Fatal Detail/Final Instruction

Little did I know that I would end up back where I begun. The final instruction for Part 1 is to create a "figure" using a small, seemingly insignificant but fatal detail of our accident--something that "sent" us this accident, something that spoke to us and spoke to the entire metaphysics of the accident. Since we are using the logic of electracy, we are using the logic of signifiers, resemblances, associations, "punctum" (even if it might not be emotional). . .something, if we want to use the term "subjective" (although it reveals the collective subject).

Object CAUSE of the desire. . .not the thing desired itself (ABSURD DETAIL--synthome). . a meaningless signifier that organizes the whole (ob)scene, which itself doesn’t mean ANYTHING.  ­The Fetish shows you the fatal (pre-destined) of the scene. . .we’ll know it through its fatality à something in the disaster that ‘sent me’ this accident. Cannot stop it—its irreparable. We’ve got to know what’s SENT TO US SO WE CAN ACT. (class notes)

Part of this instruction is that we want to abstract the forces at work in our accident rather than the things--this is another way to understand that we are looking for a relation (in the sense that Ulmer talked about the commodity not as a thing, but as a relationship). Thus, rather than looking at a particular scene (to use Baudrillardian terminology) of my accident--e.g. the drag line, the mountains, the coal slurry--and rather than trying to synthesize them, I tried to use my visual association and description to think about a particular image. At first, I thought maybe it would be int he drag line itself, since Ulmer claims that we need to learn to "speak to our machines," but the above pictures were also in a sense created by 'machines' (the coal cleaning machines).

If we recall one of my very first attempts at an image, I recognized that the second picture above looked to me like black lava--volcanic residue. Thus, I attempted to juxtapose this image over the mountains, making it seems as though the mountains were turned into a powerful volcanic/lava force (first figure above). If we are talking about describing the forces, we can understand the coal slurry force as volcanic (this is the power we harvest from it). The power of the volcano relates explicitly to Baudrillard's example of Pompeii, which is a key passage Ulmer cites on Routine for describing our accident as metaphysical:

"Pompeii: everything is metaphysical in this city [. . .] Neither monumentality nor beauty are essentail to Pompeii, only the fatal intimacy of things, the fascination of their instantaneity as well as as that of the perfect simulacrum of our own death" (Baudrillard 42).

Furthermore, the volcano relates explicitly to one of Virillio's photographs in his Museum of Accidents: Clark Air Force Base. This is one of photos I used in my presentation.

But finally, and most importantly, it relates to my particular accident.


As I sat and thought about these two photos above, I was thinking. . .what does that coal slurry look like? What other substance than coal does it look like? What is its texture, its color, its materiality? And then I had it (and I could only hope that I could connect these two things conceptually): OBSIDIAN

http://geology.com/rocks/igneous-rocks.shtml

The materiality of obsidian also looks remarkably like coal as well as coal slurry:

 But it is smoother, it basically looks like washed and smoothed out coal. Obsidian also suggests a pun on Baudrillard's notion of "obscene" ("obsi(n)dian) a serendipitous (or perhaps fatal) detail. The coal slurry loses its "scene" within the mountains and becomes an obscene sludge lodged in the valley--an accident waiting to happen.

Also, on a personal level, when I was a kid I loved obsidian--it fascinated me, it seduced me, it was one of my favorite rocks. I remember I had a reproduction of an arrowhead made out of obsidian from the geology center just outside my hometown. I don't know what happened to it, but it was precious to me. . .i loved the smoothness of it--god how seductive. . .

Obsidian, according to Wikipedia is "is produced when felsic lava extruded from a volcano cools rapidly with minimum crystal growth. Obsidian is commonly found within the margins of rhyolitic lava flows known as obsidian flows, where the chemical composition (high silica content) induces a high viscosity and polymerization degree of the lava. The inhibition of atomic diffusion through this highly viscous and polymerized lava explains the lack of crystal growth. Because of this lack of crystal structure, obsidian blade edges can reach almost molecular thinness, leading to its ancient use as projectile points and blades, and its modern use as surgical scalpel blades.<sup>[1][2]

Thus, obsidian connects with the "force" of the volcano that I found inherent in the lava-like substance of the coal slurry! I couldn't believe my luck! But, of course, it was not luck--it was fate. . .it was that "series of fatal throws" as Baudrillard puts it. 

