A table of dissociations

Before the message or form, object or subject, theme or argument, there is the brute script, an artifact caught in histories of symbolic processes.

The symbol or script in itself is not signifying; there are super-signs deployed that circulate to organize other signs: master concepts, idées-forces, key terms, sign-posts…

To subtract the symbolic energy from the line: the symbol with the minus sign;

There is always a question of the problematic link between the practice of the idea and the idea of the practice;

Any species of the declarative (explanation, illustration, etc.) is suspect as a device of coherence. Any argument moving towards the defense of an idea or process is a declarative;

Can we start writing without any master discourse or subject taking charge, no thematic conducting the mass, or rhetorical order whatsoever sculpting the flow of thought and emotion?

Although consistent with argumentation, it would be too declarative to cement this announced objective with a coherent practice, or overload it with the physics of illustration or execution, as if there was a seamless medium between idea and practice, and that it would just take some technique and effort to demonstrate it.

That would just replicate or reinstate a center for the discursive production, overlaying the negative symbol with a positive film of meaning that super-intends all the series…

It would restore the symbolic energies of scripts as the primary field of events. This may be unavoidable, with the symbolic always resurging like an echo or after-effect;

This is the tension that tugs us back and forth from meaning-effects and their material processes. The entry-point is always already at risk.

Using the logic of intention and purpose: I would say, “I want to start a table of dissociations.”

It begins with the dissociation of symbolic energies from scripts, that is, both in associative and constitutive levels. I don’t claim that scripts should not have these functions, but that the significance of scripts is a temporary product. There is an actual management of scripts within an economy of significations, a connection we foreground by dissociations.

First, I would like to place myself at the level of the scriptural item: language as artifact.

Next, this scriptural gesture is managed by a host of thematic attractors: subject, topic, argument, key idea, source, destination, etc.

The process is not analytically pure: the practice is a see-saw of contradictions, erasures, postulation and cancellation. This explanation is an example, another declarative…

This dissociative practice of scripts entails the suspension of major associative items, patterns, and principles: syntax, attribution, description, allusions, imagery, rhyme, and other language forms.

In short, a re-view of actual and personal intertexts, or of various thematic attractors: lyricism, humanism, idealism, movements, aesthetics, schools of thought, literary forms, discursive styles, rhetorical patterns…

In any case, neither in a clear commentary nor in an applied practice can this whole idea, purpose, or intention be unified. Both terms (commentary, practice) become master concepts themselves, immediately taking over the sense of events.

But that opens a moment where dissociations can be launched again, in dispersive bursts I can probably call "sidelances..."

Fantastic machines

A man was looking for some fantastic machines to impress his in-laws with. And in this room, sir, we have Machine A and Machine X. “I don’t understand. They look quite identical.”

True, sir, but that is what it seems on the surface. Let me explain as objectively as I can. When you push this button on Machine A, it proceeds to unfurl a world for you in an unexpected series. Let’s say it starts with 1, it can come out with 973, but not necessarily. There is no absolute rule that governs the series that it spurts. In any language event, it may follow 1 with gold or cow or never, or any nonsense symbol like ∞ or µ, a vegetable salad, or roof of Italian villa in case, or even a human human child, a supernova and a preposition.

“Interesting, but I have no great need for this child or that supernova. How about Machine X?”

This is the most fantastic machine of all, our prototype. When we push this button, it generates a series following strict rules. For example, 1 is followed strictly by 2, then by 3. The word it is followed by a singular verb in the third person, and this apple is always eaten by Eve before Adam. Archaic can always rhyme with ecstatic but not with dice. Now you have 6209, a seemingly random number, but represents 17 solar earth years. You can opt to push this other button if you find yourself unable to divine the rules, which in your case, dear sir, would be quite rare, I believe. Well, my in-laws would be in great need of this kind, then.

Amazed, the man said, “You’re right. This is the most fantastic machine you have. Look how as if it had read my mind completely.” It doesn’t surprise me, sir. If I may add, with full sincerity, that before you came into the store, I heard the same machine say A man was looking for some fantastic machines. I simply took that to mean you.

“What a very fitting and necessary way to end. Well, my in-laws would be in great need of this kind, then. I’ll take X.”