On the Paradox of Cognition 9783631861851, 9783631862667, 9783631863060, 9783631863077, 3631861850

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On the Paradox of Cognition

PHILOSOPHY AND CULTURAL STUDIES REVISITED / HISTORISCH GENETISCHE STUDIEN ZUR PHILOSOPHIE UND KULTURGESCHICHTE Edited by Seweryn Blandzi

Advisory Board Manfred Frank (University of Tübingen) Kamila Najdek (University of Warsaw) Marek Otisk (University of Ostrava, Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague) Wojciech Starzyński (Polish Academy of Sciences)

VOLUME 9

Ewa Szumilewicz

On the Paradox of Cognition

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available online at http://dnb.d-nb.de. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.

„Firebird” printed with the kind permission of Jean-Pierre Luminet. This work has been reviewed by: Marek Szydłowski (Jagiellonian University) and Andrzej Leder (Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences).

ISSN 2510-5353 ISBN 978-3-631-86185-1 (Print) E-ISBN 978-3-631-86266-7 (E-PDF) E-ISBN 978-3-631-86306-0 (EPUB) E-ISBN 978-3-631-86307-7 (MOBI) DOI 10.3726/b18762 © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Berlin 2021 All rights reserved. Peter Lang – Berlin ∙ Bern ∙ Bruxelles ∙ New York ∙ Oxford ∙ Warszawa ∙ Wien All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilization outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. This publication has been peer reviewed. www.peterlang.com

I am grateful to: Professor Andrzej Leder –​for his patience, wisdom, courage and the time he devoted to me. Professor Jean-​Pierre Luminet –​for the beautiful drawing, “Firebird,” on the cover of my book. I dedicate this book to the memory of the kindest and wisest man I have had the honour to know. To the man who first noticed me philosophically and inspired me. To the memory of Professor Marek Wojciech Szydłowski.

“Reality was never enough, there was need of magic.” Herman Hesse, Childhood of the magician “Elle a des fous rires qui emportent ses larmes.” (philosophy) with its mad laughter wipes its tears Deleuze G., Guattari F. Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?, Les Editions de Minuit, Paris 2005, p.16

Table of Contents Introduction ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 11 Chapter I: Paradoxical genealogy of subject ���������������������������� 17 On the paradox �������������������������������������������������������������������������� 17 Deleuze –​“temporality” of sense ������������������������������������������������ 23 Disjunctive synthesis ������������������������������������������������������������������� 24 Lacan –​“temporality” of sense ��������������������������������������������������� 26 Lacan and Deleuze –​the function of time ����������������������������������� 28 Tension and paradox ������������������������������������������������������������������ 32 Casus Narcissus �������������������������������������������������������������������������� 39 Narcissus, art, Jüngers’ three-​dimensionality and the paradox of the word ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 40 “But poets establish what remains” �������������������������������������������� 45

Chapter II: Relativity of the relation between I –​Other ���������� 49 General theory of relativity and quantum mechanics –​place and role of the subject ���������������������������������������������������������������� 49 Cortazar’s mirror –​a metaphor of the subject ���������������������������� 53 The paradoxical concept of knowledge ��������������������������������������� 55 Time according to Lacan, for the second time... �������������������������� 57 Time according to Deleuze ���������������������������������������������������������� 61 Structural difference? ������������������������������������������������������������������ 62 Mirror –​a symbol of self-​knowledge ������������������������������������������ 64 Tears ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 67

Chapter III: Paradoxical status of the I –​Other relation �������� 69 Derrida’s Narcissus ��������������������������������������������������������������������� 69

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Table of Contents

Ovidius’s Narcissus ��������������������������������������������������������������������� 74 Narcissus and a world without the Other ����������������������������������� 75 Fort-​da without Other ���������������������������������������������������������������� 77 Narcissus’ call and the position of the observer �������������������������� 79 “Mirror and mask” –​the unbearable weight of Other... ������������� 80

Chapter IV: Paradoxical ontological status of the world as such ������������������������������������������������������������������������ 87 Potentiality according to Agamben ��������������������������������������������� 87 The “cut” in the Deleuzian landscape ����������������������������������������� 91 The “cut” in Quantum Mechanics. The position of the observer and the Agambenian mistake ���������������������������������������� 93 The act of “cut” in the Deleuzian landscape ������������������������������� 96 “Cut” in quantum mechanics. Observer position and Agamben’s assumption ��������������������������������������������������������������� 98 Akeda: Kierkegaard’s paradox, comedy and the position of subject �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 101

Final conclusions ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� 109 ENDING: Paradoxical status of subjectivity ��������������������������� 113 Speranza error ������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 117 Bibliography ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 119 Illustrations ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 123 Index of Names ����������������������������������������������������������������������������� 125

Introduction Cognition is a paradoxical process. Cognition is a paradoxical process, from the moment of the formation of human subjectivity, through its relationship with the Other (or more precisely: l’autre1) and with the world, to the ontological status of the world as such. This is what this book has at stake. I take the Deleuzian2 definition of paradox as a process of going in both directions at once.3 The landscape of my views includes language,4 understood (following Lacan and in the spirit of the linguistic turn in philosophy) as a tool that constitutes the subject and at the same time allows for the possibility of interacting with the world. The elements that will be scrutinized are: the paradoxical genealogy of the subject, the relativity of the relation the I–​world, the paradoxical status of identity in the relation between the I and the Other, and the paradoxical ontological status of the world as such. Looking at a thought conditioned by a symbolic “cut” (a concept borrowed from Jacques Lacan but understood, more broadly, as a cut as such whatsoever), which I identify with violence, the formation of a symbolic field (through the primordial “cut”), the I–​Other “cut” of identity on the way to Other, or an attempt to save identity (metaphorically rendered as a casus of Narcissus with the consequences of such an act), 1 “Other” is a translation of the French-​speaking philosophers’ (Deleuze, Lacan) word l’autre. For this and many other valuable observations I would like to thank Adam Lipszyc. 2 In the philosophical tradition it is accepted to write adjectives derived from the names of philosophers in both upper-​and lower-​case letters. I stick to lower-​case spelling (Deleuzian, Lacanian, etc.). 3 “The paradoxes of sense are essentially that of the subdivision ad infinitum (always past-​future and never present), and that of the nomadic distribution (distributing in an open space instead of distributing a closed space). They always have the characteristic of going in both directions at once, and of rendering identification impossible, as they emphasize sometimes the first, sometimes the second, of these effects.” Deleuze G. The Logic of Sense, The Athlone Press, London, p. 75. 4 I understand language in a broad sense, also as artistic expression, including non-​verbal expression.

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Introduction

I show that an attempt to create a stable structure requires a “cut.” But where the boundaries of cognition begin to crumble, a paradox –​that which evades the principle of contradiction –​shines through. I note that a similar mechanism exists in natural sciences, which I treat as a certain language. For example: the limits of the applicability of quantum mechanics are manifested in the wave function of the universe, through the function of density of probability of the appearance of a specific state. An actual state can appear only after the gesture of “cut” –​after the act of choice. Thus, the actual state is subjected to the principle of contradiction only after the establishing act; only after the cut. As protagonists I choose Deleuze, Agamben and Lacan. Deleuze is a philosopher who connects different languages (science, poetry, philosophy) in a “crystalline” way in the sense of structures of pure, logical thinking. Agamben is an example of a philosopher who connects languages in a vague and imprecise way, and at the same time whose ontological concepts are in opposition to the results of the natural sciences. Lacan, on the other hand, shows well the relationship between language and subject. Deleuze’s and Lacan’s philosophies are two different philosophical languages that seem incompatible at first glance. This is not a difference between different structures of thinking but between different planes of reference: ethical (Lacan) and ontological (Deleuze). In the book, this relationship is reflected in numerous metaphors, and can probably be seen most clearly when we metaphorically relate Deleuze’s language to the language of quantum mechanics (QM), while relating Lacan’s language to the language of the general theory of relativity (GTR). This apparent incompatibility of the two theories is due to their different frames of reference. There is another “starting point” for observation. I assume that Deleuze’s definition of paradox, derived from The Logic of Sense, treats it as a process that takes two opposing directions simultaneously. I will treat it as a formula, because, in my opinion, it perfectly reflects the essence of paradox. I am investigating the notion of the temporality of sense in relation to both Lacan and Deleuze. For Lacan, the time shift in relation to the articulation of trauma –​the skeleton of identity –​ builds tension. In Deleuze’s philosophy, the particular structure of time as such introduces an element of constant disharmony. I consider Deleuze’s time based on The Logic of Sense, although Deleuze’s specific philosophical

Introduction

13

sensitivity to the notion of time is rather similar in Difference and Repetition as well. I would say that this disharmony is what both philosophers have in common. However, the relationship with Other, axial for Lacan, is what distinguishes philosophers. But it is not the case that Deleuze’s subject is able to break the syntactical links with the world as an object of language, as shown in the essay on Robinson in Logic of Sense. What makes Deleuze so special is his sensitivity to “happening” and “becoming.” I am thinking here of a certain fragility and the related dynamics of structure, which the philosopher reflects in many metaphors, such as the metaphor of Body Without Organs (where it is worth remembering the premise of the existence of the Body as such). This metaphor reflects the dramatic dynamics of resistance to structural deadness. Or, the classic example in the Thousand Plateaux: a wasp and an orchid which, through feeding and fertilizing, create a symbiotic, emergent cell. A wasp and an orchid permeate each other: they “become,” or rather, they “are becoming.” On the margin, it is worth remembering the premise that orchids and wasps as such existed before. For Lacan, the Other is the one who funds the stability of the world. Each relationship with the Other is based on a word. And every word spoken, as spoken, is not mine. I think that for both Deleuze and Lacan the key is a kind of disharmonic thinking, a kind of thinking the essence of which is paradox. Deleuze is sensitive to the fragility and tenderness of structures. He’s interested in the transitional moments. Lacan carefully watches the process of creating structures as such. It’s like a gesture from the other side. The imago’s analysis, when the child in the mirror hears the affirmative voice of the mother, “Yes it is you,” or the logical structure of Lacan’s time, are the moments when the structure is created. Lacan does not ask about the previous existence of a sequence of words as such: Symbols, Significants. He is interested in the moment of “cut,” the moment when a sequence of words, by cutting off the rest of the word, forms a sentence –​a relatively stable structure. And similarly, I see such dependencies in contemporary physics, where both QM and GTR are theories which –​for example, in comparison to Newtonian physics –​have a core element of paradoxicality, wherein GTR

14

Introduction

would be called a relational theory, a theory of creating structures, and QM a theory of “becoming,” “indetermination.” Why a metaphor? Justification for the choice of methodology The analogy on which the metaphor is based has a heuristic potential because it sketches the structure of thinking. Creating metaphors that combine different languages, such as poetry, physics and philosophy, can help one to search for links and connections between sciences. The metaphor can also become an inspiration to search for new connections.

The book has the following layout: Chapter One: Paradoxical Subject Genealogy I consider the possibilities of going beyond the “horror of paradox” and ask about the consequences of exceeding the “magic of words.” I present art, poetry and poetic-​prose as attempts at expression that does not bend under the principle of contradiction. The metaphor of cosmological models of the universe (general theory of relativity) depicts various positions of the individual in the metaphorical Möbius Strip (Lacan), which generates different ways of articulating the subject. By the way, the Lacanian Mobius Strip is a theoretical construct that shows the boundaries of cognition, whether as the subject or as the world. Chapter Two: Relativity of the I–​Other relation In relation to the process of word formation –​the condition of identity –​I study the function of Lacan’s and Deleuze’s time. The considerations include reflection on the paradoxical concept of knowledge (Lacan). Then I refer both concepts (Lacan and Deleuze) to contemporary physics (general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics) by means of metaphor. Chapter Three: Paradoxical Status of the I –​Other Relation The reflections on the paradoxical status of the identity in the I –​Other relation are presented by means of the metaphor of Derrida’s Narcissus –​Echo relation. This chapter is essentially a metaphorical exegesis of the riddle Deleuze acutely articulated in his essay Michel Tournier and the world without others. Deleuze says there:

Introduction

15

The mistake of theories of knowledge is that they postulate the contemporaneity of subject and object, whereas one is constituted only through the annihilation of the other.’ And then: ‘The Other assures the distinction of consciousness and its object as a temporal distinction. The first effect of its presence concerned space and the distribution of categories; but the second effect, which is perhaps more profound, concerns time and the distribution of its dimension –​what comes before and what comes after in time. How could there still be a past when Other no longer functions.5

This is a quotation from Deleuze, which I deliberately and repeatedly invoke and discuss in the book. For Deleuze, subject is at least a problematic category. Chapter Four: Paradoxical ontological status of the world as such My analysis of the issue of potentiality in the light of Agamben and Deleuze, related metaphorically to the wave function of the universe (quantum mechanics), shows that the position of the observer should be carefully chosen. Agamben’s position is a paradoxical figure of the subject’s (observer) position, which I prove. In the world of Agamben there is no reason to talk about the passage of time. I scrutinize the moment of “cut” in the landscape of quantum mechanics in relation to Deleuze’s intuitions. For this purpose I use the classical interpretation of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, namely the Copenhagen interpretation of the wave function of the universe. Two different positions of the observer will be referred to the Copenhagen interpretation of the wave function and to the interpretation of the multiverse (Many Worlds Interpretation). The philosophical implications of such a procedure will be discussed. The End: Paradoxical status of subjectivity This is a look at the problem of subjectivity. The question about consequences and the price of saving the “trace” included here implies an issue of syntactical relations between the subject and the world. The interpretation of Mallarmé’s sonnet is a metaphorical representation of the paradox of subjectivity, or more broadly, it is a metaphorical, very sketchy attempt to ask a question about the roots or originality of l’autre.

5 Deleuze G. The Logic of Sense, The Athlone Press, London, p. 311.

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Introduction

The human adventure in the world begins with “cut.” The act refers to both the formation of the word (Deleuze) and the formation of the subjectivity (Lacan). The relation I–​l’autre is a question about the foundations of human identity (Derrida). What is more, the relationship between man and the world sparkles with paradox, generating various positions of the individual on the metaphorical Mobius Strip (Lacan and contemporary physics –​general theory of relativity). Paradoxical, too, is the question about the ontological status of the world, which in both Deleuze and contemporary physics (quantum mechanics) demands a “cut” in order to transform from a potential, possible world into the existing one. A philosophical journey on the verge of cognition is an ouroboros’ adventure. This act of “self-​eating” is at the same time a hope of “rebirth”: a belief in the lack of definitive foundations. The awareness of the fragility and ephemerality of cognition liberates the desire to cross borders, even if only illusory ones.

Chapter I:  Paradoxical genealogy of subject On the paradox Deleuze in his book The Logic of Sense describes a paradox in the following way: The force of paradoxes is that they are not contradictory; they rather allow us to be present at the genesis of the contradiction. The principle of contradiction is applicable to the real and possible, but not to the impossible from which it derives, that is, to paradoxes or rather to what paradoxes represent.6

Let us pay particular attention to the fact that, for Deleuze, a paradox is not contradictory. In other words, as Deleuze later puts it, a paradox is an aleatory point, an empty square, and although it assists the birth of contradiction, it is not contradictory in itself.7 Furthermore, Deleuze explains that it is only because the principle of contradiction refers to what is real8 and possible, but not to what is impossible, i.e. to what paradoxes represent, that it could at first be understood that contradiction is on the level of the possible and real and that paradoxes constitute solely a condition of possibility; hence, that a paradox is not possible on the level of reality. However, on second thought, this sentence says only that paradoxes represent the impossible; it does not necessarily mean that they do not refer to the real world. It means that the principle of contradiction refers to the possible and the real, but not the impossible from which paradoxes derive or, to be more precise, which paradoxes represent. Therefore, paradoxes represent what is impossible; they are on the surface of what is impossible, whether on the deepest topological level, where Aion –​according to Deleuze –​weaves his past–​future story, or on the level above the realm of Aion –​the linguistic level, or even on the most epidermal level of speech, which articulates the paradox.

Deleuze G. The Logic of Sense, The Athlone Press, London, 1990, p. 74. 6 7 Cf. Deleuze G. The Logic of Sense, The Athlone Press, London, 1990, p. 74. 8 To make it explicit: “real” does not refer to Lacan’s terminology. Lacanian “Real” would be written with the capital letter.

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Paradoxical genealogy of subject

Deleuze’s time is manifested as Aion and as Chronos. Aion is, using Deleuze’s terminology, always a neutral infinitive, an empty form of time and as such unlimited and independent from matter. Aion is a time of events –​effects: it stretches into the past and the future, and from this perspective it divides the present. All that is not Aion is Chronos. Chronos is therefore not infinitive –​it is always defined as active or passive. Nor is Chronos an empty form of time –​Chronos is the eternally living present. Just as Aion is not limited by matter, because he is not dependent on it, so Chronos depends on matter. Matter limits and fulfills Chronos, and Chronos measures the movement of the bodies. Moving on in Deleuze’s terminology, Chronos can be figuratively portrayed as consisting of merely casket-​type contemporaries. From this viewpoint, it seems that a transcendental perspective is not necessary to understand the functioning of a paradox; consequently, a paradox would be then a moment that creates speech devoid of such a cut, a Derridean Shibboleth. (A paradox includes the possibility of a cut in itself; however, the real cut is possible only after overcoming the aporia of the paradox: after putting a full stop to conclude a sentence).9 For paradoxical situations, on the other hand, Lacan evokes the metaphor of a sentence: a sequence of words as such can only become a sentence when the rest of the word sequence is “cut off”; that is, only after a full stop has been placed. By the way, it is worth noting that such an approach to the notion of paradox presupposes the prior existence of the word sequence as such. The sentence is not being created as such. A sentence is a result of “cut.” For Lacan the meaning is secondary to the existence of a symbolic field. The paradox, according to Deleuze, contains two opposite directions simultaneously, i.e. the possibility that one direction can exist only to “cut” the other direction. Deleuze’s favourite metaphor, appearing below, is that of Alice of Wonderland, who, eating the dough, becomes simultaneously

9 Cf. “The cut made by the signifying chain is the only cut that verifies the structure of the subject as a discontinuity in the real. If linguistics enables us to see the signifier as determinant of signified, analysis reveals the truth of this relationship by making holes in meaning the determinants of its discourse.” Lacan J. Écrits, W. W. Norton & Company, 2006, p. 678.

On the paradox

19

smaller and bigger. This is a paradoxical situation. However, when we look not at the whole situation, but at its fragments as such, it is Alice who, in each of these shredded moments, finds herself either in the process of growing up or in the process of becoming smaller. The gesture of “cut” disenchants the situation. Alice is the one who always goes in two directions at once: Wonderland exists in always subdivided double direction.10

To paraphrase Derrida, however, a paradox would be a speech that was not reached by circumcision. Thus, it would be a moment creating a speech that would not have a real “cut” in it, a Derrida’s Shibboleth. If the word circumcision appears rarely in its literality, other than in connection with the circumcision of the word, by contrast, the tropic of circumcision disposes cuts, caesuras, ciphered alliances, and wounded rings throughout the text. The wound, the very experience of reading, is universal. It is tied to both the differential marks and the destination of language: the inaccessibility of the other return there in the same, dates and sets turning the ring. To say “all poets are Jews” is to state something that marks and annuls of a circumcision. It is tropic. All those who deal with or inhabit language as poets are Jews –​but in a tropic sense. And the one who says this, consequently, speaking as a poet and according to a trope, never presents himself literally as a Jew. He asks: What is literality in this case? What the trope (again an intersection with the “Meridian”) comes down to, is locating the Jew not only as a poet but also in every man circumcised by language or led to circumcise a language. Every man, then, is circumcised. Let us translate, according to the same trope: therefore also every woman –​even the sister. Consequently…11

Thus, at first glance, one could say that a paradox belongs to the world of nonsense and does not have the burden of sense, because only the “cut” can make the speech gain sense, as Lacan would put it, or circumcision of speech, with reference to Derrida’s metaphor. It seems that such an interpretation of a paradox brings us closer to Lacan’s understanding of schizophrenia –​a kind of speech that only slides over the surface of presence, thus lacking Aion; lacking the depth.

0 Deleuze G. The Logic of Sense, The Athlone Press, London, 1990, p. 78. 1 11 Derrida J. Sovereignties in Questions: The Poetics of Paul Celan, Fordham University Press, 2005, pp. 54–​55.

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Paradoxical genealogy of subject

At first glance, one could say that it is a kind of paradoxical speech resembling the kind without scars: a speech without a full stop. Both a paradox and a schizophrenic utterance are “uncut.” Yet, the latter comes solely from the world of Chronos, while a paradox reaches higher. The paradoxes of sense are essentially that of the subdivision ad infinitum (always past-​future and never present), and that of the nomadic distribution (distributing in an open space instead of distributing a closed space). They always have the characteristic of going in both directions at once, and of rendering identification impossible, as they emphasize sometimes at first, sometimes the second, of these effect. This is the case with Alice’s double adventure –​the becoming –​mad and the lost name.12

And this is exactly the moment when topologic Aion would resonate into both the past and the future, where Alice in Wonderland, who is eating a cake, is simultaneously becoming bigger and smaller (but since this scenery lacks Chronos, identification is impossible, for it is impossible to touch the father’s names, which is what a paradox and a schizophrenic utterance have in common); furthermore, it would be Alice’s double adventure in which Alice would become mad and lose her name as, using Derrida’s metaphor, she would not touch the blade of the father’s Shibboleth name: she would not be circumcised. Alice and Through the Looking-​ Glass involve a category of very special things: events, pure events. When I say “Alice becomes larger,” I mean that she becomes larger than she was. By the same token, however, she becomes smaller than she is now. Certainly, she is not bigger and smaller at the same time. She is larger now; she was smaller before. But it is at the same moment that one becomes larger than one was and smaller than one becomes. This is the simultaneity of becoming whose characteristic is to elude the present. Insofar as it eludes the present, becoming does not tolerate the separation or the distinction of before and after, or of past and future. It pertains to the essence of becoming to move and to pull in both directions at once: Alice does not grow without shrinking and vice versa. Good sense affirms that in things there is a determinable sense or direction (sens); but paradox is the affirmation of both senses or directions at the same time.13

2 Deleuze G. The Logic of Sense, The Athlone Press, London, 1990, p. 75. 1 13 Deleuze G. The Logic of Sense, The Athlone Press, London, 1990, p. 1.

On the paradox

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Alice’s double adventure illustrates the essence of a paradox well: becoming simultaneously bigger and smaller is a process of going in two opposite directions at once. Paradox is opposed to doxa, in both aspects of doxa, namely, good sense and common sense.14

At first glance, one could assume that since a paradox is contrary to doxa, it belongs either to the world or to nonsense (which is impossible because if a paradox were strictly nonsense, it could not be a paradox at the same time), or it is only an aleatory point on the verge of sense and nonsense. However, in the 12th chapter of The Logic of Sense, Deleuze specifies a paradox, this empty square, as a supernumerary element. They both (the empty square and the supernumerary element) recall the intuition of sense and this etymological definition of a paradox15 as something that is beyond sense. A verbalized paradox –​paradox which emerges from speech –​is a topological Aion without the cut in the symbolic field; it is a sentence repeated endlessly without a full stop. A paradox is a frail structure, which torments with its power of the missing full stop. The emphasis is placed on the moment when we start to realize that it could be possible to find an immanent element of sense in a paradox itself. And if we kept looking for Chronos, the linear time or an element of sense in a paradox, we would come across a question about the transcendental perspective, as a paradox would then seem something that oscillates between the depths of Aion (it could not be sense only as it would no longer be a paradox) and ratio of Chronos, going beyond the two of them as well. It would also remain uncircumcised. Therefore, do we need metaphysics to grasp such an idea of a paradox or should we just domesticate it by means of a Shibboleth blade? Or maybe such an attempt to domesticate it is in fact like a Münchausen trilemma, resembling Heidegger’s curled up metaphysics.

