Issue 5 - Carte Blanche by Gadfly Magazine

GADFLY Spring 2021 Columbia University Undergraduate Philosophy Magazine

GAD CARTE BLA

DFL Y LANCHE 05

GADFLY Spring 2021 Columbia University Undergraduate Philosophy Magazine

EDITORS Editor-in-Chief Emilie Biggs Chief Article Editor Nicholas Gauthier

Interview Editors Rishi Chhapolia Joey Clatement Qingyuan Deng

Digital & Design Editor Skylar Wu

Deputy Editors Wynona Barua Gabrielle Epuran Paul Hanna Angie Lytle Ella Markianos Soham Mehta Aiden Sagerman Ciro Salcedo

Assistant Design Editor Matthew Harper

Representative Ashley Blanche Waller

Chief Interview Editor Tzar Taraporvala Managing Editor Jonathan Tanaka

Events & Publicity Manager Mars Hu Article Editors Chase Bush-McLaughlin Matthew Harper Isaac Schott Elia Zhang

Editors Emeritus Cecilia Bell Alice Mccrum

We thank the Columbia Philosophy Department for their continued support in all our endeavors.

CONTENT A Letter from the Editor

Mental Math of a Recovering Skeptic Erin Aslami

Speaker of the Dead: On the Ethics of Memory Thomas Mar Wee

Bodies on the Line : Cyber-melancholia and the Suspended Animation of the Virtual Body Ezequiel González

Interview: David Chalmers on Consciousness Rishi Chhapolia

Freedom of the Present Moment Matthew Harper

The Language of Mathematics Aiden Sagerman

Dissolution as Literary Genius Mira Ward

False Freedom and a Forgotten Feminine: A 21st Century Hippie’s Reading of On the Road Emma James

A LETTER FROM THE

s we began brainstorming themes for print issue no. 5, Gadfly editors were in an unusual position. Our board and discussion meetings had been relegated to the gloomy cells of Zoom for over six months. The majority of us had nev-

er met each other in person. Starting college, conducting research, applying for jobs, even making friends—all now took place in a strictly virtual landscape. We were living and thinking in an entirely new world. We found ourselves faced with a dilemma: wanting to talk about what we were going through, wanting to fully explore the philosophical ramifications of the past year of our lives; yet also emotionally exhausted by endless think-pieces and COVID talk, wanting to turn away from the parade of images and statistics for a moment. After such a devastating and seemingly endless disruption of life, how could we not crave a space that felt untouched by it all? And so we arrive at “carte blanche.” An interesting term, whose myriad of meanings and uses is itself reflective of the unlimited possibility it describes. Literally translated as “blank card,” the term is typically employed to describe a blank check, a situation in which one is at liberty to ‘write in’ the sum to be paid. Carte blanche is frequently used in political situations—Emma James will draw attention to its militaristic connotations—to evoke situations of absolute liberty, of unconditional authorization to act. What we have, then, is an (impossible) image of a total lack of limits, of something that, by way of being nothing, occupies the status of pure potentiality. Carte blanche, then, carries with it an immense ambivalence. It signals creative power, the emergence of new worlds. It also denotes a profound absence where meaning could be and yet is not. We see carte blanche as an invitation to explore what comes next, and thus to look hopefully toward a future; as well as providing a space to meditate upon the devastating conditions that have created this newness that we now live in. It has both an ethical function, a ‘what-must-we-do-now,’ and a cathartic one. We take stock of our blank slates. We ask, ultimately, how blank these slates truly can—should—be. Erin Aslami opens the publication with a response to the apparent emptiness of the carte blanche in “Mental Math of a Recovering Skeptic.” How can action arise out of this disappearance of limits, this space in which neither identity nor difference can

occur? We are thus dragged into the dangers of carte blanche: that pernicious strain of solipsism that arises out of a complete abandonment of the possibility of fixed truth. Ultimately, Erin demonstrates to us the way that relativism as a plurality of perspectives is itself productive of reality — that communication creates pathways out of that which appears undefined, that meaning arises only out of deliberate and shared work. Carte blanche also contains a sense of loss. Something has been wiped away in order to create it: every new world arrives only after the dismantling of the previous. Thomas Mar Wee in “On the Ethics of Memory” will argue that no future-oriented work is unburdened from the past. Rather, we are ethically charged with bringing this past — its tragedy, its violence--with us into the new worlds we make. In this way, Thomas forces a confrontation of the rhetoric of carte blanche with historicity and mnemonics, offering reflection on the ways that we can and should resist the narrative of the blank page. We then shift gears to another aspect of carte blanche: the way it responds to possibility and to virtuality, the way it allows us to navigate the varied and tenuous modes of the real. We ask ourselves: what is possible space, possible action? What is the virtual? How do we oppose these categories to that which is physical, or tangible? And what work can we do in the gaps in-between? Ezequiel González offers a response in “Bodies on the Line,” where he uses both an exploration of instagram and refined psychoanalytic work to describe the “cyber-melancholic turn” enacted upon the digital body, which is generative of a “cyber playof-self”. Rishi Chhapolia’s interview with philosopher of mind and cognitive scientist David Chalmers continues this line of investigation, offering remarkable insight into problems of consciousness, ethics and AI, and the future of virtual reality. Finally, Mat-

A LETTER

thew Harper’s “Freedom of the Present Moment” guides us through possible worlds theory and deposits us firmly at the present as an escape from the trappings of temporal anxiety. What actually activates the dormant potential of the carte blanche is, of course, this ‘writing in.’ We must, then, look to language: to the way that inscription upon the blank surface transforms it, actualizes it, puts it to work; but also to the way that lan guage elides this fixity, oozes out of its own set regions of meaning.

In “Mathematics as a Language,” Aiden Sagerman displays his own triumphant carte blanche within the academy, offering an argument for approaching mathematics as a coherent linguistic structure so compelling it was accepted by Columbia’s Institute for Comparative Literature and Society. Contrarily, as opposed to arguing for what a lanin “Dissolution as Literary Genius.” Using both Elena Ferrante’s novels and her general cultural phenomenality, Mira embarks on questions of anonymity, identity, and the moments of slippage between the two. Finally, Emma James plays us out with “False Freedom and a Forgotten Feminine,” in

FROM THE EDITOR

guage is, Mira Ward demonstrates the ways language slips out of its own boundaries

which she uses personal narrative to explore her own interactions with and ruminations upon carte blanche while living ‘on the road’. Juxtaposing lived experience with Kerouac’s famous text, Emma challenges us to consider the type of freedom we see the road as offering, the ways this has been commodified, and what we can do about it. Her solution, ultimately, is to embrace a radical ‘freedom with’ which outpaces outdated and antisocial approaches to liberty such as the ‘freedom from’ or the ‘freedom to’. It is this note that we would like to end on—the idea of community, of ‘freedom with,’ and of its antidotal properties to both philosophical and social or ethical woes. It has been a challenging year. We at Gadfly have been truly moved by the continued enthusiasm for our work, even while occurring entirely online. We have been immensely fortunate to have added invaluable members to our editorial board this year —many of whom are freshmen, who chose to begin their college journey and include us in it at such an anxiety-inducing time as this. We would also like to seriously commend all of our contributors for having produced such thoughtful pieces of writing at a time when writing and research feels so very hard to do. It is our sincere hope that readers of this issue will, even more so than entering deep into philosophical contemplation, feel the warmth of a network of young thinkers who are asking vital questions and answering them in creative and collaborative ways, in spite of all current circumstances.

MEN O REC

NTAL MATH OF A COVERING Erin Aslami

MENTAL MATH OF A RECOVERING SKEPTIC

agic is nothing less than perspective. What else can we call a refreshing arrangement of reality, a twist to refocus our vision of our world? Makeovers are magic; JeanPaul Sartre in Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions elevates transformative concepts such as remorse and ownership to magic. There is no thing that a thing is because of magic. Yet, magic harbors a foundational dependence on non-magical reality. I had always considered the realms of the magic and the mundane to be of separate natures. Perhaps they tracked and mapped onto each other, the magic embroidered into the mundane with a bright red thread. However, with magic defined in direct relation to the real, I have learned of the reliance of newer perspectives on their stable, supportive bases. A change depends on the original. We cannot, and should not,

forget to witness what is natural to us. Isolating the magic would dissolve it. We would lose it all: that which is ordinary, magic, and both. When was the last time a bit of speech left a questionable taste on your tongue? The last time human communication felt magical or unrealistic in its goal? Do you see that this relationship between the magical and the mundane parallels our understanding of others and ourselves? Without an original, there is no new. Without the mundane there is no magic. Without the self, there is no other. Self-contextualization is the groundwork for one’s contextualization of others. We must consider the importance of our natural perspectives when approaching unfamiliar ones. Magic does not exist without a base in reality. Not only would we not realize recognize

it, but also it would not conceptually exist, and it is similar for considering people and peoples distant to us. wareness of our positionality enables us to productively approach another. This is the case for religious, intellectual, cultural, political, and all other belief systems which entwine to create your perspective. I am thinking here of the uniquely human power to self-contextualize and the uniquely human task of upholding epistemic responsibility. To be epistemically responsible is to identify yourself as a knower among unknowns. It is to make your evaluation of knowledge— both firsthand and secondhand, new and established, active and dormant—an ongoing effort. Epistemic responsibility involves molding the natural process of observation into an intentional one, and it uses open-mindedness, endless curiosity, awareness of self, and a strong foundation in humility to do so.

Conceptualization is a necessary, inescapable, and terrifying aspect of our subjectivity, only, to my previous belief, holding us back. The blind who regain their eyesight remain sightless; without training in conceptual recognition and without outsourcing perception to other senses, people with recovered sight experience visual agnosia: an inability to process visual information. We have nothing but notions. Nothing is sensed and understood without interpretation. I believed our only hope to sense and understand the real was to suppress the instinct to cast perceptions into our own concepts. I held my breath and strived to betray the learned conceptions which had betrayed me and which reigned over the totality of my interpretive function. All that allowed me to do was withdraw.

Previously, I had believed only a turn from our own assumed and accepted views could lead to a decontaminated window to witness another culture. Edward Said, founder of postcolonial studies and former professor of literature at Columbia, examines how the West perceives the East in his book Orientalism. He confirms our innate tendency to morph reality into our own visions; he writes, “it is perfectly natural for the human mind to resist the assault on it of untreated strangeness; therefore cultures have always been inclined to impose complete transformations on other

I feared that carrying an intimacy with my personal background while approaching others would negate the entire process of accessing their integrity. How can we help but end up creating our own version of someone else, especially if our learning starts and ends tucked in the folds of our own grey matter? Despite this, I am currently convinced of the value of contextualizing oneself (and holding onto it) before studying others, and I have Edward Said and Charles Taylor to thank. I also have myself to thank. This was not my first goaround with personal philosophical

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cultures, receiving these other cultures not as they are but as, for the benefit of the receiver, they ought to be.”

MENTAL MATH OF A RECOVERING SKEPTIC

rehabilitation. Ironically, it helps to draw on the emotional strength of others who also as high schoolers began their tottering philosophical journey as accidental skeptics.

Reality unravels, depending on who you ask. Every once in a while you will catch a skeptic (or create one). External-world skepticism is an enticing philosophical standpoint which breeds suspicion regarding our human capabilities to connect to and know about the world independent of our own minds. The status of what I call an accidental skeptic is not difficult to attain, and often it involves taking popular epistemological ideas just a bit more seriously than feels right. Many of us have entertained whether we live in a simulation or if we are really acting out our everyday lives within the bounds of a dream. Those ponderings can root into uncertainties which become more real than the feeling of reality we experience as a person in a physical and mental environment.

y tumble into skepticism occurred after I let loose the innocent question of “is truth even true?” It became my greatest challenge and insult to interact with the outer world I began to doubt. Tim O’Brien in his war stories of The Things They Carried: a work of fiction detailed the mental math required to accurately portray extreme experience like his time in Vietnam. Between what actually hap-pened, what seemed to happen, and what felt like had happened, he created the “happening truth” and “story truth,”

begging us to consider how fiction is truer than true. While this seems to be step towards effective communication and relaying personal narrative, I could not move past problematizing the issue he was actively solving: the question of which factors create our experience of reality, and how we can measure out the facts to speak clearly to a journalist, or sift them out to tell our loved ones what we personally experienced and how we will carry it. So, if the presentation of the world is only ambiguous in its relationship to truth, how could I define my own relationship to the world? Solipsistic and idealist thinkers occupy all spaces and times. The idealist Vijñānavāda Buddhist school asserts that all forms belong to cognition. Their dissenters claim the mind is like a crystal; cognition has a transparent nature and any appearance in the mind must be caused by an external object, like how a red thing behind a crystal “implants redness into the crystal”. The Vijñānavādin defends the non-existence of non-mental objects because of causal positive and negative concomitance: for instance, we have never seen an object alongside its cognition. “We do not see fire alongside but separate from smoke.” I grew reluctantly proud of my ability to distrust what was around me and what I thought was around me. My senses became afflictions, betrayals of perceptual functionality that I mourned and celebrated. Subjectivity corroded everything my eyes passed over. How could I ever

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understand someone if we perceive a single object and see contradictory properties? The Vijñānavāda school argues that the existence of external objects would be “redundant.” I dulled my senses and tripped into my mind—into such a state of detachment from uncertain reality that it became strange to carry out physical, external procedures. My roommate told me, watching me struggle with our broken dishwasher, “You don’t really... interact with things around you.”

fter a sufficient time-out in my skull, I strained to put my faith in reality, realizing my external-world skepticism was a form of faith in itself—the same form of faith I practiced as a willing external-world skeptic. I appreciated that while both accepting and rejecting reality are built on faith, only one begins a path towards what we can consider real. Tim O’Brien, as I see him now, was actually trying to tell

me that living in my reality, which is both shared and subjective, is what would bring me closer to the real and the other. Learning to see through our own perspective, and encouraging it as it changes, always has been wise. A doctor can tell me I have perfect adjusted vision without seeing through my eyes. This mindset change was not, as ever, my own revelation, but in debt to the work of those aforementioned thinkers before me who anticipated my coming and the coming of many after me. It was an encounter with one of Said’s imperatives that thwarted me from what I believed to be the higher endeavor of self-detachment: we “ought again to remember that all cultures impose corrections upon raw reality.” He challenged me to face subjectivity in full as something we must honor. On top of that, Charles Taylor seems to beg us in his tome A Secular Age to embrace the essential nature of our base perspec-

MENTAL MATH OF A RECOVERING SKEPTIC

I realize now that if different perspectives do not co-exist, we have none. Attempting to resist my own for the sake of others, or trying to block the views of others to validate my own, only causes the existence of perceived reality as a whole to fade. While I had previously thought that breathing into my own lens of reality would only fog my study of others, I know after reading Taylor that if I fight against my own identity, rather than bringing reality to other identities, I will break the symbiotic bond of co-determining others. I struggled to accept that if I let my own conceived ideas dissolve, those of my co-determiners would remain without support and we would end up with nothing. My view of reality was resuscitated.

