Scorpions and the Anatomy of Time: The 3-D Mind, Volume 3 9780773570184

Citation preview

105130.book Page i Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

scorpions and the anatomy of time

105130.book Page ii Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

105130.book Page iii Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Scorpions and the Anatomy of Time j a c q u e s m . c h e va l i e r The 3-D Mind Volume Three

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston · London · Ithaca

105130.book Page iv Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2002 isbn 0-7735-2359-6 Legal deposit third quarter 2002 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (bpidp ) for our activities.

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data Chevalier, Jacques M., 1949– The 3-D mind Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents: 1. Half brain fables and figs in paradise – 2. The corpus and the cortex – 3. Scorpions and the anatomy of time. isbn 0-7735-2355-3 (v. 1) isbn 0-7735-2357-x (v. 2) isbn 0-7735-2359-6 (v. 3) 1. Neuropsychology. 2. Semiotics – Psychological aspects. 3. Semiotics – Philosophy. 4. Psycholinguistics. 5. Language and languages – Philosophy. 6. Neurophysiology. i . Title. qp360.5.c43 2002 302.2 c2002-900769-0 Typeset in Sabon 10.5/13 by Caractéra inc., Quebec City

105130.book Page v Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Contents

Log On: Bookmarks 3 neural reminders 1 The Time Machine 19 2 Attentive and Inattentive Remembering 26 3 Short-Term, Long-Term, and Working Memories 38 4 Memory in the Future Tense 42 5 Fear and Watchfulness 47 6 Synaptic Fields and Long-Term Potentiation 54 7 Things to Remember 57 semiotic motions 8 Volumes Recollected 63 9 Mum’s the Word 75 10 Scorpions at the End of Time 82 11 Timing and Planting a Plot 94 12 Speculations on the Hot and the Cold 112

105130.book Page vi Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

vi

Contents

philosophical speculations 13 Kant on Time 127 14 Assembling a Clock 133 15 But Where Is Time? 140 16 The Body and Soul of Time 152 17 Variations on the Signum Triceps 164 18 All in a Bar 173 19 Ground Zero History and Signs of Transgenocide 188 Notes 201 Bibliography 207 Index 213

105130.book Page 1 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

scorpions and the anatomy of time

105130.book Page 2 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

105130.book Page 3 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Log On: Bookmarks

How does language relate to brain structures and processes? What language should we use to capture the interface between meanings and neurons, or signs and synapse? Can neuroscience inform semiotic thinking, and to what extent can semiotics return the favour, through interpretive analyses and sign theories that can shed light on the anatomy of the mind? The 3-D Mind 1 and 2, the two books that preceded this one, offered tentative answers to these questions, with an emphasis on the lateral (right and left hemispheres) and vertical (corticalsubcortical) dimensions of brain and sign activity. Our journey into hyperlinks between semiotics and neuroscience started on the lateral (sagittal, commissural) plane. The 3-D Mind 1 thus explored the half-brain literature, and hence the tendency for each hemisphere to specialize but also to complement or supplement the other brain. Most normal tasks performed by the brain were shown to require bihemispheric contributions, something that spatialized approaches to cognitive activity tend to ignore. Since interaction is the rule, terms to capture the specificity of each hemisphere are not easily found. Given this problem, I suggested the use of “flexible simples” – terms that presuppose interactivity, that do not represent fully fledged tasks (e.g., auditive or visual), and that do not carry legacies of western philosophy (e.g., the analytic/synthetic divide). Two Greek terms that satisfy these requirements are “synkretismos” and “diakritikos.” Some sign actions produce effects of convergence and do so through a prevalence of rh

105130.book Page 4 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

4

Scorpions and the Anatomy of Time

(right hemispheric) syncretic processing, as in the language of metaphor (Christ is like a lamb). Others generate effects of divergence achieved through predominantly lh (left hemispheric) diacritic processing, as when we speak of dualities (Christ battling against Antichrist). Over and beyond this distinction, however, brain and sign activity involves a bimodal reticulation of similarities and differences. Sign activity following a syncretic pattern contains elements of diacritic processing; things can be said to resemble one another provided that they are perceived as being different in some respect (Christ viewed as a Lamb slain is not a lamb). Likewise, diacritic events can take place provided the brain apprehends a common terrain within which oppositions can play themselves out (as between the Beast and the Lamb slain in Revelation, both of whom are animal representations of invisible spirits). In support of this relatively straightforward argument, I offered a close reading of the hemispheric lateralization literature, together with semiotic analyses of western naming practices and expressions of ethnobotany in the Bible (fig apron in Genesis), poetry (Longfellow’s Evangeline, Line 1), and native Mexican mythology. The analyses showed how neural communications and meanings in language constitute tissues of syncretic and diacritic connections, sign reticles (Sr) made up of lines crisscrossing each other in multifarious directions. Three major philosophical implications followed from this “theoreticle” perspective on the weavings of signs and synapse. First, the integrative concept of “nervous sign processing” should be substituted for models of the brain and the intellect that separate biology from mental activity. The “subject-matter” of “semiosis” is at once physical and communicational. Second, sign reticles are communicational networks that are both orderly and “chaosmotic.” They are subject to patterns of convergence but also lines of divergence that defy simple modelling, be they of the analytical or the dialectical kind. Third, sign actions are governed by the principle of “conferencing,” not referencing. That is, they do not refer to things or thoughts signified through representational means. Rather, they confer meaning through

105130.book Page 5 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Log On: Bookmarks

5

“signaptic” conversations among signs, “reticles” of fine lines evolving in language and in neural cells alike. But there is more to semiosis than the cognitive weavings of lines fulfilling divisive and connective functions. Sr activity may generate horizontal assemblages of similarities (rh ) and differences (lh ). Yet these assemblages are never strictly cognitive or intellectual. Similarities and differences mapped along the sagittal plane are also shot through with prefrontal rulings and limbic feelings. Intellect, affect, and precept constantly intersect. The 3-D Mind 2 thus went beyond the half-brain literature and related discussions of similarities and differences in language to include considerations of the axial plane. This is the plane that divides and connects the upper (prefrontal, normative) and lower (limbic, emotive) structures of brain and sign processing. The axial dimension draws lines and projections between right and wrong, pleasure and pain, the practical and the impractical, the lawful and the lawless. The cortical-subcortical axis also involves differences in levels of attentionality, ranging from the full awareness of “higher-order faculties” to the autonomic impulses of “lower” brain and body activity. Much of 3-D Mind 2 thus revolved around the intricate relationship between norms (moral, rational, interpretive), emotions (feelings, sentiments), and attentions (awareness, repression, etc.). The neurological foundations of attentionality were explored at some length. Briefly, webs and circuits of synaptic communications are complex sums of events, each of which falls into one of four categories: (1) attentive depolarizations, (2) inattentive depolarizations, (3) closing-off polarizations, and (4) hyperpolarizations. First of all, the overall equation includes neural depolarizations or connections that arouse attention through activation of the reticular system and the neocortex (category 1). Attentions that are fully deployed will then result in voluntary somatic events (muscular and skeletal) channelled through the peripheral nervous system. These action potentials can also generate acts of full cognition, instrumental reasoning, interpretive evaluation, and moral assessment. But while this occurs, a multitude of impulses can be transmitted through depolarization

105130.book Page 6 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

6

Scorpions and the Anatomy of Time

obtained without cortical “noticing” (category 2). Inattentive processing includes involuntary impulses transmitted through peripheral autonomic pathways that stimulate (sympathetic) or inhibit (parasympathetic) nervous activity; unaware learning achieved through subcortical processing or brain-stem mediation; autonomic acts of limbic assessment that trigger nonreflexive behaviour (as in fear reaction triggered by the amygdala, immediately above the brain stem); and processes of limbic regulation that generate emotive dispositions within each hemisphere (e.g., lh positive-approach, rh negative-withdrawal). Neural activity is essentially analogical, a ratio-based phenomenon that combines the two forms of synaptic exchange, the attentive and the inattentive. But communicational impulses presuppose other operations that follow a different principle: the rule of active closing-off. A lot of brain chemistry and electricity goes into actively avoiding connections that need not be attended. Impulses (whether or not they come out into the open) rest on mountains of chemical and electrical closures. Shutting-off activities operate at the cellular level through polarizations that put synaptic zones and cellular membranes at rest (category 3). Hyperpolarizations may also increase cellular “capacitance” – the ability to close off and withstand impulse transmission (category 4). When aggregated into larger processes localized in particular areas of the brain, blocking off mechanisms of the latter kind can take the form of prefrontal checks on limbic activity; interhemispheric pathways that synchronize the two brains but also grant priority to one lateral specialization over another; and interventions of the reticular formation, which awakens the brain to certain external stimuli but leaves out those that require no attention. In short, neurons can link up through either somatic or autonomic pathways, and they can disconnect through either polarization or hyperpolarization. The 3-D Mind 2 extended this fourfold equation to sign networking. The process of signification is a complex summation of four layers of activity. Some “signaptic” exchanges are fully attended, producing what I have called the “soma” expressions of semiosis – sign actions

105130.book Page 7 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Log On: Bookmarks

7

foregrounded and made immediately noticeable in language. Other exchanges take on a secondary role and constitute the background impressions and subsidiary evocations of sign events. These ancillary transmissions are obtained through autonomic depolarization, activation without full noticing. All remaining connections show resistance. They maintain capacitance for one of two reasons. Either they are polarized and do not connect because unrelated to what is being considered, or they are hyperpolarized and remain unattended through active neglect or forceful inhibition. When hyperpolarization occurs, sign pathways show high levels of resistance due to their offensive character. The pathways falling under this rule comprise all underground linkages that are near the attentional domain and threaten it to the point of requiring energetic closure. The 3-D Mind 2 examined how this rank ordering of attention affects the weavings of cognitive, emotive, and normative (moral, rational-instrumental, interpretive) dimensions of sign activity. On the cognitive plane, overt attention may be granted to reticles of similarities and differences (e.g., Genesis 3 using the fig apron motif to mark a diacritic event – the Fall evoked by Adam and Eve’s discovering sexual difference and hiding it with leaves of the fig tree). But cognitive linkages can also be suggested through autonomic inscriptions (e.g., embedding implications of the Fall in the fig imagery). Meanwhile some connections may be polarized because irrelevant to the task at hand. Or they may be hyperpolarized because diametrically opposed to expressions of the surface script (e.g., enjoying the good life in the shade of a fig tree). Our ratio-based approach to the uneven attentions of sign activity also accounts for the weight that may be accorded to either similarities or differences. Some strategic moves may head in a syncretic direction, towards effects of closeness and self-sameness, as in proper name identities. (See also my analysis of the “I Like Ike” slogan, generic terms such as “man” to stand for both “man” and “woman,” or the mediatory intervention of “Peter Waterhole” in Canadian stories of beavers and frogs, all in 3-D Mind 2.) But attention may also shift in

105130.book Page 8 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

8

Scorpions and the Anatomy of Time

the opposition direction, towards diacritic tactics that emphasize distance and difference. A case in point is the use of the fig apron imagery in Genesis 3 to mark the distance between man and woman, the Creator and his creation, life and death. (For other examples unpacked in previous books, see my reading of the battle between iguana and corn child in native Mexican mythology, or the rhetoric of tribal difference to explain warfare in Africa.) These sign tactics are adopted for reasons that go beyond the cognitive patterns and regulations discussed in 3-D Mind 1. Their role is to skew the cognitive order of similarities and differences, using the attentions of language to attain particular goals of affective resonance. The attentional calculus gives emotive shape to cognitive effects. It governs the level of normative judgment as well, which includes not only morality but also the exercise of instrumental reasoning and interpretive evaluation. The rank ordering of sign attentions is the cornerstone of any theory concerned with understanding the operations of judgment in language, hence claims to rightness, reason, and knowledge. Moral, rational, and interpretive judgments demand that signs calling for attention be given preferential treatment and the first order of priority. Most acts of judgment also require attentionality to concentrate, such that meaning may be obtained through Sr focusing. This is especially true of the instrumental and interpretive forms of judgment. Avoiding depolarizations going off into multiple directions is vital to the works of denotation, description, definition, categorization, and causal explication. Focusing permits the sign process to impose limitations on how sign connections can be assembled, producing reticles that are more sharply delimited than others. Through the application of judgment, pertinent connections are attended and impertinent pathways are ignored. Sign assemblages that are less constrained include tropes of all kinds, each with an attentional morphology that generates a particular combination of sign expressions and impressions. For instance, the function of metaphor is to highlight one field or level of signification and assimilate it to another that remains

105130.book Page 9 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Log On: Bookmarks

9

implied but not fully expressed. Unlike metaphors, analogies use grammatical markers of likeness, thereby drawing attention to the reservations of comparative language. Assemblages of indices and subindices of speech activity can also be constructed though narrative parallels folded into allegorical language. They can generate projections of diacritic parts on to implied wholes (synecdoche), or surface substitutions of the tasteful for the distasteful (euphemism). Ambiguity and irony are two other rhetorical manipulations of uneven attentions. The former hinges on manifest tensions between divergent implications, the latter, on deliberate contradictions between the said and the unsaid. Mention can also been made of oxymorons, which are purposeful negations of contradictions, and of synonyms and polysemic meanings, which involve one or many radiations from utterance to immediate associations. These effects of language have one principle in common: they are so many variations on associations of the explicit and the implicit. Signs are folded into other signs, in ways that invite particular interpretive judgments. But sign connections are also wrapped up in the foldings of moral judgment. For instance, the device of metaphor may specialize in attributions of likeness, yet it also imposes an injunction against abuses of identity: the Lamb Slain may be a metaphor that stands for Christ, but this is not to say that the lamb is a divine creature. A ruling against zoolatry is folded into the lamb metaphor. This brings us to the ethical aspects of normativity, a moral rank ordering “process” (with court-like procedures) that tends to be overlooked or simply denounced in structuralist, post-structuralist, and postmodern conceptions of the non-hierarchical, plurivocal ways of semiosis. Contrary to these accepted ideas, normative commands play a constitutive role in language (broadly defined). Furthermore, like all other sign actions, normative meanings are subject to our fourfold equation of attentional calculus. That is, norms may be communicated explicity, through the somatic pathways of language. But they can also proceed through the autonomic implications of analogy or metaphor. Alternatively, they can be avoided (polarized) because irrelevant to particular events. Or they may

105130.book Page 10 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

10

Scorpions and the Anatomy of Time

be inhibited (hyperpolarized) because at odds with effects of the surface script (e.g., laying out the lessons of self-sacrifice immediately after Adam and Eve ate the fruit of knowledge). In 3-D Mind 2 some questions were raised regarding the last scenario. In what sense can inhibitory force be applied to signs of normative activity or the rulings of law? Isn’t morality always expressed through declarative language, the kind that vies for maximum attention? The answer to this riddle went as follows: Normative teachings must be transmitted, as they ought to be, as signs to be ranked above all others, to be signified with maximum clarity and visibility. But they must also be communicated in a timely fashion, with deferrals if need be, and preferably with an economy of words, by means of implication or condensation. Furthermore, morality must not spell everything out lest it should draw attention to signs condemned to be silenced and banned. Diplomacy is therefore a virtue; circumvolutions are needed to address the question of things that are simply “out of the question.” Morals are constantly faced with the delicate task of dealing with “the unspeakable,” speaking to “it” while banning “it” from the surface script. Thus some self-censorship of morality is unavoidable. Sign activity grants greater visibility to indices of moral goodness. But it also grants morality the powers of strategic silences – that is, brevity, timeliness, and diplomacy. Morality must use all means available to exercise power, including conciseness, deferment, and discretion. But concessions to limbic pleasures are also part of its assets. The pleasurable side of morality contradicts the notion that conscious morals will derive nothing but trouble from the immoral ways of the unconscious governed by the pleasure principle. But how can this be? How can moral and immoral attentions complement one another in some important respects? The question can be answered in several ways. For one thing, affects that are considered to be unutterable must be given some prefrontal sign attention if they are to be condemned. More importantly, morality has a lot to gain by adding lure to the rule of law; the virtues of morality will receive attention provided

105130.book Page 11 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Log On: Bookmarks

11

they appropriate some of the “virtues” of desire, the pleasure principle, and the avoidance of pain. These gains can be secured through the two-sided rule of “containment” – “conveying” and “withholding” signs of transgression, all in the same breath. In the end, morality calls for shadow dialogues between the said (foregrounding the Lamb slain motif), the unsaid (implications of meekness and asexuality in the background), and the unutterable (underground echoes of the mightiness of vernal Aries). Through “containment” effects, signs of moral judgment succeed in co-opting the unlawful (astromythology) into serving their own rule (early Christianity). Precepts draw energy from pleasurable affects, lawful or not. The 3-D Mind 2 showed the obverse to be equally true. In order to find satisfaction, signs loaded with limbic affect must activate connections typically associated with normative activity, especially those having to do with acts of deprivation and dispossession. Paradoxical as it may seem, the virtues of power and pleasure can be enhanced by using some of the powers and pleasures of virtue. If pleasure is to maintain the mind’s attention beyond short spaces of time, it must borrow some tools of normative language, such as deferment and self-denial. The 3-D Mind 2 explored these vertical interchanges between precept and affect at some length. The exchanges include downward attentional allowances that acts of normative judgment make for signs of limbic activity. Sign communications that are predominantly normative are shaped by emotive forces, supportive and transgressive affects vested in the teachings of morality. The pathways of morality contain traces of the pleasurable. But the argument holds true in the opposite direction as well. Vertical interchanges comprise the upward attentional allowances that acts of desire make for the deferment of pleasure. Circuits of licence and depravity are covered with traces of ethical concessions. Sign actions may be prone to specialize (on both lateral and vertical planes), yet they constantly intermix desire and norm, acts of indulgence and calls for renunciation. Not all connections between pleasure and morality are mutually constraining. Some are actually enabling; they bridge the

105130.book Page 12 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

12

Scorpions and the Anatomy of Time

Kantian gap between morality and self-enjoyment, or suffering and pleasure. Much of our discussion in 3-D Mind 2 regarding these reciprocal allowances of prefrontal and limbic attentions revolved around two “disposal” modalities, those of “having access to” and “getting rid of.” While the act of having something “at one’s disposal” is typically associated with signs of gratification, the act of “disposing” usually evokes signs of dispossession and related themes of frustration and want. Given our prefrontallimbic exchange theorem, two anomalous scenarios were singled out for analysis. The first scenario consists of metaphors that convey signs of pleasure through acts of dispossession (e.g., removing the shoe when entering a house or a bed). The second scenario is totally opposite and equally intriguing: it involves the use of possessive metaphors to convey lessons of self-denial and worldly sacrifice (e.g., wearing the shoe in missionary exile). Why should marks of possession and dispossession be used as signs of pain and pleasure, respectively? These anomalous scenarios led us to revisit the workings of metaphor, a sign action normally viewed as a syncretic tactic that emphasizes proximal resemblance above all. But this is only one side of metaphor, the one that echoes the rh convergence rule. The metaphor used in this fashion draws attention to what it resembles or is part of. To use a biblical imagery, a man may ritually acquire new shoes at the same time as he “takes possession” of wife and real property in land. The shoe sign adds on a symbolic representation to what it represents, thereby marking the object of desire it stands for and “comes with.” The footwear metaphor serves as an “add-on,” a syncretic tactic deployed with maximum amplitude. If used in this fashion, the shoe possession is essentially positive and pleasurable. The other side of metaphor is radically different. It entails an act of simulation, which is not the same as a statement of resemblance. Simulation is the effect we obtain when the imagery (footwear, for instance) serves to draw attention to what is absent. The shoe metaphor then acts as an object of longing (shoes worn in missionary exile, outside the Promised Land),

105130.book Page 13 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Log On: Bookmarks

13

to be disposed of when replaced by the “real thing” (entering the Lord’s temple). Simulation points to the distance that separates the sign doing the imitation (a shoe) from the sign it imitates (possessions in land and women). Instead of serving what might be called the in-addition effect, a metaphor used in this fashion fulfils an in-lieu substitution function; it acts as a pale reflection of what the subject yearns for. It becomes a sign of desire. The amplitude of the syncretic effect vested in metaphor is then reduced considerably, towards a diacritic slant that triggers desire by means of simulation (e.g., a man wearing shoes in missionary exile, travelling in the hope of unshoeing his feet in the Holy Land). The argument has many implications for theories of self-denial and self-gratification, or Thanatos and Eros. While self-denial is typically associated with signs of deprivation, objects covering the body may be used to signify what is longed for, provided that these possessions are used in a simulation mode. When transposed to the sexual domain, the implication is that one gender can possess attributes of the other gender, using them as inscriptions of the order of desire. Thus a woman of virtue may retain some masculine possessions (e.g., breasts turned into solid ramparts in the Old Testament Song of Songs 8: 10), using them as tokens of what is renounced and yearned for. In the scriptures, these “ascetic possessions” cover the virtuous body with signs of erotic be-longings, traces of the model woman’s desire to be possessed by the man of God. The model woman expresses her hopes of being united with her Shepherd Lover through a wishful simulation of the union itself. Eroticism may adopt the same tactic, putting the diacritic qualities of metaphor to its own use. Erotic imagery (e.g., stilettos – shoes with masculine attributes) may encourage each gender to cover itself up with signs of union of the flesh. Paradoxically, this language of desire requires that each gender surrender some of its attributions to the other gender, letting it be possessed with desire or signs to that effect. Seduction lies in each gender’s attraction to its possession by the other, or the likeness thereof. The exchange feigns a commerce that never

105130.book Page 14 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

14

Scorpions and the Anatomy of Time

ends. The end result is a travesty of coherent sexual identities, an unsettling decomposition of the sexual code invading all signs of conventional gendering (e.g., only women wear spikeheeled shoes). The 3-D Mind 2 gave several illustrations of these interchanges of norms and desire in the attentions of semiosis. It showed how rule-governed behaviour (prefrontal judgment) implies not only repressive activity (limbic affects under control) but also transgressive behaviour (limbic affects let loose). Judgments are in the habit of “containing” signs of transgression which in turn “contain” expressions of the judgments being transgressed. Norms and infractions are the warps and wefts of a single fabric. In short, sign reticles involve dynamic interchanges between cognitive, normative, and emotive communications, connections that require complex sums of attentions and inattentions. On the philosophical plane, this Sr (sign-reticle) perspective was shown to constitute a radical departure from stimulusresponse and sign-representation theories alike. Signs are not linguistic responses to external stimuli. Nor are they representations of objects or concepts dwelling outside the Sr process. Neurosemiotics emphasizes instead the interweavings of signs (and signals) and the “attentional quanta” variably distributed among component parts of Sr activity. This perspective has the advantage of broadening the notion of “sense” to include practical syntheses of the senses and constructs of meaning, norm, and affect. It is an approach that acknowledges the inherent worldliness of semiotic activity. All sign actions are products of “sense” defined as bodily faculty (the five senses), meaning (the sense of a word), judgment (being sensible), reason (common sense), emotion (being sensitive), and awareness (to regain one’s senses). Signs and signals belong to a universe where the weavings of “sense” and “synapse” ignore all rifts between conception and perception, meaning and experience, psyche and body, word and world. Although neurologically inspired, these remarks lend credibility to some key premises of existentialist and phenomenological philosophy. They are especially

105130.book Page 15 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Log On: Bookmarks

15

supportive of Heidegger’s “care-structure,” a notion that captures the pre-personal, non-metaphysical, and non-representational nature of sign attentionality. The “care-structure” points to the embodiment of our “minding” process – signs that tend to what must be attended with all the powers of our “larger intelligence,” the body. Consciousness and the unconscious are metaphysical terms that barely capture the “minding process” built into all those neural and bodily mechanisms that contribute to the uneven attentions of “sense.” Given the constitutive role of attentionality in the constructions of sense, the Cartesian Cogito and the Freudian Id should perhaps give way to the homunculus. This is the “little man” whose body parts are drawn in proportion to the attention they receive in the cortex (e.g., primary motor and somatosensory fields concerned with hand movements, lips, and tongue are much larger compared with cells connected to the trunk; see Rosenzweig et al. 1999: 207, 301). Were we able to map the distribution of all cortical and subcortical attentions and inattentions on the homunculus (and also grant “him” the choice between two genders), our “little man” would embody much of the argument presented in 3-D Mind 2. But there is a problem with the homunculus, one that happens to be shared by the Sr theorem outlined above: it is frozen in space and deprived of any “sense of time.” The little man is never seen moving and never plays a role in a plot. He has no memory of the past and looks ahead but sees nothing looming on the horizon. He is attentive but has no “attentes” – the French word for expectations of things that are about to happen, from “attendre,” to wait. Neurologically speaking, his body is without a longitudinal axis, the coronal plane consisting of associative fibres that connect the rear lobes to anterior regions of the brain. In the previous books, mention was made of mechanisms of deferment and also shifts in the attentions that we grant to various facets of particular sign activities (e.g., moving from one dactyl to another in Longfellow’s hexametric poetry; from ear piercing in the 1960s to body piercing in the 1990s; from anglophone usages of frog symbolism to their

105130.book Page 16 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

16

Scorpions and the Anatomy of Time

francophone rebuttal; from the joyful to the sinful, the tribulational, and the sacrificial usages of fig imagery in the scriptures; etc.). Although embedded in our analysis of attentionality, these observations never led to a full treatment of the coronal or associative processes that govern them. The 3-D Mind 3 undertakes to restore this dimension to our little man.

105130.book Page 17 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

neural reminders

105130.book Page 18 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

105130.book Page 19 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

reticle 1

The Time Machine

The brain contains 50 billion to 100 billion neurons. Each neuron branches into axons and dendrites that receive thousands of waves of electrical discharge from other neurons. The end result is a living tissue of synaptic connections that are virtually incalculable. The flow of information running through this dense fabric cannot be reduced to simple patterns. Notwithstanding the warning, studies of neuropsychology suggest a mapping of brain circuits along two planes: the sagittal and the axial. In previous books we saw that these two planes point to hemispheric functions and cortical-subcortical attentionalities, respectively. The interaction within and between the two planes has been emphasized throughout the two books, with the implication that simple distinctions between auditory analysis and visual synthesis, or cognition (reason) and emotion (passion), are misleading. Functional demarcations applied to brain areas may be useful only if qualified through studies of integrative brain activity. One question not addressed in previous books concerns the anatomy of time – how time is processed by the brain. This brings us to a third plane, the coronal. This is the plane implicating differences and relations between the anterior and posterior lobes of the brain, or motor output and sensory input. We shall see that pathways mapped along this plane regulate the interplay of memory and amnesia, fear and anticipation, anxiety and hope, or in other words, connections between attentions to the past, the present, and the future. The assumption

105130.book Page 20 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

20

Neural Reminders

made here is that issues pertaining to the time factor are best addressed by looking at the role of attentionality vis-à-vis memory and anticipation. As in Ricœurian hermeneutics, the time dimension concerns essentially the impact of the “hitherto” and the “hereafter” on the attentional “here and now.” Two commonplace assumptions regarding our capacity to remember can be revisited in the light of advances in neuropsychology. First, the notion that memory is merely concerned with things of the past is problematical. Brain circuits do not function in isolation from one another. Recollections of the past cannot be separated from attentions to the present. Nor can attentions to the past and the present be severed from hopes and apprehensions of the future. Scientific evidence points instead to the necessity for mnemonic processes to be understood within the broader context of integrated brain activity (LeDoux 1996: 6, 73–8, 105–6, 141, 181–2). Second, the notion that memory is a homogeneous faculty must be challenged. Memory is not a unified function governed by a localizable brain system, an area in charge of storing information designed to be remembered. Mnemonic processes have different brain locations. The functional localization approach dating back to the works of Gall can perhaps be applied to multiple forms of memory, but not to memory treated as an overall faculty. Memories of shapes and forms do not activate the same brain areas as memories of words, sounds, or signs of danger. Nor is memory an integrated system composed of interrelated parts. As with the concept of emotion (fear, stress, sexual attraction, boredom, motivation, etc.), the term “memory” points rather to a multiplicity of neural modules and processes. Remembrance and durable learning are achieved through a variety of mechanisms of encoding, storage, and retrieval, multiple brain circuits that permit us to remember some of the things we learn.

posterior lobes In order to understand the time factor in brain activity, one must look at divisions and interchanges between posterior

105130.book Page 21 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

The Time Machine

21

Brain lobes. Drawing by Martin Blanchet

sensory-input and anterior motor-output areas. Briefly, posterior lobes of the sensory cortex specialize in receiving, processing, and storing visual, auditory, and somatosensory information. These posterior areas can in turn be differentiated into lobes and hemispheres that fulfil distinct memory-storage functions. For instance, the temporal and parietal lobes located in the rh are centrally implicated in spatial and temporal memories, mappings that may exist below the threshold of awareness and with subcortical support (Robertson 1998: 273; Parasuraman and Greenwood 1998: 480). They provide simple or composite snapshots of times, objects, and places that are apprehended without being organized into successions of things or events. These snapshots are accessed by means of visual and spatial cues that serve to reconstruct the context in which to place memories, locating them in synchrony with contextual correlates (times and places) and making them autobiographical

105130.book Page 22 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

22

Neural Reminders

A rear view of the two hemispheres. The Digital Anatomist: Interactive Brain Atlas. John W. Sundsten (Washington: University of Washington Press, 1994)

(LeDoux 1996: 199–200). Studies of visual perception suggest an even finer division of labour between temporal and parietal lobes of the rh. Parietal circuits contain “where pathways” that facilitate object location. By contrast, temporal circuits include “what pathways,” responsible for object recognition. Lesions in this area can cause a visual recognition problem called prosopagnosia, an impairment in the subject’s capacity to identify faces. As should be expected, temporal and parietal lobes of the lh play a key role in the verbal comprehension of what is remembered. The Wernicke area is a particularly important integration area used in recognizing unknown words and making sense of spoken language (minus elements of complex syntax such as verb conjugations and the sequencing of words; see Iaccino 1993: 61–2, Peters 1995: 199). Sensory-auditory memories of words can be severely impaired when the left temporal lobe is damaged. In keeping with these findings, word memories tend

105130.book Page 23 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

The Time Machine

23

to be unavailable to split-brain subjects experimentally involved in rh stimulation only. In normal subjects, posterior lobes of the right and left hemispheres work together. Through interhemispheric exchanges between posterior-lobe memories, we are able to remember the shape of an object while at the same time comprehending the word assigned to the visual image. Split-brain subjects lose that ability. They will use their rh to pull out the correct object from a bag, matching how it feels with the memory of the object seen a few moments earlier. They can also identify the object as either good or bad. But they will not be able to appropriately connect object and word (LeDoux 1996: 13–14).

anterior lobes The frontal cortex governs motor output. Anterior lobes control movement by sending messages out to the body through the spinal cord. Messages sent from each hemisphere are directed to the opposite side of the body. Movement is also required to convert word comprehension into speech action. The motor cortex thus plays a vital role in organizing the voluntary sequencing and planning of movements in the body as well as in language. Accordingly, frontal lobe patients show deficit in planning and sequencing motor behaviour and in verbal fluency. Shifts from one organizational scheme to another (using new sorting principles, problem-solving methods, or perceptual perspectives) are also impaired. Behaviour tends to be stereotyped and inflexible, as if fixed in time. Damages to the medial prefrontal lobe will cause “emotional preservation” as well. This is the inability to shift from one emotional response to another, or to extinguish habitual reactions such as conditioned fear responses (Churchland 1986: 163; Temple 1993: 53, 249). Posterior sensory-input areas of the brain store memories that show no diachronic movement. They permit storage of semantic memories that will not be put into sequential order when remembered. These memories may also come without details regarding their contextual aspects, such as when and

105130.book Page 24 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

24

Neural Reminders

where they were actually learned (e.g., words). By contrast, anterior lobes govern the episodic memory, which is the recollection of precise events and related details of the past presented sequentially. (Episodic memories are encoded and retrieved with the assistance of the anterior and posterior portions of the hippocampus, respectively; see Rosenzweig et al. 1999: 471, 485.) This is in keeping with the anterior lobe control over motions and successions in time. Although usually associated with the rh (ibid.: 470, 486), the frontal episodic memory system is likely to bring together contributions from the two hemispheres. To the rh is assigned what is known as the prosodic function, or the rhythmic structuring of sound in speech. Mention should also be made of the narrative aspects of story-telling – the construction of a plot introducing a narrative thread into reconstructions of the past (Marieb 1993: 388; Rosenzweig et al. 1999: 486). To the lh corresponds the Broca area that specializes in speech movement, or the expressive-motor aspects of language, which make an important contribution to organizing events in sequential time and putting them into words. Readers are reminded that the frontal left side specializes in the comprehension of sentences involving complex syntax and linear succession. When this area is impaired, subjects may experience difficulties in speaking, articulating sounds, and using proper grammar (Iaccino 1993: 52, 63). Interhemispheric communications between anterior lobes permit motor coordination between both sides of the body. But they also bring together two ingredients that are essential to our “higher faculty” construction of sentences, stories, and plans: on the one hand, an rh grasp of plot and rhythm and, on the other hand, a measure of lh linearity – doing or processing one thing at a time.

anteriorposterior communications As with interhemispheric communications, the integrative activity that connects anterior and posterior lobes is crucial to most

105130.book Page 25 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

The Time Machine

25

things we do, such as reading, writing, or having a normal conversation. For instance, lh pathways located between the Broca and Wernicke areas serve to integrate the articulation and comprehension functions of language. Damage to pathways of this lh arcuate fasciculus may therefore result in conduction aphasia, a difficulty in repeating words just heard. A simple act such as repeating a word just heard activates interconnections between several areas. The sound input must first be channelled through the ear and 1 2 3 4 5

go to the primary auditory area and then the Wernicke area for comprehension; the result is passed on to the Broca area via the arcuate fasciculus, to be converted into a precise sound-articulation plan that will be forwarded to the relevant area of the motor cortex for implementation via facial muscular action.

Initial pathways involved in the act of reading a word are different in that information is first received by 1 2

the eyes and the primary visual area and then transmitted to the angular circumvolution and the neighbouring Wernicke area, which is where the letter image is matched with the appropriate sound image.

The interchanges described above become even more complex when we consider the rh processes that feed into acts of speaking and reading. These include the processing of diffuse semantic meaning (Fischler 1998: 393), object-image association, tonality, and narrativity. Without these additional inputs, acts of speaking and reading would not add up to integrative activities that make full sense.

105130.book Page 26 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

reticle 2

Attentive and Inattentive Remembering

explicit and implicit memories Different memory functions and interchanges proceed along cortical pathways involving the posterior and anterior lobes and the two hemispheres. But memories are also modulated by subcortical and subattentional processing mechanisms. This brings us to the vertical dimension of memory systems: the distinction between explicit-declarative and implicit-emotive memories. Explicit-declarative memories are generated mostly at the cortical level. They store up information containing answers to the “what” question and include memories of names, words, dates, places, objects, and faces. They tend to be context-specific; information about a face is stored together with recollections of a name, for example, or a place. Note that declarative memories are not triggered mechanically; that is, they are not dominated by automatic response control systems. They involve instead the exercise of discrimination and choice, a feature that gives them considerable flexibility. The declarative memory system is governed by the temporal lobe. It shows greater activation in the lh during encoding and in the rh during retrieval or efforts to that effect (Rosenzweig et al. 1999: 485). It also receives input from the subcortical, medial temporal hippocampus. Through massive interconnections between the hippocampus and the neocortex, “attentive” memories assist the brain in exercising control over emotional behaviour and response systems that are otherwise automatic.

105130.book Page 27 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Attentive and Inattentive Remembering

27

Decorticate animals are unable to assess stimulus situations and adjust behaviour accordingly. As a result, they have little control over emotions such as rage or fear. Declarative memory is essential to human learning and planned behaviour. All the same, there is more to memory than the explicit attentions we pay to recollections of the past. There are many things we learn, memorize, or remember without paying much attention to the task at hand: for instance, walking, driving a car, placing the verb after the subject, or putting the tongue in the right position when uttering a t instead of a d. The intervention of full attentionality in automatic activities such as these is neither necessary nor possible. Trying to do these routine things with maximum attention would literally paralyse the brain (LeDoux 1996: 176). Once they are learned, many things we know or do require little attention, if any. Yet we tacitly remember them. These memories are called implicit or automatic, two terms that are often treated as synonyms, which they are not. Automatic memories fall into several categories. Some may be of the procedural and performative kind. They constitute answers to the “how” question, for instance, how to lace my shoes and perform the action accordingly. Alternatively, they may involve emotional appraisals achieved without cortical attentionality. These automatic appraisals can activate motor responses based on emotive choices that are relatively few and simple: flight, fright, freeze, attack, and so on. “Mechanical” responses may be genetically prepackaged, putting brain processes and bodily behaviour on automatic pilot, so to speak. But they can also be learned through one of three processes: priming obtained through prior exposure (e.g., completing a word stem using a word already seen or heard); skill learning; and conditioning of the instrumental kind (learning from the consequences of one’s behaviour) or the Pavlovian (a secondary stimulus producing a conditioned response). More will be said about these automatic learning processes later. We know from observation that automatic memories can be activated without our full attention and without explicit memories of prior learning. Memories thus formed tend to be resilient

105130.book Page 28 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

28

Neural Reminders

when compared to declarative memories. Fear conditioning is a case in point. The emotion and related memories can be indelible. They can incubate when apparently lost or extinguished. They can be brought to life in situations of stress. Their reactive intensity can even grow over time (ibid.: 145–6, 203, 251). Some fear-related memories may be more resilient and receive more “automatic attention” than others. Salient features of a stimulus situation remembered mechanically (through amygdala processing) will thus receive more consideration compared to contextual associations (dependent on the hippocampus). Both may act as conditioned stimuli, yet some have more weight than others. Fear conditioning amongst rats is revealing in this regard. When trying to escape danger, rats will grant a bell sound announcing an electric shock more mnemonic weight than background recollections of the experimental box in which both sound and shock were experienced (ibid.: 167–8). Automatic memory systems involve various neural circuits. For instance, while eye-blink reflex conditioning depends on the cerebellum and the brain stem (together with the hippocampus and the cerebral cortex), fear conditioning activates the amygdala and surrounding connections (Rosenzweig et al. 1999: 487). The amygdala is at the end of the subcortical caudate nucleus (in the central nucleus) and plays a leading role in short-term motor response memory. It is responsible for activating the autonomous nervous system and the adrenal gland, releasing adrenaline, adrenal steroids, and peptides into the bloodstream. It acts as a “visceral” device that triggers the quick-and-dirty execution of survival reactions, coupling simple and fast responses to specific kinds of stimulus situations. Behavioural and automatic nervous reactions implicating the amygdala include muscle tension, facial expressions, freezing, startle reflex, pain suppression, and stress hormone release. Increases in heart rate, perspiration, and blood pressure are also dependent on the amygdala (LeDoux 1996: 158–62, 195–6, 221, 257–8, 291–3). Pathways connecting the cortex to the amygdala consist of neurons projecting from the thalamus to the cortex and back from the cortex and the hippocampus to the amygdala. They

105130.book Page 29 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Attentive and Inattentive Remembering

29

are finely tuned in that they transmit relatively precise information about the cognitive and emotional aspects of a stimulus situation. By contrast, thalamic cells projecting directly to the amygdala, without cortical intervention, are broadly tuned. They solicit simple and immediate responses such as fight, fright, or flight. These circuits are of no use in distinguishing between sounds of, say, a slamming door and the memory of a shotgun (ibid.: 162–5). Thalamic information received directly by the amygdala, without neocortical and hippocampal processing, passes “like greased lightning, over the potentiated pathways to the amygdala, unleashing the fear reaction” well before any conscious assessment of the event (ibid.: 258). Fear conditioning and the ability to recognize facial expressions of fear are impaired if the amygdala is disconnected from the sensory thalamus, or if the hippocampus and the amygdala (or nucleus basalis in the forebrain) are lesioned (ibid.: 171–3, 289). The amygdala functions like the hub of a wheel. “It receives low-level inputs from sensory-specific regions of the thalamus, higher level information from sensory-specific cortex, and still higher level (sensory independent) information about the general situation from the hippocampal formation. Through such connections, the amygdala is able to process the emotional significance of individual stimuli as well as complex situations. The amygdala is, in essence, involved in the appraisal of emotional meaning. It is where trigger stimuli do their triggering” (ibid.: 168–9).

memories playing games The brain can learn and remember things without the intervention of explicit memories. But how do automatic and explicit memory systems interact? While operating on different planes, memory systems are bound to intersect. Even when giving limited attention to automatic memories, the neocortex still responds and plays games with them. Under certain conditions, emotional arousal can enhance explicit memories. The automatic-emotional enhancement of declarative memory is verified in experiments where memory

105130.book Page 30 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

30

Neural Reminders

formation is improved by introducing adrenaline into the bloodstream during stimulus situations. Opposite results are obtained by blocking off adrenaline production. Automatic memories may also come to the rescue of a poor conscious memory system. Studies of hypermesia (the recovery of previously inaccessible memories) thus show that tapping into automatic memories through free association or dream analysis can lead to a conscious recovery of memories otherwise suppressed. Conversely, an absence of emotional enhancement can reduce explicit memory retention. Things learned that have little emotional value (no reward or punishment attached) or lose it over time (e.g., through habituation) are more likely to be forgotten. Alternatively, they can remain latent and never manifest themselves through declarative memory (Rosenzweig et al. 1999: 473, 482–3; LeDoux 1996: 60, 206). Interaction in the opposite direction can also be observed, through a conscious enhancement of automatic memory. Declarative recollections can bring about emotional memories and related bodily effects (tension, anxiety, higher blood pressure, etc.) (ibid.: 203, 285). Cortical control over subcortical emotions and routine performance, exercised via the temporal hippocampus memory system, is nonetheless limited. As LeDoux (1996: 265) remarks, “the connections from the cortical areas to the amygdala are far weaker than the connections from the amygdala to the cortex. This may explain why it is so easy for emotional information to invade our conscious thoughts, but so hard for us to gain conscious control over our emotions. Psychoanalysis may be such a prolonged process because of this asymmetry in connections between the cortex and amygdala.” Automatic and explicit memory systems can be mutually supportive. But the two systems can also play games that will make a mockery of principles of mnemonic congruence and accuracy. We know that no memory system can ever be absolute, let alone exhaustive. Memory operates selectively. This is not surprising. After all, the only way cognition and emotion can guide the brain into paying attention to anything is by granting uneven attention to incoming stimuli. The brain remembers some

