Viviparous Recrudescence (a Metathetical Pasigraphy)

Notes and quotes from

Michel Foucault

The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences

--

Metathesis – the transposition of sounds or letters in a word

Pasigraphy – a writing system where each symbol represents a concept. Its aim is universal intelligibility (The Glass Bead Game?)

Vowels in Isolation:

A for possession (avoir, to have)
E for existence
I for puissance (power)
O for étonnement (astonishment, eyes opened wide)
U for humidité (humidity) and therefor for humeur (mood)

P102. From Court de Gébelin (1816)

“This object of extension of which all natural beings are constituted – an extension that may be affected by four variables. And by four variables only:

The form of the elements,
the quantity of those elements,
the manner in which they are distributed in space in relation to each other,
and the relative magnitude of each element.

As Linneaus said, in a passage of capital importance, ‘every note should be a produce of number, of form, or proportion, of situation.”

P134. From Philosophiebotanique.

“…things can now be established in a manner that excludes all uncertainty…the arrangement of its elements into a linear series patterns representation according to an evident and universal mode.”

P134-6

“All the creatures that taxonomy has arranged in an uninterrupted simultaneity are then subjected to time.”

P151

“Imagination…the ambiguous locus in which the shattered but insistent continuity of nature was united with the empty but attentive continuity of consciousness.”

P160

“’The excessive abundance of money, which makes the power of states while it lasts, thrusts them imperceptibly and naturally into indigence.’”

P187 from Cantillon.

“It would be untrue to say that nature spontaneously produces values; but it is the inexhaustible source of the goods that exchange transforms into values, though not without expenditure and consumption.

The Physiocrats begin their analysis with the thing itself which is designated in value, but which exists prior to the system of wealth.”

P195

“The visible order, with its permanent grid of distinctions, is now only a superficial glitter above an abyss.”

P251

“…for those who are hungry, wheat is scarce; but for the rich who make up society, diamonds are scarce.

…labour – that is, economic activity – did not make its appearance in world history until men became too numerous… humanity is henceforth laboring under the threat of death…”

P256

“Homo oeconomicus is not the human being who represents his own needs to himself, and the objects capable of satisfying them; he is the human being who spends, wears out, and wastes his life in evading the imminence of death.”

P257

“Ground rent is the effect, not of a prolific nature, but of the avarice of the land. Now, this avarice becomes more perceptible every day: the population, in fact, increases; progressively poorer land is brought under cultivation; the costs of production increase; the prices of agricultural products increase, and ground rents with them. Under this pressure, it is very possible – indeed necessary – that the nominal wage of the labourers will also begin to rise, in order to cover the minimum costs of their subsistence; but, for the same reason, their real wage can never rise in practice above the sum that is indispensable to provide them with clothing, shelter, and food.”

P258 (Ricardo)

“Nietzsche…He took the end of time and transformed it into the death of God and the odyssey of the last man…”

P263

Viviparous – of bringing forth live young that have developed inside the body of the parent.

Recrudescence – the recurrence of an undesirable condition.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK6Gvee-ri4 – Tame Impala – New Person, Same Old Mistakes

“Expressing their thoughts in words of which they are not the masters, enclosing them in verbal forms whose historical dimensions they are unaware of, men believe that their speech is their servant and do not realize that they are submitting themselves to its demands.”

P297

“…in the very heart of empiricity, there is indicated the obligation to work backwards – or downwards – to an analytic of finitude, in which man’s being will be able to provide a foundation in their own positivity for all those forms that indicate to him that he Is not infinite. And the first characteristic with which this analytic will mark man’s mode of being, or rather the space in which that mode of being will be deployed in its entirety, will be that of repetition – of the identity and the difference between the positive and the fundamental: the death that anonymously gnaws at the daily existence of the living being is the same as that fundamental death on the basis of which my empirical life is given to me; the desire that links and separates men in the neutrality of the economic process is the same as that on the basis of which everything is desirable for me; the time that bears languages along upon it, that takes up its place within them and finally wears them out, is the same time that draws my discourse out, even before I have pronounced it, into a succession that no man can master. From one end of experience to the other, finitude answers itself; it is that identity and the difference of the positivities, and of their foundation, within the figure of the Same.”

P315

“…ought we not remind ourselves that we are bound to the back of a tiger?”

P322

“…the chaotic accumulation of contents, the weight of experiences constantly eluding themselves, the whole silent horizon of what is posited in the sandy stretches of non-thought. Because he is an empirico-transcendental doublet, men is also the locus of misunderstanding – of misunderstanding that constantly exposes his thought to the risk of being swamped by his own being, and also enables him to recover his integrity on the basis of what eludes him.”

