Metic Hexis and Flusserian Flux

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Between Beckett and Bec :

The Mtic Hexis and Flusserian Flux of Vampyroteuthis Abductionis

Dan Mellamphy

Marshall McLuhans & Vilm Flussers Communication & Aesthetic Theories Revisited (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, forthcoming).

Appeler a des questions, des hypothses. [] Comment faire, comment vais je faire, que dois je faire, dans la situation o je suis, comment procder? Par pure aporie ou bien par affirmations et ngations infirmes au fur

et mesure, ou tt ou tard. [] remarquer, avant daller plus loin, de lavant, que je dis aporie sans savoir ce que a veut dire.

Samuel Beckett

Vilm Flussers treatise on the Vampyroteuthis Infernalis ends with a

report from LInstitut Scientifique de Louis Bec; this onethe present essay

begins with some support from LInnomable de Samuel Beckett; it begins by

aporia pure and simple (par pure

aporie).

1 I say aporia without knowing what

it means (its all Greek to me),2 the Greek words pros and aporia being wellnigh

untranslatable and even at times indistinguishable (mutually ungraspable und

unbegreiflich), as Sarah Kofman acknowledged in the section on Pros, son of

Mtis in her asyet untranslated Comment sen Sortir? 3 The fluidity (ein Fluss4)

of the Greek pros makes it as intractable and untenable as any aporia , and thus

an equally mticcrafty, cunning, wily and beguilingmechan or machination.

The Greek words mtis, pros and aporia weave together5

in[to ] a veritable enigma, which in Greek could be called an ainigma or griphos, the latter

being a word which also applies to a certain kind of fishing net;6 hence,

explains Kofman, an enigma is woven, like a basket or net; [] [its art or techn

is related to ] the arts of weaving and plaiting, to the most ancient techniques

and tricks which use the suppleness of vegetal matter and its capacity for

Mtic Hexis and Flusserian Flux(rough draft)

Dan Mellamphy [[page 1]]


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[fluid] torsion to make knots, ropes, meshes and nets so as to surprise, trap and

ensnare. 7 In Marcel Dtienne & JeanPierre Vernants 1974 study Les Ruses de

LIntelligence: La mtis des Grecs, the sourcebook of Kofmans Comment s en

Sortir? (and of the latter end of that lastquoted Kofmancomment), it is explained

that the octopus is renowned for its mtis:8 fluid, ungraspable, developing into

a thousand agile limbs, octopi are enigmatic creatures, [] pure aporias , and

the night that they secretea night without exitis a perfect emblem of their

mtis; in the depths of obscurity, [] the octopus alone is capable of tracing a

path, of opening a pros.9 Writing about this inky sepiasecretion, this perfect

emblem of mtic maneuvering, Flusser acknowledges that according to popular

opinion, octopi deploy this floating cloud of inkwhich they shape into their own

image10simply to mislead their enemies, but there is more to the story:11

Closer observation of the vampyroteuthiss relatives has revealed that the act of sculpting the sepiacloud has nothing to do with their enemies and that, beyond self portraits, they fabricate countless other forms that are [] exclusively intended to mislead their receiver. These nebulous manipulations are meant to deceive.12

By nature as well as by culture,13 according to Flusser, the vampyroteuthis

seeks to mislead14 (each gesture of vampyroteuthian creativity [] is synonymous

with deceit 15 or with what the Greeks of antiquity called dlos: dlos [signifying]

at once ruse, trap and magical bind,16 as Dtienne and Vernant state in their

study). All vampyroteuthian emissions are enigmas17 (ainigmata, griphoi),18 and

in this sense again the octopus and octopoid vampire squid are veritable masters

of mtis:19 the suboceanic equivalents of the super oceanic Odysseus polymtis.20

The human octopus and mtic man par excellence was the mythological Odysseus polymtis, whom Eustathius described by the very words he is an octopus!,

orparaphrasing Eustathius in an explicitly Flusserian modeOdysseus is a veri

table vampyroteuthis!21 But the octopus is not simply characteristic of a particu

lar type of human behaviour, Dtienne and Vernant point out; it is also the

model for a form of intelligence which was known amongst ancient Greeks




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as the polyplokon noma:22 a tentacular intelligence23 that, in a recent

essay,24 I positedvia Flusseras a pre post erously post digital (nevermind

post historical25) intelligence altogether exemplificative of globallyreticulated

A.I. The world that humans comprehend, wrote Flusser, is one that is grasped ,

handled and manipulated in accordance with, and through the literally digital

tenfingereddesign of, the human hand (the limbs of a bygone locomotive

organ which served to grasp the branches that we had originally held).26

The vampyroteuthis, on the contrary, takes hold of the world with [] tentacles surrounding its mouth , which originally served to direct streams of food toward the digestive tract. The world grasped by the vampyroteuthis is a fluid, centripetal whirlpool.

It takes hold of it in order to discern its flowing particularities. Its tentacles, analogous to our hands, are digestive organs. Whereas our method of comprehension is activewe perambu late a static and established worldits method is passive and impassioned: it takes in a world that is rushing past it. We compre hend what we happen upon, and it comprehends what happens upon it. Whereas we have problems, things in our way, it has impressions.27

As was stated in that previous paper, 28 Dtienne and Vernant would

disagree with this last claim, the claim that the polyplokon noma is passive,

and would argue instead that the passion here is not in fact passive but rather

attentively active.29 Nol Denoyel from the Dpartement de Sciences dducation

at the Universit Franois Rabelais (named after one of the Renaissance masters of

mtis) likens mtic activity to what Charles Sanders Peirce called abduction30

and Gilbert Simondon called transduction. 31 Just as mtis grasps kairs

(kairs being the propitious, decisive and opportune moment qua critical

juncture and/or turning point in a given situation or set of conditions),

abduction [grasps] the pertinent hypothesis of a given situation qua set of con

ditions;32 hence [mtic] abductionor mtishexis transduction, harkening here

to Debra Hawhee33always emerges as a new beginning, a novel individuation,




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a hitherto unfamiliar perspective, born in and borne by the mtic kairs 34 (the

pivotal point qua generative moment of mtis understood as a corporeal cunning).

A central condition for taking new perspectives is activity , the codirectors of the

Center for Diagrammatic and Computational Philosophy at Endicott College (Gian

luca Caterina and Rocco Gangle) affirm via a quote from Michael Hoffmann,35

andreturning to our central example taken from Flusser, Kofman, Dtienne

and Vernantthe activity of abduction or mtic transduction grasps given

occasions like an octopus: that is, via the gestures of a great many teeming

tentacles or at once divergent and convergent coils (the coils of its

polyplokon noma , its many tentacled mtic intelligence). Manycoiled/

many tentacled mtic/abductive/transductive intelligence is not only active

but utterly and inextricably interactive: it is the activity of an intensive inter

activity, one which articulates interrelations/interactions both material (i.e. eco

logical: having to do with the material environment) and sociocultural (i.e. oko

logical: having to do with the habitual environment). The concept of ecoform

ation (formation by things) transforms itself into okoformation (the Greek okos

designating [habit/habituation/ ]habitat), and finally the notion [] of ec(h)oform

