Jacob's Ladder and Limits

I found the film Jacob's Ladder to be a curious narrative reflecting the ontological and metaphysical notion of limits in terms of becoming-what-you-are. Interestingly enough, the film more or less starts with an Image, a Text, and a Motto.

IMAGE

Some would argue that the Image would be the opening shot of Jacob Singer (the protagonist pictured above) in the subway (which we will discuss shortly), but I, personally, do not find such to be the case. It is this Moment, this Image, which constantly and recursively haunts Singer throughout the film. This particular memory-trace--and this Moment in particular--returns back to Singer over and over, and informs his choices and judgements throughout the narrative. As we eventually learn, this Moment, this Image, in fact constitutes Singer's authentic self (to be explored at the end of this blog post). It is his coming to terms with this Moment-Image (hyphenated because it is both the defining Moment for Singer, as well as a Moment which haunts him as a trace in the form of an Image, most often in dreams). 

TEXT

He is reading Albert Camus' The Stranger. It could be no other way: Singer is a stranger in a strange land, a "place" where he should not be, and this is because he has not come to terms with his Moment-Image and returned back into himself (becoming-what-he-is or -should-be). For the time being, perhaps, The Stranger serves as a guide, since he is ignoring his Daemon (better guide). 

MOTTO

It reads: "HELL. That's what life can be, doing drugs. But it doesn't have to be that way. Help is available, day or night." What it means to say: "HELL. That's what life can be, living inauthentically. But it doesn't have to be that way (you can become-what-you-are). Daemon is available, day or night." 

Below is the subway scene (and then some), in case you are interested: 

SPOLIER ALERT: Essentially, Singer was killed in Vietnam, and the narrative consists of him navigating that liminal space which, for sake of convenience, we will call Purgatory. But he should not be there. Singer only exists in this place (where he is a stranger) because he has not come to terms with his limits (in this case, sheer finitude), has not acknowledged the authenticity of his self. Singer's Daemon in this film, rather obviously if you see it, is his Doctor, who guides him back to become-what-he-is, and back to his proper territory and place/space. But Singer keeps ignoring Daemon; as such, he meets his Nemesis, wherein he finally realizes and comes to painful terms with his situation:

After Singer realizes the authenticity of his proper self (and the inauthenticity of that which he has been pursuing), he comes back home, back into himself, to become-what-he-is. He comes to terms with his Moment, that Image that constantly haunts him (Moment-Image). His "coming back home into himself" is below:

Certainly, this film deals with a metaphysics of after-life--an almost theological narrative of sorts--but it is easy to extrapolate the concepts within the narrative and apply them to the ontological and metaphysical notion of limits in the embodied sense, and as we have been discussing in class. At least, such is the case in my opinion. 

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Electrate Christ: The Allegory of John Lennon

The British Invasion brought with it a group of shaggy haired blokes called the Beatles, and set the cultural landscape of the States on fire with a New Gospel: rock and roll. As was the case with Elvis, parents quickly became more than skeptical of the group: the implicit sexuality; the strange hair and appearance; indeed, perhaps even the fact that they were British. And then John Lennon made the fateful remark: “We’re more popular than Jesus.”

Like Christ, he had admitted what the Elders had long suspected: he “claimed” to be of a higher order than the situated God of the time (is at least what the Elders heard). And like Christ, they set out to crucify him—albeit symbolically, in effigy—for the very same offense.

Yet, John Lennon and the Beatles (who he is not, by the way, wink wink) survived the momentary backlash. Their cultural influence grew, and it grew in direct opposition to the hegemonic values of the time, changing as they were in the turbulent Sixties.  The Beatles—as well as other key voices during this cultural shift—were creating a new Church of sorts (and with such a move, there was plenty of institutional resistance, backlash and actual violence to go around). And despite this seeming displacement, John Lennon’s message seemed hauntingly familiar, like an echo from a figure equally resisted from long ago: the message of Love.

And yet, the symbolic crucifixion of John Lennon became actualized in 1980, when he was shot dead in front of his hotel room. Of course, the most dangerous question, perhaps even a perverse one, is if this was John Lennon’s Fate. It could easily be argued that, within the realm of dubiously dubbed “culture,” John Lennon became as powerful a voice as anyone in recent historical memory. The measure of his change is immeasurable, and still echoes as powerfully as ever when “Imagine” plays. Like Socrates and Christ before him, he could not forever run from the consequences of giving so much.

In many ways, the stories are the same; the institutions are different. And yet, in either case, the ethos behind the narratives are not all that distant: again, merely the emphasis on the resonance of Love. Both reside within the potentiality and possibility of the imaginary: faith in a higher power so as to guide a sense of well-being (in its more desirable form, at least); imagining (or dreaming) as a means by which to move towards well-being.

The problem: institutions care more about their preservation and reproduction than their actual message (and this is quite obvious). The message that models individual behavior, however, merely becomes a delivery system for the reproduction of the institution itself. Of course, this is duly noted in the institutions associated with various epochs (oralityàliteracyàelectracy), and in how these institutions contend with each other. The question, then, is how can we move beyond the otherwise inevitable struggle over power between institutions (hegemony) and into a more de-institutionalized focus on the advancement of well-being in itself and for itself? Otherwise, it seems the same allegory repeats itself. After all, could we not say that John Lennon was, perhaps, the electrate Christ? 

