There is a lot to learn from revisiting the original meditaitons. This morning as I reread the
writing from this day ten years ago two things jumped out at me. First, is what
I’ll call the presumption of emphasis, which is an awkward way of describing
the belief that a theme has been addressed much more than it actually has been. Second, is what I’ll call the
fallacy of coherence, which produces a disparaging of equivocation. Both of these were disclosed to me as I sat
down to write my commentary based on yet another prompt from Blanchot on the
prophetic.
I
started by searching the blog for all uses of the term ‘prophetic,’ already
anticipating that the first line of today’s commentary would be something like:
“There are a few terms that receive as much attention as ‘prophetic’…” Much to my surprise the term is ostensibly
appearing in only 5 posts, but, upon further investigation it is only appearing
2 posts, and only 1 time with substance!
[PPM 30, MARCH 14th] “And, finally, that Love is a kind
of spirit, indeed, the very one that empowers the one who practices the
'prophetic art' of philosophy.
[OPM 144, JULY 8TH] “The sage is a kind of prophetic
figure, which is one of the reasons the writing experiment takes a long sojourn
with Nietzsche's Zarathustra [this is forthcoming!]. The sage is
prophetic in the sense of expressing a vision of the future that breaks with
the past and present. Prophetic in the sense of articulating an
emancipatory discourse.”
Along the way, as I was reviewing the posts where the ‘prophetic’
was ostensibly taken up I encountered two striking moments of equivocation with
my writing on spirituality. At first I
was troubled by this, but then the fallacy of coherence was revealed to me, and
I was forced to recognize the depth of the deeply rooted internalized
expectation that is a cornerstone of academia set by Aristotle’s
principle of non-contradiction. Of
course I am fully conscious of how deeply I have internalized the hegemonic expectation
of coherence and consistency. In fact
it’s not an exaggeration to say that the writing experiment was in part
motivated around the attempt to uproot this expectation. And other writing too, specifically the work
on the threshold scholar and the ontology of the stranger. In fact the ‘poetic,’ as a qualifier of ‘poetic phenomenology,’ is a
sign or euphemism for the attempt to exorcize this expectation from my
writing. And this is precisely where
the LAPES project has taken off from.
That is, from the struggle to think within the location that is marked
by the ‘logic’ of contradiction, which is not simply an inversion or reversal
of Aristotle’s principle of non-contradiction but a phenomenological
documentation of the specific event that unfolded at the inception of el Nuevo
Mundo, the collision between the previously co-existing old worlds. [This past week the thinking from within this
‘collision’ has been momentarily suspended/delayed by Warburg’s ‘old book’ and the kinship it
claims to demonstration between these ancient philosophies.]
And it is precisely with the suspension of threshold thinking that
I have been reading Blanchot’s essay ‘Prophetic Speech.’ This suspension animates a feeling of
hospitality that immediately and paradoxically produces a sense of ‘kinship’
between the suspended project and Blanchot’s writing on the prophetic:
“prophetic speech announces an impossible future, or makes the future it
announces, because it announces it, something impossible, a future one would
not know how to live and that must upset all the sure givens of existence.”(p.
79) But this is precisely what the writing that emerges from the thinking of the
threshold scholar announces when it offers a phenomenology of the collision
zone where he moves. Of course there is very important contrast
between what Blanchot is saying and what the threshold scholar is offering, and
that is on the location of the impossibility, and thus the temporality of
prophetic speech. Above I cited OPM
144: “The sage is prophetic in the sense of expressing a vision of the future
that breaks with the past and present.” This break is the kairological interruption
that marks the time of living endured by those who persist along the collision
zone. One can not live but merely exists in
the collision zone. Here then, in the
present (interpolated by the past), is the impossibility of life that is made possible by an
transcendent art making, the music-making of the blues, the congregational
spirituals announcing the impending arrival of an alternative livable and sustainable future. But this is not a certain future, but
one envisioned in song infused with faith and hope. Thus, Blanchot is on the mark when he writes
of prophetic speech that its force is felt as an interruption of the present:
“When speech becomes prophetic, it is not the future that is given, it is the
present that is taken away, and with it any possibility of a firm, stable,
lasting presence.” (ibid) I would only
add that prophetic speech (or song) does not so much take away as reveal what
is already (always?) existing insofar as it discloses the impossibility of living in the present. This is why meditative thinking is preparatory and anticipatory.
Today, given the content of the just completed commemorative
commentary, the fragment I’m distilling from the writing completed this day ten
years ago will be the complete second sentence:
The poetic is the originary
or fundamental dwelling of learning because ‘poetic’ identifies the receptive
modality of a responding that is most ready and open for the unforeseen.
3.0 (Monday, Portland, ME) - Yesterday's 3.0 was completed but for some reason I forgot to publish it. Actually, I'm presuming that the family stress from yesterday distracted me. My beloved son, Jaime, is experiencing the intensity of being 14 in the time of climate change and social media. The smart phone is in many ways a more dangerous and debilitating addiction than the opioids that are ravaging so many these days. Anxiety levels are off the charts, and I believe it's related to the climate change. All that to say, I pray he kind find balance and smile more often than scowl. But I also recall that when I was 14 I had an awful summer, so as the old adage goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same!
ReplyDeletePerhaps that is the secret of prophets. They can predict the return of trends?
As I wrote yesterday, the second moment of the dialectic I am describing is located in-between reading and discussion. But each moment of the dialectic of philosophical study that I am describing is always situated in the Moment, which is Nietzsche's category for the Now, for the eternally recurring Present. Was his Zarathustra a prophet? My recollection is that he was indeed a Persian prophet. His speeches were prophetic. But they were delivered in the form of evocative speech, as parables and sermons. At times they announce a future.
Blanchot has been a central figure in part 2, which I am writing this July. I had no recollection of having studied Blanchot 10 years ago during the very same time when he has figured so prominently in my work. For me, Blanchot is exemplary as a thinker and writer. He is understated, but at the same time audacious. This he shares with other French philosophers. But the reserve of his writing is truly inspirational. Of course what he has said on writing is fundamental for my project, and he lead me right to Kafka's "HE," a parable that Arendt takes up in the Preface to "Between Past and Future," and a piece that was influential when I make the turn toward temporality awhile back. It's uncanny, to say the least, to read the 2.0 commentary that cites Blanchot. And the uncanniness of encountering underlines the message of the distilled fragment from OPM 151: 'poetic' does indeed identify the receptive modality of responding that is most ready and open for the unforeseen. But the smiling ferocious image of Howlin' Wolf tempers my Romantic sensibilities and reminds me that the "unforeseen" includes trouble ahead. This is what the poetics of the blues teaches us!