105130.book Page 31 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Attentive and Inattentive Remembering

31

inputs at the expense of others, paying heed to some stimuli and forgetting them as soon as they lose their novelty (through repeated stimulation and habituation or adaptation). In the final analysis, memory is notoriously selective, forgetful, and inaccurate. It focuses on central aspects of whatever summons our attention and puts a lot of contextual information into background storage. The rest is simply ignored or forgotten. Proceeding otherwise would make no sense. A perfect memory system would consume so much attentional and neural energy as to be cumbersome and maladaptive (ibid.: 203, 209–11). Luria’s study of hypermesia shows how burdensome and dysfunctional a long-term overactive memory system can be (Rosenzweig et al. 1999: 197, 477). Memories are not only incomplete; they are also malleable. This is especially true of declarative memories. Things explicitly remembered depend on what the subject does, feels, and attends to at the moment when memories are retrieved and are consciously attended. The implication is that conscious memories are not accurate reconstructions or “truthful” representations of past experience. Rather, they involve simplifications, additions, omissions, and distortions dictated by events occurring from memory formation to retrieval. Things we remember and the way we remember them are shaped by evolving frames of cognitive and emotional reference. Memories of times past change with the passing of time (LeDoux 1996: 244). Another way of manipulating memories is to keep them apart. We have seen that automatic emotional arousal can accompany, trigger, and reinforce declarative memories. But automatic memories can also develop without conscious memory formation, resulting in subliminal exposure effects (ibid.: 54). This unaware memory phenomenon is well illustrated by Clarapede’s experiment with a female patient suffering from a short-term memory deficit and the resulting inability to convert new information into long-term memories (anteroamnesia). The patient refused to shake the physician’s hand, having learned unconsciously, through prior stimulus exposure, that a prickly tack was concealed in his hand. Unable to remember previous encounters

105130.book Page 32 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

32

Neural Reminders

with the physician, the patient could not explain her gesture. The experiment shows that danger can be detected without a conscious orchestration of signs and memories of fear (ibid.: 18, 180–1). Keeping explicit and automatic memories apart is not something that can be done and remembered consciously. The brain is not aware of everything it commits to memory. The two memory systems can nonetheless be kept apart with a secret purpose, as it were. Repression is a case in point. This typically occurs when declarative memory entertains an antagonistic relationship with emotional experience. One of the principal tasks of memory is to forget things deemed unpleasant or dangerous. The brain is constantly working at forgetting painful experiences, with the implication that losing trace of a memory requires as much work as remembering it. As argued by Freud, the intensively negative nature of some past experience can cause explicit memories to be impoverished or massively repressed. Memory loss and selective amnesia can be caused by brain lesion, yet similar effects may result from repression due to psychological trauma. Repression, however, does not entail a straightforward extinction of memory content. Rather, traces of past experience are pushed back into the automatic memory system where they continue to exert force and influence on brain activity. This brings us to displacement, a direct offshoot of repression. Displacement presupposes two things: a dismantling of explicit and automatic traces of the same event, and an assemblage of memories that appear to be unrelated. Through displacement an automatic-emotive memory is connected with a declarative recollection that seems to address something else. For instance, I may be aware of the fear I am currently experiencing (triggered by the amygdala) without knowledge of the trigger stimulus causing this reaction (the smell of gas associated with a traumatic car accident). This may lead me to attribute the emotional experience of fear to the stimuli and memories currently occupying my awareness (handling gas). Effects of phobia and misdiagnosis may result (fear of gas) and generate new mnemonic associations in their own right. Alternatively, while they

105130.book Page 33 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Attentive and Inattentive Remembering

33

may be severed from salient elements of an explicit memory system (a car crash), automatic memories (fear experience) may hook up to background stimulus associations (a “heavy metal” song heard immediately before the accident). Or the automatic memory may attach itself to an indirect piece of information, something that has a bearing on the emotive memory through metaphorical or metonymic association (fear of gas stations). Condensation is another game involving multiple memories. It occurs when various background and foreground, implicit and explicit memories and stories are mixed, ranked-ordered, and packed together, resulting in surface appearances of conciseness and declarative economy. As with displacement, condensation generates an air of overdetermination and arbitrariness. Foreground and background associations stored in memory systems are conducive to all sorts of combinations, assemblages that may generate apparently senseless matchings. The plasticity of mnemonic compositions is such that bricolage can appear to reign supreme, as in dreams and phobia. Uneven attentions granted to automatic and explicit, background and foreground memories suggest that there is no such thing as a memory system that is essentially truthful, let alone exhaustive. Nor is there such a thing as total amnesia or global memory disorder (ibid.: 195). Mnemonic compositions are malleable amalgamations of disparate acts and levels of remembrance. Another implication is that thoughts about feelings are not the same as feelings about thoughts or experience. Nor is “remembering an emotion” the same as “remembering with emotion.” While declarative memories can attend to emotions (“I was afraid that …”), they are not necessarily loaded or expressed with emotion, an observation often missed in cognitive approaches to studies of memory and emotionality. Representational and cognitive approaches to memory, à la Descartes or Aristotle, ignore this important distinction, treating memories of emotions as effects of cognitive appraisals of past situations. They fail to take into consideration the physiological processing of emotions, which consists in action tendencies and bodily responses that can occur before or without conscious

105130.book Page 34 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

34

Neural Reminders

appraisal of previous experiences (ibid.: 24, 27, 43, 47–52, 64, 68, 181–2).

from implicitness to unawareness The dialogue between memory systems can go in all sorts of directions. It can go from mutual enhancement effects to arbitrary collages shaped by repression and related mechanisms of displacement and condensation. The preceding comments concerning the interplay of memory systems, however, should be qualified in several ways. Firstly, the explicit/implicit terminology often used in studies of memory systems is somewhat misleading. The term “explicit” suggests an outward expression of remembrance, typically of a verbal nature. The problem with this notion is that the brain can pay attention to memories without having to express or verbalize them. Images can be sounded, heard, or visualized in the brain without being uttered or seen. The distinctive property of “explicit” memories is not that they are expressed through words but rather that they are brought to our awareness in the sense of receiving our fullest attention. By contrast, automatic memories are prereflexive in the sense of being reflex-like. They are accessed almost inadvertently, without an act of will and related activities of noticing, awareness, and arousal. Something is remembered and triggers a response without the subject paying attention to the memory in question. The concept of prereflexivity is well suited to suggest “something known, though not consciously understood or expressed.” By “explicit” remembering we should therefore understand a “fully attentive” memory. The term “implicit” should also be revisited, to mean something that is known half-attentively, as distinct from something that is accessed with full attention (spelling a word) or none at all (holding a spoon). The word “implicit” denotes something understood, though not plainly expressed, or something that is suggested, though not stated. This suggests that attentionality is not a digital either/or mechanism. It operates at various levels and with flexible mnemonic

105130.book Page 35 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Attentive and Inattentive Remembering

35

effects ranging from zero-degree inattention to full noticing. Attributes of “implicitness” should be reserved for middle-ofthe road effects of background attentionality, the kind exemplified by the “contextual implications” of declarative memory, as in poetry, word-games, metaphor, or humour. In short, implicit memories suggest a lower degree of attentionality that should not be confused with memories processed in a reflex mode. Secondly, we must take care not to lump all inattentive memories into a mnemonic subsystem characterized by unawareness, emotionality, performativity, sequentiality, stability, and decontextualization, as LeDoux would have it (1996). For one thing, we cannot assume that inattentive memories are always emotional. Learning how to drive a car can generate habitualprocedural memories that do not trigger emotional responses. Nor do these memories necessarily entail procedural learning organized sequentially and without sensitivity to context. Some inattentive memories fit the latter description: for instance, learning how to pronounce successions of sounds forming particular words (“d-o-g”), independently of when and where the words were first uttered. Other automatic learning, however, may be of the symbolic kind. Symbolic memories are sign assemblies highly sensitive to context and typically formed without a diachronic, sequential organization. On this point, readers are reminded that in Freudian theory unconscious symbolling is atemporal, situated outside of time and without chronology and linearity. Finally, inattentive memories are not necessarily stable. They can show as little resistance to the passage of time as reflexive ones. Many of the stimuli processed by our senses (e.g., background music or conversations) are apprehended for short periods of time, without being encoded and stored into our long-term memory system. Thirdly, LeDoux’s notion that there can be automatic remembering without mnemonic awareness, the two working more or less in parallel, is problematical. LeDoux emphasizes the relative autonomy of explicit and automatic memory systems. Although critical of limbic emotionality theory, he is of the view that declarative-cognitive and performative-emotive processes function

105130.book Page 36 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

36

Neural Reminders

differently (ibid.: 69–70, 280). He observes that one function can be impaired without affecting the other. For instance, the perceptual processing (pp) of a stimulus situation can be maintained in the absence of automatic-emotional appraisal (ep) effects. Likewise, the automatic-emotional appraisal of the goodness or badness of a stimulus situation can dispense with cognitive processing by the neocortex. The same observations apply to memories of pp and ep, which can be registered, stored, and retrieved independently of one another. Thus I may remember and state facts concerning a past traumatic event (“I was shocked and speechless”) without retrieving the original emotional response. Or I may relive an emotional response to a stimulus that “rings a bell” with little awareness of the trigger stimulus and related memories of the original event. LeDoux’s observations are insightful. Treating attentive and inattentive memories as two separate functions is nonetheless a problem. In 3-D Mind 2 we saw how difficult it is to separate cognition from emotion, treating them as functions that do not necessarily interact and that are constituted differently at the neurological level. The two functions are constantly interacting and providing mutual assistance. The argument applies not only to learning activities but also to acts of remembrance. Thus the dependence of inattentive memories on attentional activity should not be underestimated. Memories derived from procedural learning, as in tying one’s shoelace, is not done automatically from the start; attentive learning is needed to acquire the habit in the first place. Attentionality is also needed when “automatic” symbolling seems to prevail, as in dreams. Past events recollected in dreams may seem distorted to the point that they do not represent memories of the declarative kind. Yet the fact that considerable energy is applied to acts of distortion suggests that the events are still “occupying the subject’s mind.” Experiences that were originally conscious must continue to draw some attention if they are to be distorted. A victim of violence will transform memories of abuse into dream imageries of lightning and storm if the subject is still preoccupied with experiences that were once conscious and that the

105130.book Page 37 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Attentive and Inattentive Remembering

37

brain no longer wishes to fully attend. To say that memories and trains of thought are unconscious does not mean that attentionality is simply absent. It means rather that a lot of energy must be put into avoiding full noticing and arousal and into investing attention somewhere else. Effort is required for awareness to be shifted to a place of refuge that looks like the site that must be deserted. One memory system works hard at disactivating another that continues to exert pressure and force. The opposite form of dependency, the attentive thriving on the inattentive and the automatic, is even more extensive. Cortical activity requires subcortical support. Cognitive processing presupposes motivational support that must be minimally sustained and attended throughout the duration of an attentionally focused activity (e.g., writing an exam). These requirements are met through vertical pathways that link up neocortical processes with subcortical circuits. Axial projections facilitate efforts of synaptic potentiation (impulse transmission) and brain arousal, efforts that are not strictly cognitive, let alone “reflexive.” Explicit emotionality may or may not ensue (e.g., fear of failure). But even when affects are neutered, flatness still requires brain operations of a noncognitive nature; mechanisms such as communicational inhibition (synaptic inhibition or hyperpolarization) are needed for the brain to keep emotional activity in check (e.g., panic) and pursue the task at hand.

105130.book Page 38 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

reticle 3

Short-Term, Long-Term, and Working Memories

Different hemispheres, lobes, and areas of the cortex are used to encode, store, and retrieve auditory-verbal, visual-spatial, motor, and other sensory memories. To these variable mnemonic functions can be added subcortical interventions from the hippocampus and the amygdala and the corresponding bifurcation of attentive and inattentive memory systems. Attentive remembrance occurs in a state of arousal. It can take an anterior lobe route and feed into acts of speech, goaloriented behaviour, or episodic memory activity (combining lh sequentiality with rh narrativity). Alternatively, attentive remembering can take a posterior lobe route and generate semantic memories (auditory, visual). Inattentive memories also operate in various ways, including • conditioned reflexes involving brain stem intervention (e.g., • • • •

eye-blink reflex conditioning); procedural performances implicating the forebrain (e.g., lh word pronunciation, rh manual skills); the automatic recognition of word-sound connections (activating lh posterior lobes); language skills involving automatic pattern-matching of input to highly accessible memories (Fischler 1998: 394); or routine acts of spatial location and object recognition (activating rh posterior lobes).

Over and beyond this classification of mnemonic processes, neuropsychology must address the interaction between anterior and

105130.book Page 39 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Short-Term, Long-Term, and Working Memories

39

posterior lobes, interchanges between cortical and subcortical functions, and the interfacing of attentive and inattentive memory systems. Brain areas and circuits specialize and fulfil variegated functions, but they also communicate with one another. Integrated activity is the rule rather than the exception. It is required to accomplish most tasks. Simple acts such as reading a sentence out loud presuppose electrical and chemical interchanges involving stimuli from the sensory cortex, information from the primary visual area, word-comprehension from the Wernicke area, acts of speech from the Broca area and the motor cortex, attentive memory retrieval from the hippocampus, emotive colouring from the thalamus, evocative tonality and meaningful objectevent associations from rh lobes, and so on. Memory is a complex assembly line that integrates many layers of prior learning and operative remembering. It functions in successive steps and with multiple coactivations as well. Memories of times past vary according to senses, functions, and levels of attentionality. They also vary according to another criterion that is essential to the very concept and experience of time: the factor of durability. Not only are there different memories of time, but there are also different ways of “timing” a memory. This issue has a direct bearing on our understanding of mnemonic processes and related interchanges between rightleft, cortical-subcortical, and anterior-posterior circuits. Simply put, the issue concerns the length of time that a memory may be expected to last. As explained below, mnemonic traces are stored in one of four interacting systems known as buffer-zone, short-term, medium-term, and long-term memory systems. All four systems feed into an overall executive function known as the working memory. Buffer-zone memories are “iconic” (visual) or “echoic” (auditory) and last a few seconds at most. They constitute snapshot experiences of specific inputs received from the senses and are based on a brief persistence of nervous sensory activity. The short-term memory works differently. It brings together information from various specialized buffer zones, encoding a limited amount of information and holding it over a relatively short span of time, up to about thirty seconds (e.g., remembering

105130.book Page 40 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

40

Neural Reminders

a phone number about to be dialled). Information thus retained will usually comprise no more that seven or eight elements. Things learned recently are generally given priority in shortterm memory activity. Some of these temporary memories are stored in a medium-term memory system where they stay for a longer period of time, up to a few hours (where did I park my car this morning?). A select number of short- and medium-term memories are consolidated into long-term memories accessed with or without attentional effort. This long-term mnemonic system gives greater weight to first experiences or stimuli, as opposed to things recently learned; the primacy effect is given precedence over the recency effect. The hippocampus and the amygdala (together with their neighbouring input and output connections to the neocortex) play a role in laying down these durable memories, which are sent to and saved in relevant areas of the cortex. When these circuits (or thalamic pathways) are lesioned, anterograde amnesia may result (LeDoux 1996: 185ff.; Rozenzweig et al. 1999: 471, 481, 485, 493–4). The working memory is the “executive function” where sensations and memories meet. Its role is to produce unified moments of experience supported through emotional and stimulational arousal. This operational memory consists of all the stuff we pay attention to at a given moment in time, against the background of memories formed through previous working memory activity (LeDoux 1996: 271–3). Our working memory also gives every experience a particular orientation; it is informed by current stimuli, yet it imposes a selective bias on what the senses are actually attending. Perception influences memory, which influences perception. In the words of Kosslyn, the working memory “corresponds to the activated information in longterm memories, the information in short-term memories, and the decision processes that manage which information is activated in the long-term memories and retained in the short-term memories … This kind of working memory system is necessary for a wide range of tasks, such as performing mental arithmetic, reading, problem solving and … reasoning in general. All of

105130.book Page 41 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Short-Term, Long-Term, and Working Memories

41

these tasks require not only some form of temporary storage, but also an interplay between information that is stored temporarily and a larger body of stored knowledge” (cited in ibid.: 272). The working memory implicates frontal cortex areas such as the orbital and the anterior cingulate cortex. It also activates the prefrontal cortex, on the lh side for discrimination (e.g., when encoding faces, paying attention to distinctive features) and on the rh side for coordination (e.g., when recognizing faces) (Rosenzweig et al. 1999: 481). Information received in the prefrontal area is first channelled through the lateral zone. Input comes from two directions: (1) the hippocampus and other cortical areas involved in long-term memory formation; and (2) the visual cortex mediated by the temporal “what” and parietal “where” pathways (involving object recognition and location respectively). The prefrontal cortex can then send back information to parietal and temporal lobes. This output serves to prime “the visual system to attend to those objects and spatial locations that are being processed in working memory (top-down processing),” which in turn can influence further processing of incoming information (LeDoux 1996: 275, 278–9). Prefrontal signals are also sent to the amygdala and its projection areas, using information from the outside world to influence amygdala interpretation and output (ibid.: 248). Attentions to the past and the present feed into the working memory system, which in turn conditions the things we remember and pay attention to. The loop is looped, it seems. Not entirely, however. One element is still missing: the “system” that pays attention to things that are about to come and to be remembered as things of the past. We have yet to understand how memory links up with attentions to the future.

105130.book Page 42 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

reticle 4

Memory in the Future Tense

The word “memory” denotes an act of remembrance, recalling something from the past. But it also evokes the act of letting something come back to one’s mind so that it can be considered and “attended” anew. This is to say that memory is inseparable from attentionality. The working memory plays a key role in this regard. It allows the brain to bring together all the stuff it attends to in the present tense, including things of the past. The working memory is not mere remembrance of the past. It is everything we “care to consider” at a given moment in time. Memory is always harnessed to the “here and now.” Mnemonic functions vary according to the kind of somatosensory information the brain is responding to. They also vary according to the amount of attentionality the brain cares to apply to the material it is actually processing. Implicit and background memories thus receive less attention compared to explicit and foreground recollections. In 3-D Mind 2 we saw how variable mixtures of inattentive, half-attentive, and fully attentive investments account for differences between products of language and forms of rhetoric. Attentional dosages also give shape to the variable effects of repression, displacement, dreaming, joking, routinized behaviour, and so on. The same argument can be extended to mnemonic activities: they too are subject to variable measures of attention. The working memory system is built upon many layers of remembering, some of which require little arousal, if any. To paraphrase Freud, the attentions of declarative memory represent

105130.book Page 43 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Memory in the Future Tense

43

The prefrontal cortex. Drawing by Martin Blanchet

no more than the tip of the mnemonic iceberg. All the same, they are indispensable to human survival. Activities such as crossing a street, reading, speaking, or listening require that our brain be able to grant full consideration to whatever sensory and mnemonic material is in need of our undivided attention. What LeDoux (1996: 277) calls the “frontal lobe attentional network” involves a complex web that allocates attention selectively, investing more of it where more is effectively needed. Networking allows specific activities to be pursued attentively or half-attentively, inhibiting other actions and memories and guiding voluntary movement and decision-making processes subserving particular goals and needs. The forebrain constantly decides when to continue attending to stimuli and related memories and when to stop paying attention, reverting instead to habituation, extinction, or plain neglect. Messages that are sent from the medial prefrontal area to the amygdala can also serve to extinguish automatic memories, or conditioned responses such as fear. Communications mapped along these axial lines

105130.book Page 44 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

44

Neural Reminders

may play an important role in behaviour therapies that rely on desensitization techniques to undo habitual memories exhibiting maladaptive effects, as in phobia (ibid.: 170, 248, 263–5). Frontal lobes direct our attention and exert influence over inattentive memory formation and retention. But they also receive advice from the amygdala. Given its massive connections to the cortex, the amygdala and its defensive system exercise direct influence on prefrontal attentionality and working memory. Actually the amygdala is known to “project to a wide variety of cortical areas. Included are projections to all stages of cortical sensory processing … to prefrontal cortex, and to the hippocampus and related cortical areas. Through these projections, the amygdala can influence ongoing perceptions, mental imagery, attention, short-term memory, working memory, and long-term memory, as well as the various higher-order thought processes that these make possible” (ibid.: 287; Rosenzweig et al. 1999: 522). The working memory responds to immediate cortical and subcortical inputs and makes sense of them against the background of short-term and long-term memories. Results are fed back into somatosensory activity and memory formation, priming the brain into paying attention to things that are relevant to the situation at hand. But there is more. The notion of priming raises an important issue: the relationship between memory and attentions to things that are yet to come. Attentionality is not merely an executive function where current stimuli, shortterm memories, and long-term recollections meet and interact. Attentionality also involves a neurological deployment of vigilance and anticipation, a presence of the mind waiting for signs of things not yet remembered or sensed. In order to be “working” effectively, a memory system must be able to process signs and memories of the future. Memory is as much harnessed to the “hereafter” as it is to the “here and now.” Signs of the future are not ghosts or spirits of divination dwelling inside the brain. I smell or imagine gasoline, which triggers “explicit” and “automatic” memories of a car accident. The car crash is not felt, perceived, or experienced as such. Yet

105130.book Page 45 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Memory in the Future Tense

45

its memory triggered by a key stimulus or image is converted into an ominous signal, a sign of impending danger. The smell of gasoline makes me nervous. All indications (ongoing stimuli) are that I am not in a car accident. There is nonetheless some indication that I am about to revisit the scene of the accident in my mind, or that I may be hit by a car if I do not give heed to signs of danger (processed by the amygdala). Signs of the future (the smell of gasoline) are the products of a simple calculus: recollections of an accident that could be repeated minus all ongoing stimuli that have no direct bearing on these memories (i.e., all current circumstances minus the smell of gasoline). Take the memories and sensory stimuli away from this futuristic equation, as in direct laboratory stimulation of the amygdala, and you are left with vague feelings of foreboding danger – fear with no sense of where the danger comes from let alone what signs actually announce (LeDoux 1996: 172). Memory is a postfigurative system. But it is also a prefigurative machine. Acts of language can serve to illustrate this point. A text can be read and understood provided that the working memory is able to “keep in mind” words already read or being read and convert them into announcements of words likely to be read. By-products of attentional “wait and see” effects include anxiety, fear, surprise, satisfaction, suspense, and foresight. Attentionality goes beyond a processing of signs of the present and related traces of the past. It is also an active processing of expectations (attentes in French) of the immediate future. Effects of attentional prefiguration play an important role in the exercise of declarative memory. Telling the story, be it real or imagined, in the past tense entails a narrative movement, a story comprising futures in the past tense – scenes of the past that are about to be related and that will deliver promises of memories already told. At the neurological level, narrations of past experiences activate prefrontal circuits implicated in speech movement (Marieb 1993: 388). But the prefrontal brain is also in charge of planning the narrative movement. It plots out the sequential ordering and unfolding of past events, including those not yet delivered. Planning things about to be said or

105130.book Page 46 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

46

Neural Reminders

done requires the past to be declined in the future tense. It requires that the narrative ground be prepared for things that will happen once other things “will have come to pass.” Sign activity does not box attentions of the present, the past, and the future into discrete categories of time. Rather, it weaves anticipations of the future into our working memory experiences. The fact that expectations are embedded within our memories of the past and our appraisal of reality in general does not mean that things are always predictable. Expectations are often encoded, memorized, and acted upon in such ways as to leave room for the unexpected. We all have memories of experiences deviating from what we thought would happen, which means we can trust the unexpected to strike again. All the same, we expect the validity of some past learning to persist over time. This is to say that brain activity thrives on expectations of a minimally coherent “world-about-me.” Likewise, brain processing thrives on assurances and prospects of a minimally coherent self. When I look at “my self” in a mirror, I rely on the mirror to project a relatively identical face from one day to the next. Though constructed, malleable, and changeable, persisting self-attentionality is a sine qua non of a reliable working-memory system. In the words of LeDoux (1996: 33, my emphasis), “one of the main jobs of consciousness is to keep our life tied together into a coherent story, a self-concept. It does this by generating explanations of behavior on the basis of our self-image, memories of the past, expectations of the future, the present social situation, and the physical environment in which the behavior is produced.” Sign processing constructs continuity through time, as it must.

105130.book Page 47 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

reticle 5

Fear and Watchfulness

The neurological foundations of the experience we have of the future tense can be approached through studies of fear and anxiety. Reactions of fear may result from internal or external stimulus situations that bring back memories of painful experiences via amygdala and/or hippocampus arousal (LeDoux 1996: 257– 8). The question is whether it is stimulus and memory appraisal that engenders the emotional experience, or is it the emotion that triggers cognitive and mnemonic activity? Do we experience fear because we are cognizant of signs of danger? Or do we assess a situation to be dangerous because we are in a state of fear? It is probably safe to say that both situations can happen. The important point to bear in mind, however, is that a painful experience (dentist drilling a tooth) is not the same as experiencing the fear of pain (sitting in the dentist’s waiting room). While the former entails real suffering, the latter involves the anticipation of potential harm and the prospect of suffering. Fear and anxiety connect past and present situations to signs of the precisely or vaguely perceived future – the possible, the probable, or the inevitable. We run from danger not because of pain but rather because of the pain we might suffer if we did not run (ibid.: 42; see 228, 233). This “if” appraisal rests upon a calculus of anticipations and expectations based on working memory assessments of how stimuli relate to short- and longterm memories and cognate associations. The brain is a forward-looking machine. Neuropsychologically speaking, we do not simply live in a world that is and with

105130.book Page 48 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

48

Neural Reminders

memories of a world that was. We also live in a world that might be or that shall be. Ghosts dwell in the machine after all! The prefrontal cortex is one critical site where spirits of the future are encoded and domesticated. Through prefrontal activity the subject takes control, prepares a processing activity, plans serial actions, carries them out, sustains related attentions, protects them from distracting events, assesses the risks involved, and predicts possible outcomes (LaBerge 1995: 218–19; Cohen et al. 1993: 8). It explores the means by which gains can be maximized and risks minimized. Forebrain interaction between the basal ganglia and the amygdala is particularly important in this regard. It allows the subject to convert plans into instrumental behaviour pursued with emotive enhancement. The nervous system thus shifts from reaction to action. Goal-oriented activities are predictably impaired when the prefrontal cortex is lesioned. As already remarked, frontal lobe patients repeat the same behaviour over and over again. They are glued to the present and have difficulty projecting themselves into the future (LeDoux 1996: 176–7). The control that humans can exercise over possible futures entails certain costs. The brain is empowered to explore the future, with the implication that it can generate anxiety in the face of what might or might not come to be. Fear of frustration or danger will thus result. This can occur in one of two ways: through a state of full arousal, or through effects of automatic bodily response. When in a situation of automatic fear conditioning, the brain learns how to read signs in a reflex-like manner, treating relevant stimuli as signs of imminent danger. Automatic fear reactions produce arousal signals ranging from pilo erection (the hair “standing on end”) to pupil dilation and elevations of blood pressure and heart rate. Other reactions include flight, attack, startle, freezing, bodily orienting, or desensitizing (implicating the brain’s natural opiate system). Subjects may become aware of these fear responses or may remain unaware of them and show no declarative cognizance of the Pavlovian relationship between natural stimulus (the

105130.book Page 49 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Fear and Watchfulness

49

Fear. Drawing by Charles Le Brun (1619–1690). “Expressions of the Passions of the Soul: Fear.” Copyright Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, ny s0153655 art146901; Louvre, Paris, France

meat), learned trigger (the bell sound), and conditioned response (salivation). Anxiety is all the more intense when these automatic memories of danger are in full force and “explicit” memories are lost. When subjected to full attentional processing, however, fear opens up the brain and the body to the weaponry of past experience, cognitive analysis, planned action, “if” appraisals, and risk assessment. Reaction to the present based on past learning turns into future-oriented action. Attentional behaviour adds awareness to automatic signs of stress and anxiety and permits some degree of control over amygdala-dependent fear reactions (ibid.: 79, 128, 132, 134, 141, 146). Control is achieved through cortical and subcortical communications with the amygdala. The lateral nucleus of the amygdala receives various fear-monitoring inputs: stimulus features from the sensory thalamus; information concerning objects

105130.book Page 50 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

50

Neural Reminders

and events from the sensory cortex; and explicit memories and contextual associations from the transition cortex (rhinal) and the hippocampus. Inputs are then passed on to other regions of the amygdala and feed into the response control system. If deprived of prefrontal, hippocampus, and sensory cortex information, amygdala-dependent anxieties and fears may be uncontrollable and strategies to reduce them no longer available. Lesions to the basal ganglia are also known to reduce the patient’s ability to control anxiety. Phobic behaviour and panic in excess of the actual danger faced by the subject may result from these disconnections. Habitual strategies to reduce fear and anxiety may be maintained under circumstances that are no longer appropriate (ibid.: 170, 227–30, 232, 250–1, 262). Levels of stress must be considered when discussing anxietycontrol mechanisms. Mild stress (and adrenaline release) can enhance learning, conditioning, and automatic remembering. Too much of it, however, can have detrimental effects on normal brain operations. Stress that persists or becomes too intense may affect the ability of the hippocampus to control the release of stress hormone and to perform routine functions, including normal “conscious memory” formation. A malfunctioning hippocampus can reduce the subject’s capacity to acquire new learning, including novel lessons that can prove automatic memories wrong and serve to extinguish them. Explicit memory problems are likely to occur as well; that is, excessive stress can impede long-term potentiation (see below) in the hippocampus and cause hippocampus dendrites and cells to shrivel and degenerate. When combined with amygdala and hippocampus activity, the frontal lobe attentional network governs the normal operations of our working memory. It does so in ways that are sensitive to signs of things to come and to the assessment of future possibilities. Memory is not a faculty firmly glued to immutable moments of the past, as most conceptions of remembrance would have it. On the contrary, when aroused, our working memories are by definition on the watch and on the move. Fear, anxiety, and stress are basic effects built into the

105130.book Page 51 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Fear and Watchfulness

51

system. The future is never entirely predictable, which means that the brain must remain open to the unexpected even when behaving according to plans. Thus, when attending the future, our working memory must combine two things. It must focus on step-by-step actions of the instrumental sort – hence, show a capacity to concentrate on specific tasks and behave according to plans. But since the unforeseen can always prevail, the brain must also be sensitive to the vagueness and indeterminacy of things that are yet to come. This general openness involves an unfocused watchfulness or sensitivity to things vaguely apprehended, stimuli and images not yet perceived or imagined. Two forms of forward-looking attentionality are required: an lh focusing on precise activities geared to plans of the immediate future, and an rh openness to the unforeseen and the unforeseeable. The brain must be able to do both things. As with other brain functions, this is not an either/or system. Shifts between focusing and watchfulness are frequent. Mixed strategies will be formed at various points along the continuum from rh to lh attentional behaviour. Shifts and mixtures in attentional strategies presuppose in turn an even deeper form of attentionality working at the subcortical level, that is, brain arousal. This acts on the forebrain by enhancing the sensitivity of targeted cell areas to incoming signals. Arousal serves to awaken a brain otherwise drowsy, inattentive, or “absentminded.” It also brings the brain out of sleep, reactivating its capacity to discriminate between internal and external stimuli. Neurotransmitters released by brain-stem cells with arousal effects include noradrenaline, dopamine, serotonin, and acetylcholine (ACh) (ibid.: 285, 288–93). Arousal brings about a general watchfulness that can turn into focused attentionality when required. Waking up to events of the world-about-me brings about sensitivity to an indeterminate future that can turn into task-oriented action. Two important implications follow from these observations regarding attentions (subcortical and cortical) to stimuli (internal and external)

105130.book Page 52 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

52

Neural Reminders

processed against the background of memories of the past and anticipations of the future. First, attentionality works analogically. Mechanisms of awareness involve a continuum from sleep to inattentive receptivity, general watchfulness, semi-attentive responsivenes, and active focusing. The notion that consciousness is a unified faculty that functions digitally – the brain turning it either on or off – does little justice to normal brain activity. Second, attentionality works dynamically, with one form and measure of attentionality constantly feeding into another. While it can be aroused from a state of relative watchlessness or sleep, brain awareness cannot emerge from absolute inertness. Some form and degree of attentionality is needed to trigger another. Attentionality will thus be enhanced or heightened by sensory processes, as when novel stimuli are perceived; by working memory activity, as when accomplishing a task involving prior learning; by the amygdala, as in situations of immediate danger; by autonomic signals from the body, as in situations of anxiety and stress; and so on. All of these activities generate further arousal, yet they respond to prior events of cortical and subcortical arousal. Arousal is needed to generate further arousal, as in the case of fear. Awareness of the experience of fear may result from our perception of signs of external danger. This awareness, however, presupposes deeper-level attentions to danger involving somatic and visceral signals received by the amygdala from the brain stem, say, hyperventilation causing the blood pressure to rise. Actually, a visceral apprehension of potential pain may cause fear (and awareness of it) in the absence of “real” external triggers. When this happens, bodily signals generate further bodily and emotional arousal, and hence further anxiety and fear (ibid.: 259, 296). Arousal enhanced by amygdala intervention sustains and enhances a given emotional state. It reinforces the sensitivity of cortical areas and the working memory to specific stimuli relevant to the situation at hand, blocking out other inputs vying for attention. All of this information is fed back to the amygdala and keeps it alert. This dynamic system sustains our attentions

105130.book Page 53 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Fear and Watchfulness

53

to perception, working memory, problem solving, feelings, and related body signals (from the autonomic nervous system), all of which require a good dose of general arousal and sustained feedback from the body. Too much arousal, however, can create or accompany excessive stress and reduce the capacity to focus “mentally” and behaviourally. Semi-attention, unfocused watchfulness, and plain inattention are also essential to normal brain activity.

105130.book Page 54 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

reticle 6

Synaptic Fields and Long-Term Potentiation

Our survey of memory circuits and time frames must not leave out basic learning mechanisms operating at the level of synaptic and molecular events. Although more research is needed to verify the link between synapse and memory, there are various ways in which functional and structural changes occurring at the synaptic and neural level can be said to contribute to mnemonic activity. One method that neurons can use to facilitate memory formation consists in presynaptic neurons releasing greater amounts of neurotransmitters. This enhances interneural communication and assists the growth of neural networks needed to support durable learning. Also, the greater the frequency of synaptic activation and nervous influx and the greater the release of presynaptic neurotransmitters, the more likely and easier it is for the firing level to be reached in the postsynaptic neuron.1 Another way for learning to be “remembered” at the neurological level is for presynaptic, dendritic, synaptic, or postsynaptic areas to increase in size and sensitivity to neural exchanges. Alternatively, synapses and nervous pathways can be newly developed or rearranged so as to accommodate the encoding, consolidation, and retrieval of new information. Finally, “synaptic remembering” can occur through mechanisms of classical conditioning and sensitization. Classical conditioning involves a repeated stimulation that facilitates interneuronal attention. Sensitization is characterized by a heightened neurochemical response to a stimulus that is benign but repeated and increasingly painful

105130.book Page 55 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Synaptic Fields and Long-Term Potentiation

55

(Churchland 1986: 70–1). All of the situations described above can be reversed, resulting in a reduction of synaptic activity, sensitivity, and connectivity. The corresponding symptoms are habituation, unlearning, and the loss of memory (Rosenzweig et al. 1999: 474, 502, 508–10, 522). Habituation occurs when stimulation is so benign as to cause inattention at the synaptic level, a loss of membrane capacity to depolarize in response to a given stimulus (Marieb 1993: 427). One important neural mechanism most likely to be directly involved in memory activity is the long-term potentiation process. ltp (observed in the hippocampus) refers to cells firing with greater intensity when connections are facilitated through prior associative learning or neural conditioning (i.e., frequent or repeated stimulation). ltp also involves a neurological law according to which “cells that fire together wire together.” This Hebbian principle applies to cells that join those already wired. Compared to cell x, cell a may not be strong enough to fire cell y; but if a fires at the same time as x, then a will acquire sufficient strength to evoke a response from y. Also a and x will establish connections and coactivity between them (LeDoux 1996: 215, 253; Rosenzweig et al. 1999: 497–8). The end result of ltp is twofold: a strengthening of synaptic connections between neurons, and a durable increase in the magnitude of synaptic response known as the synaptic field.2 It should be emphasized that neural learning through ltp is experience specific; only those connections involved in a given stimulus situation are strengthened. To this feature should be added the properties of cooperativity and associativity. That is, an ltp enhancement of synaptic field requires the coactivation of multiple inputs stimulating a given cell or cell area. Responses are stronger when connections are zapped simultaneously (LeDoux 1996: 213–20). The rule of cooperativity governing this field-potential enhancement mechanism means that learning and remembering are neural constructions of associative networks, nodes of cells that fire simultaneously and that show plasticity and durability. Memories depend on these cell assemblies being first formed and then triggered collectively.

105130.book Page 56 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

56

Neural reminders

Must all component parts of these cell assemblies be triggered for memories to be retrieved? Current neuropsychological studies suggest that memory retrieval will occur provided that reactivated components are sufficient in number and relative weight. By “weight” is meant the actual amount of attention originally assigned to a given stimulus or association. Also, the more emotionally loaded reactivated components are and the closer the emotional state is to the original experience, the more likely the “explicit memory” will be brought back and the more vivid it will be (ibid.: 211–12). The negative counterpart of ltp is known as long-term depression. ltd activates neurotransmitters and proteins that weaken the amplitude and durability of cell networking, inhibiting synaptic connections and the firing of action potentials. This means that cell assemblies can develop and grow, but they can also shrivel up and dismantle (Rosenzweig et al. 1999: 507, 510). In other words, they can be “forgotten” or extinguished. Note that the mechanism of extinction seems to have more impact on individual connections than on cell assemblies. Furthermore, some assemblies may be more resilient than others. This is especially true of interconnections established within the amygdala or between the amygdala and the cortex. Durable amygdala learning may be an “important aspect of the long-term, extinction-resistant, implicit memory created by fear conditioning” (LeDoux 1996: 253).

105130.book Page 57 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

reticle 7

Things to Remember

What are the implications of neuropsychological studies of memory for semiotics and sign theory? Before we answer this question, a synopsis of previous observations regarding the anatomy of time is in order. To begin with, we have seen that memory is not a unified faculty occupying a storage room clearly mapped in brain geography. Rather, various lobes, hemispheres, and areas of the cortex and the subcortex busy themselves processing, storing, and retrieving different forms of memory – auditoryverbal or visual-spatial, semantic (“where” and “what” memories) or episodic (rh prosodic-narrative, lh expressive-motor). Mnemonic activities thus vary according to the type of learning involved. But they also vary according to something else: the quantity of attention actually assigned to products of learning. Studies of neuropsychology show how some memories are reactivated with full cortical attentionality, hence an explicit awareness or consciousness of what is being remembered, to use an older terminology. By contrast, other memories are given less attention. Although they may be registered with equal or greater effectiveness, they are processed and retrieved automatically, prereflexively or unconsciously. Examples of “inattentive memories” (some acquired through prior attentive learning) include eye-blinking, fear conditioning, routine acts of spatial location and object recognition, learned procedures such as driving a car or tying one’s shoelaces, and so on. It should be emphasized that mnemonic functions cannot be pigeonholed. Recollections are more often than not complex

105130.book Page 58 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

58

Neural Reminders

assemblages that connect right-left, anterior-posterior, and cortical-subcortical circuits of the brain. Simple day-to-day tasks require a coactivation of semantic and episodic learning coupled with “where” and “what” recognition memories. They also presuppose a malleable blending of attentive and inattentive remembering. Admixtures of explicit and automatic memories produce effects ranging from the mutual enhancement of cortical and subcortical memory systems to esoteric collages shaped by repression, displacement, and condensation. Mnemonic assembly work operates at the neural level as well, via an ltp (long-term potentiation)-induced enhancement of synaptic sensitivity and connectivity. ltp results in the durable wiring and firing of cell assemblies formed through iterative learning and remembering. While showing properties of durability and plasticity, associative memory networks can also be unlearned or forgotten through the neural process known as long-term depression (ltd). The issue of memory loss points in turn to another source of memory differentiation and coordination: their relative durability. We have seen that buffer zone, short-term, and long-term memories make distinct contributions to functional brain activity. These memory systems specialize, but they also interact between themselves and interface with sensory activity. The overall executive function responsible for this integration is called the “working memory” and is governed by the “frontal lobe attentional network.” It brings together memories of immediate and distant times and hooks them up to ongoing stimulus situations. The working memory generates unified moments of experience. It oversees the production of meaningful events informed by past experience and attentions of the “here and now.” Through integrative coactivation, the brain constructs a “world-about-me” forever declined in the present tense, a world formed against the background of previous learning and related acts of “explicit,” “implicit,” and “automatic” remembering. But of all aspects of the working memory system, the most intriguing lies in its prefigurative capacity. At stake here is the brain’s ability to sustain our attention not only to things selected

105130.book Page 59 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Things to Remember

59

from the past and the present but also to things we anticipate, fear, or expect – signs of the future apprehended in the light of current stimulus information and past learning. Forebrain attentions to things not yet sensed or remembered constitute a prerequisite of goal-oriented and planning activity (linguistic, narrative, behavioural) and are vital to our working memory system. Anticipations respond to and condition what we sense and care to remember. They affect and are affected by current stimuli situations and memories of the past, be they declarative or not. Feedback circuits are probably involved here, enabling postsynaptic neurons to reconnect with presynaptic networks (anticipations enhance or reinforce the memories and perceptions that triggered them in the first place). In short, anticipation primes us into paying attention to stimuli and memories that matter the most, which in turn influence ongoing efforts to anticipate things and events not yet delivered. Finally, two forms of prefigurative activity cohabit in the exercise of working memory attentionality. The first one consists in goal-oriented, step-by-step activity. It focuses on signs of the possible, the probable, and the inevitable. Instrumental prefiguration assumes a certain amount of determinacy and permits the brain to expect or anticipate a relatively coherent “world-about-me” – hence, a minimally coherent self and a minimally predictable environment. Although requiring subcortical input, forebrain intervention (mostly from the lh) is particularly important in this pursuit of a world controlled through instrumental focusing. By contrast, the second prefigurative mode assumes the world to be relatively indeterminate. It adopts an attitude of general openness or vigilance towards things not yet perceived or imagined. This is the brain on sentry duty, with an rh attitude that can give free rein to subcortical reactions of fear, anxiety, and stress. The division between focused anticipation and unfocused watchfulness is not to be understood digitally (either/or) or statically. Analogical mixtures and dynamic shifts in forward-looking attentionalities are essential to most tasks. Attentions to the notyet are subject to shifts in dosages of anticipation and vigilance.