4 Deleuze G. The Logic of Sense, The Athlone Press, London, 1990, p. 75. 1 15 para –​before vowels, par-​, word-​forming element meaning “alongside, beyond; altered; contrary; irregular, abnormal,” from Greek para-​ from para (prep.) “beside, near, issuing from, against, contrary to,” from PIE *prea, from root *per-​ (1) “forward, through.” Cognate with Old English for-​ “off, away.” Source: etymonline.com

22

Paradoxical genealogy of subject We may therefore propose a table of the development of language at the surface and the donation of sense at the frontier, between propositions and things. Such a table represents an organization which is said to be secondary and proper to language. It is animated by paradoxical element or aleatory point to which we have given various double names. To introduce this element as running through the two series at the surface, or as a tracing between the two series the straight line of the Aion, amounts the same thing. It is nonsense, and it defines two verbal figures of nonsense. But, precisely because nonsense has internal and original relation to sense, the paradoxical element bestows sense upon the terms of each series. The relative position of these terms in relation to one another depend on their “absolute” position in relation to it. Sense is always an effect produced in the series by the instance which traverses them.16

It is therefore visible that Deleuze starts to feel that a paradox unites with sense somewhere on the verge of sentences and things. A similar perspicuity can be found in his reflections on the relation between madness and reason: Madness is human nature related to the mind, just as good sense is the mind related to human nature; each one is the reverse the other. This is the reason why we must reach the depths of madness and solitude in order to find a passage to good sense. I could not, without reaching contradiction, refer the affections of the mind to the mind itself: the mind is identical to its ideas, and the affection does not let itself be expressed through ideas without a decisive contradiction.17

A paradox lives on the verge of nonsense and sense, which tremble together. It is impossible to say that sense or nonsense is a broader or narrower term. It is so because it is a reverse relation, just as in the case of madness, which is the opposite of reason (one cannot be understood without the other), similarly to light and darkness. A paradox unites sense and nonsense but still misses this particular cut or the wound. Since a paradox fills in all the surfaces, from Aion to and beyond the world of Chronos, the question arises as to which blade is capable of making such a wound. And therefore, can circumcision go “beyond”? Let us repeat: Sense is always an effect produced in the series by the instance which traverses them.18

6 Deleuze G. The Logic of Sense, The Athlone Press, London, 1990, pp. 80–​81. 1 17 Deleuze G. Empiricism and Subjectivity. An Essay on Hume’s Theory of Human Nature. Columbia University Press, New York, 1991, p. 84. 18 Deleuze G. The Logic of Sense, The Athlone Press, London, 1990, p. 81.

Deleuze – “temporality” of sense

23

Let us have a closer look at the word traverses –​it displays some distinctive metaphysical sensitivity but is rather an allusion to Heidegger’s curled up metaphysics; a clear demand for a cut. What permits, therefore, the determination of one of those series as signifying and the other as signified are precisely these two aspects of sense (insistence and extra-​being) and the two aspects of nonsense of the paradoxical element from which they derive (empty square and supernumerary object; place without occupant in one series and occupant without place in the other).19

Deleuze sensed the perils connected with taming a paradox, which he expressed in the final sentence of the chapter “on paradox.” This presentation of a total deployment at the surface is necessarily affected, at each of these points, by an extreme and persistent fragility.20

In the face of such impermanence, the question arises about the possibility of the existence of a narrative identity, an identity based on words. Let us therefore examine the function of word and time in the genealogy of the subject.

Deleuze –​“temporality” of sense The ignorant suppose that an infinite number of drawing requires an infinite amount of time; in reality it suffices that time be infinitely subdivisible as in the case in the famous parable of the Tortoise and Hare. The fundamental question with which this text leaves us is this: what is this time which need not be infinite but only “infinitely subdivisible”? It is the Aion. We have seen the past, present, and future were not at the three parts of a single temporality, but they rather formed two readings of time, each one of which is complete and excludes the other: on one hand, the always limited present, which measures the action of bodies and causes and the state of their mixtures on depth (Chronos); on the other, the essentially unlimited

9 Deleuze G. The Logic of Sense, The Athlone Press, London, 1990, p. 81. 1 20 Deleuze G. The Logic of Sense, The Athlone Press, London, 1990, p. 81.

24

Paradoxical genealogy of subject past and future, which gather incorporeal events, at the surface, as effects (Aion).21

For Deleuze, the words that create narrative22 are located “between” time, between Aion and Chronos. A Deleuze’s subject thrown into Aion-​Chronos time-​space weaves words on the border of two times, on a fictional surface tension.

Disjunctive synthesis Let us, therefore, stop at the question about the sense, as the possibility of articulation, of what constitutes the subject. According to Deleuze: Sense is that which is formed and deployed at the surface. Even the frontier is not a separation, but rather the element of articulation, so that sense is presented both at that which happens to bodies and that which insists in propositions.23

Let us stop at disjunctive synthesis –​a kind of counteraction to the primary chronological casket disjunctive. Disjunctive synthesis is a procedure that goes back to Nietzsche’s intuition. “Point of view” does not signify a theoretical judgement; as for “procedure,” it is life itself. From Leibniz, we had already learned that there are no points of view on things, but that things, beings, are themselves points of view. Leibniz, however, subjected the points of view so exclusive rules such that each opened itself onto the others only insofar as they converged: the points of view on the same town. With Nietzsche, on the contrary, the point of view is opened onto a divergence which it affirms: another town corresponds to each point of view, each point of view is another town, the towns are linked only by their distance and resonate only through the divergence of their series, their houses and their streets. There is always another town within the town. Each term becomes the

1 Deleuze G. The Logic of Sense, The Athlone Press, London, 1990, p. 61. 2 22 I am not familiar with the literature that explores the issue of narrative identity in relation to Deleuze’s thought. However, Deleuze’s time can be considered as a necessary condition for the formation of the word –​here founded as the foundation of identity. The only position I was able to find was: Declan Sheerin Deleuze and Ricoeur Disavowed Affinities and the Narrative Self, Continuum, London, 2009. However, this is not a search for such motifs in Deleuze’s philosophy as could serve as the basis for an analysis of the issue of narrative identity. This position is rather an attempt to deconstruct the notion of identity as such (described by Sheerin as “self”). 23 Deleuze G. The Logic of Sense, The Athlone Press, London, 1990, p. 125.

Disjunctive synthesis

25

means of going all the way to the end of another, by following the entire distance. Nietzsche’s perspective –​his perspectivism –​is a much more profound art than Leibniz’s point of view; for divergence is no longer a principle of exclusion, and disjunction no longer a means of separation. Incompossibility is now a means of communication.24

Disjunctive synthesis opens the door to divergent thinking. This perspective is a peculiar point of view in which the affirmed discrepancies, or more precisely the nodal points of discrepancies, determine the direction of branches in the next, successive discrepancies. Deleuze, basing his claim on divergent reasoning, postulates that perspectivism should be understood as a condition of a certain truth of change appearing to the subject. Hence, disjunctive synthesis is not only a tool of thinking, without concern for the true character of the shape of thoughts, but rather a true convergence. “If the status of the object is profoundly changed, so also is that of the subject,” Deleuze postulates.25 The operation of disjunctive synthesis can be metaphorically described as a fractal construction of the image of thought, where the result of such operation is the emerging image as such. However, we are still moving in a closed, suffocating, single-​track space, like a worn-​out hermeneutical circle –​where on the one hand we are melted by a cold, casket “here and now,” and on the other hand the empty space between the elements makes the object of affirmation a distance separating the casket and fractal petals of “here and now.” The disjunctive synthesis sensitizes us to “affirmative divergences.” The incompossibility is an added value. Thus, returning to the Deleuzian landscape, the question about these distances between cities would appear to be unreasonable. It would therefore have to be assumed that the question of what is between the objects in the city is irrelevant. It wouldn’t matter if there was a lawn, a forest or, for example, streets. In turn, if this problem were to be transferred into areas of e.g. mathematics, then the disjunctive synthesis would be a question about properties and attributes of the space in which elements of a given set are located. From a mathematical point

4 Deleuze G. The Logic of Sense, The Athlone Press, London, 1990, pp. 173–​174. 2 25 Deleuze G. The Fold. Leibniz and the Baroque, The Athlone Press, London, 1993, p. 19.

26

Paradoxical genealogy of subject

of view, this question is generally overlooked. Examples of three elements will be subject to the same analysis whether they are in a vacuum, water, or elsewhere. However, Deleuze points out that the procedure of disjunctive synthesis refers to the sphere of life rather than to axioms as such. On many occasions, in the pages of Logic of Sense, the issues of unpredictability were discussed. An aleatoric point is a moment when formal laws bend. Here this would be a question about the space between three points –​ a question about water, vacuums or, for example, air. The operation of disjunctive synthesis sensitizes the problem of “background.” Removing elements from space is not just removing elements as such, but is also a situation in which you discover the space that surrounds those elements. Forgetting about buildings is at the same time an opportunity to look at the forests, streets and lawns in a sensitive way –​the forests that fade away every day and disappear under the pressure of the houses. The Deleuzian gaze introduces us to a reality in which the discovery of palimpsests becomes possible. Moreover, only in the light of Deleuze’s disjunctive synthesis is the coexistence of Chronos and Aion possible. I would risk the thesis that Deleuze’s sense emerges from the combination of Aion and Chronos by means of disjunctive synthesis, where within this “weave,” or on the border (which is not separation) of these two times, a sense emerges of a place of articulation. The articulated event of Aion’s world with the act of “cut” by Chronos polishes the thought to the form of a word. [...] in the case of Aion, the becoming-​mad of depths was climbing to the surface, the simulacra in turn were becoming phantasms, the deep break was showing as a crack in the surface.26

Lacan –​“temporality” of sense Lacanian trauma is a paradox in itself. Trauma remains non-​verbal. Trauma is deposited in the Real, outside the register of words. Trauma always happens “too early;” its understanding, situated in the Symbolic, in the

26 Deleuze G. The Logic of Sense, The Athlone Press, London, 1990, p. 165.

Lacan – “temporality” of sense

27

register of words, de-​traumatizes it by definition.27 The word binds trauma and understanding, but it binds them together in a special way: in Deleuze’s language as a disjunctive synthesis –​that paradox of the word (trauma and understanding). Lacan’s subject is a torn subject: continuously shredded (trauma) and healed (understanding). This strong tension creates a special narrative: a narrative of continuous building and destruction. It is an attempt, almost doomed to failure, at self-​narrative, set “beyond” the time: “before” (trauma) and “after” (understanding). In the Lacanian landscape, the gap in the symbolic system is a traumatic event.28 The hiatus in the symbolic system is a path to the Real, to the place where the trauma lives. Trauma happens in real life, outside the tongue. One can see here a tension: on the one hand there are traumatic events, these non-​verbalized foundations of human subjectivity, and on the other hand we can see a register of words, this tool which is the key to understanding human subjectivity. How, then, can subject understand the “truth” of his personality structure, his symbolic system, and verbalize the trauma that conditions it? Well, this is a task that is almost doomed to failure in advance. The gap in the symbolic system, which is conditioned by trauma, disappears when trauma ceases to be a traumatic event. It ceases to be so when it is verbalized. It is then that the structure of the symbolic field changes, as the signifiers are displaced. The time shift between a traumatic event and its articulation is what creates the movement of signifier and signified; signifier understood here as trauma and signified as an element of the symbolic field. At the intersection of this dependence words are created, an indispensable element of creating

27 Another interesting shot of this “premature” trauma can be found in the article A. Bielik-​Robson, 2006, and earlier –​Forrester J., 1990. Agata Bielik-​Robson explores the issue of Lacanian trauma in relation to the Hegelian figure of the Master and Slave. Forrester researches this moment of time delay (in the book it is presented as “two moments with a time delay,” “reordering time”) seen as the relation: trauma and understanding. Chapter 8: Dead on time is particularly important in this context. Lacan’s theory of temporality. 28 Cf. Lacan Seminar on the Pourloined Letter: Ecrits, W. W. Norton Company, New York, 2006.

28

Paradoxical genealogy of subject

identity. What is more, I postulate consideration of the “temporality” of the trauma on two planes simultaneously: 1. as a temporality included in reference to the signifier (here are the roots of “too early”); 2. and, as a consequence, as always a relationship with the Other, moreover anchored in the Other, which is also a result of Lacan’s approach to the notion of time.29 Metaphorically speaking, if one compares a symbolic field to the space-​ time and trauma to a black hole, which shapes the topology of that field, then at the moment when that black hole evaporates, the topology of the space-​time continuum is modified. In other words, “the truth” of the system occurs when the system is modified. The system remains in action (and in this sense is true) as long as its “truth” persists (trauma), and is off the register of consciousness. Lacan does not provide us with an answer to the question of a language that could objectively explain the position of man in the world. For there is no such language. What Lacan proposes is to explain the structure as such: the discourse is true (in the sense “works”) as long as the truth about it (trauma) remains non-​verbalized. In this sense, any auto-​narrative is doomed to failure in advance: it is narrative as long as its truth is outside the world, hidden in the register of Real. With this shift of the signifier vs. signified (trauma vs. the moment of understanding), auto-​narrative is, by definition, cracked, torn. Thus, the genesis of the word is itself a paradoxical process. For what creates the foundations of identity is founded on contradictoryand unstable foundations: on a paradox.

Lacan and Deleuze –​the function of time Both Deleuze’s “border” and Lacan’s Real are what makes sense. However, Lacan’s language cannot be translated into Deleuze’s language.

29 See: Logical Time and the Assertion of Anticipated Certanity, Lacan J. Ecrits, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2006. The notion of logical time in Lacan will be analysed later in this book.

Lacan and Deleuze – the function of time

29

Deleuze’s “border” is a place where a sense emerges (a place of articulation) and it is secondary to a temporal element.30 The tension between Aion and Chronos creates words. Looking at Lacanian trauma as what makes sense, it is impossible to be detached from the other person’s gaze. Lacanian time emerges from the relation with the Other. Hence trauma, our most personal “mine,” which aspires to be the undoubted truth, is legitimized in the gaze of the Other. Trauma, as something that by its very nature is non-​verbalizable, exists until it is detached from the world of words –​from the Other. Therefore, although itself a non-​verbalizable construct, it is founded on a word. For Deleuze, the fontal concept is time, which I see as the disjunctive synthesis of Aion and Chronos. From the concept of time a word emerges. Time so seen is both a sufficient and a necessary condition for word-​formation. A word, in such an approach, is therefore almost by definition a paradoxical construct due to the paradoxical construction of time as such. On the foundation of this paradoxical word, an identity is born –​and is thus primordially paradoxical. For Lacan, the original concept is trauma, as something that remains non-​verbalizable. At the same time, it is founded on a word (according to Lacan’s vision of time). It seems, therefore, that the reality of trauma is founded on contradictory foundations: on the one hand, it claims to be “objectively true.” On the other hand, it is rooted in the relation with the Other, in the symbolic relation. When looking at Lacan’s time and a condition of sense, one cannot omit the eyes of the Other. Lacan’s time, contrary to Deleuze’s, is the time that emerges as the effect of the relation with the Other. What I seek in speech is a response from the other. What constitutes me as a subject is my question. In order to be recognized by the other, I proffer what was inly in view of what will be. In order to find him, I call him by a name that he must assume or refuse in order to answer me.

30 A similar intuition can be seen in Deleuze’s work when he examines the relation between a concept and a plane of immanence. It is also here that one can see the tension, the narrowing of meaning at the moment when a non-​verbalized idea becomes an articulated concept. (Deleuze G., Guattari F. What is philosophy, Columbia University Press, New York, 1994).

30

Paradoxical genealogy of subject I identify myself in language, but only by losing myself in it as an object. What is realized in my history is neither the past definite as what was, since it is no more, nor even the perfect as what has been in what I am, but the future anterior as what I will have been, given what I am in the process of becoming. If I now face someone to question him, there is no cybernetic device imaginable that can turn his response onto a reaction. This definition of “response” as the second term in the “stimulus-​response” circuit is simply a metaphor sustained by the subjectivity attributed to animals, only to be elided thereafter in the psychical schema to which metaphor reduces it. This is what I have called putting a rabbit into a hat so as to pull it out again.31

Hence, the insoluble aporia: how can what is most real (trauma) be treated as real if it is not possible to rupture the relationship with the Other? In my opinion, the assumption of Lacan’s reasoning is the premise that time cannot be considered in isolation from the Other. The above analysis may lead to the conclusion that Lacan’s trauma is an aporia. Trauma as that what is rooted in the Real is at the same time a symbolic phenomenon, because it functions as based on the Other. It is, therefore, what aspires to be true, but this status is always only symbolically true, provisionally true. This paradox is easy to overcome when one negates the category of objective truths: after all, there are no such truths. What is called truth is the truth of a system that is structurally coherent (and in this sense “true”) for as long as it does not know “the truth” about itself (its trauma). The word is accompanied by an element of time delay. Self-​narration is therefore a term contradictory in itself. Rather, one could say that each narrative about itself is a counter-​anticipation; it is delayed in relation to itself. One may ask about the conditions and possibilities of articulation, as to what constitutes subject, what gives it a sense. In fact, the answer to such a question is simple as long as the sense is expressed in terms of temporality. The temporality of sense according to Lacan’s theory I will therefore describe as: 1. asynchronous (the “delayed” understanding of traumatic events) 2. symbolic (rooted in the Other)

31 Lacan J. Ecrits, W.W. Norton Company, New York-​London, 2006, p. 247.

Lacan and Deleuze – the function of time

31

3. temporal (unavoidable change in the symbolic field when the sense of the structure is perceived). Lacanian sense is, therefore, on the one hand, an illusory and fragile concept, but as such, it is also stable as a structure, as a certain mechanism. However, Deleuze’s approach to time does not need the category of the Other. Deleuze’s time may exist outside the area of the relation with the Other. Deleuze’s time is a construct immanent to sense. It is worth noticing that Deleuze does not explain the concept of time itself, but only describes it. For both Lacan and Deleuze, the very process of word formation is a paradoxical one. On the basis of Deleuze’s philosophy, words arise as a result of the function of time, paradoxical in itself. For Lacan, words are a tool for verbalizing trauma, which itself is non-​verbalizable and asynchronous, as mentioned in the paragraph above. The category of time, understood differently by Deleuze and Lacan, is what distinguishes both philosophers. On the other hand, this mentioned process of the formation of words, as well as the mechanism of the emergence of sense (and also human subjectivity) is similar in both philosophers: it is rather the subject that is the secondary construct of the emergence of sense, than the assumption that it is the man who gives sense to the world, and even more so than the assumption of any objectivity of this world. Using the words of Lacan: it is the symbolic system that creates the human being rather than the human being who creates the symbols. Ernest Jones has drawn up a little catalogue of the symbols that one finds at the roots of analytic experience –​which constitute symptoms, the Oedipal relationship, etc. –​and he demonstrates that what is at stake are always essentially themes related to kinship relations, the master’s authority, and life and death. All of which obviously involve symbols. The latter are elements that have nothing whatsoever to do with reality. A being that is completely encaged like an animal, hasn’t the slightest notion of them. At stake, here are precisely the points at which symbols constitutes human reality, where it creates human dimension Freud constantly emphasizes when he says that the obsessive neurotic always lives in the register of what involves the element of greatest uncertainty: how long one’s life will last, who one’s biological father is, and so on. There is no direct perceptual proof of any of that in human reality. Such things are constructed and constructed primitively by certain symbolic relations that can find confirmation. A [child’s] father is effectively its

32

Paradoxical genealogy of subject progenitor. But, before we can know who he is with certainty, the name of the father creates the function of the father. I believe that symbols are not elaborations of sensations or of reality. What is properly symbolic –​and most primitive of symbols –​introduces something else, something different into human reality, something that constitutes all the primitive objects of truth. What is remarkable is that symbols, symbolizing symbols, all fall under the heading. The creation of symbols accomplishes the introduction of a new reality into animal reality.32

In both Lacan and Deleuze’s philosophy, words are in a paradoxical relation to the notion of time. Deleuze’s narrative, Deleuze’s formation of words, is similar to that of Lacan’s words, since they both exclude continuity, causality, stability, invariability, permanence. For both Lacan and Deleuze, the identity of the subject is broken in advance, broken in time, and hence the narrative is inconsistent. To say it more emphatically: every attempt to build a stable, lasting and coherent narrative with reference to the issue of identity is a gesture towards the loss of the second bottom, the loss of human depth. Paraphrasing Deleuze’s words, one can say that the narrative identity is characterized by extreme and non-​removable impermanence. Thus, let us go one step further: beyond words.

Tension and paradox “Nothing is more fragile than the surface?” Deleuze G. The Logic of Sense, p. 83. “Language is rendered possible by the frontier which separates it from things and from bodies (including those which speak).” Deleuze G. The Logic of Sense, p. 166.

Let us look at the category of tension: what the relation of tension to paradox is, and how these two categories influence speech. Let us start with how the tension builds reality, how it implements us into the world. As Hilsbecher aptly puts it:

32 Lacan J. The Name of The Father, trans. Bruce Fink, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2013, pp. 43–​45.

Tension and paradox

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In reality, the intellectual and rational sphere coexists in constant tension with hidden, telluric forces, subconscious, vegetative, irrational, or whatever else to call them. It is not the tension as such that determines the particularity of our situation: it has always existed, it belongs to the essence of humanity. But the degree of that tension.33

Tension as such is an immanent part of our humanity. Everyone is resonating, both in consciousness and in the unconscious. The relation between consciousness and unconsciousness has been associated with the specificity of a musical instrument. I think the acoustic resonance metaphor could hit rightly here. Tense strings have resonant frequencies correlated with mass, length, and voltage. Although the string does not generate sound itself, the force used and the way it is touched make the music come into being. Touch without a string ends up in emptiness, while a string as such is just a piece of wire. Consciousness without unconsciousness is empty, whereas unconsciousness without consciousness is dead. Consciousness and unconsciousness live in constant tension, on the fragile line that separates them from each other, like Deleuze’s kingdom of past-​future Aion and the world of the present Chronos. This is because the past, future and present are not –​according to Deleuze who follows the Stoics –​the three parts of one temporality,34 but allow for two different interpretations of time: Chronos, as by definition always a limited present, who measures the actions of bodies as causes and measures the state of their abyssal constellations of Aion. Since past-​future (Aion) and present (Chronos) interpretations are two disjunctive ways of seeing the world, we can say either that there is only “now”: measuring past-​future constellations, or that there are only past-​future divisions arranged along empty virtual lines of “now.” In one case, the present is everything; the past and future indicate only the relative difference between two presents. One of these has a smaller extension, while the other has a contraction bearing upon a greater extension. In other case, the present is nothing; it is a pure mathematical instant, a being of reason which expresses the past and the future into which is divided. Briefly, there are two times, one of which is composed only of interlocking presents; the other is constantly decomposed into elongated pasts and futures. There are two times, one

3 Hilsbecher W. Tragizm, absurd i paradox, PWN, Warszawa, 1972, p. 28. 3 34 Deleuze G. The Logic of Sense, The Athlone Press, London, 1990, p. 61.

