Some Notes for Telemachus

i.

“The answers for the speculations on the Spirit lie in the praxis of phenomenology, where one aligns with the epistemic nature and limits of the human experience –the answer is found in the acceptance that we have no direct access to what is outside of our consciousness. Deciding to take breaths, in ἐποχή (epokhē), is to survive the passive submersion in a continuous stream of waking semiosis; it implies a rebellion against the tyranny of Signs, an inescapable struggle in the unending swim to the shore of Physis.”

• Concerning the metaphor of Physis as an island –after contemplating it once again–, it seems to me that it might be the ideal of satisfaction embodied (which is an impossibility, but is the paradoxical nature of jouissance herself); the breaths are ‘difference’, yes, however, I think that I am looking at it very existentially and that they are the self-speech that manifests as the illusion of free-will, hence, the creative act of self-imagining (a poetic re-membering of the mythic self) necessitates a displacement, or a pause, of jouissance so as to re-organize ourselves in the light of the “symbolic-purified”/purely symbolic –which I would describe as the ecstasy of [necessary] sublimation. One takes breaths out of the conventions of language (i.e., the Symbolic) so as to reach the Real via appropriate repression, viz., poetic language in which the poet cannot even explain the signifiers he includes in his poem (unless he were to psychoanalyze them at the cost of his own self-tolerance) –existentially, one can expand it into the meaning that one confers into certain points of suspension of one’s life (e.g., caring for others, caring for one’s own self-cultivation, for philosophizing, etc.). It is to no surprise that these engravings into our flesh are misunderstood by us (and misheard in our judgment) if they have been repressed/forgotten ‘trans-generationally’; the failure of translation that poetry consists of, as containing the Real intact within its metaphors, is opposed yet equivalent to the continuous failure to discern what ‘has been said’ by our ancestors since we cannot hear them! We do not even know how to listen to them! We can only hear ourselves! It seems to me that poeticizing our own lives might be the only way to stand on equal grounding with the complexity of our ancestors’ hieroglyphs –my acquaintance with Lacan, although growing, is still nowhere near to a complete level of mastery, so I would not know whether to conceptualize the poetic induction of meaning under the Imaginary order itself– however, I would say that entering the liminal stage between the Imaginary and Symbolic is the role of the poet –which may allude back to the breaths that are needed to float in the asymptotic swim towards the island of Physis. All in all, I believe that the ethic I prod at is the universality of poeticizing in the human so as to make sense of the Symbolic register through complementary means that allow towards a proper integration of the Symbolic order; it is the symbolic act of bringing the ensemble of the Id (the unconscious) into a homunculus (the self) that can be conversed with via words on paper (á la Golem of Prague) : the instantiation of the poem; the recognition of the self as the split-subject –in which a ‘mystical’ ricochet can take place, at least momentarily in our reflexivity (self-reflection as the exact moment of ‘abstraction’/ekstasis), of Dasein; the greater Self.

ii.

• Experiences exist independently from the experiences (in question) themselves in a ‘post-experiential’ realm, occurring in consciousness through memory –accessible through intentionality. This is the structure of the phantasm; the self as phantasm is the ‘self as another’, bound by temporality; the mirrors of time as the images of memories. Now, inevitably, the poetics of the phantasm have some sort of archetypal substrate and exist in a series of inflections between many factors of “life”; the poet poeticizes to poeticialize his life and so as to live in it –the wonders of a geomorphopsychology, following a Dalinian aesthetic, become a study of the physiognomy of the imagination itself (the wonders of memory and of [the subject’s 'private’] language are one, and its marvelous monuments are in the imaginal; the asymptotic ideal (being the structure of the ideal/utopic in-itself) of self-understanding which is always caught up in between the inner-images that one can apprehend through their mind’s eye –to what extent, then, does the Imaginary offer any more illusory knowledge than any other epistemic configuration in consciousness?).

iii.