Wallace in his Kenyon College commencement speech, “This is Water.” He tells us, “There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes ‘What the hell is water?’” Recognizing our environment is steady work, and that work does not include running away from our own shadows. Though I doubted the value of contextualizing oneself before studying others, the words of Said and Taylor and Wallace have turned me towards the value of a strong foundational knowledge of individual background. Studying the real like it is magic taught me what humans know about reality—that it depends on a foundation hidden in plain sight. Just like the magic needs the mundane for visibility, the mundane needs the personal for meaning, and the interpersonal needs the personal for support.

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-tives. He emphasizes the interpersonal nature of individual identities. Taylor affords us a trust in subjectivity when he identifies each of us as the “co-determiners of the meaning of our action.” This means that while we must consider the uncertainty in our construals of reality, relativity is not a threat to our own personal beliefs, but an opportunity for affirmation and realization. By emphasizing the necessity of bearing “witness” to each other’s expression of individuality, Taylor teaches us that our own identities are only as secure as we view those of others, and those of others are only as secure as we view our own.

I have confidence in transcultural communication and learning because of its role in creating and supporting reality. Practicing interpersonal epistemic responsibility is a privilege and an act, not a negation and denial. I see now a step away from myself is not one towards another. It is one lost.

n all, our reliance on relativity is not one to mourn but one to thank. Reality can only have meaning in context, as has been popularized by David Foster

SPEAKER OF Thomas Mar Wee

On the Ethics

F THE DEAD

s of Memory

“How I wish I could name them all, But the list, confiscated, cannot be found. — “Requiem” by Anna Akhmatova I. Introduction

SPEAKER OF THE DEAD

he masthead of the recently created COVID Memorial website reads, “Not forgotten. Not just a number.” The website, created sometime this year during the COVID-19 pandemic, functions as a digital graveyard of sorts to commemorate some of the more than 2.5 million (at this time of writing) lives that have been lost during the pandemic. The site allows families to post brief obituaries of their loved ones along with a photo. Scrolling through the seemingly never-ending stream of posts commemorating parents, children, friends, and lovers who have died from the coronavirus, the sheer scope of collective grief is staggering. The United States recently surpassed the grim milestone of 500,000 COVID-19-related deaths since the pandemic began. One of the pressing questions we now face is how, while still in the midst of a pandemic, we should honor those we have already lost and the thousands more who will die in the coming months. The FAQ page of the COVID Memorial website describes its raison d’être:

People around the world are realizing that COVID-19 is much more than statistics and graphs […] These are the faces and lives we have already lost. Browsing this website, one gets a sense of the moral impetus underpinning this memorial. As evidenced by these posts, many have not been granted the simplest dignity of being allowed to see their loved ones on their deathbeds. A reoccurring, heartbreaking detail in many of these obituaries is that their loved one died alone. Websites such as this one exist, in part, because of the nature of the pandemic and our measures to contain it: In order to stop the spread of the virus, we have been forced to grieve its deaths largely in private. If any funerals and memorials are held in person now at all, they are small, private affairs. The pandemic has deprived us of public opportunities to mourn. We have not been fully allowed to grieve. In response to the reduction of the victims of this pandemic to mere statistics and the lack of public opportunities for mourning, people have invented new ways to give these deaths the

THOMAS MAR WEE

SPEAKER OF THE DEAD

the individual dignity they deserve.

If it is true, as Joseph Stalin is famously reported to have said, that “one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic,” how can we prevent these deaths from becoming mere statistics? Whose obligation is it to hold all these deaths in memory and give each their due? This dilemma prompts the question: Do “we”, in a collective sense, have a moral obligation to remember the dead? II. An Obligation to Remember

uch has been written, in philosophy, about how one ought to be, and much has been written about memory, but far less has been written about the interstices between these two — a domain we might call the

“ethics of memory.” This concept may at first seem counterintuitive, since we usually think of memory as more related to forms of knowledge than to actions and ethics as being the domain of our actions. However, as Paul Ricoeur argues, it is possible to speak of an ethics of memory: Memory has two kinds of relation to the past, the first of which […] is a relation of knowledge, while the second is a relation of action. This is so because remembering is a way of doing things, not only with words, but with our minds; in remembering or recollecting we are exercising our memory, which is a kind of action.

If there is such a thing as voluntary memory, it becomes possible to speak of “acts of memory”, the same way we speak of “acts of service”. On a grand scale, these acts of memory are enacted through memorialization. For what is the memorialization if not the act of committing something to collective memory? Many of our rituals surrounding death deal with this idea explicitly. A memorial service frames a person’s life and ultimately shapes how we will remember them. A discussion of the ethical concerns of memory, on a large scale, must therefore eventually turn into a discussion of memorialization. One significant recent scholar on this topic is Avishai Margalit. His book, aptly titled The Ethics of Memory, is an instructive source to turn to when considering the questions of memorialization and memory. Margalit, building on existing discourse on collective memory,

is concerned both with microethics, the ethics of individuals, and macroethics, the ethics of collectives. In the book’s introduction, he lays out explicitly his aims: “The topic of this book is the ethics of memory, with a question mark: Is there an ethics of memory?” Margalit begins his investigation by first distinguishing between morality and ethics, two terms which are often conflated, but that he believes refer to fundamentally distinct concepts. These two terms, in Margalit’s view, are distinguishable by the kinds of human relations they refer to. Ethics tells us how to regulate our thick relations with others, usually people we are in close emotional proximity to. Ethics, on this account, is broadly concerned with ideas of loyalty and betrayal. Morality, on the other hand, governs our thin relations—our relationships with strangers and acquaintances—and is more concerned with themes of respect and humiliation.

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I want to emphasize Ricoeur’s observation of memory’s relationship to action, remembering as “a way of doing things.” We might call this voluntary memory. There are countless examples of voluntary memory in our everyday lives, actions we take to shape how and what we remember. Think, for example, of the student who writes out flashcards to study for an exam, or someone who employs a pneumonic device to remember a phone number. By pointing out the dual aspect of memory as both knowledge and action, Ricoeur helps us become more attuned to the agency we possess in the act of remembering.

This distinction is important, both for Margalit’s project and for our current discussion of memorialization because memory, Margalit argues, usually falls under the domain of ethics, meaning it is a concern of our thick relations. Care is at the core of our thick relations, and care, Margalit argues, is only possible if we ‘remember’ the person we are caring for. Communities of memory, with one example being the family, Margalit says, are the foundation of ethics. Memory is a prerequisite for our thick relations and

SPEAKER OF THE DEAD

and is thus under the domain of ethics. Consequently, this means that by Margalit’s original definition, memory doesn’t extend beyond the ethical borders of our intimate circles. However, there are some instances where Margalit argues that the imperative to remember becomes relevant to communities of thin relations—the domain of morality. Margalit gives the Holocaust as one example of an event that extends beyond the typical ethical borders of memory, and, as I will argue, the COVID-19 pandemic also falls into this category.

The Ethics of Memory is interested in situations where the moral imperative to remember extends beyond our inner circle. Margalit goes on to advocate for a “moral community of memory.” A moral community of memory, for Margalit, would be tasked with remembering certain “radical evils,” a term Margalit borrows from Immanuel Kant. These “radical evils,” according to Margalit, include “crimes against humanity, such as enslavement, deportations of civilian populations, and mass exterminations.” I would like to extend Margalit’s definition of “radical evil” to include another large-scale recent tragedy: the COVID-19 pandemic. The scale of death in the US alone rivals that of World War II, making this pandemic a tragedy on the same scale as the other kinds of mass suffering that Margalit describes. Additionally, although the deaths from the pandemic are from so-called “natural causes”, and thus not intentional in the same way as the other atrocities Margalit describes, an argument can be

made that the rampant, uncontrollability of the pandemic is also the result of poor decisions made by human actors such as politicians and world leaders. The pandemic’s staggering death toll is the result of a pathogen, but also the result of the action (or inaction) of individuals. A recent study by Lancet found that 40 percent of COVID deaths in the US were preventable. I argue that this pandemic, as a largescale traumatic event, would fall under the purview of Margalit’s “moral community of memory.” It is an event that “we,” in a broad sense, have a moral obligation to remember. Once this obligation has been established, the question becomes: what do we mean when we say “we?” Who exactly is responsible for this remembering? III. Who Should Remember

n pre-modern times, the role of remembering important cultural events would likely fall to that of the storyteller—the bard, singer, orator, or griot who learned a repertoire of stories to pass them on to future generations, not only for the amusement of an audience, but for the transmission of cultural memory. Today, most modern societies have dispensed with the tradition of the oral storyteller. With the advent of modernity, as Walter Benjamin laments in his famous essay “The Storyteller”, the role of the storyteller has declined until it has become virtually nonexistent. In absence of the storyteller as our

As Margalit points out, the most enduring transmitters of memory are nonhuman. It is rather physical objects, the communal mnemonic devices—monuments, art, artifacts, and memorials—that are “responsible, to a large extent, for our shared memories.” In this way, I argue it will be our artists, writers, and architects who are the best suited for tackling this task of remembrance. They are the ones who, in the coming months and years, will face the unique burden of preserving the cultural memory of this pandemic and the countless lives that

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receptacle of memory, Margalit’s concept of the “division of mnemonic labor” provides a potentially useful alternative. Building off of the economic concept of “division of labor”, Margalit adapts this term to refer to the way that the burden of collective memory is distributed throughout a society. He goes on to explain: “In traditional society there is a direct line from the people to their priest or storyteller or shaman. But shared memory in a modern society travels from person to person through institutions, such as archives, and through communal mnemonic devices, such as monuments and the names of streets.” Who then, does the responsibility for preserving and transmitting cultural memory fall to? We all, in a sense, have free rein in determining what gets remembered. Each of us, for example, will hold our own unique memory of this pandemic. But in practice, cultural memory today is usually constituted by the exporters of mass culture: the press, politicians, artists, writers, etc.

have been lost. IV. The Ethics of Memorialization

he task of memorialization is always a complex process, deeply fraught with ethical considerations. An ethics of memorialization seeks to lay bare these ethical questions. It is especially concerned with rhetoric—the way that memorials convey their historical message or content. Recently, we have seen the kind of controversy that memorials can spark with the recent debate around Confederate monuments in America. The story of the justifiable backlash against these monuments is a case study in failed attempts at memorialization, failures which an ethics of memorialization seeks to interrogate.

SPEAKER OF THE DEAD

There is the ever-present threat, in memorialization, of distorting history to serve the needs of a regime or ideology. In the case of Confederate monuments in America, there has been a recent resurgence of scrutiny and outrage at the ideological connection between many of these monuments and white supremacy. The outrage and controversy around these monuments has only grown in the past year, resulting in

the removal and destruction of many Confederate monuments around the country. In just the past year, after the killing of George Floyd this summer by a police officer, nearly 100 Confederate symbols were removed in the United States, “either by local decrees or forceful protesters.” The Southern Poverty Law Center’s report on Confederate monuments is an

As the example of Confederate monuments in America shows, failed attempts at memorialization can distort history and reify violence, rather than providing reckoning, closure, or healing. Even events as ostensibly “apolitical” as a global pandemic can still be inadequately memorialized. Events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, which are simultaneously “universal” in their reach, but highly unequal in their impact, have an arguably greater potential to leave voices out or to come across as incomplete or one-dimensional. This doesn’t mean we should shy away from the task; it simply calls for a tremendous amount of care and attention to be paid to any attempts at memorialization.

It will require a great deal of creativity and ingenuity to properly account for all the collective loss we have experienced since the pandemic began. Our old models of monuments and memorials may not serve our needs this time around. They may be instructive in some ways, but it is imperative not to repeat their mistakes and shortcomings. This pandemic is a unique tragedy in many ways and any attempts at memorializing it will have to rise to meet the unique demands of the current moment.

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example of an ethics of memorialization in action. An ethics of memorialization seeks to ask questions about how memory is being constructed, and whose story is being told. The report, which features an exhaustive list of the nearly 2,000 Confederate monuments in the United States and a compelling argument for their removal, frames this ethical question explicitly in its title “Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy.” Its heading further lays out the ethical stakes of this particular case of memorialization: “Our public entities should no longer play a role in distorting history by honoring a secessionist government that waged war against the United States to preserve white supremacy and the enslavement of millions of people.”

