Plato, er... Socrates' Ion

 So... it's been awhile, Mimesis Tute, but here we are.

Let's catch up. In the months since we quote unquote went live, I've started my reading, and oh boy was I ready to go. I read the Symposium, and had a few ideas about it, none of which I'll actually take up in any meaningful way. It's enough to say, that dialogue doesn't directly connect with our topic, mimesis. Now, that's a good deal of giving up, isn't it? Should a trajectory of discovery be limited by its subtitle (or its title)? Well, no, I thought. And maybe that's true, and maybe we'll come back to the Symposium in a more meaningful and committed way. It is a dialogue "about" love. Love is its content, its what it's about. It engages directly in the tools of mimesis (we'll determine soon enough if the "tools of mimesis" makes any sense to say). It's a dialogue, with characters and a scene (a funny, hungover one at that).  A mimetic discussion is definitely possible. But, it seems to me, having some sense of what mimesis is would make that reading richer.

For that reason, I'm starting with Ion. This one in particular:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0180%3Atext%3DIon%3Asection%3D530a

In it, Socrates and Ion have a kind of epistemological debate. Ion, a rhapsode, claims to know everything there is to know about Homer, the poet whose work he performs. Can he judge between Homer and Hesiod, Socrates wants to know? Only one skilled in an art is capable of making judgements of quality. Only the doctor can judge someone in good or ill health, only someone versed in the art of painting can say one painting is good and another bad. Ion cannot compare Homer and Hesiod because he lacks an understanding of Hesiod's work, and so lacks information. Socrates equates this to his lacking an art, his work as a rhapsode being that of divine possession, rather than an artform.

Socrates uses the metaphor of a magnet to describe the dissemination of this divine possession. The magnet, the prime force, is the Muse, who inspires the epic poet. The poet, having no control over what she writes (hence, not an artist), is magnetize by the Muse, takes her charge, is inspired, and so channels the work. It is a work of the gods played through the medium of the poet. When Ion performs Homer's epics, the same thing occurs. Homer, like the Muse before him, channels through the rhapsode, and, as Socrates makes clear, the same thing carries into the audience as well. The emotions Ion feels performing Homer's work are conveyed to the audience. The possession, or magentization carries into the audience, such that from the one Muse, or God of the work, there is a long chain of magnetized charges.

The poet, the rhapsode, the audience to the epic poem--according to the dialogue--have no access to any particular intelligence or knowledge. In the dialogue, all knowledge is had only by those with direct knowledge. Doctors know about health. Generals know about generalling. There is no knowledge otherwise, and if a doctor knows about horsemaning it is because he is both a doctor and a horseman. Though Epics describe and dramatize horsemaning and doctoring or seering, the epic writer can't know anything about the real-life qualities of those skills and knowledges. Less so the rhapsode, and still less so the audience member.

In this dialogue, all knowledge is only truly knowledge if it is gained as the result of real-life use. Use in the real-world. Use through actual art, and not by any sort of inspiration.

This sets up poetic work as being of another order from the real. It's the gap between these things that makes of the mimetic space. Whether divine inspiration--or self-sublimation of any kind--has to do with this--and, something like it  probably does--is secondary. That there is a distinction between works of what Socrates would call art, and those of what he'd call a divine nature, opens an aesthetic space in which to understand the subject, consciousness, and what we tend to call art today.

Mimesis Tutorial Gone Live!

Yes, it's true. The Mimesis Tutorial is gearing up, engine revving, on yer marks git set, hut hut hut.

Check the page and get reading!

http://ps4tnc.blogspot.com/p/investigating-mimesis-in-art-literature.html

Or, and first, tell me what your thoughts are on the new structure of the course. For anyone not Nick who wants to be involved in the tutorial, let me know and we can make you a contributor to the blog.

Newly Fermenting (Scottish post-regionalism?)

Nope, just almost done with a new, this time (seemingly) successful batch of Sandor Katz's Vinegar de Pina.  And this one used only '100% British-grown Sugar' you know what that means kids.  Yep, beet sugar.  You'd have to be pretty dumb to brag about beet sugar, it seems to me, even knowing that it was NOT shipped over some large body of water, and harvested by toothless brits in tractors (so the drawings on the bag pointed toward) without machetes or delicious-ness at all, or that 500 grams of it was only like 70 pence... how this place lost the shilling, so sad (but this!! how they did it!!!), such a more poetic monetary division... doesn't not make the not-caneness any better, but its just for vinegar right?  But still...