34

Paradoxical genealogy of subject of which is always definite, active or passive; the other is eternally Infinitive and eternally neutral. One is cyclical, measures the movement of bodies and depends on the matter which limits and fills it out; the other is a pure straight line at the surface, incorporeal, unlimited, an empty form of time, independent of all matter.35

Chronos is, therefore, a present that measures, like a Swiss precision watch, past-​future forms, cutting them into thin, single instances of “now” on the surface. One can risk a statement that, for the price of the overall unity of the structure (Chronos as a straight line stretches towards infinity), we strip the being of its overall essence: we shred it into casket-​like presents so as to subject it to cold, mathematical, precise, Chronos’s calculation. Aion, the place of the past-​future depth, paradoxically does not have in itself this past-​future direction. Aion himself cannot generate a paradox. Only from the perspective of static logical genesis, from the perspective of sense, from the perspective of surface, from the perspective of surface tension between Aion and Chronos, does the direction as such emerge. What will be developed in the book, and here only sketched, is the fact that Deleuze’s subject is somehow “thrown” into the Aion-​Chronos space-​time continuum. This space-​time continuum is, as I have already mentioned, infinite since Aion is infinite; it is also probably a space-​time continuum independent of the position of the observer. This space, however, undergoes some modifications due to the position of the individual in relation to Other; this is obvious, for example, in the light of Deleuze’s essayMichael Tournier and a world without Other from Logic of Sense. However, it must be admitted that, although Deleuze’s intuition is similar to Lacan’s (the space-​time continuum is modified due to the position of the individual), Lacan not only works out this argument intuitively but can also articulate the entire analysis,36 which logically stems from his theory. So let us go back to Deleuze: let us go back to the Aion-​Chronos and take a closer look at what is happening on the verge of the two. Tension is that factor that makes consciousness and unconsciousness coexist on the border. It is the degree of tension that influences the homeostasis of consciousness and unconsciousness. Thus, the sense emerges on the verge of the irrational

5 Deleuze G. The Logic of Sense, The Athlone Press, London, 1990, p. 62. 3 36 Cf. Logical Time and the Assertion of Anticipated Certainty, in: Lacan, 2006.

Tension and paradox

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abyss of the Aion and Chronos ratio. In other words, the sense emerges on the border between two times: Aion, who has no direction and Chronos, who has a direction in himself but a lack of depth. The creation of sense from the body presupposes a seeming contradiction: thatthe sense both produces the things it incarnates and is produced by these things. So this is almost a question about metaphysics: how can the sense of oneself be produced from the things one puts on while being wrapped around them? This apparent contradiction is invalidated by Deleuze’s idea of static logical genesis. How can we maintain both that sense produces even the states of affairs in which it is embodied, and that it is itself produced by these states of affairs or the actions and passions of bodies (an immaculate conception)? The idea itself of a static genesis dissipates the contradiction. When we say that bodies and their mixture produce sense, it is not by virtue of an individuation which would presupposes it. Individuation in bodies, the measure in their mixtures, the play of persons and concepts in their variations –​the entire order presupposes sense and the pre-​individual and impersonal neutral field within which it unfolds. It is therefore in a different way that sense is produced by bodies. The question is now about bodies taken in their undifferentiated depth and in their measureless pulsation. The depth acts in an original way, by means of its power to organize surfaces and to envelop itself within surfaces.37

This “static” in itself is deceptive because it refers to the bodies in their varied depths, in Aion. And let’s not forget that there’s nothing more perishable for Deleuze than the surface. The depths of Deleuze’s bodies pulsate infinitely and this pulsation, according to various procedures (such as stretching, crushing, absorbing), shapes the surface, which intact, but almost by definition calculable, field provides continuity to the world of Aion and Chronos, creating a kind of fictional surface tension –​the only and necessary condition for the creation of speech. Paradoxically, this field is the only possible condition for the continuity of the world of Aion and Chronos; it is a virtual and so fragile field. If we relate this to Deleuze’s definition of paradox, then the paradox would be that which breaks the tension in such a manner that it resonates simultaneously on the surface and in the depths, in Aion and in Chronos simultaneously. Standing at the gates of the paradox, words lose their power, crumble at the mouth. And 37 Deleuze G. The Logic of Sense, The Athlone Press, London, 1990, p. 124.

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so it was with Alice, whose hilarious adventure of eating cookies had to be paid for with this “silence,” at least in the sense of “nameableness,” as it was not fully definable. Alice became both bigger and smaller at the same time. It is a bidirectional, contradictory process, and therefore a paradoxical situation that goes beyond words. The fictitious letter of Lord Chandos to Francis Bacon, written in language impotence, is a pictorial example of an attempt to search for “whirlpools” of language: […] I have lost completely the ability to think or to speak of anything coherently. At first I grew by degrees incapable of discussing a loftier or more general subject in terms of which everyone, fluently and without hesitation, is wont to avail himself. I experienced an inexplicable distaste for so much as uttering the words spirit, soul, or body. I found it impossible to express an opinion on the affairs at Court, the events in Parliament, or whatever you wish. This was not motivated by any form of personal deference (for you know that my candour borders on imprudence), but because the abstract terms of which the tongue must avail itself as a matter of course in order to voice a judgment –​these terms crumbled in my mouth like mouldy fungi. […] Even in familiar and humdrum conversation all the opinions which are generally expressed with ease and sleep-​walking assurance became so doubtful that I had to cease altogether taking part in such talk. It filled me with an inexplicable anger, which I could conceal only with effort, to hear such things as: This affair has turned out well or ill for this or that person; Sheriff N. is a bad, Parson T. a good man; Farmer M. is to be pitied, his sons are wasters; another is to be envied because his daughters are thrifty; one family is rising in the world, another is on the downward path. All this seemed as indemonstrable, as mendacious and hollow as could be. My mind compelled me to view all things occurring in such conversations from an uncanny closeness. As once, through a magnifying glass, I had seen a piece of skin on my little finger look like a field full of holes and furrows, so I now perceived human beings and their actions. I no longer succeeded in comprehending them with the simplifying eye of habit. For me everything disintegrated into parts, those parts again into parts; no longer would anything let itself be encompassed by one idea. Single words floated round me; they congealed into eyes which stared at me and into which I was forced to stare back –​whirlpools which gave me vertigo and, reeling incessantly, led into the void. […] Now and then at night the image of this Crassus is in my brain, like a splinter round which everything festers, throbs, and boils. It is then that I feel as though I myself were about to ferment, to effervesce, to foam and to sparkle. And the whole thing is a kind of feverish thinking, but thinking in a medium more immediate, more liquid, more glowing than words. It, too, forms whirlpools, but of a sort that do not seem to lead, as the whirlpools of language, into the abyss, but into myself and into the deepest womb of peace. […] I felt, with a certainty

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not entirely bereft of a feeling of sorrow, that neither in the coming year nor in the following nor in all the years of this my life shall I write a book, whether in English or in Latin: and this for an odd and embarrassing reason which I must leave to the boundless superiority of your mind to place in the realm of physical and spiritual values spread out harmoniously before your unprejudiced eye: to wit, because the language in which I might be able not only to write but to think is neither Latin nor English, neither Italian nor Spanish, but a language none of whose words is known to me, a language in which inanimate things speak to me and wherein I may one day have to justify myself before an unknown judge.38

Perhaps, you can get a resonance on the border between words and things without touching the metaphysical perspective. Perhaps the ephemeral solution to such an aporia is Heidegger’s poetry or Jünger’s poetic-​prose as three-​dimensional. Returning to the three-​dimensionality: its action is based on the fact that we seize objects with inner pliers. The sign of extraordinary subtlety is that one sense used for this purpose is somehow split. The true language, the language of the writer, is distinguished by words and images that carry great emotion, words, which, although known to us for a long time, bloom like buds, from which seem to flow immaculate brilliance and colorful music. […] Every three-​dimensional observation makes us bewildered, and that’s because the sensory impressions that initially appeared to us on the surface can also be tasted in their depths. Between understanding and experience we delight a shock, as if from a wonderful fall –​ and at the same time there is a confirmation hidden in it; we feel a play of senses slightly wavering like a mysterious veil, like a curtain of miracles.39

The question can now be asked: what breaks the tension so that a paradoxical situation arises that the subject is able to resonate not only by chanting Chronos or melting in Aion, but can also resonate on two planes at the same time without touching the Shibboleth’s blade of words: both in Aion’s world and in Chronos’ world? Both Deleuze and Hilsbecher agree here: art is the medium. And yet shock is the primordial element of art in general, the spiritual ability to express oneself. Not when it turns against a real or apparent taboo, but when it surprisingly re-​formulates the fundamental truths of human existence, of being,

38 Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Letter of Lord Chandos to Francis Bacon, 22. August, 1603 http://​depts.washington.edu/​vienna/​documents/​Hofmannsthal/​ Hofmannsthal_​Chandos.htm. 39 Jünger E. Awanturnicze serce, Czytelnik, Warsaw, 1999, p. 33.

38

Paradoxical genealogy of subject of the world, when in a surprising perspective re-​presents the things seen daily, so that we have the impression that we have seen them for the first time, as if a miracle had happened. In one of his fragmentary notes, Valéry speaks of a chest of drawers standing in the corner of his room, which, at a moment of pure sensitivity, became a revelation to him. In Hofmannsthal’s opinion, Lord Chandos speaks similarly of a plough left alone in a field. The surprise, therefore, is the proper essence of the shock –​that is, the surprise that comes from the basic experience of the mystery of life, the mystery of being. The nerve of life gets in this act of orgiastic shock. At one moment, curtains fall from the mystery of the world –​and it appears as an open secret. The man who gets to know it loses his speech, fights for words and creates speech anew.40

Bewilderment is the heart of art. At the same time, bewilderment is the heart of the paradox. What can the work of art do but follow again the path which goes from noise to voice, from voice to speech, and from speech to the verb, constructing this Music fur ein Haus, in order always to recover the independence of sounds and to fix the thunderbolt of the univocal. This event is, of course, quickly covered over everyday banality or, on the contrary, by the sufferings of madness.41

Art breaks the tension between Chronos and Aion so that we sound simultaneously in the worlds of the two. It is the essence of paradox. Art transcends words and reaches the heights of paradox. Art is the medium that goes beyond words –​it is its greatest power, but also its weakness that art remains inexpressible, non-​verbalized... Thus, the following question arises: The problem is therefore one of knowing how the individual would be able to transcend his form and his syntactical link with a world, in order to attain to the universal communication of events, that is, to the affirmation of a disjunctive synthesis beyond logical contradictions, and even beyond alogical incompatibilities, it would be necessary for the individual to grasp herself as event; and that she grasp the event actualized within her as event; and she grasp the event actualized within her as another individual grafted onto her. In this case, she would not understand, want, or represent this even without also understanding and wanting all other events as individuals, and without representing all other individuals as

40 Hilsbecher W. Tragizm, absurd and paradoks, Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, Warszawa, 1972, pp. 37–​38. 41 Deleuze G. The Logic of Sense, The Athlone Press, London, 1990, pp. 248–​249.

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events. Each individual would be like a mirror for the condensation of singularities and each world a distance in the mirror.42

Was Deleuze right when he claimed that the individual, by crossing his own form and breaking the syntactical links with the world, reaches a universal communication of events? Heidegger’s answer would be “no,” because Dasein breaks the syntactical links with the world in fear: then words crumble. On the other hand, in fear, one does not exceed one’s own form; Dasein does not understand oneself as an event –​then there is no affirmation of disjunctive synthesis.

Casus Narcissus Let’s consider the Narcissus case. B -​I wonder. I often racked my brain over what it meant that the painters saw death in the mirror. The world as a dream reminded them of death. The magic of the mirror also has its own danger: the danger of temptation. A -​Temptations for what? B -​Dream and death. I don’t believe Narcissus died of vanity. B -​I think he was tired of the wandering of those who preceded him. He couldn’t see the horizon anymore. His father, the god of river, crossed all the horizons. Narcissus searched for a source of rivers, a source of sources. He drowned in the fetal waters of the Earth’s great-​grandmother. […] B -​No matter how much world and movement the mirror absorbs: it transforms it into a timeless dream. In something like after death or before birth. A [...] The horizon tempts us to infinite wanderings, a mirror to complete the wanderings. The horizon causes movement, the mirror would like to stop any movement. Two opposing spells.43

2 Deleuze G. The Logic of Sense, The Athlone Press, London, 1990, p. 179. 4 43 Hilsbecher W. Tragizm, absurd i paradox, PWN, Warsaw, 1972, p. 198.

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On the verge of image and words, in the depths of water, waves of echoes chant the words of Narcissus. Is there anyone outside me? Narcissus asks, and the mirror surface of the water will brush Narcissus’ words into syllables, images, monotones. Narcissus’s mirror, Deleuze’s tension, reflects in two ways: words and images, wrapping them into one. Abraham remains silent because the words crumble in his mouth. Narcissus will keep silent, lulled by the singing of the water’s depths. Can an individual then wrap himself up in an event in such a way that he breaks all syntactical links with the world, while not splitting, dissolving in himself –​the fetal waters of the Earth? The narcissus of Lacan, who would melt in the mirror, would lose himself, would lose his structural integrity. The depths would not be a summoning womb for him, but only a blade that shreds in such a way as to dismember the first elements. In Hilsbecher’s view, however, the water’s depths are personified in such a way as to take Narcissus to the next dimension –​beyond words. In both Lacan and Hilsbecher’s eyes, Narcissus is silent. Lacan’s Narcissus is silent because his personality structure is torn apart again. Hilsbecher’s Narcissus stops speaking, because when he looks at Mother-​Water, he rises above the word, to eternal peace.

Narcissus, art, Jüngers’ three-​dimensionality and the paradox of the word For both Deleuze and Lacan’s Narcissus, Lord Chandos, Hilsbecher’s art generates various positions of subject. As I have previously outlined, the case of Narcissus can be considered in two ways: in Hilsbecher’s view it is not just a matter of looking at one’s own eyeballs in such a way as to tear themselves apart at the irises, pupils, and proteins; there is also this primordial sink; this mirror is a “fold,” a Deleuzian tension which, between the kingdoms of Aion and Chronos, puts Narcissus to sleep for the next dimension. Jünger’s prose and Heidegger’s poetry are three-​dimensional. The same applies to art: an extraverbal medium. Art is written about both by Deleuze (as that which struggles with madness alone) and by Hilsbecher (as that which is the heart of paradox). These means of expression go beyond the

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Möbius Strip.44 It is possible because the Euclidean spaces used by strict mathematical formalism are not only infinite in the sense of the Möbius Strip, but also spatially infinite. Such an assumption is based on the traditional, most classical cosmological approach to the solutions of Einstein’s equations, that is, solutions to the general theory of relativity (GTR). Of course, for strict mathematical formalism, this is not the only possible solution to the GTR equations. Three possibilities for the k parameter value correspond to three different possibilities of space-​time curvature. These three options of space geometry were described as Friedmann’s models. Friedmann’s models predict the future of the universe; the first and second models are those that operate in infinite spaces. The first Friedmann model is the most classic description. This model describes an open universe that expands slowly. The speed of this expansion is sufficient to avoid shrinkage. In such a model, the speed at which galaxies move away from each other is constantly decreasing (and expansion is increasing). It never goes down to zero. In Euclidean flat models, after an infinitely long time, the infinite space of the universe will be found within the horizon. However, since photons cannot travel faster than the speed of light, information about this state will reach us after an infinite period of time. This is the classic solution to Einstein’s equations. In our space –​at short distances –​the laws of Euclidean geometry apply. The sum of the angles in the triangle is 180 degrees. Geometry on the scale of our universe is one of the cases of hyperbolic geometry, i.e. open. The next is spherical geometry. Both geometries are characterized by radii of curvature, analogous to the Earth’s radius: positive radii indicate spherical geometry; negative radii indicate hyperbolic geometry. The second Friedmann model is a system in which, as in the first model, the laws of hyperbolic geometry apply. It expands so fast that gravity’s attraction can only slow down expansion. So it is also an expanding universe. In this open universe, similarly to the surface of Earth, parallel lines

44 Möbius’ Strip, through treated only as a thought construct, is Lacan’s favourite metaphor for the world.

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Figure 1  –​Open universe (author’s picture)

diverge. Thus, the sum of the angles in a triangle is less than 180 degrees and the circuit of the circle is greater than 2 π r. The third Friedmann model is a system that expands until the maximum is reached and then decreases to zero. Type Three universes collapse to expand again. Spherical geometry applies to the pulsating (bouncing) universe. Parallel lines intersect and the sum of the angles in a triangle can be up to 540˚. The perimeter of the district is less than 2 π r. The spherical space is closing itself in. The pulsating universe is therefore spatially finite, but this process of contraction and expansion can theoretically be repeated infinitely. The scenarios of a possible development of the universe, which assume cyclicality, thus going beyond singularity, capture the universe as actually infinite. In such scenarios actual infinity is fulfilled; it is a real attribute of the universe. Such an opinion was expressed by Professor Marek Wojciech Szydłowski in our private correspondence from December 2009. Friedmann’s three models allow us to understand the notion of the position of the observer. We will use Lord Chandos and Abraham Kierkegaard for this. Lord Chandos can be placed anywhere on the Möbius Strip, assuming that the strip disintegrates. This is the position of the crisis of words. The biblical Abraham, or Abraham from the fourth version of the Kierkegaard paradox, is with God on the same plane. And since God is

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Figure 2  –​Model view of the pulsating universe (author’s picture)

treated as infinity, this God must necessarily “flatten” himself to human flat-​like three-​dimensionality. It is undoubtedly a comic position.45 To better grasp the sense of this theory, I will use the example of a bird and a frog, taken from physicist Max Tegmark46 and my concept of its interpretation in the world of Flatman.47 Let us consider the example of point particles that move in three-​dimensional space. The observer inside this space –​a frog –​sees these particles only as points moving at a constant speed. In four-​dimensional space, the observer [bird] will see a straight line –​a strand of pasta. At the same time, when the frog sees a pair of orbiting particles, the bird sees two intertwined strands of pasta. The frog will describe its world with the help of Newtonian laws of dynamics and gravity. These laws will not be adequate to express the point of view of a bird whose world is described by the geometry of pasta plexuses –​and so, some different mathematical structures. For a bird, the frog itself is only a thick bundle of spaghetti, which has complex weaves. Can a frog, therefore,

5 I will discuss Abraham’s casus in detail in the last chapter of the book. 4 46 See: Tegmark, M. Parallel Universes, in: Science and Ultimate Reality, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004. 47 This example of a bird and a frog in the world of Flatman was used by me in my article of 2005 “On the direction time flow” in the memorial book Science, Human World devoted to Professor Irena Szumilewicz and edited by Władysław Krajewski, published by the Polish Philosophical Society.

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find sense in analysing and studying the world when it knows that it will never experience a perception of reality that is adequate to convey the perception of a bird? It is known that there is a hypothesis of multi-​dimensional theory (e.g. string theory). Such spaces would have a much more complicated structure than our earthly one. Is it then legally valid to study reality, if it is known anyway that it is examined only for a frog? A counterexample could be the theoretical world of a Flatman. Flatman is a virtual creature, living in a two-​dimensional reality on the edge of a spherical planet. This creature (Flatman) is convinced that it moves in infinite, flat space. If Flatman, using a stick, began to stir wider and wider circles, at some point he would realize that as the diameter increased, the circumference of the circle would start to decrease. It would happen if the Flatman crossed the equator of his planet. In this situation the creature could become suspicious as to whether the planet’s space was flat. So is it worth considering the structure of the universe with so many ambiguities and limitations? In that case, do scientists create mathematical structures, or do they only establish their relationships with the physical world? Can we talk about a privileged perception of reality in the situation of a bird, thus depreciating the frog’s point of view, or vice versa? There are two possible approaches to this problem. These possibilities have existed since the times of Plato and Aristotle. According to Aristotle’s classical definition of truth, the frog world is as legitimate from its point of view as the bird world from its point of view, because truth is the conformity of things with the intellect. The Platonic shot is diametrically different. Reality in such an approach is mathematical structures, and our perception is available in more or less perfect approximations. In Platonic terms, the bird’s perspective is much more perfect than the frog’s perception. The reality of the Flatman is much more fragile than the perception of man. Only in the Platonic paradigm is the question about the essence and structure of the universe legally valid. To sum up: Art and the casus of Narcissus take us beyond words, beyond the Möbius Strip. The price of Narcissus’ silence and the non-​verbalism of art remains an open question: the relation of art to madness and death to Narcissus’ silence…

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“But poets establish what remains”48 Distance out-​distances itself. The far is furthered. One is force to appeal here to the Heideggerian use of the word Entfernung: at once divergence, distance at distantiation of distance, the deferment of the distant, the de-​ferment, it is in fact annihilation (Ent-​), which constitutes the distant itself, the veiled enigma of proximation.49

Let us refer to Heidegger’s term de-​distancing (Entfernung). The notion of distancing, as annihilating distance, can be found in Being and Time: When we attribute spatially to Da-​sein, this “being in space” must evidentially be understood in terms of the kind of being of this being. […] De-​distancing means making distance disappear, making the being at a distance of something disappear, bringing it near. Da-​sein is essentially de-​distancing. As the being that it is, it lets being be encountered in nearness. De-​distancing discovers remoteness. Remoteness, like distance, is a categorical determination of beings unlike Da-​ sein. De-​distancing, on the other hand, must be kept in mind as an existential. Only because beings in general are discovered by Da-​sein in their remoteness, do “distances” and intervals among innerwordly beings become accessible in relation to other things. Two points are as little remote from each other as two things in general because neither of these beings can de-​distance in accordance with its kind of being. They merely have a measurable distance between them which is encountered in de-​distancing. Initially and for the most part, de-​distancing is a circumspect approaching, a bringing near as supplying, preparing, having at hand. But particular kinds of the purely cognitive discovery of beings also have the character of bringing near. An essential tendency toward nearness lies in Da-​sein.50

De-​distancing is as an oscillating existential of closeness and remoteness. Therefore, it is a process taking two opposite directions simultaneously. According to the Deleuzian notion of paradox, it is a paradox. De-​ distancing is impossible to measure in mathematical segments. It is not a stepwise, discontinuous lability that can be related to a point, but rather

8 Hölderlin F., Remembrance, passim. 4 49 Derrida J. Spurs. Nietzche’s Styles, The University of Chicago Press, 1982, pp. 50–​51. 50 Heidegger M. Being and Time, State University of New York Press, 1996, pp. 97–​98.

