Leo XIII
Tuesday 15 February 2011
Reflections on reading Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx (17)
The seventeenth night
In the name of the Revolution, the Double Barricade.
(Impure “impure, impure history of ghosts”)
The barricades erect their own histories, yesterday France, today Egypt, tomorrow Denmark. Protests are remembered through their laundered dirty dead. Bobby Sands now painted large upon our walls of liberation, his death squares and multiplies itself with a conjoined Lorca and Lennonesque algebraic formula.
The dead poets cry: Long live death! "¡Viva la Muerte!"
The sleeping dogs of Revolution whimper in their dreams.
A chain gang are cutting into the rock face, they work in harmony, singing spirited hymns and humming while they carve the new fifth face of Rushmore. Marx’s beard is taking shape; the chained men cut his features, shape his nose and carve his delicate mouth out of the unformed granite. The gang work hard at their labour, they sweat profusely and are undernourished. Lining the edges of Lincoln’s hair stand a row of armed prison guards looking down on the chained workers, they despise their prisoners.
Keeping their sticky hands on the keys of power is a priority of the ruling hegemony. They play their harmonies in F minor to the masses, creating groans of misery and a deep longing for the grave. The sound we hear in the distance is the sound of the hammering of nails into the coffin of socialism, while the leaders shape their little Englanders, little Americas, little Russians and little Hitlers all readied to fight their wars on all domestic fronts. After-all Capitalism begins at home.
The chains of the prisoners are rattling to a B minor harmony (30), patiently the gang awaits its fate, each man waiting for divine dispensation.
30 Affective key characteristics from Christian Schubart's Ideen zu einer Aesthetik der Tonkunst
C major: Completely Pure. Associations of innocence, simplicity, naïvety, children's talk.
C minor: A declaration of love and the sighing of the love-sick soul.
Db major: A leering key, degenerating into grief and rapture. It cannot laugh, it smiles.
D major: The key of triumph, of Halleluiahs, war-cries and of victory.
D minor: Melancholy womanliness, the spleen and humours brood.
D# minor: The anxiety of the soul. When spectres speak, their speech is in this key.
Eb major: The key of love, of devotion and of intimate conversation with God.
E major: Shouts of joy, laughing and fulfilled delight.
F major: Complaisance & calm.
F minor: Deep depression, funereal lament, groans of misery and longing for the grave.
F# major: Triumph over difficulty, echo of a soul which has fiercely struggled and won.
F# minor: A gloomy key: it tugs at passion as a dog biting a dress.
G major: Rustic, idyllic and lyrical, every calm and satisfied passion.
G minor: Discontent, uneasiness and bad-tempered gnashing of teeth.
Ab major: Key of the grave. Death, grave, putrefaction and eternity lie in its radius.
Ab minor: Grumbler, suffocating heart, wailing lament and all difficult struggles.
A major: Innocent love, hope of seeing one's beloved again and trust in God.
A minor: Pious womanliness and tenderness of character.
Bb major: Cheerful love, clear conscience, hope and aspiration for a better world.
Bb minor: Mocking God and the world; preparation for suicide sounds in this key.
B major: Anger, rage, jealousy, fury, despair and every burden of the heart.
B minor: The key of patience, of calm submission to divine dispensation.
In the name of the Revolution, the Double Barricade.
(Impure “impure, impure history of ghosts”)
The barricades erect their own histories, yesterday France, today Egypt, tomorrow Denmark. Protests are remembered through their laundered dirty dead. Bobby Sands now painted large upon our walls of liberation, his death squares and multiplies itself with a conjoined Lorca and Lennonesque algebraic formula.
The dead poets cry: Long live death! "¡Viva la Muerte!"
The sleeping dogs of Revolution whimper in their dreams.
A chain gang are cutting into the rock face, they work in harmony, singing spirited hymns and humming while they carve the new fifth face of Rushmore. Marx’s beard is taking shape; the chained men cut his features, shape his nose and carve his delicate mouth out of the unformed granite. The gang work hard at their labour, they sweat profusely and are undernourished. Lining the edges of Lincoln’s hair stand a row of armed prison guards looking down on the chained workers, they despise their prisoners.
Keeping their sticky hands on the keys of power is a priority of the ruling hegemony. They play their harmonies in F minor to the masses, creating groans of misery and a deep longing for the grave. The sound we hear in the distance is the sound of the hammering of nails into the coffin of socialism, while the leaders shape their little Englanders, little Americas, little Russians and little Hitlers all readied to fight their wars on all domestic fronts. After-all Capitalism begins at home.