P323

“…the cogito does not lead to an affirmation of being, but it does lead to a whole series of questions concerned with being…”

P325

An sich – Noumenon – posited object or event that exists independently of human sense perception.

Für sich – Explicit/actual – Being-for-itself / being which defines its own bounds and determines its own properties (Autonomous)

Unbewusste – Unconscious Mind

“…in every case, the inexhaustible double that presents itself to reflection as the blurred projection of what man is in his truth, but that also plays the role of a preliminary ground upon which man must collect himself and recall himself in order to attain his truth.”

P327

“For modern thought, no morality is possible.

Can we say that it is not known by those who, in their profound stupidity, assert that there is no philosophy without political choice, that all thought is either ‘progressive’ or ‘reactionary’?”

P328

“This is because man, in fact, can be revealed only when bound to a previously existing historicity: he is never contemporaneous with that origin which is outlined through the time of things even as it eludes the gaze; when he tries to define himself as a living being, he can uncover his own beginning only against the background of a life which itself began long before him; when he attempts to re-apprehend himself as a laboring being, he cannot bring even the most rudimentary forms of such a being to light except within a human time and space which have been previously institutionalized, and previously subjugated by society; and when he attempts to define his essence as a speaking subject, prior to any effectively constituted language, all he ever finds is the previously unfolded possibility of language, and not the stumbling sound, the first word upon the basis of which all languages and even language itself became possible. It is always against a background of the already begun that man is able to reflect on what may serve for him as origin.”

P330

“…psychoanalysis moves towards the moment…This means that, unlike the human sciences, which, even while turning back towards the unconscious, always remain within the space of the representable, psychoanalysis advances and leaps over representation, overflows it on the side of norms, conflicts burdened with rules, and significations forming a system, the simple fact that it is possible for there to be

System (therefore signification),

Rule (therefore conflict),

Norm (therefore function).

…function and norms, attains its foundation in the mute repetition of Death,

Conflicts and rules their foundation in the naked opening of Desire,

Significations and systems their foundation in a language which is at the same time Law.

…this Death, and this Desire, and this Law can never meet within the knowledge that traverses in its positivity the empirical domain of man; but the reason for this is that they designate the conditions of possibility of all knowledge about man.”

P374-5

“…man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end.”

P387

Perichoretic Arrogation

 

It's said, ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,’ but if you were to kill me, I may find myself in a greater harmony which may be more uncomfortable for you. When does one cease to find innocent joy in the sound of one’s own heartbeat transformed into something more deeply sonorous, full of telltales, spooky? Face-down in bed, eyes wide open, grimacing if not straight-up gnashing, grinding jawbone to TMJ, conscious of only one’s own autonomic nervous system, my head’s up my own ass like some mental contortionist capable of cranio-rectal implantation and oblation like a bloody ouroboros in distaste! Face-down in bed (prone), an incursion of cockroach-related particulate-matter turns my eyes toward communism (pink)! From the white purity of what? Insular anarchy? What amounts to children stranded on an island where normalcy far from domestic civility may be said to tenuously exist. Drunk and high from avoiding my ‘yes sir’ duties to society or whatsoever have you. Held in contempt for snoring, what is one ignoring if not breathing exercises? Pranayama – Oh Mama! Am I out-of-pace with society’s keep-up? Or am I out of touch with society’s upkeep or whatever is presupposed on one’s arrival to ‘kept’ society, where loans used to be financial games, but now things are more serious with customary rule changes – where poor gamers are found to hunger IRL.

Out of pace with society’s keep-up, God on high reports, “I might need you to seek refuge; as a civilian to an invading force.” Sun Tzu knows one does not go to war unless victory is believed to be assured and the only ones to bear history’s narrative be the victors. Spoiling it for everyone on this side of a fence like a border wall, “Thank you for fresh carcasses, comrade,” (as my intrusion crustily inspissates). My ‘why’ – she wants to tell me what to do, but she doesn’t want to tell me what’s going on behind-the-scenes and yet she’s gathering my ‘intel’ at a concerning rate. These points of data are indicative of some obfuscatory function! Coupled to an invented interpretation that serves to find fault. (Meanwhile, she’s breaking my mirrors). ‘There’s more than one way to skin a cat’ and so many disorders manifest similarly, hence how the practice of medicine is able to treat, based on similarity of presentation. ‘All the world’s a stage’ and some people play sick roles. Some desire to ‘stay sick’ (a bumper-sticker) because feelings associated with said disease appeal to something at least known in the world (albeit abased) and that knowledge one feels power over, whether to indulge or deny based on the usefulness of symptomatology to achieve material gains. Over others, in denial that such toxic behavior will get the best of them (not today!) one pushes off significant change for the betterment of selves and society for some fleeting comfort – a future anxiety.