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a paradoxical coexistence of effetely pulsing nearness and remoteness. Such an interpretation of de-​distancing would bring us closer to Deleuze’s world of Aion, except that to get closer to Chronos’ world of now we do not need a Derridean blade of Shibboleth, the cut. The reason for this is that according to Heidegger Da-​sein itself contains an essential tendency towards nearness. This Aion-​Chronos dance intermingles, creating circles of a multidimensional Heideggerian notion of time –​however, one should not overlook the fact that, if Heidegger’s tendency towards nearness is an enthymematic assumption, it is the weakest point in Heidegger’s vision of a paradox. Let us look at Heidegger’s definition of a paradox once again: Da-​sein cannot wander around in the current range of its de-​distancing, it can only change them. Da-​sein is spatial by way of circumspectly discovering space so that is related to beings thus spatially encountered by constantly de-​distancing.51

Da-​sein is constantly stuck in a paradoxical state. De-​distancing is a natural mode of existence for Da-​sein. Da-​sein is paradoxical by its nature, since de-​distancing is its way of existing in the world. Da-​sein is simultaneously getting closer and farther away; and its tendency towards nearness, towards nullifying entropy, is that which would constitute a natural cut. Entfernung (de-​distancing) is paradoxical in itself: a paradox is a being’s natural mode of existence, yet Da-​sein has some inclination towards common sense in itself. It is a kind of sensitivity similar to Deleuze’s. Nevertheless, the difference is that in this case the question about the transcendental perspective of the Shibboleth blade fades away –​ instead we have an assumption about the inner tendency towards the closeness/​nearness that a being has, a tendency towards now. Heidegger revealed a similar intuition regarding Dasein in Identity and Difference, when he considered Ereignis (the event): The event of appropriation is that realm, vibrating within itself, through which man and Being reach each other in their nature, achieve their active nature by losing those qualities with which metaphysics has endoved them.52

1 Heidegger M. Being and Time State, University of New York Press, 1996, p. 100 5 52 Heidegger M. Identity and Difference, Harper & Row Publishers, New York, 1969, p. 37

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Ereignis is a paradoxical area. It is rocked in itself. Here the enthymematic premise about nearness is not rooted, unlike in Dasein, since late Heidegger, the Heidegger of Identity and Difference, a man moving away from ruling in the world of technology, naturally reaches out into Ereignis. That is the way it is, because this coexistence of a man and being on the mode of the event, this transgression from the world of technology towards the world of the event, may occur only through the leap (der Sprung). Thus a spring is needed in order to experience authentically the belonging together of man and Being. This spring is abruptness of the unbridged entry into that belonging which alone can grant a toward-​each-​other of man and Being, and thus the constellation of the two. The spring is the abrupt entry into the realm from which man and Being have already reached each other in their active nature, since both are mutually appropriated, extended as a gift, one to the other. Only the entry into the realm of this mutual appropriation determines and defines the experience of thinking. What a curious leap, presumably yielding us the insight that we do not reside sufficiently as yet where in reality we already are. Where are we? In which constellation of Being and man?53

Heidegger’s leap is, therefore, an intellectual-​existential journey from the world of technology towards the world of being, towards inhabiting, towards existing, towards co-​existing of the being and a man, of thinking and existing. Belonging-​together in itself constitutes a similar intuition to Heidegger’s Dasein or Deleuze’s concept of time. Nevertheless we have here a complete lack of metaphysical connotations; the only enthymematic premise is an assumption of this “leap,” in a way a reversal of Husserl’s epoché. Martin Heidegger had a similar intuition in his essay The Question Concerning Technology, in which he quotes Hölderlin’s poem: But where danger is, grows The saving power also.54

This intuition is similar to Deleuze’s relation madness–​reason or sense–​ nonsense. Heidegger’s and Deleuze’s ideas have a lot in common. However, while Deleuze leaves us in the face of the fear of a dilemma, a wounded

53 Heidegger M. Identity and Difference, Harper & Row Publishers, New York, 1969, p. 33. 54 Heidegger M. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, Harper & Row Publishers, 1977, p. 34.

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speech, or a tormenting paradox, Heidegger goes even further. Heidegger finds poetry comforting; poetry is for him a kind of speech which bends the Shibboleth blade, an untamed speech: a speech which is both paradoxical and articulated or, with reference to Derridean metaphor, a speech of a mad Jew. Whether art may be granted this highest possibility of its essence in the midst of the extreme danger, no one can tell. Yet essence in the midst of the extreme danger, no one can tell. Yet we can be astounded.[…]. Thus questioning, we bear witness to the crisis that in our sheer preoccupation with technology we do not yet experience the coming to presence of technology, that in our sheer aesthetic mindedness we no longer guard and preserve the coming to presence of art. Yet the more questioningly we ponder the essence of technology, the more mysterious the essence of art becomes. The closer we come to danger, the more brightly do the ways into saving power begin to shine and the more questioning we become. […] … poetically dwells man upon this earth.55

So we return to Jünger’s three-​dimensionality and the question of the possibility of expressing the “unnamable,” which probably only poetry can save....

55 Heidegger M. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, Harper & Row Publishers, 1977, pp. 34–​35.

Chapter II:  Relativity of the relation between I –​Other At the beginning of this chapter, I will briefly discuss two concepts of contemporary physics: the general theory of relativity (GTR) and quantum mechanics (QM). I treat GTR and QM as certain languages that can be helpful for metaphorical imaging, for grasping the structures of philosophical concepts. These two theories are going to serve me as a metaphor of mechanisms, which I notice in the philosophy of Lacan and Deleuze. I also hope that this perspective can help in grasping the humanistic sense of physical theories, derived from post-​structuralist philosophy.

General theory of relativity and quantum mechanics –​place and role of the subject The General Theory of Relativity (GTR) was established in 1915. It is based on the principle of the equivalence of acceleration and gravity. It states that the acceleration of the reference system is equivalent to the occurrence of an appropriate gravitational field. Gravitational and inertial forces associated with system acceleration are indistinguishable. In a given point of space, the effects of gravity and the effects of accelerated motion are indistinguishable. The most important conclusion from the theory of relativity for the concept of time is that there is no place in space that exists outside of time. Also, no events occur at some point in time outside the space. Time and space form a single space-​time continuum. Space-​time is defined as a set of events, i.e. points characterized by the place in space and time in which they occurred. An event described in this way is an idealization of an event understood experimentally. We omit here the duration of the phenomenon and its spatial dimensions. The time described by one coordinate (next to the spatial position) gives the space-​time continuum the character of a geometric object. The foundations of quantum mechanics were developed in 1925–​1926 independently of each other by Erwin Schrödinger, Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, and Werner Heisenberg. Werner Heisenberg formulated the principle of ambiguity. Quantum is defined as the smallest portion by which

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a physical quantity can change. The quantum theory takes into account discontinuity, i.e. step changes in physical quantities characterizing micro-​ particle states. According to this theory, electrons, as well as other elementary particles, do not cross the classical track out in space, but appear in different places in a certain area of space near the track defined by classical mechanics. Thus, the quantum description of the electron gives only the area in which the highest probability density of finding the electron is found. One could speak about of the position and the velocity of the electron as in Newtonian mechanics and one could observe and measure these quantities. But one could not fix both quantities simultaneously with arbitrary high accuracy. Actually the product of these two inaccuracies turned out to be not less than the Planck’s constant divided by the mass of the particle.56

This law was formulated by Heisenberg in 1926. Heisenberg showed that the uncertainty of measurement of the position multiplied by the uncertainty of measurement of the product of speed and particle mass is always greater than the constant h (Planck constant). He stated that the more accurately we determine the momentum of a given electron, the less precisely we can determine its position. Following the uncertainty principle, the state of an atomic system or elementary particle cannot be precisely stated. If we precisely determine the position of the electron, we cannot precisely determine its speed. Therefore, it is impossible to determine future phenomena unambiguously, not only because we do not see their connection with present phenomena (as Hume pointed out two centuries ago), but also because we cannot know present phenomena exactly. According to quantum mechanics, the universe evolves according to the rules of a coherent mathematical system, but this only determines the probability of some version of the future; it does not state which of the possibilities will be realized. Karl Popper illustrates the uncertainty principle with a simple example: if there is an electron at rest in a room (it must be dark in the room, as photons would excite the electron), one can easily define its momentum, because it would equal zero in the described situation. If, however, we would like to determine its location, we would need to light this room: but then the 56 Heisenberg W. Physics and Philosophy, copyright by Werner Heisenberg, United States of America, 1958, p. 42.

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photons will disperse the electron and the momentum will change. The change of energy of a given electron multiplied by the change of time will always be undetermined, and this indetermination will not be less than Planck’s constant. The formula tells us that the product of the two ranges of error is at least of the order of magnitude of h, where h is Planck’s quantum of action. It follows from this formula that a completely precise measurement of one of the two magnitudes will have to be purchased at the price of complete indeterminacy in the other.57

Heisenberg’s argument does not mean that there is indeterminism in the Universe. This argument implies only that we cannot learn all the laws of nature, not that there is no causality in nature. Quantum mechanics does not allow us to predict the result of a single measurement. It defines a set of possible results and allows assessing their probability. Quantum mechanics replaces continuity with discrete distribution. Therefore the uncertainty of quantum mechanics is comparable to any other theory, except that the time needed to observe some events is disproportionately long. The theory of relativity combines time and space in a four-​dimensional continuum. Time and space do not exist in an absolute way, but are related to each other. In the light of quantum theory, elementary particles can evolve in time either forwards or backwards –​which is not possible with GTR. GTR describes the gravitational field in the macrostructure of the world. Quantum mechanics describes the relations that occur between elementary particles. Einstein’s equations break down at almost infinitely short distances and almost infinite energies, for example in singularities of black holes. Then we get infinity in the results, whereupon the paradox appears. When operating with huge masses and distances of Planck scale order (e.g. near a black hole), GTR is not an adequate tool for describing the processes taking place there. Quantum mechanics also leads to aporia. An example of such a paradox is the analysis of basic oscillations. The basic state is the state with the lowest energy. The energy value is not zero because then the uncertainty principle would not be met. An oscillating system (e.g. a pendulum)

57 Popper K. The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Routledge Classics, London, 2002, p. 242.

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performs zero vibrations; i.e. it oscillates around zero. When one tries to calculate the mass or charge of the electron in the basic state, it is obtained in the results of infinity. Quantum mechanics describes the world well in microscale. The general theory of relativity describes the world well on a macro scale. Although GTR and QM enable full understanding of all processes occurring in nature, their synthesis is not possible: after combining their equations of quantum-​mechanical probability, some processes have infinite values in the results. It is worth noting that the two theories (GTR and QM) require different positions of the observer: in the general theory of relativity the observer is a part of the phenomenon; he is an “element of the game,” while in quantum mechanics the observer is an external frame of reference for the phenomenon that takes place “beyond.” I am going to discuss this matter more comprehensively in the last chapter. Perhaps, this is the philosophical meaning of the incompatibility of the two theories. An innovative and interesting approach to the issue of the difference between GTR and QM is the opinion of Professor Paweł Horodecki, which he expressed in a private conversation with me: the difference between the two theories can also be expressed within the scope of randomness. Randomness would play an important role in microscale, whereas in large scale systems its weight would be negligible. The analogy with the issue of self-​organization would be obvious: Self-​organization is understood as the process of the spontaneous formation of spatial, temporal, and time-​space structures or functions of a system composed of several or many components. This phenomenon occurs in physics, chemistry, and biology in open systems in states distant from the state of thermal equilibrium. It is interesting that the phenomenon of self-​organization also occurs in areas far removed from physics, biology, and chemistry, namely in economics, sociology, medical and technical sciences.58

In this context (randomness) it would probably be fascinating to compare Lacan’s and Deleuze’s theory.

58 Szydłowski M., Hereic M., Tambor P. Self-​organizing Universe in different scales –​ a place where science meets philosophy, in: Transfer of ideas. From evolution in biology to evolution in astronomy and cosmology, ed. E. Roskal, Wydawnictwo KUL, Lublin 2001.

Cortazar’s mirror – a metaphor of the subject

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Cortazar’s mirror –​a metaphor of the subject “The subject does not belong to the world: rather, it is a limit of the world.” Ludwig Wittgenstein

Paraphrasing Wittgenstein, we can say that everything we find in the world does not contain what the subject who finds it is. Such a statement does not determine either that the subject exists or what the subject is. In fact, it opens the field to a question about the relation between the subject and the world, even to questions about the way in which the subject exists and the way in which the world exists, and about the relation to knowledge as the factor that binds the elements together: knowledge as the boundary between the world and the subject.59 To begin studying these relations, let us stop at the mirror of Cortazar as a metaphor of the subject. THE BEHAVIOR OF MIRRORS ON EASTER ISLAND When you set up a mirror on the western side of Easter Island, it runs backwards. When you set one up on the eastern side of the island, it runs forward. Delicate surveys may discover the point at which that mirror will run on time, but finding the point at which that mirror works correctly is no guarantee that that point will serve for any other, since mirrors are subject to the defects of the individual substances of which they are made and react the way they really and truly want to. So that Solomon Lemos, an anthropologist on fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, looking into the mirror to shave, saw himself dead of typhus –​this was on the eastern side of the island. And “at the same time a tiny mirror which he’d forgotten on the western side of Easter Island (it’d been dropped between some stones) reflected for no one Solomon Lemos in short pants on his way to school, then Solomon Lemos naked in a bathtub being enthusiastically soaped by his mummy and daddy, then Solomon Lemos going da-​da-​da, to the thrilled delight of his Aunt Remeditos on a cattle ranch in Trenque Lanquen county.”60

Cortazar’s mirror brings us closer to Einstein’s vision of the world, where the mirror’s reflection is connected with the place that this mirror occupies

59 However, if we were to read Wittgenstein from the prism of Narcissus, the questions about the subjectivity of being, and even more so about this boundary between being and the world, would become justified. 60 Cortazar J. Cronopios and famas, New Directions Publisher, New York, 1999.

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in space. But Cortazar goes one step further: he wonders how the mirrors react. However, it is not articulated here whether this reaction of the mirror affects the way it reflects the image. Using the language of the general theory of relativity, Cortazar does not consider the question of whether the subject influences the world through the way it reacts. Neither Cortazar nor Einstein considers the question of how the world exists depending on the subject position of this mirror as a subject. Cortazar and Einstein saw an inseparable connection between the mirror (our Subject) and space understood as space-​time. Cortazar also noticed the reacting of the mirror, but in the above-​mentioned fragment he did not consider the influence of this reacting on the world. But he did so in a different paragraph –​“Song of the Cronopios”: When the cronopios sing their favorite songs, they get so excited, and in such a way, that with frequency they get run over by trucks and cyclists, fall out of windows, and lose what they’re carrying in their pockets, even losing track of what day it is. When a cronopio sings, the esperanzas and famas gather around to hear him, although they do not understand his ecstasy very well and in general show themselves somewhat scandalized. In the center of a ring of spectators, the cronopio raises his little arms as though he were holding up the sun, as if the sky were a tray and the sun the head of John the Baptist, in such a way that the cronopio’s song is Salome stripped, dancing for the famas and esperanzas who stand there agape asking themselves if the good father would, if decorum. But because they are good at heart (the famas are good and the esperanzas are blockheads), they end by applauding the cronopio, who recovers, somewhat startled, looks around, and also starts to applaud, poor fellow.

Cortazar’s mirror is a metaphorical reflection of the general theory of relativity and the Cronopio’s singing leads us to the question of how the world exists, depending on the position the subject takes in this world. So what would the paradox be for Einstein, what would it be for Lacan, and what would it be for Cortazar? The Einstein paradox would appear where the boundaries of the mirror (black holes, or more precisely, singularities) would appear, while Lacan avoided the paradox because he established a transcendental perspective –​ethics.61

61 The ethics of Lacan in the context of avoiding paradoxes will be discussed in more detail in the following pages of the chapter, in the subsection “Lacan’s time for the second time....”

The paradoxical concept of knowledge

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Figure 3 –​Raphael Santi –​Lady with Unicorn. Available at: https://​search. creativecommons.org/​photos/​a9de0547-​77b3-​454a-​8126-​b7859945f0dd.

The paradoxical concept of knowledge Cortazar probably did not consider the paradox as such, but he questioned both the borders of the world-​mirror and the borders of the human world, as well as the relations within the human world. Cortazar poetically captured and considered this paradoxical situation of cognition in a fragment: The lady with Raphael’s Unicorn. Lady of the Unicorn by Raphael Saint-​Simon thought he saw in this portrait a confession of heresy. The unicorn, the narwhal, the obscene pearl in the locket that pretends to be a pear, and the gaze of Maddalena Strozzi fixed dreadfully upon a point where lascivious poses or a flagellation scene might be taking place: here Raphael Sanzio lied his most terrible truth. The passionate green color in the face of the figure was frequently attributed to gangrene or to the spring solstice. The unicorn, a phallic animal, would have infected her: in her body rest all the sins of the world. Then they realized that they had only to remove the overlayers painted by three irritated enemies of Raphael: Carlos Hog, Vincent Grosjean (known as “The Marble”), and Rubens the Elder. The first overpainting was green, the second green, and the third white. It is not difficult to observe here the triple symbol of the deadly

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Relativity of the relation between I – Other night-​moth; the wings conjoined to its dead body they confused with the rose leaves. How often Maddalena Strozzi cut a white rose and felt it squeak between her fingers, twisting and moaning weakly like a tiny mandrake or one of those lizards that sing like lyres when you show them a mirror. But it was already too late and the deadly night-​moth had pricked her. Raphael knew it and sensed she was dying. To paint her truly, then, he added the unicorn, symbol of chastity who will take water from a virgin’s hand, sheep and narwhal at once. But he painted the deadly night-​moth in her image, and the unicorn kills his mistress, digs into her superb breast its horn working with lust; it reiterates the process of all principles. What this woman holds in her hands is the mysterious cup from which we have all drunk unknowingly, thirst that we have slaked with other mouths, that red and foamy wine from which come the stars, the worms, and railroad stations.62

The Lacanian concept of knowledge63 can be compared to the Cortazar figure of a mysterious cup, to the way of interpreting the activity of quenching desire, without knowing what this activity is; or more precisely, from the unconscious knowledge of the way of interpreting the activity of quenching desire: What this woman holds in her hands is the mysterious cup from which we have all drunk unknowingly, thirst that we have slaked with other mouths, that red and foamy wine from which come the stars, the worms, and railroad stations.

What is more, Cortazar specifies this symbolism with words about the way of quenching desire (thirst) only through other mouths, as if the subject were almost symbiotically connected with the signifier in a double way: that is, this signifier would relate to another signifier and at the same time through this other signifier, or to say in the mirror of the Other, would reflect or even create the desire of the subject, the “thirst, that we have slaked with other mouths.” The painted concept of “drinking wine” is also a pictorial approach to Lacan’s concept of time, which is reflected in the concept of jouissance.

62 Cortazar J. Cronopios and famas, New Directions Publisher, New York, 1999, pp. 21–​23. 63 Dravers P. “To Poe, logically speaking: from ‘The purloined letter’ to the sinthome,” in: Lacan: topologically speaking, edited by Ellie Ragland and Dragan Milovanovic, New York: Other Press, 2004.

Time according to Lacan, for the second time...

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Figure 4  –​Lady with a Unicorn. Available at: https://​search.creativecommons.org/​ photos/​11dd21f2-​27ce-​4bb4-​9a8e-​5f4eb627a457.

Time according to Lacan, for the second time... Again, the question of time is emerging. It is worth mentioning at this point that Lacan’s logical structure of time (analysed in detail by the philosopher in his article Logical Time and the Assertion of Anticipated Certainty) is logically coherent only when you assume an enthymematic premise (which Lacan, nota bene, had to do) about the equal reaction time of each of the three analysed subjects. In the Lacanian reasoning, it was assumed that each of these three entities is within the same intellectual predisposition. This assumption does not, of course, cancel out the deep cognitive dimension that Lacan’s reasoning brings with it, concerning the structure and nature of the context of the relation between the I and the Other. Lacan derives the properties and attributes of the problem of the passage of time by quoting a thought experiment on the situation of three subjects who have the task of solving a logical riddle. Let us recall the context. The prisoners’ warden announces to three chosen prisoners that the one who first solves the logical riddle and guesses

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the colour of his disc will be released. The riddle is as follows: the warden has three white and two black discs. Next, he fixes on the back of each prisoner a white disc. As it is on the back, prisoners are able to see their companions’ discs but not their own. On that ground the prisoner is supposed to deduce the colour of his disc. The warden also states that all probabilistic reasoning is forbidden. Let us then look at how prisoner can logically deduce the colour of his disc. I will present the reasoning of prisoner A because for B and C the reasoning is the same as they all have white discs. The situation is as follows: A assumes that his disc is black. What would B then see? He would see me with the black disc and C with the white. Next, B would discern that C doesn’t leave the room. If he had left the room it would mean that B’s disk is black. If C saw A and B with the black discs he would be sure that his disc could not be black and thus was white. Let us remember the whole time that this is the reasoning of prisoner A. Prisoner A sees that neither B nor C leaves the room, and on that ground, he concludes that his disc cannot be black (as there are only two black discs). B and C performed the analogical reasoning simultaneously. Thus, all three prisoners deduce the colours of their discs and they leave the room simultaneously. I will discuss critically the Lacanian notion of time. The philosopher’s logical riddle, while brilliant, raises the following doubts: 1. Lacanian disquisition is based on the axiomata of classical logic. The possibilities of choice are narrowed into binary oppositions: either the disc is white or it is black. Or to put it facetiously: couldn’t it be that, in a fanciful gesture, the warden affixes to one of the prisoners, let’s say, a pink disk? 2. The depiction assumes that the intellectual potential of prisoners is equal, so that their deductions are made at the same time. But we can hypothetically assume that one of the prisoners reached his conclusion faster and left the room sooner. And such a gesture would put at stake Lacan’s riddle as such and its possibility of solutions by prisoners B and C. 3. It is assumed that the situation takes place in conditions that are not influenced by any external factors that may interfere with the process. Using the terminology of modern science, contemporary physics would say that the prisoners are in the inertial system. But can we hypothesize

Time according to Lacan, for the second time...

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that one disc was set inaccurately and falls? Therefore, doesn’t the time pass? In other words, is there a place for any element of fluctuation or of unpredictability? Unpredictability as such would transcend a description based on the structural necessities of ethical relations: in a prison scene, an ethical relation would be metaphorically depicted with paraphernalia such as discs, prison, scenery in the sense of conditions and possibilities of the situation appearing as such.64 4. Even if we assume this ad hoc ethical perspective, it is rather a rigid ethic as there is no possibility of changing the rules of the game while time flows: the warden cannot change the rules of the game in the middle of the game. In other words, there is no possibility of changing the ethical assumption in the middle of the game. 5. In my opinion, the warden takes from the riddle the position of deus ex machina. First, the warden sets the laws and rules of the prison’s world and simultaneously sets himself beyond the relations within the notion of the flow of time. The warden dictates and creates all the conditions and possibilities of the game and simultaneously occupies the meta-​ plane of the whole narrative. When analysing the philosophical implications of the riddle, Lacan refers only to the relation between the three prisoners. The position of the warden is not taken into account. What is more, in my opinion, there is no possibility of conducting a logical analysis of the position of the warden, as his position is set as the absolute frame of reference, as well as the necessary condition, within which the whole situation must occur. The position of the warden is that of deux ex machina. Lacan’s step reduces the situation to three elements (the prisoners) whereas the whole action, the whole situation, is based on the fourth element (the warden), which is omitted. Lacan’s time can be considered only if referred to the Other (the prisoner is able to conclude the colour of his disc only if he refers to the situation of his companions). Thus, time is a construct emerging from the relation to the frame of reference –​the situation of the Other (the other prisoner).

64 For this, as well as for many other valuable remarks, I would like to thank Andrzej Leder.

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Time is therefore a construct that emerges in relation to the “system of reference” –​the situation of a fellow prisoner. If one were to compare Lacan’s time with Deleuze’s time, one could metaphorically say that Deleuze’s idea is illustrated by the notion of time that functions in quantum mechanics, while Lacan’s idea can be illustrated by the concept of time that appears in Einstein’s concept.65 From the analysis of the logical structure of Lacanian time I proved that the situation of prisoners requires “inertialism”: it requires that the puzzle concerning the colour of the disk is handled in conditions isolated from influences, that is, external stimuli. Then, Lacanian time can only be considered within relations. I understand this relativity in such a way that only in relation to the Other (a fellow prisoner) is it possible to carry out a reasoning process that implies the passage of time. Time considered in this way is relative time. This approach can be applied as a metaphor to the approach to time contained in the theory of relativity. There, too, the inertial condition of the system must be met. In this arrangement, time can only be considered as a relation between objects. Time, both in Lacan’s theory and in Einstein’s view, is relative. To put it more illustratively, the landscape of quantum mechanics cannot be seen as such without execution of the measurement act (in quantum mechanics the boundary of cognition is Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle). However, by performing the measurement act we narrow down the landscape to the place that is being surveyed. Translating this into Deleuze’s language: Aion’s world, a collection of all kinds of possible future-​past states can only be captured in terms of temporality by means of a self-​referential act by Chronos, which shreds Aion’s world into casket-​ like presents. The GTR landscape is of the whole (structure) only if an absolute reference point is assumed (e.g. the passage of time can be measured only if it is related to e.g. the Sun, the Moon, or another object). In GTR, the observer is a “part of the game”: the game, however, can only take place when it is founded on an absolute plane of reference (the Lacanian guard comes to mind as a deus ex machina). Both in GTR (here referred to Lacan) and QM

65 This Einstein metaphor will be discussed in detail later in this paper.

Time according to Deleuze

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(referred to Deleuze), the principle of constructing reality is similar, while the reference planes are different.