Almost 3 weeks ago.  A fateful day.  We also began some kraut (enshrouded in the rear), but here in all its (their?) glory, some pineapple skin chunks (left out the bottom bit, always a bit moldy, didn't want a repeat of last time) in some sugared-water.  Also used a glass as a sinker (half a bottle imp?), to keep down the potential for surface growth, 

Things moved a little slowly (compared to last time), the pineapple skins had been in the fridge for a day awaiting the last day of the beautiful flowers Em had confiscated from some park or other that had been occupying this vase; which may or may not have anything to do with anything.  But after 10 days there was a bit of yeasty sediment (not pictured above), so after straining out the skins, developed this lovely cloudiness. [pictured here...

and here.]

After about a week, between stirring every couple of days, noticeable small formations, seemingly animalcule? could be seen floating on top.  Definitely not fuzzy, almost look like little mothers in Kombucha.

Still nice and cloudy....

This morning, pre-stir, the happy little vinegar things are seemingly happy and overall developing a little nicer of a color.  I remember the other batch being a little more yellow.  If my iCrap camera (it's true, it's not Scottish) and Scottish light (which is always good... there is a view out our kitchen windows that most days looks like the opening of the Simpsons, the perfect little puffy clouds on a too blue sky.... incredible, need a better camera... anyone have a Leica M they'd be willing to hand over?).

I'll put up some tasting notes next week when it's all through and ready for the fridge.  Hopefully the Kraut will be a bit closer and I'll put some photos and notes about that up as well, before it gets all stewed up with some beautiful pork pieces...

I hear that there is some stirring beginning on the 'Mimesis' front... anyone for some Ancient Greek Readings... (more soon)

hmmm... ragout... RagB/Bb

perhaps if I had started making pasta sauce three years ago I would have distracted myself into writing the th[es]is I "really wanted", still no sauce made but 150 pages of this[es], instead of the 250 of absolute drivel that i've got... "to show for my...." [sorry, odd Billy Corgan moment...], wrong musical di(rec/cta)tion...

something like that

this, again, but god JH looks like Chuck Norris with that beard

ah, better:

and on a completely different note... [not(e)] the self-quote... {ack}

"
To at least some extent it seems that ‘sampling’ [here, purely in the form of “sample-based musics”, we promise] is possible mostly - yes, yes, b/c the ‘materials’ can be iterated, re-given, in a mostly nominal sense - becuase there is a framework, perhaps a pre-given ‘lexical’-ish framework to put those re-purposed materials in….

To a certain extent the ‘content’ of the the so’called materials has to be disregaurded as long as the frame work dictates what the content ‘movements’ are from that “giving”.

Sort of like in jazz tunes where the alternation of song-specific ideo {soon to be trope - for ‘Jazz’ say - but still one, if listening ‘hard’ enough, resultat, really of ‘studying’ ‘hard’ enough, having heard ‘enough’ [hence, already being tired of it, it being stale, you forgetting your enthusiasm} and cadential tropes {da da lat da… / something I ii V or ii V I V7/IV… or the like}


***

And are there limits to the phenomena sayable by discourses of reaseach, measurement?  Does the scholar and the academy have a culture that is apt to it, and even ‘drescriptions’ and ‘meanings’ given about other ‘cultures’ still only express one of the altering alteritous relation between the cultures?

Or is any practice (techne) speakable by every other practice [techne]?  Is the ‘difference’ between all practice [are one] only jargon?


***

We need to reread [Premises] again.  Itseems like we can’t muster anything to Legein with/for it, even though itseems to be pushing and aim us more and more…  Perhaps we could argue for a HomoGenerator without hardmemory.  Some origin code and whats in RAM.  Occasionally (or often if one exposes its entity often, dangerously) whats passing through the de-re-script and forget process fuzt-uck-ups the ‘source’, leaving an altered code with which to continue on… always remembering that thats how this code came ‘into’ ‘being’ in the first place.  So a HG with just confused will… or even wills, confused.  To shallow to take in anything but a disrtorted scale ‘model’ of the way ‘we’ (its co-infectants) ‘model’ the [what-be-calling-Manifold].

And a Homogenerator - to hazard a dead neologism, homologism fro the ‘storage’ in the Attic - who is just HG poein homoi.  Who (in its whoing; “Dr. Who?”, “exaclty”, or Suessing) only make samenesses, pushing off into … just making things BettyDavisEyesWithoutAFace make sense by lumping and stacking and soaking and getting it in your shorts, like kids building sand-castles.  And dead neologisms, isn’t that what that is?

