What I Love About...WORDS!

This zine is for anyone interested in words in the most general sense of the term. It may be the spoken word, books or political speech. In a more general sense the potential reader may be interested in culture or ideology. This zine discusses how words change and how words work.

The zine is A5 size and includes text and black and white images for the hard copy and colour for the digital one. The cover is coloured card (colour not specified). The contents includes, among other subjects: how language evolves, how words have actions, portmanteau words, and inventing words. Here is the contents page:

Price:

The hard copy zine is £3.90 and postage for UK comes under standard letter. Please enquire for international postage.

The digital copy of the zine is £2.50 and will be provided via an email account.

Please note: This is a handmade zine and, by definition, will consequently have imperfections.

How to (de)Construct a Place Setting in Three Easy Steps

1 - Define a place setting.

What is a ‘place setting’: the setting of a place, to set a place? The opposite of ‘to set’: un-set…unsettle. A place for whom/what? A set placing. A place for a subject. A setting of a scene. To set the scene for the subject of the place.

1 place /plays/ n 1a physical environment; a space 1b physical surroundings; atmosphere 2a an indefinite region or expanse; an area…4 a particular part of a surface or body; a spot…5b an important or valued position…7a a proper or designated niche…8a an available seat…8c PLACE SETTING

2 place vt 1 to distribute in an orderly manner; arrange 2a to put in, direct to, or assign to a particular place…2c to put in a particular state 3 to appoint to a position…5a to assign to a position in a series or category; rank 7 to put, lay…

3 setting /’seting/ n 1 the manner, position, or direction in which something (e.g. a dial) is set 3a the background, surroundings…5 PLACE SETTING

2 - Ascertain the limits of the place setting.

“How is it possible to determine, in such a situation, what truly belongs to the inside and what does not?" (Derrida 1987: 138).
The place setting exists as a singularity in space and time: on the spatial plane it exists on a surface without clearly delineated edges, and temporally it is unclear at which point the place setting becomes itself, or when it is no longer that of which it is known in regards to assembly/disassembly.

Somebody puts together the place setting. It could be the diner, it could be the cook, it could be the silver service waitress/waiter . . . it could be you. A number of possible people construct it. The placemat, cutlery, glasses, plates are laid out by following certain cultural conventions. The dining paraphernalia is placed on a surface, a table. Some of the items may rest on the placemat, if there is one, and some will not, for instance the glasses do not, although they too can sometimes sit on their own object, a coaster.

Where is the edge of the place setting? If you were to draw around the limits of the place setting you would quite probably draw around almost every single separate item that makes it up.

The margins are unclear. It appears that the outside of the place setting is also contained within the inside of it, in the fluid space between the items. The outside pours into the inside. What belongs to the place setting and what does not? Does the tablecloth belong to the place setting: the tablecloth could be removed and the place setting could still be considered to exist. What of the table? What could be utilised in the place of a table that would still enable a place setting to be called such: a kitchen counter, a TV dinner tray, a wooden packing crate. How many individual items that make up the place setting need to be removed for it to not be a place setting? Everything but a knife and fork . . . maybe . . .

How significant is the setting of the place setting: could one assemble a place setting on the pavement of a busy street, or in an art gallery? The context of the place setting might mean that a diner could not be present at the scene of the place setting. If it were physically impossible (or dangerous) for a diner to be in attendance, is it still a place setting: could a place setting be set on an airport runway and it still considered to be a place setting. It would certainly be recognisable as one, but how much does the context effect the place setting, inasmuch as it is part of the dining event. On a spectrum of contexts it is difficult to ascertain an absolutely clear point at which a place setting would not be considered to be such.

The place setting, in terms of its existence, comes into and goes out of being surreptitiously. At some point in its manifestation it becomes what is recognised as a ‘place setting’, but its materialisation is gradual and rather furtive. It is carefully assembled piece by piece, comes to rest for a period of time, then is gradually dismantled by the diner and/or an-other: disarranging the original construction. If the place setting was only considered to be a place setting at its most complete (prior to the diner’s arrival, prior to their unpicking of it), its disassembly could be seen as a destructive act. The diner destroys the place setting, like one might destroy a work of art. This could be considered an act of violence.