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, obsidian is not just a precious and seductive object, but it was also something like a commodity/gift in other cultures (the gift-giving cultures). Wikipedia writes, 

"</sup>Native American people traded obsidian throughout the Americas. Each volcano and in some cases each volcanic eruption produces a distinguishable type of obsidian, making it possible for archaeologists to trace the origins of a particular artifact. Similar tracing techniques have allowed obsidian to be identified in Greece also as coming from Melos, Nisyros or Yiali, islands in the Aegean Sea. Obsidian cores and blades were traded great distances inland from the coast.^{[citation needed]"} 
 
And is backed up: here

Obsidian was also used to make ancient tools and weapons--thus, a crucial rock for the production of Technics!

Obsidian, like coal slurry, is created by the accident--the detritus of the volcano (not the volcano itself). Coal slurry we do not think as a commodity, a way of exchange, but using electrate logic I have found a connection between the properties of coal slurry (although it is not always hard like obsidian) and an essential (and yet accidental) geographical substance.

The question is how do I turn this into a figure? I cannot exactly describe the figure in words--it is a material relation--a 'felt' relation rather than textual. We shall see what I can come up with soon enough. . .

Instructions for 'Theory'--The 'play' of the commodity.

 

http://seekingalpha.com/article/116497-12-commodity-based-short-etfs

For our CATTt, we are substituting the focus of "narrative," coming from our Hollywood film for 'tropes'. According to our discussion, we are substituting Game Theory's primary 'game' of poker with another type of game. Callois, who we will read next, tells us that there are only 4 types of games, the first two corresponding to money economies, the second corresponding to gift economies. Since we are trying to see our own 'money economy' from the perspective of the gift, we need to look at the second two

Four Games

• 1.       Agon--competition

• 2.       Alea—chance

• 3.       Mimesis—theater (simulation)

• 4.       Ilynx—“vertigo”  (game of Vertigo?)

(class notes)

Baudrillard focuses mostly on mimesis, but the absolute commodity is 'Illynx', which is a game of 'vertigo'.

Vertigo, n:

1. Pathol. A disordered condition in which the person affected has a sensation of whirling, either of external objects or of himself, and tends to lose equilibrium and consciousness; swimming in the head; giddiness, dizziness

2. fig. A disordered state of mind, or of things, comparable to giddiness.


3. The act of whirling round and round. (OED)

The 'act of whirling round and round' can also be framed in terms of Baudrillard's idea that our fundamental task is Appearance and Disappearance. I related this in a previous post to peek-a-boo.  In a state of "vertigo', there is no equilibrium and there is no 'dialectic' (class notes).

. . . . . . . .

Instruction: To see the accident as a commodity, which seduces people into serving it. 


In order to do this, we need to rid ourselves of the trappings of 'narrative' in order to create a figure. Andy Warhol's work, for instance, contains no narrative--neither external mythology (Pollock) nor internal diagesis.

. . . . . . . .

The late George Carlin, more than perhaps any other comedian, could be considered the comedian of the accident. He shows us that accidents, disasters, catastrophes indeed do fascinate us--he shows us that we are seduced by them:

We need to look at the accident as something that wants to happen and as something that fascinates us. Thus, instead of looking at Mountain Top Removal in its utilitarian aspect--to get coal for energy, I need to look at it as something we are seduced by. I need to locate this seductive aspect, from the perspective of the object--is the object coal slurry? Are we fascinated by coal slurry? Are we fascinated by coal slurry poisoning rivers and destroying homes? Or are we fascinated by coal? We obviously aren't fascinated by the mountains. 











