For the person in abject and insufferable pain, pain becomes the universe;
thinking through pain otherwise, as in these writings, is thinking through
the entire universe itself in terms of suffering. We assume that in
general when one 'does' philosophy or science, one speaks from a position
of neutrality and/or health, that a degree of detachment from the body is
intrinsic. But one might just as well speak from a position of depression
or pain or hysteria, and different cosmologies, of the body especially,
emerge. Just as cosmology describes at its asymptote the whole of the
cosmos, so abject pain describes in a similar position the whole/hole of
the body; there's nothing else. For humans, death, dying, and the universe
are entangled; Wittgenstein's drawing of the eye interconnects with all
cessation of being. In cosmology as well there is constant speculation on
the heat death of the planet, the cold simmering out death of the
universe, the ending of all life; all of these are interrelated, and
birth/life/death histories of the cosmos parallel birth/life/death
histories of species. We somehow believe as well that our body is ours,
and our universe is ours; we know no others, but speculate on the Other in
existentialism (among other domains) and multiverse; everything is both
unreachable and apparently reachable, embraceable. And in both, at the
heart of the psychology and physiology of bodies and worlds, there are
unutterable fears and drives. -
- Alan
On Sun, 7 Oct 2012, Monika Weiss wrote:
These are very beautiful summaries of your meditations--reinscriptions,
thank you Alan and Sandy.
Pain as socially visible and already historical from the point of view of
others, yet unnamable and meaningless within ourselves. Loss of the ability
to signify, to mean, is a shared attribute of pain and mourning. Pain as
embodied union of mind and body, in their indiscernible embrace (when it
hurts it hurts throughout) --- and mourning as an act, a response to the
loss of meaning, to the loss of, breaking of, falling of a part of one self,
the entire self breaking, so that it no longer is capable to comprehend
itself.
Could you expand on the "pain's relationship to the body as cosmology to the
universe"....
Monika Weiss
On Oct 6, 2012, at 11:12 PM, Charles Baldwin wrote:
Here's the final part of the dialog (in fact, the notes below
are largely by Alan). Again, these emerge from the
kernel/core/chora of the discussion of mourning and grief.
110812_004: Pain as separating inscription/history from the
inertness of the body; what's read as history from the outside
(and thereby entering the social), from the inside is
unread/unreadable. The inside is pure substance.
110812_005: Inscription carries, until burial, carries a
specific relationship to the body until burial. Burial is a form
of reinscription. A line on the body - how is this interpreted
during life? during death?
110812_012: Inscription => embodiment and maintenance;
maintenance => retardation: what makes for example virtual
particles last as long as they do? Retardation - slowing things
down, copying, duplicating, a poetics of dispersion,
holding-back. See the phenomenology of numbers: data-base,
interpretation, intentionality, an immersive situation, memory.
In doing mathematics, always dealing with temporal processes. In
pain: everything drops away, definable and immersive situations
cease to exist.
110812_014: Splintering, splintered nails, leveraging of
particles, striations, applicable to notions of binding,
constriction, discomfort.
110816_002: Pain of the signifiera: signifier as incision,
disturbance, splits between the Pale and beyond the Pale. Pain
beyond the Pale? The pain of death: horizon foreclosing its
origin and the subject as well.
110816_003: The work I do as obdurate, not grid or mapping, but
flows that are not channelized, flows that are mute - relation
to pain. The phenomenology of the embodiment of the signifier is
also mute. What I do is planless, expands into available
technology on a practical level, produces and reproduces that
way.
110816_006: My Textbook of Thinking: components of inscription:
linkage, syntactical structure, inscription is an ordering of
difference, impulse, representation-structure, legitimation
structure, maintenance, stabilization mechanisms,
positive/negative feedback, field of abjection. Excessive
related to corrosion. Difference between fissure and
inscription. Relationship of corrosion and scarcity to pain.
110816_007: Phenomenology of eccentric space, Sarduy,
de-centering the subject, tied to abjection.
110816_008: Difference between fissure and inscription; pain
tends towards fissure; if fissure is same and same, there's no
geography, no topography, no topology; the result is the crack /
wound, everywhere and nowhere.
110818_001: Pain relates to the body as cosmology to the
universe. (?)
110819_001: Pain in relation to virtual worlds: in
circumlocution of the subject who may remain impervious, the
degree zero of phenomenology.
110821_001: What happens when users exchange their avatars? Our
histories, inventories, are no longer our own.
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