ation attempts to account for the interactions between these different poles,

argues Denoyel.36 Ec(h)oformation interweaves the interaction of self and

sociocultural environment with the interaction of self and material environ

ment, 37 generating an interactional intelligence38 qua mtic mtissage 39

(as Penelopean as it is Ulyssean/Odyssean40); thus mtis [] strikes us as an

intelligence of interaction , here configured as [an] ec(h)oformation.41 In an

essay written prior to the fortuitous 2012 Christmaspresent/ cadeau deNol of

Denoyels Y2K / 1999 paper, the interaction and interrelation of ecology and mtic

(in this case Fremenic, harkening back to Frank Herberts Fremen, themselves

masters of mtis and tactical taqiyya42) ec(h)ology was also outlined, with

the wormvariant of wyrm: [i.e.] serpent or dragon 43as its infernal exem

plification rather than the exemplary Flusserian vampyroteuthis infernalis.44

In her essay on Mtis [as] an Intelligence of the Body, Debra Hawhee




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takes note of the fact that mtis invokes an idea of intelligence as immanent

movement: a movement which blurs boundaries between bodies and arts

(or, in the analyses of Dtienne and Vernant, between the classic rgimes of

techn and poisis);45 the wiles of art and body converge at the juncture of

groping limbs, [] as with the example of the octopus, she explains; and be

cause of this it [is] difficult to locate techn , poisis, or indeed thought ,

for that matter, [] strictly within the mind or consciousness (which is the

problem/ [dis]solution of any transduction). 46 Mind and body converge

and are blurred in the movement of mtic intelligence or octopoid

cunning. In other words, in the gn [] [of ] the octopus, [] techn

emerges from the matrix of [] a series of fluid movementsein Fluss,

one might say, echoing Flusser[fluid] movements between tentacles,

teeth, [] [and various] bodily maneuverings. Mtis is in this sense a

mingling or mtissage of quick, responsive impulses (mtic kairs);

as opposed to the Greek nos, which is concerned with timeless principles,

mtis emerges only from [an ec(h)ology of ] shifting and ambiguous situations []

eluding logical apprehension 47 its ec(h)ology is in many respects alogical:

an alogos (hence literally unspeakable )48 in Greek. Liddell and Scott translate

the alogos as 1, without speech, speechless, infans; [] 2, without reason,

irrational; [] 3, not reckoned upon, unexpected:49 all aspects (1, 2, 3) of

(4) mtiss polyplokon noma . With respect to its infancyits being infans

Peirce was in complete accordance (at least when it came to what he called

abduction): [I am] always unceasingly exercising my power of learning new

tricks to keep myself in possession of th [at ] childish trait (the trait of abduction,

hypothesisgeneration , or the play of musement: the movement of mtishexis),

he explained.50 Such infancy is in many respects what Simondon would call pre

individual and actively individuating (i.e. in the process of active/intensive

individuation).51

Without speechin a state of infancya child always tries to express

itself through gestures or actions,52 wrote the mathematician and historian of




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enigmatic ideas (ainigmata, griphoi) Ren Schwaller. This permits the child to get

much closer to the truth [of a situation ] than the learnd man who relies on

fixed meanings and habitual correlations. 53 Those who would be crafty and

cunningfull of Witz: wile and wit, or esprit and lan en franaiswould

be advised by Schwaller (as well as by Peirce54) to endeavour to acquire this child

ish trait, to employ and deploy diagrammatical and gestural modes of descrip

tion, inscription and transcription: a form of transcription [always] having several

possible meanings, and one that uses ordinary [acts and/or ] facts as hooks

to catch thought. 55 As Flusser suggested in the first of our indented quotations

(above), the writings of octopi / polyplokoi are writhings rather than writings,

strictly speaking: they sculptvia sepiawhat he described as enigmatic, eso

teric, and ephemeralhence kairtic56nebula, nebulous formations that play

childish [] tricks57 on the senses and (like all tricks, all works of magic, all mtic

machination maneuvers) are meant to deceive.58 According to Flusser, octop

oid writhings deceive, orthograph writings deform: the first by their bending or

breaking of rules, the second by their rulebound stringency59 (the deceptive,

diabolical, diagrammatical duplicity of the gesture and its gestural suggestiveness

its suggestures is thus closer to the truth 60 than its orthodox orthographic

alternative 61). In his Apologie du Logos and his Modles Mathmatiques de la

Morphognse , the mathematician Ren Thom makes a similar point (most

explicitly in the final chapter of the latter study: its chapter on the play of muse

ment Au Frontires du Pouv oir Humain: Le Jeu62which deals with the diagram

matical duplicity qua gestural game of mtis). In mathematics, a science of

exemplary rationality, progression is accompanied more by tricks than by general

methods, Thom admits.63 In the face of an enigmatic local situation, universal

reasonthe logosis not sufficient; it is necessary to have recourse to that form

of intelligence which the classical Greeks called mtis.64 Mtic tricks and their

polymorphous, polyvalent, polyplokon noma are comment sen sortir 65 in the

face of enigmatic situations, states the worldrenown FieldsMedalist.




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Thoms erstwhile colleague Gilles Chtelet, whose great contemporary

influences were the writings of Gilles Deleuze and of Gilbert Simondon (and who

organized the famous conference on Simondon at the Collge International de

Philosophie in 199266), devoted a large part of his career to diagramming gestu

res or to what he kairtically if not kl graphicaly 67 characterized as the capture

[of ] gestures midflight (capturing each gesture before it curls up into a sign).68

His notion of diagram was in many ways akin to Flusserian photographs qua

technical images,69 which alsolike diagrams in Chtelets workblossom with

dotted lines in order to engulf images that were previously figured in [less detailed,

less intricate, less indepth ] thick lines.70 The key to drawingup and drawing

forth diagrams for Chtelet is a Peircian playof musement or as Thom would

say, a playing or gaming to the frontiers of human power. 71 For Chtelet, our

own interaction with the figures that we draw constitutes a place of invention and

discovery that cannot be explained away by the theorems that appear to lock

down a particular [] procedure, Kenneth Knspel explains in his excellent

introduction to the English translation of Chtelets Enjeu du Mobile (literally

The Issue of the Mobile or The Motile Gambit ; translated inthe year 2000 as Figuring

Space).72 The cognitive and corporeal gesture is an inextricable part of the diagram

matic/dignic interactivity qua Denoyellian ec(h)oformation of Chtelets vision

and version of mtishexis; his diagrams are thus, like the sepiascultureswrith

ings rather than writingsof Flussers vampyroteuthis, trickster texts, magic tricks,

mtic machinations , which actively (indeed inter actively) reactivate a whole

complex that has hitherto been mutilated by technical dispersement: 73 a

complex that includes genuine [] magical power, [] sleights of hand, all these

recipes, all these thought experiments, all these figures and diagrams, all these

dynasties of problems seemingly capable of the miracle of [interactive/ec(h)o

logical] reactivation.74 It is precisely the reactivation of problems that Chtelet

undertakes in his work, states Knspel.75 As in Peirces project, the object is the

generation of new perspectives, 76 the spreading and stretching [of ] dimensional

ity77 that we also find at the heart and prosthetic perimeters of McLuhans parti




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cular project 78 and that Chteleta mathematician , after allfound in Hermann

Grassmanns Lineale Ausdehnungsle (his Theory of Extension):

What Chtelet found most intriguing about Grassmann was the way that he represents a genuine pedagogy of the forms of the grasping of space (Chtelet, 2000, 103). Essential to this pedagogy is the [] capacity for an overview. This overview is not the dilettantes distant contemplation; it takes part in the action: [] it transports us to that privileged zone were intuition and discursivity become knotted into a living unity. It is neither a priori nor a posteriori; it is contemporaneous with what it grasps (104). In Grassmanns own words: Presentiment [ Ahnung ] appears foreign to the domain of pure science, above all to the domain of mathematics. However, without it, it is impossible to find a new idea. It isif conceived in the right waythe look [or the hook79] that seizes in one go any development that leads to the new truth, but comprising instants that have not yet become exposed. It is for this reason that the presentiment can at the beginning only be obscure [ dunkles Vorgefhl ] (104). That is why scientific presentation is essentially a progression of two series of developments [] [and thus essentially and inextricably ec(h)oformative].80