Softening my gaze, ‘what is in accordance with nature as harmony…’ it is commented upon that I’m up early today! Instant discord. “...the child – and he is more than a witness, he is a scapegoat!” And often things get worse before they get better...how are compromise and tolerance in a relationship dismissive? This missive seeks official answers and final solutions! These things grievous in nature, how are they natural? Too pedantic? Such aggression toward one who presents opposition, sure, but out of filial piety – a moral of sinology (Confucianism) that Nietzsche would likely scoff at as an observer of circumstantial disharmony – “change your tune!”

‘Negging’ – negative encouragement, how does tearing down the self-perception of another build one up?! ‘Doc sez sensory imp-puts test well, so perception-of-others is thusly validated. What test might one physician perform to test self-perception/reflection – crossword puzzles? Even such games have been found offensive. What fails to offend the senses? Mom’s lasagna temporarily sates, but the pork sausage doesn’t sit well: mother’s revenge, Montezuma’s schadenfreude.

5/22

Was at a local drinking-establishment/beer & pizza watering-hole near an early closing time. It began raining heavily so I requested my roommate I knew was sitting at home, watching TV and lives in normal walking distance to come pick me up. He arrived right away, rapping at the chamber door. Everyone's thought, "Was that old drunk John trying to get one after closing time?" Everyone agreed not to let him in, yet I followed him out, having asked for the convenience. As one’s convenience is another’s inconvenience (apparently, in this case) he was mad at me for not being outside right away – when I paid my check and still had half a beer, and a shot was being served me from another patron. He was argumentative off the bat (at the outset of our interaction) for being discourteous when a parameter for courtesy had not been clearly defined/established.

Guilt at arraignment! An efficient judicial system! In the wrong for being charged to begin with! “I am confident that the charges levied against me are in accordance with my acts, however my ignorance is to be found within the arbitrary structure – the moral hierarchy itself!” The order of the court: does it align with the natural order of things? Do the rules of man’s arbitration follow intuitively from the laws of nature? What one would consider a mathematic derived as a reading of weight upon a scale, another applies a discursive formulaic to integral constants – weighing into the moment of offense past/historical interpretations of the way things have gone as well as future trajectory variability for how things may have gone, but didn't - an attempt to verify an inaccuracy. “Your desires are greater than your reason, and your vanity is even greater than your desires…” goes a mocking patron <#160> How would I feel if I had spent an entire sunny Spring day in front of a television set? Not very good! Perhaps angry at myself for squandering time in my life so inordinately on syndicated “Seinfeld” and live golf. Isn’t being tired exhausting, fatiguée​? I know it puts me to sleep if I were to engage in something so mindlessly – an emptiness forms, there is so little left of self that love becomes a foreign concept (a commercial to skip) and vanity escapes all reasonable desire. (As I dream of elder abuse…) True, if there were no television, there would not be that same suffering distraction, that blameworthy device that some binge upon as addict archetypes. Still, addict archetypes always have been able to find some (electrical) outlet for their desire for loving attachment that may have been lacking in formative years. It’s as if I expect a mentally disordered individual to exceed my expectations! It’s as if I expect demons to exorcise themselves! The problem with T.V. is diminishing returns as it comes to alleviating boredom, as occurs with most drugs of choice. Like an old definition for autism – fantasy as an escape from reality – but because fantasy and reality function through the device closely in parallel, they become conflated. A man’s expectations in general become fantastic and hyperbolic through this diffusion of conscious activity directed toward what amounts to a scattering of light and sound. Interpreted by the receiver thereof as sensible (it tickles the senses) and because one has indeed made sense of such an array, reality itself seems more masterable. It’s fantasy training! However, because of constant cut-scenes and commercial interrupts, it is non-sequential. One’s attention, while affixed on one target, is paradoxically broken by the object itself, its twisted contents. The object itself, although boxy and rectangular, because it takes on the form, bearing, and voice of competing personalities, is anthropomorphized, and sometimes vicariously so, that the consumed individual imagines one’s own personality to consist of myriad vested interests, fantastically regulated by a light-up plastic wand. Competing for your attention, content production teams intent on administering gratifying imagery – bleach white teeth, Botox, make-up, costume, lighting – all the things that make life seem so neat and orderly, all the things that cost millions, millions of hours of entertainment.