105130.book Page 60 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

60

Neural Reminders

They also hook up to a deeper form of watchfulness operating through mechanisms of its own, that is, brain arousal, which stirs up the full working memory system into forward motion. All forms of attentionality feed into one another, with the implication that brain processing is never fully at rest.

105130.book Page 61 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

semiotic motions

105130.book Page 62 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

105130.book Page 63 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

reticle 8

Volumes Recollected

Attentions deployed through normal working-memory activity conjugate considerations of the present with memories of the past and anticipations of the future. They also require that some inattention be applied to distant times, whether through appropriate losses of memory or lack of foresight. While these observations are founded in neuropsychology, they also hold true in the semiotic domain. The analyses of symbolic material that follow show how speculations on time condition all productions of language. We begin with material already explored in previous books, revisiting them with concerns not addressed until now. Examples of naming practices (“Jacques M. Chevalier”), political slogans (“I like Ike”), plant imageries (figs in Genesis, hemlocks in Evangeline), and shoe metaphors (biblical, erotic) will be revisited briefly, with a view to showing their attentions to narrative time. In later sections of this book I extend my discussion of the anatomy of time to other familiar examples (biblical scorpions, Nahua corn myth, the “no importa” anecdote), and some new material as well.

hopeful namings Of all acts of signification that we can think of, proper naming seems the most closely tied to the particular and unique thing or person it denotes. In 3-D Mind 1, we saw that a complex set of similarities and differences are nonetheless mapped on to a person’s name of reference or address. A person’s name can

105130.book Page 64 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

64

Semiotic Motions

be “signed” and mean something provided that a naming practice establishes a terrain or field within which proper-name differences can be made to signify. In the case of “Jacques M. Chevalier,” lines of convergence unite two proper nouns into a single identity. But effects of selfsameness also intersect with lines of divergence, pitting a spiritual identity against a biological patronym or a Christian name against a patrilineal family affiliation. In 3-D Mind 2 we added another dimension to this analysis: affects and precepts are also conveyed through naming practices. Proper noun identities are shot through with normative threads, lines inserting a whole set of legal and religious rights and obligations into words designed to constitute a person qua person. These claims and expectations embedded in names are subject to rules of propriety and precedence. Each side of a twofold identity named “Jacques Chevalier” constitutes a distinct jurisdiction; legal identities may thus be emphasized in court, while spiritual references may be stressed in church. In contexts where spiritual considerations prevail, the Christian name comes first and ranks above the family name. This tallies with the fact that the “first name” is given at baptism, which marks the child’s birth to the life of the spirit, a moment sanctioned by a priestly father and the child’s father dwelling in heaven. Uneven attentions are granted to multiple identities cohabiting in one’s name. Attentional quanta point to effects of rank order, but they are also symptomatic of moves struck in a game or a plot, the central topic of this book. Names are always used in context, with a slant reflecting particular goals and related circumstances. For instance, paying primary attention to a deceased person’s Christian name (instead of the patronym) when celebrating a funeral service betrays hopes in the person’s life in the hereafter, notwithstanding memories and regrets of the joys experienced on earth. A will to focus on the life of the spirit, or the soul that transcends the body and survives after death, constitutes a speculation on time. It represents a tactical move within a story implicating a subject’s relationship to the hitherto and the hereafter. The story can be expected to convey

105130.book Page 65 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Volumes Recollected

65

hopes but also fears and signs of things to be forgotten, to be appropriately silenced if and when need be. Whatever positive things may be said of the deceased, no one’s past is without faults, misgivings, opportunities missed, and problems unresolved, considerations that are generally left unsaid in a funeral narrative. Nor is the future entirely secure. Are Christians always sure that there is life after death? If they are, are they absolutely confident that their “loved ones” will deserve an afterlife in the kingdom of heaven? Can these doubts be voiced when a Christian is mourned? Fears and hopes, meanings uttered and silenced, memories kindled and lost, all cohabit in the simplest sign activity, including naming. The same observations apply to full enunciations, including the most simple, such as “I like Ike” (see 3-D Mind 2). Over and beyond an apparently straightforward statement of preference, the political slogan is an exercise in forward-looking rhetoric. It tells the story of hopes of a majority choice resulting in Eisenhower’s gaining the office of the president of the United States. The statement, however, is bound to receive opposition, a fact and source of fear that the slogan must pass over in silence. The slogan is backward looking as well. Through punning, the catchphrase brings back memories of why Ike is “layk” his fellow citizens, a man to be “layked” by everyone and worthy of everyone’s “aye” support. Last but not least, the slogan invites voters to forget signs of moral and political superiority tied to a war hero aspiring to the most powerful office of the land. Memories, hopes, and anxieties either attended or ignored come together in a narrative move struck in the liking and the likeness of a man named “Ike.”

the wheel of fate Names are not static references to the people or things they denote. Like all other signs, they play a role in stories that are being told, narratives involving memories of the past and signs of the future evolving in the present tense. The present apprehends and hosts signs of the future that eventually become the

105130.book Page 66 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

66

Semiotic Motions

present and then turn into a past to be remembered or forgotten. Shifts and transformations are part and parcel of this circuitry of time. They bring about new directions and sign connections previously unexplored. This is true of all sign events, from the simplest to the most complex. To use a familiar example, a person doing the introductions usually gives Christian names first and family names second. The first name acts as part 1 in a simple plot consisting of a synthetic duality: the Christian name typically followed by part 2, the family name. The same principle applies to “I Like Ike”: it represents a statement of familiarity that it is hoped will lead to a majority of “aye” votes electing the friendly candidate to an office otherwise marked by distance and formality. In both cases the narrative shifts from side one to side two of a binomial equation. One side, the one attended to, prefigures the side momentarily unattended, the one held in abeyance or “en attente.” A sign under consideration prefigures its complementary side by “containing” it, conveying and withholding it at once, if only for a brief moment in narrative time. A sign is a cog in a wheel, and the wheel is forever moving. But the ground it travels is never entirely foreign. In fact, the wheel can keep moving and the ground remain essentially the same. This is especially the case if we consider all the grounds that make up a story – the foreground, the background, and the underground indices of a given plot. Take, for instance, the fig apron motif appearing in Genesis 3. We saw in 3-D Mind 1 how the fig imagery appearing at the beginning of time is a penalty for the shortsightedness of Adam and Eve. It foretells the trials of male and female labour to be inflicted upon humans dwelling on earth. The fig apron and related principles of fig cultivation (based on the process of caprification and the rule of self-sterility) herald God’s curse made explicit in scenes that follow immediately after the original sin. The narrative shifts from the fruit of knowledge and immortality to a scene of nudity covered with fig leaves, a scene foreshadowing the sufferings of woman giving birth in great pain and man tilling the earth by the sweat of his brow. Children of Adam and Eve are

105130.book Page 67 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Volumes Recollected

67

condemned to regret and fear two things evoked by the fig apron: memories of sin and signs of future suffering. Signs of the fig tree betray a narrative on the move. To say that narrative grounds never really change is to deny the obvious, one might argue. Biblical scenes are constantly moving; figs can be expected to give way to other fruits much less painful to humanity – apples, grapes, olives, pomegranates. Narrative grounds are known to shift and slide. All the same, moves typically occur within durable plots. In the end, other fruits appearing in scenes less tragic than the Fall may not be all that different from figs. They may indeed be figs in a different guise, harvested in a different season, or seen from a different angle. Readers already acquainted with this analysis are reminded of the multiple signs tied to the fig motif. Briefly, we know that the fruit can stand for sinners behaving like lazy “sycophants” idly sitting in the shade of the fig tree, or “vile figs” fallen from the tree and rotting on the ground. If used in this fashion, the fig imagery plants the seeds of another well-known offshoot of the symbolism at hand. It becomes a fruit heralding the sufferings of productive and reproductive labour, as in Genesis 3. One fig imagery, the sinful, prefigures another, the tribulational – God making men and their fig trees bare, casting them away and condemning them to rot or be devoured by their enemies. The fig curse in turn sows other narrative potentialities: for example, the possibility that trials of the human condition may be converted into ascetic conduct and self-sacrificial offerings to God. This is what Zacchaeus did when he climbed a fig tree for a sight of the Saviour, renouncing his fig-like wealth and comfort and behaving as a good fruit in the eyes of God. The ascetic fig imagery announces yet another shift in narrative thinking, from signs of sacrifice to the blessings of peace and prosperity proverbially enjoyed in the shade of the fig tree. Blessings can be secured if they are deserved and therefore renounced. But the wheel does not stop there. Too many blessings enjoyed for too long can lead men to indulge in the good life and lapse into sin once again. Immoral conduct will then

105130.book Page 68 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

68

Semiotic Motions

echo the Fall and prefigure the conversion of sin into trials, and so on. In its own way the fig imagery loops the entire biblical loop. As in Matthew 24 (34–36), whatever its immediate purpose is, a show of figs always contains something else to come. Any text deploying particular aspects of the fig imagery must ignore alternative potentialities embedded in the same imagery. Signs can occupy the fig terrain provided that no attention is granted to associations branching out in directions that do not apply to the text at hand. Connections that do not fit sink into oblivion, if only for the narrative “time being.” The point to be made here, however, is that sign associations obliterated from a given plot are never reduced to absolute inactivity. Rather, they act as pre- and post-figurative connections that provide the background and underground incentives to narrative movement. However forgetful or shortsighted they may be, surface scripts are always loaded with indirections constituting inattentive signs of the not-yet about to be told, or the no-longer about to be remembered. Semiotic linkages unremembered and unforeseen are cogs that support shifts in narrative time. They introduce anxieties and hopes into living sign activity. Scriptural usages of the shoe imagery explored in 3-D Mind 2 invite similar comments. Whether possessed or removed, biblical shoes are always taking a step forward along a fourfold narrative path. Consider the path travelled by the shod. Step 1 may consist in endowing feet with blessings of the well-shod treading their own land and enjoying wealth and property at home. These blessings, however, may prefigure step 2: a life of sin exemplified by cruel men wearing shoes of iron and occupying lands and shoe-property not their own. This second step also has a sequel. Reproachable usages of the shoe motif may turn against the sinful and bring them punishment, depriving them of all their belongings and forcing them to wear shoes while in exile. When this happens, shoes may be worn instead of the blessings they stand for, not in addition to them. This is step 3, the tribulational, which opens up yet another narrative possibility, a fourth step to be delivered in due time. The step in question consists in turning one’s sufferings into a sacrificial

105130.book Page 69 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Volumes Recollected

69

mission, the kind pursued by men whose feet are covered with footwear because they are spreading the word of God in foreign lands. Since these men walk in the right footsteps, those of the Lord, their shoes can expect to tread the Promised Land and enjoy the blessings of a shoe-property well deserved. Sacrificial steps may thus bring us back to step one, which is where the story began and may start all over again. Notwithstanding John’s Apocalypse, lessons of biblical proportions never come to a final end. Biblical characters cover their feet with shoes (or remove them) for one of several reasons. They do it for reasons evoking the joyful, the sinful, the tribulational, or the sacrificial implications of life on earth. But these immediate implications also set the scene for later shifts in narrative time. Shoes are never worn (or taken off) to signify an immobile position or stance adopted within a static story. More to the point, the biblical shoe terrain is a playing field where each and every move results from prior moves, remembered or forgotten. Each stance also leads on to something else, declared or not. Movements occurring within this field entail imageries that are constantly shifting, say, from issues of housing and marriage to signs of the Unshod, as in Deuteronomy 25. The narrative wheel keeps on rolling, from one scene to another. But while it may be in perpetual motion, the wheel is forever driven by the rule of “eternal return,” bound to tread new grounds that remain “neverendingly” familiar. The hemlock motif appearing in line one of Evangeline may also illustrate the attentions of memory and anticipation evolving in narrative time. Readers will recall the two-sided nature of the last word (“hemlock”) appearing at the end of line one of Longfellow’s Evangeline: “This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks.” As with the fig imagery of Genesis 3, the Acadian narrative does not grant equal attention to all possible offshoots of the hemlock. Some linkages are accentuated while others pass unnoticed. Yet all linkages are active. To be more specific, the hemlock imagery works at two levels: the attentive, highlighting recollections of evergreen life

105130.book Page 70 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

70

Semiotic Motions

and tall pine growth; and the inattentive, consisting of memories of poisonous weeds that inflicted death upon the innocent (the conium used to kill Socrates). The plant in question ends up acting as a complex field, a reticle constructed at the intersection of two roads, the high and the low. The high road involves a ground-level meaning moving in a direction essentially promising, towards associations of the evergreen Tsuga tree. In contrast, the low road consists of underground “indirections” triggering memories and fears of less pleasurable events about to be told. The forest primeval scene makes a visible move in one direction, towards sweet memories of the Golden Age shining in Acadie. Yet hemlocks also prepare the ground for a darker plot. They herald the story approaching the surface narrative of a chosen people’s Fall, a tragedy about to be committed to mournful memory. Hemlocks carry anxieties of a model woman’s fall and the bitter wormwoods of Acadian history. Roads other than the high and the low should be considered as well. Fears of painful recollections tied to hemlocks also “contain” hopes of sublime conduct inspired by the higher teachings of Christian virtue and devotion. These hopes are embedded in the hemlock imagery, constituting a third direction traversing the plot at hand. Hemlocks and kindred signs – the hemlock-related “gall” and “wormwood” endured by Christ and the Virgin Mary – allow Evangeline to convey hopes of redemption via a story of sufferings and sacrifice. The poem is generally driven by this sublime option, which means that the song of Acadie is fated to be “evergreen” after all. Evangeline’s sublime take on past and future history is explicitly addressed in Longfellow’s poem. But Evangeline points to another plot that goes beyond the narrative itself, a plot informed by literary battles evolving in parallel with memories of New World history. I am alluding to the embattlements of English poetry and prosody. Readers will recall that the poem was written and received as an hexametric subversion of Anglo-Saxon poetry and culture marked by the pentametric tradition. It was written and read as a romantic reversion to a natural, quasioral tradition lost to Modern English culture. In addition to

105130.book Page 71 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Volumes Recollected

71

Evangeline. Drawing by Thomas Faed (1826–1900). Public Archives of Canada, c7607

glorifying memories of the Acadian past, Longfellow’s poem was reminiscing about the golden age of poetry. But in doing so the poem took up a stance regarding the future of culture and poetry. Through poetic technique, the narrative advocated a modern outlook on the inherent goodness of things dwelling in a state of nature and dressed in a quasi-oral language made to measure. The poem never fully liberated itself from the strictures of classical poetry. It nonetheless anticipated important explorations of twentieth-century poetry freed from narrow definitions of the English genre. This brings us back to the prosodic features of Evangeline’s first line, a versification technique that sheds light on how messages regarding the passage of time can be reinforced through patterns of sound and rhythm. The poem features a six-metre

105130.book Page 72 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

72

Semiotic Motions

structure consisting of dactyls (e.g., múrmuring) variably accompanied by trochees (e.g., síngers) and spondees (e.g., hémlóck). The poem acts like a massively iterative buffer zone filled with recollections and anticipations of six-metre sentences repeating and announcing one another through lingering sounds of dactylic time. While effects of continuity prevail, each metre is like a breathing pattern that rises and falls continuously and then comes to a predictable end. The repeated closure of dactylic cadence lends itself to plaintive effects, evoking a proud people expiring, or the model woman of Acadie breathing out her last breath in exile. The end result is a mournfully contemplative tone of lament and praise for the dead, a slow-paced, melancholic composition in a minor key bordering on monotony. This singsong elegy of bygone days creates the constant expectation of a first foot launching a new hexametric verse. Yet each hexameter also calls for another foot, the one that comes last, the one that keeps reminding us that l’Acadie is merely a memory. The “hémlóck” spondee becomes the first of a long series of moments of “terminal expiration” boding ill for memories about to be told. Two accented syllables bring a poisonous end to the dactylic continuity of the forest primeval imagery. The hexametric speech medium thus harps on a fundamental duality: the fate of a people before and after the Fall, and hence the enduring sadness of a world bereft of the blessings of olden times.

erotic moves The time factor intervenes in all sign events, including words designed to arrest the passage of time. Names, slogans, fetishistic symbols, and words of lingering poetry may all attempt to deny memories and anticipations built into them, ignoring distant times not made explicit in signs of the here and now. Denials of this sort are nonetheless stories in their own right, stories that play games with conjugations of tense. All signs are harnessed to the schemings of time; sign actions are compelled to move through shifts in narrative attention or through the

105130.book Page 73 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Volumes Recollected

73

interplay of pre- and post-figurative semiosis. They thrive on movements between the overt and the covert, the foreseen and the unforeseen, things remembered and things forgotten. Nervous sign activity is driven by phantoms of the no-longer and spectres of the not-yet. Is narrative motion a rule applicable to all sign events? Could we not say of pictures and paintings that they succeed where words normally fail? Unlike words uttered one after the other, visual semiosis seems to do well without the mechanics and the dialectics of times present, past, and future. Perhaps the same thing can be said of imageries that express pleasure either enjoyed in the immediate present or renounced forever and without hopes for future compensations. All such signs seem to be glued to the here and now. They are unconcerned with promises not fully delivered or hopes of the future not fully explored. Fullblown expressions of asceticism and eroticism are impervious to narrative time, one might say. These impressions of timelessness are nonetheless misleading. In reality, the motions of time can never be escaped. Analyses presented in 3-D Mind 2 are conclusive in this regard. Signs of erotic and ascetic attentions are subject to speculations on time. Both stories of Eros and sacrificial Thanatos tie rewards in the future to possessions or dispossessions enjoyed or suffered in the present. Take sacrificial usages of the biblical shoe motif. We saw that men of God have everything to hope for if they renounce their “home-shoe-wife” property. Hopes of redemption and blessings in the afterlife are also granted to men of virtue who cover their feet with footwear while deported and deprived of the blessings that the shoe metaphor stands for. Shoes worn or removed with sacrificial intent are steps in the right narrative direction. They constitute payments in time essential for investments in desire. Shoes worn or removed for ascetic purposes are expressions of hopes and yearnings that constitute a man’s most precious be-longings. Modern-day erotic usages of the shoe imagery imply deferrals as well, investments in time no less profitable than the self-denials of biblical proportions. Even when given maximum licence,

105130.book Page 74 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

74

Semiotic Motions

scenes of pleasure often resort to convoluted foot and shoe symbolism, proceeding through metaphorical tokens of what men and women long to possess or to be possessed with. Naked as they may be, models are dressed up with traces and hopes of winnings of the other gender, spoils resulting in losses of the purely masculine or feminine self. The obsessive spike motif tells the story with elegance. Stiletto shoes point to masculine inscriptions covering the female body with hints and promises of the two genders coming together, or desires to that effect. Although eminently feminine, they are tokens of men granting women the male equipment needed to send out invitations to sexual commerce, props that lay out the attractive “possessions” of desire. Paradoxically, eroticism (or depravity) requires signs of deferment (or deprivation), losses in space and time inherent to the simulations and movements of desire. Bodies rendered erotic and attractive can never really “be themselves.” If they were, they would relinquish the power to seduce others into paying attention to what they yearn for – the other’s desire of their own desire. Whether expressed through spikes, earrings, or body piercing (see 3-D Mind 2), Eros conjugated in the present tense always delights in thefts of gendered features, losses of identity (verging on “self”-denial), and loans in libidinal time.

105130.book Page 75 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

reticle 9

Mum’s the Word

A child draws a cat. Not just any cat: cats in the abstract don’t exist. Nor do archetypal cat symbols. Only concrete cats, with particular colours, shapes, feelings, and stories to tell. Take the cat below, drawn by a child and given to a child therapist (my wife), with background information regarding the child. A cat that is all eyes, all ears, all nose. This is an animal on the lookout. Watchfulness is written all over its face – but watchfulness of a diffuse kind. We don’t really know what the cat is looking at. Although fixed, the attention is undetermined, unspecified, unspoken. If eyes and ears are focusing on something, viewers are not meant to know what it is. It might be something that no longer is, with eyes looking back to the past. It might be something about to happen, with an eye to the future, as the expression goes. But it’s not something that’s part of the immediate present, the drawing. The cat sees, but the drawing is silent on the object of its attention. The eyes are round, big, wide-open, staring at who knows what. No half-closed eyes here. No eye shut to whatever it is the cat is gazing at. The animal is all up to the eyes in signs of watchfulness. Could the cat have an eye on something desirable, like food, or a loved one, the apple of everyone’s eye? Could it be making eyes at another cat? Possibly, but unlikely. Signs to that effect are not seen. A cat keeps a watchful eye on a situation unknown to other viewers. Keeping eyes open for what? Instead of keeping a secret, shouldn’t the cat take this opportunity to open our eyes

105130.book Page 76 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

76

Semiotic Motions

Drawing by a child (anonymous)

to the truth? Judging by the cat’s ears, which are wide open, the truth in question is of the kind that could be put into words or sounds. If the cat pricks up its ears, it must be on account of something that deserves to be heard. Something has come, is coming, or will come to its ears – something that might make our ears burn, if we only knew. No deaf ears here. No distraction either. All sounds are bound to be picked up. With ears pricked like that, no sound can go in one ear and out of the other. Ears are paying utmost attention. And yet not a sound, not a peep. Not even a meow or a childish whimper. Certainly no screaming or wailing, no caterwaul here. After all, it’s just a drawing. How convenient. The cat is all ears but in no need of someone else’s ear. It may invite eyes to look at a drawing, perhaps, but no attentive ear is called for. This is not the kind of cat that promises to be talkative. The pet promises anything but an earful.

105130.book Page 77 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Mum’s the Word

77

A clearly drawn nose comes with long whiskers. Our pet animal is well equipped to smell and feel whatever it is that its eyes are looking at and its ears are listening to. But what is this about? Perhaps something that is so closely “envisaged” that it can be felt with whiskers and be told to the cat’s face. Something that smells bad, perhaps like danger, or a rat. But the cat prefers that we keep our noses out of this story. Shrinks searching for a foul plot should not try to tease out this secret. Otherwise the story will cease to be what it is meant to be: a secret not to be nosed about. Still, a child on the watch for danger is begging to be heard, if only through the mute art of drawing. The question therefore remains: what is the cat fearing? The answer lies right under everyone’s nose, including the cat’s. Consider lines drawn below the organ of smell, those of mouth and lips. This looks like a big mouth that could tell a long story. Really? There is no tongue here, no mouth wide open, no words about to come out, no inclination to mouth off. Just a mouthful of silence. The animal is mouthing at something possibly sad or unpleasant. Something that would give us the blues if we knew. Sad eyes are coloured blue, in a face looking down-in-the-mouth, a face with buttoned lips, paying lip service to what the speech organ is designed to do. A mouth that would speak with forked tongue if it were forced to speak out. The cat is biting its tongue. Or is it the child’s tongue? What for? What is the mouth saying? What story is this blue-eyed child saying through its sphinxlike silence? The answer is drawn right under the cat’s nose. Actually, the answer is coming out loud and clear: mum’s the word. The cat is paying utmost attention to who knows what. Perhaps we could pay equal attention – but in a different way, with a focus on details that beg not to be seen. Details that do not call for utmost attention let alone precise meaning. Consider the winged heart drawn on the left upper corner of the drawing, behind the pet. What kind of things can a child put behind? Things of the past, and related hopes of turning back? That would make sense, given that left is to right what the no-longer

105130.book Page 78 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

78

Semiotic Motions

is to the not-yet – as in reading and writing, always from left to right. But why a heart flying towards the past, behind the cat? What is there to know about hearts? Hearts can do all sorts of things. For one thing they can be brave and encouraging. If this is what we are faced with, then we can expect a heartening story, a tale that will put everyone’s heart at rest. If so, the cat and the child should be in good heart and be openhearted about it. The heart we see should take wing and experience joy. But this is not the heart we see. If this is a brave heart, then what we see must be bravery expressed in the face of danger. The heart is showing courage where courage is needed, under trying circumstances. Difficulties point to lines of rupture separating the heart from the cat; one wing from another; one heart chamber from another; one lip from another (see drawing). Not to mention lots of scratches: the heart is scrawled with heavy-pencil lines drawn in a crisscrossed pattern. Somebody is crossed. Perhaps because someone is crossing the line, doing something reproachable. Bravery does not mean insensitivity. This is not a heart of stone, the cold-hearted kind coloured black, not pink. This heart points to something it is highly sensitive to. Something that provokes feeling. Something the cat is taking to heart. Something close and dear to its heart. Something synonymous with desire. But why something? Could it not be someone? A sweetheart, for instance. Do children have sweethearts? Could it be a loved one very close to the cat’s heart? Someone that used to take the cat under its wing? Could the heart be lost to somebody else, taking flight and breaking away from the cat’s broken heart? Could the loved one be flying on the wings of time, from present to past? “I know!” says the viewer: The child is sad because she has lost the pet animal she was so fond of. The puzzle is coming together. Is it? Not really. There is no sign that the cat is moving or has moved. The drawing shows instead a heart flying away from an immobile cat. Could it be that the cat is the child drawing itself as a cat? If so, who is the heart no longer taking the house-pet child under its wing?

105130.book Page 79 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Mum’s the Word

79

Could it be the father? Unlikely. Men are not coloured pink. A man cannot be called Rose. Then it must be the mother. She’s gone or going. Another broken family story, it seems, nothing rosy here. A heart coloured like a rose, yet a story full of thorns. The child is losing heart but is not openhearted about it. This is not a heart that will be worn on the child’s sleeve. Nor is she about to fly into a rage. No outburst of sentiment here. No clear statement about where mum is going or has gone. Remember: mum’s the word. The child portrays herself as a cat, with eyelashes plus a nose and ears coloured pink. Let the child drawn in the likeness of a cat stand for what it is: a pet daughter wearing signs of her mother’s gender. A daughter is worried and saddened by a mother leaving. What does the daughter do? Nothing, other than keeping a close watch on … mum’s the word. Silent as a cat. The child draws a cat but will not speak out and let the cat out of the bag. The plot thickens. Patience, though! Like the passive child, viewers must wait for the cat to jump and tell us where to go. Hopefully not in the direction of adults fighting like cats and dogs … A cat is not always passive and furtive. Some children think they are the cat’s whiskers, the centre of everyone’s attention, or the world’s pet, so to speak. Some can be aggressive, like cats among mice or pigeons. Some can be ill humoured and peevish, like children in a pet. Not this one, however. This is a child paying attention, not receiving it, a child on the watch yet silent. A child lending both ears to visual images that are soundless on purpose. She looks and apprehends, yet she sees nothing happening or coming. Nor can she recapture the past. The child draws things behind her but does not look at them. This is a child playing cat-and-mouse with her pet secret, watching it yet hiding it, all at once. The cat is powerless. It has no control over the story it tells, no neck to stick out in an effort to change the past. No neck that would allow the cat to rise above the situation, doing or saying something about it. No speech motion, no movement.

105130.book Page 80 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

80

Semiotic Motions

Muteness combined with immobility. Anxiety and paralysis instead. Angst and perhaps fear, but no wings to the child’s steps. Legs so small that they cannot stretch and relax. With no paws or feet to take action, take steps in the right direction. No motion towards better memories of the past or prospects for the future. The child has lost her footing. She has no grip on the situation. She cannot put her best foot forward nor put her foot down. The narrative grounds she stands on are undefined. No firm path to follow. No sense of direction in time. Just a compulsion to stay on the watch. Unlike the neck and the legs, the body appearing below the head is given ample space. It comes with a large rear end and a tail rather short and pale, all coloured brown. The same brown crayon marks out the contour of the entire body, with an emphasis on the external ears. The short tail is understated; the pricked ears are overstated. Why the contrast, and why brown? Could we say that the child is doing herself up in brown? Is she aiming for good appearances, perfection and neatness of lines? Could she be “watching herself” and “watching out” at the same time? But there is another line of reasoning, one less heartening. This may be a cat browned off with shitty things heard and overheard. Smelly things having to do with the body and bodily functions. Brownish things that could be lodged in the tail end of this story. These implications make sense, provided we pay attention to that which attracts the least attention. What would that be? Feeble lines point to limbs, hands, and extremities. These are signs for sweethearts to be petting and play footsie with. Inner ears coloured pink may receive rosy words of love from mum. External ears are nonetheless picking up words and sounds of mum’s heart lost to someone else. Mum in love with a man not close to the child’s heart. Mum petting a man’s body … This is the tailpiece of an infantine story. An appendix designed to tail away into signs of paleness and insignificance. But enough said. Actually too much has been said. Let’s not forget: mum’s the word. Unlike a film, a drawing does not move. But lines drawn can still set a story in motion. After all, the lines must be plotted

105130.book Page 81 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Mum’s the Word

81

out one after the other. A drawing takes time. The lines are accompanied by eye movements during the act of drawing and when viewing it as well. Eyes looking at them will take their time. Ocular motions tell a story. Eyes usually move from signs that summon the most attention to those that summon the least. They also move back and forth between the marked and the unmarked, the foreground and the background. They move with memories of what has already been spotted, recollections of visible and less visible associations, questions and expectations about connections not yet seen, details or patterns soon to be revisited, and, last but not least, things that the mind must remember to forget. Snapshots fixed in time do not exist. Every snapshot tells a story. Take the “no importa” snapshot reported in 3-D Mind 2. It too drew on simple lines, about a daughter smudging ice cream on my shirt and then reassured through enigmatic words, two Spanish words for “it doesn’t matter.” Words pronounced with an English accent in a French-speaking environment. Words no less enigmatic than a child’s sphinx-like cat. Words delivered on the instant and for an instant. Signs nonetheless projecting themselves into other moments in time. Just like a narrative or film moving through time. The incident spoke to an immediate past to be remembered: stories of violence and torture in Central America, told in Spanish the day before. But they also spoke about an immediate past to be forgotten: troubles at the office, problems with an English accent. All capped with a forward-looking resolution. A resolve to remember things that matter and forget those that don’t. Perhaps I should bring this story to an end. I should say more about what mattered so much and yet so little. The best part of this story, however, has already been told: mum’s the word.

105130.book Page 82 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

reticle 10

Scorpions at the End of Time

A child draws a cat on the lookout, an enigmatic pet standing still and keeping a watchful eye on the unpredictable and the imponderable. No focusing on the details and circumstances of the child’s anxiety is allowed. If attention were paid to the actual circumstances of the child’s fear, then angst would turn into anxiety. Memories and expectations would tie signs of fear to particular moments and events in time. The cat’s ability to keep watch, keeping still and an open eye for the unknown, would automatically suffer. So would the child’s ability to turn the eye away from fixed memories and outcomes that are likely to result from the situation at hand. Attentionality to distant times, “unreal” moments escaping the immediacy of the here and now, can take one of two forms. On the one hand, a diffuse watchfulness (rh) permits a general openness to whatever may come. This open watch requires a capacity to stand still, as in periods of “wait and see,” or during “long watches of the night.” Stillness implies that attentionality may open on to virtually anything, as in “a watched pot that never boils.” But it also presupposes a good dose of receptiveness to sudden changes, and hence sensitivity to signs of the unforeseen emerging from darkness and the larger scheme of things. On the other hand, there is the close watch (lh) that permits people and narratives to keep track of time, situating the present in relation to measures of the no-longer duly remembered and the not-yet duly anticipated. This is the kind of watch typical of the hawk watching over its prey, scrutinizing all steps of

105130.book Page 83 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Scorpions at the End of Time

83

current and anticipated behaviour. Mention could also be made of the dog, an animal to be imitated when developments are in need of “watch-dogging.” This close-watch disposition is subject to precise measurements, as when people watch their step. Measurements in space usually call for computations in time. This is what an army does when it assigns periods of guard so as to avoid being taken by surprise, typically at night when attentionality goes to sleep. The same disposition generates the piece of time-watching equipment commonly known as the watch, worn around the wrist. The watchful habitus evoked here turns the past into chronology and history. It also converts the future into things that can be planned or predicted. Insensitivity to stillness and to untimely memories or expectations is characteristic of the close-watch disposition. Keeping track of time means that things heading in the wrong direction or persisting over time must be left unattended. They are best forgotten, or they should not be considered because they take attention away from current plans. This is to say that not everything is in need of close watching. All things cannot be treated as equally “watchable.” If they were, considerable time would be wasted. Sign activity usually falls somewhere between these two poles of forward-looking attentionality, the open watch and the close watch. What is more, the two prefrontal attentionalities interact in ways that are not strictly cognitive. Thus if one option is pursued (e.g., the open watch in the case of the cat), it will likely be done through a good dose of hyperpolarization. Proper efforts will be made to block off the other “watch” (e.g., the cat paying attention to precise events) for reasons involving norms and affects playing themselves out on the vertical plane. Take, for instance, dream-like visions of the future, or prophecies of the End as revealed in the New Testament Apocalypse. Scenes of the End visualized by the prophet focus on a long list of events destined to occur in sequence at a given moment in future time. Revelation is a prefigurative account of minute scenes and details of this sombre event. John’s visions, however, are like long watches of the night, protracted moments when

105130.book Page 84 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

84

Semiotic Motions

all imaginable things can happen. Moreover, signs of the End are meant to bring time and history to a final close. The Apocalypse is a closely watched event that opens on to the end of all events. Things destined to happen after belong to a nonsensical “hereafter,” an open-ended era where differences between past, present, and future no longer hold. John’s story revels in visions of timelessness, as in dreams. Accordingly, his prophecies display so much chronological complexity and indeterminacy that great imagination is needed to keep track of these events unfolding in history. John’s close tracking of signs of the hereafter is an injunction to stay on the watch, keeping an eye open on definite moments that will put a stop to all precise developments of history. The last words of the New Testament are a double-edged invitation to focus on the vagueness and confusion of chaos prevailing at the end of time. Over the ages, readers of Revelation have attempted countless chronological interpretations of John’s visions of the Day of Judgment (Chevalier 1997). Innumerable calculations and anxieties of a close watch have been substituted for the immeasurable angst of John’s open-ended watch – to no avail. Events prophesized by John fit practically all periods of history and none of them at the same time. We still keep track of time, which means that time is still with us. Archives have withstood all warnings of the Apocalypse. Not even the year 2000 has put an end to that. Does this mean we should no longer waste time trying to extract a precise dating system from John’s Apocalypse? Is every attempt to look for a close-watch device hiding beneath the warnings of Revelation an exercise in anachronism and displacement? There is no simple answer to this question. Better said, the question is misleading. In reality, John’s account of the end is both things all at once: it is an open-watch actively speaking to the end of closely watched time. To be more precise, the New Testament Apocalypse is a denegation of primitive astronomy. We know that John shows considerable discretion when dealing with exact dates and how

105130.book Page 85 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Scorpions at the End of Time

85

Death on a Pale Horse. Etching by Joseph Haynes (1760–1829), after J. Hamilton Mortimer, Stanford Museum (Leventritt Fund), 1972

time should be measured. The prophet puts everyone on the watch but gives no one the actual watchword or password needed to pass the many guardians of his text. Allusions to precise calculations are nonetheless written all over Revelation. Visions of the Apocalypse compute time in ways that are so complex as to command the simplest possible conclusion: precise codifications must be forgotten and ignored if a general

105130.book Page 86 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

86

Semiotic Motions

watch and timeless warnings are to prevail. Beasts appearing in this text behave like sphinxes whose secret mission it is to convert specific anxieties into a compulsive angst. They pursue a most enigmatic task: to launch a timeless era requiring the eradication of all pagan calendars and related agenda of primitive astronomy. The riddle emerging from this secret mission is formidable: how to plan the timing of events that will bring ruin to all the pagan gods and their idolatrous measurements of time? Revelation is liberation from astromythology, an embattlement against the evils of mathematics flourishing in antiquity. John’s book discloses a lengthy warning against the mechanics of heavenly time. These warnings are given out through watchful language, as they should be. The language is nonetheless replete with contradictory effects. The main contradiction lies in a prophet “watching his language” so carefully as to be constantly on the lookout for things that should not be seen or heard. How else can issues having to do with the unspeakable be addressed, if not through a meticulous watch on everything that needs to be left unsaid? The prophet is on the watch for every chance to evade the unutterable. This reading of Revelation has been explored at length elsewhere (Chevalier 1997). Suffice it to propose here ten closely measured theses that can be illustrated through a particular passage: the battle between the Lamb slain and scorpion-tailed locusts rising in the train of the Antichrist, as described in Revelation 9. The passage has been addressed briefly in 3-D Mind 2, with an emphasis on lines of convergence and divergence and also the silences built into John’s dialogue with ancient astromythology. The analysis presented here picks up the same story but looks at it from a different angle, stressing the two-sided issue of narrative timing and the reckoning of time. 1

Lines of convergence and divergence should be revisited first. In Revelation, scorpions are to the Lamb slain what • Antichrist is to Christ; • darkness is to light;

105130.book Page 87 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Scorpions at the End of Time

87

Cinquième trompette. Illustration by Gerona Beatus (975), fol. 156. Abbaye de La Pierre Qui Vire, 89630 Saint Léger Vauban, France. Photo des Éditions Zodiaque

• Scorpio is to Aries (see #10 below); • death marking the fall equinox is to resurrection cele-

2

brated at the vernal equinox; • the sun heading down the south-east is to the sun heading up the north-east; • power over life (Scorpio rises at seedtime) and death (Scorpio is a cruel killer) is to meekness and sacrifice. All signs of Revelation converge on similarities between differences mapped on three planes: the zoological, the

105130.book Page 88 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

88

3

4

5

Semiotic Motions

astrological, and the spiritual. The language of metaphor superimposes signs of zoology and astrology upon names of divinity. To this analysis, however, should be added a deeper source of divergence: the distance that lies between an interpretive path heading in the astral direction and surface lines heading in the spiritual direction. Our astrological reading of Revelation is a line of divergence in its own right, a countertext at best located between lines of the narrative at hand. The surface script of Revelation boxes the sign process into one of two poles: either the invisible Sign-Maker dwelling in eternity, or his visible sign-manifestations dwelling in time. In contrast, the astral countertext is guilty of committing an abuse of identity; star worship confounds timeless spirits with signs appearing in time. In Revelation, memories of an astrological countertext are downplayed and extinguished. Heavenly spheres such as Aries and Scorpio are reduced to mere metaphors, signs made “in the likeness of the appearances” of the immaterial spirits they stand for. Astral connections folded into metaphor thus point to a central task of John’s visions of the End: erasing astralism, bringing ruin to pagan measurements of time, committing them to oblivion for eternity. Prophecy in Revelation is essentially a mnemonic ban on the temporal order. It is a command to forget ancient practices of divination and the cult of bodies marking time in heaven. Signs received by John are given a liberating mission, which is to disenthral Logos from astralism – from the motions of time ruling over the perceptible heavens, the bodily spheres, and the worldly order. The ban “contained” in Revelation is a plot concerned with the issue of time, a scheme directed against “mathematical” ways of remembering the past and foreseeing the future. The ban shifts the attention away from memories and anticipations of pagan astrology. This is done with a view to elevating the eternal above the temporal, the spiritual above the physical, immutability above movement and the motions of desire. But star-gazing does not cease to exert pressure and

105130.book Page 89 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Scorpions at the End of Time

89

Relationship of organs of the body, the humours, and the signs of the Zodiac, 16th century ce. From Gregor Reisch, Margarita Philosophica, Basle, 1508. Copyright Image Select / Art Resource, ny s0152094 art143663; Victoria and Albert Museum/London, Great Britain

force. It continues to be feared and invites promises of the greatest battle of all times. The mnemonic curse inflicted upon astralism is projected into the future. In John’s visions, paganism may be already forgotten. Come Judgment Day, however, it will be fought again and will be condemned to go unremembered in the End. Revelation heralds a total lapse of heathenish memory, keeping the demise of “mathematica” in store for that Final Moment that will end all moments in Time.