Time according to Deleuze Deleuze understands time as an individual’s disposition. There is no need to refer to the category of the Other. Since time is not considered within the framework of relations and fluctuations, all kinds of external stimuli do not refer to this scenery. Looking at the structure of Aion, one can see that this depth time is more a set of possibilities than states existing as such. Aion is a collection of all kinds of possible configurations, which actualize only at the moment of a Chronos’ “cut.” It can be metaphorically related to the time that exists from the perspective of quantum mechanics. The wave function of the universe, which is the solution of Schrödinger’s equation, describes a set of all kinds of possible states of the system, where only the act of measurement –​“cut” –​actualizes the specific state.66 However, both depictions of time (those of Deleuze and Lacan) can be placed in the same category, namely the probability of density. Andrzej Leder, presenting the subjective field, describes it as strikingly similar to the function of the probability of density, which can be seen in quantum mechanics. Ockham’s principle of the economics of thinking quoted below can, in my opinion, be illustrated within categories of the probability of density. Subjective field organized by the desire of the Other is always somehow limited. This means, however, that despite its negative character, the subjective field is not, in fact, infinite. For in any structure there are positions that are excluded for the subject. The chain of signifiers, i.e. sentences, are actualized in the subjective field, or in other words, the subjective field generates meanings that determine the subject’s position. But some sentences the subject cannot speak, cannot take the positions they represent. The subject is, let us recall, the actual position in the subjective field. The subjective field is, therefore, a manifold, covering all possible, but also only possible for a given structure, positions of the subject. The problem of continuity and discontinuity appears here, i.e. the topology of this field. Contrary to the philosophical ideal of substance, the subject cannot be everything, occupy all positions. Or maybe –​only in infinite continuance –​the

66 The issue of time in the perspective of quantum mechanics will be discussed in detail in the last chapter.

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Relativity of the relation between I – Other subject field could cover all possible positions. This results in one of the most important principles of Western thought –​the Ockham’s principle of the economy of thinking.67

What actualizes a certain state in Deleuze’s work is the gesture of Chronos’ “cut,” a gesture that is somehow self-​referential and ontological. Deleuze’s time is an internal disposition of an individual and Lacan’s time is a field of all possible configurations of the I-​Other relation, where (for both Lacan and Deleuze) the gesture of a “cut” actualizes the state. Deleuze’s gesture of “cut” takes place on the ontological plane, while in Lacan’s case it is an ethical plane (this guard-​like deus ex machina). By the way, Lacan’s ethics presented in the essay on Logical Time... is a rigid, pre-​adjusted, immobile ethics: it is not possible to change ethical assumptions during the game, i.e. when time passes. The guard is not able to change the conditions of the game during the game.

Structural difference? I think that the difference between the language of the GTR and the language of quantum mechanics can be expressed in a similar way; not as a structural difference, but as a difference between the planes on which the operation takes place: either the immanent plane, the internal plane (quantum mechanics) or that of the external perspective (GTR). In other words, by bringing the terminology closer to philosophical terminology, we would see the difference as that between the ontological plane (quantum mechanics, Deleuze) and the symbolic plane, where this “symbolism” would be understood as a relation taking place “in the world.” The relativism of the general theory of relativity is expressed in the statement that concepts and time lose their absolute meaning GTR; the absolute sense has in a sense the space-​time itself.68 Physical processes taking place in the background of space-​time continuum are not independent of it, because they can and do shape space-​time continuum itself. Their influence on space-​time manifests itself through its curvature. Curved does not become time and space separately,

67 Leder A. Pozycja podmiotowa i podmiotowe pole –​wariacja na temat Lacanowski. W(okół) współczesnej filozofii francuskiej, Wydawnictwo Naukowe Akademii Pomorskiej w Słupsku, Słupsk, 2012. 68 This is where the association with Lacan’s symbolic field appears.

Structural difference?

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but space-​time –​a fundamental object of relativistic theory, to which the laws of physics refer.69

The way Lacan perceives time is not the same as in the general theory of relativity: Einstein’s time considers “isolated” systems (frames of reference, though mutually correlated, do not affect each other, in the sense that the way they exist or, metaphorically speaking, the way they feel about each other does not derive from their inner feeling; such systems are measurable only in the sense that an external observer can compare them with each other), whereas Lacanian time is inseparably connected with the way the subject feels the time (in the sense of thinking the desire of the Other), which is reflected in the mirror of the Other. In Lacan’s case, the measurability of the passage of time could not be defined at the time when the subject would be an “isolated” system. Lacan’s concept does not foresee a situation when the subject breaks the syntactical links with the world. These “isolated systems” cannot be considered within this concept. However, in Einstein’s perspective it would not matter, because the passage of time would not depend on the internal structure of the self, but only on the relation of the subject with the external world, which would influence the shape and size of the subject, but not its internal structure. Therefore, although in both Lacan and Einstein the axial element is relativity, it is treated differently: GTR assumes the relativity of the subject in the world to another subject; Lacan assumes the reciprocity of the subject’s world to the world of the other subject. This means that the world of the general theory of relativity is subjected to modifications due to the way the subject exists and can be measurable in relation to another subject in the same world, while the Lacanian view takes into account the way of thinking of the world in relation to the Other, regardless of the world in which it exists (a rigid ethical plane as a condition for the situation to appear). The passage of time in the general theory of relativity focuses on the I-​Other relation in the enthymematic premise of the isomorphism of that world. Lacan, on the other hand, assumes in the isomorphism of time the I–​Other

69 Szydłowski M., Tambor P. “Relacjonizm i substancjalizm w kontekście teorii grawitacji i kosmologii,” Przegląd Filozoficzny –​Nowa Seria, R. 25, 2016, No. 4 (100).

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as an enthymematic premise, assuming it is prescinded from the shape and appearance of the world: invariably of the shape of the Möbius Strip (understood here as a necessary condition of an ethical relation). GTR equations are adiabatic equations70 (the question arises here about this paradoxical “environment;” after all, there is no external OTW!), while in Lacan this adiabaticism would manifest itself in the very shape of the world, in the immutability of the pre-​set ethical assumptions (the disk is always either black or white!).

Mirror –​a symbol of self-​knowledge Let us stop at perhaps the most enigmatic fragment of Cortazar’s Lady with the Unicorn: It is not difficult to observe here the triple symbol of the deadly night-​moth; the wings conjoined to its dead body they confused with the rose leaves. How often Maddalena Strozzi cut a white rose and felt it squeak between her fingers, twisting and moaning weakly like a tiny mandrake or one of those lizards that sing like lyres when you show them a mirror. But it was already too late and the deadly night-​moth had pricked her. Raphael knew it and sensed she was dying.

Magdalena cuts the rose, which appears to her as a moth (moth, however, is a triple symbol of rose petals). However, a sting is painful, a sting inflicted by a moth’s head, a dead head. The spike is fatal. The rose-​moth symbol (dead hull with wings) shows the whole spectrum of perception of feeling in relation to the mirror-​death surface. The writer expressed it picturesquely by recalling the figure of a bird –​a lyre (Lirogon) staring at a mirror: the bird, staring at its own reflection, acts as much more than just an imago: it produces every image –​sound.71 In Magdalena’s “deadly cut,” the painter sees death as a lying, terrible truth. The painter lied about the truth about both the way the world exists and the cognitive capabilities of the subject. The painter, like a Wittgenstein subject, does not prejudge anything. For Wittgenstein, however, the subject

0 Understood classically as heat exchange with the environment. 7 71 In my opinion, this motif of the mirror in Cortazar was inspired by the series of tapesseries “The Lady and the Unicorn –​the tapestries.” These six tapestries symbolized the five senses (taste, hearing, sight, smell, touch) and the sixth (desire) as their sublimation. See: http://​www.tchevalier.com/​unicorn/​tapestries/​.

Mirror – a symbol of self-knowledge

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is the limit of the world and it seems that all the steps “beyond” the subjectivity, aimed at breaking the syntactical links with the world, do not fit into the scenery. But where Wittgenstein stopped, the painter goes one step further: he shows the whole spectrum of the pathology of the mirror; both in death and in desire, looking at the axial and constitutive elements, therefore almost by definition infinite. The moth appears twice. The first time, it shows the face of Magdalena, whose white face is wrapped in two layers of green, gangrene green paint. It is not difficult to see in this a triple symbol of a moth, whose wings, attached to a dead hull, make it difficult to distinguish it from rose petals. The green colour, the colour of gangrene, which Magdalena was infected with by a unicorn–​narwhal, hides the true whiteness of her face. Magdalena’s face is compared to a moth. Green, gangrene-​like wings and dead hulls depict a woman’s face, and Cortazar’s images of rose petals come to one’s mind: those white roses that resist Magdalena’s knife with a weak groaning. Is this an act of self-​mutilation? Isn’t the step towards knowledge the deadly one? Let us return to the casus of Narcissus: Magdalena’s mirror resounds with the singing of a bird: a lyre reflected like an echo. With every mirror reflection, the Narcissus sound, like a dead hull with wings, sinks deeper and deeper, until the limits of non-​existence are reached. Narcissus, hypnotically staring at his reflection, wants to understand more and more. The moment of death is, therefore, the moment of understanding of misunderstanding. It is a moment of authentic existence.72 As time goes on, the sight becomes more and more stripped of narcissism; it is the most complete attempt to understand one’s own subjectivity. It is an attempt, almost by definition, condemned to failure, to doom. Narcissus’ gaze is a siren self-​lullaby to the truth; a lying, terrible truth. Let us recall here the intuition of Andrzej Leder: The detailed separation of what flows from the subjective authorities themselves, from everything that can come from outside, allows for a simultaneous concentration on the “dramaturgy” of the meeting of these two spheres. In this meeting, in mutual reference, a sense is emerging. (...) Compromise is the only way to establish subjectivity or any mental life. Paradoxically, the human genesis of

72 Heidegger’s Sein-​Zum-​Tode comes to mind.

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Relativity of the relation between I – Other sense, assuming responsibility and freedom, is possible only in the encounter of interiority and exteriority, in their mutual reference.73

Therefore, for life to continue in it, as well as for the subject’s structure to be created, it must condemn itself to compromise. Narcissus, on the other hand, in an uncompromising gesture, breaks the syntactical links with the world. In the process of moving towards understanding, he increasingly clearly understands misunderstandability. Paradoxically, it loses its subjectivity when it strives to understand the essence of its subjectivity. On the verge of death, he reaches the truth of his Dasein, the lying, most terrible truth. Lacanian suggestion of “eat your Dasein” is recalled here, which becomes not only a cynical statement of the impossible, or even a curse, but rather a longing of the shredded Dasein for understanding. Travestying this sentence in the narcissus trend, one can say “know your Dasein.” The mirror stage is a drama (…) the succession of phantasies that extends from a fragmented body –​image to a form of its totality.74

Self-​recognition in the mirror (which I mentioned in Chapter I) according to Lacan’s theory would mean a return to the state before imago, a return to the stage of the mirror. This would be an impossible moment when the subject breaks the syntactical links with the world, when the body is again fragmented. Knowledge of the unconscious, breaking the syntactical relations with the world (breaking the symbolic relations) is a return to the world of psychotics, with its pupils, irises, and proteins as shredded elements.... But it was already too late and the deadly night-​moth had pricked her. Raphael knew it and sensed she was dying.

Moth has its roots in the word mother. What comes to mind is this primordial, narcissistic sink...75 And Magdalena’s bitter-​sweet tears. The filthy pearl in the medallion. The Cortazar’s unicorn is a narwhal, where in the

3 Leder A. Nauka Freuda w epoce Sein und Zeit, Aletheia, Warsaw, 2007, p. 98. 7 74 Lacan J. “The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytic experience,” Delivered at the 16th International Congress of Psychoanalysis, Zurich, July 17, 1949, p. 4. 75 Pearls symbolize tears.

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old Scandinavian language narw means “corpses.”76 The narwhal is said to have been named after its skin colour, which epitomizes the livid corpse.

Tears For the European civilisation, from antiquity to modern times, the unicorn living in a forest thicket remains an invariably cultural phantasm, an evocation of enchanted time, Eden. It is in this paradise scenery, in the depths of the forest, that the story of the unicorn –​the history of the painting –​takes place. Unexpectedly appearing in the medieval and Renaissance fountain is a fold of exterior wrinkling against the background of lush nature. This is the source of the splitting, stunning and numbing reflection –​the mirror of Narcissus, in which a black unicorn sees a white zebra, a “ghastly double.” In the Euclidean world of mirrored gazes, reflection is something terrifying, degrading, and wonderful at the same time. The unicorn, as Jakub Bosh writes in his Symbology, attacks his image reflected in the water. The appearance is a deadly threat to him, an artificial imagination, though it attracts attention. On one of the six La Dama a la licorne fabrics exhibited at the Musee National du Moyen Age in Paris, the unicorn is reflected in a mirror (miroir) held by the woman. (...) The mirror reflects and captures the image of a unicorn. The mirror trap becomes at the same time a tool for stopping, immobilizing, numbness –​a desire to fix the phantasm, but also for piccola morte.77

Magdalena’s bittersweet tears, that filthy pearl in the medallion, is the mirror trap of Narcissus. The same one where the unicorn fell into the trap. Every time you catch a phantasm, it’s a siren song.

6 See: etymonline.com/​index.php?term=narwhal. 7 77 Borowicz S. “Łzy jednorożca: szkic do fantasmatycznej biografii obrazu,” Teksty Drugie, No. 5 (137), 2012.

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Relativity of the relation between I – Other

This chapter on the relativity of the I–​Other relation, after a brief introduction written in the language of GTR and QM, began with the mirror of Cortazar as a metaphor for the subject. The leitmotif of this journey is Cortazar. His “Lady with a Unicorn,” Magdalena, depicted the paradoxical position of the subject trying to understand. I would call the position in Lacanian language the phantasm in the handful, or –​as Deleuze would probably say –​the smile and the Cheshire cat simultaneously, or –​using the language of science –​the external frame of reference in GTR. These are positions that are both impossible and paradoxical.

Chapter III: Paradoxical status of the I –​ Other relation Derrida’s Narcissus DERRIDA: “I’ll try now to answer your question about the story of Echo and Narcissus. If one focuses on the treatment of the image and not on the love story in the myth of Echo and Narcissus one sees the myth as about the relationship between specular image and voice between sight and voice between light and speech, between the reflection and the mirror. Speech is what’s taking place here right now. There’s a mirror. I’m speaking. There’s a camera. You pose a question. I repeat it. So I’m acting as both Narcissus and Echo at one and the same time. And what’s extraordinary in this scene, which I’ve examined in my seminars, is the moment when Echo traps Narcissus in a certain way. Echo, cursed by the jealous gods, was never allowed to speak for herself, and was only allowed to repeat the ends of other’s phrases. But Echo, in her loving and infinite cleverness, arranges it so that in repeating the last syllables of the words of Narcissus, she speaks in such a way that the words become her own. In a certain way, she appropriates his language. In repeating the language of another, she signs her own love. In repeating she responds to him. In repeating, she communicates with him. She speaks in her own name by just repeating his words. And as always with speech, one is blind. To speak is to not see. So all speech is to some extent blind. And at base, Echo blindly but quite lucidly corresponds to Narcissus. It’s a story of love, after all. She corresponds to Narcissus who is also blind, because Narcissus realizes that he can only see himself, that it’s only his own image he is seeing in the water. To see only oneself is a form of blindness. One sees nothing else. And it’s because of this that Narcissus cries. He cries, and in a way, he dies from not being able to see anyone else. Echo and Narcissus then are two blind people who love each other. Now how do two blind people love each other? That’s the question.” [Derrida –​an American documentary film directed by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman, 2002]

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Tain. A delicate sheet of material that clings to glass to form a mirror. Would you guess that the etymology leads to the word “worthless”? Wouldn’t every imitation be worthless? A mirror; it provides an imitation of an object staring at it. Travestying the imitation, one can say that the glass covered with a tain appears as a means of polyphonic technique, consisting of imitating as the repetition of a section of a melody, where one voice introduces another.... The mirror thus captured resonates with an Echo of its own accord. However, it is not an echo that only reflects the sound, but the Echo that, reflecting the sound, assimilates or tames it at the same time –​ this paradox of imitation.... Tain, in Polish “pozłotka,” can also mean “plant.” It is a Californian type of poppy (Eschscholzia californica). It is an opium alkaloid with strong intoxicating properties, which intoxicates, enchants, attracts. The word “narcissus” probably comes from the Greek word “narke,” later adopted by the Romans as “narce,” which meant “being numb,” and referred to the narcotic strong smell of the flower, which intoxicates, enchants, attracts. And at base, Echo blindly but quite lucidly corresponds to Narcissus.

Echo in this intoxicating dream weaves its own language, assimilating the words of Narcissus. This imitation is therefore a creative process. I dare to say that each gaze in the mirror assumes the presence of a different person. Before the first mirrored reflection appeared, one could hear the voice. By the time the vision appeared, the voice had already been resounding. Lacan probably had to be aware of the priority of the voice when he was developing the phase of the mirror.78 And although some motherly voices enfold a deaf baby, it does not matter. A voice can not only be heard, but also felt. You can feel the warmth, the rhythm, the tamed air long before your own reflection is formed. Anyway, the word “reflection” implies the need to bounce back from something (otherwise it is a Munchausen effort).

78 At a later stage of the theory, a child seeing its reflection in the mirror hears the mother’s voice confirming: yes!

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An unformed subject is formed in the voice, Reflecting itself towards the mirror.79 This primordial relationship with the mirror in the background Resounds with the voice, the voice of the Other. This is the primordial Echo. It is not an echo of oneself (it would not be a relation of reflection but the Munchausen effort), It is an Echo. Echo is an echo of the Other The music of the Other. Maybe the imago is born in the Voice The voice of the Other? And with each successive voice, The smell of that Voice comes back foggy? Maybe it is the voice that constitutes the subject? Maybe in every mirror there is this germ of echo –​Voice, this primordial longing for imago? Narcissus and Echo resound together And they become blind. In Derrida’s take on the myth, Narcissus gets the spotlight. He hears Echo’s speech, he returns to voice. He feels warmth, rhythm, tamed air. Their relationship seems sustainable If it wasn’t for the mirror. A mirror freezes infinity, It encourages the movement to cease. Stop. A mirror doesn’t have to reflect an image. Most importantly perhaps, mirror resounds with an Echo of itself, Attracting further and further inwards.

79 In the next part of the text, the Freudian interpretation of Fort-​da will be criticized. I will try to show that childish play is not, as Freud wanted it, the nucleus of the death drive, but the constitution of subject in a gesture of summoning Other. The Fort-​da is essentially the constitution of the subject in the process of the passing of the voice, gaze, or presence of the other, and at the same time a call for his return. This procedure is always a soothing repetition in the changing symbolic field.

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Paradoxical status of the I – Other relation In such tension, one does not feel warmth, rhythm, familiar air, The air that is alive. You can’t breathe in water. But it does carry a voice. You can sense a voice in water afterwards by the movement. Not only by staring at the depths But also by being inside, You feel more: waves caused by the movement of vocal waves, temperature changes caused by the movement… The paradox. You can’t hear and hear at the same time. Two different worlds cannot be heard at the same time: Water and Air. One cannot lose one’s subjectivity to attain self-​knowledge and at the same time establish one’s subjectivity in relation with Other. You can hear either the voice of the water Or the air. Maybe the Narcissus of Derrida Is trying to establish a dialogue with Echo, Maybe his desire is to surpass blindness? Maybe he tried to understand the primordial voice of waters To touch Echo? Was their blindness mutual? Or is it just Echo, Who was becoming blind acquiring the language of Narcissus? What else could she have? Could she be silent? Or maybe it was in her silence That Narcissus could begin to see again?

The riddle oscillates around the notion of cognition and self-​knowledge. Derrida’s paradox, at first sight, does not correlate with earlier analyses of self-​knowledge in the mirror. However, if we look carefully, both interpretations may seem complementary. In Derrida’s view, the Narcissus–​Echo relationship is an I–​Other relationship, in which both sides are talking. There is no element of silence here, which is probably necessary for the words to resound, for them to settle and perhaps even for them to come into being. A voice without air is not audible.

Ovidius’s Narcissus

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And water lures Narcissus to the world of the Other–​Self, a world in which the voice intertwines with silence. Here it is only a step to Narcissus’ pursuit to self-​knowledge, to get to know in the mirror the Other–​Me, Me–​Silence. Each cognition assumes the Other (or the Other–​I) and returning to this musical layer, each dialogue is an imitation of the repetition of the voice by the other or subsequent voices.80 Here is the painter’s deceitful and most terrible truth: Every word is a small death, While in silence death is fulfilled. “Is it not true that the voice is hallucinating?” –​said Barthes. It hallucinates or evokes sensory perceptions that appear without an external stimulus. The hallucination is, therefore, the heart of narcissism. Perhaps silence deprives the being of its narcissistic essence?

In Derrida’s view, it is not Echo who confesses her feelings through the words she assimilates. Echo only seduces –​ She weaves Neverwords. All she knows Is seduce and seduce on and on… There is no other way. Speaking I am blind, Being silent I die. (or –​travestying Derrida) I don’t speak, so I am. (or –​travestying Lacan) I think, so I’m not.

The only thing left is the look. In classical Persian literature, narcissus is a symbol of beautiful eyes. Are we going back to the starting point; this time tighter, without Echo?81 Is the only thing left the hallucinations of Narcissus, the mirror of Möbius? Narcissus speaking to himself in the void? Just a tain... 0 It brings to mind the Lacanian vision of a signifier–​signified chain relation. 8 81 The Echo’s trace is fading...

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Ovidius’s Narcissus What you perceive is the shadow of reflected form: nothing of you is in it. Ovid

I would jokingly say that Ovid was the first and the most penetrating Lacanist. The concept of Lacan’s subject reflects Ovid’s myth about Narcissus and Echo. This is the original version of the myth, different from what has been discussed so far. Let us start from the beginning, with the myth. Let us look at Echo, reflecting on its status of subjectivity: Echo still had a body then and was not merely a voice. But though she was garrulous, she had no other trick of speech than she has now: she can repeat the last words out of many. [Ovid Metamorphoses, Book III, 360–​363].82

Let us look carefully at the fragment “she had no other trick of speech than she has now” in the context of the articulation and carnality of Echo. Juno’s curse made Echo turn from a carnal and talkative nymph into an echo –​Specter –​and finally fall silent, turning into a stone. This is the precise route from speaking and living to death and silence. Most importantly, the role of the voice does not change, this “no other trick of speech than she was now.” In other words, the role of the voice, the role of speaking in the relationship with the human being remains constant and paradoxical. One can see the symmetry between Echo –​Nymph –​Chatterbox (Echo from before the Juno curse) and Echo –​Incorporeal silence. The relation between carnality and articulation is a bijection: a function mutually adequate. Thus, isn’t there any difference? The myth of Echo and Narcissus is a myth of love. At least that is how it came together. However, it is also a myth of cognition. The Ramnezia (Nemesis) fulfils the wish of the boy despised by Narcissus by fulfilling his words: “Let him love, too, not being loved.” [Ovid Metamorphoses, Book III, 405]. The curse is fulfilled: he will live “if he doesn’t know himself.” [Ovid Metamorphoses Book III, 348]. Narcissus got to know himself when he loved without being loved: the moment of his death is 82 Ovid Metamorphoses Book III (A. S. Kline’s Version) https://​ovid.lib.virginia. edu/​trans/​Metamorph3.htm.