 

The Prestige and Mountain Top Removal/Coal Washing

Baudrillard writes, "Our fundamental destiny is not to exist and survive, as we think: it is to appear and disappear. That alone seduced and fascinates us. That alone is scene and ceremony [. . .] for something really to appear, surging up to the reign of appearances, there must be seduction. For something to really disappear, to resolve into its appearance, there must be a ceremony of metamorphosis" (213).

Essentially, Baudrillard seems to be describing the magic act. The Prestige also maintains that you must have both appearance and disappearance for a successful act: As John Cutter puts it in a voiceover, "but to make something disappear is not enough, you  have to bring it back." Ideally, as Baudrillard says, there will be a metamorphosis, but The Prestige shows in both magic and science, metamorphosis cannot take place without waste.

I am shocked at how The Prestige, a film I haven't thought about in years, has revealed itself to me to be intimately connected to my disaster. There are many points in the film that I would like to explicate in terms of sacrifice and symbolic exchange. If you have seen the film before, you can pick up on several symbolic resonances that ultimately anticipate the end. I wish to show how the film exemplifies the Restricted as opposed to the General Economy--involving a sacrifice of excess. When i first watched the film, I thought it was good, but I now find it a masterful piece of storytelling, acting, and writing.


Blackmail

I argue that one of the fundamental techniques of manipulation is blackmail. Baudrillard writes, that blackmail is only "a giant special effect" that uses the soft technology of violence to dissuade. It is based on a non-utterance that "puts an end to the scene of exchange" (64-65). We find many examples of the lack of the scene of exchange--rather than exchanging, violence and obsession escalades into a tragic ending (despite the illusion of a happy one--we will come back to this). Angier tells Borden that if he doesn't tell him his secret, his daughter will be sent to a boardinghouse, implying she will not be taken care of. If he does tell him the secret, she will be provided for. However, Angier puts an end to the scene of exchange when, even though he agrees to tell him his secret, Angier takes it, tears it up and say "whatever you're secret was--mine is better." He decides that he has "won."

Before this blackmail, but after it is represented on screen we find that Angier himself was blackmailed by  his "double," who, again, just wants more and more from Angier until he betrays him to Borden--he held all of the power. The blackmailer never intends to allow the exchange to be completed--the blackmailer desires more and more power as well as resources. 


Sacrifice

Characters constantly repeat a few important lines. One of them is "sacrifice is the price of a good trick." This aphorism is illustrated throughout the entire film as it anticipates the final 'revealing' of the secret that was not really a secret. When Cutter sees Borden's trick he tells him outright he uses a double--thus revealing the real 'secret' in the open, but we are not looking for that secret--we, the audience, is looking in the mode of Angier--for the truth, for the real secret, for the more complex trick, so we don't realize that we should already know the ending. As Cutter says,

"Now you're looking for the secret but you won't find it, because you weren't really looking, you do want to find it out, you want to be fooled."

This is another important aspect of the film because it complements the other: the really good trick, the one that is not illusion, involves sacrifice. The characters also discuss how it is impossible to pull off a good trick without "getting your hands dirty if you want to do the impossible"

1st mention of sacrifice: Angier and Borden go to see an old man who has a trick with disappearing a bird cage. This is a bet that they make with Cutter, since he cannot find it out. Borden finds it out because he does the same thing. As he watches the old man hobble like a cripple toward his carriage he watches and says to Angier that "This is the trick. He lives a lie--self-sacrifice is the only way out of this." Thus, no one can discover his methods because he refuses to believe the man can do any significant physical movements--its brilliant really!

2nd mention: Another magician disappears a bird in a cage by slamming his hand down on the handkerchief. A little boy in the audience begins to cry (the character's eventual love interest) and say "He killed it. He killed it" even though the woman reassures he hadn't. Just then, the magician 'brings the bird back', but the boy is unconvinced. Borden shows him that the bird is OK, but the boy says: "Yes, but where's his brother"

Here, the boy has already gained insight into Borden's own secret double/twin who lives half of his life. If you have seen the film before, this is a really creepy moment as you realize that this is a 'doubling' within the film of the 'secret' that Angier (and the audience, mind you) seeks. Furthermore, it is an anticipation of the 'sacrifice' that Angier must make to perform his trick (more on that in a minute).

