Revere the words...

This is a letter I submitted to the Jewish news...

As I circle the words in Julie Szego's article (13/3) I can't help but remember Hanna. And like most I have questions. Is it a motion signaled to revise the words? A palimpsest of memories unfulfilled? A revisionism one might surmise delivered to empathize with this rather modernist piece of film. And a modernist character whose spatio-temporal plane seems interrupted by words she can understand, yet cannot articulate onto a page. Is it high art or a convoluted piece of literature that yearns to find reason where there is none...?

Virgil once said a fault is fostered by concealment. What first comes into question is the notion of high art and whether it is at fault. Its modernist convolutions and non linear predilections distort history in one might say a romantic ideal that brings about the slightest whisper of catharsis for some and a revisionist history for others. Maybe this "anomaly" sweeps away memory and displaces it for a reason though. For are we not the culprits of memory itself when we take it into our own hands? When we incarcerate those, who like the Shoah itself, is as some have said "a mystery wrapped in silence"?

The real irony though is Hanna's life wasn't left to the words she so strongly articulated when speaking to others but the ones she left behind on the page, and the ones her sensibilities taught her to listen to the tapes; a record of life outside the prison walls.

As Jews we should only be so fortunate that the Odyssey of "twists and turns" is one we can articulate onto a page. For what if we are the last ones left to tell the truth? Hanna's journey brings to bear the importance of the literary medium incarnated as a revision not of history but of how the reader is born in a time where there are no reasons left to reflect upon. Only in the hope someone will listen just as she did and revere the words.

My late Grandfather was an illiterate. Sometimes when I went over to see him I'd notice he would attempt to read the newspaper. But as I sat there and wondered what compelled him to do such a thing, in what one might call a displaced state of mind, there was a desire in me to know. And in a strange yet compelling irony he taught me to revere the words…

A question of "art"

HERE are a few quotes about art i picked up off someones facebook. She's an art history graduate from melbourne uni

I will attempt to dissect these pithy little statements in due course.

A successful work of art is not one which resolves contradictions in a spurious harmony, but one which expresses the idea of harmony negatively by embodying the contradictions, pure and uncompromised, in its innermost structure.Theodore Adorno

-Ok well first off I think we have to make a distinction between a "spurious harmony" and the idea of "negative harmony". In Adorno's case I think he is trying to say that resolving contradictions in art are in some way riddled with disengenious *outcomes* which he has conviniently called "harmony". "Negative harmony" on the other hand is an idea. Adorno is carefull though as he utilises a Plato like rhetorical device placing the " negative harmony" under the umbrella of an "idea". This means he doesn't have to explicitly define the term harmony" at all yet at the same time he uses the term "successfull work of art" which really implies that the art work itself is a success and contains a successfull outcome in and of itself. How do you measure success if you cannot simply define the nature of that success with your own terminology? Adorno has simply resorted to neologistic logic with no real understanding of the terminology he is using or its implications. Moreover the term "harmony" really becomes like a nebulous word or catch phrase with no real meaning at all. Now lets see if we can try to dissect what Adorno might be saying about contradictions and their embodiment.

At first glance "spurious harmony" is a confusing phrase. Now lets say I were to quote virgil "a fault is fostered by concealment". There is potential here to make a case and argue Adorno is not opposed to virgil's axiom; being a firm believer in not resolving contradictions but rather embodying them "pure and uncompromised". I have already demonstrated that as far as terminology is concerned Adorno is far from "pure and uncompromised". Moreover adorno is probably a firm believer in Virgil's rhretorical mode of thinking where you should try to avoid faults at all costs so you do not *compromise* your integrity. The question is would Adorno subscribe to Virgil's quote if the "idea" of a fault and the "idea" of concealment were perhaps both negative and positive depending on the connotation and art work in question? If for instance a fault and concealment were negative containing an inherent "negative harmony" yet their context, sentence structure, or grammatical inflections made them positive in nature is this a case of how something quite simple can become an insidious form of rhetoiric? After all an idea or umbrella term has the potential of meaning just about anything if there is no definition involved in the terms utilised. Adorno's quote lends itself to a structuralist critique in the end where he again uses a rather frivolous term "the innermost structure". What the innermost structure seems to relate to is some kind of core introspection. What is Adorno's introspection when is comes to the idea of being spurious as opposed to the idea of negative harmony and complete purity without compromise? There seems to be a clear problem here in terms of how we relate an idea to how we reach our "innermost structure"... Adorno is a good example of this.

