Virilio’s “Open Sky”

It is possible to at once project love, amazement, and disgust at Virilio’s (1997/2008) Open Sky; Virilio is entertaining enough that he excites the extremes of all the emotions one feels upon reading an engaging text. Take, for example:

“If the interval of time (positive sign) and the interval of space (negative sign) have laid out the geography and history of the world through the geometric design of agrarian areas (fragmentation into lots of land) and urban areas (the cadastral system), the organization of calendars and the measurement of time (clocks) have also presided over a vast chronopolitical regulation of human societies. The very recent of emergence of an interval of the third type thus signals a sudden qualitative leap, a profound mutation in the relationship between man and his surroundings.

Time (duration) and space (extension) are now inconceivable without light (limit-speed), the cosmological constant of the speed of light, an absolute philosophical contingency that supersedes, in Einstein’s wake, the absolute character till then accorde to space and time by Newton and many others before him” (Virilio 1997/2008: 13).

which draws on a body of philosophy dealing with the nature of space and time (it is with this literature that I am deeply enmeshed in preperation for section 3 of my doctoral comps). First, the associations between time-positive and space-negative come directly from Einstein’s general relativity, in that “the equations that define space-time as a four dimensional continuum (for example c²t² – x² – y² – z² = 1), the three spatial co-ordinates x, y and z are subtractive when the temporal co-ordinate t is additive and vice versa” (Murphy 1999: 68). The practical ramifications of this equation are easily explored with the use of a spacetime diagram:

Here, time is represented by the vertical Y axis, and space by the horizontal X-axis. The speed of light (v=c) is denoted by the dotted red line, which proceeds at 45° from both axes. If your velocity is less than the speed of light – v<c – then your movement occurs in the upper 45º of the graph. This is called a timelike path, and is the path that normal matter assumes in the spacetime of relativity. Contra, a velocity  greater than the speed of light (v>c) gives rise to a spacelike path, which is the path that timetravelers and tachyons follow. The dotted red line itself is a lightlike path or null path. Ray (1991) explains:

In the spacetimes of the STR [special theory of relativity] and The General Theory of Relativity (GTR), we may connect any two points geometrically by timelike, null, or spacelike paths… When a timelike path connects two points, a signal travelling at less than the speed of light may  pass continuously from one point to the other. When a null path connects two points, only a signal travelling at the speed of light may pass between them. The notion of causality in relativity is tied to the idea of light being the fastest possible causal signal between two points. [...] So the ‘light cone’ of an event C may be thought of as the cone of possible causal influence – C may be regarded as a physical cause of any event within or on the lightcone” (Ray 1991: 60).

This is perhaps more easily visualized when space in generalized to two, rather than one, dimensions:

where anything lying outside of the “future light cone” of the observer is thus, by definition, incapable of causually influencing the observer in the future. Put another way, if nothing can move faster than the speed of light, then only objects that lie within the spacetime bounded by the speed of light relative to the observer (i.e., the future light cone which expands as time progresses) can causually influence the observer.  Tachyons, or any other object following a spacelike path, violate the law of causality and the vectored 1-dimensionality of normal time, giving rise to the paradoxes of time-travel.

Ray goes on to note that “the laws of STR do not legislate against particles travelling faster than light. The key idea behind STR is the invariance rather than the limiting character of the speed of light” (1991: 61). This, of course, strikes to the heart of Virilio’s second point quoted above, that “the cosmological constant of the speed of light, an absolute philosophical contingency that supersedes, in Einstein’s wake, the absolute character till then accorde to space and time by Newton and many others before him”. The absolute space and absolute time of Newton were transformed by Einstein – not into relative spaces and relative times – but an absolute spacetime denoted by the universal invariance of the speed of light. Speed, after all, is denoted in meters per second or some other such notation – understandable only in the relationship between space and time. Where the speed of light is fixed, so too space and time.

Virilio ties this exposition of spacetime back into modern human existence with the following:

“The exposure time of the photographic plate is thus simply the exposure of time, of the space-time of its photosensitive matter, to the light of speed, that is, ultimately, to the frequency of the photon carrier wave. [...] These days, the screen of real-time televised broadcasts is no longer a monochromatic filter like the one familiar to photographers which lets through a single color only of the spectrum, but a monochronic filter which allows a glimpse only of the present. An intensive present, spawned by the limit-speed of electromagnetic waves and no longer registered in chronological time – past-present-future – but in chronoscopic time: underexposed-exposed-overexposed” (Virilio 1997/2008: 28).