The COVID Memorial website is an early, triaged attempt at memorialization. It satisfies an urgent need, providing an outlet for those who have lost loved ones during the pandemic and are looking for a public space to mourn. However, it is more a product of necessity—simple, utilitarian—than a carefully-crafted piece of artistic expression. These memorials will come later, either while the dead are still being counted, or in a few years when we finally have a moment to look back and take stock of all that has been lost. These new memorials will likely have to invent new ways of articulating grief for a post-pandemic world. This may mean utilizing new technologies, new mediums, or perhaps even inventing a new language of grief, in order to properly speak of our dead.

Ezequiel G

BODIES ON

Cyber-melancholia and the Suspen

González

N THE LINE

nded Animation of t he Virtual Body

BODIES ON THE LINE

I. [I’m already logged on, unsure at this point of what my password is. I scroll through my main account, occasionally sending hearts to friends, families, acquaintances. I go through my messages, replying or ignoring. My partner has sent a disappearing image, I should open that later. If I switch into one of my other accounts (I have four), they’ll know I’m fully on-line, so I stay on my main (account). I close out of the app, but my life is still refreshing on the timeline: a video of me from two weeks ago receiving likes, messages with my image reaching around the globe, I can even connect another app to my account, posting when I’m not in front of the screen. I may take a break, but my account does not.]

hile there has been an explosion of research into digital subject formation since the 1990s, much of it has considered the digital “body” as a diminutive form of a material body: a poor copy (or perhaps a “poor image”1) that cannot compete See Hito Steyerl, “In Defense of the Poor Image.” 1

with the complexities of the human organism. Nonetheless, we rely more and more on social media and telepresence software, highlighting the persistence of this hazy outline of a digital body, presence, and ordering logic. In its persistence, this semblance of a separate body seems to destabilize digital theories of selfhood that rely solely on corporeality. In other terms, what if the digital body were not assumed to be sutured to the material body, thus rendering the superficial language of media studies insufficient to excavate our current relationships with our digital avatar(s)? This project will seek to consider this possibility, taking departure from Judith Butler’s schematization of melancholia in The Psychic Life of Power, putting their spatializing psychoanalytic language in conversation with digital theorists sketching the depth and complexities of cyber-subjectivities. Through this comparative reading, I aim to demonstrate how the virtual space is distinct from the material world2, eluci-dating how this distinction can open pathways towards diffused subjectivities

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“Forgetting oneself is opening oneself.” — Dōgen, from The Moon in a Dewdrop (1253)

Throughout this paper, I will use “material” to denote the biological world, the side of the screen of the fleshy-ego, and “virtual” to denote the world of cyberspace, the cyber-ego. 2

and different ways of understanding selfhood beyond corporeality. Putting my own body on the line as a site of narrativized reflection within the social media platform Instagram in brief epigraphs, this essay will seek to trouble the solidity of a human anchored in the material form, humbly pointing ever outwards to cyber-conceptions of our shared future(s).

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II. [I decide to go on Live as I’m walking through the airport. I narrate my packing schedule, explaining my trajectory on the journey home. My followers tune in, offering questions, reactions, hearts, thumbs up. I respond — my friend sends me a text, telling me she is screen-recording my Live. I end the Live once I’m on the plane, spending the rest of the time scrolling through my likes, making sure I’ve responded to all the comments on my photos. I put my phone on airplane mode.]

efore considering the extent of digital subjectivity in relation to the material body, it is critical to first recognize the particularities of the digital realm. The virtual world is not simply a flawed copy or a poor image of the material world, but a thriving informatic multiverse structured by its own laws, logics, and (dis)continuities. As digital theorist Tara McPherson notes in her article “Reload: Liveness, Mobility, and the Web”, “the Web constitutes

itself in the unfolding of experience” in a “navigable terrain of spatialized data” whereby users forge connections, explore and create architectures, and recombine themselves in a form that is unique to the medium. The fact that the Web “constitutes itself” points to the generative nature of cyberspace: a pulsating, amorphous web probing ever outwards into the furthest reaches of the world. On Instagram specifically, we are attuned to an audiovisual-based social media landscape. Interactions on the site are gathered up in timelines of pictures and videos, punctuated by daily disappearing stories or Live appearances. In this platform, exchanges are realized via comments and likes, a very literal affective economy that, while commercially dominated by so-called “influencers” and corporate sponsors, nonetheless applies to the photos and videos coming from old high school acquaintances. We give and receive “likes” in the shape of a heart; perhaps we react in a Live with a frowning emoji. But while the virtual space is a distinct digital arena replete with its own actions, logics, and consequences, it is not completely separate from the material world on the other side of the screen. Returning to McPherson, “what a medium like the web is or will be...is not separate from the discourse which surrounds it and structures conditions of possibility...[while it is also] shaped by the medium and its particular [forms]”. Put in different terms, the architectural structure and the interface of a site

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like Instagram finds its foundation in in the discourse of the material world while at the same time the discursivity of Instagram (its own logics and affective economy) produces virtual and material consequences, both in terms of discrete effects and psychological reordering. We construct personas that live exclusively in the digital realm that can nonetheless impact life on the other side of the screen. It is precisely this semi-autonomy on either side of virtuality/materiality that forms the focus of our inquiry: founded on the particularity of the digital arena, yet recognizing its nexus with the material world and user that is its origin. III. [My body may be asleep in-flight, but my e-body is not. The screenrecorded Live has

been sent by my friend to my family, letting them know my flight was delayed. My partner screenshots a photo on my page, sending it to their friend to prove I’m as beautiful as they said. The friend cycles through my timeline, seeing if I’m active, checking the posts I’ve liked. A video of me circulates in some chats. My friend and my partner talk about my e-activity at lunch. Perhaps someone in a faraway place is attempting a hack of my account (for the fifth time). I am fast asleep.]

iting artist Roy Ascott, anthropologist Paula Sibilia sketches a process of reconfiguration across

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the screen, exercise of digitalization that finds its conclusion within virtuality3. Through what seems like a diffusive engagement mediated by a screen, the e-self is reconsolidated4, seemingly solid before our own eyes yet absolutely fractured among the various threads of the Web. We recognize the body on this side of the screen, drinking tea while typing comments on an essay, reading the news. But what of the other body, the body contained within the screen? Consider the ways in which our likeness and actions can circulate on the web without our direct input (viral videos, likes, automatic following, etc.). Both individually and in a composite, an “us” starts to form: a semi-consolidated e-self, a cyber-ego. We create an account (or several accounts) on Instagram. Our main account reflects and catalogues our face and images, our likes and dislikes, our desires, our private information. This account

looks and speaks like us, circulating freely in the flow of digital information. We in essence construct a Self that can act and speak on our behalf. We queue posts, we hook up a bot that automatically follows and unfollows accounts5;6;. Yet despite our input via our fingertips, once our cyber-ego has been constructed and anchored in the “network-extension”, it has lost the the support of the material “As I interact on the Net, I reconfigure myself; my network-extension defines me exactly as my material body defined me in the old biological culture.” (translation mine) in Paula Sibilia, El hombre postorgánico: Cuerpo, subjetividad Y tecnologías digitales. 4 Within a literary example, N. Katherine Hayles terms this digital assemblage a “reconstituted corpus [which] is a body of information.” 5 See websites like Phantombuster.com or the FollowLike bot. 6 Note also that this is just with our current mainstream technology which will no doubt appear clunky to a reader in the not-so-distant future. It isn’t too difficult to imagine a completely automated Instagram influencer account, following the example of social media bots, Sophia the Robot, GPT-3, etc. 3

Looking to Judith Butler’s analysis of psychic inceptions in The Psychic Life of Power can point towards a quasi-psychic apparatus at play in this virtualized body represented on the screen. In Judith Butler’s reading of classic Freudian psychoanalysis, melancholia is what not only creates psychic internality, but also the ego itself as a psychic object: Melancholia describes a pro cess by which an originally external object [or ideal] is lost... and the refusal to break the At the same time, our likeness can circulate across the globe without our knowledge or consent. We can be hacked, and another voice can speak with our face, not to mention the myriad of other forms of digital identity theft. Even this language (“identity theft”, “hacking”) points to our lack of wholesale authority over this digitized subject. While we may have birthed this body with our face, it is not solely under our control. 8 This may seem contradictory with the aforementioned linkage between material and virtual bodies. The distinction is that while there is an interacting between subjects across the screen-divide, the virtual body cannot rely on the sensoria of the material body directly. There is contact with the material body, but never again in the way the material body communes with itself: this is the loss of the material support we illustrate here. 7

attachment to such an object or ideal leads to the withdrawal of the object into the ego...and the setting up of an internal world...[taking] the ego as its object. The ego cannot grieve this loss (it is “unavowable”), absorbing the loss instead into itself, and creating an entire internal world in response. Mapping this loss onto the digital condition, the body types up the e-self, birthing it into existence. The cyber-ego has to some degree its own freedom of movement and circulation within the virtual world. In this moment of digitalization, the digital body has lost the support of the material body. It no longer has a fixed anchor, bound instead to the tempestuous waves and currents of binary code and cybernetic exchange. Yet the cyber-ego cannot grieve the loss of the body, namely because it cannot recognize it. To recognize that the cyber-ego is distinct and un-anchored from the material body would be to admit to our fleshy selves that subjectivity is not uniquely contained within our bodies. To some extent, we lose complete control of our virtual presence once it has been uploaded9. Thus, faced with an unavowable loss of the material support, the cyber-ego absorbs the psychic residue of the lost object (the material support) into itself. This can be seen in the unconscious language of tactility and the yearning for material sensoria on the

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body7. We may be able to go from the material to the digital, but as of now there is no technology that can seamlessly input digital data into our brain. The e-self has lost the anchor of the material body, and appendage-like imitations in the digital realm (“pokes” on Facebook, “taps” on Grindr, “claps” on LinkedIn, etc.) are insufficient to recreate the material sensorium8.

Returning to Sibilia, “my network-extension defines me exactly as my material body defined 9

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Web (“pokes”, “taps”, Virtual Reality soft/ hardware). The cyber-ego cannot grieve this loss because, like the melancholic, it swears “I have lost nothing”.

Further, the process of digitalization itself is violent. The carbon body is burnt up in this transfer, reimagined in a block of code. Our material bodies are effectively dematerialized in a process of pixelization, later recombined into something uncannily similar yet not quite us. What is thus the reaction of the e-self to this aggressive translation, a process through which they were born yet killed their parent, proverbially emerging from the womb soaked in a blood of alternating ones and zeros? Here we can glimpse the stirrings of a melancholia relegated to our constructed e-selves: a cyber-melancholic turn in response to the violent trauma of digitalization, binary fracture, and virtual reconfiguration that forced our e-selves to lose their original bodies. But where the material self would respond to that melancholic turn with a process of internalization, the e-self cannot. The e-self simply does not have the same internality as the material self. “Melancholia produces the possibility for the representation of psychic life,” explains Butler, leading to a topographical reflexivity and conscience in an internal world: a “self that takes itself as its own object”. By contrast, the cyber-ego, like the Web, can only expand. Rather than creating some form of internality, the unavowable loss of the material body is expressed in the desire to recuperate “taps”, to “poke” another, to

spatialize further in order to regain the original senosoria of the material body. As N. Katherine Hayles demonstrates in her essay “Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers,” “cyberspace is created by transforming a data matrix into a landscape in which narratives can happen.” Instead of playing out psychic games in an internal world through a conscience or via psychological reflexivity, the cyber-ego builds new worlds altogether, transforming itself in imaginative ways that are particular to the medium of the Web. On Instagram, we make more accounts, new groups, new chats, etc. The cyber-ego takes itself as its own object through a process of what digital theorist Federica Buongiorno terms reembodiement: a symbolic, narrative diffusion of the self in avatars, anonymous blog posts, disembodied telepresence10, etc. In the cyber-melancholic turn, the loss of the material support is externalized, resulting in an outwards spatialization that seeks to recuperate the lost object, both in the logic of corporeal actions like “poking” or “tapping” but also in the play-of-self done through cyberspace expansion and a diffused narrative re-embodiment. IV. [Once I land, I turn my phone back on, updating family and friends on my location. I start receiving targeted ads for the McDonalds in the airport. When I go through the Stories feature, some of the corporate content has magically shifted into Spanish, recognizing my

aking itself as a psychic object, the “shadow of the [lost] object”11 casts its shade on the cyber-ego, an action of superposition reflected in the corporeal language of virtuality (and perhaps in the more explicit desires to graft together technology and the flesh12). Even within the digital theorists mentioned in this paper, there is a consistent insecurity with regards to the material support, with calls to relegate Butler, citing Freud, writes: “...in melancholia, ‘the shadow of the object fell upon the ego’... in the place of the loss that the other comes to represent, I find myself to be that loss, impoverished, wanting.” 12 Paula Sibilia writes at length in El hombre postorgánico of the “faustian” project of technoscience, including biotechnology, informatic immortality, and post-biological evolutionary manipulation. 11

virtuality to a secondary role in service of prioritizing the “fragility of the material world for Hayles, to reiterating “organ ic resistance” to Sibilia, to noting the “illusory status of promises of transformation” in McPherson. This points to the central anxiety of the cyber-melancholic turn. One cannot recognize or grieve the loss of the organic body because to do so would be to imagine its possible obsolescence in a not-too-distant future. Nonetheless, there are important, even promising possibilities to be considered in this turning of the cyber-ego. The external spatialization mechanism is what allows for one to be reembodied on Zoom, or for one’s YouTube videos to go viral. On Instagram, a user can create several accounts attuned to specific play-of-self narratives: an artist Instagram, a private Instagram, etc., each with its own codes and followings. However, despite the potential benefits of a diffused subjectivity, it is important to note that Instagram, like virtually

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my new geolocation. My family is coming to pick me up, I let my friends in the US know I’m fine. I’m hungry, strangely craving a Big Mac.]