The boy is correct--the bird really is killed as the cage is smashed into its skull. This scene will also "double"/repeat.

3rd sacrifice: Blinded by his own hubris and confidence, Borden decides that he will tie a different knot for a dangerous 'drowning woman' trick. Later in the film, Angier will ask him which knot he tied and Borden will respond "I don't know"--which is actually the truth because he wasn't the one who actually tied the knot (it was his twin brother). Anyway, the result of this is that Angier's wife, the assistant, dies by drowning.

This event sets up the next two instances of sacrifice. When Borden decides that he wants to try the 'catching bullet trick' because it is risky, he asks someone in the audience to shoot him, knowing the bullet is 'not' in the gun. However, that man is Angier, who puts in a different ball (another instance of doubling) and puts it into the gun. He shoots him in the hand, taking off two of his fingers. We learn later that the twin brother, in order to do the 'transporting man' trick will also have to remove  2 of his fingers so they look the same--these must be sacrificed for the trick to work.

Borden takes revenge when, once Cutter and Angier have worked through a way to not kill the bird in the cage trick, disguises himself as an innocent audience member. He comes up and before Angier can pull the string (attached to a complicated mechanism) Borden crushes the dove in the cage, killing it and scaring the hell out of the other volunteer and the rest of the audience. These moments--when the trick goes wrong--are OBSCENE--the scene, the illusion is gone and the true mechanism comes out.

However, we learn that people are fascinated by the obscene magic show (or think they are). When  the owner of a theater, hearing of the new dove trick, asks Cutter and Angier why he does not do the water-escape trick or the bullet catch, Cutter says:

"Cheap thrills, somebody looking for an accident"

And thus, we have the 'trick' as both the successful smooth operation that usually occurs and the possiblity of an accident. A magic trick can always go horribly horribly wrong, as Borden actually points out before he attempts the gun trick: "The trick is still dangerous because you never know if a crazy audience member will put in a button or even a bullet into the chamber"--this is, of course, precisely what happens (the movie operates fatally in this sense--each instance of sacrifice must be repeated in order for it to have meaning--see Zizek on 9/11.).

The scene of the trick/possiblity of the accident is also presented in Nikolai Tesla's presentation of Alternating Current. As Angier enters the room he sees these giant balls with lightning flying back and forth from each other. Just as Baudrillard writes that "if things have a greater tendency to disappear and collapse, perhaps the principle source of future energy will be accident and catastrophe," Telsa's 'AC' is framed as an accident waiting to happen by the audience and everyone essentially runs out of the room. This is something like the heralding of electracy in the industrial revolution.

Angier also sacrifices everything--money as well as the woman who loved him--in order to get the secret (that is not really secret)--he fails to realize that the exchange is not possible-- the secret is worth nothing --the trick becomes ordinary, the sacrifice becomes ridiculous.


Transporting Man--Sacrifice of Excess

Led astray by Borden, who gives him the key word "Tesla" to his diary (which he fabricates and gives to Angier's ex-assistant--who Angier has sacrificed for the secret. Angier has also sacrificed the memory of his dead wife--the person one thinks he is out to get revenge for--he says "I don't care about my wife I care about his secret"--he sacrifices her memory), Angier goes to America to talk to Nikolai Tesla and asks him to build a machine that will transport him from one place to another. But Tesla's machine doesn't quite work the way its supposed to--seemingly not doing anything to a hat they try it out on.

The hat should signal to the viewer something they had seen before. The very opening of the film is a shot of multiple black hats on a hillside, with a voiceover that says "are you watching closely." If we are watching closely, or at the very least, if we have already seen the film, we DO know where these hats go every time. Thus, the opening of the film is addressed to the viewer (or reader) in the same manner that both Angier's diary (that Borden reads in jail after he is framed for his murder) and Borden's diary (the diary that puts him over the edge and kill Borden) are addressed to the other person.

