Ian Bogost wants very much to distinguish between the elements which comprise a narrative approach to media analysis, and his own, premised on Alain Badiou’s “count as one,” which grapples with the paradoxical notion of an infinite set (or even more paradoxically, multiple infinite sets). I’m a set theory layman, but it seems to me that by definition a single infinite “set” would have to preclude the occurrence of multiples, i.e. infinity by definition confounds addition or compounding or even presentation in multiple, must less singular, instances. (Further reading suggests that set theory applies an “accepted” meaning of infinite…call it “practically infinite”). I’m still confused.
Setting that aside, I think I’m seeing at least a cursory similarity between the distinction of “units” as referential and theorist Stanley Fish’s notion of “interpretive communities.” The former notion (according to University of Cairo metaphysician Graham Harman) suggests that objects (you, me, the world around us) are inherently referential and, as such, extend beyond their own limits; the latter theory extends individual, experiential, and also referential interpretations to the social communal experience, arguably itself a unit-plus-n extension.
But about any of this it can be difficult to see precisely what Bogost is after. He begins by admonishing jargon, then proceeds to employ quite a bit of it as he attempts to explicate the theoretical and historical underpinnings of what separates his notion of “units” operating discretely but interconnectedly. As I’m reading, I keep asking myself “How isn’t this just another deconstructive iteration redrawn for an informatics-based audience?” Maybe that’s what it’s meant to be.
Another area of inquiry that seems a bit foggy: Feedback loops in organism behavior, so for instance frog tongues as operating in relation to insects…stimulus, response, unit relation. Also, a frog’s neural system can act collectively as a “predator” set in relation to sets of insect “prey,” making that relationship unit operational as well. But how does that hash out on an observational matrix? How do you identify the behavioral taxonomy? Or do you? Doesn’t the observational matrix present a return-to-systems problem?
And what about “apprehending” itself, the very act gripped by a kind of transitory structuralism? It’s impossible to think unitarily in the strictest sense of discretely. Our conscious sense of ourselves and our reality is organizational. Consciousness is premised on systemic thinking, real-time bio-electric activity that enables moment-to-moment perception lattices, allowing us to apperceptively sort reality according to our recursively manufactured frameworks. Illusory or tangible, I think structuralism or at least structural projection underpins basic human self-awareness. Structures may collapse at analytic event horizons, but consciousness is premised on the assumption that structures exist. I’m not sure you can get outside that. It’s another “think without language” paradox.
Another area I’m muddy about: digital thinking. In my experience, digital has always meant fixed, rigid, fundamentally systemic. As Bogost employs the term, he seems to mean it as binary, as sive (from Spinoza’s expression “Deus sive Natura“), as unfixed and disconnected. I think the analogy risks confusing the more common “digital” vs. “analog” debate, i.e. on/off vs. continuously variable and liable to change. Or perhaps the point is an inverse of that debate: unit operations as digital in the sense that digital becomes a functional collection of discrete units employed in the creation of systems, but nonetheless merely an approximation of the ungraspable, analog infinite.
Post a Comment