Form and Life: Erotics and Rhetoric

The Facts of Life:

Life is ‘isness’. It is being (Ontos, Sein).
It is the amalgamation of all things that are both insofar as they are and how they are, it is, furthermore, it is the precondition and for, and, actuality of both.
Aristotle (Metaphysics Bk XII) describes Ontos as the most general category, that which can be applied to all things and, as such, qualitatively an empty category.
This view of life as ‘undescribable’ is shared by Hegel and Wittgenstein.
But, all three authors seem to remind us, life is, simultaneously, its own experiencing.
As experience is qualitative, and its precondition, life lends itself to qualification
This qualification is the recognition of the quality of difference, conflict, birth and death. In short, the quality of form.
Primary questions: What is our gateway into discussing life discursively? What should we aim to do with life? Describe it? Explain it? Love it? Affirm it?

Eros and Erosophy:

The problem of life is identical to the problem of the erotic. The erotic is, discursively, the annihilation of ontological difference in the realisation of concrete difference.
Likewise, the erotic formally eludes classification. To do so is to alienate from what it actually is (Petya’s concrete desire for Joanna) and turns it into a category which is universally applicable.
In talking about this, the erotic becomes a category only communicated ecstatically
In Plato’s tradition (See Symposium but also Democritus, Parmenides and Hesiod’s Theognia) Eros was the god or principle responsible for life being as it was, it was the cosmological transcendental synthesis
Nietzsche’s training in philology made him aware of this, his understanding of physiology also made him acutely aware of the effects of erotic desires and practices on the individual embodied human being. The physiological effects are the preconditions of thought, of discourse in general.
Woolf was the first translator of Freud into English and, despite her difficult relation with the texts, was aware of the principle that all consciousness was governed by erotic desire.

Plato and the dialectics of divinity and the fear of force

The first formal thing we notice is that dialectic is used initially only to facilitate the speech, then to criticise it
In the speech we are presented with the individual interpretation of phenomena. This interpretation is  mediated not only by intentionality but by bare intentions. The intention not only dictates the speech but subverts the truth:

Lysias’ speech – Lysias has no argument, he has a series of skewed examples which seem to indicate that one should only sleep with a man not in love with you. There is no formal coherence (count the times he uses a conjunction, seriously, its fucked up). This expresses the sophist’s life (remember, disorganised speech is the product of the disorganised soul, a disorganised soul is the product of no self discipline in the world of activity). Lysias is, in Platonic terms, degenerate. As a democrat he appeals to the lowest common denominator, that is, grubby self interest. As this prerogative is dictated by an inability to think of one’s self interest as related to any form of universality, it cannot be expressed as logical necessity. To express it thus would make it hold for everyone, not just as erotic theory, but, as a ‘moral dictate’ based around a collective self interest. This possibility is negated by the ouroboros of Athenian democracy. (Bronze)

In the following interlude, the dialectic merely proves that a further speech is necessary. In short, it indicates that there is an imminent gap between what Lysias thinks he is doing (science) and what he actually gives us (deceit). The dialectic is still subsumed, we are still trying to find ‘the right one’.

Socrates alone: The discursive practice dictating the dialogue insists that we keep the presupposition. The presupposition is a reduction to personal interest, hence, Socrates can only assume the role of the rhetorical craftsman. He takes the raw materials of a Lysias and turns them into something coherent. His labour, though, is not called into being by the necessity or utility of the end product, but simply by the being of the raw materials and Phaedrus’ ignorance of basic rationality. Hence, life is alienated in its expression. Socrates excludes, he dis-unifies. This is acknowledged at the beginning of the speech and in the fact that Socrates covers his head with his cloak, making himself voluntarily blind. Remember that in the Republic sight is explicitly analogous to knowledge and morality. Phaedrus has forced him

Socrates and the Muses/Arguments:

Palinodes are caused by force, but what force? The fear of retribution from the gods (See Steisichoras in Greek Lyric Poetry OUP 1983). The Socratic Oedipus has seen not ‘too much’ but not enough, to see is to speak and act in line with what one sees (the Good is self motivating). To do otherwise is impiety. The Socratic realisation of this comes from the daimon which only tells Socrates his faults. Immediately, the third speech is facilitated by the introduction of a further subject. This impersonal subject pulls the rug of ‘I, Socrates’ from under the logos.
What replaces this spectre of the’ I’ is the inspiration of the Muses. Here, the dialectic becomes complete, we have the unification of two entities in pursuit of the truth. This unity is the unity of the temporal, physical Socrates with the ‘divine muses’. The divine is the precondition of the world, to know the divine is know the world better than the world knows itself. ‘Life’ becomes comprehensible only in its ecstatic grasping outside of itself. Formally, we have moved from rhetoric into dialectic with the very essence of life itself (see the prayer at the end of the text). We notice, in the post speech dialogue, that the divine is also the rational. The gods and the Arguments, then, are unified. Not only this, but, our path to understanding ‘life’ is in a rationality that superceedes the actuality of any individual instantiation of it. Formally, we must negate the ‘I’ in multiplicity and reduce all phenomena to their rational constituents. (For Plato’s self criticism see the opening of the Statesman.