• The phenomenon of an idea: thinking=willing=imagination: a trichotomy between : the thought-word (consonants in the imagination); and image and sound (colors and vowels) –the ultimate synaesthesia is language, and its phenomenology is essentially meta-linguistic, as well as both phonetic and graphemic; the phenomenology of the syllable informs us of the implications of using the tongue in thought (or imagination)… reason (which we might consider to be seemingly conscious thinking) is characterized by a passive mentis os; feeling/intuitive-understanding is a passive mentis os that is observable upon the placement of the inner-gaze onto the pupils of the mentis oculi, however, there is one more evolutive level to the dialectic: thinking in images. It is a switch in focus from a passive mentis os to an active mentis oculi (and the spectrum of this image-thinking –vision-logic– ranges from day-dreams/reverie to dreaming, in varying levels of complexity, and its perceptual inversion is indistinguishable from reading a piece of text without moving your tongue, i.e., the imagination being the underside of perception). The perception of one’s own imagination (i.e., the imagination perceiving itself) is constellated by points on the phantasmatic membranous surface of the mentis corpus, through which a dynamo of changes of attention onto your readily-available panoply of senses occurs for the phantasm to be navigated (the kinaesthetic passive imagination is a dominant content in the imagination, creating form to which sense/connoation can stick to the activity of an active mentis oculi); this apprehendable dynamo of changes is in-itself a “syn-aesthetic prise de conscience”, a floating attention placed onto one’s free image-association; the analysis of the perceptual changes enters the mentis corpus, now, “all the senses” includes reason/common sense, i.e., thought/meaning/truth, and so we leap from an empirical phenomenology to a radical epistemology: it all needs to be deconstructed, and the intention is not to enter a dualism, but to understand the mentis corpus as the center of different channels of cognition to be contained within the imagination, which is actually the imagination –or imagining– itself, in conjunction to the heuristics of organ-less organs (it is not strictly a Deleuzian BwO, it is the organs of the spirit, that is, the organless organs that are the imagination which behaves as both a reservoir –e.g., the kinaesthetic imagination, or the net of signifiers in one’s Unconscious– and an ‘intelligence’ –an analytical capacity of the imagination that can ‘understand’ the images presented to it). The phenomenology of the BwO, for lack of a better conception (perhaps in this case the psychoanalytic Unconscious might be being described), can be observed in hypnagogic hallucinations directly, that is where the magic union between perception and the mind is located because hypnagogia is where imagination and sense (sense in the sense of meaning and perception) join… Moreover, synaesthesia is one of the many species of thinking in images –in its joining of imagination to feeling, where ideas can be felt; and so the trialectic unfolds back into memory as its substrate; however, this seemingly solely spiritual union of imagination and feeling is actually Rimbaud’s pure hallucination of the word (the image can indeed represent ‘understanding’!); the schizophrenic only feels the consonants, not the vowels; the poet feels the consonants and sees and feels the vowels; both the light and its many shadows!… what is the phenomenology of the mentis corpus but a series of mirrors found in each sense [meaning] within the imagination? Phantasms are (each) idea, and the phantasm all ideas at once.

iv.

• Lacanian epistemology (Todestrieb) does not only dictate what one can know of the self; more importantly, it is also a threshold that prevents you from contemplating the full epistemic manifestation of relativism –life and death are one? waking life is the metaphor for life and sleeping is for death? To enter into a fully metaphoric (or archetypal) way of thought is without a doubt possible –a sort of resonance between opposites; if one were a foolish Hungarian, one might even call it a utraquistic method (an analogizing that is always useless without a third-ness).

v.

• Seeing yourself reflected in other people; that’s who we are. We see each other in the rest (in gestures in utterances), and, I think it is a sign of humility to find yourself in others. You will always find yourself in others because you are the Other. The permanent illusion is that we think that we are not the person in front of us, but, we are; and language is the reflective medium –the mirror– that allows both people to be reflected onto one another, as well as being a fleshly mirage veiling the union of the subject and object. You will always find yourself in the Other no matter where on their face you lay your gaze.

vi.

• Humor is both the feminine, the contorted, the proto-human; it is the plant, the fungus, the animal; it is the unconscious understood as ever-manifesting in our ever-changing experience –all is in flux, if all is consciousness–, while retaining a synthetic depth; a uterus with embryo where each of its umbilical breaths birth eyes to the void : the Image (the represented unrepresentation par excellance) –its essence is imaginary, and its stage is the imagination; its substance is Feeling, its very mechanic and production is through feeling, and memory is the underlying cause-substrate; with graphemes as its amnesiac dilutive. We must study the re-ification of perception in the imaginal, i.e., the intimacy of an image/rememorization of a given space of autobiographical importance (which might as well constitute as all possible memories of the body).

vii.

• The body is the synaesthetic apparatus; meaning, that, language, as the mnemonic excretion of the body; works as an ana-aesthetic; it separates [all of] the senses (it separates the meanings too) in speech and text –and the ‘reader’ reconstructs them, (how?)– via the “language of the imagination”– now, what is this process? The BwO, in gross terms; the organs of the spirit in Coleridgian terms; imagination itself in Steiner’s spirituality. The Science of the Image is the Art of the Word.

viii.

• Eternal recurrence: Nietzsche engenders a dualism between life and death in his eternal return, it’s far too existentialistic for it to be existential –instead re-ify your life –re-vivify, re-live–; every single one of your memories, but in the present –this is the true cyclical essence of existence, at least the only one perceivable: it is the condition to coexist with the eternality of the present [moment] and its transcendent and immanent effigies (viz. the future and the past respectively).

viv.

• The science of the letter is the hearing of sound; now, hearing entails many things, it is the phenomenology of Voix (which is deeply related to how an idea exists); but, one cannot think of a transcendental concept of Voix, as it’s not an image (it cannot be made into a language, it is the resonance of meaning through the medium of syllables) –we must philosophically conceive of it, unfortunately, in prosody; it is purely an aesthetic. The science of the letter involves observing the atoms of speech, which, if observed through writing are remarkably distinct, but only on the surface. Could we not say that the voice is only immanently-transcendent in the encapsulation of a grapheme; in the inscription onto the fleshly tissue of memory?

x.