Considering the place setting to be a ‘place setting’ only when it is whole and complete, allows for it to be described as such even in the absence of a diner. If the place setting is set, but the diner never arrives, the place setting is still a place setting, even if its origins are not so sure. However, at some point, the items making up the place setting will all be removed.

If the place setting is seen as something more nebulous, uncertain in terms of when it begins and ends in time, the diner’s re-arranging of the items that form it, and the removal of those items during the dining process, could also be included in what is recognised as the place setting. But, we still have the issue of a beginning and end, though. Does the place setting begin when the placemat is laid or, maybe, when the first piece of cutlery is set down. Does it end when the final item is removed?

The place setting is a fragile thing.


3 - Ensure the place setting is ready for the diner's arrival.

The place setting awaits a subject. The place setting is calling a subject. The diner is hailed by the place setting, “interpellated” in the Althusserian sense, whether the place setting has their name on it or not, as it might at a formal dinner when written on a card. The place setting has a subject in mind, whether it is a named subject or a generalised other. The type of dinner will dictate, to a large degree, certain characteristics in the diner: it may dictate their class, wealth or social status; their associations with other diners (relative, friend, business associate); their membership of a certain group. All these qualities define the event, the place setting, and the subject. Therefore the place setting holds certain notions about the subject before they arrive at the dining table.

At a formal dinner the place setting exists for the sole purpose of a subject to be sat at it, and for that subject to utilise it within a given framework. It is an object requiring a subject to fulfil its purpose. The place setting anticipates an always already subject. In this sense the subject comes before the place setting, they exist before the place is set, as a knowable, expected attendee of the dinner. But, does the subject exist as a diner before the place setting is set? If the place setting is a one-time-only event, it is possible the subject only exists as a diner at the point they sit down at the table. If this is the case, then the place setting comes before the dining subject.

It appears that the tendrils of the place setting spread temporally in both directions. It forms a nexus which connect a past and future subject in the singularity of an event. This event, operating around the hub of the place setting, is also contingent in the changing of the subject. The subject will have been altered by the event and will not be the same subject that sat at the place setting at the beginning of dinner. Conversations might have taken place, dialogue exchanged, the subject’s psyche could be transformed, however minutely.

The place setting, as an assembly, is also part of the greater assembly which is the dining event. This could be considered to be like the Deleuzo-Guattarian “assemblage” which comes together and then disassembles. If it were considered in these terms, we could not separate the subject from the event, the subject does not attend the event they are part of the event. The place setting and the diner would be intrinsically linked, because they make up the processual dining experience.

The place setting retains the history of the event. Before the final items are removed, what remains of the place setting contains a trace of the event that has just taken place. The place setting is a recording device for the event as it is for the particular individual subject as diner. How the place setting is left at the point the diner leaves the table is an audit trail for the actions of the subject during their dinner party. If the recording could be played back the subject’s steps could be retraced. The used place setting, at the moment the diner leaves and prior to the point it is finally removed by the attending staff, alludes to an absence. The dining subject leaves their signature (their autobiography), in the rumpled silk placemat, in the not-quite-finished glass of vintage port, in the highly-polished unused silver dessert spoon. Disorder replaces order. But this disorder is telling. It speaks of a past, of an attendance.

Each individual diner will leave their history behind on the table: an archive of the event left behind in their wake. The dining subject has left their mark. Their absence leaves a sign of a past presence. ‘Elvis has left the building’ but he still exists in the discarded crumpled gig programme and trampled cigarette butts of the deserted dance hall.

The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago 1974-79, the Brooklyn Museum

References:
Derrida, Jacques. 1987. The Truth in Painting. Trans. by Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press).

Abominable Snowman Theory

By Julian Isaacs

Yeti. Yet-i. Yet, in English also means still, whilst the French for yet is encore, which also means again.

Cixous addressed women writing in white ink, the yeti leaves an abominable white footprint in white snow. It is a carbon footprint of a yet to be rewritten text, but the copy is white on white.

This is apperceptively impaired downhill skiing, over glacial lakes, fleeing an avalanche of cognisance, until we take sanctuary in an igloo walled by the abominable footprint and can read again. Waiting, as for Godot, for a St. Bernard with a small barrel of comprehension round its neck.