The problem with the machine is that it does not TRANSPORT a man with no remainder--but actually DUPLICATES him. We find out that for Angier's trick to work, he must kill every double of himself in a tank (symbolically repeating his wife's death over and over again--Nolan films the scene in exactly the same as the initial drowning. Clearly, this is no longer about his wife's death--or at least, in some sense, it seems he is responsible for the death).

Thus, the machine--the scientific machine that ends all illusion, appearance, and trickery is actually responsible for several murders. The EXCESS created by the machine (or the duplication of Borden and his twin) cannot be maintained in Angier's current mode of living. . .we have to get rid of the excess, hide the excess, which is also the secret because the secret would ultimately terrify us. . .

The original excess--the two Borden's--are also too much for this world. The Borden in jail really does die and hang, despite his last word being "abracadabra." At the same time, Cutter has led Angier to the basement to dispose of the machine (reminiscent of an Edgar Allen Poe story), knowing that the other Borden will come and kill him.

One Borden1 and the Angiers have been killed--the film ends with a typical happy scene of Cutter, Borden2, and his daughter--once all the external (accidental) elements have been eliminated, life can go on as normal and all is well. . .

Connection to Mountain Top Removal

In a recent article in Scientific American, there is an article on a photographer who has taken strangely beautiful pictures of "landscapes of Extraction: Industrial Impacts Mar the Planet." Here is one of the photos that discusses Mountain Top Removal:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=landscapes-of-extraction-and-heavy-industry

This article mentions the idea of "overburden":

OVERBURDEN: That is the industry jargon for the rest of the mountain that lies over the precious coal—hence all that needs to be removed. Here at Kayford Mountain in West Virginia, bulldozers scrape away the residue of the mountaintop. This last stand of trees disappeared in less than a day, turned into "valley fill"—more industry jargon—that buries streams and levels hollers.


Thus, the "mountain" becomes excess, 'overburden' that must be controlled and disposed with. Not only the Mountain, but the coal cannot be sold in its pure extracted state, as I mentioned in my post on coal slurry. The coal requires cleaning, that ultimately creates more excess stored in various places unsafe for human beings. Excess will not be tolerated. . .or at least hidden. . .it is the SECRET of our standard of living--it is the SACRIFICE to our standard of living.

If we are looking at this from the perspective of the gift-economy, it won't do to just ignore/hid/dispose/murder this excess that is essential to the "trick". . .we must find a way to address it. . .this surely must be part of my fatal strategy.

The question is how to escape the utilitarian, clean logic that the pop culture film endorses?

"No one cares about the man who disappears (the man in the box) only the one that comes out the other side"

Theory Instructions(?)

Reading for Instructions

I think I am beginning to understand this "reading for instructions" thing. Rather than try and make sense of everything myself, I have looked for possible ways that Baudrillard can be instructive in our creation of the fatal strategy.

Object

We already know that Baudrillard is going to instruct us to look at the object. The object in our case is our particular accident. The object is a "poor conductor of the symbolic order" but a "good conductor of the fatal"--the gods (read: the sacred) can only live in the inhuman. Taking a jab at Christianity, B. argues that the "God-Man is an absurdity" So this is one instruction: focus on the object/accident, but from the perspective of the accident--as if the accident "wants to happen." As Baudrillard writes, nature may be indifferent to men, "but it is not indifferent in the fact of making itself into a spectacle through 'natural disasters' (223). This connects with our Target because Virilio does not make a distinction between man-made and natural disasters. I would argue he focuses primarily on the 'object' (the twin towers--not the terrorists).

Signs

But what about further instructions? I think it has something to do with restoring signs to their power. If we are going to read our accident as a 'sign', then we need to ask what kind of sign--a sign with or without a signifier?

This is done, in general, by seduction--but not by one's own attempts at seduction, but the object's fascinating ecstatic seduction. Seduction teras you from your own 'desire', returning you to the world and restores power to signs. So how might we do this specifically?

