>Against this uncontrollable multiplicity, the yearning for the One emerged,
>the phantasy of having All of us directed towards One desire and goal, at
>least for a while.
>[...]
>the Everything: "Would that I could react to all of them, do justice to all
>of them" ..." it would very shortly become impossible" said Brandon.
>Surely, a nobel aspiration. Thus, in front of this opposite, the One for
>All, another opposite appeared: Everything or Nothing, to be here or not,
>[...]
>It seems to me that this list can't enter the yes/no, One/All,
>Everything/Nothing phallic order and logic.
>[...]
>phallic tools of One, All, Everything or Nothing can't handle these
>differences, whether we like it or not, for severality is at the heart of
>the list's mode of becoming.
>[...]
>Theory is not separate from our "real" life, ideas
>shape life and are born from it. The question of handling difference and
>the other, and of negotiating different desires in a non-One and not-All
>space of interlinks is crucial; the desire to construct an artificial "One"
>when multiplicity gets too much is, to my mind, dangerous - it is one of
>the dangers of our time.
>Bracha Lichtenberg-Ettinger
I apologize in advance for any toes I'm about to step on, but this set of
comments, is, frankly, offensively trite. To admonish a serious
intellectual interest in completeness with such completely derivative
scolding is an insult to the concept of intellectual debate. How often
have we heard the postmodern desire for
complexity/difference/multiplicity/etc offered (as it is here) as a
_positivist_ counter against statements which attempt to be
authoritative? People are authors when they pen words; they desire to
make progress in their thoughts through this authorship, and do so
through developmental discussions of what they have authored. If this
discourse is allowed to fall into the state of inter-multi-non-, it is
eviscerated into a pool of digression. To assume, however, that, in this
'progressive' work, that these authors have no recognizance of the
complexity of what they think, the possibililty of interrelationships
between multiple concepts, and the ability of their progression to
productively digress, is insulting. If we have a "danger of our time",
it is, in fact, the _fear_ of the one, of the 'proclamation,' of the
'linear' that is this danger.
brian lonsway
......................................................................
j erik jonsson distinguished visiting assistant professor.
rensselaer architecture.
lonsway@rpi.edu.