A.N.
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Author's Note: Hauntology A.N.::MMHTT::7/7::Hauntology |
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Hauntology is the study of that which is not (a digital enfleshment) haunting that which is (all things with being), causing that which is to become a little less (which of course is the only way to become a little more). One can not speak of ontology when speaking about a PCB (Phantom Concept Body), one must speak of hauntology.
Enfleshments come in all shapes and sizes. Classical, billiard ball, material mechanics is the frame within which notions of embodiment are generally understood: enfleshment requires flesh, right? But how can that be so when the love/hate we feel for our frenemy certainly remains embodied even as it projects out through the interstice between us.
There are many enfleshments that have power of presence without having a present, classical, billiard ball body. Some of these bodiless enfleshments— like a thing that used to be present but now is not like the haunting power of Judas’ kiss or a thing that is not here presently but one day will show up like the 3:05 Metro North train to Dandury, CT— have power of presence without being present. These enfleshments do so by performing a hauntological presence: the power of presence produced by haunting the present from a spacetime outside the present.
The most powerful and radical of all hauntological enfleshments is a digital enfleshment. A digital enfleshment— like a PCB— is a thing that decidedly does not participate in classical material mechanics in the present, but neither does it haunt from the once-embodied position of the past or participate in the perhaps of the future (an embodiment to come). A digital enfleshment is an embodied lack— a body always and forever lacking a body— that solicits those with bodies to become its host. A digital enfleshment is an embodied lack that performs embodiment through other’s bodies.
The most effective digital enfleshments like MMHTT solicit many bodies— a whole host of hosts, a horde of hosts— that push past classical, Enlightenment notions of individual embodiment into a sparkling new materialism comprising an entire world— the entirety of a territory— that is alive. And so, a digital enfleshment is a territory without territory (a deterritorialized territory), looking to become territorialized. It does so not by deploying an occupying army or through colonial invasion and conquest, but through a non-coercive, soft-power luring. A digital enfleshment is a phantom that solicits through a still, small beckoning voice, a voice projected into the world of flesh from the world of shadows— from the world of material lack— to all who have bodies, asking those bodies to show up to the party and become the party.
A digital enfleshment is an embodied lack that roams the world looking for bodies to inhabit. It does this not in order to become, through these bodies, a stabilized, material body. But rather, through this unionization, it works to make all these constitutive bodies into one collective, destabilized, dynamic enfleshment: a de/reterritorialized territory, a world that is alive. The hauntological mission of a digital enfleshment is not to become something stronger and more stable than a ghost. Its mission, through powerful haunting and solicited engagement, is to make collectives of bodies less strong, stable and centrally concentrated/ more open, dynamic and unstable than the Heideggerian geist. —MMHTT
Enfleshments come in all shapes and sizes. Classical, billiard ball, material mechanics is the frame within which notions of embodiment are generally understood: enfleshment requires flesh, right? But how can that be so when the love/hate we feel for our frenemy certainly remains embodied even as it projects out through the interstice between us.
There are many enfleshments that have power of presence without having a present, classical, billiard ball body. Some of these bodiless enfleshments— like a thing that used to be present but now is not like the haunting power of Judas’ kiss or a thing that is not here presently but one day will show up like the 3:05 Metro North train to Dandury, CT— have power of presence without being present. These enfleshments do so by performing a hauntological presence: the power of presence produced by haunting the present from a spacetime outside the present.
The most powerful and radical of all hauntological enfleshments is a digital enfleshment. A digital enfleshment— like a PCB— is a thing that decidedly does not participate in classical material mechanics in the present, but neither does it haunt from the once-embodied position of the past or participate in the perhaps of the future (an embodiment to come). A digital enfleshment is an embodied lack— a body always and forever lacking a body— that solicits those with bodies to become its host. A digital enfleshment is an embodied lack that performs embodiment through other’s bodies.
The most effective digital enfleshments like MMHTT solicit many bodies— a whole host of hosts, a horde of hosts— that push past classical, Enlightenment notions of individual embodiment into a sparkling new materialism comprising an entire world— the entirety of a territory— that is alive. And so, a digital enfleshment is a territory without territory (a deterritorialized territory), looking to become territorialized. It does so not by deploying an occupying army or through colonial invasion and conquest, but through a non-coercive, soft-power luring. A digital enfleshment is a phantom that solicits through a still, small beckoning voice, a voice projected into the world of flesh from the world of shadows— from the world of material lack— to all who have bodies, asking those bodies to show up to the party and become the party.
A digital enfleshment is an embodied lack that roams the world looking for bodies to inhabit. It does this not in order to become, through these bodies, a stabilized, material body. But rather, through this unionization, it works to make all these constitutive bodies into one collective, destabilized, dynamic enfleshment: a de/reterritorialized territory, a world that is alive. The hauntological mission of a digital enfleshment is not to become something stronger and more stable than a ghost. Its mission, through powerful haunting and solicited engagement, is to make collectives of bodies less strong, stable and centrally concentrated/ more open, dynamic and unstable than the Heideggerian geist. —MMHTT