As decrepescence slowly descends upon the new Millennium, it becomes more important than ever to recognize that the Derridean Meridian (thesis + antithesis = rhesus) not only explains the world as it should be, but all of the multifarious worlds of the rhizomatic omniverse. We could ask no less of a nascent theory of everything (a baby TOE, as it were, or possibly will be), and yet, we must ask more. (Gerald, stop picking your nose and pay attention – this could be important!)
Of course, Derrida hadn’t considered the mirror phase of laser optics, or he would have realized that the inClement Greenberg approach to 17th century Portugese pornographic haiku was ipso facto pas au courant schadenfreude in media res. (Erika: I hear that Michael has finally proposed. Frankly, I think you can do better – the boy just isn’t tenure track material, if you know what I mean. Still, if he’s really who you want to spend the rest of your life with, congratulations.) It was this failure of Imagineering that Eco was referring to when he pronounced: “I need some Tums. Does anybody have any Tums on them? God, what I wouldn’t give for a Tums!” [1]
It’s this re-embodiment (re-embodi-mint?) that leads to the generalization of cyborg instantiation. (Gerald, stop that! It’s gross. And, unhygienic.) It’s the 19th century body eclectic made over from the spare parts of a decaying culture. Well, that and batteries you can get for $3.99 at Radio Shack. Would that real power in the world came so cheap!
The body, you see, is like an electron swimming in the irreducible sea of sub-atomic energies. You can comm-link to some pie (eye-fie-DIE?) in the sky satellite system, but, when it comes right down to it, the atavistic impulse cannot be squelched by mere allusions to Eigan Values. (Ingeborg, are you ever going to get that dissertation written? The world is waiting!) No. We must strip our conceptions of the body, pull our minds out of the conceptual gutter we’ve all been born into and walk boldly away from Our Cyborgian Century. [2]
Yes, I’m talking about nothing less than the overturning of the overnurturing Master Mega Monongohelian Nar(rat)ives. Foucault wept. Then, he wrote 27 volumes on the end of the printed word. As the man himself might have written: “Being is the essence of existence, but neither its juissance nor its puissance.” [3] (Tsuing-Po, that diet drug is going to kill you. Consult a doctor.) The Other has confronted the unassimilable Otherness of its being, and thrown up in a sink in your bathroom. Invest in a plunger.
So much for the erotic ontology of the garden gnome. I believe it was Freud, that diabolical ecdesiast himself, who argued that sometimes a garden gnome is just a garden gnome. [4] The Other has left the building. Brecht wept, [5] but it was either the alienation talking or the garlic he had for lunch. The substantial instantiation of Otherness within the coZy confines of the IVOry ToWer is only mATChed by the raw power of the Other marCHiNg down Main Street with its UnDeRwEaR eXpOsED. [6]
Of course, there may only be half a dozen people in the world who will follow this argument. (Hi, Markus! Good to see your condition has cleared up.) All the more reason to make it as forcefully as we can.
1) Anschluss, Viktor. “We Don’t Live In That Universe Any More.” Digest of Indigestible Results. V27, I132. November/July, 1996. p11,024. See, also: Victoria Anschluss. “That Universe Doesn’t Live Inside Us Any More.” Forthcoming.
2) Nicholas Negroponte, private conversation, July 7, 2031.
3) But, he didn’t write it, so I don’t have to footnote it. Well, alright, if he had written it, it probably would have appeared in: Foucault, Michel. On Grammatonarratologicalism, v 25. Mickey Spillane, trans. New York: (No Such Thing As) Bad Press, 1988.
4) Freud, Sigmund. Dreamy Dreams and the Dreamers Who Dream Them. Al Franken, trans. Bonn: Bavarian Cream Pie Press, 1997.
5) Moraviatuya, Hans. Theatre in the Age of Autonomous Unintelligence. New York: YECHT Press, 1989.
6) Sorry about that: my caps lock key was having an emotional crisis due to what it perceives to be my aggressive use of the keys around it. At first, I felt it was beneath my dignity as a white male woman of colour to argue with my machine; however, given the cyBorgesian nature of modern society, I let it have its way for a sentence. It takes so little to keep keyboard components happy…