Mortality is just immortality, without the i-m or I'm and thus holds its own cold glamour. An ice pick, as Trotsky found out to his cost, is both a means of survival on the mountain, and a lethal weapon. A lot can go wrong between the base camp and the superstructure: let us remain conscious that Althusser strangled his wife and went mad. Murder as one of the colder arts: creative writers' darlings, Marxist theorists and Communist leaders are all ripe for the cull. The Andes are a postDada variorum edition of T. H. White, the sword in the crevasse.

The higher we go, the colder we get; the wider, the more evasive the white footprint we search. The higher we go, the harder we search; the search holds an Icarian allure.

The defining feature of the abominable snowman is we only ever see his footprint, his trace. The footprint is like a casting from which the statue has escaped. It is a false palimpsest, not even a slow reveal, a no-reveal. Casting, of course, also means selecting a character to play a part. The author is lost, missing in action, and he has chosen us as readers or interpreters, whilst lumbering away mischievously leaving us little to go on. We have to validate this hollow frame to read it as a clue, a glossary of the unwritten.

Let us examine the semantemes in validate: inside a refrigerated vale of tears are the id and the at, the what and the where.

We now come to the difference between the abominable snowman and the cryogenic analyses. In the latter, the meaning has been frozen within the text and must be thawed to be deciphered, or at least read. In the yeti approach, the text must stay frozen to taste the meaning. It is closer to palaeontology than it is to the ready meal. We have entered the liminal hypothermic territory of post-cryogenics.

So, the yeti. We can stand in his footprint, but not walk in his footprints. Yeti. Yet-i. Yet I is already or yet there, still and again there. I is not, pace Rimbaud, an other, but many others. One man's Regan is another man's Cordelia, and this can change with the casting; our critiquing of a text is contingent upon the level of subjectivity mirrored therein. Ascent is vital: the sublime awe of the base camp hides the potential horror of the peak: one foot wrong and wonder becomes bewilderment.

The beauty of this critical approach is its simple, pious purity; the Lacanian purity of the not yet I.

Why the dislike button adds nothing to Facebook!

At his Townhall Q and A on 15th September, Mark Zuckerberg did not announce for certain a ‘dislike’ button, despite all the reporting focusing on this as if it is an imminent future additional feature. What he actually said was that Facebook are considering another feature that goes alongside the ‘like’ button, such as a ‘dislike’ button that could be used for ‘expressing empathy’. This post will explain why I think including a ‘dislike’ button does not add anything to the dynamics of the scenario of the already existing ‘like’ button.

The singular ‘like’ option allows users to select ‘like’ for any number of reasons, here are some examples. It might be for liking the content of a positive post, or for when a friend has achieved something (such as completing their dissertation), or it may be they have reached an anniversary of some kind. It also allows you to agree with the contents of a post – this could be something to do with a shared political opinion, or showing approval for an event that a friend may be attending, for example. There are many reasons why you would click ‘like’ to express an actual (genuine) liking of a post’s content.

One of the problem arises, as acknowledged by Zuckerberg, when you don’t like the content of the post, even if you may like the sentiment behind why someone has posted it. Zuckerberg’s example is the current refugee crisis. Sometimes people qualify this in their comments when they are liking a post the contents of which are upsetting or of which they have sympathy. It can sometimes feel ‘wrong’ to ‘like’ posts if you feel clicking ‘like’ does not reflect the complete response you have towards that post. So let’s use this as our example, since Zuckerberg used this is in his Q and A session.

Zuckerberg says that a ‘dislike’ button in this instance would allow people to show their empathy in a given situation. But does it really do this? Say you don’t want to ‘like’ a post on the refugee crisis because it does not express your feelings about it, and not clicking anything clearly doesn’t show the opposite since it does not recognise your acknowledgement of the post in any way at all (unless you write a comment). Also, you may be worried that if you do click ‘like’, it may seem you are liking that there is a crisis, rather than showing your empathy towards the refugees. So there appears to be a ‘lack’ in Facebook in providing you the scope to express yourself in this particular scenario. So, how would ‘dislike’ make up for this lack?

In the way that the ‘like’ button works, the ‘dislike’ button works the same way but in reverse, actually adding nothing to the overall Facebook experience, except for further confusion and the need for people to continue to qualify their use of it. This is why: if you click ‘dislike’ on a post about the refugee crisis, what are you saying ‘dislike’ to? Are you actually saying you dislike the fact there are refugees suffering in this crisis? Possibly, in this situation, that may be the assumed response. But actually you could be saying that you dislike the post for a number of reasons. For instance, you may be someone who is totally unsympathetic to the crisis and has empathy for those countries staunchly protecting their borders. This is empathy, but not that described by Zuckerberg in his example.