If we have lost the 'scene' where the magic happens, we have to look for a new kind of seduction--"vertigo of obscenity" (149). It is this kind of obscenity that Marilyn Manson seems to get at in m(Obscene). I think he may be saying that their playful eroticism is much better than what is accepted in our society (you want commitment/put on your best suit/get your arms around me now we're goin down down down--an ambiguous lyric).

In Baudrillard's narrative:

"And so the cruel story of the woman to whom a man has written a passionate letter and who asks in her turn: 'what part of me seduced you the most? To which he replies 'Your eyes' and receives by return mail, wrapped in a package, the eye which seduced [. . .] nothing is worse than to utter a wish and to have it literally fulfilled; nothing is worse than to be rewarded on the exact level of one's demand" (152).

Thus, "destiny becomes specific: at a given moment, at a given point, SIGNS BECOME OBJECTS, impossible to turn into metaphors, cruel, without appeal [. . .] They cut short any decipherment, become confused with things" (153).

And again: "words, emptied of their meaning, begin to function as things" (190).

And ok, maybe I was thinking that this also relates to the Torino/Torino scale association.

Words cease to be things at h)and--they are like Heidegger's broken hammer--staring us in the face in their brute materiality. . .

Theory as Ceremony

Ceremony of the World

Ceremony (defined):

 a. An outward rite or observance, religious or held sacred; the performance of some solemn act according to prescribed form; a solemnity (OED)

A ceremony is fatal and has no 'meaning'. The ceremony is not concerned with either subjective desire or objective 'chance' (more on that later), but the fatal object. Ceremonies are composed of discrimination NOT difference (203-205).

For me, there is a kind of relief in Baudrillard's marginalizing "difference" as the ultimate concept. Perhaps it shows my true colors as a middle class while male, but Baudrillard clearly does not completely oppose difference and discrimination. Difference has connotations of 'meaning' (at least B. claims it does). Discrimination (besides unfortunately sounding the history of race) is more about order and rules.

Indeed, Baudrillard argues that, in reality, each of us prefers and arbitrary and cruel order (although they are meant to be disturbed) than a 'liberal' one where we do not know what we want (206). This is a hard pill to swallow, but in a sense I take pleasure in repetition and ritual--when, "something besides the real is at stake." Thus, we play games.

Theory is like a ceremony: "both ceremony and theory [are] violent both are produced to prevent things and concepts from touching indiscriminately, to create discrimination, and to remake emptiness, to redistinguish what has been confused [. . .] ceremony is always sacrificial" (217).

If we are trying to re-introduce the sacred into the world--it seems that we need to look at ceremony as a possible resource--but what type of ceremony is possible in our obscene world?

Appearance and Disappearance: Baudrillard's illusions

It's Magic!

Although he doesn't explicitly say it, one of Baudrillard's main metaphors that moves throughout the text is the stage magician. Baudrillard speaks of a loss of the "scene," which corresponds to the loss of the stage and the illusion. Perhaps one of the reasons we are less attracted to magic is because our lives are obscene. We have lost illusion so that the Real is left.

Bordering on cliche, stage magic revolves around an illusion maintained by a secret. This is codified (as a "rule" rather than a meaning) in the Magician's oath:

""As a magician I promise never to reveal the secret of any illusion to a non-magician, unless that one swears to uphold the Magician's Oath in turn. I promise never to perform any illusion for any non-magician without first practicing the effect until I can perform it well enough to maintain the illusion of magic." (Wikipedia).

Thus, a pact is made to keep the secret of the illusion because if the illusion is revealed then the trick's effect is nullified. . .magic becomes banal (fatal becomes banal?). What once seemed a powerful spectacle (a kind of fetish) is reduced to a mechanical, rational explanation.

Illusion (as defined by Baudrillard): "an initiation to the rule, to the superior agreement and convention in which something other than the real is at stake" (211). 

Baudrillard argues that what will eventually 'save us' is not rationality, but the "spectacle" (Baudrillard 225). However, can we get the scene back? Or must we look toward a new mode of seduction--fascination (more on that later).