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every social media, is a corporate arena. Targeted ads bombard one from every angle, and one’s likeness, once uploaded, belongs to Instagram until the account is deleted. As Tara McPherson notes, “you remain within a contained database” structured by corporate interests and a marketing that impulses you towards consumption. Further, within a non-net-neutral realm (as is the case in Portugal) even entering this digitized space incurs a cost. The cyber-ego is thus enmeshed within a capitalist marketplace, a neo-Fordist fever dream whereby “rather than being subjected to capital, the worker is now incorporated into capital.” The globalizing will to power of corporate interests thus takes advantage of this diffusion of self in cyberspace, with both virtual consequences (in the case of pay-to-use sites, cook-

ies, or government web tracking) and material ramifications (advertisements, selling of data, surveillance). V. [Post-Big Mac (with fries), I make my way to the entrance. No one has arrived to pick me up yet. I switch through my accounts. From my main to my private to let my followers know about my partner’s friend Insta-stalking me—because of course I found out. From my private to my artist account, confirming my presence at an exhibition later this week, queuing a series of posts of new photography studies. From my artist account to a professional account, ensuring I haven’t

he loss of the material support for the digital ego results in a cyber-melancholic turn, whereby the self is caught up, as Butler writes, “between the desire to live and the desire to die” in a profound existential ambivalence. In order for the cyber-ego to live unencumbered from the melancholia of the lost material support, it must effectively sever that psychic connection, something which it cannot do. Yet if the cyber-ego were to die, we would lose all of the interconnectivity of re-embodiment, and with it the conveniences of modern life. The inception of e-subjectivity thus resides in a suspended animation, half biological, half technological: termed by Paula Sibilia as the state of “el hombre-información”13. This ambivalence is exacerbated by common conceptualizations of the Web as a mere simulacrum of the material world, rather than recognizing its particularities, internal logics, and possibilities for play-of-self and auto-narrativization. But what if we could supersede this cyber-melancholic turn? What would it mean to acknowledge the semi-autonomy of digital presences, recognizing In English, literally man-information, human-as-information. See Sibilia, El hombre 13

postorgánico.

that synthetic actions and digitized maneuvers have implications on both sides of the screen without necessarily relying on the material body? Yet there is “no ‘one’ without ambivalence” Butler reminds us, as “there is no ambivalence without loss...one that of one’s emergence.” It is precisely this existential ambivalence, this vacillation leaves the trace of its turn at the scene between life and death, that creates the cyber-ego. The cyber-ego is imprinted with the trace of the material form, and it is in its emergence that one can see not only the cyber-melancholic turn’s spatialization, but also perhaps a way beyond the cycle of melancholic subjectivity. Namely, if the melancholic condition in the cyber-ego allows for outwards expansion and play-of-self, one can imagine performances of digitality14 that serve as a sort of narrative laboratory. In other words, since the cyber-melancholic turn postulated in this essay expands outwards, there is no limit to the imaginative possibilities of cyberspace, its architecture, and its performative capabilities. In the recesses of the Internet less touched by advertising and and commercialization15, there is poten-

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received any new messages. I return to my main profile, posting a story: “Back home!” My family has arrived, I put my phone away. In the darkness, my inner pocket lights up with new notifications.

For more on digital performativity/performance, see Buongiorno’s “Extended Selves”. 15 Clandestine torrenting sites, unmoderated blogs, low-tech Web 1.0 sites: these can be interesting sites of ethnographic exploration of postorganic play-of-self since they do not incur profit in the same way as Instagram , Facebook, etc. Conversely, there are precisely the sites of increased fascist radicalization, pointing again to McPherson’s model of the Internet as a product of discursivity in the material world and the ambivalence of the cyber-melancholic condition. 14

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-tial for an e-self beyond the constraints of corporeality, not negatively discarding the material support, but acknowledging its loss, acknowledging the present moment, and choosing to imagine futures not as hombre-información, man-as-information, but hombre:información, human:data. This hombre:información would see the cyber-ego as an active component of our autoconstruction in which both subjects are participating, rather than just the material acting upon the digital16, allowing subjectivity to extend beyond the hazy outline of a human body. In employing the psychoanalytic language of Judith Butler’s The Psychic Life of Power in conversation with prominent digital theorists and a framing narration of Insta-subjectivity, this essay has attempted to briefly sketch the psychic inception of digital subjectivity in the particular conditions of cyberspace. In articulating this cyber-melancholic turn suscitated by the unavowable loss of the material body, I have pointed towards the existential ambivalence of the e-self within cyberspace and in relation to the material user. A discussion on the losses and gains of this ambivalence and melancholia recognizes the dangers of corporate surveillance and commodification inherent in the virtual capitalist marketplaces that structure the mod ern Internet. Yet, in gesturing towards We use the term hombre:información thus as a placeholder, the theoretical possibility of seeing man as congruent with data, rather than simply 16

acting upon it.

possible avenues forward, we catch a glimpse of a different model of digital subjectivity — hombre:información, human:data — which takes into account the respective agency of both parties, recognizing the quasi-autonomy of the cyber-ego. Yet the hombre:información remains a sketch, in the words of Judith Butler, “a hyperbolic theory, a logic in drag.” This word play gestures to the psychoanalytic work that may define our relationship to our e-doubles: a world in which we see an e-self (that is still us) in a form alien to our corporeality, a truly post-organic integration of subjectivity beyond materiality. Putting our bodies on the line and recognizing the distance of the screen could move us toward the “redemptive possibility” found in our cyber play-of-self, opening up narrative capabilities in an ever-expanding e-architecture of our design.

EZEQUIEL GONZÁLEZ

INTERVIE CHAL CONSCI

IEW: DAVID LMERS ON IOUSNESS

avid Chalmers is a Professor of Philosophy at NYU. As a philosopher of mind, his research is focused on understanding human consciousness and its applications to His work has appeared in The New York

INTERVIEW: DAVID CHALMERS ON CONSCIOUSNESS

conversation focuses on Chalmers’ ideas from his book The Conscious Mind, and his paper, “The Virtual and the Real.” The interview has been transcribed and edited for brevity and clarity by Rishi Chhapolia. Gadfly: How close are we to understanding why consciousness exists? Would an answer help us understand the ever-elusive “meaning” of human life? David Chalmers: This is one of the great unanswered questions at the moment, why does consciousness exist at all? That’s maybe the very core of the “hard problem of consciousness.” Can we explain why consciousness exists fully in terms of physical processes? There’s certainly correlations between brain processes and consciousness, and we’re making a lot of progress at narrowing down which processes in the brain are more correlated with consciousness, but we still have a long way to go. All that, though, is really at the level of correlations, and there’s really nothing here that would explain why consciousness exists wholly in terms of the brain. My favored approach is to assume that consciousness exists, and then come up

with principles that connect it to everything else in the world. It may be that the best kind of theory of consciousness will presuppose that consciousness exists, and give us the laws that govern it in the same way that our theories of space and time presuppose that space and time exist. That’s at least where things stand right now. But, of course, it’s still very early days, and you’ve got to stay updated on what’s coming next. On the connection to “meaning,” I’m inclined to think that consciousness is somehow what gives our life meaning. If we were not conscious at all, there’s a sense in which our lives would lack meaning. As conscious beings, we experience things as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, or broadly as ‘meaningful’. Mainly I’ve been thinking about a related issue, which is the connection between consciousness and value. I’m inclined to think that a system has to be conscious in order for anything to have value for it. Only conscious beings are beings that have, for example, moral calculations. It’s a slightly different question from meaning, but of course, value and meaning are very closely connected. And I’m sympathetic to the view that consciousness is the ground of meaning. Part of the project of leading a meaningful life will involve having the right kind of conscious life. It seems that human evolution has significantly shaped how we perceive, and interact with, the world. How do you think human evolution has affected the development of conciousness? If there exists an objective

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external reality outside of the mind, is it possible for us to have become more accurate at perceiving it over time?

onsciousness has gotten far more sophisticated over time. There is an interesting question about whether there was any kind of consciousness present at the beginning of the evolutionary process. There are certainly views that there was some element of consciousness all along. The mainstream view is that consciousness a very simple form, and then gradually evolved from feeling to perceiving to

There’s a big evolutionary advantage to getting the structure of the external

world right. We should expect that consciousness gradually becomes more accurate in those structural respects over time. Which is not to say that there can’t be quite a few, at least local, illusions and things that we misrepresent and get wrong. You would certainly think that the ability to accurately represent the external world is evolutionarily useful. Perception has very sophisticated models of the external world. And on the face of it, these models would be more useful if they’re accurate. But some people have argued against that — most recently, the psychologist Donald Hoffman wrote in The Case Against Reality that evolution doesn’t care about truth or an accurate representation of the world. We could be just as evolutionarily world; there is no reason for the external

world to be anything like the way we perceive it to be. I think that argument doesn’t work but it’s a very interesting one.

INTERVIEW: DAVID CHALMERS ON CONSCIOUSNESS

In the past you’ve argued in favor of the possibility of an artificial intelligence that is equal to human intelligence. In The Conscious Mind, you wrote that “there is a class of computations such that the implementation of any computation in that class is sufficient for the existence of conscious experience.” What is the threshold that a set of computations must reach to be classified as “consciousness”?

That’s one of the big unknowns. We don’t know how widespread consciousness is. I have some small element of sympathy with panpsychism, the view that consciousness is everywhere. In which case, it may be that even very trivial computations, like bits flipping, may have some degree of consciousness. That said, I’m very far from confident this view is true. On a much more mainstream view, there’s going to be some degree of complex computation at which consciousness kicks in. I’m inclined to think that it’s going to be a level far simpler than, say, the level of complexity of the human brain. There is good reason to think that many animals much simpler than humans have some degree of consciousness. I’d like to think that mice are conscious, flies are conscious, worms are conscious. But worms are pretty simple. C. Elegans

if worms can be conscious, some kind elements with the right wiring could be conscious too. But that said, figuring out what that threshold is at the core of developing a good theory of consciousness, which we don’t have yet.

uppose we have an AI that someone claims is “conscious.” How could we know that this AI really possesses consciousness and isn’t simply providing a simulation of it? How do I know that other humans are conscious? How do I know that you are conscious? You’re acting like you’re conscious, and you’re talking about consci-

chicken life, most people will save the get to the point where they have moral status akin to that of a chicken, and only later get to the point where they have rights akin to that of a human.

xactly what the threshold is, however, is extremely hard to know. Getting to the level of being a ciding, feeling, language-using creature

of this is proof.

existence, those are all elements of what’s involved in humans’ “full” moral status as rational beings. So once we have an AI that has those things at a human level, we can say it’s close enough.

As a practical matter, if we end up with AI systems which are humanlike in all these respects, at some point people are going to extend to them the assumption that they’re conscious, as we do with other people.

Do you think that virtual reality can allow us to experience what it’s like to be other people or beings? For example, according to Thomas Nagel’s famous example, what it’s like to be a bat?

At what point should we start treating an AI equivalently to a human being?

Some people have called virtual reality an “empathy machine.” Partly because, at least to some extent, it can put you in other people’s shoes. So maybe I could be put in the shoes of an explorer or somebody from another culture. Or at least be getting the sensory input that they receive, and occupy their perspective. And that would give me some sense of what it’s like to be them. But of course, there’s much more to what it’s like to be a person or being than just this pure sensory perspective. There’s the way you interpret it, how you feel about it, how you think about it, all of

An AI may have some degree of moral status well before it gets to the human level of moral status. Most of us make a distinction between a kind of “full” moral status that humans have, and a “partial” moral status that many non-human animals have. People think that you shouldn’t make chickens, for example, suffer unnecessarily. But very few people think that animals should have the kinds of rights that humans have. If it comes to saving a human or saving a

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ousness, that helps. You’re similar to me in various ways, and I know I’m conscious, so I assume you’re conscious but I certainly can’t prove it. With AI, we have to roughly go on similar things— behavior, similarity to us, and so on. If we have an AI that behaves in a very humanlike way, walks and talks like us, and has relevantly similar internal processes, then I’d start to at least strongly make the assumption of consciousness. What would be especially convincing is if the AI starts talking about consciousness itself. It says, “I have these conscious processes. It’s very weird and mysterious, but it feels like something from the

INTERVIEW: DAVID CHALMERS ON CONSCIOUSNESS

which is the result of years and decades of being embedded in a culture, society and place. I don’t think we can expect virtual reality to really give you that, at least not immediately, and not easily.

Regarding whether VR could tell me what it’s like to be a bat. It could do some initial things towards that experience—flying around, hanging upside down, etc. But when it comes to things like the SONAR signals that the bat sends out: for the bat, is it more like hearing, does it hear the beeps? Is it more like vision, a constructed image? Or something in between? I suspect that it’s something in between. And merely putting on a VR headset and hearing these chirps - we probably won’t experience that the way the bat does, and that’s because the bat brain is probably very different from the human brain. Now humans do have the ability to echolocate, which could be used to help understand the bat’s experience of echolocation. But when the differences between individuals or species arise due to differences in the brain, that is going to be much harder to effect through virtual reality equipment alone. That said, the brain is very plastic. People have found that you can put people in new environments, and that different parts of the brain can adapt to processing things it didn’t before. For example, blind people can become better at echolocation. Maybe this could happen if we get exposed enough to another perspective. But bats are so different from us, I’m doubtful of VR’s capability

to give us too much insight into what it’s like to be one. You have claimed in the past that, in the long term, our experiences in virtual reality can be as valuable to us as our experiences in physical reality. Since an individual can choose between living in a virtual and non-virtual reality, do you think there is one we should spend more time in? Is there a normative way of thinking about this?

argue that a sufficiently sophisticated virtual world, like Neal Stephenson’s “metaverse,” could be a perfectly valuable place to spend one’s time in and, in principle, is not a second-class reality. You could live a perfectly meaningful life there. In any individual case, there are going to be pros and cons of doing so. For example, your existing friends and family are mostly in the non-virtual reality. If so, that will be a reason to favor the non-virtual reality. If they all go into a virtual reality and say, “Come join me in the metaverse,” that might be a reason to live in the virtual reality. It may be that virtual reality enables you to do things that are simply impossible in non-virtual realities. Whether it’s enhanced sensory capacities or the ability to fly or explore new worlds, and you may really value those things. I don’t think there’s a simple way to choose which world is best. Every individual has different preferences and values. Choosing to spend most of my life in VR can be a perfectly reasonable choice.

