k-punk said:
but the alternative to ontology is not vagueness and amorphousness; it's more like paradox or anomaly, that which will not allow Being to stablise - ANamorphousness, perhaps. For instance, the anamoprhic blot is not vague; although apparently only a smear when seen head-on, it assumes a form when looked at awry.
Provocative post, K-Punk, thank you.
One comment on the formation, ANamorphic, however. Though you made it perfectly clear in your graphic presentation of the word, the formation still strikes me as potentially confusing since some people may hear it as
ana-morphic, which would mean something like 'toward form.' The origin of our English language alpha privative prefix (the a- or a-morphic, a-political, a-social, etc) derives from ancient Greek usage, where this particle was an old zero grade vocalic nasal n-. In ancient Greek it appeared as "a-" before a consonant and "an-" before a vowel, the same option that we inherit into English. But there is also of course the old Greek prefix, "ana-", which means "to, toward, up," or "down," depending, and which is also used in our language today. So in ANamorphic we have a double negative, as you well know, but one that is homonymous with another prefix with another meaning. Not that this is a problem, of course! (The negation of amorphic or 'unformed' by way of "AN-" was obviously what you were interested in exploring here, and I certainly understand the attractiveness of the formation.) Perhaps you prefer the ambiguity of a word that potentially means both "not Amorphic" but also "towards morphic."
k-punk said:
2. Recording machines. Or 'technology has made us all ghosts', as
Mr Penman , surely the pre-eminent hauntological critic, once put it. Part of the problem with finding a definition that is satisfactorily
limiting is that recording
as such is hauntological. The very existence of recorded sounds produces a critique of ontology, a disturbing of the distinction between being and non-being, presence and absence.
The statement, "the very existence of recorded sounds produces a critique of ontology" is certainly a provocative way of putting it.
The first thought that comes to mind, however, is that this notion of 'recorded sound as critique of ontology' runs into an interesting question: yes, the recorded sound occupies a peculiar ontological space -- and perhaps it has critical potential when applied to traditional ontology -- but what about its amazing
durability? I am thinking of many examples, just one being the amen break, which, though only a four bar drum break in 'origin', has enjoyed an unbelievably robust afterlife as a mutable and durable temporal articulation that can be used to form everything from early hip-hop to the familiar drum drone of something like Macc's
"If . . . " (haha, I know, I know, for most of you Macc's tune is probably just another recent dnb pfft in the drumfunk mode, but I wanted to link to it b/c I find it to be a pretty gorgeous and 'haunting' piece, check the vocal sample)
To restate the question: does recorded sound offer a critique of ontology or does it comprise a special category? And what would this mean for 'hauntology' (which still seems a bit vague to me at this juncture)?
(nice aural correspondence between 'hauntology' and 'ontology,' by the way)