For Baudrillard, as in magic tricks, the effect is all that matters. The secret is that the secret will not suddenly give the act more meaning. The magic trick is a signifier without a signified--it produces pure pleasure and jouissance--not meaning. It causes us to ask if we can "believe our eyes"--we want to believe it was "real"--we know that it is a 'trick', but its such a convincing one. We take pleasure in it because it does not deal in the Real.

The Prestige--loss of the scene

I must thank Steven L. and Jon T. for pointing me toward the film The Prestige, which dramatizes this loss of illusion and scene:

The plot of the Prestige is pretty complicated for a popular film. Its been awhile since I have seen it, but one of the events that one can see from the trailer above is that tricks 'go wrong' and the audience is horrified by the entry of the Real. The film centers around an alleged murder--a foreign topic of the magic stage where all is a play of appearances for our enjoyment.

But The Prestige also centers around the obsession with the secret of a trick that we "know" cannot be performed. The film keeps the viewer guessing until near the end where it is revealed that the one person who we know as Borden (Christian Bale's character) is actually he and his twin brother. Wikipedia summarizes it thus:

"Borden reveals that he was actually two identical twins who lived as Fallon and Alfred, alternating between each role. One twin (the one still alive) was the husband of Sarah and father to daughter Jess, and loved Sarah more than the magic; the other was in love with Olivia. They played one individual in life and in the illusions. Angier's method is also revealed: During the illusion, the machine created a duplicate of Angier, with one falling through a trap door into a locked tank and drowning, and the other being teleported to the balcony. Each tank contains a drowned Angier. Borden leaves Angier to die as a fire consumes the building. Afterwards, Cutter reunites Borden with his daughter"

Obviously, this "loss of the secret" results in a devestating, violent ending. Furthermore, once we figure out that the trick Borden performs is actually reality, we almost feel let down as an audience--it is unexpected and yet everything begins to make sense. This is the reason the secret must be contained for a magician. Again, in a useful phrasing, Wikipedia explains,

"Exposure is claimed to "kill" magic as an artform and transforms it into mere intellectual puzzles and riddles.^{[citation needed]} It is argued that once the secret of a trick is revealed to a person, that one can no longer fully enjoy subsequent performances of that magic, as the amazement is missing.^{[citation needed]} Sometimes the secret is so simple that the audience feels let down, and feels disappointed it was taken in so easily"

Though these comments are speculation, we can understand this in terms of the CATTt as an interaction of the Contrast and Theory. Once the secret is exposed, the magic becomes "mere intellectual puzzles and riddles" and that the "moment of amazement is missing." The trick loses its inhuman quality and dons mortal garb--the magician ceases to fascinate us (is magic seduction or fascination?). We revert to revealed strategies--the "game" loses any sense of game or play.

Prestige as Re-Enchantment/Fetish

According to The Prestige, there are three parts to a magic trick. These three parts serve to, to point to Stiegler, 're-enchant' the world.

1. The Pledge-- "the magician shows you something ordinary; but of course, it probably isn't"
2. The Turn-- "the magician makes this ordinary something do something extraordinary"

(now you're looking for the secret but you won't find it)

3. The Prestige--"this is the part where the twists and turns, where lives hang in the balance, and you see something shocking you've never seen before"

Appearance and Disappearance--Our Task

Baudrillard seems to call his readers to be illusionists, to be magicians. Instead of the Heideggerian search for the meaning of Being (in the early work primarily focused on the 'subject'; in the later work attempting to find the meaning of Being in itself), Baudrillard writes that our fundamental task consists of appearing and disappearing (213).

This takes us back to two paradigmatic children's games:

1. Fort-Da. While Freud interprets this game of fort-da as the "conjuration of a mother's absence," but Baudrillard takes it one step further, arguing "its also first of all a kind of ceremony, a control and mastery of appearance and disappearance" (212).

