9 Letter

Letter is a discussion on signification (which is explained through hole logic). The key to this chapter is understanding what he means by "hole."

Chapter overview
Ulmer writes that the "absolute center of flash reason, concept avatar, that which is to electracy what contradiction is to literate logic, is the hole as logic (someday this will drive a global economy)" (165). Right now, I have NO idea what that is supposed to mean. He says that "the hole as logic" is to electracy what "contradiction is to literate logic." In formal logic, contradiction is the method by which one can tell that something is false, it is the negative which makes the positive stable. So this is the role "the hole as logic" has in relation to electracy?

There are three registers to "the structure operated through flash reason" (165): moment, the hole as logical device, and jouissance.

It seems from what Lacan says that the hole is a point where many different threads of meaning meet. Where you find out what really is the point. Lacan describes it as "a single word at the intersection of three of the ideas" (165) which signals that this word is the important thing. Like the black holes of astrophysics, the hole is a "manifestation of energy" (165). Flash reason works because of the functionality of the hole. Ulmer laughs when he understands this, but I don't understand it yet. So the hole is what attracts both player, avatar, and meaning?

This connects with chora because chora is "a hole, a primordial gap" it is "positive immanent material nothing" (166). Synonyms for the hole are "entelechy, monad, conatus, Dasein" (166). In other words, the hole makes a thing what it is or what it is supposed to become? This fits with the first three words, but I am not quite sure how that would fit with Dasein. Ulmer writes that "functionally hole is potentiality" (166) which fits with my attempted definition.

Middle of page 166 Ulmer goes all "Life is a Game of Baseball" (philosophy geek version of it). In this version, God is the player and you are the ball being played. You are the addressee of everything that plays out.

"Flash reason is a rhetoric of trigger devices supporting creative innovation (browsing, categorical clustering organized by shared emotion) in networked experience ontology" (168), This is one of the best explanations of flash reason that I have found so far.

The example of the Rat Man which is the source for the Rat Bridge, whereby a torture method by rats (Ratten), crosses through linguistic and imagistic connection to gamble (raten) and then marriage (heiraten). Is this an example of gathering meanings (torture, marriage) around a hole or a center (gamble)? (170). The ontological hole functions as a verbal bridge (171).

Savoir-y-faire is learning to do something with one's symptoms (after treatment with psychoanalysis).

"Writing is ontological, meaning that the potential of language to generate hole meaning constructs and brings into reach a certain reality . . . a reality of attraction-repulsion, whose institutional instantiation, at this stage, is primarily Entertainment" (172). So, writing creates a reality. Primarily a reality built by attraction and repulsion and constructed for the purpose or with the function of entertainment.

Pages 173-179 are a description of a trip to Firenze with thoughts on chora, gelatio (not creosote), and hole logic. Poetic, and helps to illuminate the concepts with vivid examples (and makes other concepts more complicated and difficult to understand).

Here are some letters Matt Tettleton and I exchanged about four years ago. Except we didn't write to each other. We created a reality in which Anne Frank and Yoda could communicate with one another. This writing is definitely attractive and repulsive. Take a look...



While you're at it, psychoanalyze THIS!





Chora
Here is how chora is used in this section.

Chora is positive immanent material nothing" (166). It is something we live without knowing it. Ulmer later writes that synonyms to chora are "entelechy, monadus, conatus, and Dasein" (166). It is seen as a kind of force which is not recognized and which yet has meaning because it exists as potentiality (what a thing or person can be or become). Chora names "disclosive withdrawal," which means "the movement by which you experience your own activity in the world" (166).

Julia Kristeva however writes that chora is the "'semiotic' dimension of language" (171) which is exemplified by Joyce exploiting "all the music and poetic devices of the poetic function, pushed to the extreme of nonsense, that is for their own sake, without concern for the signifieds of meaning" (171). As such, chora has a disruptive potential it seems like, since it is more concerned with being than with meaning.

Flash Reason
Here's how Flash Reason is dealt with in this chaper.

"Flash reason is a rhetoric of trigger devices supporting creative innovation (browsing, categorical clustering organized by shared emotion) in networked experience ontology" (168), This is one of the best explanations of flash reason that I have found so far. It works through imagination, fantasy, and myths which are triggered by images. "The function of concept avatar is to map these triggers, whose firing makes accessible (and hence open to revision) the forces structuring habitus" (168). So are concept avatar and flash reason the same here? Flash reason is "a rhetoric of trigger devices" whereas concept avatar functions to map these triggers which (when they are fired) makes the forces of structuring habit accessible and malleable. Is flash reason then the application of these triggers which concept avatar has mapped? Concept avatar being the pedagogy or underlying theory and flash reason being its application as "available means of persuasion"?