105130.book Page 90 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

90

6

7

8

Semiotic Motions

Revelation watches out for signs heralding the end of astralism’s close heavenly watch. Memories and prospects of history governed by measurements of primitive astronomy are under attack. The New Testament Apocalypse is an openended plot against calendrical time and its worldly correlates. It is a plot against all the hopes and the fears of star worship, and hence all the recollections and the forebodings that can be read into the stars. John’s prophecies pass judgment against asterisms that keep close track of time and related signs of human destiny and desire. But there is a problem: apocalyptic prophecies are written in such “timely fashion” that they cannot observe their own ban. The author of Revelation is in a fix. Given his apocalyptic mission, John must use signs that lay out the course of events occurring at the end of time. These signs must be amenable to some time-watching equipment, be it in the shape of letters, seals, trumpets, or bowls marking the passage of days, years, and reigns. Thus the prophet cannot take full heed of his own secret injunction, which is to foreclose the march of history and to no longer gaze at star-like markers of time. Some cheating is inevitable. Accordingly, Revelation is written in such ways that fragments of close-watchfulness must be deviously recuperated. In an effort to develop some sense of apocalyptic timing, the prophet falls back on heavenly timing devices. Thus recollections and predictions of measurable history inspired by signs from the heavens continue to be a dominant feature of Revelation. Computations of time based on astral movements may be systematically blurred and muddled, to the point of becoming virtually unrecognizable. Judgment is nonetheless couched in the language of an astromythology gone obscure and esoteric. Sidereal measurements are muddled so as to emit warnings of the most general watch. Narrative timing tactics designed to undo the close mathematical watch of time are many. One of them consists in wasting no time with precise dating information based on time-tested equations, such as one week is “seven times”

105130.book Page 91 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Scorpions at the End of Time

9

91

one day. Calendars based on “apparent time” and related motions of the stars are timeworn instruments. They can no longer measure events and intervals that truly matter. Manufacturing signs in “the likeness of the appearances” of time is another time-warp tactic. This effect is obtained through a multiplicity of esoteric timescales, all converging on endless announcements of the final hour or last day. The scales usually range from threefold to fourfold and sevenfold divisions in narrative time. Through a lavish deployment of scenes and events mapped on to these scales, John prepares the grounds for the triumph of chaos followed by a heavenly Jerusalem dwelling in eternity. Unconventional measures of time gradually evolve towards a new Creation where night and death shall no longer be and the Lord shall shine on his servants instead of the sun. Final events thus come in their own good time. Some scenes, however, come out of the blue, disrupting the threefold, fourfold, and sevenfold episodes in apocalyptic history. Visions wandering off from pre-established timeframes take time by the forelock, refusing to abide by the limits imposed through John’s orderly series. Other sources of confusion include overlaps and movements back and forth between events and scenes organized into distinct series. Time-out from orderly series is also achieved through pauses lasting a few biblical lines that speak to “little” apocalyptic moments. On the whole Revelation is a slow-paced story that tends to drag its feet, taking a long time with all series so as not to reach the End “in no time at all.” Revelation may declare that everyone’s time has come; yet time is needed to spell the message out in full. Time-saving allusions to scenes and prophecies of the Old Testament are useful in this regard. They add texture to Revelation and do so without taking time away from novel announcements of John’s Apocalypse. Although not governed by calendrical measurements proper, prefigurative tactics are built into John’s announcements of letters, seals, trumpets, and bowls appearing in orderly fashion. They set in motion a host of memories and anticipations

105130.book Page 92 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

92

Semiotic Motions

that play themselves out through a progressive unfolding of dovetailing series. Yet the actual content of each scene and series cannot be derived or deduced from previous visions. It is as if all recorded events were forgetful of prior scenes and shortsighted vis-à-vis developments to come. This contributes to the time-warp effects described above. But it also suggests another kind of prefiguration, the kind that revels in great discretion and obscurity in language. Appearances of forgetfulness and shortsightedness are essential to the plotting of time in Revelation. John’s use of the scorpion imagery illustrates this point. Demons in the train of equinoctial Scorpio entice readers of Revelation to place hopes in the almighty Ram well before the actual appearance of the Lamb slain at Easter, the season that marks the beginning of a new era and the end of cyclical time. Scorpion-tailed spirits of the Fifth Trumpet form the pre-text of the marriage supper of the paschal lamb celebrated at the end of Revelation. Their demonic appearance gives the reader yet another pretext to invest hope in memories of the triumph of Aries at springtime. Yet these hopes are designed to be vaguely apprehended at best. Readers should recall that while divination engenders hopes that are precisely calendared, prophecy revels in vagueness and secrecy. The language used by John is so convoluted and obscure that no scene can be mechanically inferred from another. Hopes measured in time are conveyed with great circumspection and bewildering complexity. If anything, the scorpion and the lamb are at best reminiscences of a measurable past to be forgotten and shadows of a predictable hereafter to be surmised. Ancient signs of divination do not mark orderly time in Revelation. Rather, they lurk behind John’s vision of the end of narrative time. 10 Prophecies of shadow astromythical inspiration are conveyed through scorpion-tailed locust demons rising from the abyss, forming a cloud of smoke covering the sun and sky and hurting sinful men during five months. The demons have golden crowns, human faces, lion teeth, and the wings of

105130.book Page 93 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Scorpions at the End of Time

93

horses and chariots of destruction. The scene betrays an astrological underplot, an undertext pointing to the fivemonth period it takes the sun to reach the vernal equinox after its passage through the late October sign of Scorpio. Wittingly or not, the prophet is watching out for oracular signs of the sun-god passing through Leo and Scorpio and journeying through a five-month period of rains and darkness echoing the Flood, a rainy spell characterized by the waters that “prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days” (Gen. 7.24). The season in question starts with the autumn equinox in the seventh month of Tishri, the month of Atonement and Judgment. It ends with the sun’s ascent above the equator and resurrection at spring. The season tallies with John’s south-eastern outlook on the future, as confirmed through evocations of locusts from the desert, sulphur from shores of the Dead Sea, a heavenly altar resembling Ara, and four angels stationed at the Euphrates. The imagery is appropriately accompanied by evocations of serpents, scorpions, lions, centaurs, and other beasts of the southern sky. In short, the prophet assimilates the sun entering the sign of southeastern Scorpio to the morning appearance of a locust cloud coming from wastelands to the south or southeast, a plague ushering in the darker half of the year. Note that although subserving the Antichrist, creatures of idolatrous origins are unleashed against followers of the Beast. Judgment is brought through self-destruction. God has the power to turn emissaries of the bottomless pit against their own master. Spirits assimilated to the timekeeping spheres of heavens are unleashed against their own reign – the cyclical order of time.

105130.book Page 94 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

reticle 11

Timing and Planting a Plot

My reading of Revelation’s scorpion imagery has focused on the coronal aspects of sign activity, by which I mean the time factor intervening in semiosis. But the analysis also takes into account two other dimensions explored in previous books. First, it incorporates considerations of the sagittal plane (3-D Mind 1), and hence the cognitive mapping of lines of convergence and divergence woven through images of scorpions and lambs. Second, linkages mapped on to the axial plane (3-D Mind 2) have been factored in, lines that point to the uneven distribution of normative and emotive attentions. Over and beyond its cognitive logic (rh), John’s open watch stance involves the application of considerable force and affect against the immoral ways of closely watched times (and related fears and hopes unfolding through heavenly bodies in motion). The scorpion scene of Revelation 9 thus amounts to an intricate assemblage of similarities and differences, signs of the overt (normative) and the covert (repressive, transgressive), and narrative speculations on time. The interpretive exercise that follows pursues the same overall objectives but in a totally different context. The material is already familiar to the reader. It is taken from the Gulf Nahua story of Sintiopiltsin, the Son of Corn, already introduced in 3-D Mind 1. The encounter between the corn god and mocking iguana (one or many of them) is revisited with a view to achieving three things. First, an effort will be made to further clarify cognitive weavings of the corn/iguana relationship. Second,

105130.book Page 95 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Timing and Planting a Plot

95

greater consideration will be given to moral affects. To be more specific, the myth will be shown to concern itself with the sacrificial conduct of the corn god securing the good life for humans on earth, men and women who feed on corn and in turn dedicate their lives to feeding and reproducing the divine plant. It should be stressed that moral anxieties are not explicitly addressed in the passage under analysis. While passing comments are made on issues of sacrifice, the corn myth gives the impression of involving convoluted symbolism mostly of the anecdotal and dream-like sort. Moral questions are nonetheless central to the scene at hand, provided that connections unattended by the surface script are addressed, as they should be. Third, secret implications of the mocking iguana scene point to promises, hopes, and fears of an evolving story, potential developments and shifts triggering anxieties that form an integral part of the corn/iguana encounter taking place at the site of a well. When viewed synchronically, signs act as elements within systems of static differences. Shifts in time can also be interpreted synchronically, with an emphasis on differences between scenes ordered in sequence. Variations occurring through time are then explored with the tools of comparative analysis, a method that examines lines of convergence and divergence linking one speech sequence to another. In my view, this synchronic approach to sign processing does little justice to the motions of language – to the wheelings and dealings of time that govern the politics of narrative attention. Far from being an immediate presence of the mind, the order of attention is a command to the senses to be ready for what is deferred. It disposes the senses to respond to signs that are not yet triggered or no longer active. The attentions of semiosis thrive on memories of the past coupled with a constant disposition to wait and see, hence l’attente. This is to say that desires at work in the nervous sign process are subject to the hermeneutic principle of distentio (Ricœur 1984: 22), a tension between recollections and expectations of signs of distant times (past or

105130.book Page 96 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

96

Semiotic Motions

future) that haunt the narrative present. This principle is the obverse of what may be called the logic of contentio, by which I mean lapses of memory and fears of contentious events apprehended at all moments of a moving plot. More shall be said on the interplay of distentio and contentio and its implications for a theory of time in semiosis. Dialogues between layers and levels of attentionality (the explicit, the implicit, and the illicit) are never purely synchronic. Signs of the overt and the covert converge on a temporal experience of Sr activity, a fearful and hopeful experience that “contains” – at once conveys and withholds – the moving scenes of a plot. In the words of Bakhtin (1981: 280), “forming itself in an atmosphere of the already spoken, the word is at the same time determined by that which has not yet been said but which is needed and in fact anticipated by the answering word. Such is the situation in any living dialogue.” The analysis presented below drives our moving-dialogue thesis home. Our discussion will take into consideration the cognitive, the normative, and the emotive aspects of sign activity, but it will also emphasize the force of time. The Nahua myth we are about to revisit features a battle pitting two mythical characters, a duel essentially concerned with an epic confrontation between pleasure and the moral good. The story of Sintiopiltsin deliberates the attentions that should be granted to value and virtue over interest and satisfaction. But the scene also addresses possible delays and shifts in negotiations between the commendable and the pleasurable, shifts assigned to distinct signs and actors appearing at different moments in narrative time. We now turn to these movements in the moral anxieties of a Mexican native mythology. The idiom spoken by the people of Pajapan corresponds to the “t” dialect of Nahuat, as opposed to the “tl” variant spoken by other groups. Words or expressions currently used in Pajapan are both italicized and underlined (e.g., megat). By contrast, classical Nahua terms recorded by Siméon are simply underlined (mecatl). Words appearing in italics only are Spanish. My

105130.book Page 97 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Timing and Planting a Plot

97

spelling of classical Nahuatl and Gulf Nahua words follows the conventions adopted by Siméon and García de León respectively. In the scene discussed in 3-D Mind 1, the iguana makes fun of the corn god’s drooping ears and of his father dwelling in Tagatauatzaloyan, “the-land-where-men-are-dry.” The exchange is immediately followed by a battle. Using a string (nomamegat) or snare (nopichawan) made by his adoptive father, the boy is said to capture an iguana: “Come on, you ruffian (anda cabrón), I’m going to lasso (nia nigitsonwiti) you,” says the boy. He follows (gitogatih) the animals with his snare and at the sound of “tras,” catches (gilpilih) one iguana by the tail. But the tail breaks (postek) and the animal flees. The iguana comes back again and the boy catches it (gigiskih) by the foot (iyikxi) and hits it with the string (gimegawitek). He reprimands the animal and warns it that if it comes back and mocks him again, he will lasso it and feed it to his adoptive father or never let it go (ninamechmahkawati). Frightened (ginmohmotih), the animals go away and never come back. They only shout at Sintiopiltsin (gitsahtsiliah) from afar. We start with the similarities and differences expressed through the initial exchange between the mocking iguana and the corn child. Readers are reminded that Sintiopiltsin is a weak mediator in that he is corn food that stands still and is easy prey. He is silent when spoken to. He is immature and unable to reproduce. He dwells near water to the east and is separated from his father residing in dry lands situated to the west. Last but not least, he is vulnerable to excesses of wetness and dryness. By contrast, the iguana can mock and speak down to the corn child in that it is a corn-eating predator and a prolific begetter that can move freely between water, earth, and sky. Although a reptile, it resembles fish, snakes, humans, and birds all at once. While the iguana has every reason to ridicule Sintiopiltsin, scene 2 chooses to go in an entirely different direction, inverting the relationship between animal and plant. The corn child becomes a predator equipped with a long lasso and words of

105130.book Page 98 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

98

Semiotic Motions

reprimand and threat. Conversely, the iguana turns into edible prey with a broken tail. Its feet are immobilized by a snare, and its speech is reduced to shouting and noise. One sign composition leads up to another that is similar in some respects yet radically different in others. Why the inversion? Why have attentions shifted so dramatically? An explanation can perhaps be found in the rank ordering of signs – in the distribution of affects and precepts guiding the overall story. As noted in 3-D Mind 1, the hero triumphs over his foe by virtue of the weaknesses that lie in the animal’s unrestrained strength. Although enjoying the good life, the parasite, predator, and prolific begetter lacks the ascetic disposition needed to deal with real oppositions in life. The iguana ignores how to turn death and related afflictions into requisites for the blessings of life. A creature that takes the easy way out of problems situated in time (death) or space (water vs. earth vs. sky) is no match for a mediator who sustains sacrificial exchanges between joy and suffering, water and sun, the earth and the sky. Unlike the corn child, the iguana is not equipped to handle dualities of the lifeworld. But how do implications of the corn-iguana battle convey the teachings of sacrifice? What do they tell us about the pros and cons of hedonistic and ascetic paths to the good life? Should well-being be secured through immediate pleasures, or be obtained in the form of rewards for “doing good”? To answer these questions, key sign actions must be further explored. Scene 2 revolves around the impressive tail and tongue of the mocking iguana, protrusions that raise basic issues regarding language, morality, and sexuality. The loose-tongue motif appears first. The animals put the boy to shame by calling him and his father names. In Gulf Nahuat, notza is to call a person by his name, and nohnotza is to criticize or insult.3 In spite of their massive tongues, or perhaps because of them, the iguanas are unable to speak the human way, that is, with caution and modesty (tlacatlatoa). They are guilty of indiscretion, of letting words escape from their careful attention. They indulge in frivolous language.4 Such ill-spoken, evil-tongued creatures are not

105130.book Page 99 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Timing and Planting a Plot

iguana in scene 1 powerful mediator speaking, mocking corn eater (predator) prolific begetter moves between water, land, and sky swimmer, terrestrial, born from egg long tail

corn in scene 2 predator long lasso words of reprimand

99

corn in scene 1 weak mediator spoken to, mocked eaten (prey) immature elote corn child father above (dry land, west) son standing still, below (near water, east) vulnerable to excessive wetness or dryness ears cut, back broken or “doubled” iguana in scene 2 prey tail broken, feet immobilized shouting, emitting noise

worthy of admiration (mauizoa). They deserve to be silenced or reduced to shouting and crying (mahmauitzatzi, tzohtzi, tzatzatzi) while fleeing, as in scene 2. A Zoque-Popoluca variant of our reference myth (López Arias 1983) portrays the iguana as having a bad cough and failing to deliver an important message from the boy to his mother. A small lizard takes over from the iguana but ends up saying exactly the opposite of what the corn boy meant to tell his mother. The animal is accused of treating words like rumours, mockeries and lies that spread too quickly, changing their meaning through misinterpretation. Because of the lie told by the lizard, the narrative goes on to say, human beings are no longer immortal. To punish the animal, the corn god cuts its tongue in half, which accounts for the forked tongue characteristic of the small cowixin lizard. Fish poking fun at the boy’s red hair suffer a similar fate: the boy retaliates by catching a few fish with a line and hook and then passing a string through their mouths. The iguana, the lizard, and the fish are punished where they have sinned, through mouth and tongue.5

105130.book Page 100 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

100

Semiotic Motions

Signs that are equally telling include the longish tail endowment of the iguana and the lasso or snare used to capture the animal. A convergent sign, the word megat for “line,” applies to both tail and snare. When combined with -tzin, the root term for the back or rear end of something, the megat line produces the “tail” appendage or “backside handle” motif (tzinmegayo). The narrative clearly focuses on this appendage when describing Sintiopiltsin’s prey. But the same “line” can be extended to the lasso or snare (mecauia, mecayotia) used to capture the appendage. The snare consists indeed of a megat string tied to a bamboo stick at one end to pull a lasso fixed at the other extremity. The string is made up of a cord twisted (malinah) like a liana or climbing plant (bamegat, bamegayo) and covered with beeswax to make the noose slide. When closely examined, the snare appears to be made of parts stolen from the animal. The bamboo stick is elongated and segmented like an arrow, a spinal column or the powerful tail of the lizard. The snare also works like a pitzauayan trap, a word designating the narrow or central part of a hole or a body, hence the belt or the waist to which tails are attached. Finally, there is wax (xicocuitlatl, bee excrement, honey), a substance akin to tallow fat (xicocuitla-icpayollototl) and evoking the fatness and sweetness of the underworld paradise – a land of plenty enjoyed by creatures resembling the prolific and gluttonous iguana. Stories of underworld creatures caught with honey are common among the Mexican Gulf Nahuas (García de León 1969: 297; 1976: 84–6; for older connections between honey and sex, see León-Portilla 1983: 238). Other megat associations reinforce signs of domination vested in this imagery. The word can be used to denote a mamegat fishing line, or a twisted cord to shoot arrows with (mecayotia). If used to carry heavy loads, the string (megapal) becomes the mark of a slave (mecapallo), a creature flogged (megauitegui) by his master and forced to carry heavy loads attached to straps around his head. The iguana tail and whip connection is confirmed by variants of the same myth portraying the iguana using its tail to flog the Popoluca corn god (Homshuk) caught fishing,

105130.book Page 101 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Timing and Planting a Plot

101

its feet rotting (Rodríguez Hernández 1994: 1). Water spirits known as chaneques can also use the animal tail to whip hunters who hurt animals needlessly or kill them to feed their mistresses (García de León 1969: 294, 306). In short, signs of the snare or trap prefigure and converge on the tail and the animal to be caught. All losses suffered by the iguana are our young hero’s gains. Sintiopiltsin’s plan to catch the mighty-tailed iguana looks like a pretext to rob the animal of its inherent powers. The mastery procured through the tail and string imagery extends to the reproductive domain. Signs converging on sexual matters are many. First, the lizard’s phallic tail is a rear end so impressively long that the animal is reputed to mate with serpents and to possess ophidian flesh. Its tail is so massive and strong that the Gulf Nahuas believe it will continue to live even when cut off, as if it were a serpent. Second, the noose or net used in this scene stands for the greatest prey of all, a megat lover. The imagery of a boy capturing his prey at the site of a well (which is where young lovers usually meet6) suggests that the boy is trying to put someone else’s head in the noose (ilpiacayotl). He is trying to enslave, bind, or attach (ilpia) another life to his own, confining an attractive creature to a prison-like (teilpilcalli) trap. Third, if converted into a matrimonial tie, the liana string can turn into an umbilical cord (xicmegat). The anatomical conversion points to the germ-son of corn (ixictayol) and the linkages of a family, a genealogy, or a lineage (mecayotl). Given these associations, it is understandable that lianas should serve as doors opening onto sacred sites full of riches owned by underworld spirits (García de León 1969: 295). Actually the same can be said of iguana tails: they can be the object of considerable envy, especially for those who aspire to the blessings and riches of chaneque spirits reputed to inhabit the doughy buttocks (tzintamal) of the iguana.7 Much is at stake in the iguana’s defeat. All is as if the iguana was divested of the reproductive powers vested in its tail; the implication is that too big a tail spells ruin for the wealthy, the potent, and the powerful. The end result is death by emasculation

105130.book Page 102 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

102

Semiotic Motions

or decomposition. The inferior backside part becomes perishable in the sense of being linked to material that rots. I am alluding to excrement, bitat among the Gulf Nahuas, a term synonymous with money, fault, and filth.8 The lizard stands accused of making fun (auiltia) of the corn boy, playing or toying (auilnemi, ahauil) with the root verb auia, a term implying a wastage of one’s wealth.9 Accordingly, the animal deserves to lose its appendage. An excess of phallic might results in castration. The animal is chastised according to the rule of proportional retribution, a rule whereby evil returns to cause its own destruction. Other indices also point to this conclusion. For one thing, the boy insults the iguana by calling it cabrón, a male goat that stands for a cuckold but also a paramour, a ruffian, or a pimp. The insult suggests a conversion, from cock to cuckold. Moreover, the hero catches and mutilates his prey. The iguana is caught by the rear end, producing the sound tras, an onomatopoeia and the word for “behind” (tzin, el trasero). The corn boy cuts off the animal tail and frightens (mahmaui, cuitla-pammauhtia) the iguana away. The gesture is the equivalent of denigrating (mauizpoloa) and reprimanding (postegui) the culprit, breaking the animal’s back, shoulders, or loins.10 The iguana becomes spineless and shoulderless. It is condemned to flee, hence to “turn a shoulder” and “run with fear.”11 The imagery suggests emasculation; the captured tail is a “bottom-stick” (tzinbayo), a staff or stalk that suffers from impotence when broken (postequitzinbayo) or dead (tzinmicqui). The punishment is so severe as to affect all bodily extremities: not only the phallus but also the tongue, the tail, and the foot. The long-tailed, firm-footed, and loose-tongued animal is unmanned and silenced, put down and trampled (icxipechtia). The narrative ties the animal by the tongue, the tail, and the foot (icxiilpia, icximegauia).12 It silences and slows it down with the appropriate string (icximegat), thus confirming its inclination to self-debasement and laziness (icximiqui, dead feet). Another variant of the corn child story reinforces the notion that tails can be lost through lack of virtue. The story tells of

105130.book Page 103 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Timing and Planting a Plot

103

an ut tut bird that disobeyed the corn boy and got its tail eaten by arriera ants. The bird lost its long tail because it slept at night and failed to keep watch over the trail where the ants that stole the grain of corn passed. The tapa-camino, a “roadblock” bird that “always waits for us on trails” and that doesn’t sleep and can be heard at night, succeeded where the ut tut had failed. He discovered where the corn grain was stored, in a hill accessed through a rock fissure (Sánchez Bain 1994: 116–18).13 In our reference myth, a corn boy equipped with a lasso captures all the powers vested in the iguana tail. But there is a problem with this victory. His newly acquired possessions can be turned against the hero, placing him in a position similar to that of the vulnerable iguana. To catch the iguana, the corn boy had to follow (toga, togatia) or search for (temoa) his prey. The question is whether the hero will be tempted to follow in his enemy’s footsteps. The catch thus results in a riddle: the hunter appropriates an animal tail while also finding fault with it. Wisely enough, the narrative chooses to remove the appendage from the boy’s grip. Instead of playing along with the foolish animal, the hero persists in his task. The narrative goes on to show the boy fetching fresh water for his adoptive father. In doing so, he secures and gives up the source of life (and the iguana flesh) for the sake of his father, all in anticipation of an even greater sacrifice: the corn god offering itself as food for human beings. The answer to questions of morality lies in sacrifice, not in the conquering ways and spoils of the hunter. The lesson is confirmed in another variant where the boy kills the iguana but is then scolded by his grandmother who forces him to resurrect the animal (Rodríguez Hernández 1994). To sum up, the megat and its derivatives can serve to express: 1 2 3

the means to conquer (snare, lasso, fishing line, bow string); the object conquered or possessed (flesh, phallus, prey, lover, slave, family ties); and the pains suffered by those who end up being conquered (dismemberment, castration, impotence, a broken back, trampling, silencing).

105130.book Page 104 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

104

Semiotic Motions

To these derivations can be added other connections that point the way to: 4

the higher teachings of sacrifice (renouncing the applications of (1) and (2) while accepting the implications of (3).

Ascetic usages of the string imagery suggest that objects of desire and means to possess them can be mastered and preserved only if they are renounced. In order to secure signs and possessions of the good life, heroes must let them go. The corn boy starts setting the example by releasing his prey. The question is whether letting the iguana go is a full expression of what the narrative is driving at. Is it enough to secure the blessings of life through the trials of sacrifice? The answer is no. For the moment, Sintiopiltsin’s treatment of the megat string is a timid deployment of the ascetic attitude and ensuing rewards. All indications are that signs of fully fledged sacrifice are bracketed and held in abeyance, if only for a narrative while. Erotic and ascetic evocations are hidden for several reasons. On the erotic side of things, the young hero captures his prey and yet dreads the sexual powers vested in the iguana. He lets go of the powerful tail in his possession for fear of becoming like the animal itself, a creature loaded down with signs of lechery. The move is understandable, given that the hero is too young to chase and tie himself to the megat woman of his desire (typically encountered at a well, which is where the iguana makes fun of his immaturity). Although growing rapidly, the ear of corn is still without the reproductive powers of the iguana and the ability to reunite water, earth, and sky. Nor does his leafy stalk compare favourably with the tail of the iguana. On the ascetic side, the corn boy shows equal timidity in that he dares not turn the string imagery against himself (instead of using it against the iguana or the ant, as in a later scene). He fails to convert the string into a belt tightened around his body, an expression of reproduction achieved through abnegation (see below). Although he masters the iguana and shows wisdom by releasing its tail, the corn child is not accepting the full costs of growth and reproduction, issues that must be confronted sooner or later.

105130.book Page 105 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Timing and Planting a Plot

105

In the iguana trap scene, two forward-looking anxieties are registered while left unsaid: the fear that the child misbehaves, but also the hope that he comports himself heroically. On the one hand, there is the fear of transgression conveyed through a megat snare acting as a lustful “be-longing.” The instrument points to what the young hero is searching for, something that he is not allowed to possess and that speaks to a desire possessing him. The snare and derivatives thereof embody all the trappings of the good life on earth, the kind foolishly enjoyed and lost by the prolific, long-tailed iguana. On the other hand, the snare creates moral expectations. Since the child chooses not to keep the trap and the prey in his possession, listeners may be hopeful (but not certain) that the hero’s journey through life will set an example of virtue. As shown below, promises of ascetic behaviour can be expressed through the megat imagery. The string can denote a belt tightened around the body or a whip to flog oneself with, both of which are signs of self-discipline. As we are about to see, the string imagery can also be associated with acts of severing the head from the body or pulling hair from one’s head, imageries that apply to the doubling and harvesting of maize plants at autumn. These belt-tightening and hair-pulling imageries are directly related to issues of sacrifice and are made explicit in subsequent episodes of the same myth (see Chevalier and Buckles 1995: 303–9). The corn boy can master his prey through a show of selfdenial, an exercise that requires the megat string to be made of hair plucked from his own head. As with Samson, the strength of our hero lies in his hirsute head, in his ability to lasso (tzonguia, tzonuia) his enemy with his hair (tzonti), catching it with his tzongal hair-house turned into a deadly snare (tzouaztli). In order to obtain this snare and conquer his prey, however, the maize boy must be made bald. In other words, he can obtain victory by attaining maturity, the kind that results in a pixca harvest (from pi, to tear or pull a plant or a person’s hair). Like the iguana hanging by the string or the fish caught with hook and line, the plant must be pulled by the head and then husked

105130.book Page 106 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

106

Semiotic Motions

with a wooden tool called pixcon. Among the Nahuas this husking device is a euphemism for the penis; thus the husking, peeling, and plucking imagery (xipia) is the equivalent of a man losing his virginity.14 Given these associations, the powers of reproduction are to be granted to the hero provided that the boy resigns himself to being deflowered, bowing the head down and losing his hair or head. He must refrain from “raising his hair” (tzohmioguetza), becoming angry, and rebelling against what life has in store for him. In the long run, a head that “bows down” is the only head that can sow (tzontoctoc, from tzonti and toga, to sow). Death by hair cutting (tzontegui, also “to cut oneself”) or decapitation (geshtzontegui) heralds a new life. The fact that the corn god masters the iguana augurs well. But the boy has yet to demonstrate his valour and achieve maturity by turning the string and tail imagery against himself. Unless he flogs or disciplines (megauitegui) himself and atones for the crimes of others (cuitlatzacuilia), his victory will be as short-lived as the powers enjoyed by the foolish iguana. If the boy refuses to break down and bend (doblar, beloa) under the heavy rains, he will suffer the fate inflicted on his father, as in another variant of the myth. That is, he will be whipped by the winds of autumn and destroyed by lightning and thunder (tatibini) hailing from the north (Rodríguez Hernández 1994: 2). In order to reproduce, he must tighten a belt (cuitlapicayotl) of leaves around his body, gird up his loins (cuitlalpia), and then bow (cuitlacaxxoa) or fall to the ground, be shelled, beaten, and chastised (uitegui). The secret of immortality lies precisely in the corn god’s ability to withstand all such trials, which are unknown to the iguana. As is made clear in other variants, Sintiopiltsin will live forever and triumph over his natural enemies as long as he agrees to comply with the cyclical requirements of life, which include drying up, spreading his seed, and serving as food for men.15 The myth continues to describe Sintiopiltsin’s journey to the westerly “land-where-men-are-dry,” a land of dryness and darkness and the burial site of his father. The story is a fully developed illustration of signs of self-denial built into the cycles and

105130.book Page 107 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Timing and Planting a Plot

107

Cornfield after harvest, Sierra Santa Marta, Veracruz, Mexico. Photograph by Daniel Buckles

reciprocal exchanges of life and death. The young “water-like” corn child is a god destined to suffer the same fate as his plant father, which is to dry and die under the heat of the sun and be eaten by human beings. He must die at the hands of his milpa (cornfield) masters who must in turn sweat, break their backs, and work themselves to death reproducing the plant. While they require water to grow, plants and humans must dry out and sexually exhaust themselves in the process of producing food and seed for future generations (Sedeño and Becerril 1985: 107). This is to say that they must keep a certain distance from water, moving away from the origin of life and all things wet if they are to grow and reproduce. The later rule is well illustrated by the cycle of corn. Once “doubled,” husked, and plucked, the best ears of the previous harvest are selected, put aside, dried, and cared for (tapachoa), to be used to seed the milpa again. The corn boy must also be devoured so as to feed new generations of men and maize alike. Humans and animals that fail to follow the example set by the corn god, thereby refusing to accept the sacrificial requirements

105130.book Page 108 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

108

Semiotic Motions

of reproduction, stand accused of jeopardizing the web of life. Accordingly, they can expect to suffer reprimand. Lessons concerning the nature of semiosis also follow from our analysis. While sign activity can trigger a wide range of implications, it cannot grant them equal attention. Overt signs must be deployed with a sense of direction, using signs of cognitive, emotive, and normative orientation to give meaning to the text. The attentions of language presuppose a preferential treatment and rank ordering of signs, a court-like “process” that provides language with a sense of rule – rulings on the sentiments and moral conclusions that govern the activity at hand. Another important lesson can be drawn from this interpretive exercise: norms and emotions are not always spelled out. Signs may be designed to convey judgment and mood, but this is not to say that they will get to the point immediately and without indirection. Precepts and affects are full of convolutions and deviations. Far from simply laying out images of the desirable, language stands to gain a lot from courting signs of misery and immorality. Flirting with crime and tragedy is necessary, if only to instil fears that proper conduct may not prevail and that evil may triumph in the end. In the scene that concerns us, the string used as a hunting instrument is not conducive to a reading of ascetic (belt) meanings into the megat motif. The text also precludes an erotic interpretation. The megat imagery is not applied to the blessings and rewards (lover, lineage) that result from deeds of sacrificial behaviour. For the moment, the narrative chooses to inhibit the ascetic and erotic connections potentially triggered by the string imagery. Related affects and precepts are not for all that absent from the scene. Informed listeners know that the iguana is misbehaving; that the corn god is still immature; that he has good reason to be angry; that he has what it takes to triumph over the iguana; that evil inflicted upon the corn god threatens the livelihood of human beings; and that letting the lizard go is full of reassuring implications. In other words, the native audience knows that the story is not over and that important issues raised by the iguana incident have yet to be dealt with at greater length.

105130.book Page 109 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Timing and Planting a Plot

109

Corn in the kitchen, Sierra Santa Marta, Veracruz, Mexico. Photograph by Daniel Buckles

The secret implications of the Gulf Nahua story of a corn child catching the iguana and breaking its tail point to scenes that have yet to be told. As already suggested, the moral weaknesses of the mighty-tailed lizard account for the punishment inflicted on the animal. More importantly, its demise at the hands of the corn child produces pre- and post-figurative effects that serve to keep the narrative plot in motion. The battle reminds listeners of several things that the corn child should not forget: his immaturity, the danger of a good life procured without abnegation, and the many enemies and obstacles in the way of reproduction and growth. Although Sintiopiltsin masters the

105130.book Page 110 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

110

Semiotic Motions

iguana, the scene lays the ground for a more durable resolution of these problems. It invites listeners to place their hopes in the sacrificial ways of a corn god reaching maturity. It does so prefiguratively, though, well before the hero’s arrival in “the-landwhere-men-are-dry.” What is more, the scene generates hopes by indirect means at best, through the breaking of the lizard’s back and the child releasing the animal’s tail. In the final analysis, the mutilation suffered by the iguana announces the corn plant “doubled” at autumn, a story of backbreaking sufferings that begs to be told. The story is about the corn god’s sacrifice performed at the end of the maize cultivation cycle, a time when ears of corn tied at the waist join father plants that have already dried (so as to feed humans and produce new seed). The correction applied to the iguana gives the listener a pre-text to invest hope in the re-enactment of stories of human and plant survival obtained through sacrifice. In the long run, the ascetic moral of Sintiopiltsin’s journey through life is bound to prevail against the teachings of conquest. Like the corn plant first “doubled” and tied at autumn and then beheaded at harvest, humans must learn to turn the megat string against themselves and tighten their belts. This is the only way they can survive and enjoy a life of plenty. The corn god ranks above and wins against the lizard not because of his inherent powers: his triumph comes rather from his sacrificial calling. Although apparently without a sense of dramatic development (as Foster claims, cf. 1945: 243), the corn myth follows a plot. All scripts play games with the passing of time. “Movement is symbolism for the eye; it indicates that something has been felt, willed, thought” (Nietzsche 1967: 492). Every discourse has a story to tell and does so with its sense of development, a “speculative” operation that adds “interest” to the code. The story of the Nahua corn god has its own mode of speculation on time. Each scene makes compositional moves that convey and withhold signs of the future along with memories of the past. Every sign activity is an invitation to unravel issues that are still pending, meanings that both inhabit and go

105130.book Page 111 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Timing and Planting a Plot

111

beyond the narrative present. Accordingly, our reading of the mocking iguana scene responds to what the Sintiopiltsin story is driving at and does so by situating it within a broader narrative context. Our effort to reconnect what the iguana scene chooses to silence becomes an exercise in “relevant speculation,” a deconstruction that goes beyond the surface associations, sentiments, and teachings of the text at hand. Like all interpretations, our analysis shows impatience. By proposing a premature dialogue with scenes that have yet to develop, our hermeneutic account dismantles and undermines the hopes, the fears, and the anxieties embedded in the narrative present. Readers are thus reminded that motivations and explanations of the interpretive practice should not be confused with the texts or scripts they claim to “represent.” Unlike our exegesis, the story has nothing to gain from getting ahead of itself. We saw that brevity obtained through sign condensation is an asset of morality. But procrastination may also be a virtue. A multitude of signs that are highly condensed, that are organized in narrative sequence, and that take devious turns (for reasons of displacement or deferment) may be needed to make sure that a moral argument attracts attention and is driven home. Morality transmitted through narrative means may be compulsively repetitive and verbose.

105130.book Page 112 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

reticle 12

Speculations on the Hot and the Cold

An important thesis that follows from previous analyses is that fixed categories of time do not exist. Only speculative moments in time do. Scorpions and lambs appearing in Revelation may evoke the solar body passing through signs of the zodiac (Scorpio and Aries), which are measurable and observable events corresponding to particular months of the year. But they also raise anxieties regarding traces of the past and seeds of the future. These hopes and fears form an integral part of time unfolding through movement in space. Time exists and acquires meaning through motion and emotion. The same can be said of a mythical corn boy battling with an iguana, or a cat freezing to attention, a pet animal drawn with ears pricked and eyes wide open. They too mark a watchful disposition towards signs of the no-longer and the not-yet, as opposed to fixed positions in space or time. To be sure, time can be measured and divided into categorical devices ranging from prosodic metres to lines in a poem, pages in a book, scenes in a narrative, days in a week, months and seasons in a year, or dots and lines on a watch. All such devices serve to locate expressions of the here and now. In reality, however, these devices merely set the scene for wishful assemblages of signs of the present, signs that are compelled to borrow things from the past and make investments for the future. Even when applied to the immediate present, measurements of time speak to shadow moments conspicuous by their absence. Times that are remembered or forgotten have one important thing in common

105130.book Page 113 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Speculations on the Hot and the Cold

113

with times that are anticipated or unforeseen: all of them are made manifest in the present tense. Categories in time exist, but they are speculations in their own right. Consider again the mocking iguana scene appearing at the beginning of the Gulf Nahua corn myth. The native symbolism deployed in this scene has been interpreted against the background of categories in calendrical time, categories based on the pre-Hispanic hot-dry/cold-wet divide. These divisions apply to seasons in the year and to the agricultural cycle revolving around corn production, the Mesoamerican staple food. Thoughts about the agricultural cycle constitute the main thrust of the Sintiopiltsin story and are made explicit in some scenes. The entire plot revolves around issues of time, such as the necessary transition from wetness (corn seed planted in moist soil at the beginning of the rainy season) to dryness (corn ears drying up for harvest and storage) and then back to wetness (a new milpa cycle). The point of the story, however, is not merely to convey information about the agricultural calendar. Given its predilection for convoluted symbolism, mythical language is not particularly well suited to this task. The story aims at something else: as with Aztec mythology, it addresses the hopes, the anxieties, the uncertainties, and the risks involved in the works of time. The corn myth deliberates the best and worst ways for humans and plant spirits to handle divisions and transitions in agricultural time. It plots out courses of action and narrative developments that speak to the risks of chaos and the requirements of survival over time. These comments apply to botanical life forms that humans depend upon to secure their livelihood. But they apply to humans as well. As we are about to see, the Mexican Gulf Nahuas and the neighbouring Zoque-Popolucas divide the human life cycle into moments and phases regulated by rules of dryness and wetness. The resulting cycle goes beyond an exercise in mere classification, pigeonholing moments of life into discreet periods of time. It goes beyond analytic and digital measurements, to include signs that plot out the anxieties of human life – the fears of plans spoiled and the “speculative” remedies thereof.

105130.book Page 114 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

114

Semiotic Motions

The reproduction of both cornfield and the human body is ruled by speculations on the hot and the cold. Consider first the life cycle of cultivated soil. According to Nahua farmers, milpa land becomes tired (Spanish cansado) when it dries out. In ideal conditions, “soil strength” may be recovered by letting the land “rest” for seven years. The “abandoned field” (acaual) generates a large amount of tasol garbage – plant litter that “gives life to corn” by shading out weeds and by rotting and keeping the soil wet, cold, or fresh (cece). The fallow is aided by “cold” plant species (e.g., jonote) that produce a great deal of litter, soften the soil, and “easily release the juices” of the earth. By contrast, “hot” plants such as oak dry out and harden the land, fixing soil juices in their thick bark. The leaf litter that falls on the ground during the fallow period “becomes soil,” as does the ash (Nahua banesh, “lime made from wood”) created through burning. Farmers know that dry-season mulching and plant decomposition in fallow lands will enhance the coldness or wetness of the soil. But they also count on the spring burning to fertilize the soil and protect food plants from excess humidity (usually described as chahuistle) accumulating over the wet season cycle. The recovery of soil fertility is thus perceived by Nahua farmers as a process of “healing” obtained through a balanced combination of the cold and the hot. One farmer aptly puts it that a maize plant does not want sun or heat only, nor does it want water or cold only (“aguinegui niat, aguinegui tonati; aguinegui ni cece, aguinegui ni totoni”). As with plants, human life begins in water. In classical Nahuatl, water stands for a child (oc atl), the first era of humanity (atonatiuh, “sun of water”), and the food of life (atl tlaqualli). Accordingly, the Gulf Nahuas and neighbouring Zoque-Popolucas believe that newborn children are generally bathing in a state of softness, wetness, and freshness. Their blood, hearts, and brains are watery, weak, and slow, which is also true of adults and plants sleeping and cooling off at night (Sánchez Bain 1994: 65). Maturation and daytime labour imply the opposite condition –

105130.book Page 115 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Speculations on the Hot and the Cold

115

a state of hotness and dryness where heart and brain lose water, become stronger, and move faster: The blood freshens up and rests through the heart, it rests and the blood is no longer at work. That’s why one stays completely dead, because the whole body stopped working. It’s not working, and that’s when one takes the opportunity to rest. One rests until when one wakes up. As soon as one wakes up, everything wakes up, everything starts working … When one eats, that’s when the heart is receiving the food … the blood starts running normally, because it’s taking sacred food. It maintains itself … all parts of the body are working normally. What it [the heart) asks for it [the body] gives slowly (ibid.: 146–7).

As humans grow and use maize to feed their hearts (Rodríguez Hernández 1994: 18), they move faster and become drier and stronger. The same logic applies to gods and spirits such as the Corn Master, a divinity known as Sintiopiltsin among the Nahuas and Homshuk among the Zoque-Popolucas. As he reaches the age of seven, the Corn Master acquires the ability to walk, move around, and fetch water (as opposed to “being water”). He grows in intelligence as well. With humans, growth implies a quickening of the blood pulse, tomaayoolojmej in Nahua, from yol, a word signifying the heart but also the interior, the eye, or the seed of fruit or corn (as in ixictayol).16 In order to move faster, however, the blood must circulate and get thicker and drier, which it does under the influence of the sun. To be sure, adults are entitled to rest. Labour and physical movement can be sustained on the condition that the body drinks and eats every day – especially maize, which fills and counters heat and fatigue accumulating in the body. When your blood works well and “you are well fed, well everything, then you have the courage to work, you want to walk and everything” (ibid.: 160; see 65, 150). Like the cornfield, the body must cool off at night, enjoying a good night’s rest, at a time when the sun brings light to the world of the dead (Rodríguez

105130.book Page 116 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Semiotic Motions

116

Sun, tonal day, work, old age strong gaze-blood-heart fast-moving, less water

Cyclic balance

tomaayoolojmej pulse, hearts of our spirit

heliotropic growth Cyclic balance

Birth in water night, rest, youth weak gaze-blood-heart slow-moving, more water

The human life cycle

Hernández 1994: 14). This must be done in preparation for another day involving faster motions of the blood, the brain, and the limbs. Without rest in darkness and at night, overexposure to solar heat can kill. Solar energy gone destructive points to a sorcerer whose power it is to cast spells (tonalitlacoa) by shooting arrows and rays of light (tonalmitl) that can be destructive of plant life. Closer to the Gulf Nahuas and their

105130.book Page 117 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Speculations on the Hot and the Cold

117

corn myth, there is the action of the sun or the hot wind (tonalehegat) rising to the south or the east (tonayan).17 Sun heat is known to cause men to “sweat” (itoni in Nahuat, cupiji in Popoluca, “that which comes out when hot”; cf. Sánchez Bain 1994: 269) and ears of corn to die prematurely through drying (tonalmigui). Humans constantly alternate between daytime activity and night-time tranquillity. The overall trajectory of life and the body is nonetheless from youth to old age, wetness to dryness, coldness to hotness. Humans are born in water, but they are fated to die sooner or later. This is to say that humans and their blood are “mostly hot” (ibid.: 145). They are heliotropic creatures destined to grow in the sun until the source of life dries up on them. The solar life force dwelling in humans points to a soul (tonal) made essentially in the image of the sun (tonati). Life is torn between the blessings of the sunny life and death caused by the heat of the tonati sun. On the one hand, ancient Nahuatl and current Gulf Nahua derivations of the root verb tona are evocative of not only food and the sustenance of life (tonacayotl) in general but also dry-season corn (tonalmil) and everything else that grows “under the sun” (tonayan), in the heat (tonalli) of the summer season (tonallan).18 Accordingly, in the village of Pajapan, the tonal denotes one’s portion or lot in life – hence the soul, the shadow, the spirit, or the life force of the human body. On the other hand, the drying process (tonaluagui) is a requirement of plant reproduction, a sacrificial offering (tonaltia) built into the cycle of life and death on earth. Corn ears must be dried, shelled (taoya), and cleansed of all impurities to produce edible food and dry tayol seed for planting.19 To dry under the sun is thus to move closer to the moment of death and to gather the strength needed to reproduce. The rule applies to humans, soils, and plants alike. Just as a man advancing in age is growing both thin and strong (chigac, pipiktik), so too a plant or a plot that dies under the action of sun or fire has gained in maturity (yoksik) and may serve to reproduce life. When the person turns very old, however, the process reverts, back to the weakness and the vulnerability of the very young.