There has been a global cultural discourse about how AI is taking over

intelligence, which can learn things exponentially faster than a human being. Can we use these developments in AI to start deciphering the “hard problem of consciousness”? Once we’ve got machines which are smarter than we are, they’ll be better than us at doing philosophy, so we’ll hand off the problem to them, and they’ll solve our philosophical problems for us. The “hard problem” might be too hard for human brains, but let’s put an what they come up with. I do take the possibility of superintelligence very seriously. I wrote an article about 10 years ago on the idea of singularity, or intelligence explosion. But once we have AIs that are more capable than the human mind, they will also be more capable at designing machines,

so they will design machines better than we can, smarter than the ones we design, and hence machines smarter than themselves. And then if you repeat that process, you get a rapid spiral towards superintelligence. I suspect that that will happen. Who’s to say that, at the end of a process like that, we might have AI systems that stand to Einstein as Einstein stands to a mouse. It’s unimaginable what that might lead to.

RISHI CHHAPOLIA

There may be some downsides in the short term: you will lack all sorts of capacities that are currently present in non-virtual reality. You can’t experience the bodily senses, food, drink, sex in VR. But who’s to say, in 50 years, that might be different. Even once we have much more sensorily satisfying VR, though, people might have a preference for natural reality. But just as many of us choose to spend our lives in cities such as New York, which are not terribly “natural,” it’s perfectly reasonable to choose to spend your life in VR.

I’d imagine that, certainly when it comes lems, AIs will have left regular humans in the dust. They’ll regard our problems as trivial and have a whole new set of philosophical problems to contend with. cial future of philosophy ends up being continuous with current philosophical problems, like the one of consciousness we’ve thought about. One way all this could go is if these super intelligent systems are somehow themselves successors of human systems, and not separate AIs. Maybe we actually upgrade the human brain along the way with AIstyle technology and we end up being super intelligent creatures ourselves, then there might be the hope of more continuity between humans and AIs in many domains, including these scienbe that our successors will look back at us and say that we were just messing around in the dark with problems of consciousness, the same way we look at naive humans 10,000 years ago making got it started.

FREEDOM OF THE PRESENT

FREEDOM OF THE PRESENT MOMENT

ur lives are forged through the decisions that we make every day. Some of these decisions

situations, interacting with different people, and certainly speaking (and hence thinking) a different language than they would otherwise have been. Yet, no matthe ways our lives take course, these dethe end of our lives, whenever that time may come, our existence will be marked precisely by these contingent facts. Metaphysically speaking, we can consider our lives in terms of possible worlds, i.e., ways in which the world could have been different. Indeed, we would all agree that the world need not have been the way it actually is. To illustrate, consider what you did yesterday. In that twenty-four hours, you may have gone for a walk in the park, started to read a new book, or spontaneously traveled to Europe. All of these options are strictly possible, even though you would be more likely to do some activities than others. In other words, there is a possible world for each possible way in which you could act, including combinations of such actions. In fact, there is a possible world in which you do all three of these options. Now, suppose that

(i.e., yesterday), you cannot change your actions, since they occurred in the past. Hence, what were once possible worlds that you could bring about have now become worlds that would be impossible for you to bring about. It is impossible for you to act differently than you did yesterday.

MATTHEW HARPER

we choose to eat for breakfast or what shirt we wear on a particular day. Other decisions, however, shape our lives in profound and meaningful ways. If someone decides to move from New York City to Rome, for example, they would

you actually went for a walk in the park yesterday. By acting in such a way, the possible world in which you had gone for a walk (which was previously merely possible) becomes the actual world. Of course, you are still able to read a new book or spontaneously go to Europe at some later point in time. However, with-

Up to this point in time, we could have all made different decisions, and in the future, we can make other choices than the ones that we will end up making. Indeed, it is entirely possible that we could live completely different lives than the ones that we are currently living. How would our lives be different if, for any given choice, we chose the other option? In fact, we often spend a great amount of time thinking about the ways in which our lives could be, would be, and even should be. In our daily lives, we quite frequently use our imagination to examine the possible worlds that are open to us. We wish to see how the world might be if some antecedent event (e.g., a decision) were to occur. We think about conversations that we had a few days ago and how we may have responded better. We think about future interactions and how they might play out. Some of us may even think, for

FREEDOM OF THE PRESENT MOMENT

instance, about the particular circumstances of our death: who will be around us, where we will be, and what we will be thinking. From this present moment to the day we die, we can shape our lives in any number of ways. Certainly, what we do today will influence what we are able to do tomorrow. So, how should we decide between the options that are before us? A person’s life can be viewed, from their birth to their death, as the actualization of a particular possible world singled out of the many left unactualized. Which possible world should we pursue and which possible worlds should we reject?

In regards to our lives and the ways in which they may turn out, we are not particularly concerned with the trivial ways in which it may vary. Rather, we want to know the effects of major shifts in our possible worlds and more spepower to actualize. We often spend a great deal of time considering how we may change the actual world and our present circumstances within it to more beliefs, and ideas. Nonetheless, we are not always able to transform our desired possible world into the actual world. Decisions and the degree of freedom to our choices are sometimes (and perhaps often) not up to us. Indeed, we are quite limited by the circumstances of the world or by how other people’s decisions affect us. For example, we do not choose where, when, or to whom we are born. Yet, all of these contingent facts

in early youth and beyond. Nonetheless, we each have the ability to affect change in the world, however large or small. If we indexed the possible worlds of the future in relation to how much our actions bring about change in our lives, as we look farther into the future, the differences in the states of affairs in these possible worlds increase. At the present moment, we are highly limited by where we are and what we are doing. However, as we view the possible worlds available to us further into the future, there is a greater set of possible worlds because more is possible. In order for these possible outcomes to happen, certain things must happen between now and that future point in time in order for that possible world to become the actual world.

et, every possible world of the future in relation to our lives has a temporal limit. Our existence is such that, no matter what we do, we will all grow old and die. Hence, every such possible world necessarily ends in our death. Despite this important truth of our existence, many people today choose to ignore our entwinement with time. For example, the mid-life crisis itself is an adverse response to the sudden realization that one has lived Indeed, if we have not come to that realization yet, there will certainly be a time where each of us (barring any unforeseen circumstances) realizes that not only have we lived a considerable portion of our lives so far but that we have less time to live. As time passes and we

In this way, we should take note of the possible worlds in which we die in the near future. It is entirely possible, metaphysically speaking, that any one of us dies tomorrow. The presence of those possible worlds in our ontology demonstrates an important (and perhaps obvious) truth: the future is not metaphysically guaranteed. We cannot, as a matter of fact, guarantee that we will be alive at any given future point in time. We live each moment of our lives in the present. In the same fashion as Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am,” our immediate conscious experience of the present moment allows us to guarantee its existence. The past used to exist and the future will exist, but metaphysically they do not exist; only the present exists. Since we cannot guarantee the future nor change anything that has happened in the past, living presently can allow us to live more closely in accordance with the nature of reality. In The Sutra on Knowing the Better Way to Live Alone (Bhaddekaratta Sutta), the Buddha explains:

Looking deeply at life as it is in the very here and now, the practitioner dwells in stability and freedom. We must be diligent today. To wait till tomorrow is too late. Death comes unexpectedly. How can we bargain with it? The sage calls a person who dwells in mindfulness night and day, ‘the one who knows the better way to live alone.

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arrive closer to death, the possible worlds that are open to us are decreasing in terms of diversity, because we are unable to affect as much change in the world and our individual circumstances as we did before. Naturally, we do not know when we will die.

Happiness resides in the present moment. We each have all that is necessary for happiness right now. It is true that we are limited in terms of our actions. There are moments when we have to do things where we would rather do something else. Yet, despite this limit on our possible worlds, we do have the complete freedom to think as we wish. No

Do not pursue the past. Do not lose yourself in the future. The past no longer is. The future has not yet come.

FREEDOM OF THE PRESENT MOMENT

matter the situation, we can take that moment as an opportunity to fully realize ourselves in the present. Living in the present moment means that we accept and embrace the fact that any possible world can become the actual world. Yet, many people believe that their happiness is dependent on the occurrence of some possible event. We often tell ourselves that once we reach a certain goal or aspiration, only then will we be happy. Social discourse often revolves around acquiring money, power, and renown. In view of our metaphysics, these desires are sustained by the future—there is no point in earning money now (i.e., working) if it cannot be used later. Since the future is not guaranteed, it does not make sense that someone’s happiness should depend on unstable

grounds (i.e., possible worlds of the future). If we accept that even a normatively bad possible world can become the possible world, then we can appreciate our life thus far, the beauty of the world around us, and our time in existence. Even if we die tomorrow and know it, the practice of living presently can allow us to, nonetheless, be happy and peaceful.

ur actions should reflect our mindset. In The Handbook (The Enchiridion), Epictetus writes, “Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well.” Our lives can turn out in any number of ways. It is true that if we choose alternatively in regards to a significant decision, then we would have

been, or can be, different—they are irrelevant for practical purposes. If we are overly concerned with how our lives ultimately end up turning out, we end up missing our lives. Each moment of our lives can and should be an opportunity for us to not only live more fully but to actualize our most important ideals and beliefs, whether in thought or action.

MATTHEW HARPER

different experiences and interactions. Nonetheless, upon making any decision, we must accept that they cannot be undone. In regards to time, there are certainly no make-ups: once time is spent, it is spent. We may be able to rectify our past wrongdoings, but those original actions will always have occurred. We should not be too focused with how our lives could have

THE LANGUAGE

E OF

THE LANGUAGE OF MATHEMATICS

Columbia’s Comparative Literature and

to study literature, culture, and society with reference to material from several national traditions, or in combination of literary study with comparative study in other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.” My interest is studying mathematics from a humanities and social sciences perspective—think history of mathematics, philosophy of mathematics, or sociology of mathematics. The CLS major seemed like a space that would support me doing the work I wanted to do. However, the major has strict application requirements, asking students to complete four semesters in each of two non-English languages by the end of sophomore year. I decided to ask for something different: the freedom to completely reframe my course of study by treating mathematics as one of these languages. This essay is an edited version of the letter I sent to the department to make my case. I. Introduction

n order to study mathematics from the perspective of the humanities, you guage of mathematics. Mathematics, like any real language, has a grammar and ciently familiar with both that you may actually participate in mathematical discourse. Studying mathematics from the perspectives of literature, philosophy, and history therefore requires familiarity with mathematics in the same way that participating in a French literature class

requires knowledge of French. And just as a French text must be translated to be understood by an English-speaking audience, mathematical thought must undergo a translation process in order to be understood by a broader academic audience. Since this is my area of interest, I believe mathematics should count as a language for the purposes of the Comparative Literature and Society application requirements. II. Grammar

efore I discuss the grammar of mathematics, I would like to address an important distinction I will use throughout this essay. In mathematics, there is a distinction between mathematics itself and something called metamathematics. Mathematics proper studies mathematical objects—numbers, shapes, and their more abstract generalizations. Metamathematics, on the other hand, studies the process of doing mathematics: it looks at topics like logic, sets, and proof writing. This is equivalent to the difference between someone who studies the literature of a language and someone who studies the linguistics of that language. A literary theorist has a sociological understanding of the grammar of their language, and uses that understanding to produce writing. A linguist, however, works with a bigger and more precise picture of grammar. In the same way, a mathematician has a sociological understanding of mathematical grammar which they use to do math. A metamathematician, however, works with a bigger and more precise picture

AIDEN SAGERMAN

of mathematical grammar. To see this in practice, we need to get a better understanding of what mathematical grammar really is.

THE LANGUAGE OF MATHEMATICS

here are two components to mathematical grammar: proofs and elementary mathematical objects. Proofs are the tool of establishing truth in mathematics. Just as a scientist might design an experiment to show that their hypothesis is true, a mathematician will construct a proof of a statement to show its truth. They are also the essential mode of mathematical discourse, in the same way that a conversation or literary text is a mode of linguistic discourse. Let’s look at an example. A mathematical statement which is true—that is, which has a proof—is called a theorem.1 Theorems usually say something about

basic verb to explain conjugation. (Even Numbers). We say a natural number a is even if there exists a natural number b such that a = 2 · b. In other words, an even number is twice some other whole number. Thus 4 is even, but 5 isn’t, as 4 = 2 · 2 and 5 does not equal 2 times any whole number. Now that we have an object, we can come up with a theorem about it. 1 I mean truth here in a sociological, rather than metamemathical sense; in more technical contexts, truth and provability are not necessarily equivalent.