The chains of the prisoners are rattling to a B minor harmony (30), patiently the gang awaits its fate, each man waiting for divine dispensation.
30 Affective key characteristics from Christian Schubart's Ideen zu einer Aesthetik der Tonkunst
C major: Completely Pure. Associations of innocence, simplicity, naïvety, children's talk.
C minor: A declaration of love and the sighing of the love-sick soul.
Db major: A leering key, degenerating into grief and rapture. It cannot laugh, it smiles.
D major: The key of triumph, of Halleluiahs, war-cries and of victory.
D minor: Melancholy womanliness, the spleen and humours brood.
D# minor: The anxiety of the soul. When spectres speak, their speech is in this key.
Eb major: The key of love, of devotion and of intimate conversation with God.
E major: Shouts of joy, laughing and fulfilled delight.
F major: Complaisance & calm.
F minor: Deep depression, funereal lament, groans of misery and longing for the grave.
F# major: Triumph over difficulty, echo of a soul which has fiercely struggled and won.
F# minor: A gloomy key: it tugs at passion as a dog biting a dress.
G major: Rustic, idyllic and lyrical, every calm and satisfied passion.
G minor: Discontent, uneasiness and bad-tempered gnashing of teeth.
Ab major: Key of the grave. Death, grave, putrefaction and eternity lie in its radius.
Ab minor: Grumbler, suffocating heart, wailing lament and all difficult struggles.
A major: Innocent love, hope of seeing one's beloved again and trust in God.
A minor: Pious womanliness and tenderness of character.
Bb major: Cheerful love, clear conscience, hope and aspiration for a better world.
Bb minor: Mocking God and the world; preparation for suicide sounds in this key.
B major: Anger, rage, jealousy, fury, despair and every burden of the heart.
B minor: The key of patience, of calm submission to divine dispensation.
Monday 14 February 2011
Reflections on reading Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx (16)
The sixteenth night
Time will stand witness to all mortal judgements. The Enlightenment project itself will at some time have to stand naked before the measure of its measures. Serious questions will be asked of a movement that prided itself on logic only to founder on desire.
A spirit guide is vital if you are to visit the underworld, special trips can be organised by our agent, tours can be taken through vaults and caves beneath the ground and a ferry is always on standby to take those interested over to the other side.
A dark reflection of the day exists far beneath the ground; a dog laps at still waters, ripples breaking up its reflection as the lapping continues and oscillations spread across the underground lake.
Q) Take the Christian out of the Marxist and what have you got?
A) A confederation of pagans.
The spirit world is not a fiction. Every human being experiences its reality. When the mother walks out of the room the baby cries as it seeks to keep her image present, and in that moment the first ghosts are born, the ghosts of disappearance. In death the spectres form themselves from memories, from pain of loss and grief. Beyond the membrane of the present these spectres live in past and future worlds, waiting for our souls to meet their own and merge. In some futures the collective psyche will rise up and demand sacrifice, in others it will be voted into power.
All human transactions are a recognition of these older and deeper contracts. All births, all lives, all deaths are conjoined in a great spiritual union, an ancestral passing down of manners, genes and culture, all in the shadow of the daily round. Every exchange a life for a death; we bargain for our lives and leave our goods in wills, designed to make the last transaction and to raise the status of our children, who can now be us, now we are gone. To the living, we gift the possessions of the dead. The gift of life is echoed in our daily contract with each other, a binding compact with our selflessness. In capital exchange we get confused and objects become like people, an anthropomorphism too far, a bloody conversion that strips humanity to its base material.
The dues we owe our ancestors have been sold on to Global debt purchasers, what was our inheritance is now a foreign liability, a symptom of a critical condition.
Marx has taken hold of the dog by its collar. He contemplates the ethics of the situation, should he let the dog free and remove the collar or should he leave it on? He is very aware that in this place feral and wild animals are shot on sight.
Time will stand witness to all mortal judgements. The Enlightenment project itself will at some time have to stand naked before the measure of its measures. Serious questions will be asked of a movement that prided itself on logic only to founder on desire.
A spirit guide is vital if you are to visit the underworld, special trips can be organised by our agent, tours can be taken through vaults and caves beneath the ground and a ferry is always on standby to take those interested over to the other side.
A dark reflection of the day exists far beneath the ground; a dog laps at still waters, ripples breaking up its reflection as the lapping continues and oscillations spread across the underground lake.
Q) Take the Christian out of the Marxist and what have you got?
A) A confederation of pagans.