• The study of language starts without thinking about the concept; the study of the concept reels in the gargantuan obstacle of outlining a new theory of the mind; and, finally, whether a morality should be understood, as such, is already lost in Nietzsche; if anything, an ethic can only be an aesthetic; and any morality is axiology considered independent from aesthetics –a fatal error. Transcendence is a mere forgetting; nothing else but Memory. A real philosophy holds Mnemosyne as its apostle! Orpheus is Socrates; and Mnemosyne is Philosophy. This is the only reversal necessary from which to continue the work of our truest theoreticians (of our purest metaphysicians); going beyond nature is dangerous in thought (see the poet), but shall also be done through writing (the philosopher) –however, there is a clear syncretism between these two roles and what makes a great thinker; philosophers should be prophets; and, Abulafia lays out this process through the logic of mysticism –the logic of mysticism is a poetic existentialism! sure, existentialism falls into psychologisms (it cannot be a real phenomenology nor a furthering of metaphysics; which I believe mysticism reconciles fairly well (Heidegger, Deleuze, Wittgenstein, Ponty) –but is taboo and confused with theosophic superstition. Everyone has to become a poet! to recognize experience as a Metafysica Poetica! this is the true Renaissance!

xi.

• The demeanor of the Other is the amalgamation of gesture (itself) as a perceived essence; a perceived essence is a feeling caused by perception to which imagination tends and indicates vitality to (epistemological vitality as a particular essence of a “body” that is, seen reflectively as (and by) memory, i.e., a proper reification of perception in an image: understanding (in that it can be remembered)) –the self in the perception of an object, holding an “intentionality”, a “physiognomy", a rubbing of mirror-neurons, engenders the nature of the object being apprehended and thus remembered (the object is formed as a body in the consciousness of the self and, its essence/feeling is dependent on the desire which determined the placement of the gaze in the first place; the appearance of a woman, the “flex and roll of her hips”, the shyness in her gaze, and her hairs’ infinite shades of gold and brown –that, put into one, is a sound example of the sort of intentionality that is desired in the moment, felt, and instantly remembered at once; and it is not exactly a Humean empirical observation. Now, the voice of the Other, however, is not an essence (since it cannot purely be re-membered, in fact, it is the first impression of someone to be forgotten after they someone die –its remembrance is always muddied in comparison to the image) it is essential, immanent, and conditional to the being of the Other! The Other’s self (or mind) is the voice; the Other’s free-body (or body as such) is the imaginal image of him! And seeing (perceiving) the Other is a syncretism of these two post-reflective apprehensions of an object in perception. Nowadays, we individually inhabit cyberspace, and, this realm of virtuality allows us to de-member our own [capacity for virtualization in the Zizekean sense].

xii.

• The Sublety of Feeling and Truth as presented in the Inversion of Intersubjectivity: Ethics is composed by the illusion of the Other, and subsequently composes interpersonal action (ranging from speech, to epistolarity, etc.: it is the hallucination of language –not Rimbaud’s hallucination of words–, it is the use of language itself that is provoked by the need of ethics that the illusion of the Other causes), viz., the dimension of the Other is the dimension of Ethics in themselves; reflexively, what composes the illusion of the Other is the hallucination of selfhood (the erring of considering the soul as distinct from the body, and vice versa)! This is where consciousness and self-consciousness can be traced from Hegel’s logic, to Freud’s primacy of memory (as memories/remembering/an idea or thought being essences as such), and finally, into a Deleuzian-type conception of life, which follows an awkward materialism, that, when applying a reversal of the Rimbaldian maxim: “On me pense [à moi]”, that is, “Je pense à eux [ou à lui/elle]” (the Lacanian objet petit a) we are elucidated into the recognition of life composing truth itself (life and truth being a rough sketch and highly interchangeable with other onto-epistemic syzygies); the moment you recognize the Other, you recognize life, which you have first unconsciously recognized in yourself, and conceive as the pure concept of free-will (in-itself) –see Lacan’s mirror-stage: the appearance of the Other (equivalent to our conception of “Ethic”) is the assumption of the self implemented into the automatic necessity for Morality/Language toward Action, to be imprisoned in our organs. The feeling of the Other-proper, is merely their body and face, the Other as an entity can only be recognized through the self, and, is hence a manifestation of the self, as well as being a construction of the self in-itself, as well as being composed by [through] the self, fragmentarily carrying the essence of the self as such –because the Other, in its entirety, is the essence of the self because, as explained before, the other is determined by the self first, and determines the self “second” in a species of isomorphism. Furthermore, imagining the Other is an essential projection of the self, which constitutes the Other as being a permanent projection of the self and existing epistemologically on the inner surface of the solipsistic sphere that my consciousness, as infinitely subjective, is. “It’s my soul what surrounds my body / a sphere that spins before the universe” (Solomon ibn Gabirol). You can understand perception as imagination if we become outrageously empirical and accept the ontology of the mundus imaginalis… And thus, find no difference in the epistemology of the imagination and perception as an active imagining/hallucinating of reality… this puts the Other in a sticky position since what we say to them, is based on an assumption that they are an-Other (person) and that they supposedly understand what we say, as if we were not speaking to ourselves solipsistically when addressing the Other.