And this makes it hard to go along with Ricouer’s words in ~Memory….~.  There doesn’t seem to be an apparatus that is time/date/location stamping every thing that gets (s)crammed into RAM so even less as it becuase(comes) ‘narrativized’ - its not exactly like this, but this thrust needs work…, parries?  yes but not hot/cold - in the/as ‘Souce’.  Even this ‘narrative’ time is a reconstruction that just relies - and ‘justly’ - on the relative co-events, and phrase mark(er/ing)s, and ….  Not “remembering” this though now, is just having the what/who to rebuild it later, and if I co-re-marked this moment enough (yes, I could, but won’t, read ‘about it’ again here) with enough other chaff-it-shit-ips [cf. Danielson] to have the code read this moment on reconstruction.  Like how hitting cmd-i avails me a new depth (that is precisely not a new dimension, which is the entire problem of theying trying to de-linearize the word, no amount of Italicizing could implant all of the commensurate Bios (all with its own ‘way’ - despite all L’niz sez about ‘simples’) that antiquity, the de-scaled, out-of-s… that historizing, with(in)out even re-collecting, re-membering, and re-constructing IT leaves in an entity.


And this, the foregoing, is just a cannonical statement (build-out) of the problem of the shape of our thinking, the thing that does get repeated.  Rework, reward, even a value, becomes impossible.  Like if we forgot to Save our productOfTechne we couldn’t ever really re-create the thing that now isn’t, forever.  So [and there is precisely a missing step, or an un-shorn/shown, [un]though here, the ‘classically’ Platonic one] to futz-ung with something that really shouldn’t be, and only sort-of is, would be to lose the only [philos] a-boy has ever had, folding, and unfolding, and folding [mistaken often for a refold], what came folded in the first place… And is that the problem, maybe the only one, of Atomism, assu(r)mising that the primordata was ‘pure’ at some non-trivial point?  Wasn’t already m(e/as)sage-ing our rectal sphincters into us fooling ourselves that this explanation feels (w)rite, mistaking the feeling for the thing that just happens to (always) be co-occuring? co-ocher[dyed/die-ing/(tap-ed-ing)]-ring-ing…. Like a temple bowl, a rin gong, a ring-on(g) {looks like, in IPA?},  a confused “se(c)t” scale of partials, shifting, ring-ing-(ing)-{ing}-[inging].

[N.Bb. - and here/hear, Gong as onomatopoeia {“the only way [homologei]”…”Don’t (Never?) leave home ([‘om] and {abode}) without it.”…. G-ong-ong-ong, or in AleMan, AllMan, g(lühend)ung-ung-ung-ung [this pro’lly what Heidegger kept hearing, [or g(abAuf)ung-ung-ung, shor(t/ed) for: g(abAüfklar)ung-ung-ung].  And perhaps the problem with English is thinking [always by sound-ing] that the continu[ous]ity we are looking for is the most irritating nasal {ing} for all time, exhaling out the nose, forgetting to, with [which] Heraclitus to [taught us] sniff, to smell.  #onesmallerror
].

And this [occur]ring-ing in ‘our’ again: “ears or head” impossibleDifference. ; Is what makes it hard to write, to right so many, [passed in silence], wrongs, to “reach out and touch”…. None of these/is means can be adequate to that [never]silence of/that being together [co]rings so much more adequately.  No future for being with, the great constrictor of post-capitalist ‘being’, makes presenting de[silenced], de[sign]ed, de-sig-ng-is-ed, signs4sound feel so hear[gu]t-wrenching.  Rent, Spent, and everBent.  The great will of “The best part of waking up…”

"

Clearing my throat(,) something gets off my chest. [OR what is there to say?] pt. 1

[N.B. this probably deserves a bit of introduction.  Which I will try to provide at least something sensible to/in order for(?).  The ongoing conversation on [not]'critiquing' the critique of Narrativity, and the always non-state of [completion] of this goddamn thesis. Thetic is right...  But also the beauty of this:

what can we say?  What is it to bicker endlessly, or as Heidegger puts it in the "Letter on {super questionable, this 'on' here} Humanism" which I am "still" wrestling with here: "..."]