The spirit world is not a fiction. Every human being experiences its reality. When the mother walks out of the room the baby cries as it seeks to keep her image present, and in that moment the first ghosts are born, the ghosts of disappearance. In death the spectres form themselves from memories, from pain of loss and grief. Beyond the membrane of the present these spectres live in past and future worlds, waiting for our souls to meet their own and merge. In some futures the collective psyche will rise up and demand sacrifice, in others it will be voted into power.
All human transactions are a recognition of these older and deeper contracts. All births, all lives, all deaths are conjoined in a great spiritual union, an ancestral passing down of manners, genes and culture, all in the shadow of the daily round. Every exchange a life for a death; we bargain for our lives and leave our goods in wills, designed to make the last transaction and to raise the status of our children, who can now be us, now we are gone. To the living, we gift the possessions of the dead. The gift of life is echoed in our daily contract with each other, a binding compact with our selflessness. In capital exchange we get confused and objects become like people, an anthropomorphism too far, a bloody conversion that strips humanity to its base material.
The dues we owe our ancestors have been sold on to Global debt purchasers, what was our inheritance is now a foreign liability, a symptom of a critical condition.
Marx has taken hold of the dog by its collar. He contemplates the ethics of the situation, should he let the dog free and remove the collar or should he leave it on? He is very aware that in this place feral and wild animals are shot on sight.
Friday 11 February 2011
Reflections on reading Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx (15)
The fifteenth night
A dog is standing on the arm of a huge balance which tips and tilts; first one way then another, as the dog adjusts its position above the pivot. It appears that the dog is preparing to jump to a place of safety. These scales weigh all state capital in balance with the totality of foreign debt. Far below lays the pit of human suffering, the scale of which is monstrous.
The dog looks down, a slow steady stream of saliva drips from its mouth; it is worried and howls for its master, but Marx is inside the bank looking for the dog’s lead. He is sure he had it locked away in a safe deposit box, but which one? He’s not sure. He decides to work out the box number through a complex system of numerology. With a white chalk stick he starts to write equations on a blackboard. Complex algebraic formula are becoming linked by directional arrows, brackets now containing words as well as numbers, the top half of the blackboard is now covered in complex white scrawl and out of this two lines emerge, one to the right and one to the left. He draws a circle at the end of each line, inside of the left one he writes, (1) and inside of the right one he writes (2). Beneath these two numbers he writes the word INTERPRETATION in capitals. From just beneath the T that sits between the N and the E he draws a line downwards angled towards the left and this time draws a rectangular box opening out from the line’s base. He starts to write within the box. Hypothesis 1. All measures are gaps between reality and ideas. Reality can compromise value, which in itself can only be measured by belief. Therefore the length of the lead is determined by the following:
Marx now draws a line downwards and sloping to the right from beneath the letter I that sits between the letters T and O. He draws another rectangular box and begins to write. Hypothesis 2. All measures of facts are questionable. The ideal is a fixed point. An economic analysis would therefore be determined by principles of inheritance. Therefore the length of the lead is determined by a Diophantine equation.
Marx stops, he is getting out of his depth, but whilst working this through he has intuited the whereabouts of the lead and now sets off to find it.
A dog is standing on the arm of a huge balance which tips and tilts; first one way then another, as the dog adjusts its position above the pivot. It appears that the dog is preparing to jump to a place of safety. These scales weigh all state capital in balance with the totality of foreign debt. Far below lays the pit of human suffering, the scale of which is monstrous.
The dog looks down, a slow steady stream of saliva drips from its mouth; it is worried and howls for its master, but Marx is inside the bank looking for the dog’s lead. He is sure he had it locked away in a safe deposit box, but which one? He’s not sure. He decides to work out the box number through a complex system of numerology. With a white chalk stick he starts to write equations on a blackboard. Complex algebraic formula are becoming linked by directional arrows, brackets now containing words as well as numbers, the top half of the blackboard is now covered in complex white scrawl and out of this two lines emerge, one to the right and one to the left. He draws a circle at the end of each line, inside of the left one he writes, (1) and inside of the right one he writes (2). Beneath these two numbers he writes the word INTERPRETATION in capitals. From just beneath the T that sits between the N and the E he draws a line downwards angled towards the left and this time draws a rectangular box opening out from the line’s base. He starts to write within the box. Hypothesis 1. All measures are gaps between reality and ideas. Reality can compromise value, which in itself can only be measured by belief. Therefore the length of the lead is determined by the following:
Marx now draws a line downwards and sloping to the right from beneath the letter I that sits between the letters T and O. He draws another rectangular box and begins to write. Hypothesis 2. All measures of facts are questionable. The ideal is a fixed point. An economic analysis would therefore be determined by principles of inheritance. Therefore the length of the lead is determined by a Diophantine equation.