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the fulfilment of the wish of Nemesis and the fulfilment of the divination. The situation becomes a stalemate, because Echo also loved at the moment of death, not being loved. So, if we relate these two figures to each other again, cognition is death?, death is cognition?, The I is an illusion?, Other is a pretence?, did Narcissus know himself in speaking to death?, did Echo die in silence? There is no Echo and Narcissus dyad. The Echo–​Narcissus relation is never just a two-​element relation. Without water, air, or a mediator, there’s no way out of the impasse. Something must be assumed. I an sure that is what Lacan would say. Ovid is probably more sceptical: Fool, why try to catch a fleeting image, in vain? What you search for is nowhere: turning away, what you love is lost! What you perceive is the shadow of reflected form: nothing of you is in it. [Ovid Metamorphoses, Book. III, 431–​4].

Narcissus and a world without the Other83 Narcissism! There is not narcissism and non-​ narcissism; there are narcissisms that are more or less comprehensive, generous, open, extended. What is called non-​narcissism is in general but the economy of a much more welcoming, hospitable narcissism, one that is much more open to experience of the other as other. I believe that without a movement of narcissistic reappropriation, the relation to the other would be absolutely destroyed; it would be destroyed in advance. The relation to the other –​even if it remains asymmetrical, open without possible reappropriation –​must trace a movement of reappropriation in the image of oneself for love to be possible, for example. Love is narcissistic. Beyond that, there are little narcissisms, there are big narcissisms, and there is death in the end, which is the limit. Even in the experience –​ if there is one –​of death, narcissism does not absolutely abdicate its power. An interview with Jacques Derrida by Didier Cahen in France –​Culture in March 22, and published as “Entretien avec Jacques Derrida” in Diagraphe 42 (December 1987).

83 The title of the subchapter was inspired by Deleuze’s essay “Michel Tournier and the world without Other,” The Logic of Sense.

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Paradoxical status of the I – Other relation Narcissus himself, gazes at himself only from the gaze of the other, and precedes himself, answering then only for himself, only from a resonance of Echo.84

Narcissus can only exist thanks to Echo. There is no narcissism without Other. Other is not only a possible relationship, a possible world, but also a prerequisite for thinking of such. Without Other, the world’s structure disintegrates and the temporal structure dissolves, as Deleuze brilliantly discerns in the essay “Robinson and the world without the Other”: “The mistake of theories of knowledge is that they postulate the contemporaneity of subject and object, whereas one is constituted only through the annihilation of the other.” And then: “The Other assures the distinction of consciousness and its object as a temporal distinction. The first effect of its presence concerned space and the distribution of categories; but the second effect, which is perhaps more profound, concerns time and the distribution of its dimension –​what comes before and what comes after in time. How could there still be a past when Other no longer functions.”85

Narcissus dies, but the structure of his personality is not torn apart. Echo enfolds the words of Narcissus affectionately. It is a possibility and a condition of her love monologue. Without water-​depths, Echoes, echoes, air, mirrors, or eyesight Narcissus would stand silent in the void. Such a situation, a situation “beyond narcissism” is beautifully described by Deleuze in his essay “Michel Tournier and a world without Other.” Robinson in Deleuze’s view is a castaway, whose structure-​of the-​Other has been dissolved. Thus, the subject-​object relation becomes an impossible relation. Since the intermediate element (the Other) has disappeared, consciousness cannot distinguish the object (the island) from I (Robinson). There is no past, time does not flow and Robinson becomes Speranza: Consciousness ceases to be a light cast upon objects in order to become a pure phosphorescence of things in themselves. Robinson is but the consciousness of the island, but the consciousness of the island is the consciousness of the island has of itself –​it is the island in itself. We understand thus the paradox of the desert isle: the one who is shipwrecked, if he is alone, if he has lost the structure-​Other,

84 Derrida J. The Work of Mourning, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2001, p. 164. 85 Deleuze G. The Logic of Sense, The Athlone Press, London, p. 311.

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disturbs nothing of the desert isle; rather he consecrates it. The island is named Speranza, but who is the “I”?86

Fort-​da without Other This subsection is a critical interpretation of the Freudian fort-​da concept. I will defend my thesis that the mechanism of the children’s fort-​da creates the primordial structure of the world, and so is a reversal of the narcissism figure. According to this interpretation, the concept of the death drive becomes invalid. Narcissus, on the other hand, is a figure that breaks the syntactical links with the world (a reversed fort-​da), and in consequence breaks time, perception and thinking. My argument is reinforced by Deleuze’s thesis that Other is the structure that is the condition of perception. Freud developed the fort-​da concept by looking at a one-​and-​a-​half-​ year-​old child’s play. The child played with a wooden spool wrapped in a string: it threw the spool out of the bed and then attracted it with a string. The boy playing with the spool, when the toy left, made a sound of “o-​o-​o-​ o-​o,” which Freud interpreted as “fort,” or “away,” and together with the returning spool made a sound of “da,” interpreted as “here.”87 The boy’s play can be compared to playing “yo-​yo” –​the child pushes away and then attracts the toy, or (as Freud did) to the child’s play of disappearing and appearing: the child squats in front of the mirror and stands up, disappears and appears. Freud combined the play with the spool with the mother’s absence, her leaving the child’s sight. On this basis, he came to the conclusion that playing with a spool is a kind of “child’s revenge on the mother”:88 The act of flinging away the object to make it “gone” may be the gratification of an impulse on the child’s part –​which in the ordinary way of things remains suppressed –​to take revenge on his mother for having gone away from him; and it may thus be a defiant statement meaning “Alright, go away! I don’t need you; I’m sending you away myself!”89

6 Deleuze G. The Logic of Sense, The Athlone Press, London, p. 311. 8 87 Freud Z. Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings, Penguin Books, London, 2003, p. 172. 88 Freud Z. Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings, Penguin Books, London, 2003, p. 174. 89 Freud Z. Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings, Penguin Books, London, 2003, p. 174.

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Freud’s interpretation is strengthened by the observation that the child, entering into the active role of the rejector, compensates for the passivity of the situation in which the mother disappears from his field of view. At the same time, he emphasizes the pleasure that the child feels when entering the role of “torturer”: Exchanging his passive role in the actual experience for an active role within the game, he inflicts on his playmate whatever nasty things were inflicted on him, and thus takes his revenge by proxy.90

Incidentally, such behaviour goes beyond the Freudian principle of pleasure and became an incentive for Freud to formulate the death drive as one based on the compulsion to repeat. In my opinion, this is an unrooted procedure, as the whole concept of the fort-​da is highly debatable: 1. Fort-​da belongs in the context of structuralism because it is based on the binary system of the opposition: “is” and “is not.” The whole context of “appearance” and “disappearance” of the spool is avoided. 2. Freud writes about changing the position of the subject from being a passive element of trauma to an active subject. The child becomes an active player in the context of “revenge on the mother.” There is another way to do it. The child thinks: the mother is gone (this situation hurts me, it is my trauma), so now I am going to make my mother from “fort” to “da” with a spool. It would be a “Mummy come back” game. With this interpretation, we won’t find a single gram of revenge. Such a game, although it is a compulsion to repeat, is a compulsion to repeat the call “Mummy, come back.” It is a cry that mollifies and soothes, not a vindictive one. In such a scenario there is no room for reflection on the essence of the death drive. What is more, I think that this is how every coercive repetition works –​there is a movement towards life, not death. 3. Freudian fun can also be interpreted more simply: as a mimicry, a repetition, like other children’s games, e.g. playing house. It is just like mimicking Mum. 4. It is also worth noting that in the fort-​da we are dealing with different subject positions of observers, i.e. mother and child. For it is not the

90 Freud Z. Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings, Penguin Books, London, 2003 p. 176.

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case that the mother disappears as such; she only disappears from the child’s sight. Freudian fort-​da analysis assumes different subject positions of observers. This is the only context in which analysis is possible. Moreover, as I have already mentioned, the fort-​da avoids the whole context of the appearance and disappearance of the spool. The child reacts only to the presence and absence of the mother, is blind to the whole context of her coming and going. Such an arrangement trivializes the scene, narrowing it down to the schematic, binary opposition “there is” or “there is not.” In other words, the child would not react in any way to the “appearing” mother as long as she was not at the cot itself. 5. However, if you set up this binary fort-​da opposition, it will still give rise to other problems. Bearing in mind that every fort-​da tears apart the symbolic field because it is a traumatic experience, every return “from behind the horizon” of the trauma is a return to the same non-​ the same place. It is a return to the changed symbolic field, to the structure first broken and then rebuilt. Each time, “rebuilding” the structure of the field changes the necessity of mechanical repetition into a mollifying, soothing pleasure. The child calms down when he or she is an active player in the “Mommy come back” game. However, each modification of the symbolic field “soothes” the trauma of departure. The play of the fort-​da shows that it is a self-​healing mechanism and a cry for your neighbour. Thus, there is also no room for child narcissism. On the contrary. The game presented in this way is an unambiguous summoning of Other, and thus an attempt to establish syntactical relations with the world.

Narcissus’ call and the position of the observer Narcissus calls out. He’s in dialogue. From the Narcissus position, there’s a conversation going on. And although it is a conversation with oneself (a monologue), Narcissus does not have this consciousness. It is the reader of the myth who is able to see the apparent narcissistic dialogue and place the words of Narcissus in the scenario of speaking to oneself. And this is the essence of the paradox: from the position of Narcissus he leads the dialogue, while from the position of the observer (reader) this apparent dialogue is in its essence a monologue. Narcissus is convinced that he is conducting a dialogue. In various interpretations, it can be a dialogue with Echo, with

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the sea depth, with the mirror or with the reflection. This is a Munchausen effort to which Narcissus is blind. For if he had the knowledge, he would have been silent. He would be silent because it is the Other who makes speech possible. It’s so for both Deleuze and Lacan. The myth of Narcissus is a myth about unfortunate dialogue, the paradox of cognition, or the paradox of the love relationship. And although death is inscribed in the landscape, it does not change the fact that one can hear the voice of Other in the background. I would say succinctly that this is a myth about a tragic misunderstanding. In turn, such a shot brings us closer to a comedy situation.

“Mirror and mask” –​the unbearable weight of Other... The myth of Echo and Narcissus is a myth about the paradox of “misunderstandability,” a situation in which it is impossible to break the syntactical links with the world. Deleuze’s exegesis of Robinson Cruzoe’s essay reveals the consequences of breaking the structure of Other. But one can also imagine another paradoxical situation: a situation in which two

Figure 5  –​Daniel Fineman’s photo

“Mirror and mask” – the unbearable weight of Other...

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people would lose their syntactical relations with the world without at the same time having a dissolved structure of Other.91 Borges’ short story “The Mirror and the Mask” is set in such a scene. This is a story so short that I will quote it in its entirety. The Mirror and the Mask by Jorge Luis Borges92 The battle of Clontarf over, in which the Norwegians met defeat, the High King of Ireland spoke to his court poet. “The greatest deeds lose their lustre if they are not coined in words,” the king said. “I want you to sing my victory and my praise. I will be Aeneas; you will be my Virgil. Do you think yourself capable of this task, which will make us both immortal?” “Yes, my lord,” said the bard. “I am Ollan. For twelve winters I have trained in the disciplines of prosody. I know by heart the three hundred and sixty legends that form the basis of true poetry. The cycles of Ulster and Munster are in the strings of my harp. The laws authorize me to be lavish in using the oldest words of our tongue and the most complex metaphors. I have mastered the secret of writing, which protects our art from the undiscerning eyes of the common herd. I can celebrate loves, cattle thieves, voyages, and wars. I know the mythological lineages of all the royal houses of Ireland. I possess a knowledge of judicial astrology, mathematics, canon law, and the powers of plants. I have defeated my rivals in public contest. I have made myself skilled in satire, which causes infirmities of the skin, including leprosy. I know how to wield a sword, as I proved in your battle. I am ignorant of only one thing –​how to thank you for the gift you make me.” The king, who was easily tired by long speeches, especially those of others, said with relief, “I know these things quite well, I have been told that the nightingale recently sang in England. When the rains and snows pass, and the nightingale returns from its southern lands, you will sing your praises before the court and before the School of Bards. I grant you a whole year. You will polish each word and letter. Reward, as you know by now, will not be unworthy of my royal custom nor of the sleepless nights of your inspiration.” “O king, what greater reward than to see your face!” said the poet, who was also a courtier. He bowed and withdrew, already glimpsing one or two verses. When the year came round –​it had been a time of epidemics and uprisings –​the poet presented his panegyric. He declaimed it slowly, confidently, without a glance at the manuscript. With his head the king showed his approval. Everyone imitated

91 It brings to mind Akedah, a paradoxical Abraham-​God relationship, which will be discussed in detail later in this book. 92 Borges J. L. The book of sand, Penguin Books, England, 1981, pp. 53–​57.

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Paradoxical status of the I – Other relation his gesture, even those thronging the doorways, who were unable to make out a single word. At the end the king spoke. “I accept your labour,” he said. “It is another victory. You have given each word its true meaning, and each substantive the epithet given it by the poets of old. In your whole panegyric there is not a single image unknown to the classics. War is the beautiful web of men, and blood is the sword’s water. The sea has its gods and the clouds foretell the future. You have skilfully handled rhyme, alliteration, assonance, quantities, the artifices of learned rhetoric, the wise variation of metres. If all the literature of Ireland were to perish –​absit omen –​it could be reconstructed without loss from your classic ode. Thirty scribes shall copy it twelve times each.” There was a silence, then he went on. “All is well and yet nothing has happened. In our veins the blood runs no faster. Our hands have not sought the bow. No one has turned pale. No one uttered a battle cry or set his breast against the Vikings. Before a year is out, poet, we shall applaud another ode. As a sign of our approval, take this mirror, which is of silver.” “I give thanks and I understand,” said the bard. The stars in the sky went on in their bright course. Once more the nightingale sang in the Saxon forests, and the poet came back with his manuscript, which was shorter than the one before. He did not repeat it from memory but read it, obviously hesitant, omitting certain passages as if he himself did not completely understand them or did not wish to profane them. The ode was strange. It was not a description of the battle –​it was the battle. In its warlike chaos there struggled with one another the God that is Three and is One, Ireland’s pagan deities, and those who would wage war hundreds of years later at the beginning of the Elder Edda. The form was no less odd. A singular noun governed a plural verb. The prepositions were alien to common usage. Harshness alternated with sweetness. The metaphors were arbitrary, or so they seemed. The king exchanged a few words with the men of letters who stood around him, then spoke to the bard. “Your first ode I could declare was an apt compendium of all that has been sung in Ireland,” the king said. “This one outdoes, and even makes as nothing, whatever came before it. It astounds, it dazzles, it causes wonderment. The ignorant will be unworthy of it, but not so the learned, the few. An ivory casket will be the resting place of its single copy. Of the pen that has produced so eminent a work we may expect one still more lofty.” He added with a smile, “We are the figures of a fable, and it is good to remember that in fables the number three prevails.” “The wizard’s three gifts, triads, and the unquestionable Trinity,” the bard made bold to murmur. The king continued, “As a token of our approval, take this golden mask.” “I give thanks and I have understood,” said the bard.

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The anniversary came round again. The palace sentries noticed that the poet carried no manuscript. In amazement, the king looked at him; the bard was like another man. Something other than time had furrowed and transformed his features. His eyes seemed to stare into the distance or to be blind. The bard begged to be allowed a few words with the king. The slaves left the chamber. “Have you not written the ode?” asked the king. “Yes,” the bard sadly replied. “But would that Christ Our Lord had prevented me!” “Can you repeat it?” “I dare not.” “I will give you the courage you lack,” said the king. The bard recited the poem. It consisted of a single line. Not venturing to repeat it aloud, the poet and his king savoured it as if it were a secret prayer or a blasphemy. The king was as awestricken and overcome as the bard. The two looked at each other, very pale. “In my youth,” said the king, “I sailed towards the sunset. On one island I saw silver hounds that dealt death to golden boars. On another we fed ourselves on the fragrance of magic apples. On a third I saw walls of fire. On the farthest island of all an arched and hanging river cut across the sky and in its waters went fishes and boats. These are wonders, but they do not compare with your poem, which in some way encompasses them all. What bewitchery gave it to you?” “In the dawn I woke up speaking words I did not at first understand,” said the bard. “Those words were a poem. I felt I had committed a sin, perhaps one the Holy Ghost does not forgive.” ‘The one we two now share,’ the king said in a whisper. ‘The sin of having known Beauty, which is a gift forbidden to men. Now it behoves us to expiate it. I gave you a mirror and a golden mask; here is my third present, which will be the last.’ In the bard’s right hand he placed a dagger. Of the poet, we know that he killed himself upon leaving the palace; of the king, that he is a beggar wandering the length and breadth of Ireland –​which was once his kingdom –​and that he has never repeated the poem.

I will burn the punchline. At the end of the story, the poet and the king stare at their eyeballs with eyes not mediated by the world. The world fades from the first to the third version of the poem. From the applause of the crowd to the empty line pronounced outside the world, the syntactical links with world are broken. It is an impossible Deleuzian situation when the subject merges with the object, Robinson becomes Speranza, the poet becomes the king and the king becomes the poet. This is the point when Subject overlaps with Object, when Being overlaps with Other. Paradoxically enough, it does not matter what the poet whispers now. For we have entered the scenery of pure madness.

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Lacan uses the figure of the mitre (cross-​cap) to describe the end of Guy de Maupassant’s life, a state of severe madness. Mitre is an impossible figure: it is a two-​dimensional figure in a three-​dimensional space. This is the projection plane of the real. Mitre is not orientable (it is not possible to distinguish her sides), it is a two-​dimensional variety without borders, which in the three-​dimensional world cannot be reproduced without cuts: although in the four-​dimensional world such a procedure would be possible.

Figure 6  –​ Cross-​cap (mitre) The specular image becomes the uncanny and invasive image of the double. This is what happens little by little at the end of Maupassant’s life, when he starts failing to see himself in the mirror, or when he glimpses something in a room, a phantom that turns its back on him, whereupon he knows it to be something that a certain relation to himself, and when the phantom turns around he sees that it is he.93

Lacan eagerly invokes topological metaphors. I think that the similarity between Lacan’s topology and philosophy lies in the fact that both these spaces (mathematical and philosophical) explore the conditions, possibilities, and limits of the deformation, the plasticity of objects (in Lacan, such an object is a subject) without changing their properties as such. The properties of solids, which do not change after topological transformations, are invariable topological changes.

93 Lacan J. Anxiety. The seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book X. Edited by Jacques-​ Alain Miller, Polity Press, 2014, p. 99.

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In his essay, “The gift of death,” Jacques Derrida evokes the situation of a gift as a betrayal of everyone to whom, at the same time, the possibility of receiving this gift is taken away. To put it simply and according to Marcel Mauss, a situation of gift, a situation that is otherwise impossible, is always at the same time a situation of betrayal: As soon as I enter into the relation with the absolute other, my singularity enters into relation with his on the level of obligation and duty. I am responsible before the other as other; I answer to him and I answer for what I do before him. But of course, what binds me thus in my singularity of the other immediately propels me in to the space or risk of absolute sacrifice. (…) As soon as I enter into a relation with the other, with the gaze, look, request, love, command, or call of the other, I know that I can respond only by sacrificing ethics, that is to say by sacrificing whatever obliges me to also respond, in the same way, in the same instant, to all the others. I put to death, I betray and lie, I don’t need to raise my knife over my son on Mount Moriah for that. Day and night, at every instant, on all the Mont Moriahs of this world, I am doing that, raising my knife over what I love and must love, over the over, to this or that other to whom I owe absolute fidelity, incommensurably.94

In Borges’s story, the poet whispers: “The wizard’s three gifts, triads, and the unquestionable Trinity,” the bard made bold to murmur.

Perhaps the poet’s wisdom senses the horror of the last gift from the king, the gift in the scenery of madness, in the landscape of unbearable weight of Other, the impossible weight of the Other, no longer the Other. The word “gift” is derived from “datum,” which means to date, to mark. Interestingly, we often encounter phraseological relationships such as: “save death,” “save time.” According to Derrida, a donation is at the same time a stripping, a sacrifice of the Other (l’autre) to the Other (l’autre). By devoting my time to the Other, I simultaneously betray all those Others to whom I receive it at a given moment. The Echo of the third is always present in the scenery of the gift. From the first gift of the king (mirror) to the last gift (dagger) to Echo –​the world is silent and finally turns to stone.

94 Derrida J. The Gift of Death, The University of Chicago, Chicago, 1995, pp. 68–​69.

Chapter IV: Paradoxical ontological status of the world as such The analysis of the issue of potentiality in the light of Agamben’s and Deleuze’s thoughts related metaphorically to the wave function of the universe (quantum mechanics) shows that the subject position of the observer should be properly chosen. Agamben’s position is a paradoxical figure of the subject position, which I will prove. Agamben stated that the potentiality is fulfilled in the actuality. He did so on the basis of what he calls “Aristotle’s double negation.” But he made a logical mistake, which will be scrutinized. I will investigate the gesture of a “cut” in the process of actualization in Deleuzian intuitions on the example of the Aion–​Chronos structure and the concept–​plane of immanence relation. Next, I will try to grasp the act of a “cut” in the landscape of Quantum Mechanics. Here, I will interpret the most classical explanation of the implications of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which is the Copenhagen interpretation: Wave Function of The Universe. I will analyse two different positions of the observer when interpreting philosophical implications of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics and the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Finally, the concluding remarks will be discussed.

Potentiality according to Agamben Agamben based his reasoning on the laws of Aristotle. Based on Aristotle, he interpreted potentiality as the possibility of the act as well as the possibility of ceasing the act (his essay “On Potentiality”).95 Based on Aristotle’s diagrams, he advocated the state that can’t be negated, as it is already “double negated.” Agamben’s move results in aporias that will be considered. But first, I will focus on his logical reasoning. The sentence that Agamben postulates as irreparable is: “The world is capable of not

95 Agamben G. Potentialities. Collected Essays in Philosophy, Stanford University Press, 1999

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not-​being” (The Coming Community –​X Irreparable). What is crucial is that, if we assume the existence of “notverb” (Agamben’s ability to cease the act), the contradictory principle is infracted. According to Aristotle’s “Categories,” p. 39: “It is impossible for a thing to be its contrary.” As “not-​A” is a negation of “A” there is no difference between “ceasing the act” and “not to act,” as that which is potential passes fully into actual. And if there is no difference between “ceasing the act” and “not to act,” then within one and the same entity there coexist two contraries: “to act” and “not to act.” Aristotle’s diagram of modality that Agamben advocates is a generalized diagram from “De interpretatione” 22a1422a32: modal verb + INFINITIVE vs. negation of modal verb + INFINITIVE modal verb + negation of INFINITIVE vs. negation of modal verb + negation of INFINITIVE

According to both Aristotle and Agamben: “not-​A” is “a negation of A.” Thus, “not-​A” is “whatever but A.” If then “A” is “singing” then “not-​ A” is: “dancing, reading etc. (whatever except singing).” Agamben’s “It is capable of not not-​being” is for example: “It is capable of not singing.” Agamben interprets “not-​being” as “not-​A,” thus as “whatever but being.”96 As is clearly seen, Agamben’s notation is a logical mistake: “NotA” is the only possible notation for ceasing the act, for ceasing “A.” Thus, “It is capable of not notbeing” is the only possible notation that can make Agamben’s reasoning coherent. Agamben’s sentence can be analysed for Aristotle’s diagram of the negation: modal verb + negation of INFINITIVE (here the infinitive is “notbeing”) vs. negation of modal verb + negation of INFINITIVE

Replacing Agamben’s wrong notation with the right one (correct “notA” instead of wrong “not-​A”): “The world is capable of not notbeing”

has its opposition in: “The world is not capable of not notbeing.”