The nexus of mtis and hexis, the notion of embodied corporeal

cunning, of cunning intelligence as immanent movement , suggestive gesture ,

and ec(h)ological interactivity (une intelligence de linteraction in the words of

Nol Denoyel), find themselves recapitulated in this comparison/cross connection

of Grassmann and Chtelet. Just as mtis grasps kairs and in this grasp finds

itself at one and complicit with the propitious, decisive and opportune moment, 81

so too is the gesture here knotted and hooked into the instant or moment of

grasping, neither a priori nor a posteriori [] [but ] contemporaneous with what it

grasps. The new truth that emerges from (and/or is exposed in) this mtic,

kairtic, ec(h)oformation abducts and transducts the actant agents of its eco ,

oko and ec(h)osystem qua curvedhence vampyroteut h ically voluminous82




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polyplokamian plateau (un plateau qui nest pas plat: a plateau far from flat,

beyond the bounds of its extant etymology nevermind GregoryBatesonian

Ecology 83), and plunges them into the outis or oudis84the [asyet] no thing

of pre individuated transductive obscurity: a dunkles Vorgefhl , in the words of

Grassmann. And just as in the mythological encounter of Odysseus and Poly

phemus (wherein Odysseus calls himself oudis and/or outis, meaning no one/

nobody/nothing, to trick his titanic adversary and ultimately escape an other

wise entirely aporetic situation) Odysseus blinds and binds his foe,85 so too

a certain blindness and obscurity seem to be essential in every mtic operation.

Both Denoyel and Kofman before him note that this form of intelligence which

[Dtienne and Vernant describe as having been ] cast aside and thrown into the

shadows (rejete dans lombre) in fact turns out to need this shadow (a, en fait,

besoin de lombre) to develop its masked machinations.86 Dtienne and Vernant

conclude their remarkable study of the Greek mtis by emphasizing the exclusion

from within philosophy of that cunning intelligence which proceeds by tricks and

by turns (par tours et dtours);87 most notable amongst those philosophers

dead set against such subtle savvy was Platowhose famous name 88 shares the

same etymology as the flat (plat) plateau Plato, [who] would have cast into the

shadows and condemned [to oblivion] ( [ qui ] aurait relgu dans lombre et

condamn) all socalled mtic intelligence.89 But again, like the vampyroteuthis

infernalis, it is withinwith and inthe abyssal shadows that such wily ways are

at first formulated, and it is from them that they suddenly, surprisingly, arise (as a

surprising arising out of aporia and/or an aporia from pure pros). Wily ways arise

from the ombre (lombre) of their formationfrom the shadows of their formula

tionas sovereign90 and treacherous 91 gestures: gestures of rupture 92 or

disruption93 that turn upon a given situation and in this gesture of betrayal94

are both portrayals ( snapshots , aporetic stills ) of this situation and portals

( pathways, passages or poroi) out of it.




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Notes:

1 Samuel Beckett, LInnomable (Paris: ditions de Minuit, 1953), 7; The Unnamable (New York: Grove Press, 1958), 3. 2 Samuel Beckett, LInnomable (Paris: ditions de Minuit, 1953), 8; The Unnamable (New York: Grove Press, 1958), 4. 3 Sarah Kofman, Comment sen Sortir? (Paris: ditions Galile, 1983), 17. 4 (in Flusserian German) 5 This weaving together (which for the poet Homer was an altogether Penelopean, nevermind entirely Odysseusian/Odyssean, endeavour) will in the following essay be seen as ultimately ec(h)ological (via Nol Denoyel, Alternance Tripolaire et Raison Exprientielle la Lumire de la Smiotique de Peirce, in La Revue Franaise de Pdagogie Volume 128, 1999, 38, as well as Dan Mellamphy & Nandita Biswas Mellamphy, Ec(h)ology of the Dstre: Essay on Transduction and Transmutation, in Reza Negaretani, ed., Collapse: Journal of Philosophical Research and Development VII: Culinary Materialism, 2011, 424). 6 Sarah Kofman, Comment sen Sortir? (Paris: ditions Galile, 1983), 34. 7 Sarah Kofman, Comment sen Sortir? (Paris: ditions Galile, 1983), 35. 8

Marcel Dtienne

&

Jean

Pierre

Vernant,

Les

Ruses

de

LIntelligence:

La mtis des Grecs (Paris: ditions Flammarion, 1974), 45. 9 Marcel Dtienne & JeanPierre Vernant, Les Ruses de LIntelligence: La mtis des Grecs (Paris: ditions Flammarion, 1974), 46. 10 These clouds of ink* can [] be shaped into sculptures by the arms of the animal (Tintenfisch, inkfish); Vilm Flusser, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: Eine Abhandlung samt Befund des Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste (Gttingen: Immatrix Publikationen, 1987), trans. Valentine Pakis, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: A Treatise, with a Report by the Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste , (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), 19. || *i.e. t his ink, sepiawhich fo rms floating clouds in the waterwhose outlines are modelled by cephalopods; Vilm Flusser, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: Eine Abhandlung samt Befund des Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste (Gttingen: Immatrix Publikationen, 1987), trans. Rodrigo Novs, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis

(Dresden: Atropos Press, 2011), 40. 11 Vilm Flusser, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: Eine Abhandlung samt Befund des Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste (Gttingen: Immatrix Publikationen, 1987), trans. Valentine Pakis, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: A Treatise, with a Report by the Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste , (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), 5152. 12 Vilm Flusser, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: Eine Abhandlung samt Befund des Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste (Gttingen: Immatrix Publikationen, 1987), trans. Valentine Pakis, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: A Treatise, with a Report by the Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste , (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), 5152. 13 Yes, culture: Flusser devotes a whole section of his study to Vampyroteuthic Culture (trans. Pakis), The Culture of the Vampyroteuthis (trans. Novs); cf . Vilm Flusser, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: Eine Abhandlung samt Befund des Institut Scientifique

de Recherche

Paranaturaliste

(Gttingen:

Immatrix

Publikationen,

1987),

trans.

Valentine Pakis, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: A Treatise, with a Report by the Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste , (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), 4568, and Vampyroteuthis Infernalis, trans. Rodrigo Novs (Dresden: Atropos Press, 2011), 81104. 14 Vilm Flusser, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: Eine Abhandlung samt Befund des Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste (Gttingen: Immatrix Publikationen, 1987), trans. Rodrigo Novs, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis (Dresden: Atropos Press, 2011), 91. As a species, the vampyroteuthis deludes all other species, and every group of vampyroteuthes deludes every other group; the individual deceives all others in the group, and every vampyroteuthis deceives all others. The vampyroteuthic code is a peculiar type of cryptography that is not meant to be decrypted




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or rather, its decryption yields further deceptive encryptions. The underlying purpose of all vampyroteuthic communication is to deceive the other in order to devour it. Its is a culture of deceit, pretense, and falsehood. Broadly speaking, one could even call it a culture of art; Vilm Flusser, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: Eine Abhandlung samt Befund des Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste (Gttingen: Immatrix Publikationen, 1987), trans. Valentine Pakis, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: A Treatise, with a Report by the Institut Scientifique de Recherche

Paranaturaliste , (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), 5253. 15 Vilm Flusser, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: Eine Abhandlung samt Befund des Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste (Gttingen: Immatrix Publikationen, 1987), trans. Rodrigo Novs, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis (Dresden: Atropos Press, 2011), 111. 16 Marcel Dtienne & JeanPierre Vernant, Les Ruses de LIntelligence: La mtis des Grecs (Paris: ditions Flammarion, 1974), 66. 17 Vilm Flusser, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: Eine Abhandlung samt Befund des Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste (Gttingen: Immatrix Publikationen, 1987), trans. Rodrigo Novs, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis (Dresden: Atropos Press, 2011), 91. 18 Sarah Kofman, Comment sen Sortir? (Paris: ditions Galile, 1983), 34. 19 Marcel Dtienne & JeanPierre Vernant, Les Ruses de LIntelligence: La mtis des Grecs (Paris: ditions Flammarion, 1974), 45. 20

See for

instance,

Homer,

The

Odyssey

with

an

English

Translation

by

A.T.