Nietzsche and the affirmative aphorism:

Quotes to remember from elsewhere:
‘Presupposing Truth is a woman, what then? Have not all philosophers, insofar as they have been dogmatists been incapable of wooing a wench?’ Beyond Good and Evil  ‘Introduction’
‘I admire only those that write in blood and aphorisms. They want not to be read but to be learned by heart’ Thus Spake Zarathustra ‘Of Reading and Reading’

Aphorism = ‘Definition horizon’ literally translated. Marsden describes it as ‘a skin which grows around a meaning, containing it while letting it grow’ (‘The Art of the Aphorism’ in A Companion to Nietzsche ed. Ansell-Pearson)
The aphorism is the form of the Hippocratic writings. It is the medium of symptomatology. One reads it and then tests its applicability in the world around one. Its meaning necessarily fluctuates through its application, as Hippocrates has been superseded by modern medicine.
In Human, All Too Human Nietzsche speculates that the aphorism is the mode of disseminating information which is most apt for us as physiological and psychological beings. This is how I interpret the ’blood’ in the Z quote.
The aphorism is carried by us almost involuntarily, like an old saying. But, Nietzsche subverts the nature of old sayings by expressing in the aphorism a set of paradoxes whose conclusion can be ‘said in ten sentences’ but not ‘by everyone else in a whole book’.
The aphorism rhythmically subverts are traditional modes of interpretation. It’s model of application comes so easily to us, but, what the aphorism communicates is the denial of this very form of interpretation. It makes us look at the world differently.
As such, our attitude to life becomes one which is not reductive. We do not seek the known in the unknown but vice versa.

Decadents can’t dance:

Decadent values are self contained insofar as they allow no questioning. When descending life asserts itself as a ‘civilised state’ (like Bismarck’s Germany’) then any opposition to it is seen as barbaric. It homogenises from its own standpoint.
It is, for this very reason, evangelical. Not only does it insist that all phenomena conform to it but all peoples likewise.
In this homogenisation of life, life itself is denied in its multiplicity. The affirmation is impossible in that it is always a deduction, I affirm only what suits me.
The aphorism invites us to move from standpoint to standpoint, it creates a new conversation of standpoints which transcends the initial physiological imperatives. It invites us dance. We move back to erosophy insofar as we are trying to reach out for truth without a fixed plan or methodology. It is the spontaneous longing of the lover set to music (the initial expression of der Ur-Eine and the oldest method of courtship).

Waiting

Like an envelope, folded in
spent days in bed howling at walls
Drank and smoked and ruined my skin
named the liquids going through you

Waited

Punched the furniture full of holes
found God, then lost him at bus stops
Burnt my tongue on piping coffee
carved nonsense onto surfaces

Waited

Compared our scars to old paintings
called for revolution in Greece
Accepted soup and sympathy
became self absorbed and wrote verse

Caved in

Attempt 1

I couldn't read this book until I realised I was fully out of love with you. Somehow I was horrified of associating you with mutilated locks and necromantic medics. Atypical, really, as it would be fruitless to try and count the times when I've been reading and wondered 'what would () think?'. Its probably something to do with names, referential signifiers, you'd know more about that than I would.
We appeared to grow up through those books: together? apart? It hardly seems worth wondering anymore. Our pathologies stretched in lines before us, a highway measured by our bookshelves. Look where they brought us to! To class war, to marching in the pouring rain down grey stained streets, to smoking outside coffee shops and arguing about situationism (much to the dismay of passing preppies) or drunken renditions of the red flag in crowded bars.
In short, through the annotations in each other's books, we can tell the stories of our lives, through what we felt it right to write on (or do squiggles around the margins of) you can tell affinities, projections, our post hoc interpretations of our younger selves.

But how did these words beget our deeds? In what perverse way did the traces left by dead (wo)men with tragic stories - Blake, Nietzsche, Benjamin, Marx, Wolstoncroft, Debord (to name a few who's insides bear your inscriptions: 'will to power as biology', 'race as veil of maya', 'utter bollocks') - set our living hearts and limbs alive? What force in these aged projected us forward into action.
You put your finger on the essence of it once in traffic, nonchalantly flicking through Ayer and biting your lips before looking up shraply and saying
'You can't live like that, can you?'
I've been trying to reach to the bottom of that profound statement since you said it. Our Fred gets you, as proved by your vigorous underlining in my '...Zarathustra', you both remain a mystery to me. Maybe that's because I live through these books whereas they live through you. I'm trying to understand us both.

