sprogblues

Mit sprog er min verdens grænse
Så vores sprog er vores verdens grænse
Vi sætter selv grænsen med udsigelsen
Og det usagte er et signal om en indsigelse

En oplevelse af tomrum mangler sit ord
Og det kan kun vokse op til netop dette ord
Der findes tomrum bag grænsen til udfyldelse
Og hele historien der væves går i opfyldelse

en frivillig morgen

Vi er tidsrejsende i et indre univers.
Det er det rige vi bygger, i vores eget element.
Indenfor boblen består kun vor tid.
Her strækker dig og ordene sig dybt og højt, som rødder og træer.
Udenfor daler blade gennem efterårsluft.
Deres sidste hvilested bestemt af tyngden - nødvendighed.
I boblen er hvilestedet allerede nået - frihed.
Det bekendte kan endog stadig være uerkendt.
Men læberne der bæver, af-slører en sandhed - ufrivilligt.
Og de blødeste bakker må bestige sig selv - frivilligt.
Jeget og selvet: samlet som vi'et, er det uden for tiden.

en ufrivillig morgen

Morgenen har antrukken en kølig stilhed som var den et maleri af min tankes ufrivillige stilstand.
Det er meningen jeg skal løbe, så jeg sætter én fod foran den anden, det er sådan man løber. Men for hvert skridt jeg tager taber jeg mig selv og mit tilstedevær til de tilbagelagte kilometer. Hun siger, at det er okay jeg løber forrest, men det er svært når jeg allerede er væltet bagerst fra starten. Hvis dit jeg er kloden der drejer roligt og med sikkerhed om sin egen akse, er det dog muligt af og til at rejse så langt ud af tyngdefeltet, at du når at se dit jeg bevæges meget længere end dit selv i virkeligheden er nået. Forestil dig 2 håndfulde strandsand, taget tilsammen er de udtryk for det samme: strandsand. Men i den ene håndfuld taget for sig aner du alle de forskelle som sammenligningen skjuler. Måske er det også sådan i jegets ufrivillige bevægelse: i sammenligningen forsvinder det særegne ved selvet og det tvinges til at acceptere jeget som hele sit udtryk og måske kan jeget kun finde sit selv når de løber ved siden af hinanden.

the fullness of experience

My gaze is on Saussure and the object of linguistics
but a mellow stream of vaporized Kenya caresses my cheeks
and I reawaken in the memory of your warm head on my chest:
You can take a shower here if you want, you can stay if you'd like.
The bedsheets are a labyrinth and our bodies are entangled
in the darkness soon to be illuminated by the rising reality;
our fingers glide across the cobblestoned walls of a dream
as we roam free and laugh in this disguised shadowland.
At the cusp of my memory bursting I catch a glimpse
of a hesitant surrender to this slightest possibility
and whatever there is to find in this chasmic world,
it must build across and deliver the fullness of experience.

overgivelse

Over-givelsens betingelse er det umiddelbare tilstedevær af en gabende afgrund, af et intet, hvori man skal turde at styrte, hvori man må styrte; modet, menneskets radikale åbenhed, betinger dette vovestykke. Når du drager modet er du allerede styrtet og her, "over det givne", finder du først fast grund.

reality-story-truth

I'm floating in and out of reality as the sprouting story of us unfolds; seemingly writing itself out of tune with decision and deliberation I enjoy the pleasant, smooth sailing pace. Will our story connect with reality? Honesty is the midwife of truth, but I rest and hide in fairy-like hair, intoxicated by your scent, 'till it reigns o'er us.

The Search for a Method part 2:

Before we pick up from where we left off, let’s briefly run through a couple of critical remarks on Sartre’s trajectory and the outline of his theory and method. He holds that we need not adapt philosophy to the course of the world—it adapts itself—if so, does this not run counter to his dialectical sensibility in the seeming contradiction between concrete materiality and reflection? Ie. is there not missing from this adaptation what can be called “the converse movement” of concrete materiality adapting to philosophy (this seems to gain further impetus by Sartre’s “relocation” of knowing to the real world)? Or will he grant the locus of the operation to a “given world of facts”? Perhaps it is in the already totalised knowledge, the unity-become-passive, that we see “the world” or “the horizon” to which philosophy subsequently adapts (if so what about the given world of facts?), but then in contradistinction we must see this world in its relation to an active, totalizing effort of philosophy itself, so that the world as totalised knowledge is mediated by something not yet totalised, but essentially totalizing. In both instances we end up paradoxically with the problem of where and whence the content of the world cometh—never mind the movement itself. We seem to be far from a synthesis of concrete materiality and reflection (although we must grant that Sartre’s real investigation has not yet begun, and being dialectical in nature it only appears when “working the matter out”).