Interesting, no?

Enough meditation on the ontology of spacetime (although I could go on, bringing in Schivelbusch’s The Railway Journey and “the vast chronopolitical regulation of human societies”). What else is interesting in Virilio? What about this gem:

“Historically, we thus find ourselves faced with a sort of great divide in knowing how to be in the world: on the one hand, there  is the original nomad for whom the journey, the being’s trajectory, are dominant. On the other, there is the sedentary man for whom subject and object prevail, movement towards the immovable, the inert, characterizing the sedentary urban ‘civilian’ in contrast to the ‘warrior’ nomad.

A movement that is today intensifying due to remote control and long-distance telepresence technologies that will soon land us in the ultimate state of sedentariness where real-time environmental control will take over from the development of the real space of the territory.

Terminal – and final – sedentarization; a practical consequence of the emergence of a third and final horizon of indirect visibility (after the apparent and deep horizon): a transapparent horizon spawned by telecommunications, that opens up the incredible possibility of a ‘civilization of forgetting’, a live (live-coverage) society that has no future and no past, since it has no extension and no duration, a society intensely present here and there at once – in otherwords, telepresent to the whole world” (Virilio 1997/2008: 25)

And another, discussing the same theme:

“Once more we are seeing a reversal in trends: where the motorization of transport and information once caused a general mobilization of populations, swept up into the exodus of work and then of leisure, instantaneous transmission tools cause the reverse: a growing intertia; television and especially remote control action no longer requiring people to be mobile, but merely to be mobile on the spot” (Virilio 1997/2008: 20)

Meditate on that, if you will. As Virilio succintly notes: “Service or servitude, that is the question” (Virilio 1997/2008: 20).

Melancholic Biunivocality

Began the day by mulling over Deleuze and Guatarri’s exposition of ‘biunivocal relationships’ in a suitable state of melancholy. Recall the deification of genus Homarus:

“God is a lobster, or a double pincer, a double bind. Not only do strata come at least in pairs, but in a different way each stratum is double (it itself has several layers). Each stratum exhibits phenomena constitutive of double articulation. Articulate twice, B-A, BA. [...] Both articulations establish binary relations between their respective segments. But between the segments of one articulation and the segments of the other there are biunivocal relationships obeying far more complex laws” [ATP 40-41].

Double articulation, then, is the process by which strata become stratified. But what does it mean to say this relationship is ‘biunivocal’?  Mark Bonta and John Protevil’s (2004) exegises, normally enligtening, is of no help; their Deluzoguattarian glossary (a paradoxical project, I realize) lacks an entry for ‘Biunivocal’. Other entries on related topics -  ‘Strata’, ‘Stratification’ and ”Faciality’ – likewise fail to mention bunivocality. What, then,  is this thing, this biunivocality?

Reading ‘biunivocal’ from within the complex associational matrix of the English language – ‘biunivocal’ itself is Massumi’s word choice, after all – is itself a Deluezoguatarrian expedition of and…and…and. ‘Univocal’, according to the OED:

A. adj.

1. a. Of symptoms, signs, etc.: Indicative of, signifying, or denoting one thing; certain or unmistakable in significance. Chiefly Med. Obs.

b. Of terms, etc.: Having only one proper meaning or signification; admitting or capable of a single interpretation or explanation; of which the meaning is unmistakable; unambiguous.
Opposed to EQUIVOCAL a. 2. Now esp. in Logic.

c. Mus. (See quot.) Obs. rare⁰.

2. Uniform, homogeneous; not exhibiting variation or deviation; confined to one kind or nature.
Freq. in the latter half of the 17th c., esp. in the writings of Jeremy Taylor; in some instances it is difficult to determine the precise sense.

3. Of or belonging to, characteristic of, things of the same name or species; esp. in univocal generation, normal or regular generation between male and female members of the same species. Obs.

b. Of actions, causes, etc. Obs.