Murray,

Ph.D

(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1919), 21.274, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/ text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0135%3Abook%3D21%3Acard%3D256 (via The Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University). 21 Marcel Dtienne & JeanPierre Vernant, Les Ruses de LIntelligence: La mtis des Grecs (Paris: ditions Flammarion, 1974), 47. 22 Marcel Dtienne & JeanPierre Vernant, Les Ruses de LIntelligence: La mtis des Grecs (Paris: ditions Flammarion, 1974), 47. 23 Marcel Dtienne & JeanPierre Vernant, Les Ruses de LIntelligence: La mtis des Grecs (Paris: ditions Flammarion, 1974), 47. 24 Dan Mellamphy & Nandita Biswas Mellamphy, From the Digital to the Tentacular, or From iPods to Cephalopods: Apps, Traps, and Entreswithout Exit , in The Imaginary App, eds. Paul Miller/DJSpooky & S. Matviyenko (Cambridge: MIT Press, forthcoming). 25 Vilm Flusser, Pshistria: Vinte Instantneos e um Modo de Usar , (So Paulo: Duas Cidades, 1983). 26 Vilm Flusser, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: Eine Abhandlung samt Befund des Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste (Gttingen: Immatrix Publikationen, 1987), trans. Valentine Pakis, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: A Treatise, with a Report by the Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste , (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), 39. In the fourteenth section of his Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, Marshall McLuhan via reference to the work of Elias Canettisuggested that (in his day , at least) these limbs were not yet bygone organs: in Crowds and Power , [Canetti] argues that the trader is involved in one of the most ancient of all pastimes, namely that of climbing trees and swinging from limb to limb. The primitive grasping, calculating, and timing of the greater arboreal apes he sees as a transition into financial terms of one of the

oldest

movement

patterns.

Just

as

the

hand

among

the

branches

of

the

trees

learned a pattern of grasping that was quite removed from the moving of food to the mouth, so the trader and the financier have developed enthralling activities that are extensions of the avid climbing and mobility of the greater apes (Critical Edition, ed. Terrence Gordon, Berkeley: Gingko Press, 2003, 182). 27 Vilm Flusser, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: Eine Abhandlung samt Befund des Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste (Gttingen: Immatrix Publikationen, 1987), trans. Valentine Pakis, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: A Treatise, with a Report by the Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste , (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), 39. 28 Dan Mellamphy & Nandita Biswas Mellamphy, From the Digital to the Tentacular, or From iPods to Cephalopods: Apps, Traps, and Entreswithout Exit , in The Imaginary App,




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eds. Paul Miller/DJSpooky & S. Matviyenko (Cambridge: MIT Press, forthcoming). 29 This octopus intelligence [] from a certain perspective would appear akin to that which the Lyric poets called the ephmeros, they explain. Indeed, like it, the ephmeros is characterized by its mobility , fluidity and dynamic instability (Dtienne & Vernant 1974, 4748). But unlike the intelligence of the Lyric ephmeros, that of the polytropic polyplokon is unstable only in appearance: its about faces are a trap, the net in which its adversaries come to be entangled (ibid . 48). Between the intelligence of the polytropic polyplokon and that of the ephmeros there is the exact distance that separates the octopus from the chameleon (ibid . 4748): the former is active, actively trapping, approaching its victim like a hunter or SouthPark TrapperKeeper,* whereas the latter is passive, changing with (rather than charging and playing with) the current [s] of its environment, thus devoid of the demonic or devilish deceit. Flusser does ac knowledge this active dimension however, for instance when he notes that at some unknown momentspouncing upon and capturing the kairs, very likelyit becomes a highly mobile predator: volatile (demonic, even), with a great predatory velocity (Vilm Flusser, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: Eine Abhandlung samt Befund des Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste , Gttingen: Immatrix Publikationen, 1987, trans. Valentine Pakis, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: A Treatise, with a Report by the Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste , (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,

2012, 40

41).

||

*Matt

Stone

and

Trey

Parker,

South

Park ,

Episode

60:

Trapper

Keeper

(November 15, 2000, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trapper_Keeper_%28South_Park%29). 30 cf . Charles Santiago Sanders Peirce, Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, eds. Charles Sanders Peirce, Charles Hartshorne & Paul Weis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1932), 54, re: abductive novelty . 31 cf . Gilbert Simondon, Du Mode dExistence des Objets Techniques (Paris: ditions Aubier, 1958); LIndividuation la Lumire des Notions de Forme et dInformation (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1964). 32 Nol Denoyel, Alternance Tripolaire et Raison Exprientielle la Lumire de la Smiotique de Peirce, in La Revue Franaise de Pdagogie Volume 128, 1999, 3637. 33 Debra Hawhee, Mtis: An Intelligence of the Body, in Bodily Arts: Rhetoric and Aesthetics in Ancient Greece (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), 5758. 34 Debra Hawhee, Mtis: An Intelligence of the Body, in Bodily Arts: Rhetoric and Aesthetics

in Ancient Greece (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), 65. 35 Gianluca Caterina & Rocco Gangle, Consequences of a Diagrammatic Representation of Paul Cohens Forcing Technique Based on C.S. Peirces Existential Graphs, in Lorenzo Magnani et.al., eds., Model Based Reasoning in Science & Technology (Berlin: Springer Verlag, 2010), 430. 36 Nol Denoyel, Alternance Tripolaire et Raison Exprientielle la Lumire de la Smiotique de Peirce, in La Revue Franaise de Pdagogie Volume 128, 1999, 38. This Echology foldsin, enjoins, and ultimately conjoins with Echos nemesis: the narcotized Narcissus of Marshall McLuhans Understanding Media (IV ). 37 Nol Denoyel, Alternance Tripolaire et Raison Exprientielle la Lumire de la Smiotique de Peirce, in La Revue Franaise de Pdagogie Volume 128, 1999, 38. 38 Nol Denoyel, Alternance Tripolaire et Raison Exprientielle la Lumire de la Smiotique de Peirce, in La Revue Franaise de Pdagogie Volume 128, 1999, 39. 39

For

a

machine

translation

c/o

Google

Intelligence,

cf .