In other words, all the work is still ahead of us; the method, its constitution etc. Situating historical events by way of some already established material conditions for their existence, is deemed by Sartre, a priori. It is precisely these conditions in their whole conceptual movement and truth that we wish to investigate. Then there is the business of subsuming other philosophical movements in the total development of which Marxism, we understand, is the avant-garde. Here Sartre directs an attack on those Marxists, for whom the dialectic from Brentano to Husserl to Heidegger is brushed off as mere “epiphenomenon”: this criticism applies equally today in my opinion where people of that ilk have simply not read the texts of the respective authors. Moreover this schematizing of particular instances to a predetermined universal is carried over into real history; we see for example in the analyses of Guerin a perverse vulgarization of differences between the “intellectual petite bourgeoisie” and age-honed shipowners and merchants (in this domain there exists an interesting dialectic between the “aroused” and the “imparted” reminiscent of Max Stirner—Sartre must have read The Ego and His Own). We are thus warned not to treat “signification” as “intention”; we must be careful in grasping all the evidence of a totalisation if our objective is to capture the real (effectively noise and randomness is introduced into history). An example of this important difference is manifest in the actor performing for example Hamlet: when he crosses the scene he is immersed in the play but also in earning a living—these modes of being even inform and interpenetrate each other. His acting out of Hamlet mediates his knowledge of himself as actor just as the lines and scenes of the play are permeated by his reality (the intricacies of this relationship is precisely what is denied in the current aporicity of Marxist theory); the parable thus reintroduces the imaginary into the real as a point of reference for its interpretation of itself. Further, this makes clear how intention and signification can overlap establishing the possibility of bad faith (the use-mention distinction seems implicit as well). Marxism distorts this complex synthetic unity by introducing 2 concepts at the same time; that of teleology and that of unconscious knowledge. In combination they transform human reason into surface effects in a mechanistic system while simultaneously eschewing necessity to unforeseen results of human action (there is an important place for randomness, but it must be thought in conjunction with human knowing’s placement in the world). What is not apprehended in this “scintillation of ideas” is the dialectical interplay—the contradiction—that exists concretely in the particular situation we wish to investigate. This sort of formalization then amounts to suppression rather than an integration of real phenomena, thus it is a false totalisation. Under this schema it is impossible to see how superstructure has any influence on substructure; how the imaginary holds a place in reality and vice versa.

What we are dealing with is ultimately the intricate interplay of universal, particular and individual (we shall compare Sartre’s examination to Hegel’s in the Science of Logic later). Sartre is adamant that the ‘idea’ must be found in reality—though not as a ‘thing’—and never a priori; it has “historical depth” and “actual presence” as an “objective culture”. So we grasp everything a posteriori, even matters of relation to class and environment: we could say that for Sartre every “a priori” is materially mediated in some way.

A very important aspect of this displacement is the consequence it is has for the concrete individual, the particular life: for Engels and Marx the particular is born of chance, always subsumed under a somehow predetermined abstract universal movement—Fx. If Napoleon had not risen, someone else would have instead (cf. my remarks earlier on the scintillation of ideas). But this is really an arbitrary limitation of dialectical movement (one which has huge consequences for human freedom and choice) amounting to idealism. We must extend our investigation to how the universal is lived by the particular and the discipline enabling the study of this process today is psychoanalysis. This also amounts to a refusal of the dogmatism of presenting man only in his present determinations (compare Hegel: Who thinks abstractly?)—that is, analytically—and seeking instead to discover his whole history from childhood till now: ie. the moments of internalized externality.

A further example of “disguised idealism” is seen in a lot of modern sociology, where “the real movement of history” is hypostasized and posited positivistically as an already given totality: here the object is “ontologically autonomous” (autonomous meaning un-dialectical). Likewise the methodology is autonomous, describing only functions of the already given and ultimately, combining these 2 autonomies in a “reciprocal autonomy”, the experimenter and the experimental group are completely disengaged.

            It is easy to see that the kind of investigation Sartre promises us in the Critique is of a completely different nature than “un-situated”; “pre-given”; “objective”; “autonomous” etc. investigations, reality is much more dramatic. It is a lazy thinking that which does not work dialectically, a thinking that is satisfied with and complete in a severe reduction of reality. I think this suffices for an introduction to Sartre’s project and I will instead move on to the real text ending with this quote:

“We have just shown that dialectical materialism is reduced to its own skeleton if it does not integrate into itself certain Western disciplines; but this is only a negative demonstration. Our examples have revealed at the heart of this philosophy a lack of any concrete anthropology. But, without a movement, without a real effort at totalisation, the givens of sociology and of psychoanalysis will sleep side by side and will not be integrated into “knowledge.” The default of Marxism has led us to attempt this integration ourselves, with the means at our disposal; that is, by definite operations and according to principles which give to our ideology its unique character, principles which we are now going to set forth.”