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments. An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man's nature.Ayn Rand

Now this quote is harder to critique because to some extent it bears some truth to it. To return to Virgil's quote though if a fault is fostered by concealment we may perhaps introduce art as a selective recreation of reality however not according to the artists metaphysical value judgements... This is primarly due to art and its many evolutions which have no bearing on how it is selected, just as faults are fostered by concealment so too are the many evolutions that art has gone through. Take Pollock's work for instance. Abstract art does not rely on selectivity yet its metaphysical value judgements and especially those of the artist can remain ineffable and still have some integrity. This is possibly the reason so many people call themselves artists to begin with... Metaphysics is the study of ontology and the world as we *recreate* it in our own minds not the reality around us. If this were the case and reality was in some way drastically affected by an individuals metaphysical value judgements we would essentially be talking about super natural powers and a world on the verge of armaggedon.. A value judgement does not neccesarily represent someones fundamental view of nature or anything else for that matter. The question is how do we selectively recreate anything of a metaphysical nature that is fundamental to our own nature? Sure art may represent something about us however this is delving into a realm of subjective value judgements rather than metaphysical ones that contain real intellectual value.

To expound on this I can offer an image from the book of Genesis where the sea blends with the sky to create the horizon. How do we conceptualise this image in our own minds as a paradigm of faith? Is it pre reflective or does it contain some hidden metaphysical meaning and furthurmore is it a selective activity that appeals to man's nature or his value judgements ? To man's nature maybe; as a human being struck by curiousity and possibly a feeling of longing. But to metaphysicalvalue judgements ? I would argue that we're simply not always supposed to feel the way we're supposed to according to a discourse that claims to support us. When we look at a work of art do we wonder whether art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments? Just as the horizon gives us a chance to wonder about metaphysics in an arbitrary way, art seems to offer a similar feeling of catharsis although without the underlying metaphysical value judgements. Art is a recreation of what the artist feels or thinks at the time, or it may even reveal something about their stance in politics for instance. But to elevate all artists to the point where they are contemplating the metaphysical world is really absurd since everyone has different intellectual capabilities.

schizophrenics Anonymous

Today I had an idea for a film:

There are 8 people at a table each with a story to tell and the audience has to guess which one has schizophrenia. EACH present a montage of images and verbalisations that bring about a synthesis between resolution and resignation. Resolute, in their struggle with what is fictional in their respective lives, and a degree of resignation and apathy in their struggle to find the meaning of "truth".

This piece would obviously be deeply introspective psychoanalitic piece yet still remain an enigmatic "thought experiment" for the audience. I'm thinking 12 Angry men meets Adaptation in terms of a filmic comparative analysis. In each case one person's story intertwines with another and brings about a degree of reasonable doubt as to the veracity of what they're actually saying.

In terms of a more theoretical analysis the theories of Carl Jung are quite apt in this regard. He believed the power of myth has an integral role to play in how people construct their lives and their personalised identity. He conflates this with an essentialist view stating that everyone is in some way consigned to a certain archetype or primal character. He then goes on to expound on how this mythical construction is related to the schizophrenic mind and in turn is rendered an essential system for any individual containing a unique creative and speculative mental faculty.

This is what I want to explore. In the end we come to realise something about the mindset of the creative thinker that is inextricably linked to the power of the filmic language and its abliity to create something quite intricate and beautifull.

Now what I'd like to do - provided its legal and people are willing- is to select a few people from foundies and allow them to be the characters at the table utilising their final films as a distinct reference point for a discussion about truth, meaning, the power of myth in shaping their "collective mindset". I was also thinking that the table could represent a forum or group session called "schizophrenics anonymous".

I'd aim to make this a short film rangin from 20- 30 minutes in length with minimal amount of voice over (possibly)

I guess I'd like to know your thoughts on this idea...

Thanks.

Rob.

