#zoopoetics

« Les pierres sont remplies d'entrailles. Bravo. Bravo. »

03/03/2022

Here is a screenshot of the English Wikipedia article on "Iconicity":

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iconicity

These "iconic principles" correspond precisely to the three anti-Oedipal agents: real mother, symbolic father, and imaginary mother.

This furthermore resonates with the conceptualization of natural metaphor in the mechanisms of the unconscious which characterize its primary processes (namely, condensation and displacement).

These render a symbolization (is it still "within" a semiosis?) in its opposition to a sign (S), but in the form of a different sign, either ~S, or not ~S. This contains the icon, but this icon is the substance of the form, and iconicity is essential to this substance as its intrinsic capacity. A symbolization, however, has two pairs of terms which are internally contrary, but they are not contrary to one another, since they are internally contrary in the same way (S1 is vertically alligned with ~S1, as is S2 with ~S2). This is what opens up the dimension of temporality to the understanding.

Any given S, as long as the semiosis at hand is "natural" (i.e., authentic and actual, or, a perception enabling genuine thought), shares its upper-level "axis" in common with the symbolizations of castration, namely, the "axis" which connects the "imaginary object" of perception to the "real father" of the present moment as such. This moment both foregrounds and continuously re-establishes the castrational dimension contingent to the Oedipus complex, and defines the rules which govern the "boundaries" of the visual field, or the scopic relation to "territories".

This means that iconic principles are those which govern perception at its outermost margins, but also push back against the (Deleuzoguattarian) geologic stratum by the counteractive affection of its molecular milieus, pushing back towards the center from which the stratum emanates.

Temporally speaking, iconic principles begin and end on an affect, one attributed to a particular anti-Oedipal agent. The perception of memory depends on this ordering of anti-Oedipal agents in correspondence with reality. Hence the peculiarity of feelings that linger without the words to explain them, and in connection with the appreciations of perception indicated by contemplative cognition. This attributes sentiments to particular forms of reality that run counter to an organism's moral staying-on-task and de-stabilizes its perception, yet curiously enough, it also reverses or remedies the temporal fading of memories and re-stabilizes perception differently.

Since the Oedipus complex is a sequence of moments defined by temporal groupings of three terms together out of the four terms that make up one of the two of its castrational symbolizations (castration–frustration and castration–privation), we can take the lesson about the mathematics of a series that Lacan teaches us in the Seminar on "The Purloined Letter" and apply it respectively in order to obtain the permutations of the semiotic square which are necessary to obtain the L-schema. Then we can use this same lesson and apply it to the anti-Oedipal pairs of terms and figure out their relation to symbolizations in general.

Quantity principle:

imaginary mother <––> symbolic father –> real mother

Proximity principle:

real mother <––> imaginary mother –> symbolic father

Sequential order principle:

symbolic father <––> real mother –> imaginary mother

The epigram I devised to help explain symbolizations of castration in the Oedipus complex was: "You have to have four to have three." In a corresponding expression about iconicity, one might say: "you have to have two to have three, too."

In authentic semiosis, the relation between S and ~S must be the same as the one between ~S and S. In a symbolization, however, what no longer supports this "must" is that implication no longer functions to equivocate the semiotic relation between the pairs of terms. The four terms in a semiotic square were interchangeable with one another because the relation between any pair of terms to the other pair of terms was naturally the same. But in a symbolization, the understanding has now met with the Other, because it has learned that a sign is reproducible by means of the dimension of what is signified. Thus, the a of the ego (in the L-schema) cannot imply the existence of the signifier (top-left, S), because the signifier is the emergence of a convergence now affirmed by the discourse of the Other (lower-right, A) which is unconscious, i.e., it cannot be directly perceived as existent in the natural world, but it does exist for someone else (who knows about "it", namely, a word).

What iconic principles modify is the ~S of the semiotic square, but what the resonances of iconicity really indicate is the aphanisis (disappearance or fading away) of the symbolization that preceded its appearance to perception.

Iconic Counter-Principles

Running counter to iconic principles, however, are principles of metaphysics. I devised an epigram for each to represent their semiotic consequences:

[1. ] The metaphysical counterpart of the "quantity principle" is number, identity, or in terms of term logic, "A is A".

The name of the mother is the Name of the Father.

[2.] The metaphysical counterpart of the "proximity principle" is Dasein.

The Name of the Father is "Dasein".

[3.] Thirdly, the metaphysical counterpart of the "sequential order principle" is idealism, since the sequential description of events (materialism) "is mirrored in the speech chain".

The symbolic mother is genetic,