Marx stops, he is getting out of his depth, but whilst working this through he has intuited the whereabouts of the lead and now sets off to find it.
Thursday 10 February 2011
Reflections on reading Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx (14)
The fourteenth night
A dog is licking salt from the side of a disused rusty caldron.
1) Hubble bubble, toil and trouble become leisure activities, topsy-turvy labour now renewed as rest; a state-of-the-art harmony achieved by application to the first law of motion. A DO NOT DISTURB notice hangs on the doorknob of the poor room. A poverty of the stomach is not stomached any more.
2) Homeless exiles camp on the frontiers of identity, its liquid boundary formed by the river of death; a deep flow that has no crossing except by those who have taken up the cross.
3) The sweet sweat shops of Global cooperation collect their workers’ cloying perspiration in glass jars. The lids are sealed, labels applied and batches numbered as they’re stacked by dirt cheap peace rate workers.
4) Just wars are rarely about justice. Corporate desire becomes state intervention when the breasts run dry.
5) Neither a burrower nor a lender be, or the aftermath will crush you down. In the last war the underground was defeated in the tunnels of capital and now the managers are ruling.
6) Arms and art articulate an artificial arthropod in armour.
7) The property developers are now armed with neutron bombs, they prefer structural integrity to home ownership.
8) Tribal drums echo through our history, their drummers the ghosts of nationalism, now drifting dangerously through the warped space of divided territories.
9) The phantom of capital, a purple suited masked man, is fighting with drug barons and the mafia, but even he cannot prevent the invasion of the body snatchers.
10) World laws are based on property or rights. If one the possessor is protected, if the other civilization is conserved. Global codes reflect historical power and it is no surprise that Anglo-Saxon driven edicts ensure the Englishman’s home is enshrined in laws that house the rich and oust the poor. A democratic fascism of rights.
A dog is licking salt from the side of a disused rusty caldron.
1) Hubble bubble, toil and trouble become leisure activities, topsy-turvy labour now renewed as rest; a state-of-the-art harmony achieved by application to the first law of motion. A DO NOT DISTURB notice hangs on the doorknob of the poor room. A poverty of the stomach is not stomached any more.
2) Homeless exiles camp on the frontiers of identity, its liquid boundary formed by the river of death; a deep flow that has no crossing except by those who have taken up the cross.
3) The sweet sweat shops of Global cooperation collect their workers’ cloying perspiration in glass jars. The lids are sealed, labels applied and batches numbered as they’re stacked by dirt cheap peace rate workers.
4) Just wars are rarely about justice. Corporate desire becomes state intervention when the breasts run dry.
5) Neither a burrower nor a lender be, or the aftermath will crush you down. In the last war the underground was defeated in the tunnels of capital and now the managers are ruling.
6) Arms and art articulate an artificial arthropod in armour.
7) The property developers are now armed with neutron bombs, they prefer structural integrity to home ownership.
8) Tribal drums echo through our history, their drummers the ghosts of nationalism, now drifting dangerously through the warped space of divided territories.
9) The phantom of capital, a purple suited masked man, is fighting with drug barons and the mafia, but even he cannot prevent the invasion of the body snatchers.
10) World laws are based on property or rights. If one the possessor is protected, if the other civilization is conserved. Global codes reflect historical power and it is no surprise that Anglo-Saxon driven edicts ensure the Englishman’s home is enshrined in laws that house the rich and oust the poor. A democratic fascism of rights.
Wednesday 9 February 2011
Reflections on reading Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx (13)
The thirteenth night
Wears and Tears
(Tableau of an ageless world)
We took our measure in yards, feet and inches, cubits, acres, pounds and ounces. Embodied gauges now lost in decimal and binary numerology, non human constants without a mortal history. The angle of perceived pain now fixed and yet upset within its jelly of acceleration, its taste of raspberry, with a touch of lemon, the zest for all tomorrow’s parties. This is a mocking of the life (27), but when we touch, we know what’s right and true. Embodied skills are delicate and flower only briefly, but when they do, they teach us all to live and not to think.
Only painters know of paint, its slithering creep, its tints, its stains, the viscosity of oils and the brush’s touch. Painters do not speak; they see and fear the dark. They abhor the black; it’s not a colour in their eyes, it is an absence, a vacuum for colliding particles.