My proposal

It has been a long time since I posted. This is for various reasons. In any case my life is going pretty well. I'm planning on doing the masters of creative media at RMIT next year. And now I'm faced with the task of drafting a proposal. So here it goes:


My name is Robert Berman. And according to my psychiatrists I have schizophrenia.
This is not my main concern because the clinical picture is hardly an exact science. What is my main concern is how the filmic language works as the primary allusive device for whatever I do, feel, create, ponder, and ruminate about. Delusions of granduer based on filmic themes, are merely reduced to figments of my imagination. I'm able to think rationally like anyone else though. I want to explore the relationship between film and schizophrenia as a mutually inclusive dialect. One that we all share with or without a clinical label. Film for me is not a directors medium or even an actors playground its a permeable device that can influence real life events. In philosophical terms it creates a polarised dialectic where the real and imaginary engender a causal reality that is by all means more tangible than most people are willing to admit. Folie a Deux for instance is a disorder caused by one person being isolated with another who is mentally ill and this causes the other person to form similar distorted beliefs just from the influence of the other. Sartre's bold statement of hell as "the other" combined with the virtues he extolls in regard to reaching a pre reflective state of mind seems to be the epitome of how one device or disorder can influence another in isolation and in turn manifest irrational beliefs.

What I would envision in my research is to gain an understanding of how the filmic language works in conjucntion with the schizophrenic mind. Now when I say the schizophrenic mind I don't mean a mind that is fragmented disjointed pastiche of disparate thoughts and feelings. What I mean is a mind that is capable of creating a world in the pre reflective sense. People usually talk about the filmic language as an all encompassing device that becomes tangible only if you make film. I would argue the opposite. It is the filmic language that we're born into and where we allow ourselves to reach the highest pinnacle as sentient beings.

For instance If I am one person and film is my partner I enter into a paradoxical relationship where film is both me and my partner since film is by all means an immanent force once it is seen cognitively speaking. My argument then would be the following: Film is in fact a pre reflective device that induces a folie a deux like affect in its representation. And in reality we reach an impasse where we are forced to accept film as an all encompassing reality when it really is only a part of ourselves. This is arguably grounds for a schizophrenic reality. One where we accept film as part or partner to ourselves; reality being the force that is so much greater and harder to conceptualise and condense.

A good example where this kind of logic has been applied is in theistic representations of God. The ontological argument for the existence of God is a good example because it states explicitly that reality is greater than what is contained in the mind. Hence God must exist in reality. Shopenheur called this a "charming joke" and relegated the theory as practically absurd. Now I'm not really interested in the theory but rather the logic behind it. Immanuel Kant challenged the thoery by stating that existence is not a predicate. Just because you say something 'is' doesn't mean you add anything new to the predicate hence 'it' cannot be affirmed or denied in reality. I would argue that most people think film is an adequate representation because reality is so much greater and harder to tap into. Furthurmore I would also argue that just as Kant once said existence is not a predicate. Film is not a predicate either. It cannot be affirmed or denied in reality. It is merely a representation of ourselves. Whether it actually exists cannot be conceptualised or rationalised. It is therefore a pre reflective medium. Paradoxically film is a part of ourselves instead of a partner. And this is what creates the schizophrenic relationship. Combining a pre reflective medium like film with a reflective being like ourselves. Film is by all means "the other" without reflection. And this is what makes it so enjoyable. Without reflection one can dwell on the emotionality of the art form ad infinitum. Yet this is what also makes film such a potentially detrimental part of ourselves.


I took what was known as the "scenic route" into university finishing off my VCE at RMIT. I'd like to now return to finish what I started.

Innocence

Anxiety in the world is the only proof of our heterogeneity.


Johann Georg Hamann



It is Kierkegaard who gives the truth.
Jacques Lacan

In colloquy the current edition Ed Cameron gives an elaborate explaination of anxiety according to Kierkegaard. The philosopher himself strayed from conventional "primordial" explainations concerning the notion of anxiety, innocence, and the fall into sin.


"Innocence is a quality, it is a state that may very well endure, and therefore the logical haste to have it annulled is meaning-less, whereas in logic it should try to hurry a little more, for in logic it always comes too late, even when it hurries"

Innocence is therefore viewed as something so transient it defies a more circumspect rationale even when it "hurries"
As the philosopher states:

Coming to terms with anxiety is tantamount to conceptualizing anxiety, to making it more symbolic than real.