105130.book Page 118 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

118

Semiotic Motions

Our solar father (totahtsin) who feeds all plant life is subject to the same fate. In order to grow and rise out of water to the east, he must ascend to the dry southern sky and then die in arid western mountains at the end of each day. The sun going to rest at night joins the corn child’s father buried in Tagatauatzaloyan, the land-where-men-are-dry. The father of life must disappear at the end of each day and temporarily cease “to be” (ag) if he is to accede to a new dawn. While giving light and life, the sun is subject to the dual imagery of “being.” Like other life forms, he too is ruled by the complementarity of life and death. The sun is governed by a cyclical regime where signs of absence or “non-presence” (ayag) are never a pure waste; being thrives on non-being. The dialogue of being and non-being is inscribed in every human being (tagat, man). It is also embedded in the word agui and derivations thereof, hence the sun that is no longer – the solar father that “hides and falls into a house” at night (galagui tonati) as he disappears to the west (aquian). In the latter expression, the verb agui implies that the male sun is penetrating, entering, planting, or deceiving (agui, tahaguilia) the earth, just like a man arriving (agui) into a house and seducing a woman or making love to her while she sleeps (tetlan aqui).20 The evening sun bears all the vitality of a man planting a seed in arable land (aquiloni). In the final analysis, man and sun can count on enjoying the light of life as long as they hide themselves and their private parts in clothes, darkness, the earth, and the womb.21 Without man and the sun suffering this small death, no man would ever exist, the sun would never see another day (tlacatli), plants would never be “dressed” with fruit (tahaguilo), and fruit would stop hanging from trees like children falling from the vulva (taguihlo, chayote).22 The solar force developed by humans as they grow older is essential to reproduction. Too much wetness spells trouble for the cycle of life; water-like immaturity implies an incapacity to generate the seed of a new generation. This simple rule applies to all the seed that men sow: the semen that goes into women’s

105130.book Page 119 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Speculations on the Hot and the Cold

119

bodies, but also corn seed planted in the milpa. In order to beget new life, men must be dry enough to be able to generate the fluids and seeds of another generation. Also they must be careful not to let these fluids be wasted in pleasures of the flesh. Men who scatter their seed without restraint are bound to lose their reproductive strength. When men succumb to these temptations, their seed turn weak. A man who indulges in sex and expels all of his semen will eventually lose (ejaculate) blood, dry himself out, fall ill, and be struck with fever. “When he turns dry, he doesn’t have strength anymore, he can’t walk, like his knee becomes numb, and he walks slowly” (ibid.: 234). This brings us to the following riddle. A man in need of sex is said to be in a state of heat. Sexual activity is therefore hot. But how can that be? After all, a man in a state of heat and mature dryness contains more seed and fluid compared to the one who scatters his semen without restraint. Conversely, should we not say of a sexually active man that he is not “drying up” the source of life but rather “drowning” himself in sin? Sex is like food in that it allows “the desire to go away” and the body to revert to a state of coolness. If so, how can too much sex burn someone up? Answers can be found in the native conception of gestation, male and female. Although filled with blood and the fluids of new life, women who are menstruating, pregnant, or in travail are thought to be hot. The reason is simple. When a woman is pregnant the fetus is sucking the water of life out of her, exhausting and drying her. “They used to say that all the foodstuffs that the woman takes in, that it’s for the baby. Because I’ve heard that women sometimes say ‘No! You are pregnant? … Now your baby is going to suck all the blood.’ Because children, that’s what the mother gives them they say” (ibid.: 246). This blood-drainage problem gets even worse when a woman has many children. A woman “is like a tree, if it carries a lot of fruit, then it dies” (ibid.: 207). The same logic applies to men. When men keep their semen to themselves, their seed draws out strength from their body and they become hotter than they already are. Their semen is

105130.book Page 120 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

120

Semiotic Motions

like juice squeezed from ripe fruit about to wither. Accordingly, when semen is poured out, coolness ensues. Although a hot activity, coitus and the labour of love reduce the heat in two ways: the man bathes in fluids of the vagina, and he relieves himself of embryos that siphon the life out of him. Excessive sex, however, extracts all male fluids and dries up the source of life. Masturbation is particularly reproachable in this regard; it is not aimed at fertilizing the female body and is therefore wastage of life. The Gulf Nahuas view it as a form of abortion. Promiscuity is viewed as no less harmful. The fact that a promiscuous man is bathing in female fluids is no antidote to “drought”; as with plants, exposure to excessive humidity can cause death through rotting and “waterburning.” If overindulging in sexual activity (as recently married couples tend to), men can lose their blood, their appetite, and their strength to the point that they will turn pale and sexually anemic. Under normal conditions, food strengthens semen, a reproductive fluid that will maintain its strength provided it is not wasted and exhausted (ibid.: 270–1). Too much food, however, is the equivalent of too much sex. Some abstinence is needed to enhance the reproductive process. Dietary restraint will add strength to seed sown by man, which includes semen but also the seed of corn. In Popoluca, a man who is serious, diets, and abstains from sexual activity for seven days prior to planting is in an ideal position to sow strong maize seeds. His physical and moral condition is one of dryness and heat, which is what is needed to secure the regeneration of human and botanical life alike. He and his maize plants are thus considered to be hamamok, the Popoluca opposite of a yomok, indicating a frivolous, non-dieting farmer and his plot. When maize seeds are planted or visited by a yomok man or sown in the immediate vicinity of a yomok milpa, plants suffer from various ailments, including attacks of a yomok animal behaving as a corn predator. Weak yomok seeds are easy prey for predators. They “fight” in the sense of interbreeding with other species that harm them. Their leaves eventually turn white, soap-like and hot. They get “lazy,” they grow in fewer numbers, and they rot before

105130.book Page 121 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Speculations on the Hot and the Cold

121

reaching maturity. Finally, when they are harvested and eaten, they give little satisfaction and strength. In keeping with these principles, the corn god does not tolerate lazy farmers or children playing in the milpa at seedtime (Rodríguez Hernández 1994: 11, 19–20). A farmer who is worried that the cold yomok condition of his neighbour will spread to his own plants can protect his milpa by planting his hamamok seed first. Other preventive measures include maintaining the maximum distance between the two plots, about seventy-five metres. Hot objects, for instance, redcoloured staffs (the colour of lightning) and old machetes tied with red ribbons, may be planted in the corners and in the middle of the plot. The milpa periphery may be “perfumed” with copal incense so as to protect foodplants against winds and diseases. Lastly, the concerned farmer may stand between the two plots and stamp the soil with a digging stick called espeque, requesting the plants from the two neighboring milpas not to interbreed – that is, not to “fight” among themselves and “harm one another” (ibid.: 11, 13, 20). Given his hot condition, a hamamok farmer must refrain from accumulating too much heat. Among other things, he must avoid absorbing foodstuffs considered to be hot. Thus, when sowing, the farmer should not eat mamey and banana for seven days. Otherwise the plants will go to rot, falling prey to chahuistle burning. Other hot foodstuffs proscribed during this critical week include onions, pineapple, egg, chile, chinin, avocado, and honey (associated with the blood of Christ and therefore taboo at Eastertime, a feast marking the dry season preceding the arrival of rains and the planting of wet corn). Honey and onions may be all the more “harmful” as they attract maize predators such as ants and rabbits. As for soap, it is “spicy” and “hot,” which means the farmer should not use it to wash his body lest the plants should grow white leaves and rot. Bodies and clothing should not be washed with soap (or perfumed with copal incense) until the seventh day, which is when the Corn God was born as an egg (Sánchez Bain 1994: 64–5, 108, 140, 150–1, Rodríguez Hernández 1994: 11–13).

105130.book Page 122 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

122

Semiotic Motions

Jamamoc (sun corn) sowing with diet (hot) sexual abstention, celibacy serious adult Jamamoc sows first red staffs, red ribbons Harm: old machetes predators, bad harvest “request” with espeque lazy maize, rotting copal buried, milpa smoked white leaves, soap-like interbreeding fighting and hurting Counter gives less strength less satisfying Cold clash: sex and frivolous gestures before sowing

Yomoc (woman corn) sowing without diet (cold) careless adult

Sowing sun corn

Some think it best not to leave their house during the sowing week as someone may jeopardize maize growth by touching or pinching the farmer’s backside, a gesture evoking anal symbolism and sexual activity. Also when sowing you should do seven tareas (each corresponding to one sixteenth of an hectare) without

105130.book Page 123 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Speculations on the Hot and the Cold

123

looking behind, a gesture that would offend the maize plants (Sánchez Bain 1994: 64–5). Before sowing, seed should be watered and then dried and perfumed with copal so that it does not rot. The first seven “heads” are sown without the farmer turning his head in any direction; failing this, corn might choose to leave the milpa (Rodríguez Hernández 1994: 13–14). Nor should any seed be thrown away and wasted. Other ritual precautions include burning copal around the milpa seven days after planting. When I was a young boy … when people sowed, first they had to sow seven heads … Because that’s the way it was done, you also smoke it, you take a handful of maize, you smoke it with a wick, with copal, then you go to sow, right in the middle of the milpa. Around the milpa, you take half … In the middle of the milpa you sow seven heads … as a sign. If you sow seven heads and all of them are born, then they say that the others will go well. But if the heads are not well born, sometimes only five are born, sometimes six … then they won’t come out well, as a sample. The sample doesn’t come out well … Seven days afterwards, you have to go to the milpa to smoke the heads. And then you have to smoke the milpa, around, the outskirts, making seven rounds … You count seven times, fasting, you don’t eat until twelve. Then they say the corn is well protected. Animals won’t come to eat it, the wild animals, nor will the winds make it fall … And when they sow, those seven days they will not “use the woman,” they won’t touch women until those seven days have passed (Sánchez Bain 1994: 111–12).

One informant reports having heard the corn boy cry “like many children.” After finding grains of corn scattered and abandoned on the soil, he brought them to his house to avoid the Corn God’s anger. Had he not done this, the plants could have gone to rot and the harvest could have been lost. This is to say that fatherly care is an essential ingredient in the reproductive process. When sowing, the farmer should also talk to the seed, saying in Popoluca, “However close the other [milpa] may be, don’t pay any attention to those near you. I will look

105130.book Page 124 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

124

Semiotic Motions

after you so that you grow nicely, I will clean you, love you, perfume you. But don’t pay attention to the wind, to the whirlwinds. Put your trust in your master.” Farmers must talk regularly to maize plants as they grow in the milpa and even when stored inside the house. Likewise, caution must be taken never to “bad-mouth” the plants. For instance, if someone comes to purchase maize and the owner says he doesn’t have any, the maize will get angry and go away. At night maize plants talk to one another to see how the master treats them. If mistreated, they will leave the milpa or house and seek another master. The farmer will then see children crying in his dreams, children abandoned and with dirty feet (Rodríguez Hernández 1994: 11–14, 18, 20). The life cycle of plants and human bodies entails an orderly succession of events occurring in due season, each in their own good time. Native categories speak to these orderly divisions and transformations in time. But they also address three basic facts of life. The first fact is that things can always go wrong. The second is that humans can make mistakes and be blamed for bad things arriving unexpectedly. The third fact is that things can be done to restore order and enjoy happier days. These facts add up to a conception of time that is inherently flexible and malleable. It is constantly on the move, heading in directions that are never entirely predictable and never without a plot – without risks and uncertainties concerning its outcome. Investments of sign actions aimed at profitable outcomes are not speculative afterthoughts added on to observations of divisions in time. Rather, fears and hopes are sign movements constitutive of the order of time.

105130.book Page 125 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

philosophical speculations

105130.book Page 126 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

105130.book Page 127 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

reticle 13

Kant on Time

Conceptions of time vary greatly. The same can be said of signs that are “timed” through narrative movement; measures of preand post-figurative speculation are highly malleable. This means that time is not an attribute built into physical things or reality, an objective property that can be studied independently of how the brain constructs linkages between past, present, and future. But the notion that time may be a product of the “mind” is not new. In his Critique of Pure Reason (see “Transcendental Doctrines of Elements,” part 1, section 2), Kant thus argues that time is not an empirical conception derived from experience and founded in reality. It is not an objective determination or property that inheres in things. Rather, time exists by virtue of being “represented in the mind.” Time points to an internal state or disposition. It is a determination of the mind, not of physical objects and real events. Echoes of Kantian intellectualism can be found in more recent studies of variations in “time codes.” Lévi-Straussian structuralism has been particularly influential in this regard. Unlike Lévi-Strauss, however, Kant considers the representation of time to be universally given, a “transcendental ideality” as invariable and unchangeable as the mind itself. Time exists as a pure form of the sensuous intuition, an a priori presupposition that allows us to represent things as existing either simultaneously or successively. In fact, time is the universal condition of possibility of all outward phenomena. It is a formal condition represented inwardly, prior to any perception of real objects or phenomena.

105130.book Page 128 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

128

Philosophical Speculations

The representation of time is an intuition that permits us to affirm with absolute certainty that “all things, as phenomena … are in time.” Kant’s a priori of time has real foundations in the mind. “It is the real form of our internal intuition,” an internal experience that constitutes the mode of representation of any object or self. Time is undeniably real in the sense of being immediately clear through internal perception or consciousness. The same cannot be said of external objects found in space; they could be effects of dreamlike delusion. In Kantian philosophy, the objects we perceive are like time in that they cannot be known for what they are in themselves. Objects can be known only as phenomena represented through modes of perception or sensuous intuition. The difference is that time is a pure form that can be cognized a priori. It is a pure intuition accessible prior to any perception or examination of the phenomenal world. Readers of Kant are reminded that while empirical knowledge and experience generate synthetical statements, pure intuitions give rise to analytic propositions. Analytic statements are essentially concerned with relations (e.g., geometrical) and are true of necessity and universally. Kant thus argues that our intuition of time antecedes thoughts about objects and contains nothing but relations – “of the successive, the co-existent, and of that which always must be co-existent with succession, the permanent.” These relations reflect “the mode in which the mind is affected by its own activity, to wit – its presenting to itself representations, consequently the mode in which the mind is affected by itself” (Kant 1984: 59). Analytic reasoning applied to time is self-consciousness of the mind. Kant gives primacy to the transcendental aspects of the mind. In his discussion of causality, however, he addresses issues other than a priori principles of sequentiality, simultaneity, and permanence. The intervention of the past and the future within unfoldings of the present is one such critical issue, one that I have already discussed and illustrated at some length. Kant calls it a momentum, or the interplay of principles of sequentiality

105130.book Page 129 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Kant on Time

129

and simultaneity. Briefly, in the Principle of the Succession of Time According to the Law of Causality, he explores causality as a relation of time, a product of the synthetical faculty of imagination that allows the mind to place one state before and another after. Again this connection of succession does not inhere in the object and cannot be arrived at through mere perception. It is rather the mind and its causal imagination that determine the necessary relation between a cause that comes before and an effect that follows after. All change involving a sequential ordering of phenomena is subject to this a priori law of causality, thereby making experience and our empirical cognition of phenomena possible (ibid.: 104). Phenomena, the only things we can cognize, are always apprehended as occurring in the succession of time, with every perception following another. Laws that determine the actual sequence of phenomena and that make the experience of an event possible are produced by a subjective synthesis of the mind. “If then it be admitted as a necessary law of sensibility, and consequently a formal condition of all perception, that the preceding necessarily determines the succeeding time (inasmuch as I cannot arrive at the succeeding except through the preceding), it must likewise be an indispensable law of empirical representation of the series of time, that the phenomena of the past determine all phenomena in the succeeding time, and that the latter, as events, cannot take place, except in so far as the former determine their existence in time, that is to say, establish it according to a rule” (ibid.: 154). Phenomena are located in time by means of an a priori rule that finds in what precedes the condition for something that necessarily follows. The principle of causality lays the foundation of possible experience and objective cognition. It is a prerequisite of our empirical knowledge of phenomena, knowledge that deals with the perceived order of succession, that is, how a state changes into another and what the actual change entails. From a Kantian perspective, however, succession is not merely the opposite of simultaneity. Paradoxically, things occurring in sequence can also overlap in time. Causes and effects may coexist, as with fire and heat experienced simultaneously in a room.

105130.book Page 130 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

130

Philosophical Speculations

More importantly, some coexistence between cause and effect is unavoidable since an effect cannot arise after the cause has ceased to be. The change occurs not all at once but in time, through a continuous action of causality. Kant calls this continuous action a momentum. “The new state of the reality grows up out of the former state, through all the infinite degrees thereof, the differences of which one from another, taken all together, are less than the difference between 0 and a” (ibid.: 159). Kant stresses that “it is not our business to inquire here into the utility of this principle in the investigation of nature.” The point rather is that such “a proposition, which appears so greatly to extend our knowledge of nature, is possible completely a priori.” The principle is produced in the mind and prior to all given phenomena. Our empirical knowledge of all phenomena is subject to the universal apperception of a continuous determination of position in time obtained through series of causes and effects organized sequentially (ibid.: 159). Kant’s “momentum theory” reinforces a central argument developed in this book: the notion that past, present, and future constantly intersect as opposed to occupying distinct moments in time. Kantian transcendentalism is nonetheless problematical in two important respects. First, it is a denial of the immense variations prevailing in cultural conceptions of time. In our view, time that exists metaphysically, in a purely transcendental fashion, outside particular modes of organization, is the product of a particular discourse situated in history. The same comment applies to time understood empirically and quantitatively, as an objective quantity measured by clocks. Although clock time is often considered to transcend variations in cultural history, it too points to specific signs reflecting particular times. Measurable time does not exist in the absolute. It hinges rather on particular systems of mathematical and physical coordinates amenable to studies of cultural history. Second, the notion of “momentum” is a Kantian contribution to the hermeneutics of time. It implies that no clear-cut distinction can be made between sequentiality, simultaneity, and

105130.book Page 131 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Kant on Time

131

permanence, be it on empirical or philosophical grounds. Paradoxically, things that happen in sequence must overlap if they are causally connected. This Kantian concept is nonetheless limited. Its application is restricted to the continuous progression of events that are universally moving from cause to effect. In philosophy a momentum denotes any of the constituent elements of a complex entity; with Kant these elements become floating-decimal positions linking one complex event to another. A momentum thus defined adds up to no more than a negation of serial inertia where one fixed moment follows another that is equally frozen in time. The progression proposed by Kant amounts to saying that the time-distance separating cause from effect can be divided ad infinitum. When used in this way, the concept of momentum loses all force. In the English language the word implies much more. The term can signify the impetus of something that is moving, or the force built up by a moving object, equal to the product of its mass and velocity. A momentum is the quantity of motion determining the length of time during which constant force must act on a moving body to bring it to rest. These definitions suggest that a momentum is inherently variable and malleable. When seen in this light, the concept may help us understand the interplay of immediate and distant times deployed in sign activity. An application of “force in motion” is required not only for causes to produce effects but also for signs to generate other signs. This application of force is inherently flexible, with the implication that causal and narrative movements will not simply unfold through infinite progression. Rather, all sorts of manipulations and speculations on time can launch or sustain a momentum, giving a particular impetus or force to elements of a given agenda. In some cases the force of speed may be applied. In others, the rule of maximum inertia may be preferred. Available strategies and resulting effects will vary so much that events can be said to gather momentum in some cases and to lose it in others. Events may proceed through continuous progression or give appearances to that effect. But

105130.book Page 132 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

132

Philosophical Speculations

time can also be lost, wasted, saved, or gained. While plots can drag and fade into oblivion, they can also thicken. All sorts of momentum are conceivable. In hindsight, when elevated to the rank of a universal principle, the concept of a “continuous momentum” is an empty shell that deprives Sr (sign reticle) activity of its greatest asset: strategic investments in the economy of time.

105130.book Page 133 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

reticle 14

Assembling a Clock

Categories pertaining to time are not static holes for pigeons to dwell in. Like all other signs, they have a story to tell, one that plays with the passing of time. In their own closely watched manner, all arrangements of time give impetus and force to sign activity. They plot out moves and motions that convert code and logic into strategic investments in nervous sign processing. The arrangements of time will vary considerably across space and time, according to the story these arrangements have to tell. While it is true to say that codes play with time, it is also the case that time plays with codes. Each assemblage of time is an event in its own right. Things or phenomena may appear in an orderly fashion, one occurring after or at the same time as another, on condition that precise conventions are established so that places and durations in time can be properly determined. The corresponding arithmetic, however, will vary from one set of conventions to another. Thus not all time measurements are quantities conceived in mathematical terms. Close-watch calculations of quantities in time may be a central preoccupation to cultures such as ours. But they are not indispensable to all “measures” taken against chaotic arrangements of the successive and the coexistent. In contrast, methods that are not strictly mathematical are essential to the conventions of timing. Some common denominators, often of a qualitative order, are indispensable. For instance, to categorize daytime as distinct from night-time presupposes that both durations have something in common. The

105130.book Page 134 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

134

Philosophical Speculations

two portions must be defined as segments of the same duration, such as the earth’s revolution around the sun. Likewise, to say that some ideas are modern (e.g., humanism) is to say that they coexist and share common features with other productions of the same era (e.g., science, industry). The same attributes cannot be assigned to ideas deemed to precede them, be they “medieval,” “ancient,” or “prehistoric.” The common denominators of a given era can be recognized provided they are seen to differ from common denominators of previous and subsequent eras. Note also that two eras can be viewed as radically different on condition that we accept the comparative notion of “era,” a period considered in terms of noteworthy or characteristic events. It is only within a common terrain, culturally determined and fashioned by a perspective on history, that differences can play themselves out across time. The order of time is a weaving of lines of convergence and divergence. The lines in question are variable and multiple; time frames are as diverse as all other productions of language. As with relations in space, perceived or imagined relations in time vary from one culture to another. The western measurement of days, weeks, months, seasons, and years differs from measurements of the Aztec calendar. There is no need to labour this point concerning the cross-cultural diversity of time codes. What should perhaps be emphasized, however, is that the weavings of time vary within cultures as well. Measurements of the clock based on decimal arithmetic and the Gregorian calendar play a pivotal role in modern society. All the same, our quantitative time scale does not account for all the attentions we pay to the passing of time. Other common ways of generating orderly slices of time are many. For instance, calculations of prosody and rhythm in the realm of sound can be encoded and deployed without being converted into units of time equal to 1/86,400 of a mean solar day (seconds). The same observation applies to the coexistence and the succession of “noticeable” events, lifetimes, generations, periods, eras, and epochs. Even when mapped onto dates of the Gregorian calendar, these social time markers rest upon points of reference that are not mathematical or astronomical.

105130.book Page 135 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Assembling a Clock

135

Grammar is another culturally specific way of making sense of the relationship between the befores and afters. The English language has rules specifying the sequential ordering of words in a sentence (e.g., subject before verb). It also offers six principal tenses to express the time of an action or the state of being: present, past, future, present perfect, past perfect, and future perfect. To these tenses could be added markers of imperative and subjunctive moods. A culture’s semantic conventions (naming practices, status attributions, official historical narratives, etc.) also determine the ways in which humans make sense of the succession of signs and events in time. Variegated time frames prevail at this level as well. A simple English sentence such as “President J.F. Kennedy was killed in the year 1963 ce” is a composite time-proposition that combines a particular sequencing of words (“J.F.” comes before “Kennedy,” “Kennedy” before “was killed,” etc.) with two individual lifetimes (Kennedy, Christ), a tense (past), a year (1963), and an era (ce). Mythical narration (e.g., the Fall that comes after life in Eden) and ritual activity (e.g., the Lent period followed by Easter celebrations) also deploy composite perspectives on time, with an array of scenes and ceremonial gestures that follow rules of sequentiality and simultaneity of their own. Cultures and bodies do not apply the same time-measurement recipes to all life situations and experiences. Time exists only in the plural. Actually times are not only extremely variable; they are also highly associable. Multiple patterns of events occurring with varying intensities typically coexist within the same “time frame.” What we call the biological clock illustrates this point. The “biological clock” involves one of many timing mechanisms governing several cyclic rhythms of the living organism, allowing it to adjust to internal and external environmental conditions, according to the temporal coordinates of a given state (e.g., time of day or year). It includes events mapped on to ultradian cycles, that is, rhythmic events occurring more than once a day. The brain at sleep is thus known to follow an ultradian pattern characterized by a frequency of seven cycles per second. This ultradian clock can coexist with circadian cycles based on a solar clock regulating events occurring at specific

105130.book Page 136 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

136

Philosophical Speculations

times of the day (e.g., eating and sleeping). Circadian cycles affect the organization of daily lives of most organisms and keep them in harmony with the environment. Lunar rhythms should also be factored in. They consist of events happening once a lunar day (24.8 hours) and can be observed among many tidal invertebrates such as fiddler crabs. Finally, circannual rhythms are once-a-year events that proceed through series of stages called interval timers. They determine seasonal weight gains and losses in some wild animal species. They also account for seasonal affective disorders affecting some persons (e.g., depression in the fall or winter) in response to variations in levels of light. Cycles interacting within our “biological clock” are organic adjustments to cycles prevailing in nature. They are cogs in broader wheels, living responses to other rhythmic events occurring in the environment (temperature, barometric pressure, gravitational change, the light-dark cycle, etc.). But while they fit into broader clock assemblages, cycles can also vary in levels of adaptability and autonomy. As jet-lagged travellers can testify, patterns can be learned and firmly built into organisms to the point of becoming insensitive to changes in the environment. Although out of tune with the environing milieu, they can run freely forever or until the body is entrained to another clock. Timing in language is also a product of associative schemes, temporal compositions that bring together multiple frames of reference. Even clock and calendar time as we know it is a bricolage, not a homogeneous quantity that can be weighed through simple numerical calculations. Our Gregorian calendar is a case in point. At first sight, the calendar appears to simply locate all events in relation to the birth and lifetime of Christ. Other calendars revolve around other starting points such as the day of Creation, as in the Jewish calendar (deemed to have taken place 3,760 years before the Christian Era). Another “beginning of time” is the day and year when Muhammad fled from Mecca to Medina (about 16 July 622, by the Gregorian calendar). The Gregorian frame of reference is thus one possible take on time. It is not for all that a single-frame system. Dates in the Gregorian calendar are the total sum of multiple measurements

105130.book Page 137 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Assembling a Clock

137

and associated considerations. For one thing calculations of time preceding or following the birth of Christ are obtained by applying decimal arithmetic to “natural” motions of the earth rotating on its axis and around the sun. These calculations are added on to references to the lifetime of Christ. Our calendar also rests upon heptadic and duodecimal conventions of weeks and months. These measurements are derived from but no longer dependent on ancient observations of the lunar cycle (which is eleven days shorter than the tropical year), with the exception of some religious events such as Easter. Our dating assemblage is thus an amalgamation of recorded events of the Christian Era and decimal mathematics applied to measurements of “conventional” durations and motions that are partly founded in “nature.” Time assemblages are variable and associable. They are also changeable. The year conceived in a western perspective once comprised 365 days, at least since 45 bc, with the proviso that every fourth year is designated as a leap year of 366 days, one day being added in February. The Julian leap-year rule, however, created a problem: it added three leap years too many to every period of 385 years. The Gregorian calendar adopted in 1582 corrected this by making the average year equivalent to 365.2422 mean solar days. This is close to the solar year and therefore in tune with the marking of seasonal phases in the earth’s rotation around the sun, matching the equinoxes and solstices with their assigned calendrical dates. A consequence of Pope Gregory XIII’s reform was that 4 October 1582 (Julian) had to be followed by 15 October 1582 (Gregorian). RomanCatholic countries quickly adopted the Gregorian calendar. It was eventually adopted by every western country and by Japan, Egypt, and China as well. England implemented it in 1752, Russia not until after the Bolshevik Revolution. Official dates within an era or year have their own idiosyncratic history. For instance, 1 January has been the first day of the civil year since 153 bc. By contrast early March used to mark the beginning of the ecclesiastical year. Both dates continued to be used in England and England’s colonies until 1752.

105130.book Page 138 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

138

Philosophical Speculations

As for the date that starts the Christian Era, Dionysius Exiguus (sixth century) was the one who suggested that we use the birth and lifetime of Jesus Christ. Pace Dionysius, modern chronology now estimates that Christ’s birth occurred probably between 8 and 4 bc. Readers are reminded that the first century of the Christian Era officially began in ad 1, which is the equivalent of saying that a newborn child is aged one year at the moment of its birth. Thus the twenty-first century began in earnest in the year 2001. In recent decades the search for more sophisticated techniques to measure time has allowed astronomers to address small deviations between the solar and earth cycles resulting from the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit and the inclination of earth’s axis in relation to the orbital plane. As a result we now have calculations of “universal time” based on measurements of mean solar time at the Greenwich Meridian. Adjustments to universal time, however, must be made to correct deviations due to the wandering of the Earth’s polar axis and other periodic fluctuations of the Earth’s rotation. Sophisticated clocks have been developed using non-astronomical phenomena repeating themselves with near-absolute uniformity. Quartz crystal clocks have thus revealed variations in the Earth’s rotation rate caused by seasonal changes in winds and tides, of up to 0.03 sec. per year. Since 1955 the cesium-beam atomic clock offers an extremely accurate and stable clock, using the quantum cycles of an electromagnetic signal in resonance with cesium atoms. Atomic time scales can in turn be averaged, producing what is now known as Universal Coordinated Time (utc). Leap seconds are occasionally added to keep utc in agreement with the length of the day. Time machines are situated in time. Each time-frame and elements within it have their own history. Paradoxically, historical observations regarding the Gregorian calendar and later clock technologies (especially those of the “late twentieth century”) make sense provided we situate related events within a calendar, usually of Gregorian inspiration. But events and individual lifetimes, those of Christ and Gregorius XIII, for instance, are

105130.book Page 139 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Assembling a Clock

139

needed to generate dating systems and archives of recorded events. This is to say that dating methods and time measurements can be situated in time as long as we can use some external frame of reference. A time code can be located in time provided it is assigned a place within a time system other than itself. Time references are never absolute. This holds true even in astronomy. Einsteinian theory teaches us that there is no perfect simultaneity of events whereby two events can be said to occur exactly at the same time. Time calculations depend entirely on the coordinates and motion of the observer making the actual measurements. “Objective” time is so relative that not even the cycle of night and day can be trusted to last forever. We now know that tidal friction is slowing down the Earth’s rotation rate, albeit at an extremely slow pace. In any case, who says the earth will rotate and last forever? Times may change to the point that, “one day,” measurements as we know them will simply cease to be. The Kantian notion that time never changes and that only objects or phenomena “in time” can be said to change over time is no longer tenable. Times do change, from one referencebody to another (e.g., the lunar versus the solar) and within the same reference-body as well (e.g., the earth going through a full rotation around the sun).

105130.book Page 140 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

reticle 15

But Where Is Time?

Unlike Kant’s sensuous intuition of time, the cognitive mapping of time is responsive to culture and history. The codification of time is highly malleable, associable, and changeable. The concept of code applied to measures of time has nonetheless serious limitations. Despite their commitment to plurality and diversity, theories of cognitive encoding make universal claims of their own, typically from a formalist or structural perspective. By definition, codes are systems of similarities and differences acting as models of intelligibility. Sign theories inspired by this notion – Lévi-Straussian anthropology, for instance – maintain that a formal encoding mechanism is universally wired into the brain. This is true irrespective of variations and shifts in history. We know that Lévi-Strauss has paid considerable attention to variations in codes across cultural history. His “savage mind” is nonetheless committed to discovering the Code of all codes. However plausible Lévi-Strauss’s universal mind thesis may be, it cannot be justified on the grounds of its sensitivity to relativity. Even when it denies that products of the mind are valid for all times, structuralism persists in absolving theory from the constraints of historicism, creating an intellect or “esprit” that stands above and makes sense of all codes. The Code of codes raises difficult questions regarding the relationship between permanence and history, or the universal and the particular. The concept is faced with inherent contradictions that pertain to the passing of time and cannot be resolved from an analytic perspective. Time reckoning based on

105130.book Page 141 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

But Where Is Time?

141

analytic principles creates several contradictions that will not be surmounted through logic alone. These difficulties can be subsumed under two sets of aporias that will confound all logicians and grammarians of the mind. The riddles concern the twofold relationship that lies between logic and events and between categories lying inside and outside the order of time (time/eternity, past/present/future, time/space).

could the code be situated outside of time? The first set of aporias stems from efforts to distinguish diachrony from synchrony. In Lévi-Straussian theory, all codes consist of bundles of similarities and oppositions that make sense of contingent events observed in natural and social history. Logic is designed to project order into the chaos of history. The implication here is that a fundamental rift separates logic from real history. Structuralism pits a diachrony of pure events against a synchronic intellect bent on classifying occurrences in time, regrouping them into discrete signs and series of time (LéviStrauss 1963: 213ff.). The assumption is that while events are governed by the whims of infrastructural history, the mind functions according to laws that are universal. We could say of a structuralist “mind” what Bergson once said of man: it prefers space to time (cf. Ricœur 1977: 147). This notion of the code suggests that the existence of events can be posited but can never be accessed directly. In order to be visited by the mind, events must be put into language. They must be encoded into sign systems that will reflect the mapping system used, not the terrain that is being surveyed. Events constituting the raw material of our mind are like “things in themselves” from a Kantian perspective, hypothetical realities that can be apprehended indirectly at best, through intellectual mediation alone. If so, does this mean that language and logic are not events in their own right? What is the time of the analytic logic and discourse that purport to address relations in time and configurations in space? Is structuralism an event, or is it a pure

105130.book Page 142 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

142

Philosophical Speculations

reflection of the mind, one that is meant to last forever? One possible answer to these questions consists in establishing a close connection between timelessness and logic. This requires that the Code be situated squarely outside of time, which is what structuralism proposes. But this is hardly acceptable as it forces us to deny the phylogenetic and ontogenetic evolution of the brain, against all evidence to the contrary. The Lévi-Straussian Code may be credited for being a non-theological machine, a timeless Logos brought down to earth and made human. But it still continues to evoke a transcendental “esprit” and remains “metaphysical” as ever. An interesting variation on this theme consists in treating timelessness as a product of the Code, an effect of logic and the intellect transcending the vicissitudes of history. According to Lévi-Strauss, codes create moments of eternity. They introduce rules and fictions of continuity into pure events that are otherwise lawless and arbitrary, without a logic of their own. Like pebbles in a kaleidoscope, syntagmatic events are fragments of absolute becoming that the tubular box will assemble, disassemble, and reassemble in orderly ways, making one pattern comparable to previous or succeeding arrangements. While a kaleidoscope has come to denote something that is continually changing, in Lévi-Straussian language the plaything offers a stable view (Greek scope) on forms (Greek eidos) of beauty (Greek kalos). It is designed to introduce aesthetic order into series of events that are fragmented and erratic by nature. Structural theory adds to this metaphor an important qualification. The subject that normally turns the tubular device and does the bricolage is located inside the box. The subject is a product of laws of signification not under its control. It is not the human agent but rather changing events occurring outside the box that force the box to shift, producing new patterns that are synchronically ordered but never permanent. Each assemblage is dismantled, like a palace swept away upon the flood (Lévi-Strauss 1966: 36, 232). Only the box and its invariant features (the brain and its laws) can be said never to sink. While it moves through a “history of successive synchronies” (MerleauPonty 1964: 86), the box itself never changes.

105130.book Page 143 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

But Where Is Time?

143

Our brain-box is governed by rules of aesthetic formalism. It works like a machine that converts the Chaos and “inanity” of history into models of Logos. The intellect transforms bits and pieces of infrastructure into the digital “bits” of superstructure. It turns l’événementiel into reassuring orders of occurrences and measurements in time. Cognitivism can therefore subject the “pressure of history” in language to “a differential coding of before and after.” History may be reduced to chronological frequencies (daily, annual, secular, millennial) governing hot and cold events viewed in a Lévi-Straussian perspective, as fast and slow successions of happenings unfolding in the logic of time (Lévi-Strauss 1966: 258ff.). Through its own constancy the encoding process destroys the passing of time. Universal laws of the intellect introduce timelessness into a symbolic function that can generate an infinite number of orderly arrangements (ibid.: 263). The intellect conceived as a “savage mind” is reminiscent of Nietzsche’s beastly creatures that “know not the meaning of yesterday or today … He [man] wonders also about himself – that he cannot learn to forget, but hangs on the past: however far or fast he runs, that chain runs with him … he says, ‘I remember’ … and envies the beast that forgets at once and sees every moment really die, sink into night and mist, extinguished forever. The beast lives unhistorically; for it ‘goes into’ the present, like a number, without leaving any curious remainder” (Nietzsche 1949: 5). Like the beast that lives in the eternal present, the “esprit” viewed as “bricoleur” is forgetful of the past and unconcerned about the future. Facts of history are reduced to bits of binary codes and are played with like pebbles in a kaleidoscope. They are fed into a coding machine so as to be chronologically ordered and properly synchronized with other events of a given story. “History does not therefore escape the common obligation of all knowledge, to employ a code to analyse its object” (LéviStrauss 1966: 258). Unlike all other products of language and the mind, structural formalism places itself in a unique position of postulating a binary arrangement that is perfectly faithful to reality: the distinction between logic and event. Yet a faithful application

105130.book Page 144 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

144

Philosophical Speculations

of structural theory suggests that this binarism is only one possible arrangement. Lévi-Straussian formalism is merely one coding of time, a grid that uses the category of event to explain how signs are connected to the real world. Paradoxically, the distinction between lawful codes and lawless events is bound to be situated in time. Structuralism is just another happening in the history of theory. Better said, it was just one of those eventful moments that have now lost momentum. A general science of myth has now become a particular myth of science. This brings us to another alternative, which consists in situating the Code inside time, treating it as a notion of our times. Theories of the Code are conceptual events, nothing more. But this creates new difficulties. It means treating brain activity as an event in its own right, a pure occurrence that produces the order of logic but that is not produced and cannot be accounted for by any kind of logic, not even the laws of evolution. For the Code to be situated within the order of time, a broader logic is nonetheless needed. The argument presupposes a broader time-frame comprising lawful and lawless events. Moreover, the time-frame in question would have to be explored with the use of a language other than brain-dependent logic, which is not an easy task. Lévi-Strauss’s solution to this aporia of time lies in a unique Code that may be (or might have been?) the grandest event of all: a structuralist metatheory designed to let the mind finally commune with itself. Structuralism is the logical esprit expressing its own laws and creating a universal Code-of-allcodes so different from every other conceivable “bricolage” as to have no inherent specificity. The intellect signifying itself is a brain that loops all loops in a single theoretical stroke. Great faith is needed to accept this argument.

could time be situated inside the code? But what’s the alternative? We cannot say that Time is to be found outside the Code, producing real “infrastructural” events occurring on the fringe of logic. Nor can we say that the Code

105130.book Page 145 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

But Where Is Time?

145

lies inside Time, something that simply “happens,” a logic that comes about just like any other event for which nothing else can be said. But then where does Time lie in relation to the Code? Could it be that Time simply lies inside the Code? This possibility brings us back to theories of the Code, a cognitive system empowered to map differences on to practically everything, including the order of time. Given this system, logic may be held responsible for distinctions between time and eternity; past, present, and future; succession and coexistence; time and space. Time is just another mental grid. While highly sensible, the notion that time is a product of encoding generates a few aporias of its own. Consider first the sign of “time.” From a semiotic perspective we might say that time makes sense only if contradistinguished from its opposite. Time is the otherness of timelessness or eternity, the negation of an everlasting “now.” This distinction, however, begs the question: Where does time reside in relation to eternity? One logical answer consists in saying that time lies outside eternity, which means that time has a history. Like everything else, time itself would have a beginning and an end. Plato and Christian theologians such as Augustine and Aquinas thus claimed that time came into being at the same instant as heavenly bodies came into motion. But was there anything happening before these bodies were set in motion, one might ask? Augustine replies that there is no sense in asking ourselves what God did before He created the world, for time did not exist prior to Creation. The faithful should understand that “the eternal Creator of all times, art before all times and that no times are coeternal with thee; nor is any creature” (Confessions 11, xxx, 40). In Timaeus, Plato considers time to be an image of eternity moving according to number. Real eternity, however, rests in unity, without measurable change or motion. It can exist without time and without an image of itself projected into perpetual motion. This is to say that an eternal “Now” preceded the creation of time and the world. Paradoxically, pure eternity without time can be located in time – that is, before creation but no longer after. Eternity thus allows change to occur, from

105130.book Page 146 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

146

Philosophical Speculations

eternity-before-time to eternity-with-time. Note that the latter phase will eventually be followed by the End and the reign of eternity-after-time. Needless to say, eternity divided into three successive phases defies any logic. Moreover, the notion that Creation may be viewed as an event marking the newness of time contradicts the definition of a moment in time, a “now instant” constituting the end of past time and the beginning of future time. Logically, a moment that marks the beginning of time would have to be preceded by pure eternity conjugated in the past tense, a contradiction in terms. An oxymoron of equal proportion undermines the idea of a moment that brings time to an end and that marks the beginning of a new eternity. An alternative is to treat the motions of time as infinite and therefore eternal, as in Aristotelian philosophy. Time is eternal not in the sense of occurring without change and motion; Aristotle’s time is an attribute of measurements of motion (the heavenly spheres). Rather, it is eternal in the sense of having no absolute beginning or end. The “now” of time still requires something before and something after, but these conditions can be met ad infinitum. Time conceived in this fashion simply exists and cannot be a creation of Logos understood as the spirit of God or l’esprit of logic. Aquinas takes a slightly different stand on the issue. He recognizes the possibility of created time being coeval with its Creator and therefore eternity. But this is not to say that the two are the same. The eternal present of a divine “Now” that stands still and never changes should not be confused with infinite time involving continual shifts in becoming. His conclusion, however, is that neither view, time created or time uncreated, can be demonstrated by proof of reason. Only knowledge by revelation will make a difference, in favour of theories that point to the newness of the first now of time created by God. Logos understood as God (and not as logic) teaches us how to deal with the aporia of time. Locke and Newton are more confident about the logical foundations of “eternal time,” be they founded in astronomy or pure

105130.book Page 147 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

But Where Is Time?