There are other vacuums, hidden in dark spaces far beneath the earth, where huge artificial lakes of inert water, distil their essence into electronic dreams of quark; the freezing of collisions within the holographic moment of becoming both positive and negative (28), coexisting outside concepts of ethics or morality.
Who will give this disquisition? Who will white the blackboard’s possibilities? Only a Deva (29) of the working class, only the one who has achieved the state of imperturbable thoughtlessness, is of sufficient elevation to deliver this lecture.
The sirens’ song is best listened to when you are tied to the mast, if not you could be impaled on your own beliefs, like a hedgehog that turns itself inside out to escape its own fleas.
A dog scratches itself with its left hind leg. It is oblivious to anything else.
27 Shakespeare: Timon of Athens Act 1 Scene 1
Painter
It is a pretty mocking of the life. Here is a touch; is't good?
Poet
I will say of it, It tutors nature: artificial strife. Lives in these touches, livelier than life.
28 Properties of antiparticles
Quantum states of a particle and an antiparticle can be interchanged by applying the charge conjugation (C), parity (P), and time reversal (T) operators. If | p, σ, n› denotes the quantum state of a particle (n) with momentum p, spin j whose component in the z-direction is σ, then one has
CPT | p, σ, n› = (- 1) j- σ | p, - σ, nc ›,
where nc denotes the charge conjugate state, i.e., the antiparticle. This behavior under CPT is the same as the statement that the particle and its antiparticle lie in the same irreducible representation of the Poincare group.
29 In Buddhist teachings rebirth takes place within one of six realms, these realms are further subdivided into 31 planes of existence:
1. Naraka beings: those who live in one of many Narakas (Hells)
2. Preta: sometimes sharing some space with humans, but invisible to most people; an important variety is the hungry ghost
3. Animals: sharing space with humans, but considered another type of life
4. Human beings: one of the realms of rebirth in which attaining Nirvana is possible
5. Asuras: variously translated as lowly deities, demons, titans, antigods; not recognized by Theravāda (Mahavihara) tradition as a separate realm
6. Devas including Brahmas: variously translated as gods, deities, spirits, angels
7. Rebirths in some of the higher heavens, known as the Śuddhāvāsa Worlds (Pure Abodes), can be attained only by skilled Buddhist practitioners known as anāgāmis (non-returners). Rebirths in the arupa-dhatu (formless realms) can be attained only by those who can meditate on the arūpajhānas, the highest object of meditation.
According to East Asian and Tibetan Buddhism, there is an intermediate state (Tibetan "Bardo") between one life and the next.
Wears and Tears
(Tableau of an ageless world)
We took our measure in yards, feet and inches, cubits, acres, pounds and ounces. Embodied gauges now lost in decimal and binary numerology, non human constants without a mortal history. The angle of perceived pain now fixed and yet upset within its jelly of acceleration, its taste of raspberry, with a touch of lemon, the zest for all tomorrow’s parties. This is a mocking of the life (27), but when we touch, we know what’s right and true. Embodied skills are delicate and flower only briefly, but when they do, they teach us all to live and not to think.
Only painters know of paint, its slithering creep, its tints, its stains, the viscosity of oils and the brush’s touch. Painters do not speak; they see and fear the dark. They abhor the black; it’s not a colour in their eyes, it is an absence, a vacuum for colliding particles.
There are other vacuums, hidden in dark spaces far beneath the earth, where huge artificial lakes of inert water, distil their essence into electronic dreams of quark; the freezing of collisions within the holographic moment of becoming both positive and negative (28), coexisting outside concepts of ethics or morality.
Who will give this disquisition? Who will white the blackboard’s possibilities? Only a Deva (29) of the working class, only the one who has achieved the state of imperturbable thoughtlessness, is of sufficient elevation to deliver this lecture.
The sirens’ song is best listened to when you are tied to the mast, if not you could be impaled on your own beliefs, like a hedgehog that turns itself inside out to escape its own fleas.
A dog scratches itself with its left hind leg. It is oblivious to anything else.
27 Shakespeare: Timon of Athens Act 1 Scene 1
Painter
It is a pretty mocking of the life. Here is a touch; is't good?
Poet
I will say of it, It tutors nature: artificial strife. Lives in these touches, livelier than life.