Let’s take another more ambiguous example and assume that almost everyone would be sympathetic to the refugees and in that instance we would read the use of ‘dislike’ in meaning that. Let’s say a friend of yours is a Jeremy Corbyn supporter and they put up a link to an online newspaper about him being voted the new Labour leader, but upon reading the post it then appears to be from a right-wing newspaper criticising Corbyn’s new appointment. You may be a Corbyn supporter and are happy to hear about his new position, but unhappy to read the criticisms about him in the newspapers. What do you click on then?

Many posts are of this nature. A lot of the time our opinion of something is not completely ‘black and white’ and our empathy may be directed at some of the content of the post, but not all of it. Buttons denoting ‘like’ and ‘dislike’ simply reinforce the existing dynamic. I would suggest adding a ‘dislike’ button is worse than simply having a ‘like’ one, in that it adds another layer of ambiguity. Having a ‘like’ and ‘dislike’ appears to allow you take one of two positions on a post, but in fact these two positions are just the reverse of each other, forcing you into complete commitment in one direction or other, both choices being of the same dialectical structure. While it may work successfully in some scenarios, as is the case with the ‘like’ button, does it really improve the quality of our user experience, or does it just provide more usable data for Facebook?

NB: I originally thought about doing a deconstruction of the like/dislike feature since it lends itself well to Jacques Derrida’s themes of ‘the trace’ and ‘lack’. It would certainly suit an analysis using his concept of ‘the supplement’, which is an addition that is attached to something original to improve it. However, I wanted this post to be accessible. Despite this I will sign-off with a Derrida taster: ‘the supplement…adds only to replace [and] is assigned in the structure by the mark of an emptiness’ (Of Grammatology).

Related Links:
Thank an aging audience for Facebook’s proposed ‘dislike’ button

Becoming Gerbil: Part 2 - Becoming-Small

Please click here for:  Part 1: Becoming-Genome

I feel there is some degree of prejudice directed at small animals (wild and domestic) as opposed to larger, more popular, 'pets' like cats and dogs. I would describe it as a hierarchical value system that involves not only size, but also such qualities as ‘cuteness’, possibly also furriness. This is apparently the reason that animal charities promote larger furry animals in order to gain donations. Despite the fact that there are many ‘less attractive’ animals in greater need than some of those that are shown in the adverts for animal charities, people just don’t donate money to animals that are considered culturally not so cute, such as reptiles. I also believe that some people could understand perfectly well why you might mourn the death of a family pet like a cat or dog, but might think there was something wrong with someone who mourned the death of their gerbil. Is it less worthy of mourning (based on it being a rodent? based on its size?)?

This blog looks at the becoming-small of the human. While not exactly the becoming-imperceptible of Deleuze and Guattari, it does have qualities in common with that. Becoming small is about changing one’s spatial perspective and accessing the space of the other such that you become inseparable from your environment and are better able to communicate (the issue of communication appears in the next blog). This is what Deleuze and Guattari say about becoming-imperceptible: “To go unnoticed is by no means easy. […] This requires much asceticism, much sobriety, much creative involution.” (2007: 308).

I am a giant next to Sister M, not that she actually sees my body as a contiguous object: she sees my head, hands/arms and legs as all separate phenomena. For instance, when I am sitting on the bed, she will run over my legs as if they are part of the bed/terrain. I have had the same experience with squirrels. While she is used to the separate parts of me, for instance, my gerbil-sized hands in her cage giving her food and my gigantic head looming over her to land a kiss on her tiny body (neither of which seem to intimidate her at all), my body moving around her space can disturb her if it is unexpected. If I suddenly appear, or if I accidentally loom up from below her cage (like prey) or if I raise my arms (like a bird), she gets scared and disappears into her burrow. So, she is used to me on one level (close up where she can smell me and check out the signs that, to her, make up my body), but not if I behave in any way like potential prey. Even though she has probably never seen any potential prey in her short life, she is hard-wired to react in this way.