147

mathematics. Locke considers infinite duration to be characterized by perfect constancy and uniformity, an everlasting duration coexistent with motions of the great bodies in heaven. In Newton’s view, time that is absolute and true is instead mathematical. It is duration that is boundless and everlasting, timein-itself empty of motion and heavenly beings other than God. By contrast, relative, apparent, or common time depends on something external to it, sensible bodies in regular movement. The “Newtonian code” thus resolves the aporia of eternal time by dividing time into two categories. But which came first – absolute or relative time? Does time measured “in itself” (mathematically) precede time measured astronomically, in relation to “something else”? Or is it the other way around? Presumably absolute time comes first, with the implication that it can be divided into two phases: before and during apparent time. But how can absolute time generate change in the form of movement in space? How can we explain the quantum leap from absolute immobility to bodies in motion? Also, have we not seen that “true time” is a mathematical derivation of relative time, a product of equations correcting the imperfections of celestial motions (such as the uneven rotation of the earth around the sun)? But how can abstract/immobile time be a mathematical derivation of sensible/moving time? Why measure time-in-itself against something other than itself?

perhaps a simple clock is what counts the most? Conclusive arguments regarding the relationship between time and eternity are not to be found in logic. But what about other aspects of encoded time, especially the practical ones that govern our lives? Their efficiency in ordering moments in time, using the tools of analytic linearity – measuring duration and clocking the befores and the afters – may be what counts the most. If logic of the pragmatic sort can serve to count time and make sense of similarities and differences between present, past,

105130.book Page 148 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

148

Philosophical Speculations

and future, then time codes may be salvaged from illogicalities plaguing the order of time. But clock time is not simple. Illogicality has been known to plague common sense and mathematical distinctions between past, present, and future. Readers are reminded of Augustine’s exposé on the aporia of the tenses. In his Confessions Augustine asks the simplest question: What is time? His answer begins with a paradox. On the one hand, whereas the past is no longer and the future is not yet, the present is. On the other hand, the present cannot be measured. Unlike past and future intervals of time, the present cannot be assigned a measurable duration. It is an immeasurable instant. In the present instant lies an immediate “now” that cannot be divided into what has already occurred and what has yet to come: “If any fraction of time be conceived that cannot now be divided even into the most minute momentary point, this alone is what we may call time present. But this flies so rapidly from future to past that it cannot be extended by any delay. For if it is extended, it is then divided into past and future. But the present has no extension whatever” (Confessions 11, xv, 20). Logically, present time alone can be measured, since only time that is actually passing and is perceived can be measured. Yet immediate nowness has “no space” or duration whatsoever. It does not endure and is therefore immeasurable. It has no interval that we could “measure from some beginning point to some end” (Confessions 11, xxvii, 34). Aristotle makes the same point. Time is a physical quantity that can be measured by virtue of being continuous and divisible; yet the present is an indivisible instant, without duration or extension. Since it acts as a link of time that separates past and future, the “now” is merely the sign of a continuum, an elusive moment reducible to the end of that which is past and the beginning of that which is to come.

where is time in relation to space? The logical coding of past, present, and future poses many logical problems. So does the distinction between the successive

105130.book Page 149 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

But Where Is Time?

149

and the coexistent. This is what Kant shows in his discussion of time overlaps between causes and effects. An equally difficult aporia can be found in the highest-level duality needed to signify the order of time: namely, the opposition between time and space. Here again a simple encoding mechanism appears to be in agreement with our common-sense perception and understanding of reality. Of all distinctions that the mind can generate, the difference between space and time seems the most harmless. As with all oppositional schemes, however, the question is how much polarity a difference can tolerate if its capacity to “make sense” is to be preserved. Are the two poles so radically different as to be incomparable? Or do they belong to a floating-decimal continuum that introduces overlap if not confusion in the exercise of analytic thought? These questions are not as abstract as they may seem. The age-old debate regarding the relationship between time measurement and bodies moving in space speaks to this issue. Briefly, the question is whether time exists in itself or as an aspect of space and therefore bodies in motion. Augustine is of the former opinion. While created together with the world and bodies in motion, time is not constituted by the motions of sun, moon, and stars (Confessions 11, xxiii, 29). If physical movement should be considered when measuring time, then “why should not the motions of all bodies constitute time?” Why not give equal status to the circuit of a potter’s wooden wheel or the metrical compositions of poetry? Does time cease to exist if the sun stops moving, so that we cannot even measure the duration of its stillness or any other state of physical rest for that matter (including silences in poetry)? And if the sun were to speed up its journey east to east, could we not say that its motion lasted less than the usual day? If anything, time is something that is “common to all things, both great and small,” as opposed to an attribute of the great luminaries created “for signs and for seasons, and for days and years.” Augustine thus concludes that time serves to measure motion, thereby rejecting the common-sense notion according to which “time is the motion of a body” (Confessions 11, xxiv, 31).

105130.book Page 150 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

150

Philosophical Speculations

Augustine argues that time and space should be kept apart. The implication is that time/space differences posited in language are logical and meaningful. But there is a problem: what is time independent of space? If time is to be used to measure motion, how do we measure time in itself (Confessions 11, xxvi, 33)? Augustine remarks that no certain measure of time can be obtained in movements of the luminaries or sounds of poetry. Where then will we find the appropriate measure? If mathematics could come to the rescue of imperfect measures and provide necessary corrections to the irregular movements, would we not have a time scale independent of physical motions in space? Would we not have a tangible expression of Newton’s absolute time, or Locke’s perfectly constant and uniform duration? Although attractive, this answer presupposes that we distinguish relative or apparent time from absolute time. But this solution is not entirely satisfactory as absolute time is still derived from measurements of bodies in motion. Mathematical corrections can be obtained provided that we have moving bodies creating an imperfect time scale in the first place. Time in itself, without reference to bodies in movement, is simply inconceivable. The alternative is to treat time as an aspect of motion, as in Aristotelian philosophy. Heavenly bodies would then mark the passing of time, be they corrected or not. This means that we should emphasize not the duality but rather the continuum that lies between time and space. But this has the effect of undermining the logical division between time and space. Some degree of illogicality is bound to ensue, if only through the absence of a great unifying Body of Time. Of all bodies in motion, which one shall we use as our reference point? For Newton, all things are placed in time as to order of succession. Time is an extensive manifold occupied by a great plurality of things that can be said to exist, move, and change. In Einsteinian theory, the plurality of space-time coordinates becomes even more axiomatic, to the point that Time no longer offers a single frame. According to Einstein, the notion is no longer tenable that two events happening at great distance from one another can be said to occur

105130.book Page 151 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

But Where Is Time?

151

simultaneously, at the same moment in the absolute flow of time. An absolute time scale is unavailable because inconceivable. Time coordinates are inseparable from spatial coordinates, which include bodies of reference, distances, and speeds of motion. A statement about the time of an event can be made on condition that some reference-body is specified and that its arbitrariness is recognized. Even when couched in the language of modern astrophysics, the notion that time depends entirely on the bodily spheres remains hard to grasp. For one thing different settings of the “here and now” are multiplied ad infinitum. Times past and future that do not exist and cannot be observed will mushroom in equal proportion. Another difficulty is that whatever the bodies of reference may be, the observer that does the actual “referring” is bound to be a body operating in a time scale of its own. What would that referring body be? Of all questions to be asked, this is perhaps the easiest to answer. The only referring body known to us that can observe the “extensive manifold of bodies-of-reference” is the human brain. This is the only referring body that addresses the mystery of multiple bodies of reference. It is a body that we cannot evade when addressing the issue of time, a body that we must speak to and that actually does the speaking. A radical version of relativity theory brings us back to a fundamental question: What if time coordinates were embedded not in motions of heavenly bodies but rather in movements of the brain?

105130.book Page 152 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

reticle 16

The Body and Soul of Time

Augustine’s answer to the aporias of linear time lies not in mechanical motions of the bodies. The Church Father does not conceive of time as chronology. The measurement of regular motions of celestial bodies serves a limited function, which is to mark out time. The secret of time lies elsewhere, in movements of the mind and the soul. Augustine argues that past and future times do not exist in themselves but must be thought of as part of the self-presence of mind. Things of the past are drawn out from memories we experience in the present, not from the events themselves, which no longer are. The past is generated by “the words constructed from the images of the perceptions which were formed in the mind, like footprints in their passage through the senses” (Confessions 11, xviii, 23). Images of the past are called to mind and held in the present. The same may be said of things of the future. They result not from direct perceptions or visions of a future that does not exist as yet but rather from the fact that “we generally think ahead about our future actions, and this premeditation is in time present.” Future things cannot be seen; only their causes or signs as perceived and conceived in the here and now. The sight of dawn seen in the present permits me to predict that the sun will soon rise, which implies that I can link my perception of the dawn to an image of the sunrise held in my mind. Signs teach us things about the future but do so always in the present, without any absolute certainty of what the future actually holds (Confessions 11, xviii, 24; xix, 25).

105130.book Page 153 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

The Body and Soul of Time

153

Common sense suggests that there be three times: a past, a present, and a future. In reality, however, it would be more accurate to say that “there are three times; a time present of things past; a time present of things present; and a time present of things future.” According to Augustine, all three times of the present “exist in the soul.” The present of things past belongs to memory; the present of things present pertains to sight; and the present of things future is the object of expectation (Confessions 11, xx, 26). Can this threefold present be measured? Augustine answers in the negative. He observes that time can be measured only while it passes. Past and future times are no longer or not yet passing, which means they cannot be measured. But the present cannot be measured either, for we would then be able to divide its duration into spaces of time that have gone by and those that are about to come (Confessions 11, xxi, 27). Paradoxically, a measurable present is not entirely present, for it extends beyond it own immediate tense to include distant times. If so, what is it that we measure when we measure time? Could it be motions of the heavenly bodies? But why should we grant this privilege to the heavenly spheres? “For why should not the motions of all bodies constitute time?” What if the lights of heaven should cease, and a potter’s wheel still turn round: would there be no time by which we might measure those rotations and say either that it turned at equal intervals, or, if it moved now more slowly and now more quickly, that some rotations were longer and others shorter? And while we were saying this, would we not also be speaking in time? Or would there not be in our words some syllables that were long and others short, because the first took a longer time to sound, and the others a shorter time? O God, grant men to see in a small thing the notions that are common to all things, both great and small. Both the stars and the lights of heaven are “for signs and seasons, and for days and years.” This is doubtless the case, but just as I should not say that the circuit of that wooden wheel was a day, neither would that learned man say that there was, therefore, no time (Confessions 11, xxiii 29).

105130.book Page 154 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

154

Philosophical Speculations

Head of Saint Augustine by Titian (c. 1488–1576). Copyright Cameraphoto / Art Resource, ny s0076289 art70772; S. Maria della Salute, Venice, Italy

Augustine’s point about the diversity of time-measuring bodies is in keeping with Einsteinian relativity. The argument is irrefutable. There is no reason that spheres moving in the sky should be granted the sole privilege of marking out time. By implication, time could exist without them. Motions of heavenly bodies have a history of their own and are by no means eternal. Time would be unaltered if these bodies would cease to move or change their pace, which means that time cannot be defined as the motion of a body. “The motion of a body is one thing, and the norm by which we measure how long it takes is another thing” (Confessions 11, xxiv, 31). Take the unit of time we call “a day” and the period in which the solar motion is completed, or the apparent circuit or motion of the

105130.book Page 155 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

The Body and Soul of Time

155

sun from east to east. Is the unit of time constitutive of this circuit, or is it an independent measure of it? What if for some reasons the circuit were to take less than its normal time? Would it still be a day, and would statements about “the less than normal time observation” have any meaning? Would time cease to be if the sun stopped moving for an hour, and would the notion of an hour of stillness make any sense at all (Confessions 11, xxiii, 30)? These rhetorical questions do not lead Augustine to argue for a multiplicity of reference-bodies governing the many marches of time, as in Einsteinian theory. The Church Father claims, rather, that time is an independent measurement of physical motions. But how do we measure and compare spaces of time, be they astronomic or prosodic (syllables, feet, verses, etc.)? Could we say simply that longer events or units of time are multiples of shorter ones? That begs the question, however: How do we measure shorter durations of time? Time is the protraction of something, but of what we do not know (Confessions 11, xxvi, 33). Is it things enduring in the present that we measure? Not really. After all, when measuring sound intervals, for instance, we do not measure them in the present tense only. Measurement must occur from beginning to end. This means that the sound must pass away and no longer be if it is to be measured. Yet things that are not cannot be measured. Augustine resolves this dilemma by recourse to mind and memory. We do not measure sounds in themselves, which now are not, but “something in my memory which remains fixed” (Confessions 11, xxvii, 35). It is in the mind that we measure times or traces and expectations thereof. Things leave impressions in our mind, and these are what we measure when we measure time (Confessions 11, xxvii, 36). Time would have no duration were it not for our capacity to “extend our thought,” applying the mind to measurements of events and related comparisons between durations of sounds, acts of speech, and bodily motions. Calculations of future times proceed through workings of the mind as well, by way of intentions to be fulfilled. That is, “if anyone wishes to utter a

105130.book Page 156 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

156

Philosophical Speculations

prolonged sound, and if, in forethought, he has decided how long it should be, that man has already in silence gone through a span of time, and committed his sound to memory. Thus he begins to speak and his voice sounds until it reaches the predetermined end. It has truly sounded and will go on sounding. But what is already finished has already sounded and what remains will still sound. Thus it passes on, until the present intention carries the future over into the past. The past increases by the diminution of the future until by the consumption of all the future all is past” (Confessions 11, xxvii, 36, my emphasis). But how does the mind work? How can it distinguish and conjugate three different tenses all at once? Augustine finds the answer in the mind’s threefold ability to expect, consider, and remember, passing that which it expects through that which it considers and into that which it remembers. Our mind contains expectations of future things and memories of things past. It also grants space to things of the present, those which pass away in a swift moment yet receive “enduring consideration” before they become absent. Measurements of time permit memories and expectations of distant times to be compared and experienced as either long or short. While performed in the present, these measurements are constitutive of time, which remains forever “modern,” from Late Latin modernus, of the present time (from Latin modus, measure). Rather than being divisive, time is an integrative presence, a deployment of coordinative attention. When I speak, my mind first extends attention to “the whole” of words to be uttered. For instance, in order to repeat a psalm, the mind must sustain its awareness of the full psalm context throughout its duration in speech. When set in motion and in context, each action passes from expectation to memory, exhausting one and enlarging the other. Each and every action becomes “divided between my memory, which contains what I have repeated, and my expectation, which contains what I am about to repeat.” While shifts in time ensue, considerations of the present tense extending in multiple directions prevail. “My attention is continually present with me, and through it what was future is carried over

105130.book Page 157 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

The Body and Soul of Time

157

so that it becomes past.” Augustine applies this narrative conception of time to shorter component parts of speech (sounds, syllables, words) and to longer durations and stories as well. “This also holds in the even longer action of which that psalm is only a portion. The same holds in the whole life of man, of which all the actions of men are parts. The same holds in the whole age of the sons of men, of which all the lives of men are parts” (Confessions 11, xxviii, 37–8). Our soul constantly attends to present states of things considered, remembered, and expected. These states are harnessed to the immediate; yet they are forward and backward looking at the same time. But there is more to Augustine’s conception of time than a mere reflection on measurements of the mind. In the end, attentions granted to the unfolding of time are merely distractions of our lives. They divide our mind “amid times” and lead us astray from the Lord’s heavenly calling. God’s eternal truth and wisdom should make us forget things that are past and not be drawn by those things that shall be and shall pass away. Intents and reminiscences do not lead us to a contemplation of everlasting delights: “I have been torn between the times, the order of which I do not know, and my thoughts, even the inmost and deepest places of my soul, are mangled by various commotions until I shall flow together into thee, purged and molten in the fire of thy love” (Confessions 11, xxix, 39). These words remind us that wanderings of the mind are like measurements of heavenly motions. They are not to be confused with the eternal life of the spirit that surpasses all worldly movements, be they human or astral (Ricœur 1984: 14–15, 26–7, 30). Putting considerations of eternity aside, Augustinian philosophy teaches us that time is essentially “distended.” The rule of distentio turns every sign action into a threefold composition of consideration, remembrance, and expectation. The end result is well captured in the notion of the signum triceps, a principle vividly illustrated by a baroque painting attributed to Titian (c. 1490–1576). This is the painting of a six-faced monster consisting of a middle-aged man placed above a lion, both of them

105130.book Page 158 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

158

Philosophical Speculations

An Allegory of Prudence, about 1565–70. Painting by Titian (c. 1488–1576). National Gallery, London, ng6376. Presented by David Koetser, 1966

facing the viewer; a profile view of an old man above a wolf’s head, both flanked to the right; and, to the left, a profile view of a young man above the head of a dog. The painting is said to evoke the principle of Prudence as portrayed in philosophical allegories of the Middle Ages, a multifaceted virtue combining Intelligencia, Memoria, and Praevidentia. The triple humanhead imagery synthesizes the three ages of life and related insights into the present (the middle-aged man looking at the viewer), memories of the past (the old man looking to the left), and visions of the future (the young man looking to the right). But what do the animal faces add to the threefold wisdom of man? The zoological imagery apparently dates back to

105130.book Page 159 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

The Body and Soul of Time

159

Macrobius’s fifth-century description of the three-headed statue of Serapis: “The lion, violent and sudden, expresses the present; the wolf, which drags away its victims, is the image of the past, robbing us of memories; the dog, fawning on its master, suggests to us the future, which ceaselessly beguiled us with hope” (Saturnalia, quoted in Seznec 1953: 120). The iconography is remarkable in that it points to the lower and darker side of knowledge of the past, the present, and the future. It suggests a “beastly” aspect to all manifestations of human wisdom exercised vis-à-vis the passing of time. That is, the lion subjects the present to considerations of the rule of force, a ruling entity elevated to the rank of the Powerful and the Eternal. The wolf cheats us out of memories that must be silenced and forgotten. And the dog barks at visions of hope, converting them into fears and apprehensions of the future. Over and beyond the sound choices of Intelligence, Memory, and Prescience, Macrobius’s imagery evokes the arbitrary rule of some eternal present that combines with lapses of memory and fears of the future to produce all the losses and tensions inherent in foldings of the mind. The distentio effect just described is reminiscent of Barthes’s actional code. This is the code involving the ordering of scenes, sequences, and stages of actions and events situated in narrative time. To this “action catalogue” Barthes adds the hermeneutic code governing the narrative enigma. Problems raised and solved by a story revolve around the formulation of a question, the promise of a response, admissions of defeat, and replies that may be ambiguous or partial, delayed or misleading. Hermeneutic processing thus deals with the emplotment and unfolding of a mystery (Barthes 1970: 24, 26, 91–2, 215–16). To use a language less dependent upon the Code, distentio is a force that feeds on motions of narrative “attention” viewed as l’attente, from the French verb attendre, to wait, expect, or await. As already noted, the order of attention is not an immediate presence of the mind. It is rather a command to the senses to be ready for what is deferred, be it the future or remembrance of the past, to be revisited in due time. Attentionality disposes sense activity to respond to signs no longer or not yet uttered.

105130.book Page 160 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

160

Philosophical Speculations

The nervous sign process is forever harnessed to something worth recollecting or waiting for. It chains the “here and now” to memories and “wait and see” anxieties pertaining to things that are present in absentia only. The order of time defers to the machinations of desire, a nervous process that goes beyond the static succession of instances of the pure present. The structural Code is a machine that projects slides of sequential meaning, generating synchronic assemblages that tend to be without movement, feeling, or soul. In contrast, attentionality is driven by a plot. It tells a story that betrays care for the world that exists within-time-ness (Ricœur 1984: 62–3). Sign activity feeds on movement which “is symbolism for the eye; it indicates that something has been felt, willed, thought.” The motions of semiosis do not come from external causes. They come rather from “beginnings and centers of motion from which the will spreads” (Nietzsche 1967: 492, 551n.). All signs and scripts play games with the passing of time. They toy with pre-texts and advances made at the proper time. They revel in forethoughts and afterthoughts of absent things that make a mockery of full presences in the here and now. While sign attentions are always declined in the present tense, they are rife with dialogues projected across times. The ensuing conversations are so playful as to include recollections of signs of the future (recalling John’s prophecies), hopes in signs of the past (Christ resurrecting again, humans reverting to life in Paradise), investments in memory losses (forgetting astromythology), and commitments to lack of foresight (having visions of events that are left systematically undated). These convoluted attentions stretched in all directions are inherent to Sr activity. They do not originate from the pre-narrative domain of practical experience and action, as Ricœur would have it (Ricœur 1984: 53, 74). Movement across time is rather an immediate effect of the attentional deferment inhering in all “sign action potentials” – signs that constitute effective actions and potential transmissions at the same time. The emplotment of sign attentionality is essentially twofold. Hints conveyed in the present clearly point to images of the

105130.book Page 161 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

The Body and Soul of Time

161

not yet and the no longer. Signs of remote times, however, are risky “action potentials” that refuse to be made fully and finally present. Hints of distant times must therefore be lacking in clarity. They offer covert allusions, intimations that require sign expressions to be barred from immediate sight. Their suggestiveness precludes a full disclosure of memories and signs of future narration. This is to say that semiosis is a process of narrative deferens (Latin deference, deferment) that “contains” memories of the past and expectations of the future, conveying and withholding them all at once. This process of deferens is by necessity a risky venture, a hazardous enterprise that weaves lines of secrecy and speculation into all moments of semiosis. Signs “considered” are full of things safely remembered and expected, but they also mix with things forgotten and unforeseen that introduce elements of chaos and chance into the passing of time. In the final analysis, promises of pre- and postfiguration are conjectural at best. Strokes of chance should be expected, even in things that seem to arrive by design (ibid.: 43). The threefold present is driven by the order of distentio, or the Augustinian “dialectic of expectation, memory, and attention, each considered no longer in isolation but in interaction with one another.” The same can be said of attentionality whose “engagement consists completely in the active ‘transit’ of what was future in the direction of what becomes past.” To paraphrase Ricœur, we might say that it is this combined action of expectation, memory, and attention that sustains attentionality, stretching it in three different directions all at once (ibid.: 3, 14–15, 18–19, 20–1, 30). While constantly operative, however, the distentio principle produces effects that go far beyond those of continuity across time. For one thing “distention” of the mind requires the noncoincidence of signs of consideration, expectation, and remembering. These dislocations produce tensions in the narrative present. Discordance constantly emerges from “the very concordance of the intentions of expectation, attention, and memory. It is to this enigma of the speculation on time that the poetic act of emplotment replies” (ibid.: 20–1). Distention also

105130.book Page 162 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

162

Philosophical Speculations

entails constant shifts in the sites and attentions of language, shifts reflecting the noncoincidence of the three modalities of signification. Things expected or unforeseen come to pass and turn into signs remembered or forgotten. Signs are forever on the move. But disparities in nervous sign activity do not come solely from the distentio principle, or the non-identity of things considered, expected, and remembered. They also come from the obverse principle, which consists in measurements of contentio, from Latin com-, together, and tendere, to stretch out, to strive after (in opposition, combat, or debate). This is the other side of Ricœurian and Augustinian hermeneutics – to be more precise, the unspoken side, the lower animal half of Titian’s painting. I am alluding to the side covered with “signs in combat.” Disputes plague the “contentious” operations of inconsideration, forgetfulness, and shortsightedness that join forces to produce the darker reservations of narrative time. Memory losses and lack of insight and foresight engender a wide range of sign effects that depart from a progressive transmission of sign potentials over time. These effects range from anxiety and confusion to apprehension and agitation. They include fear of the unknown and a sense of loss and arbitrariness in life. But they also generate feelings of unexpected relief and joyful surpass. Whatever the effect may be, the end result is always the same: a reminder that outcomes may fail to deliver promises of history and plot. Attention is a movement that persists; perdurat attentio, says Augustine. Persistence translates into a map or a plot. Signs mapped on to the present prepare the ground for a future that insists on becoming the past, hence the “no longer” destined to haunt another hopeful present. Measurements of attention deployed through sign calculations produce a narrative algorithm, a method of dealing with certain kinds of problems and related speculations on time. With every semiotic algorithm comes a particular rhythm that induces signs to shift in and out of structures permitting movement: the before and the after, the background and the foreground, the implicit and the explicit,

105130.book Page 163 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

The Body and Soul of Time

163

the illicit and the licit, the covert and the overt. Sign “algorhythms” may be played crescendo or serially, with pessimism or optimism. They can be subjected to pendulum effects or the spiralling of ups and downs that lead to a good or a bad ending, depending on the plot. These are modes of speculation on time that can captivate, scare, lose, or bore an audience through the appropriate pacing of the plot and related shifts in narrative time. To sum up, the order of attentio is a command to be in readiness for signs recalled or deferred. It is an order that calls out for signs of things worth remembering or waiting for. Signs under attention are always “distended” by the attentes and vestiges of desire. Expressions of the here and now are set against shadows of the no longer and the not yet, remote times brought together and “acting up” in the narrative present. But the interplay of consideration, remembrance, and expectation is never purely integrative. Distentio also requires some measure of discordance, hence the dialectic of inconsideration, oblivion, and shortsightedness. These negative aspects of the nervous sign process point to the rule of contentio, which introduces struggle into the rank ordering of signs to be considered or ignored, remembered or forgotten, anticipated or unforeseen. In the final analysis, it is the interplay of distentio and contentio that generates shifts in the closures and disclosures of the now, the no longer, and the not yet. Sign activity is a speculative market regulated by shifts in the investments of time and desire.

105130.book Page 164 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

reticle 17

Variations on the Signum Triceps

As with Augustine, Deleuze (1994: 76) views time as a product of “narrative contemplation,” a meditative process whereby the past and the future become integral dimensions and contractions of the living present. Traces of the past are like scars that mark the passage of time. They are signs not of past wounds but of the present fact of having been wounded. Unlike Kant and Augustine, however, Deleuze denies primacy to selfsame principles of the timeless mind or soul. What prevails is rather a world of differences, or the forces of chance, multiplicity, and becoming pervading a “chaosmos” animated by infinite velocities (Guattari 1995: 59). The Nietzschean concept of eternal return is to be understood in that light, not as an illustration of linear time but rather as a constant affirmation and returning of dissemblance and disparateness. The eternal return is a repetition of that which keeps differing. It is like a circle displacing itself at the end of a straight line, producing nothing but distorted similes, decentred identities, perverted effects, and unachieved goals (Deleuze 1994: 299). Pathology can be found everywhere, even in repetition (Deleuze 1994: 290). Take for instance the “gone/there” (fort/da) refrain repeatedly uttered by an eighteenth-month child throwing out of its bed a reel attached to the end of a string. According to Guattari, the child’s compulsion to repeat is not a wishful playing out of the mother’s departure and return, as in Freudian theory. It does not stand for mummy going away and then coming back. Nor is it a point of insertion of a predetermined

105130.book Page 165 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Variations on the Signum Triceps

165

language and symbolic order in the constitution of the subject, as in Lacan. The fort/da game is not a means for language to destroy the object and replace it with the logic of desire conveyed through plays of signs. The child’s game is rather an autopoietic assemblage, a word-reel-string-curtain-observer equipment emerging onto open-ended territorialities. Through this simple apparatus the “child encounters unforeseen Universes of the possible, with incalculable, virtual repercussions” (Guattari 1995: 74). The territorialities in question are explored by a desiring machine that builds assemblages of the self through “a new mastery of the object, of touch, of spatiality.” The game thus played is “a matter of a rich, multivalent, heterogenetic machine that can neither be legitimately fixed to a maternal-oral stasis, nor to a language stasis … We have to choose between a mechanical conception of deathly repetition and a machinic conception of processual opening.” The Freudian death principle governs the automatic-repetition machine, whereas the desiring assemblage is driven by the opening up of new territorialities and moves between them. Sign movements are thus characterized by “the persistence of a loss of consistency of the assemblage, or if one prefers, from the consistency of a loss of consistency” (ibid.: 75). This is not to say that we should reject principles of consistency and stability, or duration and conservation. On the contrary. Dot-like moments that stretch in time are the only dots we know. All sensations are subject to “distentions” of the soul or mind, even those that occur in a single instant. Each sensation is a composition where multiple vibrations are “contracted” on a nervous surface and contemplated for a while, preserved in such ways that “what comes before has not yet disappeared when what follows appears. This is its way of responding to chaos. Sensation … is Monument … That is why the brainsubject is called soul or force, since only the soul preserves by contracting that which matter dissipates, or radiates, furthers, reflects, refracts, or converts … Contraction is not an action but a pure passion, a contemplation that preserves the before in the after” (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 211–12).

105130.book Page 166 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

166

Philosophical Speculations

Sensation is a meditative composition. Like any other assemblage, sensation contracts the elements that compose it. It also disintegrates and disconnects with age, feeding into other compositions or giving way to chaos and discomposure. Sensation does not escape the weariness and fragility of all those vibrations contracted through the makings of sense. As with life itself, the ability of sign and sense to compose durable meaning, beyond a mere repetition of opinion, is vulnerable to the passing of time. Derrida’s take on the issue of distentions over time revolves around the concept of différance. The term is well chosen, as it appears to differ from itself. It is written with the graphic infraction of the “petit a” (instead of an e), a phonetically silent trace of its own différance (Derrida 1973: 129, 131–2). The word evokes plays and fissures of difference evolving in space. But it also connotes “the movement that consists in deferring by means of delay, delegation, reprieve, referral, detour, postponement, reserving. In this sense, différance is not preceded by the originary and indivisible unity of a present possibility that I could reserve, like an expenditure that I would put off calculatedly or for reasons of economy. What defers presence, on the contrary, is the very basis on which presence is announced or desired in what represents it, its sign, its trace” (Derrida 1981: 8; see 1973: 88–9, 139, 149). As with the Latin differre (différer in French), the process of differentiation has a temporal meaning, which is to defer, to put off something to a future time. When applying this concept to sign activity, the implication is that no event can be fully experienced in the undifferentiated present, not even live speech. Sounds and words uttered are not an immediate presence of meaning, object, or self to consciousness. Nor are phonic inscriptions a direct presence of writing to speech. Sounds, meanings, and inscriptions are so many moments of differentiation and deferment composed in language. As with signs, the subject cannot be constituted outside of this process of différance, without “being divided from itself, in becoming space, in temporizing, in deferral” (Derrida 1981: 5, 29).

105130.book Page 167 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Variations on the Signum Triceps

167

Traces of deferral are not to be confused with metaphysical absences of the sign, a signifier “representing” something in its absence or taking the place of something else that is present. When conceived in this representational fashion, the sign comes after and is derived from an original and lost presence to which it returns. It acts like a secondary and provisional detour, a deferred presence meant to be reappropriated by the mediation of signs. In reality, the deferment generated through sign activity destroys the very possibility of a final encounter with reality. “Whether it is a question of verbal or written signs, monetary signs, electoral delegates, or political representatives, the movement of signs defers the moment of encountering the thing itself, the moment at which we could lay hold of it, consume or expend it, touch it, see it, have a present intuition of it” (Derrida 1973: 138). Derrida argues that traces of différance can be found in all sign activity. This leads him to challenge all notions of certainty and direct perception or intuition based on immediate experiences of the living present, as in Husserlian phenomenology. It also allows him to question concepts of memory involving signs in absentia, images removed from the self-presence of intuition and perceptions of the absolute now. Contrary to most thinking, memory is not a pale reflection of a pristine experience stripped of its nonpresence by means of remembrance. Re-membering does not re-produce a primordial presence, a re-petitive, re-presentational image of an organic perception or experience that was once conjugated in the original present (ibid.: 53–8). Acts designed to capture pure presences and later re-presentations thereof are figments of the metaphysical imagination. But what about the Husserlian notions of retention and protention? Do they not capture the distentions of remembrance and expectation cohabiting in the narrative present? Derrida answers in the negative, in that both concepts presuppose restitutions of present times that are no longer or not yet. They are mere additions inserted into events and experiences otherwise entrenched in the living present. In contrast, the tracing of différance conjugated in the past is “a possibility which must

105130.book Page 168 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

168

Philosophical Speculations

not only inhabit the pure actuality of the now but must constitute it through the very movement of [différance] it introduces. Such a trace is … more ‘primordial’ than what is phenomenologically primordial” (ibid.: 67). By conceiving the act of signifying as tracing, Derridean grammatology introduces movement into the process of signification. It does so by constituting the present through its relations to the past and the future. Retentions and protentions are already built into motions of a nonsimple, nonprimordial presence. Given the universality of the trace, Husserl’s attempt to separate representational or expressive usages of the sign from fictitious or indicative communications between self and self (as when talking to oneself during moments of “solitary mental life”) is compromised as well. In the end, “the sign is originally wrought by fiction” (ibid.: 56–7, 66, 142, 146). The motions of time are inscribed into experiences of the “here and now.” This means that the present is never simply identical to itself. There is no primordial or monumental “present in itself,” without otherness and the presence of nonpresent times. “The self of the living present is primordially a trace.” The present thus acts as “the sign of signs, the trace of traces … a trace of the effacement of a trace” (ibid.: 85, 156). The same can be said of all forces constituted in différance, even those operating in the field of metaphysics. For instance, the intelligible exists only by virtue of its ability to defer the sensible it differs from, putting investments of the senses fictively on reserve. The same can be said of intuition in relation to concept, the mind in relation to life, life in relation to matter, or nature in relation to culture, hence all aspects of physis in relation to “techné, nomos, society, freedom, history, spirit, etc.” (ibid.: 148–9). In the realm of signification, no expenditure made in the “here and now” can ever cancel the economy of savings and investments of meanings in reserve. Memories are not retentions of the subject remembering the past that used to be present. Nor can we say that expectations are protentions of the subject anticipating the future that will become present. Neither the past nor the future can ever be

105130.book Page 169 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Variations on the Signum Triceps

169

“simple” presents. Rather, all retentional traces and protentional openings are constitutive of the “immediately present.” Their combined action produces a temporalization of sense that incorporates forces, intervals, and differences into compositions of the present. Temporal otherness is already part of lines traced in the present and the identity of presence in time. Traces in time that die like voices fading away are not tracked down after they have been heard. Rather they are tracked down as soon as they are sounded, thus generating the kind of presence that “dislocates, displaces, and refers beyond itself” (ibid.: 156). Recollections and anticipations entail an economy of differential forces that are neither fully present nor totally absent. They are set in motion by energetics involving differences in quantities, which is the essence of force. Signs of the past and the future are constantly kindled by the active discord and interplay of such forces, as in Nietzschean philosophy (Deleuze 1970: 49; Derrida 1973: 148–9). The Derridean take on distentio and the functioning of memory is reminiscent of the Freudian concept of facilitation. This term is neurologically inspired. It denotes a nervous memory or perception pathway opening up or clearing out because of a change in resistance levels. As with sign processing, differential activity constitutes the neural energetics of memory. “The origin of memory and of the psyche as a memory in general (conscious or unconscious) can only be described by taking into account the difference between the facilitation thresholds, as Freud says explicitly. There is no facilitation [Bahnung] without difference and no difference without a trace” (Derrida 1973: 149; see 130). The Heideggerian “care-structure” is another powerful way to make sense of the distentio effect in semiosis. Heidegger considers the sign to be an act of circumspection conveying an announcement of what is coming – for example, a south wind received by the farmer as a sign of rain. As in ancient astrology, the sign is a warning signal. It constitutes an act of foresight engraved on the moment of perception itself. What it anticipates is not something added on to what is already present at hand and merely occurring. The warning effect of the sign-equipment

105130.book Page 170 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

170

Philosophical Speculations

speaks rather to a prior involvement that makes us ready for something we are “attentive to” and are “concerned with.” “Only by the circumspection with which one takes account of things in farming, is the south wind discovered in its Being.” The sign “contains” a presence in the sense of delivering it and keeping it in store all at once. This is to say that “the Being of what is most closely ready-to-hand within-the-world possesses the character of holding-itself-in and not emerging” (Heidegger 1962: 110–12). As with Hegel’s concept of experience, the meaning of the Heideggerian sign resides in its being “underway.” Its essence lies in its “becoming,” in the “not yet” of the “already present” and in the “already present” of the “not yet” (Heidegger 1970: 116). Signs of the present are shot through with non-being, contaminated with the no-longer and the not-yet, the going-out and the coming-into presence (Heidegger 1959: 114). Remembrance is also set into motion by the care-structure. In his reading of Nietzsche, Heidegger asks what representational ideas we can form of “that which was.” This is a question about which “being as forward willing” has little to say. The “it was” resists powers and pursuits of the will. It turns into “the sorrow and despair of all willing which, being what it is, always wills forward, and is always foiled by the bygones that lie fixed firmly in the past” (Heidegger 1968: 92). At the root of willing one finds revulsion and revenge against the “it was,” refusing the resistance and revolt of the past against powers of the will (or the will to power). “This alone is revenge itself: the will’s revulsion against time and its ‘It was’,” says Nietzsche (in ibid.: 93). Paradoxically, the will’s revulsion to time frozen and converted into dead past ends up chaining the will to what it hates the most, the “it was.” The will can free itself from this hateful dependence on the dead past by willing the eternal return. In the “constant recurrence of the same” lies the going and coming of everything, hence the eternity of what is willed and therefore of willing itself. This is not the same as willing that there be

105130.book Page 171 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Variations on the Signum Triceps

171

no longer any passing of time. It is not a metaphysical commitment to eternity, a timeless present designed to last forever. Nor is it a willing of the pure present, the kind that belongs to the now of the immediate moment and that shows detachment from absent times not yet or no longer “in being.” The eternal return is not a wishful reinstatement of the full presence of time, a reaffirmation of Being defined as “being present.” It is even less a will to bringing back the past for purposes of repentance, to be thrown back into the past through signs of “forgive and forget.” Freedom of the will requires rather “the kind of going that does not get away from the will, but comes back, bringing back what is gone” (ibid.: 104). Nietzsche views his doctrine of eternal recurrence of the same as “the closest approximation of a world of becoming to a world of being: – high point of the meditation” (Nietzsche 1967: 617). But how should this doctrine be understood in terms other than variations on Heraclitus’s cyclical worldview, or the biblical imagery of recurring seasons, “eternal transients,” and related assurances of the Noahic Pact? Does the Nietzschean return simply point to cycles of time lingering on to all eternity? Part of Heidegger’s answer to this question lies in his discussion of memory. The word memory once denoted a form of concentration, a meditation or pious devotion where the mind abides with something that is past, present, and future “all at the same time.” “What is past, present, and to come, appears in the oneness of its own present being.” Retention is operative in memory but “refers as much to what is as to what is present and to come” (Heidegger 1968: 140). The old English word thanc captures this aspect of memory, which goes beyond strict remembrance or history written after the fact. It evokes a thoughtful meditation on what concerns and speaks to us, what we are committed to and is gathered and kept in our proximity so that we can dwell on it and in its thinking (ibid.: 138–47, 151). Remembering is not a simple journey back in time, a reversion to a presence no longer present. Memory is rather a constant

105130.book Page 172 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

172

Philosophical Speculations

return on investments in time, a retreat in perennial distentions of the mind. In remembering lies a durable re-collection of hopes gathering and recurring in a present tense forever “tense” with emotion. This “re-calling” involving things called in or off from the past, all of which are part of a mission in the “here and now” – the pursuit of an ongoing “calling” reflecting the call of duty but also the unknown.

105130.book Page 173 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

reticle 18

All in a Bar

Studies of Sr activity revolve around a basic issue: the relationship between one esse or s (for sign or signal) and another, or the bar operating right in the middle of the s/s connection. In order to address this enigmatic bar, semiotics must relinquish the notion that a signifier stands for a concrete object or an abstract concept, representing a thing or a thought in the realm of language. In opposition to all “representational” views of things that make “sense,” the science of signs must view its object of study as a system of interrelated elements. Sign compositions are bundles of relations that are not reducible to extra-linguistic references originating in the tangible world or the intangible mind. In this book and those that preceded it, sign connections are rather viewed as bundles of nervous activity subject to a threefold process. Semiosis is governed by what may be called the order-of-desire-in-motion, a logic of convergence and divergence (the sagittal plane of 3-D Mind 1) incorporating the forces of affect (the axial plane of 3-D Mind 2) and the motions of time (the coronal plane of this book). This approach to semiosis presupposes that the bar connecting one esse to another be viewed as five things all at once: 1

2

a mathematical line, i.e., a relational and fractional measure (convergent, divergent) that divides and binds cognitive acts forming a situational equation; a legal bar, i.e., a system of law and normative judgment governed by a profession of faith and morality;

105130.book Page 174 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

174

3

4

5

Philosophical Speculations

a prison bar, i.e., a place of confinement and repressive force directed against acts of simple mediation or downright subversion; an evening bar, i.e., a place of transgressive activity where signs under repression are kept alive through measures of co-optation, displacement, resistance, or subversion; a musical bar, i.e., a line of pre- and post-figurative (in)attention shifting through the narrative score.