. Let a be an even number. Then a is even. As a reminder, a2 = a · a. I will call this "Theorem 1," as is conventional. This theorem certainly looks true—we know 2 is even, so is 22 = 4; we know 4 is even, and so is 42 = 16; and we know 6 is even, and so is 62 = 36. For this theorem to be considered mathematical fact, though, we would want to prove it. Here's what a proof would look like. Proof. Suppose a is an even number. We want to show that a2 = 2c for some number c number, a = 2b for some number b. This means a2 = (2b)2, so a2 = (2b)2 = 4b2 = 2(2b)2 So then if we just say that the number c is 2b2, then a2 = 2c. Put simply, this is saying that if a is twice b, then a · a is four times b · b, which is b · b. This is, in essence, what a proof is: a process by which we take a mathematical theorem and show that from its assumptions, you actually know its conclusion is true. What actually defines a proof is a little more complicated. In a metamathematical sense, a proof is a list of statements such that each statement is either an axiom of your logical system or follows (using some sort of convoluted set of rules for deduction) from the prior statements. A formalized version of the proof I did above, for instance, would

To see an example of this, consider the proof of Theorem 1. I will look at three different examples of ways we might prove this, and explain how mathemaexample is the proof I gave above. This —it follows standard mathematical conventions in both its language and structure.3 For our second example, let's consider the simpler explanation I gave 2 When I showed this to Professor Warner, he

pointed out that there are also some interesting edge cases involving proofs which are sociologically still proofs, but provide almost no insight into why what they prove is actually true. These often take the form of, as he put it, “a sequence of random-looking algebraic manipulations” that just happen to give you the right answer. I think these are sort of comparable to sentences in a language that are technically grammatical, but are so hard to parse that you have to go through them repeatedly to figure out their meaning. 3 The one technical note her is that the word

"number" would be substititued for the more

after the proof. This would be a bit more borderline—while technically true, it is much less conventional in its structure and language, and would therefore not be appropriate in more rigorous contexts. For our third example, let’s say I wrote down a very long list of even numbers and their squares: 2 and 4, 4 and 16, 6 and 36, etc. all the way up to 3,456,278 and 11,945,857,613,284. This would certainly be quite convincing—if Theorem 1 doesn’t fail in almost 3.5 million cases, then how could it not be true? This would not, however, count as a proof in a mathematical context—a mathematician might object, for instance, that we don’t know if the theorem is true for 4, 000, 000 from the list alone.

AIDEN SAGERMAN

be a very long list of symbols like {,}, ∅, ∪, ⇒ which happen to follow a specific ruleset. In practice, though, that's not really what mathematicians use. While formal proofs do technically say why something is true, they are very hard for humans to read. As my current math professor Evan Warner likes to say, "proofs are sociological constructs"— something counts as a proof because mathematicians have decided it counts as a proof. A major part of learning mathematics is becoming comfortable with the rules of these sociological constructs.2

he distinctions between these example proofs are equivalent to the rules of a grammar. Example one is like a well constructed sentence in a language—every speaker of the language will understand what you’re saying. Example two is like a poorly constructed sentence—while it gets the point across, it would not be appropriate for some forms of communication. And example three is a sentence that is so poorly constructed it actually does not make sense—while the speaker believes they are communicating their idea, they are actually failing to do so. Learning the grammar of mathematics means learning both how to construct a proof that makes sense on the most basic level, and how to construct a proof that is appropriate for engaging in mathematical discourse.

THE LANGUAGE OF MATHEMATICS

The examples I have provided are over-

whether something is or isn’t a valid proof. Even once one understands what counts as a proof, understanding what type of proof is applicable to a particular circumstance remains complicated. There is also a linguistic component: as we saw with examples one and two, the same idea expressed in slightly different language can appear to have differing levels of rigor. Proof writing is therefore a decidedly nontrivial skill, and is a requirement for mathematical education. ments the Columbia mathematics department mentions for participating in higher level classes is familiarity with proofs, which can come from Honors Math, Linear Algebra, Combinatorics, Number Theory, or a variety of other classes. While this requirement demonstrates the foundational nature of proofs for mathematical participation, it also highlights another key aspect of proofs: they don’t require any particular content. Linear Algebra, Combinatorics, and Number Theory have almost no content in common—to be reductive, they respectively deal with the idea of lines in many dimensions, complicated counting problems, and the properties they all somehow serve the same function: teaching basic proof writing. The same is true of Honors Math—Professor Warner has told us that building proof writing skills is just as much of a goal of the class as learning the content. This is what makes proof writing grammatical: it is a necessary structure to mathemat-

ical thought, but lacks any actual mathematical objects, in much the same way that grammar structures language but does not have inherent meaning without words.

he other key parts of mathematical grammar are sets and functions. Just as some metamathematicians study proofs, others—called set theorists—study sets and functions.4 Like proofs, sets and functions have a more sociological version—known as “naive set theory”—which is foundational in the same way that proof writing is. Naive set theory is sociologically determined in that it’s exactly as formal as mathematicians agree is necessary for doing math. In many ways, it has no resemblance to a formalized version of set theory. Since both sets and functions are fairly simple

of objects.

(Sets). A set is a collection

(Functions). A function is a rule that takes objects from one set, called its domain, and matches them with objects in another set, called its codomain. Each object in the domain must match with exactly one object from the codomain.5 4 Technically speaking, set theory isn’t necessarily metamathematics, in that sets really are just mathematical objects like any other. However, as we will see, most of the objects in mathematics can be treated as sets. This means that set theory very often becomes metamathematical, as results about sets are often significant for the process of doing mathematics as a whole.

AIDEN SAGERMAN

We generally write sets by putting brackets around the list of elements. For example, {1, 3, 5} is a set. So are {2}, {lampshade, squirrel}, and the set of all fractions. Functions sound complicated, but are much simpler when you look at some examples. For instance, the rule that takes a number x in and outputs x2 is a function. It takes in an object in its domain—the set of numbers—and spits out a number in its codomain. Generally, we write out a function named f by saying f(x) = and then the output for a given input x. For instance, in the case of the x2 function, we would write f(x) = x2 to show that an input x is matched with its square. Functions can also be visualized in a variety of ways, such as as charts and as graphs.

branches: algebra, geometry, and analysis. Intuitively, algebra is the study of number-system-like objects; geometry is the study of shapes and their generalizations; and analysis is the study of continuous processes.6 In mathematical practice, though, algebra is the study of sets that have particular types of functions associated with them; geometry is the study of sets of points in space, and generalizations thereof based on sets of points that are considered “close”; and analysis is the study of certain operations you can perform on functions. Sets and functions are very literally everywhere in mathematics. However, like proofs, they lack meaning on their own. While questions like “What actually counts as a set?” and “Do particular types of functions exist?” are meta-

Almost every important object in math is a set or a function. Mathematics can (very roughly) be divided into three

as a lot of the words you’d use to characterize it have slightly different mathematical and colloquial meanings. By “continuous processes,” I mean processes where things get close together in a smooth, unbroken way. Other (slightly incorrect) characterizations include “calculus where you prove everything” and ‘the study of what happens when numbers get very close together.”

5 Mathematicians do sometimes work with a

more formal notion of functions than this definition, but it’s relatively rare.

6 Analysis is probably the trickiest to describe,

mathematically meaningful, they rarely have meaning in mathematics proper objects). Like proofs, there’s a basic intuition behind how sets and functions behave which is introduced in courses like Honors Math and is necessary for the study of mathematics. This why they are grammatical, rather than lexical.7

THE LANGUAGE OF MATHEMATICS

n summary, the grammar of math consists of foundational ideas which underlie all of mathematical thought, but which lack the substance needed to have meaning on their own. Just as some linguists study the grammatical structures of language, metamathematicians study these underlying structures in a rigorous context. For most mathematicians, though, an intuitive, sociologically-determined understanding is both necessary and sufficient. From a pedagogical perspective, the similarities between the grammar of mathematics and the grammar of a language continue to hold. While much of the introductory grammar of mathematics is taught through classes such as Honors Math, 7 It is also worth noting that set theory is not the

only foundation for mathematics. It is, however, the one which is most convenient from both an intuitive and a historical perspective: sets are fairly simple to define (at least naively), and they’re what mathematicians have been working with for over 100 years, so it makes sense to keep using them. Similarly, the grammar of a language is sort of arbitrary—for example, I could decide to form plural nouns in English by adding a “t” at the end instead of an “s.” However, in practice, the particular sounds that build up grammatical structures have a historical and cultural basis—in other words, we’ve been using them for a while, so you can’t just arbitrarily shift them.

students continue to learn parts of it throughout their education. When a student takes an analysis class, for instance, they learn the epsilon-delta argument, a type of proof used predominantly in analysis. Similarly, as a student progresses through a language, they learn the grammar required to express increasingly complex idea structures. III. Lexicon

he lexicon of mathematics is easier to define: it consists of the many primary objects of mathematical study. It is also more straightforward to grasp conceptually than the grammar, as it does not rely on a distinction between formal and sociological understanding. It is, however, harder to discuss concretely in an accessible way. To talk about an unfamiliar object, you need to give initial examples, a formal definition, and more examples and theorems to build intuition for the behavior of the formal definition. This challenge highlights a key difference between mathematics and other languages: whereas an element of the lexicon of a traditional language can usually be explained using words from another language, an element of the mathematical lexicon cannot undergo a direct substitution process. You can always read a French text in translation, although some of the meaning may be lost. But there is no concept of “algebraic geometry in translation,” since you can’t read an algebraic geometry textbook without already knowing some mathematics. This untranslatability actulally makes

This is not to say that mathematics is entirely untraslatable, as you can discuss it by way of analogy. The most elementary objects in algebra, for instance, are ing, a group is something that allows for addition and subtraction. For example, in the integers (positive and negative one can add and subtract; in the posi-

of a “word” in the mathematical lexicon. intuitive one, and takes the form of a list

by adding other properties to the list, such as cyclic groups (groups which consist entirely of something added to itself a number of times) and symmetric groups (groups which consist of all the ways to order a list of things). There are also other types of “words” which relate to groups but are not directly derived from them, such as isomorphisms, a type of function which is used to say that two groups are in some way the same even if they look different. From these different objects, or words, a mathematician can begin to formulate statements about groups and their properties;

these statements and their proofs are the “sentences” of the mathematical language. An objection one might raise at this point is that these objects do not form a lexicon, but a discourse, as they are the building blocks of a discussion. What is important to understand, however, is that while these objects are relevant topics of study in lower-level courses, upper-level courses entirely presuppose their behavior. More concretely, a group is the object of study for Modern Algebra 1; in Modern Algebra 2, however, statements about groups will be assumed as fact without further discussion (in fact, one of the primary topics of Modern Algebra 2 is reducing

AIDEN SAGERMAN

mathematics a more compelling field of preparation for future study, as you can neither work with mathematics nor produce accessible work on it without heavy background knowledge.

more complicated than groups, to sipmle statements about groups8). This continues to build: an undergraduate Algebraic Number Theory course will likely assume statements from the undergraduate course; and a seminar in modern research in the subject will assume an understanding of all the prior topics. In other words, it is a tiered lexicon, with each level building on the next. Terence Tao, one of the preeminent living mathematicians, posits three “‘pre-rigorous’ stage,” the “‘rigorous’ 8 Very technical note that Professor Warner

pointed out: it is in some ways incorrect to say that fields are “more complicated” than groups. Really, because they have fewer rules, groups are more general than fields—in particular, every field is also a group. Since fields are more specific, some facts about them are actually much simpler, in that they exclude weird cases. In the context of Modern Algebra, though, this simplicity relationship roughly holds.

THE LANGUAGE OF MATHEMATICS

t some point, the distinction between learning the lexicon and engaging in mathematical discourse does start to become unclear. By the time you’re learning about very stance, you’ve probably crossed the line from language acquisition into schol-

arly contribution. The complexity here comes from the way in which the mathematics of the last 200 years or so has been layered on itself. Unlike science, where prior theories are frequently disproved, or the humanities, where new schools of thought appear all the time, the mathematics of the modern era has actually remained entirely relevant. Most of the mathematics you see in the required courses for a mathematics major actually predates WWII (although the way we write it is often a little more modern). There is also a large distinction between learning and producing mathematics. Whereas students in other disciplines are often asked to replicate a historical experiment or write their own paper on an important text from the history of their subject, mathematics students are rarely asked to actually reinvent a key idea (or produce any sort of novel research until graduate school). The presentation of mathematical content is often actively ahistoricized, apart from a quick reference to the name of whoever proved a theorem. This means that a lot of what would be considered a “literature” course in other disciplines is treated as more of a “language” course in mathematics: the act of gaining knowledge through production and engagement with foundational texts

AIDEN SAGERMAN

stage,” and the “‘post-rigorous’ stage.” In the language of my framework, the pre-rigorous stage refers to an informal type of mathematics which is fairly irrelevant for our purpose; the rigorous stage refers to the process of acquiring the basic grammar and lexicon of mathematics; and the post-rigorous stage refers to the stage after a student has acquired these skills, at which point, in Tao’s words, “[t]he emphasis is now on applications, intuition, and the ‘big picture.’” The existence of the post-rigorous stage is what makes the lexicon of mathematics into a lexicon—while it is initially of interest in its own right, it is eventually subsumed into intuition. This is similar to the process by which the rules of a language eventually become second nature—in a French literature class you are presumably expected to speak French. Unlike a normal language, however, this process does not only occur once—you can theoretically continue learning and internalizing new mathematical concepts right up until you reach cutting-edge research. In some ways, the lexicon of mathematics is considerably larger and more academically intense than that of a language, in that the acquisition process is much longer and more linear.

streamlined version of the theory. On a more practical level, the Comparative Literature and Society language requirements consist of two semesters of introductory courses, two semesters of intermediate courses, and one semester of a literature course for one language; and two semesters of introductory courses and two semesters of intermediate courses for a second lang-

uage. The tiered structure of the mathematical lexicon means that we cannot map the requirements of the Comparative Literature and Society application to those of a mathematics major directly, as mathematics students continue to learn the words of mathematics long after a language student would be However, we can still construct a comparison on the more grammatical level that is captured by Tao’s three levels of