To arise without dispute! Many may not consider such a luxury, but when one’s very existence is an offense to another, much may be thrown in doubt (if one is found violable). One’s individuality affirms acceptance or rejection: one’s opinions may be more or less well-founded (if ascertained in good health/spirits). One needn’t advantage oneself over another to achieve validation. Good practice is self-sufficient in and of itself (leaning against the wall (Pink Floyd) is the beginning of dualism (Suzuki)). One’s posture serves to describe how one fits/sits into this life (yet even hunchbacks are validated when ringing church bells (Hugo)). It’s not only what you say it’s how you say it (rhetorically). Context matters (more than color)! Does my conceptualization ring true? It’d be more efficient if I were to treat myself like shit so as to save you the effort!

To ascend without disputation! What corporate ladder is that?! Engine like a heart, heart like galvanized steel, what really gets me off is suffering and misery – self-validation at another’s expense. When one is a child – new to the world – how is physical pain & mental anguish not tyrannical to me?! Because the suffering is chosen/known, new mothers transcend limitations. What did you expect? A bigger baby?! Bad parents complain about unexpected/unresearched consequences of parenthood, externalizing anger at self for unforseeing / lacking foresight, and continuing to fall behind, lose posture, social standing, and quantum ascendancy? Suffering lower energy states, blame is easily placed on youth for one’s lack of youthfulness – imagining a quantity lacking in abundance, one becomes deluded.

A beginner’s mind goes beyond/transcends questioning? ‘Why does such-and-such exist?’ implies a lack of acceptance. Even the most pious of judges demand exclusivity! My transcendental substantiation goes beyond mere form to content – goes beyond alimentary demands to guts & backbone! Form indicates, content describes. Peace pipes down! What one does not accept, one more easily does away with. One’s favor is implied by its being allowed to be around. How can one kill what one does not understand? Our bodies contain what is true within. If one does not eat, drink, and breathe everything – have you not tried Louis’ antipasto? Superman? If this moment is all that exists in time, how am I not spoon-fed? Emotionally mercurial individuals qualify feelings as greater than/less than even though these feelings exist in an abundance beyond quantification.

5/24

Perichoretic Arrogation (false claims upon the triune God)

Father – Son – Holy Spirit God – Guru – Self

6/11

“Unacculturate yourself! The culture isn’t just out there. When you see an old person, you have a certain set of thoughts that are conditioned by your culture that are in you now, they’re no longer out there. You just have them, you have to get rid of those first. In other words, If you’re going to be free of a dysfunctional mythology that leaves aging as a time of sadness, loss, and fear...and irrelevance – it’s certainly going to color the quality of your life.”

From Ras Dass – The Miracle of Consciousness (lecture, 1996)

As the Jews were only fit for slavery and death, sub-human, offensive...The arrogance of those who think they know, but wrongly, or are intentionally trying to deceive, see the word as merely a tool, and subordinate it as one would some polytheistic deity that is fit for only novelty and intrigue, but which bears no more basis on understanding than it may have once possessed. “Expressing their thoughts in words of which they are not the masters, enclosing them in verbal forms whose historical dimensions they are unaware of, men believe that their speech is their servant and do not realize that they are submitting themselves to its demands.”* This communication would not be worth the time if such a superior model of efficiency, living ones days in a certain manner prescribed by modernist mythology, were not proscribed by the Good Book! [‘This is how the world will end the day I die!’] Even if one ascribes to the purely physical perichoresis (triune (3-in-1? Yes, but moreso 3-and-1)) of that stupid Jew Einstein (E=mc²), a measure of light is exponentially more constant than a measure of mud! And what does that mean to a modern materialist’s spirituality? How much energy can be derived? What does saponification mean to a soap-maker? Early this morning, watching a mockingbird drive away a crow, I remember old Finch, and how ‘It’s a sin to kill a mockingbird…’ Is it arrogation to believe that this old crow (a murderer, by definition) is not a threat? So, one needs to chase the false and destructive set of beliefs from one’s own home, one’s own heart, in order to achieve harmony. Beyond that, there is an old poem about a miser whose fears come to rest above his chamber door in the form of an ebony bird which proves the indicative source of a perplexing nostalgia in “The Raven.” How seriously should one regard this man in his tedious and solitary plight?

How seriously does one take one’s investments, as a set of beliefs? One’s personality becomes invested in one’s own mythology. “Words have the power to both destroy and heal. When words are both true and kind, they can change our world,” said the Buddha. Fuck that! Lin Chi (some old sage) also said, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” What did that homicidal maniac have in mind? What was his motive, your honor? According to Google, NPR, “He meant that those who think they’ve found all the answers in any religion need to start questioning.” How is this not solvent? Apparently it is more common for one to run out of questions before one runs out of answers. What is your final solution?!