http://translate.google.ie/

?hl=&ie=UTF8&text=&sl=fr&tl=en#fr/en/m%C3%A9tissage ( A.I.). 40 In her followup to Dtienne and Vernants nowclassic study, Lisa Raphals links the Greek mtis to the Chinese wuwei , the active passivity which is just as cunning as the youwei plots of Ulysses [a.k.a. Odysseus] and correspondsfor Raphals to the twists and Odyssean/Ulyssean Uturns/about faces (Dtienne & Vernant 1974, 8, 39, 48) of the latters equallymtic mate: his wily wife Penelope, whose name is moreover synonymous with the ever turning, shape shifting polytropos: pnops designating one who weaves, threads or spools/ pn (Liddell & Scott 1889, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04. 0058%3Aentry%3Dph%2Fnh) their face, countenance or appearance/ ops




13/19

(Liddell & Scott 1889, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext% 3A1999.04.0058%3Aentry%3Dw%29%2Fy). We can account for both the youwei plots of Ulysses and the wuwei designs of Penelope as oblique means toward similar ends that is to say similar actionswrote Raphals. Both [play upon] appearances; both are oblique; both rely on skillful means more than on discursive wisdom. By contrast, the Greek philosopher [i.e. lover of wisdom] and the Confucian junzi [i.e. sage ruler or wise man] [] follow lines rather than twists; Lisa Raphals, Knowing Words: Wisdom and Cunning in the Classical Traditions of China & Greece (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1992), 230. 41 Nol Denoyel, Alternance Tripolaire et Raison Exprientielle la Lumire de la Smiotique de Peirce, in La Revue Franaise de Pdagogie Volume 128, 1999, 38. 42 cf . Frank Herbert, Dune (Philadelphia: Chilton Book Company, 1965). 43 cf . http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=worm 44 The logic or logos of the ecologist is not that of the egological operative: its vernacular is instead vermicular , an unspoken and unspeakable wormtongue, the logos alogos of earthworms , which drags us back to the serpentine dragon (even, ironically, by its etymon; http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=worm ). It is the language of egos drawn back to the dust, mixed into the mud, sunk into the sand from whence they distinguished themselves as environmentally indigestible existents; Dan Mellamphy & Nandita Biswas Mellamphy,

Ec(h)ology of

the

Dstre:

Essay

on

Transduction

and

Transmutation,

in

Reza

Negaretani,

ed.,

Collapse: Journal of Philosophical Research and Development VII: Culinary Materialism, SpringSummer 2011, 424. 45 Debra Hawhee, Mtis: An Intelligence of the Body, in Bodily Arts: Rhetoric and Aesthetics in Ancient Greece (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), 48. 46 Debra Hawhee, Mtis: An Intelligence of the Body, in Bodily Arts: Rhetoric and Aesthetics in Ancient Greece (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), 48. In an article on the topic of What Cephalopods Teach Us about Language (Discover: The Magazine of Science, Technology, and the Future, April 2006, http://discovermagazine.com/2006/apr/cephalopod morphing), Jaron Lanier provided an excellent example of the mtic/polyplokamian convergence of body, mind, techn and poisis: Describing a video shot by Roger Hanlon (Researcher at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole) in 1997, Lanier recounts how the videographer Hanlon swims up to examine an unremarkable rock covered in swaying alg. Suddenly, astonishingly,

one third of the rock and a tangled mass of alg morphs and reveals itself for what it really is: the waving arms of a bright white octopus. Its cover blown, the creature squirts ink at Roger and shoots off into the distanceleaving Roger, and the video viewer, slack jawed. The star of this video, Octopus vulgaris, is one of several cephalopod species capable of morphing, including the mimicoctopus and the giant Australian cuttlefish. [] Morphing in cephalopods works somewhat similarly to how it works in computer graphics, explains Lanier in fine Flusserian fashion. Two components are involved: a change in the image or texture visible on a shapes surface and a change in the underlying shape itself. The pixels in the skin of a cephalopod are organs called chromatophores. These can expand and contract quickly, and each is filled with a pigment of a particular color. When a nervesignal causes a red chromatophore to expand, the pixel turns red. A pattern of nervefirings causes a shifting imagean animationto appear on the cephalopods skin. As for shapes, an octopus can quickly arrange its arms to form a wide

variety

of

them,

like

a

fish

or

a

piece

of

coral,

and

can

even

raise

welts

on

its

skin

to

add

texture.

Butwhy morph? he asks. One reason is camouflage. (The octopus in the video is presumably trying to hide from Roger.) Another is dinner. One of Rogers videoclips shows a giant cuttlefish pursuing a crab. The cuttlefish is mostly softbodied, the crab all armor. As the cuttlefish appro aches, the medieval looking crab snaps into a macho posture, waving its sharp claws at its foes vulnerable body. The cuttlefish responds with a bizarre and ingenious psychedelic performance. Weird images, luxurious colors, and successive waves of undulating lightning bolts and filigree swim across its skin. The sight is so unbelievable that even the crab seems disoriented; its menacing gesture is replaced for an instant by another that seems to express Huh? In that moment the cuttlefish strikes between cracks in the armor. It uses art to hunt! Here we see the corporeal cunning of mtishexis in action, and its turn or twist upon the critical kairs qua




14/19

decisive moment. With regard to cephalopoid chromatophoria, cf . Vilm Flusser, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: Eine Abhandlung samt Befund des Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste (Gttingen: Immatrix Publikationen, 1987), trans. Valentine Pakis, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: A Treatise, with a Report by the Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste , (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), 2122, 47, 5051, 64, 67, and Vampyroteuthis Infernalis, trans. Rodrigo Novs (Dresden: Atropos Press, 2011), 42, 89, 109110. 47 Debra Hawhee, Mtis: An Intelligence of the Body, in Bodily Arts: Rhetoric and Aesthetics in Ancient Greece (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), 48. 48 Henry George Liddell & Robert Scott, An Intermediate Greek English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1889, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text? doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0058%3Aentry%3Da%29%2Flogos). 49 Henry George Liddell & Robert Scott, An Intermediate Greek English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1889, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text? doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0058%3Aentry%3Da%29%2Flogos). 50 Charles Santiago Sanders Peirce, quoted in Joseph Brent, Charles Sanders Peirce: A Life (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998:331332. 51 cf . Gilbert Simondon, Du Mode dExistence des Objets Techniques (Paris: ditions Aubier, 1958); LIndividuation la Lumire des Notions de Forme et dInformation (Paris: Presses Universitaires

de France,

1964).

52 Ren Schwaller, Propos sur sotrisme et Symbole (Paris: ditions La Colombe, 1960), trans. Andr & Goldian VandenBrck, Esotercism and Symbol (New York: Inner Traditions International, 1985), 68. 53 Ren Schwaller, Propos sur sotrisme et Symbole (Paris: ditions La Colombe, 1960), trans. Andr & Goldian VandenBrck, Esotercism and Symbol (New York: Inner Traditions International, 1985), 68. 54 Charles Santiago Sanders Peirce, quoted in Joseph Brent, Charles Sanders Peirce: A Life (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998, 331332. 55 Ren Schwaller, Le Temple de lHomme: Apet du Sud Louqsor (Paris: ditions Caractres, 1957), trans. Andr & Goldian VandenBrck, The Egyptian Miracle: An Introduction to the Wisdom of the Temple (New York: Inner Traditions International, 1985), 8. 56 One could add here, after the kairtic, the erotic: for, as Flusser says, the conceptions and com

munications (indeed the entire culture nevermind nature) of the vampyroteuthis infernalis can be likened to a libidinal and altogether erotic ecology. The world arouses the vampyroteuthis sexually: It conceives the world with its penis or clitoris, and its conceptionsunlike our sexually neutral and existentially bland conceptionsinduce it toward orgasm (Vilm Flusser, Vampyro-teuthis Infernalis: Eine Abhandlung samt Befund des Institut Scientifique de Recherche Para naturaliste , Gttingen: Immatrix Publikationen, 1987, trans. Valentine Pakis, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: A Treatise, with a Report by the Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste , Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012, 41). Our sexual organs are only indirectly connected to our handsand eyes. First the brain must coordinate the different pieces of information that it receives from these organs. This process can result in contradictions in the brain between the different types of sensory information it receives, and the brain must attempt to resolve these contradictions into empirical experiences. Our brain doubts, and there

fore

our

world

is

dubiousfor

us,

to

think

is

to

doubt.