THE LANGUAGE OF MATHEMATICS

might be considered roughly equivalent

terms of actual coursework, this would take the form of a calculus sequence and some sort of introductory proofs class, where students would begin to understand mathematical rigor. The intermediate courses would map to Tao’s rigorous phase; the direct comparison in coursework here are the Modern Algebra and Modern Analysis sequences, which presuppose basic grammatical understanding and teach more serious mathematical content and advanced proof techniques. And while, as I have erature course per se, it is likely comparable to something on the early side of Tao’s post-rigorous stage; in coursework, a 3000- or 4000-level course that assumes prior knowledge of algebra or analysis.9 IV. Communication

athematics, with its grammar and lexicon, therefore behaves much like a language. However, there is one last similarity which guides my interest in pursuing mathematics as a language: communication. Communication is, in some ways, the point

at which the metaphor breaks down. A “real” language is a full system of communication—human languages have some sort of greeting, a way to express hunger, and a way to encode a variety of complex thoughts. Mathematics clearly doesn’t—to state the obvious, there’s no proof I can write that means “Hello.” But in the context of Comparative Literature and Society, languages aren’t valuable for their ability to contribute arbitrary ideas. Instead, the value of language is to communicate culture. To illustrate this, let’s look at something that isn’t a language in this way: formal logic. By formal logic, I mean the sets of rules governing different methods of deduction rather than the discipline of metamathematical language. After all, “alphabet” and “formal language” Earlier on, I compared metamathematics to linguistics, as they both study the foundational behavior of linguistic concepts. However, there’s a key difference between the two: whereas linguistics is inductive—that is, based on concrete observation—formal logic is deductive—that principles. More concretely: if I want to 9 We may rephrase this entire comparison in

terms of the language of mathematics: Language courses and mathematics courses may both be considered partially-ordered sets with relations of dependence based on both knowledge and rigor. As posets under these dependence relations, these sets are not order-isomorphic (for one, the cardinality of the math poset is considerably greater). However, if we instead order the posets only by rigor-based dependence (and perform some sort of suitable quotient on the math one), we can construct an isomorphism.

tically grammatical, I would compare it to how speakers of the language would

The mathematical language I have described above, on the other hand, is far from empty. On the most basic level, it is

AIDEN SAGERMAN

whether a sentence is logically true, I would look back at the axioms. Internally, then, formal logic has no culture, history, or people it references—logic developed to formalize mathematics, but does not have an inherent connection to mathematical practice. This holds true when we consider how logic interacts with other disciplines externally as well—while in theory, the “speakers” of formal logic are mathematicians, in practice, as we have seen, they speak a more informal version of the language. Formal logic is therefore empty: it communicates about itself.

the prerequisite to mathematical communication, in the same way that French language is an obvious prerequisite to communication in a French cultural context. However, you also need to speak the language of mathematics to engage with the philosophy, history, or sociology of mathematics. Take, for example, this essay: I am able to discuss mathematics and its parallels with language precisely because I already know how to speak in mathematics. And mathematics is also uniquely situated with regard to the sciences. While much of the grammatical knowledge of mathematics is cause mathematics is the language we use to describe the natural world, the mary, then, mathematics is a language not just because it looks like one with its grammar and lexicon, but because it is necessary to facilitate communication.

DISS AS

SSOLUTION S LITERARY GENIUS

DISSOLUTION AS LITERARY GENIUS

ithin the literary universe, no one deals better in the interweaving of fiction and reality than Italian novelist and global sensation Elena Ferrante. Since her first

author has maintained her anonymity through the refusal of public appearances, receiving awards, or even direct correspondence with her translators. When it comes to narrative style, Ferrante consistently writes from interior, first-person perspectives. Her deep knowledge of Neapolitan history and cultural dynamics is paralleled in her writing of womanhood, poverty, the Italian educational system, as well as cultural and linguistic dynamics within Italy. A duality therefore emerges: Ferrante’s literary narratives of identity are so intricate that only someone who has lived similar experiences could replicate them in writing, thus providing the reader a feeling of close proximity to the characters and the author herself. And yet, most details of Ferrante’s personal life––and even her name––remain unknown. Ferrante has published eight works of fiction and two autobiographical works: La Frantumaglia cently, Incidental Inventions Arguably the most famous of these publications are the Neapolitan Novels quartet, the four installations written be“true” identity has occupied the public’s attention for years, and only amplified with the release of the quartet-inspired HBO series, My Brilliant Friend.

In order to explore Ferrante’s personal connections to her writing, let us turn to a quote from the author herself regarding her relationship with pseudonymity. Within Incidental Inventions, a collection of weekly columns Ferrante wrote for touches on this relationship: Ever since adolescence, I’ve liked the term 'unknown.’ It means that all I can know of the person who made this painting is the work I have before my eyes...I can devote myself to the pure result of a creative ges ture, without worrying about a big or small name.

dio Gatti seemed to have lost sight of this “creative gesture” and instead went to great lengths to uncover Ferrante, following money trails through forensic accounting and claiming that her true identity was translator and wife of writer Domenico Starnone, Anita Raja. Other recent speculations have included Stranone himself and critic Goffredo Fofi, yet all these claims are widely regarded as “mere speculations that bear no contextual support.”

Central to the Neapolitan Novels––and Ferrante’s work more generally––is the concept of Smarginatura, translated as “dissolving margins” in English. To My Brilliant Friend “the sensation of moving for a few fractions of a second into a person or a

thing or a number of a syllable, violating its edges.”

of their poverty-stricken Neopolitan rione (neighborhood), yet simultaneously grapple with their connection to their place of origin. Lenu and Lila have an intense, competitive bond propelled by the desire to feed off each other’s success and dreams through both symbiotic love and determination, and parasitic manipulation. Lenu’s recounting of their friendship is ridden with personal biases, jealousies, and prevailing grudges. Yet, her presentation of Lila (and ostensibly their friendship) is ultimately underlined by the sustained desire to give shape to Lila, who so often escapes

ccording to writer and professor Tiziana Rogatis, within her book Elena Ferrante’s Key Words, Smarginatura is the “spilling through the established boundaries of conventional reality... the loss of edges that gives things shape, the slippage of sensory order.” The parallels between Rogatis’ conception of Smarginatura and the diately apparent. Even Rogatis’ diction highlights this connection; the idea that people can slip into a “syllable” and remove themselves from “conventional reality” emphasizes that this phenomenon has symbolic weight outside of Lila and Lenu’s story and in fact transcends

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Smarginatura within the quartet. The Neapolitan Novels follow a lifelong friendship between two women, Lenu and

Lenu's preconceived perceptions.

the concept of Smarginatura very clearly manifests itself in Ferrante’s own identity and the nuances of life more broadly.

Throughout the novels, the experience of Smarginatura is most often associated with Lila. Within My Brilliant Friend, Lila first encounters Smarginatura on

DISSOLUTION AS LITERARY GENIUS

and his friends violently throw fireworks over their apartment’s rooftop to that of the wealthier, Camorra-affiliated Solara brothers. Lenu recounts her friend’s experience through writing:

[Lila] had perceived for the first time unknown entities that broke down the outline of the world and demonstrated its terrifying nature... She said that the outlines of things and people were delicate, that they broke like cotton thread...that the trails of the rockets were scraping [her] brother Rino like files, like rasps, and broke his flesh, caused another, disgusting brother to drip out of him, whom [she] had to put back inside right away––inside his usual form…

ccording to Rogatis, “Lila may christen this incredible experience, but [Lenu] lived through it first, and only lacked the courage to name it.” Upon her first encounter with Lila at the age of eight, Lenu copies Lila’s decision to drop her childhood doll into a cellar, writing that ever since that moment “I was overcome by a kind of tactile dysfunction; sometimes I had the impression that, while every animated being around me was speeding up to the rhythms of its life, solid surfaces turned soft under my fingers...It was an enduring malaise, lasting perhaps years,

beyond early adolescence.” Thus, the entire Neapolitan series––and the friendship between Lila and Lenu––can be understood as Lenu’s attempt to combat Smarginatura, a sensation she first experienced when venturing into the forbidden cellar of Don Achille to retrieve her doll with Lila, therefore transgressing a childhood boundary and losing her sense of reality. Lenu’s perception of Lila can also be understood as a manifestation of the Smarginatura Lenu experiences surrounding her understanding of herself and her friend. For example, after copying Lila’s decision to drop her doll into the cellar, Lenu states, “What you do, I do,” thus presenting a relationship of reciprocity from the initiation of their friendship. Later on, when in adolescence “receiving an education implies giving up beauty and passion (Elena’s fate)” and contrastingly “acquiring beauty and seductive power precludes receiving an education (Lila’s fate),” Lenu writes that “[What] I lacked she had, and vice versa, in a continuous game of exchanges and reversals that, now happily, now painfully, made us indispensable to each other.” From the beginning of the series to its end, Lila and Lenu’s relationship is both a constructed mirror image and a disorderly snarl of ambiguities. Rogatis notes that Ferrante herself describes the female friendship displayed in the Neapolitan Novels as embodying a “disorderliness” that differs from classical presentations of male friendships, contrasting the two gendered bonds as

“‘disorderly,’ [and] a profoundly intense experience unmediated by tradition, genealogy, or clearly-drawn boundaries between the public and private life.” Thus, according to Rogatis, the Smarginatura within their friendship is a symptom of womanhood as forbidden and othered from “the public space reserved for man as a political and social animal,” thus resulting in a more intimate and emotionally vulnerable bond between them. Let us then pursue a deeper investigation of how the usage of written language within the series functions as a narrative tool of categorizing that which escapes conventional boundaries. Lenu’s everyday oscillation between Neopolitian dialect (used within the neighborhood) and Italian (spoken in educational or formal contexts) makes clear the painful distance Lila and Lenu feel between the rione and the outside world. Lenu’s intense desire to escape the poverty of the rione and gain an education is highlighted by the emphasis she places on these linguistic shifts, especially considering her aspiration to become a professional writer; the more formal Italian therefore becomes a symbol of opportunity, education, and

success. The fact that the series itself is written in Italian by an adult Lenu who has succeeded in becoming an author incorporates the novels themselves as a physical element of the series’ plot. Thus, the audience feels as if they are a participant in the story as they are reading, further blurring the lines between

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“order versus chaos, rules versus entropy.” Rogatis then calls upon 20th century French philosopher Jacques Derrida’s deconstructionist conception of friendship as a bond between two like minded people who connect through their otherness, or marginalization in society. Within Lila and Lenu’s friendship, the

The work of 20th century French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas sheds some light on the concept of blurring conventional boundaries of meaning and truth through the said and the unsaid, the public and the private. Within his work , Levinas details the differences between what he calls the “Saying” and the “Said:” while the “Saying” is the act of communicating and words chosen, the “Said” represents the “ethical surplus” of language, or which can never fully encapsulate what is plainly expressed orally. This concept of the “ethical surplus” works in tandem with Levinas’ concept of the “Other,” or that which exhibits alterity in social contexts and interactions. The “Saying” therefore rejects that which is “Other,” or below the surface of what is visually presented and sonically heard. The “Said” includes these unspoken realities and acknowledges the “Other” while escaping conventional structures of producing meaning. Levinas continues that contrastingly, written accounts are inherently a “testimony to [the writer’s] absence,” and lack the nuanced ethical writing recounts events retrospectively

DISSOLUTION AS LITERARY GENIUS

The blurred lines between the Levinasian Saying and the Said within Ferrante’s work is thus an example of Smarginatura. The entire locus of the Neopoltian Novels––Ferrante’s writing more broadescaping boundaries, labels, that which can and cannot be expressed in words, and the establishment of intimacy within private spheres as a mode of individual expression and power.

errante herself speaks on her relationship with creative expression within public and private spheres. Within Incidental Inventions, Ferrante details her experiences with keeping a diary as a girl: I didn’t have time to write every day. And as a result it seemed to me that the thread of causes and effects was writing pages that I later back-dated. And in doing so, I gave the facts, the always exist in the pages that I wrote daily. So it was probably the experi ence of the diary and its contradic tion writer. In the invented stories, I felt that I was––I and my truths––a little safer.

If recounting events––as Lenu does within the Neapolitan Novels––grants a writer safety from the consequences of exposing oneself, does an underlying yet unsaid truth not present itself in written autobiographical work, especially when it is translated and further mediated by cultural and linguistic conversions? Written language is not a representation of reality but instead a malleable tool of appropriation. It is thus important to understand Lenu’s attempts at giving shape to Lila through words as futile; the only “reality” the reader can accept from Lenu’s account is the reality of her perception, rather than an accurate and total depiction of Lila.

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and only exists through the medium of what is being plainly stated. The work of Derrida surrounding friendship and otherness certainly parallels that of Levinas’ discourse of “otherness” within spoken and written language because Derrida was a disciple of Levinas.

rante’s international audience do not experience her novels in the original Italian, the role of translation is vital in transmitting complex and convoluted literary narratives across diverse global audiences. Within her article “Gender and the Metaphorics of Translation,” author and gender studies researcher Lori Chamberlain claims that the task of translation is inherently gendered, claiming that “the opposition between productive and reproductive work... depicts originality or creativity in terms of paternity and authority, relegating secondary roles.” And yet, the ability of the translator to transmit language and messages across cultural and global boundaries points to a type of creation in itself: the mediation of experiences, the creation of relationships. Cultural nuance, tradition, and linguistic norms

pose unique challenges for the task of translation, as the syntactic and lexical customs of different languages are not in direct parallel with one another. Thus, the practice depends on individual creativity and personal interpretation to produce a viable translation. Examined alongside Levinas’ “Saying” and the “Said,” translated texts are perpetually rich with “unsaid” communications, as they can never fully transmit the authenticity of the original author’s work, yet require creativity and artistic input nonetheless.

DISSOLUTION AS LITERARY GENIUS

Topically, within Incidental Inventions, Ferrante speaks on the concept of words and their ability to reveal that which is concealed as a tool as a powerful form of expression: There’s nothing I wouldn’t write about. In fact, as soon as I realize that something has flashed through my mind that I would never put in writing, I insist on doing so. Some say you have to be vigilant, that writers shouldn’t necessarily put everything into words. And part of me is absolutely in agreement. I like writing that adopts a sort of aesthetics of reticence, writing that suggests, writing that alludes...Restraint is all wrong if the task of the writing is to sweep away the resistance of the extraordinary that is con cealed in it. What is not suitable to say should, within the limits of the possible, be said.