The starting point has to be this radical deficiency we found with the world. That it made no sense. This huge swirling tornado, affectionately called 'life', was wont to rip the head off of anything in its way. To deny it was there, and that was what I think you were railing against, was impossible. You are it, you can't deny yourself. But to just accept it? To shrug and say 'that's life'? Why couldn't we have done that? Is Pathology the neccesarry precondition for philosophy and art? The answer to that question is probably 'yes'. How arrogant we must be to look at this glorious mess of a world and want to systematise it, explain it, represent it anew! I guess we needed those treatise and poems to make our lives bearable. It seems as if unless we can understand our relation to the world we are powerless against it, or, that through our intoxication with ideas we are somehow safe. So we picked up our texts like a soldier his rifle, or an alcoholic his bottle.

Problemata: the question of absence

A friend of mine asked me to meet her today to talk about Marx' theory of commodity fetishism. We duly met up and had a really good chat about the labour metaphysics that led to that point and different interpretations of what the fetishm entailed. The last moment, as I see it, of the fetishisation of the commodity is the point where the consumer of a given product is socially drawn into a masochistic relation to their own needs. As Deleuze points out, in Coldness and Cruelty, the masochist gets his kicks (read 'has the same basic needs as') the non-masochist. He does, however, have the meta-need that his initial need requires its own deference as a neccesary precondition for the need's fulfilment. There is no point within Venus in Furs where we can legitimately suggest that Wanda is not sexually coveted, however, consumation cannot be achieved until the game of deference (which creates its own peaks and troughs of intensity and proximity to the desired body) reaches its own ultimate endgame, where an organised contract expires, leaving one free from the continuation of servitude but having exhuasted the qualitative possibilities of deference.In consumerist speak, then, X is unable to fulfil his basic need of getting from A to B without the deference of its fulfilment through the buying of a certain kind of car, without which the qualitative comfort of the fulfiled need is impossible.

What, then, if the contract never ends? In Marxian terms, what if we find ourselves with this created need but don't have the funds to afford the deference. We find ourselves in the paradoxical position of permanently being defered from our deference.How does such a state manifest itself?
Whilst I will not disagree for a second with the Marxist thesis that all our experiences are dictated by the material distrobutions we find ourselves under, the manifestations do not always occur in direct relation to our own roles within structures of production.
The deference of deference is absence or presence. in the positive case (where I say I'll stop smoking tommorrow while lighting up) it manifests itself as a continuing engagement, a presence, in the negative as intentionality/comportment towards a displaced thing in the world. But how does this show up for us? How can we comport ourselves towards something not there?

This 'something' is further complicated by the commodification of human beings themselves. When we anthopomorphise the object and objectify the human, we find ourselves in a position where we can claim no ontological difference between the deference of the commodity fetishism and, say, the practice in Masoch's novel. While no-one in their right mind can pretend that we've reached a point where we universally value things as much as people, we must recognise that in the dual movement shown above there is a worrying tendency that is difficult to characterise. The final question, then, is how we even distinguish the commodity deference from our longing for another human being?

Who was the invisible man?

It was one of those beautifully ironic pieces of fan jesting, no-one I've asked seems to know who's idea it was to give birth to him, he was, like so many gods and icons, proclaimed from the stands without his nature being disclosed, the difference was that those devotees did not even accept their own existence:

We are not,
We're not really here,
We are not,
We're not really here,
Just like the fans
Of the Invisible Man
We're not really here

Such postmodern epistemological theorising did, and still does, resound from the home end of Eastlands. Its announcement is the Nietzschean unity in the abnegation of the self. That blissful overcoming of the individual will. Here, it whispered to us, ye are no longer bus drivers, buskers, bakers or medical monstrosities. Here you are the faithful. Oh, sing, mine congregation, sing through thine mouthfulls of balti pies and cold tea.

A couple of years ago, I bought a t-shirt bearing an outline and the legend 'Man City Legends: The Invisible Man'. I am now able to, and often do, show my devotion to my translucent patron saint whilst going about my daily buisiness. But I am doing someone else's buisiness too. Unlike the church fathers I am not about my father's work, but, rather, the work of marketers, buying into the increased commodification of football. Taking the spontaneous outbursts of fans into items to be bought and sold. That moment of unity becomes a statement I can make if I have the cash. I did, in doing so I stuck my dagger into His ribs and sank my fangs into His jugular (this proved difficult as, being invisible, He was not easy to locate).

We are His murderers, you and I. How shall we atone for this sin of sins? What new chants must we create? What are these stadiums now but His tombs and sepulchers?