In

the

case

of

the

vampyroteuthis,

the

sexu

al organs are partially located on its tentacles and, like its eyes, they are directly connected to its brain. The latter thus receives optical, tactile and sexual impressions as already coordinated and unified bits of information. In this there can be no contradictions: All incoming bits of information have, simultaneously, a tentacular, optical and sexual dimension. Its world is not doubtful but surprising; vampyroteuthic thinking is an unbroken stream of Aristotelian shock (ibid . 40). Since its tentacles are equipped with sexual organs, the concepts that it abstracts [from the world] [] are sexually laden (ibid . 47). Its concepts are generated by orgasms, and its philosophy is synonymous with copulation. Human cotus has no clear place or function in reflection, and this is because it remains undetermined whether our cotus is a public or private act. Vampyroteuthic cotus, on the contrary, is the ultimate political event. It corresponds to something like the




15/19

academy or to the agora of Greek cities. It is the ultimate political event not only because it is responsible for the regeneration of society but also because everything it conceives in the world is impregnatedgiven lifeby means of copulation. Its every ontology is an analysis of sex, an effort to differentiate between male and female being. The rules of its reflection are sexual rules. The logic of sex governs the syntax of its language (the colorations and illuminations of its skin). If, while philosophizing, the vampyroteuthis is able to abstract these sexual rules from phenomena if it manages to practice pure sciencethen it will behold the structure of pure sex. This theoretical insight causes it to climax (ibid . 48). 57 Charles Santiago Sanders Peirce, quoted in Joseph Brent, Charles Sanders Peirce: A Life (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998, 331332. 58 Vilm Flusser, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: Eine Abhandlung samt Befund des Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste (Gttingen: Immatrix Publikationen, 1987), trans. Valentine Pakis, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: A Treatise, with a Report by the Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste , (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), 5152. 59 Vilm Flusser, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: Eine Abhandlung samt Befund des Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste (Gttingen: Immatrix Publikationen, 1987), trans. Valentine Pakis, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: A Treatise, with a Report by the Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), 62. 60

Ren Schwaller,

Propos

sur

sotrisme

et

Symbole

(Paris:

ditions

La

Colombe,

1960),

trans. Andr & Goldian VandenBrck, Esotercism and Symbol (New York: Inner Traditions International, 1985), 68. 61 One might call this the althia of the abyssedary as opposed to the abecedary (an abyssal truth beyond our A BCs). 62 To the Frontiers of Human Power: On Games. 63 Ren Thom, Modles Mathmatiques de la Morphognse: Recueil de Textes sur la Thorie des Catastrophes et ses Applications (Paris: Union Gnral dditions, 1974), 305. 64 Ren Thom, Modles Mathmatiques de la Morphognse: Recueil de Textes sur la Thorie des Catastrophes et ses Applications (Paris: Union Gnral dditions, 1974), 305. 65 Sarah Kofman, Comment sen Sortir? (Paris: ditions Galile, 1983). 66 cf . Gilles Chtelet, ed., Gilbert Simondon: Une Pense de lIndividuation et de la Technique (Paris: ditions Albin Michel, 1994), with contributions by Gilles Chtelet, Gilbert Simondon,

Gilbert Hottois, JeanYves Chteau, JeanFranois Marquet, John Hart (a former colleague here at Western), Jacques Garelli, Yves Deforge, Hubert Curien, Ren Thom, Bruno Paradis, Bernard Stiegler, Franois Laruelle and Anne FagotLargeault. 67 Referring here (rather obliquely, hence altogether mtically) to the aforementioned Greek kairs or decisive moment, and to the Sansrit kl /kla, which means both temporality (present time) and the darkest obscurity (pitch black), throwing the attentive reader into the pitchblack present moment (the khos of kairs). 68 Gilles Chtelet, Les Enjeux du Mobile (Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1993), trans. Robert Shore & Muriel Zagha, Figuring Space: Philosophy, Mathematics and Physics (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), 10. Chtelets interest in ephemeral manuscript diagrams and napkin doodling[s] (2000, xvii ) brings us back to vampyroteuthic diagrams and the ephemerality of [their] sepia cloud; cf . Vilm Flusser, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: Eine

Abhandlung samt

Befund

des

Institut

Scientifique

de

Recherche

Paranaturaliste

(Gttingen:

Immatrix Publikationen, 1987), trans. Valentine Pakis, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: A Treatise, with a Report by the Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste , (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), 52. 69 cf . Vilm Flusser, Toward a Phiosophy of Photography: Fr eine Philosophie der Fotografie (Gttingen: Verlag European Photography, 1984). One is reminded here also of Marshall McLuhans argument in the twentieth chapter of Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, with regard to the photographs statement without syntax (Critical Edition, ed. Terence Gordon, Berkeley: Gingko Press, 2003, 271). Statement without syntax or verbalization [is] really statement by gesture , he explained. This new dimension opened for human inspection by poets like Baudelaire and Rimbaud le paysage intrieur , or the countries of the mind. Poets and painters invaded




16/19

this inner landscape long before Freud and Jung brought their cameras and notebooks to capture states of mind. Perhaps most spectacular of all was Claude Bernard, whose Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine ushered science into le milieu intrieur of the body exactly at the time when the poets did the same for the life of perception and feeling. It is important to note that this ultimate stage of pictorializationthe world of body and mind observed by Baudelaire and Bernardwas not [yet] photographical [] but a nonvisual set of relations such as the physicist, for example, had encountered by means of the new mathematics and statistics. [] Just as the painter Samuel Morse had unintentionally projected himself into the nonvisual world of the telegraph, so the photograph really transcends the pictorial by capturing the inner gestures and postures of both body and mind, yielding new worlds such as the subvisual world of bacteria as well as those of endocrinology and psychopathology. To understand the medium of the photograph is quite impossible, then , without grasping its relations to other media, both old and new (ibid. 271272). 70 Gilles Chtelet, Les Enjeux du Mobile (Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1993), trans. Robert Shore & Muriel Zagha, Figuring Space: Philosophy, Mathematics and Physics (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), 10. 71 Au Frontires du Pouv oir Humain: Le Jeu: the final chapter of Ren Thoms Modles Mathmatiques de la Morphognse: Recueil de Textes sur la Thorie des Catastrophes

et ses

Applications

(Paris:

Union

Gnral

dditions,

1974).

72 Kenneth Knspel, Diagrammatic Writing and the Configuration of Space, in Gilles Chtelet, trans. Robert Shore & Muriel Zagha, Figuring Space: Philosophy, Mathematics and Physics (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), xi . 73 Gilles Chtelet, Les Enjeux du Mobile (Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1993), trans. Robert Shore & Muriel Zagha, Figuring Space: Philosophy, Mathematics and Physics (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), 3. 74 Gilles Chtelet, Les Enjeux du Mobile (Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1993), trans. Robert Shore & Muriel Zagha, Figuring Space: Philosophy, Mathematics and Physics (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), 3. One might detect here echoes of Gilbert Simondons notion of a primitive magical unity at the root of technicity and of religiosity (cf . The Essence of Technicity: Section Three of his treatise Du Mode dExistence des Objets Techniques, Paris: ditions Aubier, 1958, trans.