According to Ferrante, writing is able

to allude, and therefore suggest something beyond what is explicitly written. This concept of words as tools of expression beyond the pages parallels Ferrante’s approach to identity, as she believes that her creative product has more power than her real name. Ferrante’s anonymity is quite possibly a huge contributor to her writing’s success, as the mystery surrounding the author is a source of intrigue to international audiences. It is therefore unclear to what extent the pure creative output of her writing remains independent from the frenzied obsession many fans and media outlets have developed in pursuit of her “true” identity. This is Smarginatura; the fictions and realities present inside and outside of Ferrante’s writing have congealed into a tangled mix of unspoken and spoken truths that endlessly draw readers in.

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his essay has become in itself an ities, or Smarginatura. There are unsaid truths behind every communication, and the lack of clarity surrounding Ferrante’s “true” identity is yet another testimony to the limits of language and the complexity of identity; without knowledge of her “real” name, much is lost of our understanding of the writer’s origins and experiences. And yet, the impact of her narrative brilliance would arguably diminish if the distinctions work were revealed. As a work primarily

based from real life events, the series and Ferrante’s work more generally

Ferrante’s writing is an exhibit of unparalleled creative genius. If we consider Ferrante’s anonymity as both an act of publicity, ownership, and authorship, as well as a creative element that stands alongside the writing itself, it becomes clear that the act of differentiating between the Saying and the Said within Ferrante’s work is futile. Her creative product is the Smarginatura.

FALSE FRE AND A FOR

EEDOM RGOTTEN

a 21st century hippie's reading of on the road

FALSE FREEDOM AND A FORGTEEN FEMININE

synchronicity finds me attempting to write a hook on the beach in Mexico. All I’ve determined is that the flow knows neither mediocrity nor mercy.

having unsteadied, at a societal level,

Any “alternative” lifestyle is defined in opposition to the default—counterculture counters something. The default of my American youth was woven within

Since during my travels I was not-so-se-

financial recession and the structure of elite northeastern institutions. And while I’ll concede that my youth allowed more flexibility than others, with the privilege of skin tone, lack of religious constraints, etc., its structure carried the distinct feeling that “freedom” extended only as far material parameters allowed. Diminished was any sense of creativity or wonder, which were condemned as “childish” from childhood itself on. “Carte blanche” as it was presented to me was a check with thin margins.

that my current coming-of-age adventure was a synchronistic reenactment of the novel’s first part.

But what of a different American narrative, one that embraces not the singular, prescribed, success-driven “Dream,” but rather the opposite? Somewhat forgotten or shunned by my contemporaries for its dated-ness is the classic American bildungsroman On the Road by Jack Kerouac, which I read early into my own travels last year. The following project attempts to show how a seemingly oblique—nay, illustriously irrelevant—piece of cultural (or just cult) content could teach our COVIDcursed American crop to reclaim real freedom. Maybe, with the pandemic

novel might serve as a means to imagine a post-neoliberal American “hippie” renaissance.

all-American transcendentalist hippie— after all, I sold my soul to the bean field

Having dropped out halfway through his four years at Columbia, Sal Paradise—the stand-in protagonist for Kerouac’s thinly veiled autobiography—is presented with a sudden opportunity to travel across the country with no plan beyond a faraway first stop. Friends he meets hook him up with work, but Sal’s peripatetic longings keep pulling him back on the road again after long; he soon meets a girl from Mexico in California with whom he works and falls in love. Upon realizing their paths don’t align, Sal retreats back to New York to visit a relative, and soon is again on the road. Sal, however, does not face questions about age and other too-personal details, or curious slash predatory male authority figures, or the threat of trafficking, unlike I and other woman wanderers. While my own story was much colored by my identity as a young and not unattractive woman, women in On the Road are more or less obstacles in the plot.

with the “irrational” mind and reason limited to principles of escapism—”I was surprised by how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt.” But the transcendentalist Margaret Fuller imagines that within a female are two parts: the intellectual side, which she calls the Minerva, and the lyrical, the Muse. Towards the beginning of my travels, I, as transplant Jack Kerouac, was employing only my Minerva, for I realize now that I’d learned to ignore my Muse. That learned behavior, or lack thereof, probably dated back to the societal severance of my childhood, which I’d mark by the end of lighthearted “play” sometime during my late preteen years: my crossing of that blunt, vaguely biological line where child becomes woman, a role

EMMA JAMES

In her book The Man of Reason: “Male” and “Female” in Western Philosophy, Australian philosopher Genevieve Lloyd Western argues that Western culture codifies mind and reason as masculine, and body and emotion as feminine. To identify the self with the rational mind is, then, to masculinize the self according to entrenched stereotypes. So of course Kerouac, with his Beat vibe, sets women as a backdrop presented only with respect to the inconveniences of romance past lust and babies past that. At best, a sympathetic enough character like Sal can’t keep up with his lover at physical labor and is saved financially by his aunt, and at worst his good friend Dean Moriarty carelessly abandons his fatherly duties for another flame. This American bildungsroman is one concerned only

FALSE FREEDOM AND A FORGTEEN FEMININE

demanding her compliance. But sometime on the river, my dormant Muse, a dimension inaccessible to Sal Paradise, was awoken in the form of the divine feminine. Though an appropriation of this term by performative new agey feminist star-folk is reason to cringe, the divine or sacred feminine traces its roots to Shaktism, a major Hindu sect, which recognizes metaphysical reality as feminine and worships the goddess Shakti, the personified creative cosmic energy whose true form, like Western philosophy’s God, is beyond human understanding. So, integrating this divine feminine energy implies recognizing and embracing the feminine not as an obstacle to creation, or even just its vessel, but the absolute driver of manifestation; and conceding that the empirical dimensions of the world, those which alone are recognized because Western

conscience can document them, do not account for Lloyd’s body-emotion intuition: the Muse’s lyricality. In praxis, awareness of the divine feminine deeper distinguishes two essential thematic staples of the American West: the pastoral and the sublime. The former references the supposed peaceful dominion of man over nature, through scenes of farm life and productive abundance. The latter, as particularized by Edmund Burke, inspires awe and can provide pleasure in a way different from aesthetic beauty, rendering them mutually exclusive. While the pastoral paints man as having wrangled the Wild West into a breadbasket for the towns back East, the sublime demonstrates the terrifying ultimate rule of nature over weak, shallow mankind.

he divine feminine, and its stark lack of portrayal in the novel, highlights that Sal Paradise, a young vagabond who frequently feels isolated and is never satisfied, did not demonstrate an ability to function in either a pastoral or a sublime setting. He cannot weather the reality of farm life past the pastoral, and does not yet reach the depth of the sublime in this novel. Through Fuller’s lens, we can conceptualize the pastoral as the reined Muse, the nurturing provider, or just maternal production—potential abundance were the land to be managed with more attunement to the earth—and the sublime as Minerva, the authoritarian mother, maternal strictness when no patriarch stands. But all Sal can do is flee. More

n his One-Dimensional Man, Herbert Marcuse expands on Marx’s indictment of capitalism, arguing that the worker is not just reduced to an object in the production machine, but that the worker sees himself as an extension of the products themselves. This object-extension condition raises new generations under capitalism to, in essence, love their shackles: unlike an oppressive overlord clearly identifiable as the enemy, commodities seem to be able to fulfill the want of authentic human attachment that capitalism has stolen. This capitalist inertia towards “settling down” actually destabilizes the galavanting of ever-unstable Dean—around whom the plot (and presumably real life) is tethered—summoning him to finally take responsibility for his affairs, and leaves Sal adrift in abundant, aimless freedom. Perhaps the commodified worker does not know what to even do with freedom, how to wield it, and how to lead a moderate life. Of course such an extreme condition would be born from the

capitalist chains—Sal and his friends are a cultural reaction quickly shot down. In fact, analyzing the novel itself can devolve into pulling apart some endless Russian nesting doll, since it too exists within American culture... did the wide sale of this book actually inform on or just inform the chains of capitalism? How much sale of an anti-American dream did it sell? Maybe, rather than contributing to workers gaining consciousness of their chains, it was sold as a pipe dream never to be achieved and undesirable to be sought at all, if not playing into that same commodity game.

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broadly, the freedom offered by the road to pursue happiness does not guarantee it: Sal and Dean, and all the rest, are chasing a fulfillment that never arrives, or if it does, fades as fast as the given night. In fact, that Sal (and Kerouac) behaves so wildly in opposition to the capitalist asset mindset, that he is so committed to possessions and any stability not possessing him, suggests that these forces do still rule him.

Perceived rule-breaking is so essential in the bildungsroman because American freedom is freedom from (vs. “with”) others. Fittingly, carte blanche is “at liberty,” often used to usher full discretion over how to manage a military attack: war is the opposite of collaboration. Again, this resistance-of position takes mass culture swallowing and monetizing even counterculture, any soldierly urgency at all. If we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t, what substance has our freedom? What is our freedom? In his essay "Two Concepts of Liberty," twentieth century political philosopher Isaiah Berlin proposes two senses of freedom: positive, which concerns “the source of control or interference that can determine someone to do,” and negative, “the area within which [someone] is...left to do...what he is able to do without interference.” So by extension, the “desire to be governed by myself”

FALSE FREEDOM AND A FORGTEEN FEMININE

is different from the desire for action, and positive liberty, he says, is “to lead one prescribed form of life.” But therein lies a false binary: Berlin poses the individual against the aggregated other(s), where one might easily insist on the preposition “with,” or, with others in collaboration. Must the social creature become antisocial for an optimal existence, or “the good life”? It seems not. (I’ve worked on a few extreme off-grid homesteads, and can say with some confidence that no one is fully self-sufficient, not now and not ever.) So, how do we demilitarize—or, disentangle from the assumption of opposing interests and inevitable infliction of harm—the American connotations of "carte blanche" and, freedom itself? Thoreau's civil disobedience? Gandhi’s peaceful nonviolence?

o, the necessary answer to embrace the creative energy of and disarm the assumption of harm that carte blanche implies—the more simple and vastly more challenging root cause of these other symptoms—takes root in Zen Buddhism’s conception of freedom. We must realize that our impulse to think of freedom as from others is fear-based and encouraged by individualist cultures like our own. In fact, the ego’s tendency to escape into consumption and deeper alienation when confronted by opportunities to grow, as Sal experiences, exemplifies the very fear that a capitalist upbringing reinforces. Maybe the only freedom from we should be aiming to seek, if neither

commodity nor escapism sustainably satiates the worker’s mind, is freedom FROM the mind itself. In The Way of Zen, philosopher Alan Watts describes liberation as “the recognition that life utterly defeats our efforts to control it”; returning to the apparent absurdity of life at large, more now than ever, we can transform what might be despair into “creative power,” or, I’d editorialize, the divine feminine, by “find[ing] freedom of action unimpeded by self-frustration and the anxiety inherent in trying to save and control the Self.” In a way, this Zen Buddhist conclusion—if the word conclusion were to be appropriate here—mimics the structure of Berlin’s negative freedom, but instead applies it internally. “To the Western mind,” Watts tries to translate, “the puzzle of Indian philosophy is that it has so much to say about what [liberation] is not” because emptiness must come first, before its value can be realized: “This is why Indian philosophy concentrates on negation, on liberating the mind from concepts of Truth. It proposes no idea, no description, of what is to fill the mind’s void because the idea would exclude the fact.” Zen’s approach begins with freedom from self-frustration and anxiety in order to achieve freedom of “the movements [emptiness] permits or the substance which it mediates and contains.” (Note that even in or with or for would be syntactically appropriate here.) I will share two of Wood’s approximate

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births and deaths; the region 'outside heard stated at large, “the cycle of suffering” perpetuated by ignorant desire. It cycles both through reincarnations, but also within one life, for example as Marcuse’s product-extension self-identification: consumption will never fulfill. tivity of the mind, poising itself upon an object or idea, especially when the mind has already fully worked upon the object or idea, and has come to a dead end or a paradox.” Roughly rephrased, it is a state of consciousness reached in meditation. Rather than being alienated from, subject to, or self-identified with any object, the “worker” (or the mind, or

simply the “cogito,” thinking itself) might create freedom of [sic.] said object: freedom generated from but finally unconcerned with the object. Then, perhaps rather than, as Keroac’s thankless Beat gang did (simply taking wherever they went), we vagabonds can liberate “carte blanche” itself from its false, militant conception of “freedom”— we can become free with one another and with the divine feminine that is completely absent in On the Road, through the creation of our own art and expression entirely disinterested in commodity (and/or absolute lack thereof). It is now spring. I think I’ll go dig a hole.

ARTWORK Cody Benfield 17, 21, 71, 74 Mary Kathryn Fellios 26, 34 Michael Harper 48, 51, 52, 53, 76 Irma Kiss-Barath 82 Hazel Lu 57, 64 Rachel Sherr 11,18, 22, 29, 30, 33, 37, 41, 61, 67 Danielle Stolz 12, 42, 81, 85 Sam Wilcox 77 Skylar Wu 8

THE GADFLY BOARD

Issue 5 - Carte Blanche

Articles inside

False Freedom and a Forgotten Feminine: A 21st Century Hippie’s Reading of On the Road Emma James

The Language of Mathematics Aiden Sagerman

Freedom of the Present Moment Matthew Harper

Bodies on the Line: Cyber-melancholia and the Suspended Animation of the Virtual Body Ezequiel González

Dissolution as Literary Genius Mira Ward

Interview: David Chalmers on Consciousness Rishi Chhapolia

Mental Math of a Recovering Skeptic Erin Aslami

A Letter from the Editor