4. Made, uttered, etc., with or as if with one voice. Of consent, etc.: Unanimous. Obs.

In what sense then, biunivocality in ATP? All of the above, of course.  Each strata is univocal: indicative of, signifying, or denoting one thing having only one proper meaning or signification; homogeneous through the process of overcoding; of or belonging to things of the same name or species (e.g., the inorganic, organic, or alloplastic strata); of actions and causes in the sense that collectively strata are “actualized systems with homogenized components operating at or near equilibrium/steady state/stability” (Bonta and Protevi 2004: 150); and made and uttered with or as if with one voice, which quite nicely captures the associated ideas of multiplicity, overcoding, homogenaity, vocality, and resonance all at once. Thus, the biunivocal relationship between two voices – each articulating its own univocal monophony – produces a biunivocal polyphonic texture which is emergent in character. The nomenclature ‘BIunivocal’ then, is a recognition of the importance of interaction in producing complex emergent effects/behavior.  One wonders, of course, if this reading holds true in the original french [The quasi-musical metaphor of biunivocality has strong tie-ins to the music of Steve Reich - a paper which I intend to write one day, but will not discuss at length here].

Melancholy intrudes in the imagery of biunivocal: two who are speaking, but not listening. Two people talking past each other, as it were. Undoubtedly this is a reflection of the English language, within which the notion of asymetric reciprocal interactions is difficult to express – witness ‘asymetric reciprocal interaction’ – but nevertheless, biunivocality says nothing about whether the other is listening or not. It posits only the act of vocality itself, but not receiving, decoding, interpreting. At its strictest interpretation, biunivocality posits no understanding, no reaction, no interaction, only independent articulation. [Note that this strict interpretation is exactly opposite the one intended by Deleuze and Guattari]

Guattari passed away in 1992, near Bloise, a town 185 km southwest of Paris – of what, neither Brittanica, nor Wikipedia, nor several other internet sources disclose. Undoubtedly, this is because Guattari is often overlooked as a necessary univocal composite of the biunivocal Deleuze and Guattari. Deleuze simply gets all the attention, a fact of which he was well aware. After Guattari embarked on his last line of flight, Deleuze wrote a short article in the Winter Chimeres (1992-93) entitled ‘For Felix’, in which he wrote, not “about the books we wrote together, but about the books he [Guattari] wrote on his own” (Deleuze 2006: 382). Deleuze’s short piece concludes:

“Felix’s work is waiting to be discovered or rediscovered. That is one of the best ways to keep Felix alive. Perhaps the most painful aspects of remembering a dead friend are the gestures and glances that still reach us, that still come to us long after he is gone. Felix’s work gives new substance to these gestures and glances, like a new object capable of transmitting their power” (Deleuze 2006: 383).

Three years later, Deleuze commited suicide. A heavy smoker incapacitated by lung cancer, he had recently undergone the removal of a lung and a tracheotomy. “Chained like a dog” to his oxygen machine (Goodchild 1996), unable to speak, and unable to bear the chronic, tumorous pain, Deleuze chose to self-defenestrate from his Paris apartment rather than languish in agony. Jacques Derrida (1995) wrote an elegiac memorial to the great man in Tympanum, poignantly entitled ‘I’ll have to wander all alone’. Derrida’s article is at once heartrending and cathartic, sprinkled with personal remembrance and philosophical engagements wthi Deleuze’s life.  Derrida’s conclusion is particularly melancholy:

“I will continue to begin again to read Gilles Deleuze in order to learn, and I’ll have to wander alone in this long conversation that we were supposed to have together” (Derrida 1995).

Only Derrida’s voice echoes back from the halls of the dead, a lone monophony lost in a still, quite place of solitude.

Bonta, Mark and Protevi, John. 2004. Deleuze and Geophilosophy: A Guide and Glossary. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press

Deleuze, Gilles. 2006. Two regimes of Madness: Text and Interviews 1975 – 1995. New York: Semiotext(e).

Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. translated by Brian Massumi.

Derrida, Jacques. 1995. ‘I’ll have to wander all alone’. Tympanum 1, http://www.usc.edu/dept/comp-lit/tympanum/1/derrida.html; accessed 07.02.09

Goodchild, P. 1996. Deleuze and Guattari: An Introduction to the Politics of Desire. London: Sage