Ninian Mellamphy, Dan Mellamphy & Nandita Biswas Mellamphy, in Deleuze Studies 5.3, 111111, 406424). The mathematician and historian of enigmatic ideas Ren Schwaller links magical unity with the geste or enjeu du mobile in his study [of ] Le Temple de lHomme: Apet du Sud Louqsor (Paris: ditions Caractres, 1957), trans. Andr & Goldian VandenBrck, The Egyptian Miracle: An Introduction to the Wisdom of the Temple (New York: Inner Traditions International, 1985), 2122: To know how to make the proper gesture in the proper milieu at the right momentthe proper gesture in the consonant ambiance and at the corresponding [kairtic] moment:this is [mtic] magic and the miracle of reactivation [] that Chtelet undertakes in [his] book (cf . Kenneth Knspel, Diagrammatic Writing and the Configuration of Space, in Gilles Chtelet, trans. Robert Shore & Muriel Zagha, Figuring Space: Philosophy, Mathematics and Physics, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000, xi ). 75

Kenneth

Knspel,

Diagrammatic

Writing

and

the

Configuration

of

Space,

in

Gilles

Chtelet,

trans. Robert Shore & Muriel Zagha, Figuring Space: Philosophy, Mathematics and Physics (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), xi . 76 Gianluca Caterina & Rocco Gangle, Consequences of a Diagrammatic Representation of Paul Cohens Forcing Technique Based on C.S. Peirces Existential Graphs, in Lorenzo Magnani et.al., eds., Model Based Reasoning in Science & Technology (Berlin: Springer Verlag, 2010), 430. 77 Kenneth Knspel, Diagrammatic Writing and the Configuration of Space, in Gilles Chtelet, trans. Robert Shore & Muriel Zagha, Figuring Space: Philosophy, Mathematics and Physics (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), xv . This, of course, recalls Flussers descriptions Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: Eine Abhandlung samt Befund des Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste (Gttingen: Immatrix Publikationen, 1987) of vampyroteuthic




17/19

multidimensionality: We have been exiled to the surfaces of the continents. There we have managed to walk uprightto erect ourselvesand now we loom into the third dimension, into space (heavenward, if you will). The vampyroteuthis has been exiled to the depths. There it has managed to erect itself, and now it touches the seabed like an open palm. In so doing, its palm is analogous to ours, but it is not concerned simply with feeling the third dimensionas we are but rather with feeling multidimensionality (trans. Valentine Pakis, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis:

A Treatise, with a Report by the Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste , Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012, 25). The construction of our respective brains reflects the differences between our [] worlds, he continues. Ours is flat and, for us, bodies are simply bulging surfaces (mountains). It lives in a water container, of which the seabed constitutes only one of the walls. For it, then, twodimensionality is an abstraction of the three dimensionality of everything that is objective, everything that it licks with its toothy tongue. When it soars, it does not do so from a surface into space, as we do, but rather it shoots into volume. Its soaring is not a breakthrough from a plane into the third dimension, as ours is. It bores through watery volumes like a screw. For it, space is not a lethargic and passive expanse supported by a Cartesian endoskeleton. It is rather a realm of coiled tension, laden with energy, that has been banished from its snail shell. Its geometry therefore corresponds to what we call dynamics. According to its thinking, for instance, the shortest distance

between two

points

is

not

a

straight

line

but

a

coil

spring

that,

when

fully

compressed,

brings

two points together. Where the world is constituted in such a wayas a dynamic conglomeratethere can be no immutable and eternal forms, no circles and triangles. Theory, in the sense of the Platonic contemplation of eternal forms, is unimaginable to it. Assailing it from all around, the world astonishes the vampyroteuthis again and again by the mutability and plasticity of its impressions. In short, vampyroteuthic theory is not contemplative but orgasmic, not philosophical tranquility but philosophical frenzy (2012, 42; also, a link here to a paper and performance which Joseph Nechvatal put together for our New York City NWW.IV conference: his aesthetic and philosophical States of Frenzy, http://twitter.com/twinkletwink/status/309766879319322625). 78 Beyond the correlation here with what McLuhan described as the extensions of man (Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man), McLuhan and Chtelet shared a similar interest in, and keen observation of, the formative influence of technology on thought,

or of techn on epistem. When Knspel, in his introduction, describes the third part of Figuring Space and its concern with the status of the diagram [] [as] a consequence of the technologies of representation, whether in scrolls, codices, printed books, mimeographed and xeroxed sheets, or hand held calculators and desktop monitorsnot to mention its concern with the relation between Nicholas of Cusa and problems with manuscript representation on the eve of Gutenbergit is hard not to think of The Gutenberg Galaxy . McLuhan looms (to use a nice Penelopean term) in the background here hear. Cf . Kenneth Knspel, Diagrammatic Writing and the Configuration of Space, in Gilles Chtelet, trans. Robert Shore & Muriel Zagha, Figuring Space: Philosophy, Mathematics and Physics (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), xvi . 79 Here inserting the previouslyquoted passage from Ren Schwaller, Le Temple de lHomme: Apet du Sud Louqsor (Paris: ditions Caractres, 1957), trans. Andr & Goldian VandenBrck, The Egyptian Miracle: An Introduction to the Wisdom of the Temple (New York: Inner Traditions

International,

1985),

8.

80 Kenneth Knspel, Diagrammatic Writing and the Configuration of Space, in Gilles Chtelet, trans. Robert Shore & Muriel Zagha, Figuring Space: Philosophy, Mathematics and Physics (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), xv . 81 Nol Denoyel, Alternance Tripolaire et Raison Exprientielle la Lumire de la Smiotique de Peirce, in La Revue Franaise de Pdagogie Volume 128, 1999, 3637. 82 Vampyroteuthic/octopoid/polyplokamian intelligence is, as previously noted, multidimensional (Vilm Flusser, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: Eine Abhandlung samt Befund des Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste (Gttingen: Immatrix Publikationen, 1987, trans. Valentine Pakis, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: A Treatise, with a Report by the




18/19

Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste , Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012, 25, 42). Whereas we think linearly (rightly), it thinks circularly (eccentrically). In turn, our respective worlds reflect the differences between our [] thinking. Ours is flat and, for us, bodies are simply bulging surfaces (mountains). It lives in a water container, of which the seabed constitutes only one of the walls. For it, then, twodimensionality is an abstraction of the three dimensionality of everything that is objective, everything that it licks with its toothy tongue. When it soars, it does not do so from a surface into space, as we do, but rather it shoots into volume. Its soaring is not a breakthrough from a plane into the third dimension, as ours is. It bores through watery volumes like a screw (2012, 42). The overwhelming importance of volume as a form of perceptionwhat makes it concrete form par excellenceis the fact that it is the only form that contacts all of the senses, Ren Schwaller explained in a conversation with the artist and translator Andr VandenBrck (Schwaller, quoted in Andr VandenBrck, Al Kemi : Hermetic, Occult, Political and Private Aspects of R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, Hudson: Lindisfarne Press, 1987, 107). We are able to conceive the spherical spiral, but we can comprehend it only in its plane surface aspect and, in general, we can understand volume only as section, the projection into a plane, he states in his study [of ] Le Temple de lHomme: Apet du Sud Louqsor (Paris: ditions Caractres, 1957), trans. Andr & Goldian VandenBrck, The Egyptian Miracle: An Introduction to the Wisdom of the Temple (New York: Inner Traditions International,

1985), 44.