In his elaboration Cameron notes that both oedipus and adam both share common trait. They both conceived of a hereditary sin. In accordance with hereditary sin the first sin signifies something different from a sin (i.e., a sin like many others), something different from one sin (i.e., no. 1 in re-lation to no. 2), is quite obvious. The first sin constitutes the nature of the quality: the first sin is the sin.

Therefore sin in terms of its quantitative attributes is retroactive, while the first sin is the actual sin in and of itself, qualitatively speaking for itself.

One.s ontological con-sistency relies on being split between the relation of one’s first sin and that of Adam’s. This, in short, is the logic of hereditary sin.

From here we are able to derive one's entering into a pre sinfull state to the hereditary sin. The choice (to sin) precedes the subject. It is"a subordination that is a necessary condition of one’s existence, even if it originates from a free choice".

In the newcomb paradox we came to realise it may not actually be a paradox by virtue of the fact that the choice still precedes the subject and the correlation between free will and choice is left to the speculation of all parties involved.

"As an individual, I have the freedom of choice only because the choice preceded me".
When freud states that:

.What we clearly want is to find something that will tell us what anxiety really is, some criterion that will enable us to distinguish true statements about it from false ones. But this is not easy to get. Anxiety is not so simple a matter

The more one attempts to transfer guilt elsewhere by avoiding one.s own guilt, the more guilty one becomes for attempting to annul one.s own freedom.
Perhaps one of the most insightful passages of this text follows on the cusp of this argumentative deterrence against conflating immediacy with innocence, logic with ethics: (the latter aligned with innocence the former with immediacy)
"Innocence, unlike immediacy, is not something that must be an-
nulled, something whose quality is to be annulled, something that
properly does not exist, but rather, when it is annulled, and as a re-
sult of being annulled, it for the first time comes into existence as
that which it was before being annulled and which is now annulled

Kierke-gaard’s perspective situates innocence as never preceding its loss
"rather than sin functioning as an obstacle or hindrance to some lost state of innocence, sin is the condition of possibility for any idea, Kierke-gaardian or not, of innocence in the first place. Ridding ourselves of sin is tantamount to ridding ourselves of the whole state of innocence.

It is precisely this lost object . which is really "nothing. . that, for Kierkegaard, is the object of anxiety"

What we can deduce from all this is the following: Sin may function as the primary motivator for change in any individual. One has to question why something such as the newcomb paradox was founded to begin with. In Kierkegaard's explaination of the nothingness associated with the lost object of innocence we may come to the realisation that just as innocence never precedes its loss, free will never precedes its choice since there may in fact be no correlation whatsoever. Perhaps the newcomb paradox was founded to begin with out of the desire for a fantasy. One where the subjects involved shared a notion of mitigating anxiety based on variables that defy free will and choice. The predictor and the player are interchangable subjects where signifier and signified somehow conflate. The newcomb paradox may in fact be a key variable in learning about human hetrogeiniety and its link to the anxiety complex.

De Ja Vu

The film De ja vu starring Denzel washington is a scintillating tale literally bending time and space. Washington plays a cop who becomes absorbed in a murder mystery

Rather than expound on the plot and narrative I'd rather look at the narrative structure. It follows a linear progression however it contains within it a non linear fragmented sub plot contained in a device capable of bending time and space.

To elaborate on this its imperative to know a bit about the physics of it. Einstien for instance came to the realisation that two objects cannot occupy the same space when travelling at the speed of light. This is because if you have a mirror in front of you and you stare at your reflection it would be rendered invisible when travelling at light speed. This logically does not make sense. However, another of einstiens theories proclaim that space in orbit is in fact curved. An analogy is a bowling ball on a trampoline and the attributive qualities it denotes. Say for instance we place the ball in the centre of the trampoline and throw another smaller ball say for instance a ping pong ball it will most likely orbit the larger ball in accordance with the laws of gravity.

The question the movie De Ja Vu posits is what if we could bend space using a device primarily used for monitoring other peoples activities. What if we were capable of bending the space between us and the screen. Like turning Plato's cave into something real as opposed to a shadow. It's a novel idea.