96 Also from the linguistic point of view aporia can be discerned, as “capable of not” is a rather clumsy expression.

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It is not a triple negation obviously. “Notbeing” is one verb, not the negation of a verb. It is now clear that it is a reparable structure, using Agamben’s terminology. What is more, in “De interpretatione” 18b13–​ 18b15 we can read: “But if something cannot not happen it is impossible for it not happen; and if it is impossible for something not to happen it is necessary for it to happen.” Thus “if something cannot not happen” then “it is necessary for it to happen.” Thus, “The world is capable of not notbeing” equals “The world is not necessary to notbe.” And “The world is not capable of not notbeing” equals “The world is necessary to notbe.” THUS, “The world is capable of not notbeing” has its opposition in “The world is necessary to notbe.” Let us now reconstruct Agamben’s reasoning: Assumption 1. Potentiality passes fully into actuality (which is also true according to Aristotle); that is, “ability to act” = “act” Assumption 2. There exists: “ability to cease the act” Assumption 3. “ability to cease the act” is “ability to not-​act” The law: Contradictory principle is valid. (It is the enthymematic presumption as Agamben has not articulated the law.) Let us then substitute as follows: “act” is “p” “not-​act” is “not-​p” contradictory principle: either “p” or “not-​p” THUS: Either one of Agamben’s assumptions is false or the contradictory principle is not valid.

CONCLUSION: It is clear that axiomates cannot be contradictory. Therefore, in order for Agamben’s reasoning to be consistent, to be able to consider a non-​act (this “ability to cease the act”), we must waive the psychological contradictory principle. Attempts at repealing the psychological principle of contradiction have been made in modern philosophy (e.g. Jan Łukasiewicz). However, within the confines of thought, by Aristotle’s system, the principle of contradiction is one of the pillars. Agamben’s research, the study of the function of potential, leads to the function of necessity and obligation to exist. Agamben’s philosophy

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modifies and even changes the categories of modality. As a result, his world stands in opposition to the world as seen by contemporary natural sciences. In the world of Agamben, time does not flow.97 It seems that Agamben’s intention is to avoid being forced into necessity. However, in order to postulate “p” and “not-​p” as two separate modes of existence (as Agamben wants to do), one must first postulate the impossibility of negating the state of “not-​p.” However, the whole problem is that this sentence is reparable (that is, possible to negate) and not reparable, as Agamben wants it to be. In other words, for a system to “work,” its “not not-​being” must be unfixable by necessity. I do not think that is the case. I don’t think Agamben managed to avoid the aporia: unless, in fact, we are already at a point following the end of the world (see: Agamben’s Auschwitz). The question about the boundaries of science and religion is then an open question. Or to put it more strongly: how did Agamben get the knowledge about this “end of the world” that is necessary for the coherence of his philosophy? As a curiosity I will include Agamben’s reasoning in the modal logic scheme. Even if one assumes that Agamben has gone beyond the system of bivalent logic, his opinion is still reparable; the sentence can be negated. In the light of the law of modal logic:98 M(p)~K(~p) is possible p if and only if it is not necessary to not-​p. where: M –​possible P –​the world can exist K –​Necessary The following system of equations is therefore created: M(~p)~K(p) M(~~p)~K(p) ~M(~~p)~K(p)

7 Which I will present on the following pages. 9 98 I would like to warmly thank Paweł Horodecki for our meeting and help with some aspects of modal logic.

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In the light of modal logic, the sentence “the world may not exist” is synonymous with “it is not necessary for the world not to exist,” and so this triple negation of “the world cannot not exist” would read “it is necessary for it not to exist.” Hence the conclusion: once again, Agamben’s opinion is reparable, that is to say, one for which negation is possible.

The “cut” in the Deleuzian landscape Let us look at the relation concept –​the plane of immanence. A plane of immanence as such is a plane of pure potentiality. For the observer the plane of immanence can be depicted as a metaphor of the wave function of the universe (the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics). When the observer creates a concept on a plane of immanence, then the concepts possible to him become his actual concepts. The observer with the power of the force (the Deleuzian act of violence that Deleuze takes from Nietzsche) incorporates possible concepts as his own. In other words, with the force of a “cut” (the act of creating concepts) the potential concepts become actual. This is the moment when that which is “outer” (the possibility of concepts as such) becomes “inner” (concepts incorporated by the observer). As a metaphor we can say that this is the moment of the collapse of the Wave Function of the Universe. If we look carefully, the example shows the difference between the notions of potentiality and possibility as they require two different positions of the observer: either the “inner” or the “outer” one, the immanent, or the transcendental one. Let us now take a look at the Deleuzian Aion-​ Chronos relation. According to Deleuze, time is Aion and Chronos. Aion is, using Deleuzian terminology, eternally Infinitive and eternally neutral. Aion is an empty form of time and as such is boundless. Aion does not depend on matter so it is incorporeal. It is the time of events-​effects: it spreads in the past and the future. All that Aion is, Chronos is not. Thus Chronos is defined: active or passive. As it is not an empty form of time, thus Chronos is always living presence. Matter limits and fulfills Chronos. Both Aion and Chronos are separate frames wherein each is complementary but the two together are disjunctive. Deleuzian sense emerges on the verge of the Aion and Chronos synthesis. With the cut of Chronos, the event of Aion is articulated. The thought is polished to the shape of a word.

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Paradoxical ontological status of the world as such At most, there was between them a shift of orientation: in the case of Aion, the becoming-​mad of the depths was climbing to the surface, the simulacra in turn were becoming phantasmats, the deep break was showing as a crack in the surface.99

The extreme fragility of the structure grasped should not be forgotten. The last sentence of The Logic of Sense, from the Twelfth Series On the Paradox, is as follows: “This presentation of a total deployment at the surface is necessarily affected, at each of these points, by an extreme and persistent fragility.” The emerging of sense is secondary to time. The tension between Aion and Chronos results in the birth of a word. The time of the depths (Aion) can be seen as a set of all possible configurations rather than the configurations as such. Aion is the set of all possibilities, which are actualized with Chronos’ cut. Deleuzian time, as a metaphor, can be illustrated with the Kopenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. The wave function of the universe is a set of all possible worlds, where in the act of the measurement, the “cut” results in the actualization of a definite world.

99 Deleuze G. The Logic of Sense, The Athlone Press, London, 1990, p. 165.

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My picture (the position of the subject)

The “cut” in Quantum Mechanics. The position of the observer and the Agambenian mistake Quantum Mechanics forbids us to predict a result of a single measurement. It is the theory which depicts the probability of the possible results. In the landscape of QM, time and space are not inscribed. The observer is the external frame of reference. In comparison, in the General Theory of Relativity there is no frame of reference as such, as the notion of time is a part of a game; time is an active player. All can be said without reference to an external frame, as there is

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none. The stability of the world is not questioned, as time is incorporated within its structure. The QM landscape is one beyond time and space. QM needs a time frame of reference (as the “cut”) to grasp the event. Time lacerates the event. Therefore, to seize the event is to wound. There is the essential instability of the world, as it only can be grasped from the perspective of the movement of time. The structure as such emerges if frozen in its “actuality,” if trivialized in “coiled up relative presents” like the Chronos act. These are two different positions of the man. One –​as him being an active, internal part of the world (GTR) and the other –​as his passivity, him being in the external position vis-​à-​vis the world (QM –​Wave Function). Quantum collapse (the collapse of all possible worlds to make the one existent) occurs when the observer becomes “an active player,” so that time becomes a part of his world. The many worlds interpretation (many worlds’ existence and no time as such) is the one without the observer within. If we set the observer within the world as one of many, it can be discerned that his world stands in opposition to all the worlds not chosen. This is to say that from all the worlds possible to him, the chosen one becomes existent. Agamben’s mistake, to use a quantum mechanics metaphor, is a gesture of giving life to all worlds. These worlds are “only possible” from the observer’s point of view because they exist as “the worlds not chosen.” For the observer to be there as “an active player,” they must be the worlds that are impossible. This is the point if referring to the many worlds interpretation of quantum theory, where the observer is simultaneously “an active player” in each and every world. As a metaphor it functions to inscribe time and space within the landscape of quantum theory; to incorporate time and space into the landscape of quantum mechanics. This is the point of impossibility. Derrida’s “The Gift of Death” is a metaphor for the observer’s position dilemma. The figure of Abraham is the one where the observer is not in the frame of reference. In the process of entering the Moriah Abraham is drawing close to the external frame of reference (here presupposed as Absolute). In order to do so his position towards the world becomes external; he “kills” his world. In a way it can be seen as a reversed quantum collapse, a process of getting out of time. This is the impossible moment as Abraham becomes the external frame of reference to his world, already killed. He is his own frame of reference, or it could even be said that he is the

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frame; or, assuming God, that only God is his frame of reference. Abraham, in short, is the one who went out of the frame of reference (world), whereas Agamben is the one who simultaneously “is and is not” within the same frame of reference (world).

My picture (the cut)

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The act of “cut” in the Deleuzian landscape Let us look at the relation between a concept and a plane of immanence in What is philosophy.100 The plane of immanence is the plane of pure potentiality. The plane of Deleuze’s immanence can be metaphorically rendered by the wave function of the universe (Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics). When the observer creates concepts at the immanence level, the concepts possible for him/​her become actual concepts. The observer, using violence, an act that Deleuze takes from Nietzsche, embodies his own concepts as actual. The concept’s baptism calls for a specifically philosophical taste that proceeds with violence or by insinuation and constitutes a philosophical language within language –​not just a vocabulary but a syntax that attains the sublime or a great beauty.101

With the power of the “cut”: an act of concept creation, potential concepts become actual. This is the moment when the “external” (the possibility of concept as such) becomes an “interior” (a concept incorporated for the observer). Let us proceed in a summary fashion: we will consider a field experience taken as a real world no longer in relation to a self but to a simple “there is.” There at some moment, a calm and restful world. Suddenly a frightened face looms up that looks at something out of the field. The other person appears here as neither subject nor object but as something that is very different: a possible world, the possibility of a frightening world. This possible world is not real, or not yet, but it exists nonetheless: it is an expressed that exists only in its expression –​the face, or an equivalent of the face. 102

As a metaphor we can use here the moment of the collapse of the wave function of the universe. It is the moment when the function of potentiality, the function of all possible potential universes, collapses into the universe

100 Deleuze G., Guattari F. What is philosophy, Columbia University Press, New York, 1994 pp. 35–​60. 101 Deleuze G., Guattari F. What is philosophy, Columbia University Press, New York, 1994 p. 8. 102 Deleuze G., Guattari F. What is philosophy, Columbia University Press, New York, 1994 p. 17.

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of the observer, who from being the passive, external observer becomes the participating observer, an active player of the universe already actual for him. At the moment of the collapse of the set of possible universes, in relation to which it was in the external position, he becomes thesubject inhabiting the universe that is actual for it. The remaining universes, which were previously his possibilities, are now collapsing and become impossible for him. Let’s take a look at the Deleuzian relationship between Aion and Chronos. The tension of Aion-​Chronos does not need the addition of a disproportionate element of time; it represents rather the mutual inadequacy of element A (Aion) and element B (Chronos), although it is impossible to consider one without the other: it is as impossible to consider Aion without Chronos, as to consider Chronos without Aion. Both times, Aion and Chronos, are separate interpretations of time, each of which is both complementary and disjunctive. By the way, at the first instinct, it would seem contradictory for me to hold Agamben to account for the non-​recognition of the principle of contradiction and, at the same time, to welcome Deleuze’s attempts to evade that principle. It’s not like that. My objection to Agamben is that he was relying on an axiomatic system (here Aristotle’s system of formal logic –​a system in which the principle of contradiction applies) while simultaneously rejecting some axioms (the principle of contradiction). And back to Deleuze: Deleuzian sense emerges on the border between Aion and Chronos. With a Chronos’ “cut,” the event of Aion is articulated. The thought is polished to the shape of a word. At most, there was between them a shift of orientation: in the case of Aion, the becoming-​mad of the depths was climbing to the surface, the simulacra in turn were becoming phantasmats, the deep break was showing as a crack in the surface.103

It should not be forgotten that such a structure is characterized by extreme fragility, which is reminiscent of the last sentence of the twelfth series of The Logic of Sense:

103 Deleuze G. The Logic of Sense, The Athlone Press, London, 1990, p. 165.

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Paradoxical ontological status of the world as such This presentation of a total deployment at the surface is necessarily affected, at each of these points, by an extreme and persistent fragility.104

The tension between Aion and Chronos results in the birth of a word. The time of Depths (Aion) can be seen as a set of all possible configurations rather than configurations as such. Aion is a collection of all the possibilities that are actualized by the “cut”: Chronos. Deleuzian time can be metaphorically related to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. The wave function of the universe is a set of all potentially possible worlds, in which the act of “cut,” the act of measurement actualizes to the shape of a specific, specific world.

“Cut” in quantum mechanics. Observer position and Agamben’s assumption Quantum mechanics does not allow one to predict the result of a single measurement. This is a theory that reflects the probability of a possible result. Time and space are not inscribed in the landscape of quantum mechanics; or more precisely, time and space in the landscape of quantum mechanics can only be captured when an external observer enters the stage, as an external frame of reference for a simultaneous quantum phenomenon. A quantum event is limited to the time and space in which it is observed by an observer. The observer is therefore –​using philosophical terminology –​a transcendental frame of reference. For comparison, the general theory of relativity has no frame of reference as such, because time is part of the game; time is an active player. The observer is part of the event. There is no need for or possibility of an external frame of reference, as the observer is an active player. The stability of the world is not questioned, because time is incorporated into the framework of the structure. It is worth keeping in mind, however, that within this theory time is relative; it constitutes a relation between entities (or subjects), which relation is related to the absolute point of reference. Quantum mechanics is a theory beyond time and space. An external reference frame (understood as a “cut”) is needed to capture the event. Time lacerates an event; hence, to catch an event is to “wound.” There is essential 104 Deleuze G. The Logic of Sense, The Athlone Press, London, 1990, p. 81.

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instability of the world, as it only can be grasped from the perspective of the movement of time. The structure itself emerges as if “frozen” in actuality, if trivialized in the “coiled up” present, like a Chronos act. I refer Lacan to GTR and Deleuze to QW. GTR has a “subject” as one of the elements of the theory. In principle, the frame of reference does not exist as such, because the subject is inside the world. Therefore, in order to scrutinize relations, it is necessary to establish an absolute point of reference, like a deus ex machina. The quantum world as such can only be studied from the perspective of an external observer. Metaphorically speaking, the subject enters the stage in a chosen time and space and from the entire quantum world “cuts” a piece of the world that he subjects to research. This observer –​subject –​ functions as absolute time and space, as the main stage of quantum theory. There is no other way, because –​I would say jokingly –​quantum will not examine the other quantum. On the other hand, in the purely quantum world one can study phenomena only from the “out-​of-​quantum” position, from the human position. Two subject’s positions are visible: when the subject is an internal part of the world, an active player (general theory of relativity), or when the subject is an external reference frame (quantum mechanics). A quantum collapse (a collapse of the wave function of the universe) occurs when an observer who is an external reference frame becomes an active player and time becomes a part of the game. Then the world of all possibilities is narrowed down to the world given to the observer (now also being inside such a world), and all other possibilities (other worlds) become now impossible: their collapse takes place. The interpretation of the Multiverse does not assume an observer. However, if one is in the given world, then he stands in opposition to all the worlds in which he is not, to the unchosen worlds. In other words, of all the possible worlds for him, of all the potential worlds (from his perspective as now still “external”), the chosen world now becomes the actual world. Agamben’s assumption is to set the observer as an active subject in all possible worlds. This is an impossible position. For Agamben, there is no category of a possible world. The ontological consequences that this philosopher draws from his allegedly unreparable “not not-​being” are that our world is a world where there is no possibility of changing the situation –​it is the world after the final judgement. For Agamben, the world

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after the final judgement is the starting point of his ontology. In such a perspective, Agamben’s philosophy is either an ad hoc ontology (if one were to acknowledge this “saving dimension”) or a paradoxical philosophy. Agamben’s world is a world with no beginning and no end, with the observer simultaneously inside and outside (after all, if there is nothing outside, or before the universe, the universe is then “everything,” whatever it would mean then), or with the observer “nowhere.” In any other case, it is a world of necessity with God, a deus ex machina, because without this “God’s” assumption a lot of questions become unjustified: e.g. about the passage of time, or the direction of the passage of time. What is more, there is no time there!!!!! Agamben’s assumption is a gesture made to give life to all possible worlds. These worlds –​existing as actual –​can exist for the observer only as “impossible worlds.” Agamben’s subject is an active player simultaneously in all multiverses! Derrida’s “The Gift of Death” illustrates the dilemma of the subject’s position. As soon as I enter into the relation with the absolute other, my singularity enters into relation with his on the level of obligation and duty. I am responsible before the other as other; I answer to him and I answer for what I do before him. But of course, what binds me thus in my singularity of the other immediately propels me in to the space or risk of absolute sacrifice. (…) As soon as I enter into a relation with the other, with the gaze, look, request, love, command, or call of the other, I know that I can respond only by sacrificing ethics, that is to say by sacrificing whatever obliges me to also respond, in the same way, in the same instant, to all the others. I put to death, I betray and lie, I don’t need to raise my knife over my son on Mount Moriah for that. Day and night, at every instant, on all the Mont Moriahs of this world, I am doing that, raising my knife over what I love and must love, over the over, to this or that other to whom I owe absolute fidelity, incommensurably.105

The paradoxical figure of Abraham is where the observer is the external frame of reference to himself. In the process of entering Mount Moriah, Abraham approaches the outer frame of reference (here treated as God). To accomplish such a position, he or she must “kill” his world. Such a situation can be metaphorically related to the reversed quantum collapse, the process of exiting time. This is an impossible moment because

105 Derrida J. The Gift of Death, The University of Chicago, Chicago, 1995, pp. 68–​69.

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Abraham becomes the outer frame of reference for the world that he has already “killed.” Abraham, therefore, becomes his own frame of reference to himself because there is no world anymore! –​for Abraham went “out of the world.” Expressing this in other words: Abraham becomes the frame of reference as such; or (assuming God) God alone is the frame of reference for Abraham. Abraham is the one who left the frame of reference (the world), while Agamben is the one who set the frame of reference, or systems of reference, in all possible worlds; or it is the one who simultaneously “is and is not” in all and all worlds at the same time. Abraham’s position is the position beyond the frame ofreference and Agamben’s position is the position of all and all frames of reference at the same time.

Akeda: Kierkegaard’s paradox, comedy and the position of subject What Kierkegaard defines as paradoxical history is the moment when individual existence is in direct relation with the absolute, when in such a relation individual existence –​the absolute omits all general entities; that is, Abraham is in relation with God, omitting the whole social, ethical and religious context. What Kierkegaard describes as a paradoxical story is a moment when a single individual stands in pure relation with an absolute and when all individuals are ignored. In other words, when Abraham stands in relation with God, all social, ethical, and religious contexts are ignored. Faith is precisely this paradox, that single individual as the particular is higher than the universal and is justified over against the latter not as subordinate but superior to it, yet in such a way, mind you, that it is the single individual who, after having been subordinate to the universal as the particular, now through the universal becomes the single individual who as the particular is superior to it; [faith is this paradox] that the single individual as the particular stands in absolute relation to the absolute. […] Abraham acts by the virtue of the absurd, for the absurd is precisely that he as the single individual is higher than the universal. This paradox cannot be mediated, for as soon as Abraham sets out to do that he must admit he was in a state of temptation, and if that is so, he never gets to the point of sacrificing Isaac, or if he has sacrificed Isaac he must then repentantly return to the universal. He gets Isaac back again by virtue of the absurd. Abraham is therefore at no moment a tragic

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hero but something entirely different, either a murderer or a believer. Abraham lacks the middle term that saves the tragic hero.106

This is when Alenka Zupančič comes to mind and her interpretation of a comedy, featuring a figure of comedy, namely a moment when an absolute enters the stage in all its concreteness, without its symbolic representation. Comedy is not the undermining of the universal, but its (own) reversal into the concrete; it is not an objection to the universal, but the concrete labour of work of the universal itself. Or, to put it into a single slogan: comedy is the universal at work. This is a universal which is (re)presented as being in action, but is in action. In other words, “the negative power through which and in which the god vanish” is precisely the power which has been previously (in the mode of representation) attributed to gods, and has now become the acting subject. To recapitulate: in the epic, the subject narrates the universal, the essential, the absolute; in tragedy, the subject enacts or stages the universal, the essential, the absolute; in comedy the subject is (or becomes) the universal, the essential, the absolute become the subject.107

Alenka Zupančič understands comedy as absolute entering the stage, which results in setting absolute and individual on a single plane. It is clear that the precondition for the whole biblical story to occur is to situate Abraham and absolute on one plane in order to establish a one-​to-​one relation, making them equal. This assumption results in the single individual as the particular standing in absolute, pure relation to the absolute. What is more, only with the aforementioned precondition of the ethical epoché is the teleological suspension of ethics possible. And this is when the question arises –​is the Binding of Isaac a comic image? On a side note, the process of Abraham’s purgation from worldly matters in order to stand in pure relation with the absolute is picturesquely illustrated as Abraham’s ascending the Moriah mountain; but it could have been depicted as a process of Abraham’s descending to the deep valley as well. Abraham’s process of purgation from all worldly matters is a necessary condition of establishing the pure I–​absolute relation. This one-​to-​ one relation results in the absolute becoming devoid of all symbolical

106 Kierkegaard S. Fear and Trembling, Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 48–​49. 107 Zupančič A. The Odd One In, MIT Press, 2001, pp. 27–​28.

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representation. In other words, as Zupančič stresses, the absolute becomes the subject. Here, the absolute shrinks into the flatman-​like position. The biblical words enforce this interpretation: the culminating moment is the moment when the one who speaks is, in fact, not an angel reporting God’s will, but God himself, represented as an angel. Let’s then read two crucial biblical fragments (the underlining is mine): “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.” Genesis 22:12. “I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.” Genesis 22: 16–​18.