28 Properties of antiparticles
Quantum states of a particle and an antiparticle can be interchanged by applying the charge conjugation (C), parity (P), and time reversal (T) operators. If | p, σ, n› denotes the quantum state of a particle (n) with momentum p, spin j whose component in the z-direction is σ, then one has
CPT | p, σ, n› = (- 1) j- σ | p, - σ, nc ›,
where nc denotes the charge conjugate state, i.e., the antiparticle. This behavior under CPT is the same as the statement that the particle and its antiparticle lie in the same irreducible representation of the Poincare group.
29 In Buddhist teachings rebirth takes place within one of six realms, these realms are further subdivided into 31 planes of existence:
1. Naraka beings: those who live in one of many Narakas (Hells)
2. Preta: sometimes sharing some space with humans, but invisible to most people; an important variety is the hungry ghost
3. Animals: sharing space with humans, but considered another type of life
4. Human beings: one of the realms of rebirth in which attaining Nirvana is possible
5. Asuras: variously translated as lowly deities, demons, titans, antigods; not recognized by Theravāda (Mahavihara) tradition as a separate realm
6. Devas including Brahmas: variously translated as gods, deities, spirits, angels
7. Rebirths in some of the higher heavens, known as the Śuddhāvāsa Worlds (Pure Abodes), can be attained only by skilled Buddhist practitioners known as anāgāmis (non-returners). Rebirths in the arupa-dhatu (formless realms) can be attained only by those who can meditate on the arūpajhānas, the highest object of meditation.
According to East Asian and Tibetan Buddhism, there is an intermediate state (Tibetan "Bardo") between one life and the next.
Saturday 5 February 2011
Reflections on reading Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx (12)
The twelfth night
History’s most important events are hidden, prediction is therefore hubris and there can be no promises of a future, only the comforting lies of astrology.
If only we could see or touch or hear those hidden moments lost in between the cracks among masses of the world. Those tiny, insignificant instants that will in time unfurl to become our futures, futures not compelled by messianic greed but gently nudged into being by Billy No Mates or Jane, the third forgotten child of forgotten folks. From such unrecorded butterflies are futures made. (22)
While the powerful write their names into their history books, the people make the future. Our tribe’s true labour, to bear the future present and to cultivate its fruit, to carry on regardless (23) to go on and to go on, (24) without hope, without promises, with no nostalgia for the past. We need no written histories, no monuments or shrines or statues; our time is the moment of our coming.
A new pantheon of allotment keepers and care assistants will one day replace the tottering temples of celebrities and media politicians, refurbished rag and bone carts reappearing on our streets to carry off the trash.
The media responds in kind, commissioning Knackered of the Yard to replace Wilfrid Bramble from a 1970s episode of Steptoe and Son; he will star in a 3D CGI enhanced episode specially created to celebrate the election of another democratic government. Albert’s son Harold, a Labour voter is to be played by Brad Pitt, the Joanna Lumley character by Angelina Jolie. (25) This government has a policy of taking refuge in the past believing nostalgia will validate its future.
The gardener is speaking to his local politician. “If you remove my skin, I will dissolve into you”.
The second law of thermodynamics (26) reasserts its primacy over the activities of life. Disorder is now the norm.
The dog is pissing on a book, it moves on, wets the leg of a table, moves on, now pees against the wall, moves on. The dog treats all things equally, his prick his deconstructive tool.
22 The butterfly effect is a metaphor for the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in chaos theory; a small change at one place in a complex system can eventually lead to large-scale changes elsewhere.
23 Thomas, G (1961) Carry on Regardless: An Anglo-Amalgamated film starring Sid James, Kenneth Connor, Charles Hawtrey, Joan Sims and Kenneth Williams A comedy of the British working class.
24 The last two lines of Samuel Beckett’s (1958) The Unnameable: Published by Grove Press are: “I can't go on”. “I'll go on”.
25 Galton and Simpson (1972) Steptoe and Son: Loathe Story: BBC TV Starring Wilfrid Brambell and Harry H. Corbett
26 Entropy is the subject of the second law of thermodynamics, the second law has been called a 'law of disorder'.
History’s most important events are hidden, prediction is therefore hubris and there can be no promises of a future, only the comforting lies of astrology.
If only we could see or touch or hear those hidden moments lost in between the cracks among masses of the world. Those tiny, insignificant instants that will in time unfurl to become our futures, futures not compelled by messianic greed but gently nudged into being by Billy No Mates or Jane, the third forgotten child of forgotten folks. From such unrecorded butterflies are futures made. (22)
While the powerful write their names into their history books, the people make the future. Our tribe’s true labour, to bear the future present and to cultivate its fruit, to carry on regardless (23) to go on and to go on, (24) without hope, without promises, with no nostalgia for the past. We need no written histories, no monuments or shrines or statues; our time is the moment of our coming.