Bar 1 is cognitive. First of all, the s/s connection is logical and mathematical. It lends itself to geometric arrangements of similarities and differences. Lines of rh convergence and lh divergence constitute the orderly and variable constellations of semiotic measurement.

The line that lies between one sign and another acts like a synapse in that it is both an empty space that divides and a copula that connects. When seen diacritically, the bar functions fractionally. It divides one sign action potential from another and breaks up all phenomena into separate quantities and values. But the line also works syncretically, connecting sign measures within integrative equations. Given this copulative line, no esse (Latin, to be) can stand alone, like a self-sufficient essence ignoring the complex computations of semiosis. One sign makes sense only when affecting and affected by other signs. “Signaptic” actions are produced and evolve within assemblages of sign operations functioning as semiotic machines. Each sign quantum is part of a universe of actions (images, sounds, practices) that speak to other productions of sense and meaning. The bar thus points to the interconnectedness of verbs – to analogies, oppositions,

105130.book Page 175 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

All in a Bar

175

and mediations that constitute the orderly business of la langue. It offers a measure against the conceptual or empirical removal of the esse from the nervous sign process where it belongs. Bar 2 is normative. The threadlike mark placed between one sign and another is not merely a coded line. By definition, a code refers to lawful measurements based on logic. But the word also denotes standards of conduct and moral judgment. One definition often excludes the other; knowledge is one thing, the code of morals is something else. In reality, the code always operates on both levels simultaneously. It implies both a lawful arrangement of signs and a measure of morality. The code preaches at the same time as it predicates. It manufactures a cognitive grid that performs logical conjunctions and disjunctions of all sorts. Yet it also generates a “code of honour,” a value system full of injunctions and teachings designed to “draw the line” between right and wrong.

The line linking one esse to another functions vertically and frontally, placing some signs above and in front of the bar and others below and after. Signs ranked first and above receive the kind of attention that is in keeping with lessons of rightness and wrongness. They converge on an “ideal code” deserving formal recognition, be it through moral, rational, or interpretive means. Every Sr assemblage thus points to a bar defined as a place of judgment guided by a profession of law, sound thinking, and public morality. By implication, every esse is an

105130.book Page 176 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

176

Philosophical Speculations

“essay,” an act of judgment resembling the deliberations of a literary trial. Bar 3 is repressive. The bar contains semiotic measures other than cognitive and normative ones. The emotive and wilful character of Sr activity is one such additional measure, not to be subsumed under its normative function, its sense of moral sapience or good taste. The authority function of the semiotic process calls for an exercise of power achieved by way of repression, impositions pursued beyond acts of judgment. To use the legal metaphor, the pronouncements of language require that unlawful utterances be suppressed and refused a hearing, hence that they be ruled out of court, sentenced, and confined behind bars.

Cognitive and normative attentionality thrives on a good dose of inhibition and inattention. We have seen how effects of arousal and vigilance obtained through depolarizations and graded potentials presuppose a complex summation of polarizations and hyperpolarizations that bar alternative pathways from transmitting competing signs and signals. Acts of neural mindfulness are built upon massive measures of electrical and chemical resistance. In the end, positive attentionality is merely the tip of a neural iceberg that does more hiding than revealing. Accordingly, codes grant unequal attention to sign relations. Some connections are brought to the fore while others are bracketed. The interplay between the overt and the covert – between the explicit, the implicit, and the illicit – is part and parcel of Sr processing. Sign relations plotted into logical schemes and cognitive machines are rife with gaps and silences, secrets that speak volumes about the schemings and machinations of semiosis.

105130.book Page 177 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

All in a Bar

177

The bar entails a measure of distance that gives rise to disconnection and concealment effects of all kinds. These effects can never be fully annulled. Otherwise signs would be lacking in discernment, succumbing to massive indiscretion and sheer indifference. The line that lies between signs cannot merely assemble and disassemble things into cognitive and moral grids. It must also dissemble critical parts of what signs are meant to delineate. Sign activity proceeds along two directions. One path consists of upper-road signs made explicit and dressed to the nines. The other is made up of lower-road signs that are kept in the dark and dressed down. Lacan describes the end result: “A substitutive signifier has been put in the place of another signifier to constitute the effect of metaphor. It refers the signifier that it has usurped elsewhere. If, in fact, one wished to preserve the possibility of a handling of a fractional type, one would place the signifier that has disappeared, the repressed signifier, below the principal bar, in the denominator, unterdruckt” (Lacan 1979: 248–9). To use Nietzschean terminology, the dominion of signs is founded on battles of over-wills and under-wills, superscripts and subscripts, esses that come first and others that must follow in the sense of ranking or being bracketed second. Chains of signification are not flexible series of joined links. Chains hooking upper and lower class signs are more like fetters tied to sign assemblages, shackles imposed by the will to power in semiosis. Morality and repression are two sides of the same coin. A code of honour tied to principles of logical codification must spell out right from wrong. But it cannot do so without exercising considerable discretion and circumspection. While the unspeakable must be addressed, crude renderings of the unspeakable are unacceptable. Given this exigency, some parts of the moral code must be dissembled through proper enclosure; they must be put in brackets, so to speak. Accordingly, codes are in the habit of dressing up with braces and brackets, defined as grammatical substitutes for the French braguette, a flap of cloth designed to conceal the improper parts. When attracting attention, a corpus is naturally concerned with breaches of decorum.

105130.book Page 178 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

178

Philosophical Speculations

Without parenthetic devices of the overt and the covert, the sign process leaves its compositional body entirely exposed. Indecent ways are commonly mended by the use of seemly habits, clothing the secret parts of the code. “It is the least honourable parts of the body that we clothe with the greatest care” (1 Cor. 12.23). Bracketing the private parts of the code is a habit of mind. Semiosis is an interplay of literal assertions and lateral insertions. Foreground indices are coupled with subindices of polysemic evocations lurking in the background. Sign expressions and impressions, however, are not self-sufficient. They have another requirement, which is that all disturbing associations be repressed – that signs of the illicit be put on the index and go underground. Sr activity thus brings together three levels of signification: (1) things clearly written down through visible dispositions of the nervous sign system; (2) sub verbo entries of the corpus, associations predisposed to insertions between the lines; and (3) cognate linkages written off from surface activity, or signs of an in-disposition to hear them out. I should stress that sign interpretation does not consist in paying attention to underground associations, converting them into foreground material. Knowledge is not obtained by simply removing the brackets, lifting the veil of the signifier, as it were. Making sense of sign activity does not require that the shell be forced to recede before some kernel of truth. Meaning is even less a matter of letting the medium reveal its message, or the symptom disclose the cause or nature of a deeper thing. Nor is it a question of letting the representing sign refer back to an esse or essence present in thought. All these frames of logical and moral reference are like the leaning tower of Pisa. They will not be straightened up without losing their characteristic features. In reality, the cognitive and informative leanings of sign activity are never straightforwardly structured. They are always “framed up” through the euphemisms of “proper” language. The schemings and machinations of sign propriety form an integral part of every frame, not to be removed through interpretation with impunity. If brackets are effaced, something

105130.book Page 179 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

All in a Bar

179

will be lost. Note that interpretations bent on removing the veil are not necessarily faulty or misleading. In the end, they are no different from all frames of reference. They too show attractions and leanings of their own. Bar 4 is transgressive. Normative considerations demand that a ban be placed on illicit indirections of sign activity. This repressive bar, however, can be obtained on one condition: that the “unspeakable” be named and identified so that it can be effectively avoided. Injunctions such as “don’t think of pink elephants” are inaptly straightforward and will not work. More is to be gained by letting the unthinkable be recognized in a roundabout way, by means of distortion. Devious attention is therefore required in spelling out whatever it is that should be silenced; caution and discretion are needed when courting voices of impropriety and when ruling them out of court. The task is particularly delicate and requires dissembling and displacement. Signs in command are obliged to speak to the unmentionable, which means that the ruling order is bound to feed on traces and hints of transgression. Paradoxically, expressions of the governing code will exercise censorship by “containing” subversive measures of their own.

105130.book Page 180 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

180

Philosophical Speculations

Licit expressions of language are in the habit of subsuming illicit meanings under the dominant code. This is a habit that may reinforce the powers-that-be in the realm of speech. Efforts to reduce immorality to absolute silence are relatively weak tactics. The law stands more to gain by turning the unspeakable to its advantage. Transgression is a powerful instrument of the law. Every normative schema enhances its attractiveness through the activity of scheming. Signs of the Greek sema are trivial expressions of this double-edged schema (Greek skhêma, Sanscrit sáhas), a term that denotes not only a stylistic device and a manner of speaking but also “a plan to conquer” – a will to power governing all conventions of the ruling order. The oblique stroke that ties one esse to another is full of indirect references to things that must be suppressed and yet remain offensive. Here, in this tendency to pay attention to the darker side of morality even when edifying it, lies the obliquity of the sign process. Just as morality calls for repression, so too repression is an invitation to transgression. Repressive mechanisms do not entail the concentration of undivided attention on dominant expressions of morality alone. The pleasure obtained from victories of the moral order usually contains a measure of jouissance attained through breaches of faith, “beyond the pleasure principle” (Lacan 1979: 281). The bar where signs gather is always a place of debauchery, a site where the law behaves partially and turns into an unsettling in-fraction of itself. Even when meticulously (Latin, metus, fear) and fearfully moral, attention thrives on a tension, a deep-seated anxiety that stems from the attractions of a “gap between culture and its destruction” (Barthes 1973: 15). Barthes defines this gap as the fear and pleasure of rebellion and transgression. The meaning of Sr activity lies partly in this gap. The real power of meaning is not to be found in the undivided en-soi (in-itself) of the signified object. Nor does it lie in the divided pour-soi of différance, something that is what it is not and is not what it is. Semiosis is rather ruled by l’hors-de-soi: signs are always “beside themselves” in that they constantly rebel against laws of their own making.

105130.book Page 181 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

All in a Bar

181

Sign theories often ignore “the sanctity of transgression” (Bataille 1957: 100). They pay insufficient attention to the double-bind implications of ruling signs, those that occupy higher-class positions and yet must address issues concerning the lowly and the unspeakable. Formal cognitivism is a case in point. More often than not it proposes an analytic perspective on the classificatory function of sign activity, thereby offering a limited view on what categorical “junctions” and “classes” are all about. Logic that is taken too literally ignores effects of class distinction or loss. It also fails to address effects of moral “injunctions” and “classified” information. Cognitive categories are without categorical imperatives. They are dictions without dictums and interdictions. They produce scripts that lose all sense of prescription. Cognitivism grants even less attention to the enigma of moral teachings hiding in anagogy, ethics that take refuge in the secrecy of dreamlike allegory. Psychoanalysis is equally dismissive of this moral-unconscious riddle. Freud reduces anagogy to a tendency towards “over-interpretation,” a faulty method that seeks to “disguise the fundamental circumstances in which dreams are formed and to divert interest from their instinctual roots” (Freud 1976: 670). The Kantian or Jungian notion that moral considerations can be found in unreflective dreams is at odds with Freud’s distinction between moral consciousness and the instinctual determinations and transgressive ways of the unconscious. On this point the Jungian and Kantian position is to be preferred over the Freudian. Advocates of the anagogical method are on the right interpretive track. But they are right for the wrong reasons. Their tendency is to reduce anagogical schemes to symbolic illustrations of a code of morals otherwise expressible through conscious language. As opposed to this view, sign theory should recognize a fundamental tendency in semiosis: the compulsion to hide the law, removing it from direct sight and covering it with convoluted imagery. Signs can anathematize unmentionable things by using words to that effect, but they cannot speak of the unspeakable without contravening their own law. This “double bind” situation (Bateson 1973)

105130.book Page 182 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

182

Philosophical Speculations

involves two injunctions: one forbidding subjects to talk about the unutterable and another forbidding them to articulate the first rule. The end result consists in sign activity employing devious ways of addressing illicit things, speaking to them while denying them the attentions they do not deserve. Through anagogical displacement (disguising the law), moral discourse banishes signs of immorality while also harnessing their powers to the dominant code. Normative speech ends up violating its own law, as it must. Transgression is an integral part of the law. Bar 5 is narrative. The passing of time is another central feature of sign activity. The axial line separating one esse from another can be drawn horizontally, between the staff and the rank and file, one above the other. But the line can also be drawn vertically, across staff, between sounds of the here and now and notes of the hitherto and the hereafter: in other words, between a sign that comes first and another that comes after. The bar is a line within a musical score. Signs nourish one another only by means of the time interval that lies in the middle of every semiotic composition.

In keeping with a coronal view of Sr activity, this book has shown the emplotment of language to be governed by the dialectic of narrative attentio. This dialectic entails a system of “attentes” combining both rules of distentio and contentio. On the side of distentio, all sign actions synchronize notes of static differences with tones of moving deferens – sounds of deferment performed out of deference for the hopes and the fears, the memories and the expectations of the narrative plot. Semiosis is harnessed to the e-motive powers of time, to memories of the past that come together with expectations of the future to mark the anxieties and “distentions” of narrative time. On the side of contentio, sign activity involves the interplay of memory

105130.book Page 183 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

All in a Bar

183

losses and shortsightedness vis-à-vis the possible and the probable, forces constantly intervening in the foldings of signs in narrative motion. By virtue of this principle, semiosis thrives on a certain measure of amnesia, be it retrograde (forgetting the past) or anterograde (the inability to form new memories and to anticipate immediate developments that follow). This twofold mapping of signs-in-motion is a far cry from the timeless perspective of the savage mind or forgetful bricoleur living synchronically and “unhistorically,” a codifying mind echoing the Nietzschean “beast that forgets” (Lévi-Strauss 1966: 263). Unlike the logical code, the nervous sign process thrives on speculations in time. It takes vital interest in things that were and might have been and also those that might or will surely be. As already stated, “movement is symbolism for the eye; it indicates that something has been felt, willed, thought” (Nietzsche 1967: 492). This principle can now be inverted and receive its proper direction: symbolism is movement for the eye. The will to “sense” and meaning is at the origin of all attentional moves, motions that are not conditioned “from the outside – not caused – I require beginnings and centers of motion from which the will spreads” (ibid.: 551n.). In order to signify, “sense” must be attended and orchestrated through fluxes in time, a requirement that sets meaning in action and brings it to life. Because in movement, signs are empowered to touch travellers at the right moment, moving them to tears, anger, laughter, or pity, to mention just a few possible motions of stories that play with the passing of time. The same cannot be said of logical systems governed by a timeless code, hence minds devoid of a will to emotive power. They stand still and aloof with their own narrative, with no anxieties concerning times other than the present literally unfolding before their eyes. Unlike logic aspiring to a stable way of life, sign actions are in constant motion. They have no fixed point of reference. They do not entail movements away from or closer to some immutable pillar, be it a first origin, a final climax, or a timeless model. Being born and evolving in a fluid milieu, each sign

105130.book Page 184 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

184

Philosophical Speculations

action is without a model to imitate, a first origin to commemorate, or a final destination to pursue. No sign is the seed of a predetermined outcome, an origin without antecedents, an end product without further consequences. Signs are forces of becoming. “To become is never to imitate, nor to ‘do like,’ nor to conform to a model … There is no terminus from which you set out, none of which you arrive at or which you ought to arrive at … The question ‘What are you becoming?’ is particularly stupid.” Like a moving dialogue, sign activity points to “what a conversation is – simply the outline of a becoming” (Deleuze and Parnet 1987: 2). The notion that signs are without fixed essences undermines all essentialistic approaches to the interpretive practice. Essentialistic accounts of the sign process can take one of three forms: teleology, genealogy, and anagogy. These are three principles that have already been illustrated at some length (see Chevalier 1997). Briefly, teleology is forward looking. It emphasizes signs of the future, reducing behaviour, text, and history to final ends and visions of destiny and promises of things to come. Signs of the hereafter foregrounded in this fashion can be found in divination, astrology, and prophecy. These interpretive modes guided by the logic of telos are prevalent in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Signification understood in this manner is endowed first and foremost with a disposition to “predict.” Genealogy moves in the opposite direction, towards the past. Signs governed by the rule of genos are interpreted on the basis of how they begin or where they come from, not where they are heading for. The genealogical approach to interpretive activity is predominantly a product of the Renaissance, modern humanism, and the growth of scientific scholarship. Divination and prophecy are supplanted by sign manifestations of worldly history. No longer convinced by visions of telos, post-medieval Europe marched into the future via a scientific exploration of the origins of all observable phenomena. Events of natural and cultural history become objects of intellectual excavation – digging into the original intents, root meanings, formative influences,

105130.book Page 185 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

All in a Bar

185

contextual circumstance, and causal conditions that shed light on all intelligible phenomena. The anagogical mode is not concerned with the origins and finalities of nature and culture. It involves rather a search for permanent truths and universal principles guiding the interpretive process. Anagogical hermeneutics applied to sign material can take one of two forms, depending on which interpretive mode and corresponding era it associates with – the teleological or the genealogical. In Antiquity and the Middles Ages, anagogical deliberations of timeless-symbolic principles were closely tied to visions and fears of a cosmic telos. Anagogy was then primarily couched in the language of primitive astronomy (astromythical mathematica). But anagogy also adapted its reasoning to a theological form of telos, the kind that implicated sign-manifestations of an eternal Spirit, as in the writings of Augustine and Tyconius. In postmedieval Europe, anagogy takes a new turn, away from telos and closer to genos. Instead of being tied to expectations of the hereafter, things deemed to be permanent go into service with archival memories of natural and cultural history. Science and scholarship find eternity no longer in Logos but rather in the laws of nature, logic, and the mind, converting “essences of worldly origin” into the first principles of all observable phenomena. Correlatively, astrology gives way to astronomy. With the Enlightenment and Modernity, the sky becomes the subject matter of scientists concerned with fixed motions of the heavenly bodies, not with their influence on human affairs and related insights into future finalities. Likewise, cultural phenomena become signs of their own foundations. They make sense in the light of those laws and universals that are to be discovered from one of several competing standpoints: positivism, Marxism, functionalism, psychoanalysis, pure phenomenology, structuralism, and so on. Through anagogy, signs are processed into products of constant principles transcending the vicissitudes of language and history. Unitary laws are made to stand above time and are wrapped in the

105130.book Page 186 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

186

Philosophical Speculations

mysteries and convolutions of sign activity. The interpreter’s task is to extract, distil, or unravel these timeless principles and essences from text, behaviour, and history. Although showing divergent features and histories, the three paradigms outlined above are often lumped into what is now referred to as essentialism or representational thinking, as in Deleuze and Guattari. While these authors challenge all three approaches to sign interpretation, they are particularly critical of anagogy conceived as “analogical” thinking. This is a hierarchical and territorial approach to logic and sign analysis. It consists in assessing the extent to which a term succeeds in resembling a supreme standard. The absolute model can be an “idealized speaker-hearer” à la Chomsky (1972: 117), a mother language, a pure mode of production (capitalism per se), a sociological type (e.g., fascism in its formal sense), or a universal Oedipus complex, to name just a few essences of high social scientific renown. Reasoning of this analogical kind harks back to Platonic philosophy, where ideas serve to elevate the true and the authentic above the false and the fake. Analogy is used to measure and evaluate the true and false claimants vying for some essence, say, the idea of courage, or wisdom. Using this logic, we might say that God alone can embody and truly bear the title of the Shepherd King of humanity or the Morning Star (pace Lucifer). Analogical thinking serves to demarcate the original, the real, or the true from their pale reflections, be they derivatives, sequels, or counterfeit copies of the model form. In this perspective, difference is understood not as the principle that divides a genus into opposing species through contrary predicates, as in Aristotelian philosophy. Platonic difference is rather a measurement of distance between reality and ideality (Guattari 1995: 72; Deleuze and Guattari 1987: xi, 27, 52; Deleuze 1994: 37, 59, 62, 67, 69, 265, 272–3). With sign affects sliding ad infinitum, fixed points of reference understood genealogically, teleologically, or anagogically are no longer available. Stable foundation-grounds disappear, and “things are reduced to the difference which fragments

105130.book Page 187 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

All in a Bar

187

them, and to all the differences which are implicated in it and through which they pass” (Deleuze 1994: 67). Sign variegations can no longer be pinned down to first origins and to final ends. Nor are they reducible to sedentary models made up of abstract essences. Nomadic forces prevail over signs of the immovable. Groundlessness triumphs. As in Baudrillard, simulacra are now “the superior forms” (Deleuze 1994: 68, 126–7, 277–8). Signs will no longer let themselves be uprooted from the groundless milieu in which they evolve, bottomless foundations that play havoc with all essences of western metaphysics (Derrida 1973: 51–2; 1981: 17–18, 32). Does this mean that eternal becoming is now the rule and that Cratylus siding with Heraclitus and against Socrates was right after all? Does it mean that absolutes have never existed and that arbitrariness and relativity will continue to reign supreme? Not really. Signs may be in the middle, but so are synapses. Actually, when brought together, sign and synapse constitute the middle ground. They point the way to the “subject-matter” of a nervous sign system evolving far beyond the confines of western metaphysics – a subject-matter endowed with the bewildering complexity and the many “senses” of a simple “bar.”

105130.book Page 188 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

reticle 19

Ground Zero History and Signs of Transgenocide

The era we live in no longer finds sureties in older time frames built on the teachings of anagogy and teleology, enduring principles and final ends inspired by the wisdoms of previous ages. Nor do our times find much hope in further discoveries of “genealogical” thinking – making sense of natural and cultural events on the basis of first origins and the root principles of all observable phenomena. Sound genealogical learning has been uprooted by the competitive habits of capitalism, giving way to speculative markets of truths and bodies of knowledge driven by the global commerce of doubt. Stable foundation-grounds are collapsing and yielding to the middleness of everything, a state of groundlessness affecting all aspects of our lifeworld, including the body and the mind – two unreliable terms that now exist only by virtue of the “nervous sign” milieu waxed into our brain. The current tendency for all former truths to lose ground is opening many promising horizons, yet it also engenders a chaotic milieu fraught with fear and danger. New measures of time inspired by this “groundless” spirit are reminiscent of Nietzsche’s characterization of the “beast,” a creature prone to forget and to be shortsighted to the point of always living “unhistorically.” Unlike human beings, the beast passes through the present “like a number” that leaves no meaningful remainder (Nietzsche 1949: 5). The number evoked by Nietzsche is infinitely menacing. When brought closer to home, it borders on the senselessness of ground zero events and sombre moments of recent history.

105130.book Page 189 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Ground Zero History and Signs of Transgenocide

189

Ground Zero. Drawing by Martin Blanchet

Two decades ago (1983: 135) Baudrillard looked in the direction of World Trade Center for reflections and measurements of our times. His discussion started with an incisive question: “Why are there two towers at New York’s World Trade Center? All of Manhattan’s great buildings were always happy enough to affront each other in a competitive verticality, the result of which is an architectural panorama in the image of the capitalist system: a pyramidal jungle, all the buildings attacking each other.” Baudrillard’s question concerned the demise of competitive capitalism and the end of history. But the question that is now before us has radically changed. Given the tragedy of September 11, we must now ask what these buildings reduced to ground zero signify in regards to history, the towering structures of globalization, and the new “order of appearances.” Part of the answer may be found in the towers themselves and memories thereof, or at least Baudrillard’s rendering of

105130.book Page 190 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

190

Philosophical Speculations

them. When erected, they suggested many things. Above all, they signified a global system claiming a “definitive” architecture, a twin-born complex that replaced competition by a flexible yet immutable binary system. Figures of world monopoly culminated in “perfect parallelipipeds a –14 -mile high on a square base, perfectly balanced and blind communication vessels” (Baudrillard 1983: 135). The new Manhattan and the world that came with it took the shape of molecular dna, a double backbone structure based on the spiralling principles of similitude and duplication. The message was clear: the planet was to be governed by a quasi-genetic code consisting of pure and perfect mirror forms. The towers forming the heart and centre of world trade marked the end of hierarchical rivalries by virtue of being utterly tall and simply “incomparable.” The wtc towers were also built on the rule of total selfreferentiality, a global framing strategy no longer guided by the aspirations of heavenly transcendence or the forward march of history. Towers of self-involution and self-duplication were elevated above all other narratives, like spectres dedicated to the end of history and grand visions thereof. Architectural means to achieve this implacable regime involved a digital code superseding the uplifting propositions of earlier skyscrapers and the works of transcendence built into cathedrals of previous ages. Whereas cathedrals and skyscrapers used to make a point of aiming for the heavens above, the flat-roofed pillars never took up the challenge of shooting for the sky and the heavenly hopes that lie beyond the hitherto or the here-and-now. Nor did these faceless towers “envisage” a need to put on a façade, like most buildings do; they showed little concern for “keeping up appearances” in regards to their contribution to the designs of history. Just as the two edifices felt no obligation to “edify,” world trade no longer aspired to keep up a front on matters of rhetoric or ideology – to evoke the horizons of democracy, justice, liberty, progress, science, or even God and country to justify its own rule. Global trade had no promising story to tell, no compulsion to generate grand narratives that went beyond its own walls made of self-hardening steel, using signs of the here-and-now to herald the opening of broader horizons.

105130.book Page 191 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Ground Zero History and Signs of Transgenocide

191

Globalization never pretended to reflect its immediate habitat, let alone reflect on its larger surroundings and the world in which people actually live. Unlike mirror-buildings of the 1960s (coldly but courteously projecting mirror representations of other designs in their vicinity), one tower blindly looked into its own mirror image of glass and steel. This was a cold gaze designed to eradicate variegated perspectives on private habitat and public space, not to mention differential views of real people and those “representing” or acting in (or against) their interest. The glassy-eyed perspective imposing itself upon the world happened to be mapped along the north-south axis, yet this was a false distance that never meant to offer a promising view on the North/South divide. In the end, the twin towers struck the ultimate narcissistic pose, a self-referential gesture that seemed forever fixed in time and space, a boundless involution that fully coincided with an exterior structurally adjusting to its many demands. But the story of the wtc now harks back to the tragic end of Narcissus at the hands of Nemesis, the goddess of justice and vengeance, who caused the youthful god to be haunted by memories of his own reflection. To use words that are less mythical, the pressure of history has brought back the issue of fragility, the inherent vanity built into all orders of appearances. Islamist extremism (not to be confused with Islam!) carried out this mission with utmost cruelty, converting the end of history into a death sentence horribly tangible and yet profoundly symbolic. Imageries are meanings experienced through events that never happen on their own. While lessons of Realpolitik can (and must) be read into them, ground zero events wasted no time in becoming lavishly symbolic. Actually the events have been “imaginable” for quite a while. In the early 1990s, Baudrillard (1993) had these chilling words to say about death sentences pronounced by Islamist extremism, sentences that are reminiscent of the depressurization of an aircraft cabin that occurs when the plane’s fuselage is breached or cracked … Everything is sucked violently out into the void as a result of the variation in pressure between inside

105130.book Page 192 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

192

Philosophical Speculations

and out. All that is needed is for a small rift or hole to be made in the ultra-thin envelope that separates two worlds. Terrorism, the taking of hostages, is par excellence an act that punches just such a hole in a universe (ours) that is both artificial and artificially protected. Islam as a whole – Islam as it is, not the Islam of the Middle Ages: the Islam that has to be evaluated in strategic terms, not moral or religious – is in the process of creating a vacuum around the Western system (including the countries of Eastern Europe) and from time to time puncturing this system with a single act or utterance, so that all our values are engulfed by the void. Islam exerts no revolutionary pressure upon the Western universe, nor is there any prospect of its converting or conquering the West: it is content to destabilize it by means of viral attacks of this kind, in the name of a principle of Evil against which we are defenseless and on the basis of the virtual catastrophe constituted by the difference in pressure between the two worlds, on the basis of the perpetual threat to a protected universe (ours), of a brutal depressurization of the atmosphere (the values) that we breathe. The fact is that a good deal of oxygen has already escaped from our Western world through all kinds of fissures and interstices. We should be well advised, therefore, to keep our oxygen masks on (Baudrillard 1993: 83–4).

The terror tied to memories of September 11 and their aftermath is worthy of evil pitched on a cosmic scale. We know evil to be a powerful instrument of religious extremism, a weapon of gigantic proportions designed to make war against everything that the western world is made to stand for. Given the self-righteousness and hypocrisy of all the good things advocated and yet ruined by the “free world” – liberty, democracy, justice, progress – radical Islamism has an easy job naming and imagining everyone’s arch enemy, turning all “crusaders” into a demonic force to be exorcised from everything that is truly sacred. The job is all the more facile as the West, ubiquitous and all powerful as it may be, is conspicuous in its absence and feebleness with regards to all things pertaining to evil. In the words of Baudrillard, we have reached a level of “complete aseptic whiteness” such that “violence is whitewashed, history

105130.book Page 193 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Ground Zero History and Signs of Transgenocide

193

is whitewashed, all as part of a vast enterprise of cosmetic surgery at whose completion nothing will be left but a society for which, and individuals for whom, all violence, all negativity, are strictly forbidden” (1993: 45). The death sentence pronounced by the “free world” against evil is utterly unimaginative in that we no longer have words that can do justice to the atrocities of evil, those perpetrated by others and, what is worse, our own – hate-mongering amidst our ranks and countless villainies perpetrated in the name of the free (trade) world. Bin Laden and his associates may be called the “evil-doers,” yet the euphemism betrays an impoverished vocabulary that breaks all the rules of elementary rhetoric: artfulness, persuasion, and force. No one is impressed. In retrospect, while denounced by the politically correct, Bush’s knee-jerk pronouncement of a “wanted, dead or alive” sentence against bin Laden had at least the merit of being simultaneously truthful and mythical, reincorporating old frontier fables into the horrors of history. But this is no longer permissible; the gathering signals and white lies of “United We Stand” must prevail against the war cries of lofty legend and myth. Islamism struggling against “satanic verses” and crusades is but a mirror image of this narrative vacuum created by a world so profane that it can no longer speak evil, countering anathema with equally awesome weaponry. But “let no one be mistaken”: evil has never been expunged from our world gone “fanatically soft – or softly fanatical” (ibid.: 82). Rather, it has been transfigured into our alter ego, like a mirror mirroring itself into an inverted image that makes us constantly tremble, a permanent threat of ground zero destruction that we can never see as globally “our” own. Paradoxically, evil eradicated from the walls of the great western enclosure creeps back into the system. It does so through a language that is both digital and calendrical, a mundane “9/11” formula that clearly refers to a precise event situated in measurable time. But again, let no one be fooled. This is not the language of “real history,” the kind that consists of series of chronological events marked by developments and crises of variable amplitude, from

105130.book Page 194 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

194

Philosophical Speculations

better to worse or vice versa, at a closer or greater distance from the aims of democracy or reason, let alone Islamic virtue. The 9/11 number speaks rather the language of urgency, catastrophe, and extreme calculation. It is a figure that heralds the beginning of ground zero history – a zero point of reference evoking the location of the centre of a massive explosion, but also a cipher that marks the absence of meaning, measure, or value, and the lowest point against which all other actions can be determined and measured. Ground zero history is the new order of appearances spreading through the global system like anthrax in the body social. It revolves around a point of infinite nothingness, a centre from which all other quantities will be reckoned, without ever adding “real” value or events. When put up at the sign of 9/11, history is forced to yield to the zero-sum rule of infinity and immeasurability – horrific sacrifices leading to eternal life for some, and cruel deeds of “infinite freedom” for others. Amplitude and hope give way to zerovalue events evolving in a black hole expanding through viral contagion. Calling up history at this number invites an extreme response, a final division between all the “pluses” and the “minuses” of this world, a terrifying rift that no one is permitted to escape. Either you are “one of us,” or you are “one of them.” In the end, there is no choice. All must side against “crusaders,” or they must side against “evil-doers.” Two camps are fighting until death do them part, in the image of two monoliths of intolerance reigning over all voices of dissent. Critical bystanders may refuse to take sides and will insist on rethinking the world we live in, as we must. Like Baudrillard, they may nonetheless propose an us-them scenario of their own, a tragic plot featuring the inevitable revenge of the Other – all those populations brutally pushed out of the western enclosure and suffocating in the current world system atmosphere. Despair and vengeance come back to haunt us, striking Manichean terror and dismay into spoils of the new global order. Injustice breeds intolerance and war. The chronic inability to “do justice” to the Other – “bringing justice” to others is the priority on both sides – smacks of racism mapped onto a binary code

105130.book Page 195 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Ground Zero History and Signs of Transgenocide

195

that permits of no exception to its rule. One spectre of genocide facing another looms large on our world’s immediate horizon. These grounds are exceedingly familiar, to the point that nothing new can be truly expected. And yet there is something devastatingly new about 9/11 and countless other tragedies of the end of the century: these events do not lend themselves to simple accusations of systematic attempts at eradicating the Other. What tends to be forgotten in current stories of the us-them genre, retributively minded or not, is the extent to which the foe is now partaking of the world “we” live in. For this is not a vengeful Otherness that is simply somewhere “out there,” agitating against the aircraft we travel in for petty reasons of jealousy or envy. Rather, this is an Otherness that plays a key role in the order of appearances “we” have jointly created (rumour has it that “we are the world”), a global regime made fragile by constant reminders that everyone comfortably seated in the plane or living next door is a potential “Other” and yet “one of us” – breathing freely, well educated, not all that poor, and by no means disdainful of western values, dividends of the oil industry included. The fact that true Otherness is hard to find should not take anyone by surprise. After all, so many forms of Otherness have been spoiled in so many ways that there is very little left to eradicate. Globalization reigns to the point that there is no cannon fodder left to feed the warmongering ways of genocide. The observation applies to the principal protagonists of this new war that is not exactly a war: that is, their rhetoric of mutual Otherness is very hard to swallow. Actually, the notion that “evil-doers” and “freedom fighters” – or is it “satanic crusaders” and “Islamist martyrs”? – belong to different species fully separated by culture, economy, and history is an insult to everyone’s intelligence. This raises a radically new question: Could it be that wars are no longer being waged against Others that have ceased to exist as such? Could it be that the conditions of possibility of genocide are no longer with us? In hindsight, the language of genocide does not do justice to the hauntings of 9/11. Ground zero history does not sow the

105130.book Page 196 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

196

Philosophical Speculations

all-too-familiar fear of genocide. Instead it sows the fear of transgenocide, from trans- (Latin), across, genos (Greek), race, kind, and caedere (Latin), to cut down, strike mortally, or kill. At the heart of this new genre (from the same root) of war, a messy war that is not exactly a war, lies the demise of the neatness and clearness of genos, a root term around which revolve a host of meanings directly implicated in the current transmutations of violence and terror. We know the Greek genos (alias the Latin genus) to be inclined to create orderly categories endowed with a sense of boundary. What is less obvious is the propensity for this genos to be unfaithful to its own rule. Instead of acting like a genus, this principle has behaved essentially like a virus. It spread throughout the entire body social known as modernity, penetrating through the pores and organs of an entire era. Throughout this defunct era we call modernity, the agent of genos and mutations thereof evolved and expanded in such ways as to affect the semantics and pragmatics of all spheres of life, be they concerned with “gender,” “genes,” “gentiles,” “generals,” or “generalizations” about the “genesis” of war. These added up to a host of derivations that were responsible for the modern constructions of Otherness, including the healthy versions (aspirations of the United Nations) and the pathological alike (all “final solutions” of the twentieth century). Whether we like it or not, we are now entering an era that will question, challenge, and undermine practically all divides founded on this older rule of genos. Notwithstanding appearances to the contrary, the destruction of the wtc speaks not to a war between social genotypes. What we have before us is rather a hyperviral assault between a few socially engineered hybrids aspiring to hegemony and supremacy. Mutants of history struggling for power – rival forces working across boundaries (which is what hyperviruses do) and lording it over subaltern forms of hybridity – are launching a war against all aspirations to the globalization of diversity. The struggle between complexly engineered hybrids takes place in a world that is now falling into a state of “trans,” a

105130.book Page 197 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Ground Zero History and Signs of Transgenocide

197

world subject to a compulsive transgressive mode that is rather imaginative and hopeful but also fraught with danger and terror. One derivation of genos that is massively affected by these transmutations of history is to be found in the area of “gender” and “genitalia,” a centre of erotic commerce that will no longer tolerate simple formulations of the us-them (masculine-feminine) divide. Clear distinctions of gender and sex are giving way to explorations of transgender and transsexuality pursued on the planes of biology, culture, and society – performing radical surgeries, real and symbolic, on the sexual division of labour and also the division of sexual labour. Sex itself loses all sense of boundary, and is dominated by new technologies of bodily modelling and aesthetic engineering. Meanwhile the scientific understanding of “genes” has given way to the language of transgenetic manipulation and commerce and related applications to means of reproduction (agriculture, gestation, etc.) and destruction (bioterrorism strikes back). In agriculture, local land species, which are themselves stores of genetic variability resulting from centuries of human selection and testing, are being systematically displaced by artificially engineered hybrids and clones that constitute a radical threat to the planet’s botanical gene pool. Conventional notions of “genesis” and “genealogy” mapped onto events of social history – clear mappings of origins and descent – are also subject to the end of genos. They are quickly yielding ground to boundless transhistorical references that make a mockery of pure origins and final destinations. Alas, we can no longer count on a definitive theology or a science of history to save the day and shed pure light on the real origins of 9/11, let alone its final end. Great insights and final victories are no longer in sight. Better lessons could perhaps be found in the area of comparative anthropology and political economy. Students of society may thus look at how people (French gens) differ in terms of cultural orientation or class affiliation. They will take inspiration from statements of Political History 101, which are safe enough. Those of us who took the course will recall that the

105130.book Page 198 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

198

Philosophical Speculations

English gentry (another telling derivation of genos) differed from the nobility and the yeomanry in the sense of engaging in thoughts and actions that served their own class interests. Observations of difference and hierarchy will thus explain why “types of people” (pigeonholed into classes, nations, tribes, ethnic groups, and so on) are in struggle and are prone to war. Using these lessons of history, ground zero events can be attributed to and blamed on groups that can be clearly identified because truly “different.” But there is a problem here, one that is currently plaguing all comfortable taxonomies of the social scientific mind. The movements of transnational capital (bin Laden’s?) and cultural transmigration (landed terrorists?) and the proliferation of classificatory grids and combinations thereof – politics coupled with gender, overlapping with race, crosscutting with nationality, overdetermined by religion, and mediated by class – will soon make a mockery of all essays in analytical reasoning. How many will be fooled by explanations of war that purport to reduce violence to oppositions in grammar – distinctions of logic in action? Who will dare to reduce 9/11 to a simple or multiple struggle of wage-labour against capital, woman against man, the South against the North, Palestine against Israel, Jews against Gentiles (genos strikes again), Islam against Christianity, or the West against the rest? History is now giving birth to an era where no single clamour of Truth can be expected to triumph over the mobbish ways of smaller truths. Humanity’s capacity to make sense of 9/11 is bound to suffer. The Babylonian world we live in consists of so many disciplines that should be heard on the issues, actors, and root causes of 9/11 that no categorical truth can be expected. Readers are reminded that transdisciplinarity is no less fashionable than current developments of transgendering, transgenetics, transnationals, transmigrations, and transculturation. Nowadays the boundary that separates one discipline (or literary genre and related modes of generalization) from another is as messy and blurred as the distinction that lies between the oppressed

105130.book Page 199 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Ground Zero History and Signs of Transgenocide

199

(employees of the wtc, or martyrs of radical Islamism) and filthy-rich capitalists (working at the wtc, or hiding in the mountains of Afghanistan). As with transgenetics, hybridity creeps in everywhere and takes forms that are intricately engineered and unpredictable at the same time. A case in point is this war of a confusing genre that combines various military genres. It has “generals” that are not really “generals,” “generalizations” that are never truly imperative, and rules of discipline that seem utterly chaotic and unpredictable. Could it be that this virtual eradication of all forms of genos is at the heart of this seamless war? But the loss of boundary should not be confused with the immeasurability of human folly and inhumanity. However chaotic and transgenocidal it may be, our age is not without hope. Current events and others of the like that have or will come to pass must not deter “us” from the globalization of diversity and hopes to that effect. I am not alluding to the old kind of diversity premised on illusions of fixed genotypes and selfidentical references. What is now under attack is a new reality and vision of plurality, one that fosters memories and hopes of a “transreferential” humanity, a twofold sense of self-identity and being-human that feeds on fluxes and motions occurring across the older bounds of genos. Perhaps these nomadic hopes could be vested in the memories and “generosity” of the god of true beginnings and endings. I am alluding to the twin-faced Janus who gave his name to the first month of the year, the doorkeeper to the passage of time, and the gentle (also from genos) messenger of prayers to all other gods – hence a kindred spirit of Christ, Jehovah, Allah, and countless other divinities that tend to be forgotten. On the former site of the wtc and mirror reflections thereof, humanity may wish to erect a global shrine dedicated to this messenger of hope. The youthful Narcissus who fell in love with his own reflection would then yield ground zero to Janus, the old one whose faces looked in multiple directions, from goings of the past to comings of the future. Perhaps the mourning of September 11 could give way

105130.book Page 200 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

200

Philosophical Speculations

to the prayers of December 11, the historic day of the Janus festival, thus breathing life into history and wise measures and visions thereof. If contagious immeasurability is the order of the day, then so be it, but for gods’ sake, let it be a viral attack of infinite wisdom.