Likewise,

affects

or

feelings

can

be

conceived

but

are

grasped

only

by

their

concrete

effects (ibid .). The image that represents the cube is an intuitive script for our intellects under standing of the cubic tendency. The Image is twodimensional. The cube, however, is volume, and forms in space can be represented only by conventional devices; as far as the image is concerned, our conception of cubic volume is transcribed into comprehension, into the reasoning and coordinating intelligence of the cerebral cortex (ibid . 4647). Volume alone is space and it poses a nonpolarized energy as origin: an abstraction that may be called indivisible Unity []. This same energetic state rediscovers its analogues at all levels where volumes come into being (ibid . 133). Thus the form of a volume results from a combat between movement [and the ] disintegrating rebellion of matter []. The appearance of this double effect a manifest ec(h)ology is life, which we translate through the specific numbers of the volumeforms [i.e. through the gesture of geometry , through geometric diagrams,] because it is this life that is manifested by volumes. The five regular solids, like the four elements and their dodeca

hedral quintessence, are basic symbols [and/or diagrams ] for understanding (ibid . 136). 83 cf . Gregory Bateson, Culture Contact and Schizmogenesis, Experiments in Thinking about Observed Ethnological Material, and The Value System of a Steady State in Steps to an Ecology of Mind (New York: Ballantine Books, 1972). It is possible, writes Bateson in the latter chapter (Experiments in Thinking), that some sort of continuing plateau of intensity is substituted for climax in Balinese culture. [] In general, a lack of climaxand the substitution of a plateau for a climaxis characteristic of Balinese music, drama, and other art forms (ibid . 113). Arguably, and/or forcing things a bit (with a nod to Paul Cohen et.al), this plateau can be understood as both vertical and horizontal (ibid . 117),* not to mention three dimensionally hence voluminously extended by dint of its ultimate embodiment in and by the members of that culture (viz. its being extend[ed] to [] attitudes based upon bodily balance or lenjeu du mobile , for instance; ibid . 125). The plateau in this sense is not flat (in accordance with its standard and

strict

etymology;

http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=plateau),

but

instead

fleshed out

and given depthof dimension or extensive volume, which speaks volumes, schizmogenically, for Batesons ecological enterprise (his steps to an ecology of mindandbody: mind and body beingas he puts it in the followup to his Steps to an Ecology of Mind a necessary unity after all). || *The Balinese are markedly dependent upon spatial orientationi.e. upon figuring spacein both the material (or what Denoyel would call the ecological) and the sociocultural (or what Denoyel would call the echological) domains. Batesons schizmogenic analyses are in this respect attempts to correlate and coordinate this material ecology and sociocultural echology via an ec(h)ology avant lalettre . 84 Henry George Liddell & Robert Scott, An Intermediate Greek English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1889, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=




19/19

Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0073%3Aentry%3Dou%29%2Ftis). This quality is illustrated beautifully in the Cyclops episode of The Odyssey , writes Nandita Biswas Mellamphy, i.e. [the episode ] in which Odysseus defeats and overcomes Polyphemus by calling himself Oudis or Outisou being no or none, tis and dis being thing or body .* In this passage, Homer poetically links word and act, cunningly intermixing Odysseuss epithet mtis and his pseudonym outis/ oudis. Whats more (more than mere association), here he actually equates the word mtis with the word outis, having Polyphemus and his neighbours use mtis as a word for no one or nobody, which of course is the very meaning of outis. As both polytropos and polymtis, Odysseus is, in The Odyssey , both much traveled, versatile and deceptive as well as mutable, multiplicitous, multiple and in consequence no one (no one person). [] Odysseuss outis is thus the ruse/ mtis of no one/nobody and the ruse/ mtis as no one/nobody: the hero here becomes his very epithet. When translated into English, the Greek words mtis and outis in this passage are both given as nobody, none and/or no one. Let us exemplify with two or three wellknown translations (one by Fagles, one by Lattimore and one by Knox). In response to his blinded cries, Polyphemuss neighbours exclaim m tis seu mla brotn akontos elanei / m tis sauton kteinei dloi ee biphin , to which Polyphemus replies, o philoi, Outis m kteinei dloi oud biphin . Fagless translation reads: Surely no one is rustling your flocks against your willSurely no one is trying to kill you now by fraud or force!; Nobody, friends, Polyphemus

bellowed back

from

his

cave,

Nobodys

killing

me

now

by

fraud

and

not

by

force!

(1996,

224).

Lattimores translation, less accurate with respect to the consistency of the mtis translation (not to mention the translation of oud, which should be rendered as and not and notpardon the redoubling here [ oud ]as or), reads as follows: Surely no mortal against your will can be driving your sheep off? Surely none can be killing you by force or treachery? Then from inside the cave strong Polyphemus answered: Good friends, Nobody is killing me by force or treachery (1967, 147). And Knoxs translation, which suffers from the same neglect of the oud (replacing this and not by mere punctuation) and adding a silent h to the nominal no(h)body, reads as follows: Sure no mans driving off your flock? No man has tricked you, ruined you? Out of the cave, the mammoth Polyphemus roared in answer: Nohbody, Nohbody has tricked me, Nohbody has ruined me! (1993, 138139). In his commentary on this passage, Derrida writes: Ruse rather than force (dloi oud biphin). And by someone who calls himself Nobody. The Mtis of Outis, the trickery that blinds, is the ruse of nobody (outis, m tis, mtis). Homer plays more than once

on these words when Polyphemus echoes the chorus: m tis m tis Ruse, my friends! Ruse rather than force! and who kills me? Nobody! And in turn, Odysseus makes use of these same words in signing his ruse by his name as nobody and by his mtis (Jacques Derrida, 1990, 8889, translated by Dan Mellamphy (in Mellamphy, 1996); Nandita Biswas Mellamphy, The Three Stigmata of Friedrich Nietzsche: Political Physiology in the Age of Nihilism (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 105106, 140141. || *cf . Henry George Liddell & Robert Scott, An Intermediate Greek English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1889, http://www.perseus. tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0073%3Aentry%3D*ou%29%3Dtis). 85 Homer, The Odyssey with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, Ph.D (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1919), 9.360406, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/ hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0136%3Abook%3D9%3Acard%3D360 (via The Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University). 86

Nol

Denoyel,

Alternance

Tripolaire

et

Raison

Exprientielle

la

Lumire

de

la

Smiotique de Peirce, in La Revue Franaise de Pdagogie Volume 128, 1999, 38. 87 Sarah Kofman, Comment sen Sortir? (Paris: ditions Galile, 1983), 13. 88 Actually/mtically a nickname: that of Aristocles tes Aiginas, according to Diogenes Lartius. 89 Sarah Kofman, Comment sen Sortir? (Paris: ditions Galile, 1983), 13. 90 Sarah Kofman, Comment sen Sortir? (Paris: ditions Galile, 1983), 14. 91 Sarah Kofman, Comment sen Sortir? (Paris: ditions Galile, 1983), 17. 92 Sarah Kofman, Comment sen Sortir? (Paris: ditions Galile, 1983), 73. 93 Sarah Kofman, Comment sen Sortir? (Paris: ditions Galile, 1983), 73. 94 Sarah Kofman, Comment sen Sortir? (Paris: ditions Galile, 1983), 17.



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Metic Hexis and Flusserian Flux