The other ideas the film brings to the fore have to do with going back through one's spatio temporal plane and changing the future tangentially. Obviously its implicit something like a pre destination paradox is of little significance if in fact one can change the future tangentially. What De Ja Vu tries to say is some things remain constant even if the narrative structure is changed ever so slightly. This in turn challenges chaos theory and the pre destination paradox empowering the individual to claim his own actions.

The overriding message is fate can take on many different incarnations and change just as we do. If fate took on a personage of some sort we may already see the future right before our eyes through the lense of a camera or even the shadow we cast. It is an intriguing idea and a compelling one too.

The Disjuntive synthesis of recording

In accordance with last post it seems oedipus straddles between the worlds or shall we say contingent truths. Oedipus doesn't know who begins where or who is who in the triangulation.

Being man or woman or dead or alive...

This is due to the differentiating function and disjunctive synthesis.

In the religious triangulation the trinity obliterates the female symbol in favour of the phallic. The Kantian definition posits God as apriori is a disjuntive syllogism all things restricted by a larger reality.

The Schizophrenic represents a break with the use of the disjunctive in what I suppose you might call the purist sense of the term.

The Schizo explodes oedipal geneaology who lays out a disjunctive network on the body without organs. An unengendered body ...

disjunctive synthesis has the same result as connective synthesis because

oedipus creates the differentiations that it orders and the undifferentiated with which it uses to threaten us.

This in turn hinders and thwarts desire.

The child becomes a man only by resolving oedipus where he finds within a figure of authority.

Oedipus is a like a labyrinth, you only get out by re entering it. Or by making someone else enter it.


This is where I believe the 'either or... or... as opposed to the either/or comes into play. "Withiout restricting one by the other or excluding the other from the one is perhaps the greatest paradox" pg 76




Double bind is defined as the transmission of two different messages which lead to a "double impasse"
The authors calls this a paralogism ( faulty argument is the double bind and the whole of oedipus)



So really oedipus straddles between two poles: the imaginary- process of identification /and the symbolic - differentiation

One question that comes to mind is this: if free association equates to a univocal impasse then how does the double impasse work unless it renounces free association? This is a paralogism in and of itself and quite a stark contradiction. Isn't free association required for these kinds of dynamics to work within disjunctive synthesis?

Freud and anagogical edification

In Anti oedipus Frued is cast as the all consuming athiest rendering religion in association with the unconcious. In the chapter three texts by frued it postulates interesting interpretations.

As follows: to render religion unconcious or unconcious religious still amounts to injecting something religious into the unconcious

The authors then interpret a fantasy where boys and girls are present and the result of these fantasies is a commonality involving the exclusive use of disjunctions which lead to resignation within the subject or what is commonly termed the ego. A distinction between group fantasies reside in the symbolic realm while the individual fantasy resides in the imaginary field.

This text remains extremely convoluted. Nevertheless the body without organs seems like some kind of perrenial apparition whose sole purpose is to be an antagonist to the whims of the desiring machines and also a supporter to leverage off in a paradoxical relationship. What question comes to mind is how does the symbolic realm gather its gregarious subjects and yet at the same time prove to be a solid foundation for anagogical edification in a type of science of discursivity? How does this process come about?

The authors quote Nietzsche in an attempt to expound on the relative inertia which laws communicate to institutions and their deeply engrained vigilance in regard to the "death instinct". "churches armies states- which of all these dogs wants to die". In its emphatic rhetorical underpinning the quote elucidates a type of fear.

The authors conclude there is no individual fantasy instead there are subject groups and subjugated groups. The latter living in a state of perpetual oedipalisation.

Is it possible then the death instinct and oedipalisation are also linked. If this is the case then are we in fact injecting a certain type of fear into subject relations that is by all means arbitrary. After all oedipalisation does not literally mean death and vice versa. It is here that myth becomes a reasonable counterpoint in the phenomenological sense of the term.

on page 57 the authors explicitly ask "why return to myth"?

It appears logical to assume the death instinct and oedipalisation are linked and therefore become edified within the unconcious as a mythological entity since in reality they cannot be achieved unless one dies as a direct result of an oedipal complex.