While I cannot technically become smaller. I can address my behavior so as to fit into her environment in such a way where I appear less perceptible to her in any threatening way. This comes through experience from living with her, educating myself about her and altering my behaviour where necessary. Becoming-small enables me to move into her space and creates a conducive environment for her to move into mine, so that we can have a more symbiotic relationship. We both become changed – hopefully for the better of us both - through my becoming-small.

Please click here for: Part 3: Becoming-furry

Here’s a short clip of Jacques Derrida talking about violence and the human/animal dichotomy:
Jacques Derrida And The Question Of ‘The Animal’

And there’s a book about deconstruction and animals that you may find interesting:
The Animal Question in Deconstruction

Bibliography:
Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix. 2007. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. by Brian Massumi (London and New York: Continuum).

Deconstructing the Redbrick: Spatial Ordering, Ideology and Campus Aesthetics

If any human/cultural geography, urban planning, cultural studies departments are interested in employing me to do a guest lecture for their students and/or colleagues, please feel free to contact me via this blog or on www.schizocartography.org. A CV is also available here: Tina Richardson's CV

Thanks in anticipation!

Cutting up Space, Part 2: The Laws of Form

G. Spencer Brown's fabulous book on the calculus of indications, The Laws of Form, begins thus:

The theme of this book is that a universe comes into being when a space is severed or taken apart. The skin of a living organism cuts off an inside from an outside. So does the circumference of a circle in a plane. By tracing the way we represent such a severance, we can begin to reconstruct, with an accuracy and coverage that appear almost uncanny, the basic forms underlying linguistic, mathematical, physical, and biological science, and can begin to see how the familiar laws of our own experience follow inexorably from the original act of severance.

Who would not want to continue reading this book after that enticingly fabulous introduction? Especially someone like myself who is interested in both language and urban space (specifically psychogeography and poststructuralist theory).

While the above paragraph sounds very philosophical, the book is nevertheless a mathematics-based book also, which includes Boolean algebra, the algebra of logic. This mostly appears in the form of symbols and simple formula, most of which is beyond me. However, I do understand the philosophical material, al lot of which is redolent of non-dual eastern philosophical discussion - and indeed G. Spencer Brown was a student of R. D. Laing (many of the terms Brown uses are translatable into psychoanalysis: for example, condensation and compensation). The concepts can also be applied to theories of self and other, of which Laing has written.

The book was described in its day as a mathematics of consciousness and became useful as a springboard into the theory of autopoiesis (Maturana and Varela) and in second-order observation.

The basic symbol of the theory is the cross: the 'mark' or cross'.

It is a mark that forms a boundary, separating one space from another by creating a distinction. An inside and an outside, or a 'this' and everything else that isn't 'this, if you will. It also assumes an observer of the differentiation. Various actions can then be taken that involve crossing the boundary - once or twice, crossing then returning, etc. - and the result of carrying out these transactions. This mark, the cross, when it exists creates a marked state. When it does not it is an unmarked state, or the void, or nothingness (hence it's relationship to non-dual Eastern religion).

Already you may be able to see the potential relationship with deconstruction and its interest in the binary oppositions inherent in language. Not as much as you might expect has been written about the relationship between the two, although Niklas Luhman has done so, since he is a proponent of second-order observation theory too. There is also some parergonal logic in the Brown text. As discusses by Jacques Derrida in The Truth in Painting (in very simple terms, where the framing of the artwork creates both a division but also a bridge, this concept also being applied to theory itself).

My potential interest in the book in relationship to its uses in psychogeography are around the ideas of inclusion/exclusion, directions of observation, urban planning and zoning, crossing boundaries, self and 'the other', etc. I'd be interested in any mathematical psychogeographers who might have some more thoughts about it.

I'll sign off with this brilliant passage from the notes at the end of the book:

[In order for the universe to have the function of seeing itself] evidently it must first cut itself up into at least one state which sees, and at least one other state which can be seen. In this severed and mutilated condition, whatever it sees is only partially itself. We may take it that the world undoubtedly is itself (i.e. is indistinct form itself), but, in any attempt to see itself as an object, it must, equally undoubtedly, act so as to make itself distinct from, and therefore false too, itself. In this condition it will always partly elude itself.

NB: I have a beautiful second edition copy of the book. I had wanted a copy for a long time so treated myself to one for completing my Masters. It has a great 1970s-esque cover, shown below:

Please click here for Part 1 of this blog: Cutting up Space, Part 1: L = S - [l + c + i = e + p]