24

[Alan Sondheim]

24
"The condition of the age." "Organism inhabits the symbolic; the symbolic
is not a matter of consciousness; a manner of consciousness; the symbolic
is a manner of worlding; of inhabitation." Of steward and the symbolic,
the emergence of ecology. The fundamental ground of ecology: non-existent,
function in relation to ethos. Ethos is always already consensual,
boot-strapped; ethos is implicated in, implicates, the Emblematic. The
ecological presupposes states of innocence, states of the pre-symbolic;
language corrupts, is corrupted; violence coheres to language. The
steering-mechanism of the ecological is survival; you might argue as well
for the symmetry of beauty; for the inherency (rights, behaviors,
cultures) of organisms; for any functional attribution (medical
discoveries, cleaner air): these are framed, frameworked, farmed-out. What
can be drawn from all of this? What lessons? That the world possesses an
Ought: that X or Y ought to survive? Every X or Y is contested. That I
agree, that I agree violently, is irrelevant; only that my violence might
impinge on your design. I desire the presencing of a world with few
intruders; I will argue that, but I cannot found that. That I argue that,
is happenstance; is a decision in which belief, not Belief, plays a role.
The trick is to drive out transcendence, ignore immanence, violate the
slightest appearance of the Absolute; the trick is the sublimation of the
sublime. Do I need to argue this? Must one fight?
25
Do animals have rights? Do humans? What constitutes the "have"? What
constitutes inherency, granting? What designates the social? What
designates the "natural-social"? Rights are ad hoc; situational; communal;
group-identified; legislated; unjust. I cannot appeal to justice; to
justice = Justice. Must I fight?
26
Such issues are articulated; self-organize; within a structuralist
territorialization; disappearing outside or beyond (they are beyond) any
emblematic. When I = ego = Ego appears within this, this short-circuits.
The I is always present; now it is surface, ""my" violence" "on "your"
design". This is normal philosophy, non-paradigmatic; philosophical
biography is not far behind. The text corners the text; self-references;
deconstructs. Retreat. (I emphasize the shame of writing, the
written-tawdry, the embarrassment of presence. Let production produce
production. I withdraw.)
27
Beyond or external to mathematics, mathesis, 0 and 1 are situational; they
are discursive tokens, floating signifiers. What one presents, the other
exculpates; what one withdraws, the other absolves. 0 is already a
multiplicity; just look at it. Articulation leads quickly to power sets,
cellular automata chaos, differentiations, growth: differentiation to the
degree-zero of substance, the analogic. What is ruptured at close sight,
smoothes at farther; both are latent, developed much as a photographic
plate. Set-theoretical paradoxes are the rubble of mathematics; the
mathematics of ideal forms remains in light of them. The continuum
hypothesis is subject only to choice outside of the continuum hypothesis;
someone does something one way or another with mathesis, axiomatics,
infinities. Mathematical ontology is the structure of the world; sets of
parameters define all that there is; such parameters may be ab nihilo,
virtual, real, stochastic, chaotic, fuzzy; given certain dimensions,
certain tolerances, they exhaust. A message from elsewhere is a message by
virtue of structure and interpretation. A lesson: the I withdrawn in favor
of; as a result of; as a consequence of; the eye. And the eye withdrawn,
withdraws.

[28 forthcoming]