It is more than obvious that the two aforementioned fragments unambiguously indicate that it is not the angel speaking in the name of God, but God himself. Taking everything into account, according to Zupančič’s definition of comedy, the Akedah is pure comedy. Let us then have a closer look at the four versions of the paradox of Kierkegaard, in the four versions of Kierkegaard’s comedy. First, let us have a closer look at the first version. This version is the least comical, the most down-​to earth. It was early in the morning, Abraham arose betimes, he had the asses saddled, left his tent, and Isaac with him, but Sarah looked out of the window after them until they had passed down the valley and she could see no more.108

In the first variant Abraham takes his son, Sarah looks through the window and watches as they both disappear from sight. Abraham and Isaac walk in silence. Abraham doesn’t say a word. Abraham puts his hand on the head of his son, and his face is gentle and his speech is comforting. What is more, Abraham leads his son by the hand, being constantly physically close to his son. As for his relationship with Sarah, he has not said a word of goodbye

108 Kierkegaard S. Fear and Trembling, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1955, p. 7.

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to her. In other words, Abraham has not bid farewell to the physical world, but still constantly holds the hand of the individual being –​Isaac; therefore his relation of individual being–​absolute is not a pure relation, because it disrupts the “hand” of Isaac. Turning from the absolute to the relationship with Isaac, Abraham could not bear the burden of the will of God. When Abraham became involved hand in hand in a relationship with Isaac, he could not simultaneously stand in an unambiguous I–​absolute relation. Abraham is stuck in the physical world and here lies have become almost a logical consequence of this attitude. Abraham did not lift up the horror of the burnt offering, but denied the judgement of God, claiming that it was his own victim. He seized Isaac by the throat, threw him to the ground, and said, “Stupid boy, dost thou then suppose that I am thy father? I am an idolater. Dost thou suppose that this is God’s bidding? No, it is my desire.”109

Abraham “protects” Isaac, is entangled in individual beings, is immersed in a lie. There is one element of an intermediary between Abraham and the absolute –​the “hand” of Isaac. This relationship of a lie is even more clearly articulated, when you look at it from the perspective of psychoanalysis. This perspective can be assumed in each of the four versions: When the child must be weaned, the mother blackens her breast, it would indeed be a shame that her breast should look delicious when the child must not have it. So the child believes that the breast has changed, but the mother is the same, her glance is as loving and tender as ever. Happy the person who has no need of more dreadful expedients for weaning the child!110

Here we can make the trip even to Melanie Klein and the good and bad breast, but even closer here is a metaphor of the blackened breast, as a metaphor of Abraham’s lie, namely the breast, which must be blackened and Abraham, who is lying when he repeals the judgement of God. In the second version, from physicality towards the absolute, we must pay attention to the fact that Abraham is even closer to Sarah –​includes Sarah, Sarah kisses Isaac; therefore Abraham is close to his wife. Again, 109 Kierkegaard S. Fear and Trembling, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1955, p. 7. 110 Kierkegaard S. Fear and Trembling, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1955 p. 8.

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there is an element of silence. As for the relation of Abraham–​Isaac, there is no word about the physical relation of father–​son, no mention of the fact that Abraham’s son is touched, whether to go with him by the hand as in the first version in this first bipolar relationship lie –​or in physicality, where Abraham lied to save his son, where he was rooted in the world, where he was in a far from unambiguous relationship with the absolute. Here at the beginning he “kisses,” says goodbye to the world, hugs his wife, and then moves away from the world: he does not touch Isaac, has his eyes fixed on the ground and pulls out a knife –​not touching Isaac. And we have the consequences of such a sacrifice –​Abraham is ageing and cannot forget what God wants from him. When the child has grown big and must be weaned, the mother virginally hides her breast, so the child has no more a mother. Happy the child which did not in another way lose its mother.111

And further, as a result, going with the short psychoanalytic word optics is not so dramatic: there is no element of lying, the breast does not need to be blackened and the baby grows and must be weaned enough for the mother to hide her chest in the virginal way. While here, in this version similarly to the version of the paradox-​comedy of Abraham, Kierkegaard’s insight is huge, because there he writes about the “disconnection” from his mother, but also about the “loss” of the mother. A reading of Kierkegaard by Zupančič is an obvious conclusion: Abraham must lose Isaac in the relation I–​absolute. Here the relation I–​absolute bypasses all kinds of individual beings and approaches the comedy, to use the language metaphor, of the virgin relation. Let us have a closer look at the relationship of the third. Let’s put it schematically: I –​thoughts concerning the world –​absolute. We start from the time when Abraham kisses Sarah, when he is close to individual entities, to the world. Then Sarah kisses Isaac. Abraham is even more entrenched in the world, because of the thought of Ha-​gar and her son; he reaches the peak of Moriah and pulls out a knife. And here we have the relationship that can be considered in two ways: first, Abraham is not physically touching

111 Kierkegaard S. Fear and Trembling, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1955 p. 8.

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his son, he is not as symptomatically connected with him as in the first version, but all the time his thoughts are turned not towards the absolute but towards things of the real world. In this version of his thoughts are the strongest ones facing individual beings: he is thinking about Ha-​gar, how he did not fulfill its obligations with respect to the child’s paternity, thinking that he might not meet the obligations of fathers with regards to Isaac. Hence, his relationship with the absolute becomes a relationship which mediates Abrahamic thoughts about world; it is not a pure I–​absolute relation. Abraham thinks about Isaac all the time, thinks in a way that asks God to forgive him for forgetting about obligations with respect to his son, to forgive him his sin, that he wanted to sacrifice Isaac, that the father had forgotten about the obligations with respect to his son. On the one hand, it can be concluded, therefore, that Abraham did not love his son strongly enough. On the other hand, a legitimate conclusion is that Abraham loves his son so much that he is incapable of thinking that God might assume that he could not love his son. Let us have a look at the sentence that can be understood in both ways: He could not comprehend that it was a sin to be willing to offer to God the best thing he possessed, that for which he would many times have given his life; and if it was a sin, if he had not loved Isaac as he did, then he could not understand that it might have been forgiven. For what sin could be more dreadful?112

And we have the apposition of the relationship, which clearly defines this apparent ambiguity: When the child must be weaned, the mother too is not without sorrow as the thought that she and her child are separated more and more, that the child which first lay under her heart and later reposed upon her breast will be so near to her no more. So they mourn together for the brief period of mourning. Happy the person who has kept the child as near and needed not to sorrow any more!113

We have a child who is to be separated from the mother, but the apposition is: there is no mother who would not have to worry about her child. In other words, there is no such father who does not love his son. Completion of this 112 Kierkegaard S. Fear and Trembling, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1955, p. 9. 113 Kierkegaard S. Fear and Trembling, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1955, p. 9.

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psychoanalytic situation would be such that no sin would be more terrible than the lack of a father’s love for his son, but this third variation is that the unequivocal fact is that Abraham loved his son, hence the conclusion is that no sin can be more terrible than this, that Abraham is able to kill his son. In the fourth variant, a variant of pure comedy, the variant, which is closest to the relationship in the biblical version, is coming to a pure I–​ absolute relation. Abraham says goodbye to Sarah. There is neither word about the kiss, nor mention of the physicality of Abraham and Sarah. Abraham is going with Isaac and there is no word as to whether Abraham hugged or even touched Isaac. Abraham prepares a sword. Abraham is directed towards the absolute, and separated from the world. There are no such moments when Abraham doubts, when he asks God for forgiveness; there are no such moments when Abraham must lie to Isaac; there is no moment of proximity when it comes to Sarah as symptomatically saying farewell to the world, or to Isaac as embroilment in the real world on the way to the top of Moriah. A psychoanalytic complement to such a situation, as it were a natural consequence of this situation, is that the mother, who should have food reinforcement available when disconnecting the baby from the breast so that the child does not die, in fact has no such food. Abraham cannot “feed” Isaac after removing him from the breast. Thus, Isaac loses faith. In this relationship, our pure comic situation of food reinforcement cannot be. When the child must be weaned, the mother has stronger food in readiness, lest the child should perish. Happy the person who has stronger food in readiness!114

Abraham has no such “food”; therefore, Isaac loses faith. Or, paraphrasing Hugo von Hofmannsthal from the Letter from Lord Chandos to Francis Bacon, the abstract terms of which the tongue must avail itself as a matter of course in order to voice a judgement –​these terms crumbled in Abraham’s mouth like mouldy fungi. When we stand at the gates of the paradox, words lose their power: words are in a paradoxical situation, words crumble and cannot spread in the world of Aion and Chronos at the same time. Abraham remains silent and

114 Kierkegaard S. Fear and Trembling, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1955, p. 9.

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the double adventure of crazy Alice, who, eating a cake, becomes both greater and lesser, goes beyond words. The biblical Abraham, Abraham from the fourth version, is in the relation I–​Absolute, omitting all kinds of individual beings. If you assume the existence of God, Abraham faces God face to face. To sum up, in the light of Alenka Zupančič’s definition of comedy, Akedah is a pure comedy.

Final conclusions Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveller, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —​ I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference. Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken”

The poem is a mockery. Frost wrote it for his chronically indecisive friend, the poet Sir Edward Thompson. The landscape of the poem will be the metaphor of the status of cognition, always a paradoxical one. In one of Deleuze’s favourite scenes, Borges’s tale, we can read: “The Garden of Forking Paths is an enormous riddle, or parable, whose theme is time; this recondite cause prohibits its mention.” As was mentioned, QM is the theory “beyond space and time.” There, as time is an external frame of reference, the structure is an illusion. With no time and space within QM, the external frame of references is needed (time and, as a metaphor, Chronos’ act) and then the uncertainty is unavoidable (according to Heisenberg, and with Deleuze this is this “extreme and persistent fragility”). In the General Theory of Relativity time and space are “active players” and thus the external frame of reference is impossible, as there is no “exteriority” as such. However, time is relative.

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It struck me that the tension that exists in contemporary physics somehow can be compared, probably rather as a metaphor, to Deleuze’s and Lacan’s concepts. The Deleuzian landscape, as I was trying to show, is the one where the time structure emerges as a result of a Chronos’ cut, the cut that gives life; whereas Lacan’s conception of time is rooted in the Other. It is “doing time” (I found this expression “doing time” in Alexander Williams’ article). I think that the point is: either “doing world” (Deleuze, QM) or “doing time” (Lacan, GTR). Deleuze acutely articulated this riddle. In his essay Michel Tournier and the world without others Deleuze says what I have repeated many times in my book: “The mistake of theories of knowledge is that they postulate the contemporaneity of subject and object, whereas one is constituted only through the annihilation of the other.” And then: “The Other assures the distinction of consciousness and its object as a temporal distinction. The first effect of its presence concerned space and the distribution of categories; but the second effect, which is perhaps more profound, concerns time and the distribution of its dimension –​what comes before and what comes after in time. How could there still be a past when Other no longer functions.”115 So, coming back to Frost’s poem: in a way it is a mockery. But it is rather soft. The highest tension occurs in the moment when the traveller was looking as far as he could. The sight is what matters here. Two great books were published in the same year: Deleuze’s “What is philosophy” and Derrida’s “Memories of the Blind.” In both, tears are signified with more than sadness only. Derrida in the “gaze veiled by tears” sees the very truth of the eye; the eye that “neither sees nor does not see: it is indifferent to its blurred vision.” Derrida’s gaze veiled with tears is an act of pure possibility. But Deleuze goes further. The act of laughter (as an intensity, a play of forces –​as he writes in Nomadic Thought), the Nietzschean-​like path is the act of “giving life” into “the pure potentiality.” Deleuze’s and Agamben’s sights are different. Agamben’s Coming community is –​as he quotes Hölderlin –​“the fulfilment without lament” –​a complacent sight. Derrida’s sight is veiled with tears. Deleuze madly laughs over his tears. Deleuze’s sight, like Derrida’s, neither sees nor does not see: it

115 Deleuze G. The Logic of Sense, The Athlon Press, London, p. 311.

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is indifferent to its blurred vision. But Deleuze also smiles. It’s a bitter-​ sweet scenario as the landscape of Deleuzian intuitions is the one where the structure of “rather to be, becoming” is extremely and ineffaceably fragile but also as such is the most real. Deleuze is aware of the “cut,” this pre-​existing wound. It is the wound –​using the words of Deleuze’s beloved Joe Bousquet –​that is waiting to be embodied. But also with the force of laugh, a kind of a balance is embodied. The strength of a smile makes a delicate harmony possible. To conclude with a bit of emphasis: the moment when the eye “understands” –​it is a moment of tears, as it is an understanding of the “cut.” A gesture of smile over one’s own tears is a self-​referential gesture, like a paradox fulfilled. I would say that this is the moment of Alice in Wonderland as real-​life, existing in the real world. But it will always be either NeverAlice or NeverLand. And returning to Frost’s poem: when a wanderer smiles at his own tears, it is not an act of choice, an act of marking. This is an act of life. “The love of life that says yes to death,” says Deleuze in Dialogues. 116

116 Deleuze G., Parnet C. Dialogues, Champs Flammarion, 1996, p. 80.

ENDING: Paradoxical status of subjectivity Surgi de la croupe et du bond D’une verrerie éphémère Sans fleurir la veillée amère Le col ignoré s’interrompt. Je crois bien que deux bouches n’ont Bu, ni son amant ni ma mère, Jamais à la même Chimère, Moi, sylphe de ce froid plafond! Le pur vase d’aucun breuvage Que l’inexhaustible veuvage Agonise mais ne consent, Naïf baiser des plus funèbres! A rien expirer annonçant Une rose dans les ténèbres. Stéphane Mallarmé Collected Poems with Parallel French Text, Oxford University Press, New York, 2006 Risen from the crupper and leap Of an ephemeral ornament of glass, Without garlanding the bitter vigil, The neglected neck stops short. I truly believe that two mouths never Drank, neither her lover nor my mother, From the same Chimera. I, sylph of this cold ceiling! The vase pure and draught Save inexhaustible widowhood Though dying does not consent –​ Naive and most funeral kiss –​ To breath forth any annunciation Of a rose in the shadows. Stéphane Mallarmé Collected Poems with Parallel French Text, Oxford University Press, New York, 2006

The first verses can be read as an invitation to Heidegger’s world of Ereignis. As I have already said, Ereignis is a paradoxical area. It is rocked in itself. Here the premise of closeness is not rooted, as a man moving

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away from ruling in the world of technology naturally reaches out into Ereignis. That is the way it is, because this coexistence of a man and being on the mode of the event, this transgression from the world of technology towards the world of the event may occur only by means of the leap (der Sprung). (And the “neglected neck stops short” comes to my mind.) In such a rocking mood it is good to try to listen to Mallarmé’s language. Mallarmé did not want to paint objects. Mallarmé sketched impressions –​effects. Mallarmé’s poems breathe. Mallarmé invites us to his world only through smell; these impressions –​effects. In his open hand, he holds the metaphors –​the nibulous, which, before they are noticed, will inevitably fly away. In the foreground, there is the Spirit of the Air. Sylph is the Spirit of Air, or would you say more precisely the Soul of Air? Sylph comes from the Greek word “Nymphe.” Sylph is the incorporeal embodiment of air. He is a creature with great wings that allow him to fly high in the sky. It is believed that Sylph reigns in the world of dreams and fantasies. Dreams are Sylph’s home. Sylph feels that his species is on the verge of extinction; they have this painful awareness. When Sylph promises to protect, he protects until his own death; only a man with a pure soul can be friends with Sylph. Can Sylph be enslaved? When thinking about the opposition of air –​darkness, with the first reflex, one would like to overturn it. The air is not afraid of darkness. Dark does not penetrate the air. Sylph is not afraid of the prison-​ ceiling, though the cold penetrates him. Moi, sylphe de ce froid plafond! I, sylph of this cool ceiling!

Is this verse Sylph’s rebellion against enslavement? Or is it Sylph, the king of the world of dreams, who rules over this ceiling? Then why the cold? Or perhaps the cold would blow from the world–​ceiling limit? There is a rose in the background. And Sylph’s attribute is a knife... We will return to the rose. Let us stop to ask who would try to subdue, enslave Sylph? The only pronoun that indicates the line is “I.” The rest is impersonal. The poem–​Sylph, although he dies, recoils from food. Agonise mais ne consent, Though dying does not consent –​

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Is it an echo of “eat your Dasein”? Between the void of food shortage and in the darkness, a rose is winding. It senses a meeting with the darkness. Is it afraid of darkness? As black, it will appear as a symbol of death and passing away. The rose is Sylph? Sylph’ s attribute –​knife –​evokes associations with the Cortazar’s cut of the rose by Magdalena Strozzi. And that white rose like a screaming mandragora at the sight of a mirror. Mandragora117 screams, torn from earth; everyone who hears her scream dies or goes mad. Is that a threat not to cut the Sylph’s wings? Le col ignoré s’interrompt. The neglected neck stops short.

The flight of a winged creature is a symbol of desire. And this ominous kiss is a gift that we will return to. Sylph and a ceiling again, now with a shade of thirst. Violence without power or violence with no desire? As an oxymoron, did it appear to be an interpretation that, denied thirst, stops the flight? Does Sylph get himself enslaved? Le pur vase d’aucun breuvage Que l’inexhaustible veuvage The vase pure and draught save inexhaustible widowhood

The flight of the Spirit (Soul...) towards darkness can be interpreted at least in two ways: as an inability to grasp a desire or as a gesture of rejecting it. For this kiss is a childish gesture, darkly childish, and painfully deadly in its childish innocence: Naïf baiser des plus funèbres! Naive and most funeral kiss

Coming back to the rose: is it indeed the symbolic black rose?

117 Mandragora is an attribute of underground deities like Zeus and Hekate, in which the magical garden grew. Stuck in the ground –​dangerous, after being torn out it becomes a drug against infertility. Mandragora was picked at night, by moonlight, using a black dog tied to the plant with a string. In the Middle Ages, it was believed that the mandragora grew under gallows from the sperm of hanged men.

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ENDING: Paradoxical status of subjectivity Une rose dans les ténèbres. Of a rose in the shadows.

The dark optic does not close meanings, but rather opens up to ambiguity. A kiss (this deadly, untainted, childish gesture) –​a gesture of possession tears the nature of desire, pushing Sylph–​Rose into the darkness. Maybe this is a clue? In the poem, this vague kiss is established as a gift (the word “gift” itself is so ambiguous in shades...). This scenery of a kiss-​gift is in itself Ereignis (the event): The non-​corporeal embodiment of air (arche?) is confronted with corporeality. Air –​a symbol of freedom, and kiss: a symbol of vital force, and between them a “gift.” Je crois bien que deux bouches n’ont Bu, ni son amant ni ma mère, Jamais à la même Chimère, Moi, sylphe de ce froid plafond! I truly believe that two mouths never Drank, neither her lover nor my mother, From the same Chimera. I, sylph of this cold ceiling!

Is such a landscape an impossible act of creation? Could it be that Sylph can only glide in the clouds without flowers, on a bitter night? Derrida would say: “What’s before the question?” Traces. Encounter blurs traces…

We’re back to where we started. Narcissus and water. Sylph118 and air. In the background, Echo’s traces...

118 Sylph is also a metaphorical name for Echo –​Grimm J. Teutonic Mythology, George Bell and Sons, London, 1888, p. 1413.

Speranza error Cut a letter into pieces and it still remains cinders.

When you think of Sylph and his kingdom, it’s only because of the cool ceiling. Otherwise, we’re in the error of Speranza. Deleuze has brilliantly noticed that the subject-​object relation is an overlapping relation. Derrida notes that the very name of ash is already ash.119 The letter may not have an addressee, but it has an author. In a Lacan’s logical time out of the game is a guard, deus ex machina. Despite Deleuze, Robinson will not become Speranza, because if Robinson is missing, there will be no-​one to point out Speranza as Speranza. Because Robinson, the observer, will disappear. After all, his personality structure has already dissolved... To paraphrase Derrida, I would say: “cinders are always already after,”120 which is still more of a credo than anything else. Anthony Damasio considered the smell of the rose. Although the molecular structure of the rose is known, the smell is still just as sweet. Herman Hesse, whose quotation I made the motto of the book, expresses this intuition in the category of enchanting. What is not in the morphology of fairy tales –​I found out from Andrzej Leder –​and what I agree with –​is an element of jouissance. Jouissance is morphologically unexplainable. Derrida’s ashes float above Shoah and Envois. Mallarmé’s Sylph is a psychotic dream: fear of trace. Philosophers, poets, and writers have repeatedly and in various ways captured the paradox of cognition. I have not discovered anything new. I just hope that maybe I expressed the same thing in slightly different words.

119 “The name ‘cinder’ is still a cinder of the cinder itself” –​Derrida Cinders, The University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1991, p. 49. 120 The word “cinder” in English means both glowing coal and ashes. The word “already” has unambiguous connotations of the present perfect time, a time that lasts from the past to the present. Therefore, the whole is a kind of dredging dance of fire and ashes. That is the kind of life that burns and cools. The combination of “already” and “after” reinforces this image.

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Illustrations: Figure 1

Open universe (author’s picture) ������������������������������������������  42

Figure 2 Model view of the pulsating universe (author’s picture) ����� 43 Figure 3 Raphael Santi –​Lady with Unicorn ����������������������������������� 55 Figure 4 Lady with a Unicorn ���������������������������������������������������������� 57 Figure 5 Daniel Fineman’s photo ����������������������������������������������������� 80 Figure 6 Cross-​cap (mitre) ��������������������������������������������������������������� 84 Figure 7 My picture (the position of the subject) ����������������������������� 93 Figure 8 My picture (the cut) ����������������������������������������������������������� 95

Index of Names A Agamben Giorgio  12, 15, 87–​91, 93–​95, 97–​101, 110 Aristotle  44, 87–​89, 97 B Bacon Francis  36, 37, 102, 107 Barthes Roland  73 Bielik-​Robson Agata  27 Borges Jorge Luis  81, 85, 109 C Cortazar Julio  53–​56, 64–​66, 68, 115 D Deleuze Giles  7, 11–29, 31–35, 37–40, 46–47, 49, 52, 60–62, 68, 75–77, 80, 87, 91–92, 96–99, 109–111, 117 Derrida Jacques  14, 16, 19, 20, 45, 69, 71–​73, 75, 76, 85, 94, 100, 110, 116, 117 Dirac Paul  49 E Einstein Albert  41, 51, 53, 54, 60, 63 F Fineman Daniel  80 Forrester John  27 Freud Sigmund  31, 66, 71, 77–​79 Friedmann Alexander  41, 42 Frost Robert  109–​111 H Heidegger Martin  21, 23, 37, 39, 40, 45–​48, 65, 113

Heisenberg Werner  15, 49–​51, 60, 87, 109 Hilsbecher Walter  32, 33, 37–​40 Holderlin Friedrich  45, 47, 110 Horodecki Paweł  52, 90 Hugo von Hofmannsthal  37, 107 J Junger Ernst  37, 40, 48 K Kierkegaard Soren  42, 101–​107 L Lacan Jacques  11–​14, 16–​19, 26–​32, 34, 40, 41, 49, 52, 54, 56–​64, 66, 68, 70, 73–​75, 80, 84, 99, 110, 117 Leder Andrzej  59, 61, 62, 65, 66, 117 Lipszyc Adam  11 M Mallarme Stephane  15, 113, 114, 117 N Nietzsche Friedrich  24, 25, 91, 96, 110 O Ockham William  61, 62 Ovid  74, 75 P Popper Karl  50, 51

126 S Santi Raphael  55 Schrodinger Erwin  49, 61 Szumilewicz Irena  43 Szydłowski Marek  42, 52, 63

Index of Names

W Wittgenstein Ludwig  53, 64, 65 Z Zupancic Alenka  102, 103, 105, 108

Philosophy and Cultural Studies Revisited / Historisch-genetische Studien zur Philosophie und Kulturgeschichte Editd by Seweryn Blandzi Vol.

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Dorota Muszytowska / Janusz Kręcidło / Anna Szczepan-Wojnarska (eds.): Jerusalem as the Text of Culture. 2018.

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Dorota Probucka (ed.): Contemporary Moral Dilemmas. 2018.

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Ján Zozuľak: Inquiries into Byzantine Philosophy. 2018.

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4

Marek Piechowiak: Plato’s Conception of Justice and the Question of Human Dignity. 2018.

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5

Dorota Probucka: Ethics in Ancient Greece and Rome. 2019.

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Imelda Chłodna-Błach: From Paideia to High Culture. The Philosophical and Anthropological Foundation of the Dispute about Culture. 2020.

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Arkadiusz Jabłoński / Jan Szymczyk: REALIST-AXIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES AND IMAGES OF SOCIAL LIFE. A Century of Sociology at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin. 2020.

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8

Marek Piechowiak: Plato’s Conception of Justice and the Question of Human Dignity. Second Edition, Revised and Extended. 2021.

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9

Ewa Szumilewicz: On the Paradox of Cognition. 2021.

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