105130.book Page 201 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Notes

1 This argument assumes insufficient inhibition of these presynaptic terminals by other neighbouring neurons. 2 The strengthening of synaptic connections through ltp involves glutamate, a major excitatory transmitter, and its molecular receptors known as ampa and nmda. When crossing the synaptic space, packets of glutamate (released through presynaptic action potentials) bind to ampa receptors on dendrites of another neuron. This causes sodium and potassium to flow into the postsynaptic neuron. In some forms of ltp, potassium is then removed from nmda receptors, unblocking the nmda and letting them bind with more glutamate as the postsynaptic cell fires (Rosenzweig et al. 1999: 667). Calcium then flows in, “resulting in a host of molecular changes that then strengthen and stabilize the connection between the pre- and postsynaptic neuron” (LeDoux 1996: 219). These molecular events have the effect of opening the door to other input pathways. They permit the processing of simultaneously occurring stimuli, establishing and consolidating further associations that become part of the learning process and broader memory assemblies. 3 The root word can be used to denote the act of advising, informing, befriending, or talking with someone. Tenonotztli is a story and nonotzalalizmachtia is the art of speaking, an art which the iguana does not truly possess. This paradox and the sexual implications of this scene of shame (as they relate to tepinauiz, the shameful parts) point to a man who mixes and has too much sex with women (ciuauia, ciuanotza), thereby

105130.book Page 202 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

202

4

5

6

7

Notes to pages 98–101

becoming subject to exhaustion (ciuanotzaliztli) and the loss of his male energy and virility. The moral importance attributed to language is reflected in classical derivations of itoa, to speak. Those derivations can serve to evoke men of noble descent (tlatocamecayotl) such as kings, lords, princes, governors, ambassadors, and mediators (tlatoani). These are men who speak (tlatoa, tahtoa) for others and distinguish themselves by their heroic deeds (tlatocatlachiuhtli) and the palaces (tlatocan) they live in. More importantly, they can be recognized by their manner of speech (tlatoliztli), their ability to sing or express themselves with persuasion (tlatolmaca), eloquence, and dignity (tlatocayotl), if not poetry (tlatolchichiualiztli). They master the discourse of history (tlatollotl) and writing (tlatollacuiloliztli) as well. Perfection and purity of speech are at the origin of all the powers that the noble possess, including the capacity to command others (tlatocatlatoa) and to make their will manifest (tlatoltica). Great value lies in words (tahtol) that deserve to be spoken (tlatoloni). A Gulf Nahua verb that could be used to describe the reproachable behaviour of the iguanas is cahcayah (cayaua), to entertain and seduce but also to lie and deceive. In Siméon’s dictionary, the action of “letting words escape” (by way of rumour) is tlatolchitoniliztli. Mockeries, lies, and faulty interpretations are tlatolpinauhtia, tlatolpictli, and tlatolpapaçolli (or tlatolcuepaliztli). A prey being chased at a fountain or well makes sense if we consider that courtship between Gulf Nahua men and women typically occurs on the way to the well or brook. A boy growing up and taking water from an atlacui well is a prelude to a man pouring his own fluids (auetzi) and having sexual intercourse (cui). To use the classical Nahuatl imagery, an appendage of robust flesh (cuitlananacatic) is all that is needed for someone to prosper (cuitlapiltia). The creature who possesses it is likely to grow a bigger belly (cuitlatecomatl). Riches of the earth shall accrue to powerful men endowed “with shoulders” (cuitlapane). Men of power are like creatures who have spinal columns, behinds (cuitlapampa), buttocks (cuitlaxacayatl, “the backside face”)

105130.book Page 203 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Notes to pages 102–3

8

9

10

11

12

13

203

and trunks prolific as a corn ear (cuitlapanxilotcayotl), strong as an arrow or a shinbone (cuitlapanteputzchichiquilli). For the money-excrement connection, see Culturas Populares (1982: 9). Older derivatives of the tail motif can be used to denote a wound, ripeness verging on decay (cuitlacucic), hence the act of sullying someone’s reputation (cuitlayoa) or sowing discord (cuitlacpeua). When transposed to humans, the tail stands for a vulgar person, a peasant, a worker, a beast-like slave. Finally, the buttocks and the tail point to creatures that are fat and walk slowly (cuitlananacatic), immature individuals who have no sphincter control (tzinbita in Pajapan), hence the weak, the sleepy, and the lazy (cuitlapan, also for latrines). Thus a deformed corn ear is cuitlacochin, maize that sleeps. The iguana may be suspected of indulging (auia) in the consumption of fresh (auic) food that tastes (auiac) and smells good, excessive drinking (auiliuinti), frivolous words (auillatoani), carnal lust, and services procured from prostitutes (auianiti) trained to seduce (auilpauia). All of these are vain (auillatoani) pleasures that will lead the beast to vice and corruption (auilquiçaliztli), self-degradation (auiloa, auilquiça), and self-destruction (auiliui). On the relationship between playing and making fun, see Boege (1988: 115) and López Austin (1990: 161). Current and ancient verbs denoting the cutting of a tail are tzintegui, tzinteponoa, cuitlapilana, or cuitlapiltequi. Tzinpostegui (cuitlauitequi, cuitlapuztequi) is to break a creature’s back, shoulders, or loins. The corresponding words are cuitlacuepa and mauiztlaloa. The animal suffers from the kind of terror that causes bowel movements (mauhcaaxixa) or even disembowelment (cuitlatzayani). The connection between tail and tongue is made explicit in the neighbouring Zoque-Popoluca story of a hunter who pretends to admire the tail of an alligator and then throws a stone into the mouth of the careless animal and cuts off its tongue (Foster 1945: 199). The man of lightning and thunder was asked to break the rock apart, causing a stone to hit Homshuk’s knee. The knee started

105130.book Page 204 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

204

14

15

16 17

18

19 20

21

Notes to pages 106–18

to bleed, which explains the origin of a particular type of red-striped (rayado) ear of corn. Similarly, the word used to speak of a woman who becomes pregnant is piloa, to fish or to hang. In Nahuatl, piloa is to fall, to hang, to fish, to bother, or to cling to someone. Pipiloa is to hang something, to climb into a bed, to seduce a woman. Pilchiua is to sin. When combined with tzon (for head), the term means to “bow the head,” which is what the corn boy must do if he is to mature. López Arias 1983; Foster 1945: 192. On the cyclical view of time in classical Nahuatl philosophy, see León-Portilla (1983: 47, 97, 111) and Soustelle (1940: 85). On the yollotl life force in classical Nahuatl philosophy, see León-Portilla (1983: 122, 191, 396). The “solar east” (tonayan) imagery finds an echo in the Mazatec asean motif that denotes the east where the sun rises, and the human soul as well (Boege 1988: 142, 173, 184). See also Sandstrom (1991: 247–8, 258, 276). Tonalelot is a green ear growing in the dry season. Something that grows in the summer was called tonallacayotl. To the Aztecs, a summer fruit was tonaltzapotl, tonalxocotl, or tonalxochiqualli. Closely related words produce a vision of earthly fertility and abundance (tonacati), life in a garden of delights (Tonacaquauhtitlan, “food forest”). Anciently, the act of casting seeds of corn (tlaolchayaua) was a way of determining men’s lot on earth. Similar connections made explicit by the Nahuas of Puebla are discussed by Taggart (1983: 58–9). In classical Nahuatl, the same meanings are conveyed by the words aqui, aquia, actiuh, and actitlaça. Provided the male sun covers itself up at night, the mother earth can count on receiving water and sunlight from the east in due time. Having been properly watered, she can give birth to her new maize son who will in turn spread his array over the land, replacing the original cover lost through slashing and burning (Boege 1988: 127, 149–50).

105130.book Page 205 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Notes to pages 118

205

22 The fall of the solar body at dusk is a small death impregnating a new moon rising to the west (Trujillo Jáuregui et al. 1982: 29). In classical Nahuatl, the sun wears the cloak of darkness and surrenders (calaqui, house-enter) to its rule, all in the hope of ascending once again to the sky through the red house (tlauizcalli) at dawn.

105130.book Page 206 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

105130.book Page 207 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Bibliography

Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo. 1955. The Confessions of Augustine. Transl. Albert C. Outler. Dallas, Texas. Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination. Ed. M. Holquist; transl. C. Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press. Barthes, Roland. 1970. S /Z . Paris: Seuil. – 1973. Le plaisir du texte. Paris: Seuil. Bataille, Georges. 1957. L’érotisme. Paris: Éditions de Minuit. Bateson, Gregory. 1973. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Frogmore: Paladin. Baudrillard, Jean, 1983. Simulations. Transl. Paul Foss, Paul Patton, and Philip Beitchman. New York: Semiotext(e). – 1993. The Transparency of Evil: Essays on Extreme Phenomena. Transl. James Benedict. London: Verso. Boege, E. 1988. Los mazatecos ante la nación: contradicciones de la identidad étnica en el México actual. México: Siglo Veintiuno. Chevalier, Jacques M. 1997. A Postmodern Revelation: Signs of Astrology and the Apocalypse. Toronto: Toronto University Press; Frankfurt: Vervuert. – 2002a. Half Brain Fables and Figs in Paradise: The 3-D Mind 1. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. – 2002b. The Corpus and the Cortex: The 3-D Mind 2. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Chevalier, Jacques M., and Daniel Buckles. 1995. A Land without Gods: Process Theory, Maldevelopment and the Mexican Nahuas. London: Zed; Halifax: Fernwood.

105130.book Page 208 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

208

Bibliography

Chomsky, Noam. 1972. Language and Mind. New York: Harcourt. Churchland, Patricia Smith. 1986. Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind/Brain. London: Bradford; Cambridge, Mass.: mit Press. Cohen, Ronald A., Yvonne A. Sparling-Cohen, and Brian F. O’Donnell. 1993. The Neuropsychology of Attention. New York and London: Plenum. Culturas Populares. 1982. Historia de los tres hijos. Cuadernos de Trabajos 14. Acayucan México: Culturas Populares. Deleuze, Gilles. 1970. Nietzsche et la philosophie. Paris: puf. – 1994. Difference and Repetition. Transl. Paul Patton. New York: Columbia University Press. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Transl. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. – 1994. What Is Philosophy? Transl. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell. New York: Columbia University Press. Deleuze, Gilles, and Claire Parnet. 1987. Dialogues. Transl. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. New York: Columbia University Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1973. Speech and Phenomenon, and Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs. Transl. David B. Allison. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. – 1981. Positions. Transl. Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fischler, Ira. 1998. “Attention and Language.” In The Attentive Brain, ed. Raja Parasuraman, 381–99. London: Bradford; Cambridge, Mass.: mit Press. Foster, G. 1945. “Sierra Popoluca Folklore and Beliefs.” American Archaeology and Ethnology 42, no. 2: 177–250. Freud, Sigmund. 1976. The Interpretation of Dreams. Transl. James Strachey. New York: Penguin. García de León, Antonio. 1969. “El universo de lo sobrenatural entre los nahuas de Pajapan, Veracruz.” Estudios de cultura Nahuatl 8: 279–311. México: unam. – 1976. Pajapan: Un dialecto Mexicano del Golfo. México: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Colección científica, no. 43.

105130.book Page 209 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

209

Bibliography

Guattari, Félix. 1995. Chaosmosis: An Ethico-aesthetic Paradigm. Transl. Paul Bains and Julian Pefanis. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Heidegger, Martin. 1959. An Introduction to Metaphysics. Transl. Ralph Manheim. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. – 1962. Being and Time. Transl. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. San Francisco: Harper & Row. – 1968. What Is Called Thinking? Transl. J. Glenn Gray. New York: Harper & Row. – 1970. Hegel’s Concept of Experience. Transl. Kewley Royce Dove. San Francisco: Harper & Row. Iaccino, James F. 1993. Left Brain–Right Brain Differences: Inquiries, Evidence and New Approaches. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum. Kant, Immanuel. 1984. Critique of Pure Reason. Transl. J.M.D. Meiklejohn. London and Melbourne: Dent. Karttunen, Frances. 1983. An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl. Austin: University of Texas Press. LaBerge, David. 1995. Attentional Processing: The Brain’s Art of Mindfulness. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press. Lacan, Jacques. 1979. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Transl. Alan Sheridan. London: Penguin. LeDoux, Joseph. 1996. The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life. New York: Simon & Schuster. León-Portilla, Miguel. 1983. La filosofía nahuatl estudiada en sus fuentes. México: unam. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1963. Structural Anthropology. Transl. Claire Jacobson and Brooke G. Schoefs. New York: Basic Books. – 1966. The Savage Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. López Arias, Marcelino. 1983. “El espíritu del maíz.” In El espíritu del maíz y otros relatos zoque-popolucas. Acayucan: Dirección General de Culturas Populares. López Austin, Alfredo. 1990. Los mitos del tlacuache. México: Alianza Editorial Mexicana. Marieb, Elaine. 1993. Anatomie et physiologie humaines. Transl. Jean-Pierre Artigau, Sylvie Chapleau, Marie-Claude Désorcy, and Jean-Luc Riendeau. Quebec: Renouveau Pédagogique.

105130.book Page 210 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Bibliography

210

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1964. Signs. Transl. Richard C. McCleary. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich W. 1949. The Use and Abuse of History. Transl. Adrian Collins. New York: Bobbs-Merrill. – 1967. The Will to Power. Transl. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale. New York: Vintage. Parasuraman, Raja, and Pamela M. Greenwood. 1998. “Selective Attention in Aging and Dementia.” In The Attentive Brain, ed. Raja Parasuraman, 461–87. London: Bradford; Cambridge, Mass.: mit Press. Peters, Michael. 1995. “Handedness and Its Relation to Other Indices of Cerebral Lateralization.” In Brain Asymmetry, ed. Richard J. Davidson and Kenneth Hugdahl, 183–214. London: Bradford; Cambridge, Mass.: mit Press. Ricœur, Paul. 1977. The Rule of Metaphor. Transl. Robert Czerny. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. – 1984. Time and Narrative, vol. 1. Transl. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Robertson, Lynn C. 1998. “Visuospatial Attention and Parietal Function: Their Role in Object Perception.” In The Attentive Brain, ed. Raja Parasuraman, 257–78. London: Bradford; Cambridge, Mass.: mit Press. Rodríguez Hernández, Alejandro. 1994. Unpublished field notes. Xalapa, México: Proyecto Sierra de Santa Marta. Rosenzweig, Mark R., Arnold L. Leiman, and S. Marc Breedlove. 1999. Biological Psychology: An Introduction to Behavioral, Cognitive, and Clinical Neuroscience. Sunderland, Mass.: Sinauer. Sánchez Bain, Andrés. 1994. Unpublished field notes. Xalapa México: Proyecto Sierra de Santa Marta. Sandstrom, Alan R. 1991. Corn Is Our Blood: Culture and Ethnic Identity in a Contemporary Aztec Indian Village. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Sedeño, Livia, and María Elena Becerril. 1985. Dos culturas y una infancia: psicoanálisis de una etnia en peligro. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Seznec, Jean. 1953. The Survival of the Pagan Gods. New York: Pantheon.

105130.book Page 211 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Bibliography

211

Soustelle, Jacques. 1940. La pensée cosmologique des anciens mexicains. Paris: Hermann. Sundsten, John W. 1994. The Digital Anatomist: Interactive Brain Atlas. Washington: University of Washington Press. Taggart, James M. 1983. Nahuat Myth and Social Structure. Austin: University of Texas Press. Temple, Christine. 1993. The Brain. Penguin. Trujillo Jáuregui, S., et al. 1982. Rituales y creencias Nahuas. Acayucan: Dirección General de Culturas Populares.

105130.book Page 212 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

212

Bibliography

105130.book Page 213 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Index

adrenaline, 28, 30, 50 algorithm, 162 allegory, 9, 181 ambiguity, 9 amnesia, 31–3, 40, 183. See also memory amplitude: historical, 193–4; neural, 56; syncretic, 12–13 amygdala, 6, 28–30, 32, 38, 40–1, 43–5, 47–50, 52, 56 anagogy, 181–2, 184–6, 188 analogical: attentionality, 6, 52, 59; essentialism, 186 analogy: and metaphor, 9 analytic: code, 140–1, 147, 149; logic, 4, 113, 181, 198; and synthetic, 3, 128 Antichrist, 4, 86, 93 anticipation: and attentionality, 19–20, 44, 52, 59, 63, 163; and memory, 46–7; in sign activity, 69, 72, 82, 96, 113, 168–9, 183. See also prefiguration ant imagery, 103–4, 121

anxiety: and memory, 19, 30, 45, 47–50, 52, 59; in sign activity, 65, 68, 70, 79–80, 82, 84, 86, 95–6, 105, 111– 13, 160, 162, 180, 182–3 aphasia, 25 Apocalypse, 69, 83–6, 90–1 aporia of time, 141, 144–9, 152 appearance, order of, 189–91, 194–5 Aquinas. See Thomas Aquinas, Saint archetype, 75 arcuate fasciculus, 25 Aristotle: on analogy, 186; on memory, 33; on time, 146, 148, 150 arousal, 29, 31, 34, 37–8, 40, 42, 47–8, 50–3, 60, 176 assemblage: attentional, 9; and desire, 165; and memory, 32–3, 35, 39, 55–6, 58; and sensation, 166; sign, 8, 112, 174, 175–7; of similarities and differences, 4–5, 94; and

105130.book Page 214 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

214 synchrony, 160; and time, 133, 136–7, 142 astrology, 11, 86–90, 92–3, 157, 160, 169, 184–5 astronomy, 84, 86, 90, 134, 138–9, 146–7, 155, 185 attente, 15, 45, 66, 95, 159, 163, 182 attentio, 162–3, 182 attentionality: analogical, 6, 52, 59; and anticipation, 19–20, 44, 52, 59, 63, 163; Augustine on, 156, 161–2; and consciousness, 52; and consideration, 43, 63, 161–3; and emotionality, 7–8, 14, 26–30, 33, 35–7, 40, 48, 52, 94, 108; and expectation, 15, 59, 81–3, 95, 159, 163; and fear, 19, 26–7, 45, 49–50, 52, 57, 59, 82, 96, 159, 162, 180, 183; focus, 8, 37, 51–3, 59, 75, 77, 82; forward-looking, 47–8, 51, 59, 83; left hemisphere, 51, 59, 82; levels, 5, 14, 34–5, 39, 42, 52, 57, 76–7, 81, 96; LeDoux on, 43–4, 48, 51; and memory, 19–20, 26–7, 31, 34, 36, 38–44, 52–3, 57–9, 63, 69, 95, 161; and metaphor, 8–9, 12, 35; and morality, 5, 7–11, 14, 108, 111, 179–82; narrative, 9, 57, 59, 72, 82, 95, 108, 111, 157, 159–60, 163; and plot, 15, 64, 70, 159–63, 182; neurological

Index foundations, 5–6; prefrontal, 10, 12, 14, 43–4, 48, 50, 58–9, 83; quantum, 14, 64; rank order, 7–10, 33, 64, 98, 108, 163, 176–7; and repression, 5, 14, 42, 58, 94, 176– 8, 180; right hemisphere, 51, 59, 82; self, 7, 46, 59; shift, 7, 15, 51, 59, 88, 96, 98, 162; and unconscious, 15, 37, 57; uneven, 7, 9, 15, 30, 33, 64, 94, 108, 176. See also explicit and implicit; inattention auditory processing, 19, 21–2, 25, 38–9, 57 Augustine, Saint: on anagogy, 185; on attentionality, 156, 161–2; on time, 145, 148– 50, 152–7, 164 autonomic: impulse, 5; signals, 52; sign connections, 7, 9; system, 6, 28, 53 axial plane, 5, 19, 37, 43, 94, 173, 182 Bakhtin, Mikhail, on anticipation, 96 bar, concept of, 173–7, 179–82, 187 Barthes, Roland: on code, 159; on transgression, 180 Bateson, Gregory, on doublebind, 181–2 Baudrillard, Jean: on simulacra, 187; on terrorism, 191–4; on wtc, 189–91

105130.book Page 215 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Index blood pressure, 28, 30, 48, 52 body, and time measurement, 139, 145, 147, 149–55 bracketing, 104, 176–8 brain stem, 6, 28, 38, 51–2 brevity, sign, 10, 111. See also condensation bricolage, 33, 136, 142, 144. See also assemblage Broca’s area, 24–5, 39 calendar: time, 86, 90–2, 113, 134, 193; Gregorian, 134, 136–8 capacitance: cell membrane, 6; sign, 7 capitalism, 186, 188–9, 198–9 care-structure, Heiddeger on, 15, 169–70 cat imagery, 75–83, 112 causality: and attentionality, 8; Augustine on, 152; historical, 185, 198; Kant on, 128– 31, 149; and meaning, 178; Nietzsche on, 160, 183 chaosmos, 4, 164 chronology, 35, 83–4, 138, 143, 152, 193 circumspection, 169–70, 177. See also consideration classification, 113, 181, 198. See also code clock: biological, 135–6; time, 130, 134, 136, 138, 147–8 code: actional, 159; and attentionality, 176; binary, 190, 194; genetic, 190; moral,

215

175–9, 181–2; sexual, 14; and time, 85, 110, 127, 133–4, 139–45, 147–9, 159– 60, 183; and transgression, 179–81 Cogito, 15 cognitivism, 3, 5, 33, 140, 143, 181 condensation, 10, 33–4, 58, 111. See also brevity conditioning, 27, 49–50; classical, 54; eye-blink reflex, 28, 38; fear, 23, 28–9, 43, 48, 56–7; neural, 55 conferencing, sign, 4 consciousness: and attentionality, 52; of fear, 29, 32; and memory, 30–4, 36, 50, 57, 169; and morality, 10, 181; self, 46, 128, 166; and unconscious, 15. See also attentionality consideration: attentional, 43, 63, 161–3; Augustine on, 156–7 contemplation: narrative, 164; and sensation, 165 contentio, 96, 162–3, 182 convergence, and divergence, 3–4, 12, 64, 86, 94–5, 134, 173–4 corn imagery, 8, 63, 94–115, 117–24 coronal plane, 15–16, 19, 94, 173, 182 countertext, 88 Cratylus, 187

105130.book Page 216 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

216

Index

cycle: astrological, 93; biological, 135–6; corn, 106–7, 110, 113–14, 124; Heraclitean, 171; life, 116, 118, 124; lunar, 136–7; seasonal, 92, 124, 136–7, 171; solar, 118, 135, 137–8 deferens, narrative, 161, 182 deferment: and différance, 166– 8; erotic, 74; and morality, 10–11; narrative, 73, 95, 111, 159–61, 163, 182; in sign activity, 15 Deleuze, Gilles: on becoming, 184; on essentialism, 186–7; on repetition, 164; on sensation, 165 denotation, 8, 63, 65 depolarization: and attentionality, 5; cell membrane, 55, 176; sign, 7–8 depression, long-term, 56, 58 Derrida, Jacques: on différance, 166–8; on Husserl, 167; on memory, 167, 169; on metaphysics, 187 desire: and assemblage, 165; and astrology, 88, 90; and deferment, 73, 95, 160, 163, 166; Guattari on, 165; and metaphor, 12–13; and morality, 11, 14, 104, 108; in motion, 173; and simulation, 13, 74 diachrony, 23, 35, 141

diacritic, and syncretic, 4, 7–8, 12–13, 174; imagery, 9 diakritikos, 3 dialectics, 4, 73, 161, 163, 182 différance, 166–8, 180 diplomacy, sign, 10 displacement, 32–4, 42, 58, 84, 111, 169, 174, 179, 182 disposal modes, and brain asymmetry, 6, 12 distentio, 95–6, 157, 159, 161– 3, 165–7, 169, 172, 182 divination, 44, 88, 92, 184. See also astrology dream: anagogical, 181; analysis, 30; arbitrariness, 33; and attentionality, 42; symbolism, 36, 83, 95, 181; and timelessness, 84 duality: diacritic, 4; and the Fall, 72; in Nahua mythology, 98, 118; proper naming, 66; space and time, 149–50 Einstein, Albert, on time, 139, 150–1, 154–5 emotionality: and attentionality, 7–8, 14, 26–30, 33, 35– 7, 40, 48, 52, 94, 108; and brain asymmetry, 6; and cognition, 8, 19, 33, 36, 47, 94; and memory, 20, 26–33, 35–6, 39–40, 47, 56, 172, 182–3; and morality, 5, 11, 14, 108, 176; shift, 23; and time, 96, 112, 182–3. See also desire

105130.book Page 217 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Index era, concept of, 134 erotic: and ascetic, 13, 73, 104, 108; deferment, 73–4. See also desire esse, 173–8, 180, 182 essence, 174, 178, 184, 185–7 essentialism, 184, 186 eternal return, 69, 164, 170–1 eternity, 88, 141–3, 145–7, 154, 157, 159, 170–1, 185– 7. See also timelessness euphemism, 9, 178, 193 Evangeline, 4, 63, 69–72 expectation: and attentionality, 15, 59, 81–3, 95, 159, 163; Augustine on, 153, 155–7, 161–2; and memory, 45–7, 51, 59, 182, 185; and protention, 167–8; in sign activity, 54, 105 explicit and implicit: 9, 26–7, 33–5, 42, 56, 58, 96, 162, 176. See also attentionality extinction, 23, 28, 32, 43, 50, 56, 88 facilitation, concept of, 169 fear: and amygdala, 6, 28–9, 32, 45, 47, 49–50, 52, 56; and attentionality, 19, 26–7, 45, 49–50, 52, 57, 59, 82, 96, 159, 162, 180, 182; conditioning, 23, 28–9, 43, 48, 56–7; in sign activity, 65, 67, 70, 77, 79–80, 89–90, 94–6, 105, 108, 111–13, 124. See also anxiety

217

fig imagery, 4, 7–8, 16, 63, 66–8 flight or fight, 27, 29, 48 focus: attentional, 8, 37, 51–3, 59, 75, 77, 82; memory, 3, 51. See also watchfulness foresight, 45, 63, 160, 162, 169. See also prefiguration forgetfulness: and memory, 31–2; in sign activity, 65, 68, 81, 83, 85, 88–9, 92, 112, 143, 159–63, 183, 188. See also memory formalism, 140, 143–4, 181 freezing, 27–8, 48 Freud, Sigmund: on anagogy, 181; on facilitation, 169; Guattari on, 164–5; on repression, 32; on unconscious, 15, 35 frog imagery, 7, 15 Gall, Franz Joseph, 20 gender identity, 13–14, 74, 197 genealogy, 184–6, 188, 197 genocide, 195–6 genos, 184, 196–9. See also genealogy globalization, 189–91, 193–6, 199 grammar: and attentionality, 9, 178; and logic, 198; and memory, 24; and time, 24, 135, 141 grammatology, 168 ground zero, 188–9, 191, 193– 5, 198–9

105130.book Page 218 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

218

Index

groundlessness, 187–8 Guattari, Félix: on chaosmos, 164; on essentialism, 186; on fort/da, 164–5 habituation, 24, 30–1, 43, 55 heart rate, 28, 48 Hebbian principle, 55 Heidegger, Martin: on carestructure, 15, 169–70; on memory, 171 hemlock imagery, 63, 69–70, 72 Heraclitus, 171, 187 hermeneutics, 20, 95, 111, 130, 159, 162, 185 hexameter, 15, 70, 72 hippocampus, 24, 26, 28–30, 38–41, 44, 47, 50, 55 homunculus, 15–16 hot and cold, 113–17, 119–21, 143 Husserl, Edmund, Derrida on, 167–8 hybridity, 196–7, 199 hypermesia, 30–1 hyperpolarization: cell membrane, 5–6, 37, 176; sign, 7, 10, 83 hypervirus, 196 identity: decentred, 164; gender, 13–14, 74, 197; and genos, 198–9; and metaphor, 9, 88; proper name, 7, 64; self, 168, 199 ideology, 190 iguana imagery, 8, 94–5, 97– 106, 108–13

illicit, 96, 163, 176–9, 182 implicit. See explicit in-addition tactic, and metaphor, 12–13, 68 inattention: and arousal, 51–3; and memory, 35–9, 42, 44, 57–8, 63, 68–70; in sign activity, 14–15, 68–70, 174, 176; synaptic, 5–6, 55 infrastructure, 141, 143–4 inhibition: and memory, 43; and morality, 10; narrative, 108; sign, 7, 10; synaptic, 6, 56, 37, 176 in-lieu tactic, and metaphor, 13, 68 intellectualism, Kantian, 127 intentionality: and interpretation, 184; and memory, 155– 6, 161 interpretive: anagogy, 181–2, 185; essentialism, 184; impatience, 111; judgment, 8–9, 175; modes, 184–6; norms, 5, 7; representation, 111, 178; sign, 3, 88, 178–9 Islamist extremism, 191–3 Janus, 199–200 judgment: interpretive, 8–9, 175; moral, 8–9, 11, 14, 108, 173, 175–6; rational, 8, 14, 175 Jung, Carl G., on anagogy, 181 kaleidoscope, and time, 142–3 Kant, Immanuel: on causality, 131; on morality, 12, 181;

105130.book Page 219 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Index on time, 127–31, 139–41, 149, 164 Lacan, Jacques: on pleasure principle, 180; on sign, 165, 177 lamb imagery, 4, 9, 11, 86–8, 92–4, 112 language, and movement, 23–4, 45, 79. See also narrative LeDoux, Joseph: on amygdala, 28–30, 40–1, 43–5, 47–50, 52, 56; on attentionality, 43–4, 48, 51; on memory, 20–23, 27–36, 40–1, 43–7, 52, 55–6 left hemisphere: approach, 6; attentionality, 51, 59, 82; divergence, 4–5, 174; linearity, 24; memory, 22–6, 38, 41, 57, 59 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, on time, 127, 140–4, 183 limbic, 5–6, 10–12, 14, 35 linear time, 24, 35, 46, 147, 152, 164. See also sequentiality lobes, brain, 21 Locke, John, on time, 146–7, 150 Logos, 88, 142–3, 146, 185 Longfellow, Henry W., 4, 15, 69–71. See also Evangeline Marxism, 185 mathematics: astrological, 86, 88–90, 185; sign, 173–4; of time, 130, 133–4, 137, 147–8, 150

219

mediation, 97–9, 174–5 memory: and anticipation, 46–7; and anxiety, 19, 30, 45, 47–50, 52, 59; Aristotle on, 33; assemblage, 32–3, 35, 39, 55–6, 58; and attentionality, 19–20, 26–7, 31, 34, 36, 38–44, 52–3, 57–9, 63, 69, 95–6, 161; auditory, 39, 57; Augustine on, 152–6, 161; automatic, 26–36, 43–4, 48–50, 57–8; buffer-zone, 39, 58, 72; and consciousness, 30–4, 36, 50, 57, 169; and coronal plane, 15, 19, 182; Derrida on, 167, 169; and emotionality, 20, 26–33, 35–6, 39–40, 47, 56, 172, 182–3; episodic, 24, 38, 57–8; and expectation, 45–7, 51, 59, 182, 185; explicit-declarative, 26– 36, 42, 44–5, 49–50, 56–9; of faces, 22, 26, 41; and facilitation, 169; focus, 3, 51; and genealogy, 185; global disorder, 33; Heidegger on, 171; implicit, 26, 34–5, 56; and inattention, 35–9, 42, 44, 55, 57–8, 63, 68–70; inhibition, 43; and intentionality, 155–6, 161; LeDoux on, 20–23, 27–36, 40–1, 43–7, 52, 55–6; left hemisphere, 22–6, 38, 41, 57, 59; long-term, 31, 35, 39–41, 44, 47, 56, 58; medium-term, 39–40; as

105130.book Page 220 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

220

Index

multiple system, 20, 34, 39; of names, 26; narrative, 24, 57, 65, 161–2, 167; of objects, 21–3, 26, 38, 57; and perception, 40; of places, 21, 26; and plot, 24, 88, 90, 92, 96, 109–10; and prefiguration, 45, 58–9, 161; prefrontal, 41, 50, 58–9; procedural, 27, 35–6, 38; representation, 31, 33; and retention, 167–9, 171; right hemisphere, 21–6, 38–9, 41, 57, 59; selective, 30–1, 40; semantic, 23, 38, 57–8; and sequentiality, 23–4, 35, 38; of shapes, 20, 23; shortterm, 31, 39–40, 44, 47, 58; spatial, 21; split-brain, 23; and stress, 50, 52–3; and synapse, 54–6, 58–9; temporal, 21; unconscious, 32, 57, 169; visual, 39, 57; and watchfulness, 50, 112; what pathways, 22, 26, 41, 57–8; where pathways, 22, 41, 57, 58; of words, 22, 25–6; working, 39–42, 44–7, 50–3, 58–60, 63. See also forgetfulness metaphor: and attentionality, 8–9, 12, 35; and desire, 73–4; and displacement, 33; in-addition, 68; Lacan on, 177; and memory, 88; syncretic and diacritic, 4, 12–13

metaphysics, 15, 130, 142, 167, 171, 187 mind: and brain, 3, 140, 142, 144, 188 momentum, 128, 130–2, 144 morality: and attentionality, 5, 7–11, 14, 108, 111, 179–81; and code, 175–9, 181–2; and logic, 181; and pleasure, 10–12, 96, 98, 180–1; and repression, 14, 177, 180; in sign activity, 95, 103, 105, 108–11, 173; and unconscious, 10, 181 naming: proper, 7, 63–6 narrative: attentionality, 9, 57, 59, 72, 82, 95, 108, 111, 157, 159–60, 163; bracketing, 104; deferment, 111, 161, 182; desire, 73; and ground zero, 190, 193; memory, 24, 57, 65, 161–2, 167; movement, 45–6, 67–8, 73, 80–1, 91, 96, 109–10, 127, 131, 183; prefrontal, 45, 59; right-brain, 25, 38; shift, 66–9, 72, 96, 163, 174; time, 63, 73, 82, 86, 90–2, 94, 96, 110–11, 131, 135, 157, 159– 64, 182–3 neglect, 7, 43 neurosemiotics, 14 Newton, Isaac, on time, 146–7, 150 Nietzsche, Friedrich W.: on eternal return, 164, 170–1;

105130.book Page 221 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Index on forgetfulness, 143, 183, 188; Heidegger on, 170; on movement, 110, 160, 183 origins: and différance, 166–7; and genealogy, 183–8, 197 oxymoron, 9, 146 panic, 37, 50 parasympathetic system, 6 parietal lobe, 21–2, 41 peripheral nervous system, 5–6 phenomenology, 14, 167–8, 185 phobia, 32–3, 44, 50 physis, 168 piercing, 15, 74 planning: and attentionality, 83; and declarative memory, 27; instrumental, 49, 51; movement, 23; narrative, 45; prefrontal, 23, 48, 59 Plato: on analogy, 186; on time, 145 pleasure: erotic, 73–4; and morality, 10–12, 96, 98, 180; and pain, 5, 11–12 plot: and attentionality, 15, 64, 70, 159–63, 182; ground zero, 194; and memory, 24, 88, 90, 92, 96, 109–10; and prefrontal brain, 45; shift in, 65–6, 68, 163; in sign activity, 77, 79; and speculation, 113, 124, 132, 161, 163 polarization: cell membrane, 5–6, 176; sign, 7, 9

221

polysemy, 9, 178 positivism, 185 possession, signs of, 11–13, 68, 73–4, 103–5 postfiguration, 45, 68, 73, 109, 127, 161, 174 postmodernism, 9 potential: graded, 176; neural action, 5, 56; sign action, 160–2, 174 potentiation, 29, 37; long-term, 50, 55–6, 58 predictability, 46, 48, 51, 59, 83, 124, 184 prefiguration, 45, 58–9, 66–8, 73, 83, 91–2, 101, 109–10, 127, 161, 174 prefrontal: attentionality, 10, 12, 14, 43–4, 48, 50, 58–9, 83; and limbic connections, 5–6, 12, 14, 44, 48, 50; morality, 5; narration, 45, 59; planning, 23, 45, 48; and working memory, 41, 50, 58–9 prereflexivity, 34, 57 primacy effect, 40 priming, 27, 44, 59 process, concept of, 9, 108 prosody, 24, 57, 70–1, 112, 134, 155 prosopagnosia, 22 protention, 167–9 psychoanalysis, 30, 181, 185 quantum: attentional, 14, 64; sign, 174

105130.book Page 222 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

222

Index

rank order: attentional, 7–10, 33, 64, 98, 108, 163, 175–7; and morality, 8–10, 108, 175–7 rationality, 5, 7–8, 175 recency effect, 40 referentiality: self, 63, 190–1, 199; sign, 4, 65, 173, 178, 180, 183, 186; time, 136, 139, 150–1, 155 relativity theory, 151, 154 representation: interpretive, 111, 178; and memory, 31, 33; mirror, 191; sign, 4, 12, 14–15, 166–8, 173, 178, 186; of time, 127–9, 170 repression, 5, 14, 32, 34, 42, 58, 94, 174, 176–8, 180 resistance: neural, 169, 176; sign, 7, 174 retention, 167–9, 171 reticular: formation, 5–6; sign connections, 4–5, 7–8, 70. See also Sr rhythm, 24, 71, 134–6, 162–3 Ricœur, Paul, on time, 20, 95, 141, 160–2 right hemisphere: attentionality, 51, 59, 82; convergence, 3–4, 12, 174; memory, 21–6, 38–9, 41, 57, 59; narrativity, 25, 38, 57; withdrawal, 6 risk: assessment, 48–9; narrative, 113, 124, 161 sagittal plane, 3, 5, 19, 94, 173

scheme, 23, 72, 88, 136, 176, 178, 180–1, 182 scorpion imagery, 63, 86–8, 92–4, 112 seduction, 13, 74 self: assemblage, 165; attentionality, 7, 46, 59; censorship, 10; consciousness, 46, 128, 166; denial, 11–13, 73–4, 105–6; presence, 152, 167–8; referentiality, 63, 190–1, 199 sensation, 40, 165–6 sense, and sign, 14–15, 95, 159, 166, 168–9, 173–5, 183, 187; of time, 15, 59, 90, 95, 111, 152, 159, 166, 168–9, 183 sensitization, 44, 48, 54 sequentiality: Kant on, 128–31, 148–9; left-brain, 38; and memory, 23–4, 35, 38; and narrative, 45, 83, 95, 111, 159–60; and synchrony, 95, 160; and syntax, 22, 24, 135; and time, 133–5, 145, 148–50, 159–60; and unconscious, 35 shoe imagery, 12–14, 63, 68–9, 73–4 shortsightedness, 68, 92, 162– 3, 183, 188 signal and sign, 14, 45, 169, 173, 176 signapse, 5–6, 174 sign manifestation, 88, 185 signum triceps, 157–8

105130.book Page 223 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

Index silence, in sign activity, 10, 65, 75, 77, 79, 86, 111, 159, 166, 176, 179 simples, flexible, 3 simulacra, 187. See also simulation simulation: and desire, 74; and metaphor, 12–13 simultaneity: and absolute time, 151; Kant on, 127–31, 149; neural, 55; and time code, 133–5, 139, 145 soma, sign, 6 somatic, sign connections, 5–6, 9 space and time, 15, 74, 83, 112, 128, 134, 141, 145, 147–50, 159, 166, 191 speculation: hot and cold, 114; on time, 63–4, 73, 94, 110– 13, 124, 127, 131, 161–3, 183 split-brain, and memory, 23 Sr, 4–5, 8, 14–15, 96, 132, 160, 175–8, 180, 182 stiletto, 13, 74. See also shoe imagery stimulus, and response, 14, 27–9, 36, 43, 48–9, 54–5 stress, 20, 28, 49–50, 52–3, 59 structuralism, 9, 127, 140–4, 160, 185 subcortical and cortical communications, 3, 5–6, 15, 19, 21, 26, 30, 37–9, 44, 49, 51–2, 58–9 summation: neural, 5, 176; of sign activity, 6, 14

223

supplementation, interhemispheric, 3 sympathetic system, 6 synapse: and memory, 54–6, 58–9; neural, 5–6, 19, 37; and sign, 3–4, 14, 174, 187 synchrony, 95–6, 141–3, 160, 183 syncretic: and diacritic, 4, 7–8, 12–13, 174; imagery, 7 synecdoche, 9 synkretismos, 3 synonymy, 9 teleology, 184–6, 188 temporal lobe, 21–2, 26, 30, 41 thalamus, 28–9, 39–40, 49 theoreticle, 4 Thomas Aquinas, Saint, on time, 145–6 three-dimensional mind, 173 time: aporia, 141, 144–9, 152; Aquinas on, 145–6; Aristotle on, 146, 148, 150; assemblage, 133, 136–7, 142; Augustine on, 145, 148–50, 152–7, 164; biological, 135–6; and body, 139, 145, 147, 149–55; calendar, 86, 90–2, 113, 134, 136–8, 193; clock, 130, 134–6, 138, 147–8; and code, 85, 110, 127, 133–4, 139–45, 147–9, 159–60, 183; and dream, 84; Einstein on, 139, 150–1, 154–5; and emotionality, 96, 112, 182–3; and grammar, 24, 135, 141;

105130.book Page 224 Monday, July 29, 2002 6:43 PM

224

Index

kaleidoscopic, 142–3; Kant on, 127–31, 139–41, 149, 164; Lévi-Strauss on, 127, 140–4, 183; linear, 24, 35, 46, 147, 152, 164; Locke on, 146–7, 150; mathematics, 130, 133–4, 137, 147–8, 150; narrative, 63, 73, 82, 86, 90–2, 94, 96, 110–11, 131, 135, 157, 159–64, 182–3; Newton on, 146–7, 150; Plato on, 145; referentiality, 136, 139, 150–1, 155; representation of, 127–9, 170; Ricœur on, 20, 95, 141, 160–2; sense of, 15, 59, 90, 95, 111, 152, 159, 166, 168–9, 183; and sequentiality, 133–5, 145, 148–50, 159–60; and simultaneity, 151; and space, 15, 74, 83, 112, 128, 134, 141, 145, 147–50, 159, 166, 191; speculation on, 63–4, 73, 94, 110–13, 124, 127, 131, 161–3, 183. See also eternity; timelessness; timeliness timelessness, 73, 84, 86, 88, 142–3, 145, 164, 171, 183– 6. See also eternity

timeliness, sign, 10, 83 Titian, 157–8, 162 transdisciplinarity, 198 transgender, 197–8 transgenetics, 197–9 transgenocide, 196, 199 transgression, 11, 14, 94, 105, 174, 179–82, 197 transreferentiality, 199 Tyconius, 185 unconscious: and attentionality, 15, 37, 57; Freud on, 35, 182; memory, 32, 57, 169; and morality, 10, 181 underplot, 93 vigilance, 44, 59, 176 visual processing, 3, 19, 21–2, 25, 39, 41, 57 watchfulness: and arousal, 60; close, 82–4, 90, 94, 133; and memory, 50, 112; open, 82– 6, 94; unfocused, 51–3, 59, 75 Wernicke’s area, 22, 25, 39 World Trade Center, 189–91, 196, 199

zoolatry, 9