     I couldn’t ever, say adequately, even this “Letter”.  I can’t even recount all the mostly already words that co-occurred with – or really, were the ‘substance’ ‘of ‘ – my ‘time’ “reading” the ““Letter””.  The “”’internal’”” debates, sounded acrimonious thunder, where the history of philosophy was and became and will (always) still be becoming the ‘problem’ of Metaphysics.  Now the fog, of war, forgetten; No Know/ing to recollect, and perhaps this is what the current (not currents, always dragging away the, and us with them, they) moment in the ‘history of Being’ will be…  It really does seem that Heidegger presents us with a lack of something we could have (which we can’t), but that we might/probably will (unless we really fuck it up/don’t heed His warnings) “attain” someday.  Even if this attaining is sort-of processural – could there have been a shift in language that could have given this more as coming to truth and less Being being truth for us certainly later?

The Being that is our master – to speak quite vulgarly – to “throw” us about.  Without our being ‘subject’, well without our being able to think this Being whose bitch we are adequately if we attain to our subjection to it.  The injections to keep us quiet and immobile, we’ve given ourselves… or better yet, were given ‘us’ by ‘them’ who really couldn’t deal with the pain themselves and developed/discovered these opiates to Being.  Taken twice, thusly, with ‘being’, really.  Not ‘I’, but it is only a ‘natural’ ‘misinterpretation’ that I would think so.  Metaphysic, that valium of the vulgate, the hydrocodone of the horde, which has built itself on the ‘expertise’ of those who aren’t [‘great thinkers’ – Did you know Nietzsche was the last one to….], so “Logic” could reign and keep us (as Being in our moment in the history of Being sounded? and not ‘just’ ‘to us’) from the salvation of dwelling (authentically? or just?) in the home and abode of Being, languge as saying the truth of Being, which is “still” (always?) right over there; so our guide says – the land of milk and honey will be for us/yet not yet/but right over the next ridge/and soon/and there/or/is/that/just/just/just/a/mirage…..

And perhaps ‘I’, now found (no)[place] to stand outside ‘my’ position here – hence the necessarily neurotic mode and scale of the following – just clang words together to hear the BRUIT [in the “Letter”?] they make, ring conepts (necks, strangling the life and “utility” they might have had, would have had in the more “care”ful, skilled (“at”) hands of an-other) together to [death(,)] rattle a dysphonious cacophony, phony (?) to Being and Time (always capitalized and italicized in “Letter”s? capitalizing from further sales? en francais?).  If Being would just clear me, thrown to its “truth” “outside” “It”, I could adequate, but perhaps not in/by saying yet… Nietzsche couldn’t, Hölderlin almost did (,) much better the/a/n Goethe… Throw me clear, of…. what… of… throw me clear of where I… no; it, OR It has thrown me now in our current moment.  I “might”, I “could” decide, but Being hasn’t revealed that in the fullness of its clarity yet;

So, to decide, to Deicide (or not, for example), whichever I “might” [choose?], would be to retain both “positions”, and ‘still’ be bound [up?] by a mighty metaphysic that no less than Being, and in [pseudo]contrariety [‘natural’ to it, and It?] to It, keeps me from It.

And “still” what is ‘this’ ‘here’ but a forestalling [darstellung?].  The same fear that Heidegger “car(ri)es” about our not “being” [Being] there yet.  “Still” short of the promised [no, not by anything ‘external’, like us, by, by Being, and Its saying “truth” through/by M.H.] [not]land and in sight only the ravings of ourselves, or those of ‘us’ (and not ‘them’) we wish to elevate to the “greatness” required to be “thrown” sprecht und dichtung to by by Being.  I don’t have this confidence [delusion] that Being has chosen ‘me’ to bear its, excuse me, “our” saviour forth into the peopled world.  To bear Its message of great tidings.  Tha/e/n what could I be saying.  Am I speaking for or against Metaphysics, which would still be to speak against and for it and – and here only ‘for’ {and ‘threefold’ plus one? but I’ve already braked and broken so many of that trinity, trying to Listen to not “what I already know”, which can only be “hear” “say”, I’ve said too much… always} always – Being?

And this (w)ringing (“I can’t tell if ‘Its’ in ‘my’ head or ears…” and how to be [not]outside ‘my’ ears here?), I do have some confidence[delusion] that it is what Being would resound if we could name Being ‘Being’ to its ‘taste’…

“One {B}eing, the only wise one, would and would not be called by the Zeus [{L}ife {Zenos}].”  Heraclitus, [F102], tr. Graham. The Texts of the Early Greek Philosophers. Cambridge, 2010. curlies {mine}

and “still” so much to say on/and Time….

