The Other irks perception; perception cannot withstand otherness. The Other is a thorn in the side of perception.
The world is first seen. The perturbation, the anomaly, is an Other mindlessly perceived, the Other impinging upon perception.
The world is first seen. Everything approaches Dasein from a future; all beings hold a futurity in perception. Dasein discards them all as more of the Same. Only the truly Other hurts Dasein. Only the truly Other retains futurity and announces the promise of a future outside of time. The Same props the static panoramic image of perception. Within this static panoramic image, nothing can be anything other than a convention, or, within this static panoramic image, one can believe that nothing can be anything other than a convention. Even the truly Other is thus a convention. For perception has to tirelessly defend itself, just like Giovanni Drogo, ceaselessly defending Fort Bastiani his whole life. Everything is other to Being; everything is; in being Being, beings are confirmed to and vested with alterity for… the Other. We see everything. The photographic is what we see our eyes seeing. Hence the photographic, and Barthes “punctum”, are the Other, the truly Other that truly resides outside of truth. Within the static panoramic image of everything provided by perception, I also perceive my body. Hence, the Self witnesses itself, its boundary, from outside itself, from outside that boundary; the Self, outside of itself, yet entrapped within the static panoramic image of perception. Hence, all beings within the Same are projectiles projected by the Self.
Remember, and the world comes into view; remember, and it is the Other here conversing. Everything within the Other is reduced to a convention. The Other too is reduced to a convention, a convention that cannot be smothered. The Self: born out of itself and expelled out into the domain of the Other; lost within itself and claiming everything as an ineffable copy of its Same. The Self stuck in itself within everything. Everything cannot go elsewhere.
The Other cannot be sensed or known. The Self must thus witness the Other prior to shrouding itself with its Self, prior to the advent of the Same. Memory proceeds to retrace the path back to the moment of witnessing. Hence God and the Other are born out of memory. Memory cannot be a record or a recording as this would allocate God and the Other within the sensible.
“But, from this point of view, that the difference marked in the “differ( )nce” between the e and the a eludes both vision and hearing perhaps happily suggests that here we must be permitted to refer to an order which no longer belongs to sensibility. But neither can it belong to intelligibility, to the ideality which is not fortuitously affiliated with the objectivity of theōrein or understanding” (DERRIDA 1982: 5).
The unrelenting grasp of the Self on the sacred illusion of a Same is shattered in the fall of the Self into everything. The Self dies… wakes… is born…. on a shore it calls… home – albeit here lost, till time persists… and deliriously quests to inhabit all the beds left bare and soiled in the dead city of this future. The post-aesthetic age is the age in which images are recognized. This is to say that this is a propitious time to happily masturbate while scanning family albums and Instagram profiles (Internet porn has become too cliched).
We see (:) the photographic. The photographic, now, does not belong to photography anymore. The photographic belongs to the post-aesthetic age. One would now have to ascertain with clarity the day this age was born.
If the Self sees Everything prior to anything, and if the world comes into view when the Self opens its eyes, then the Self must mother the world that is fathered by Everything. In the darkness of everything, beings prevent revealing themselves; in the light of everything, everything appears.
The photograph is lodged in the light of darkness, blind to its forgetfulness, and therefore cannot appear as such. The photographer memorizes the photograph; the photographer awakens, so to speak, the photograph. Unlike Everything, the photograph chases away all beings alien to it. The photograph, as (E)verything, belongs to Everything – the photograph becomes what is seen.
The photographic, being what we see with our eyes, what we see our eyes seeing, closes the photograph. The photograph is now a relic of death: time and space. Time and space are born out of Time. Time and space are metaphor. Time and space are metaphor of memory.
Lying on its back, in a state of torpor, you can just about hear the hushed whisper of the photograph as it gently beckons to you: “[…] thou wouldst even renew my breath with thy sweet word ‘Remember’!” (BRANWELL BRONTË 2020).
What happens when a lie crafted in such a manner as to make it impossible for one to refute it becomes the truth? What happens when the truth is absurd – when the truth is absurdity?
References:
BRANWELL BRONTË, Patrick. ‘Thorp Green’. Poem Hunter (2020). [online]. Available at: https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/thorp-green/ [accessed 25 September 2020].
DERRIDA, Jacques. 1982. Margins of Philosophy. USA: University of Chicago Press.
Images:
Guido Reni / Public domain Nicolas Poussin / CC BY-SAFeatured Image:
Left Image: HITCHCOCK, Alfred. 1954. Rear Window. [film still]. Available at: https://thefilmspectrum.com/?p=241 [accessed 26 September 2020]; Right Image: MAIER, Vivian. 1956. Untitled. Architectural Digest [online]. Available at: https://www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/vivian-maier-howard-greenberg-gallery-slideshow [accessed 26 September 2020]. Images incorporated into a montage by the author.
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