A new pantheon of allotment keepers and care assistants will one day replace the tottering temples of celebrities and media politicians, refurbished rag and bone carts reappearing on our streets to carry off the trash.
The media responds in kind, commissioning Knackered of the Yard to replace Wilfrid Bramble from a 1970s episode of Steptoe and Son; he will star in a 3D CGI enhanced episode specially created to celebrate the election of another democratic government. Albert’s son Harold, a Labour voter is to be played by Brad Pitt, the Joanna Lumley character by Angelina Jolie. (25) This government has a policy of taking refuge in the past believing nostalgia will validate its future.
The gardener is speaking to his local politician. “If you remove my skin, I will dissolve into you”.
The second law of thermodynamics (26) reasserts its primacy over the activities of life. Disorder is now the norm.
The dog is pissing on a book, it moves on, wets the leg of a table, moves on, now pees against the wall, moves on. The dog treats all things equally, his prick his deconstructive tool.
22 The butterfly effect is a metaphor for the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in chaos theory; a small change at one place in a complex system can eventually lead to large-scale changes elsewhere.
23 Thomas, G (1961) Carry on Regardless: An Anglo-Amalgamated film starring Sid James, Kenneth Connor, Charles Hawtrey, Joan Sims and Kenneth Williams A comedy of the British working class.
24 The last two lines of Samuel Beckett’s (1958) The Unnameable: Published by Grove Press are: “I can't go on”. “I'll go on”.
25 Galton and Simpson (1972) Steptoe and Son: Loathe Story: BBC TV Starring Wilfrid Brambell and Harry H. Corbett
26 Entropy is the subject of the second law of thermodynamics, the second law has been called a 'law of disorder'.
Thursday 3 February 2011
Reflections on reading Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx (11)
The eleventh night
We live in the future present, waiting for the Molotov cocktail of fanaticism to explode, a bomb fuelled with our liberal democratic lies.
Western powers subvert their own and others’ ethics, declaring war on all alterity.
A Papal Bull is issued, “The world ended on the ninth of November 1989”.
Three thousand six hundred miles away the Ark of the Covenant is unearthed beneath the sands of Israel by Arab diggers blind to its ancient hieroglyphic text. As the Ark is released from its tomb of dry sand it reconnects with swirling currents in the sky and lightening is drawn down, striking its golden form in flash after flash of forking brilliance. The Ark slowly fuses and liquid gold seeps back into the sand releasing a toxic cloud of gas that is lethal to all who contact it.
Some think these events are a sign from God, others a meteorological anomaly.
Waiting for the coming of the Messiah is eventually boring. He never comes, He never calls, He never leaves a message; His promise of Democracy a fading commitment, His promise of Communism now a broken compact.
Promises, promises, we build our lives on promises. We promise to pay the bearer on demand, five pounds, ten pounds, twenty pounds, fifty pounds, whatever is avowed by false notes of promise crumpled in our pockets, folded in our wallets and pressed close to our hearts.
The Evil One is evermore the banker, always the bearer of that promise of false gold.
The dog is still looking for its master.
We live in the future present, waiting for the Molotov cocktail of fanaticism to explode, a bomb fuelled with our liberal democratic lies.
Western powers subvert their own and others’ ethics, declaring war on all alterity.
A Papal Bull is issued, “The world ended on the ninth of November 1989”.
Three thousand six hundred miles away the Ark of the Covenant is unearthed beneath the sands of Israel by Arab diggers blind to its ancient hieroglyphic text. As the Ark is released from its tomb of dry sand it reconnects with swirling currents in the sky and lightening is drawn down, striking its golden form in flash after flash of forking brilliance. The Ark slowly fuses and liquid gold seeps back into the sand releasing a toxic cloud of gas that is lethal to all who contact it.
Some think these events are a sign from God, others a meteorological anomaly.
Waiting for the coming of the Messiah is eventually boring. He never comes, He never calls, He never leaves a message; His promise of Democracy a fading commitment, His promise of Communism now a broken compact.
Promises, promises, we build our lives on promises. We promise to pay the bearer on demand, five pounds, ten pounds, twenty pounds, fifty pounds, whatever is avowed by false notes of promise crumpled in our pockets, folded in our wallets and pressed close to our hearts.
The Evil One is evermore the banker, always the bearer of that promise of false gold.
The dog is still looking for its master.