Addendum... "missive to HurClites" but really about "Narrativity"

Verst a Fiarag! Ument.

But isn't the 'real' problem not the 'reality' of the narrative as created by the author(a)-centric author, but the {and I'm certain the electronic page of Acker could be back-bent nicely to say this} unreality of narrativity itself.  It isn't that narrative fails to capture a reality that really is, by the limitedness of the authors view (or difference of the author's view from that of the writing reader, as it is here doubly [triply?]); but that any 'reality' would have to be narrated out of the flux/'manifold'/'absolute'/'plane of immanence' (really whatever silly thing youwannaCurlit).  So the mode of 'narration' (either as Acker attempts to pin it down, or as would be more judiciously constructed out of a real assessment of the history of literature) would be one way in which stories are "held" out of everything/anything.

I guess that means we can see why you might be a little irked at the limitation of narrative as a mode of representation, and perhaps even more so at the historical object/process named "narrative" which has its own bias and weight towards certain social structures (whiteness, man-ness, whatevs).  But the think that I still can't wrap and rap my head/saying around is the hope to keep the named thing "narrative" hoping that just looking away from it for a second might allow you not to reproduce its (already, yes, yes, always already reproduced in any possible writer/reader) curve, and without any better insight into the other narrative; the way we think my words can be drawn into something that anyone else could follow and re(-)form the 'Same' way.

So on second glance (a-ver(re)s ?), I get the Acker example narrative, that makes sense and is I think a great example of Narrativity in action.  But the yardstick she puts up to it seems to be there only as 1) as means of construction some 'better' narrative negatively, and 2) fight off all the beautiful formal conflagrations of the example given.  (which on third thought, really didn't need the biographical caveat at the beginning, but I guess if your (R/r)ule(r) is some 'real' "reality" then, well, "there you are"...

Oh, right, and to 'mean' my title... wouldn't want things running off into Arbitrariness (sorry for the punchy/caddy, taking a break from re-re-re-reading all the Heidegger for the thesis... I'm sure that will rise up (def more like vomit than sun, or singing, I'm sure, singeing) sooner than later and would have been a much easier way out of the Heraclitus contract I 'signed' for myself inthatspace at the 'top' of the 'page' [yes, yes, yes De'da, you're next.... sit down and take a fucking number]), but might not that very arbitrariness be that "hidden (hiding) nature ('physis' remember, not naturphilosophie or Rousseau's Nature)".  Yes the same one that Lucretius pretends to have a bullet-proof (proof?) against in his senses, and their obviousness... Silly.

Somefraglissions (take1) : LouCreets in his acidic antipathy missive to HurClites….

And fire there was.  But are we to ‘believe’ the ‘fire’ of what we sense and name, the ratio underneath that?  Or the ramblings of a ‘madman’, about the truth of what cannot be ‘true’?

One poet to(ward) (his / an)other. Separate as big a gaping,
massive unendur ability, sense before sound, truth and pre
sen(c/s)e ‘before’ the hidden, secretive, secreting, secret.

Society has not chosen sides.  But sellers of hot air have
their branding to worry about.

Both ‘fall’ t(w)o sides, u/on’turned’.  But purveyors of hot air have
their perversions to worry about.

****

Aren’t all Narratives about truth?  The truth of the author’s (or the support(ees) of the author(itie/’)s(‘)) truth.  The jouer and sportif.  So selling what you’re/their selling’s saying.  We perveyrt nonsense and
don’t we hard-sell that as some truth? or sort of relativist u/dystopia?

Next to nothing.  If matter where energy, would there be need of ‘void’, and is movement but a illusion of fi/ragmented taking-in, the energetics lost on perception/reception them/itself/ves?

Verst a Fiarag! Ument.

So a more-or-less self consistent ‘world’ [the scare quotes might be totally unneces(c/s)ary, this may just, w/could an argu-line-of-thought-lineated-anything-u-might-ment do justice to be, that this what a world is, this selling of as much containment and maintenance in the ‘clearing authenticity of being’] thrust out, salable, salivating meant part(s) first.

    (So odd, this form was lost by most pop music relatively early into mass (re)production, the evocative and singular intro, now given over to relatively self-same drum/whispering-into-microphone… there are of course as many exceptions as not…)

And aren’t there only two ways (to die cf. M. Serres) to sell hot air?  To flatter, and the more insidious; the flattery of pretending you and I are the only ones who know.  That is understand, or is it comprehend?