2. Peak-A-Boo--Though this game is not in the control of the child, we see here a fundamental example of appearance and disappearance--does the child really not see the face of the other, or is he/she merely pretending to not do so?

These examples also support Baudrillard's point that while we may think that child's play is free and spontaneous, it is actually the "charm of recurrence, of ritual, of meticulous unfolding, the invention of rules and complicity in observance, are what makes for the intensity and simplicity of child's play" (212).

Although at first I was skeptical, I begin to think about my own childhood games--how we would create a system of rules to follow. One of our favorite games involved shooting each other with nerf guns or even cap guns. We had to decide what would count as a "hit". Sometimes we'd argue over it "he's dead" --"no i'm not, that just touched my pantleg" "but i hit you" etc. etc. Kids care more for 'rules' (particularly if they are arbitrary than we give them credit for).

So, appearance and disappearance--is this related to our task of fatal strategy? It seems difficult to say how we "put things back into the cycle of appearance and disappearance," though clearly it points toward a focus on the object (which we will explore more in another post).


"The secret is made up of the annihilation of causes and the burial of ends in the organized order of appearances alone. The Rule of Appearances and Disappearances" (212).

Merleau Ponty and Depth

After listening to Ulmer talk about the importance of abstract/avant-garde art for our class, and his mention of Merleau-Ponty--I thought that it would be interesting to re-read his "Eye and Mind" essay, which discusses his views on painting as a kind of analogy for how vision works. MP, as Ulmer said, was an important French phenomenologist and a contemporary (and in some sense rival) of Jean-Paul Sartre. However, Merleau-Ponty was also very interested in gestalt psychology and throughout his career maintained not only an interest but an active engagement with thinkers in the social sciences and other humanistic disciplines

In a way, Merleau-Ponty seems to be trying to find a different kind of metaphysics--just as we are trying to do with the accident. He contrasts (and yet draws upon) Descartes conceptions of space and the artwork that he chooses to analyze: copper engraved paintings. MP writes that "any theory of painting is a metaphysics" (Merleau Ponty 171). For Descartes, "pictures" are conceived mainly in terms of line drawings that, like the copper engravings, "preserve the forms of objects [. . .] present the object by its outside or its envelope" (172). As Ulmer mentioned before, MP contrasts this way of thinking of 'pictures' with 'secondary qualities' like color. Although he clearly says that color is not a key to painting's metaphysics. Indeed, he argues that "lines" can also give a sense of 'depth' to a painting. Particularly Matisse, who though will still put in what MP calls the "prosaic" dimension of the line but also the "hidden operation which composes in it such softness or inertia and such forces as are required to constitute it as nude, as face, as flower" (MP 184). 

Thus, Merleau-Ponty attempts to get at a kind of poetic understanding of the concept 'depth'. Depth uses to be understood as the trick of the eye technique of the Renaissance painters. MP argues that though this technique was not more artificial than the others, the painters mistakenly thought that this was the final achievement of painting. Instead, he looks for a visible that suggests the invisible: "the proper essence o the visible is to have a layer of invisibility in the strict sense, which it makes present as a certain absence" (187).

I think that we too should attempt in our 'paintings' to indicate an invisible layer of depth that has nothing to do with a representation of depth perception, but everything to do with drawing the viewer in. MP's description of the painting may give us a poetic attitude/mood to inhabit while we work with even our digital photographs: "The actions most proper to him [the painter]. . .to him seem to emanate from the things themselves, like the patterns of the constellations. Inevitably the roles between him and the visible are reversed. that is why so many paintings have said that things look at them" (MP 167, my italics). This notion of reversibility will return when we get to Baudrillard, but for now I want to argue that this is another way of forming the event as a sign that we do not explain, but that 'explains us'. As Merleau-Ponty puts it,  "the question comes from one who does not know, and it is addressed to a vision, a seeing which knows everything and which we do not make, for it makes itself in us" (MP 167). Thus we are not meant to look at the event as an 'interpreter', but as a painter who is responding to the event in light that we believe it can give us an aesthetic explanation.