Tuesday 1 February 2011
Reflections on reading Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx (10)
The tenth night
The hegemony of the ruling class is a triumph of the echo over the cries of the masses. Spectres haunt the Valley of Reverberation waiting to vent their anger through the dying words of the body politic. They wait for the man who would give them back their voices.
The First and Last Man conjoin; they are the rank and file of humanity. The alpha and omega of the long pig, a thin line that is now finite.
Scene 1. A balcony overlooking Saint Peter’s Square in Rome
The First and Last Men are in conversation:
The Last Man
History is ending
The First Man
Is this my legacy? I thought we would evolve.
The Last Man
History is ending
The First Man
Not with a bang then or a whisper, a rubbed out drawing, a simple change of plan.
The Last Man
History is ending
The First Man
Sit down awhile;
And let me once again assail your ears,
That are so fortified against our story
What we have through the generations seen.
The Last man
I am a Christian warrior.
The First man
To the inheritance of Hegel,
Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same covenant,
And carriage of the article design'd,
His fell to Marx.
The Last man
My principles rest on pillars of truth.
The First man
Nothing is funnier than a principled man.
The First man looks down into the square below. He then turns and stares at the balcony opposite. The windows to this balcony are closed and it is impossible to see what is going on behind them. He then turns goes out, and comes back immediately with a small footstool, carries it over to the balcony ledge and sets it down. He gets up onto the balcony ledge and then stands on the precariously positioned footstool. He gazes out towards the other balcony, it is impossible to read his expression. He then gets down, takes six steps towards the right of the balcony, reverses and comes back for the footstool, carries it over to the right side of the balcony and sets it down onto the balcony ledge, gets up onto the ledge and again stands on the footstool, he stares out and down into the square. He gets down, takes three steps towards the back of the balcony, goes back for footstool, carries it over and sets it down on the left-hand side of the balcony, gets up on it, looks out towards the closed windows of the opposite balcony again.
Brief laugh.
He repeats the above actions.
Brief Laugh.
Dressed in a dressing-gown, a hood pulled up over his head, a large blood-stained handkerchief tied over his knee, a North American Indian charm hanging from his neck, thick grey socks and sandals on his feet; the Last Man seems to be asleep. The First Man looks him over.
Brief laugh.
The first man goes to exit through the balcony door, halts, turns towards audience.
Laughs loud and long.
End of Scene 1
The hegemony of the ruling class is a triumph of the echo over the cries of the masses. Spectres haunt the Valley of Reverberation waiting to vent their anger through the dying words of the body politic. They wait for the man who would give them back their voices.
The First and Last Man conjoin; they are the rank and file of humanity. The alpha and omega of the long pig, a thin line that is now finite.
Scene 1. A balcony overlooking Saint Peter’s Square in Rome
The First and Last Men are in conversation:
The Last Man
History is ending
The First Man
Is this my legacy? I thought we would evolve.
The Last Man
History is ending
The First Man
Not with a bang then or a whisper, a rubbed out drawing, a simple change of plan.
The Last Man
History is ending
The First Man
Sit down awhile;
And let me once again assail your ears,
That are so fortified against our story
What we have through the generations seen.
The Last man
I am a Christian warrior.
The First man
To the inheritance of Hegel,
Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same covenant,
And carriage of the article design'd,
His fell to Marx.
The Last man
My principles rest on pillars of truth.
The First man
Nothing is funnier than a principled man.
The First man looks down into the square below. He then turns and stares at the balcony opposite. The windows to this balcony are closed and it is impossible to see what is going on behind them. He then turns goes out, and comes back immediately with a small footstool, carries it over to the balcony ledge and sets it down. He gets up onto the balcony ledge and then stands on the precariously positioned footstool. He gazes out towards the other balcony, it is impossible to read his expression. He then gets down, takes six steps towards the right of the balcony, reverses and comes back for the footstool, carries it over to the right side of the balcony and sets it down onto the balcony ledge, gets up onto the ledge and again stands on the footstool, he stares out and down into the square. He gets down, takes three steps towards the back of the balcony, goes back for footstool, carries it over and sets it down on the left-hand side of the balcony, gets up on it, looks out towards the closed windows of the opposite balcony again.
Brief laugh.
He repeats the above actions.
Brief Laugh.
Dressed in a dressing-gown, a hood pulled up over his head, a large blood-stained handkerchief tied over his knee, a North American Indian charm hanging from his neck, thick grey socks and sandals on his feet; the Last Man seems to be asleep. The First Man looks him over.
Brief laugh.
The first man goes to exit through the balcony door, halts, turns towards audience.
Laughs loud and long.
End of Scene 1
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