skandalon

The man who works recognizes his own product in the World that has actually been transformed by his work: he recognizes himself in it, he sees in it his own human reality, in it he discovers and reveals to others the objective reality of his humanity, of the originally abstract and purely subjective idea he has of himself. By this act of finding itself by itself, then, the [working] consciousness becomes its own meaning-or-will; and this happens precisely in work, in which it seemed to be alien meaning-or-will.

✖ Via Introduction to the Reading of Hegel by Alexandre Kojève, Cornell University Press, [1947]1980, p. 27

Here’s the original French version:

L’homme qui travaille reconnaît dans le Monde effectivement transformé par son travail sa propre œuvre: il s’y reconnaît soi-même; il y voit sa propre réalité humaine; il y découvre et il révèle aux autres la réalité objective de son humanité, de l’idée d’abord abstraite et purement subjective qu’il se fait de lui-même.] Par cet acte-de-se-retrouver soi-même par soi-même, la Conscience [travaillante] devient donc sens-ou-volonté propre; et elle le devient précisément dans le travail, où elle ne semblait être que sens-ou-volonté étranger. (Introduction à la lecture de Hegel, éd. Gallimard, Paris, 1947, p. 31)

A complete PDF copy of this book is available online. A French version of the ‘Introduction’ of this book is available here.

• Oct 02, 2010 link notes tagged: technology work world production subjectivity other self alienation slave master Hegel Kojève philosophy consumption consumer capitalism creation art

The things that made him who he was could hardly be identified much less converted to data, the things that lived and milled in his body, everywhere, random, riotous, billions of trillions, in the neurons and peptides, the throbbing temple vein, in the veer of his libidinous intellect. So much come and gone, this is who he was, the lost taste of milk licked from his mother’s breast, the stuff he sneezes when he sneezes, this is him, and how a person becomes the reflections he sees in a dusty window when he walks by. He’d come to know himself, untranslatably, through his pain. He felt so tired now. His hard-gotten grip on the world, material things, great things, his memories true and false, the vague malaise of winter twilights, untransferable, the pale nights when his identity flattens for lack of sleep, the small wart he feels on his thigh every time he showers, all him, and how the soap he uses, the smell and feel of the concave bar make him who he is because he names the fragrance, amandine, and the hang of his cock, untransferable, and his strangely achy knee, the click in his knee when he bends it, all him, and so much else that’s not convertible to some high sublime, the technology of mind-without-end.

✖ Via Cosmopolis by Don DeLillo, New York: Scribner, 2003, p. 207-208

Let’s say for the moment that this quote relate to the general problem of the representation of the self: of the innumerable and diverse experiences I had, in my lifetime, how and under which conditions am I able to elaborate a stable representation of myself. Or, to put it in other words : How did I came up with a sense of my own identity?

Compare it with David Hume’s thoughts on mankind, Derrida’s view on the grammar of dreams (after Freud), who Pablo Neruda think he is (along with an excerpt from Paul Valery’s Mr. Teste), Quadrophenia, and finally the problem of translation from the perspective of media theorist Friedrich A. Kittler.

Previously on Skandalon: Don DeLillo

• Jun 18, 2010 link notes tagged: author book novel art technology communication translation computer machine DeLillo Cosmopolis identity self network event effect reality life subject subjectivity apparatus node

The identity of an individual is a product of human reason: it is not anything other than a rational self. Therefore, losing identity equals losing reason. So ‘communicative cognition’ is cognition as an event which occurs in a (critical) moment not controlled by reason. It belongs to the realm of affect which transcends reason or occurs due to the drive of affect. According to Bataille, the sense of an individual losing identity is also what characterizes communication with the other.

✖ Via Nami Ohi: “Cognition as Communication: The Accursed Share by Georges Bataille as a contribution to the study of Fundamental Informatics”, The New Trends of Socio-information in East Asia, Students’ workshop, at The University of Tokyo, Nov. 2007. [PDF]

“Nami Ohi is a doctoral student in the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies (GSIIS), the University of Tokyo, supervised by Prof. Toru Nishigaki. She studies literature from the systems theory perspective. She is especially interested in haiku and analyzes it by using fundamental informatics as a theoretical framework.” (more)

• Jun 15, 2010 link notes tagged: communication philosophy lost loser individual subjectivity identity representation Bataille