Sunday, November 27, 2022
Saturday, November 26, 2022
One More Strategy for the Meaningless / EZE, 2022
The way Terry Eagleton reads T.S. Eliot is as a split text: at least one level of meaningless/at least one level of collective (un)consciousness. With asemics and polysemics and the interplay between them, we often have a single source of text and thereby an interplay of meaning/not meaning on what is usually a single plane. But the split Eagleton invokes gives us another textual problem: the identity of the text under interpretation. And this split creates yet another problem: the prioritization of the interpretation(s).
See what you think:
Poetry was not to engage the reader's mind: it did not really matter what a poem actually meant, and Eliot professed himself to be quite unperturbed by apparently outlandish interpretations of his own work. Meaning was no more than a sop thrown to the reader to keep him distracted, while the poem went stealthily to work on him in more physical and unconscious ways ... . (Terry Eagleton: Literary Theory: An Introduction, 35)
Sunday, September 18, 2022
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Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Tuesday, August 30, 2022
Category Theory for Asemic Writing / EZE, 2022
Writing is a mapping onto a graphic space. What does that mapping consist of?
For writing that entails graphemes, writing generally entails the construction of words and the composition of text, and a standard definition of writing is to produce text with semantic meaning. What happens when writing is not so mapped? when the purpose of writing is not to produce text with such meaning? Does writing that does not produce such text become graphic art? To some extent, yes.
In on some hypothetical categories of asemic writing, Marco Giovenale entertains four categories for writing that does not produce text with semantic meaning, and such writing, Giovenale generally deems asemic writing.
(1) concrete asemic writing (asemicrete),
(2) visual asemic writing,
(3) glitchasemics, and
(4) abstrasemics.
However, Giovenale criticizes the use of the "asemic writing" label for 1) "abstract or realistic paintings (pictorial works, photographs etc.)" and 2) "legible alphabets and texts ... [used as] monotonous decorations that would hardly be taken for words or sentences".
In sum, Giovenale finds writing to be something produced in a graphic space, and he tends to define asemic writing as writing that displaces immediately semantic text as its product.
Inadvertently, by pointing out the (ab)use of the asemic label, Giovenale gives the use of the label asemic writing another purpose: as a method to displace the semantic writing in a presentation.
While Giovenale sees it as a technique weirdly, perhaps badly, used, this method is no less a means to make writing asemic. After all, to declare "asemic writing" is perhaps a heavy-handed way to declare C'est ne pas un pipe.
As to other mappings, how about Category Theory?
on some hypothetical categories of asemic writing / marco giovenale. 2022
Perhaps it is possible, in the field of asemic writing, to distinguish a few ---completely hypothetical--- categories. I insist that these are mere hypotheses, and that I am not interested in structuring a rigorous theory.
We have (1) concrete asemic writing when only the asemic glyphs and calligraphy, only the asemic letters and sentences are present on the page. No images, no colors.
We can also say asemicrete, a term coined by Michael Jacobson.
We can say we have (2) visual asemic writing when we see the asemic symbols are intertwined, superimposed or when they ---in any other way--- simply share the page with abstract or realistic images.
We have (3) glitchasemics when an asemic text is evidently disturbed by some kind of glitch: it may even be severely disturbed, but not so much as to make the asemic part completely disappear.
We can say we have (4) abstrasemics when an abstract drawing or image turns itself into something resembling an illegible text, an asemic piece. Or, on the contrary, when a fragment of asemic writing gradually loses any vaguely linguistic aspect and is transformed into an abstract image.
Post scriptum.
At the same time, there are examples of works that marginalize ---or do not include at all--- an asemic aspect, and I would refer to them as: abstract or realistic paintings (pictorial works, photographs etc.) weirdly called "asemic writing" by their authors; legible alphabets and texts weirdly called "asemic writing" by their authors; monotonous decorations that would hardly be taken for words or sentences.
Sunday, August 28, 2022
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