Disasters

We can no longer approach and attempt to solve disasters as we did in the age of literacy, wherein a singular disaster would be identified and isolated, and consultants would figure a more or less univocal guilty party and a plan of action (repaying the debt of the disaster) directed only at the disaster itself. I’m thinking here of the instructive usefulness of old clichés: namely, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure…. But even the classical understanding of prevention, as framed in the epoch of literate conduct, fails us, or so it seems.

In order to prevent/cure future disasters, we need to first undergo an active and ongoing change in our ontological and metaphysical relationship to the world. We need to rejoin philosophy and aesthetics so as to create an aesthetic ethics concerned with authentic desire and well-being. In order to do so, one needs to undergo Moments that direct one’s becoming-what-they-are (rather being what one is), by reaching ontological/metaphysical limits and returning back inward, into-one’s-self. (The dialectical war between Being and Becoming, however, seems to be an ongoing philosophical war that we carry into electracy from previous epochs). After we do this, we can better exercise prudence and Flash Reason (a new mode/method of good judgment in the age of electracy), better understand authentic desire (desire authentic to our proper and enduring becoming-selves), and move towards the development of pleasure/joy that supports well-being.

Such a stylized-ontology/ontologized-style brings about an aesthetic ethics, however, that must take into account the hyper-linked and hyper-connected function of well-being in the age of electracy. The object cause of desire of one becoming-self becomes knotted together with other object cause desires within a larger social assemblage. Suddenly, the individuals within the social assemblage (and the social assemblage itself) starts acting, producing, consuming in ways that are counter-intuitive to their authentic desire and own well-being. Three key examples of such a practice (two of which have been clearly noted by Prof. Ulmer):

[Spice as the impetus for the search for--and eventual domination of--the New World]

[Molasses and Atlantic triangular trade and the support of slavery]

  [Telephone poles and the Gainesville Superfund site]

To this end, I turn to the Rolling Stones.

My lingering questions remain: how do we put this into practice in the more nuanced, detailed sense? Is such up to the consultants (especially those within the institution of the Humanities)? As we know, “electracy is not epistemological; it is affective.” It concerns an undergoing, not an understanding of meaning. If this is so, how can we accomplish what the logic of capitalism has so greatly achieved in a practical, applied sense? Again, the instructive usefulness of old clichés: you can lead a horse to water….

Social Book

Despite the technical problems some of us encountered with Socialbook, I enjoyed the concept of the exercise, as well as the exercise itself. At the very least, Socialbook and the process of publicly and collectively annotating upset and complicated the traditional approach to annotation and marginalia. Annotations and marginalia are often considered a private exercise: the notes are personal, relative to questions concerning individual projects, usually not to be seen by others. Indeed, outside of annotations and marginalia being reviewed by an instructor (I had to do this in high school, and the instruction was always: more, more, more), annotations and marginalia are only seen by others reluctantly, when one asks to borrow a book and the owner of the book says, "Sure, but please--please!--pay no attention to my stupid notes and questions in the margins." Interestingly enough, when I have borrowed books, I have found these supposedly "stupid" annotations and questions in the margins to mirror my own, or to assist in my reading of the book.

Thus, at the risk or potenial--or perhaps inevitability--of some reserve and embarrassment, Socialbook actualized a dialogue regarding nuanced points, questions and concerns between each other as we read. Indeed, it not only demanded a close reading to a large degree; it also demanded a conversation regarding our various close readings. Moreover, it moved the concept of annotating and marginalizing from an exercise done alone, in private, individually and into the collective and communal. This group effort "knotted up" the annotating and marginalizing, and in a productive manner.

Surely, there are some glitches that could and should be worked out on Socialbook--and even more so, perhaps some features could and ought to be added. The concept and experience of collectively and communally annotating and marginalizing in a digital space, however, should not be wholly abandoned. In fact, I may find such an approach inherently more rewarding than the typical format of a loose and general seminar discussion concerning a given text at large.

Deleuze and Limits

Prof. Ulmer's narrative of going to Spain in 1966 and encountering one's limits so as to "become what you are" reminds me very much of Gilles Deleuze's discussion of territorializations in the link below. It is particularly useful (to me/for me) in that he approaches "limits" and "territories" in terms of encounters, relations, sense/feeling, language. Later in this documentary (which is hours and hours and hours long), he returns to this concept of "reaching one's limits" when considering the "alcoholic." The alcoholic, he notes, has a deeply entrenched sense of his/her "limits." The last drink of the day is the reaching of an alcoholic's limit, and yet this "last drink" is only the "penultimate" drink as the alcoholic returns to (re)approach the same limit the following day. This concept (and practice) of recursively returning to reach one's limits as the process in which a subject becomes constituted as such (as what and who it is, ontologically) fascinates me.

Deleuze and Limits

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