To give you a full sense of how Jouissance works:
There was scene in one of the Hell-raiser series in which an individual was walking through Hell. In one chamber, there was a couple that were condemned to fucking with no hope of sexual release.
Now imagine the Hell it would be to do that for eternity.
In my recent study of Deleuze, I find myself, despite my opposition to hardcore materialism, comfortable with his notion of the hecceity which can be translated, at a nominal level, as an event which can be applied to the self or mind as well as most other phenomena in the universe. In this sense, the mind can be looked at as one kind of event (or system) interacting with all the other events (or systems) in the universe.
However, I have to qualify this in that I only court the materialism of it to the extent that it is a useful model in terms of Deleuze’s manifesto to approach philosophy as a creative engagement with the world rather than the science that analytics and American intellectuals would like to reduce it to.
Been reading Guattari’s The Anti-Oedipus Papers. And much to my surprise, I’m finding the obscurity of their collaborations are not so much the influence of Deleuze as they are Guattarri. I mean what I’m getting, having gotten halfway through the book, is that I’m basically facing what feels like a 400+ page prose poem that utilizes a sci-fi/technical/stream of consciousness/abstract language. I would have expected it to be the other way around, Guattari being the psychoanalyst. But then he was trained by Lacan. And all I have to do is pick a random page in the book to give you a sample of what I’m up against here:
“No ‘code treasury’. Codes aren’t hoarded, they aren’t organized. There is no “A”. What a mess. It’s very nice to try to straighten this all up, but it’s useless! The sign assigns itself singular chains, singular territories.”
At other points, he goes into something similar to my own poetic flights:
“The image of the body,
Oedipus,
shit,
binarized phonic flow,
total milk.”
And while I can understand that he is going for style that compliments the schizo-analysis they emphasize in the Anti-Oedipus, I have to wonder how this worked in the context of the correspondence between him and Deleuze the book came from. Does there come a point at which one can become so comfortable with such a language that they are perfectly able to communicate in it? Or is it simply a matter of play in which the parties involved just talk past each other while taking pleasure out of their ability to interact in an engagement that is ultimately meaningless? And this is an important question because I have seen people do as much on the boards.
This, of course, comes down to the free indirect discourse attributed to Deleuze which actually makes a little more sense with Guattari in that his stream of consciousness style feels a little more poetic. And what Deleuze encourages us to do, to treat philosophy like a collection of songs on an album, makes more sense with The Anti-Oedipus Papers in that one, at times, can take enough pleasure in the way things are being said to overlook the fact that they cannot understand a goddamn thing that is being imparted. Still, it reminds me of a line of a poem by Donald Finkle called “Hands”:
“Lay back and let the hands do their work on you.
There will come a time when poem and reader are equally beautiful.”
*
Still, I’m getting burnt out on my fixation with Deleuze and his collaboration with Guattarri. Given the large volumes of books I’ve recently bought and read in order to extract what I can use in Deleuze, it’s all beginning to feel like a carrot on a stick. I mean having now bought and read 7 different books in my desire to approach the point of Difference and Repetition, I have to wonder if I haven’t reached a point where I have as much understanding as I need for the time being, and if I shouldn’t get back to my own day and age with writers who are working and speaking from the same context I am familiar with –such as Zizek or Rorty or a contemporary writer such as Galen Strawson.
It just feels like I’m reaching the point of diminishing returns.
*
At the same time, I would note the avant garde nature of what Guattarri seems to be doing and how typical it would seem of the late 60’s/early 70’s in which it was written. In a sense, it reads like the schizophrenic monologue of someone in control of a highly technical language. But it courts the psychotic pitfall of the nihilistic perspective in that, having abandoned the criteria of the symbolic order, it recedes into its own little semiotic bubble with its own terms (parole) and underlying grammatical rules (Langue).
*
Still, I wonder if I haven’t taken it as far as I need to for now and if I should move on to something else.
I think it’s more the creation and complication of concepts. At least that’s the sense he and Guattari want to give to philosophical production in What is Philosophy? Philosophy doesn’t study; it creates; it imagines, it assembles, fabricates, hallucinates, proliferates. I’m having fun here: one can’t say of any great philosopher that he didn’t imbue at least one concept with his name, and that’s the key to the Deleuzoguattarian conception of philosophy, a conception that is itself (of course) a creation. This is, of course, a simplification. Every creation is at the same time a complication, precisely because one does not create as if from nowhere: nihilo ex nihilo. To create is to take up what D&G call the material of a plane of consistency, to reassemble it and to inflect it anew, venturing a creative response to a problematic field. Descartes looks from his window onto the hats and coats of a social body. Inhabiting a certain realm of intelligibility, he ventures the cogito as a solution to the human problematic, the question: what is it that defines the human? His is a plane shot through with religiosity and human exceptionalism, a plane from which it makes perfect sense to claim for human thought an immaterial status, simultaneously setting it apart from the animal and suturing it to the divine. Descartes creates this concept, for different thinkers of the same conceptual plane may venture different responses to similar problems. Creation is creative. It’s complicated, because Descartes has to start from somewhere. He has to take up a problem, a constellation of concepts, and form within them his own dualism. Dualism complicates these other concepts (i.e., extension as the essence of the physical, the inertness of matter, the self-directed freedom of thought, and so on).
Philosophy isn’t reflection, precisely because the artist has no need of philosophy in order to reflect on her work, just as we have no need of the conceptual resources of the philosophical tradition in order to make sense of our pasts, ruminate on our choices, and so on. When, in response to those reflections and ruminations, we create something new (even if only by complicating what’s already given), we do philosophy. So, reflection might be something like a condition for the possibility of philosophy, but it isn’t philosophy itself. The same goes for analysis, for argumentation, and so on.
What do you think, d63?
But look at what is out there.
we dive:
into our lives…
I think we can, and, in fact, must, do this together. For, while it is true that every concept is signed, as it were, with the name of a single (and singular) thinker, that creation is at the same time, as I’ve said, a complication. Thinking is bricolage. In order to think, to create, we enter into dialogue with other thinkers, we assemble what we have available around us, inflecting it in new ways. This is an emphatically intersubjective affair; it is only solipsistic inasmuch as the “lone thinker” still engages with a history of thought, still dialogues with others, even if those others exist for him only as modalities of his own thought. It might be worth quoting, even if only for the fun of it, a favourite passage of mine from Jarmusch:
[size=85]Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to.[/size]
I think this sums up nicely the fact that philosophy is as complicated as it is creative. To create, you have to complicate or “steal,” in Jarmusch’s vernacular. You take from other thinkers, you take from experience, from art, from sensation, from your own life, from the lives of others, and out of this bricolage of other tools, you build your own edifice, your own concept. This concept is singular, though it always refers back to the larger conceptual plane out of which it emerges, just as the most original film maker still refers back to a tradition from which he takes, even if only to ultimately depart from it.
We do this together, even if we only ever do it alone—if you know what I mean.
Sorry d63 been away but some jeneral observations here re: repetition diffefamce. Basically the ontolilogical turnaround from reductive paradigms occurred as a consequence of the political foundation with Sartre
.
The macro difference.was replaced end by micro differrance where participation became a mistoque as Levi Strauss pointed out
So community itself is presented on a given rather then reduced from arrived at representations.
Sorry d63 been away but some general observations here re: repetition differance. Basically the ontollogical turnaround from reductive paradigms occurred as a consequence of the loss of socio- political foundation with Sartre
.
The macro difference.was replaced by micro differrance where participation became a mistique as Levi Strauss pointed out
So community itself is presented on a given rather then reduced from arrived at representations.
Note: the above is in referance to "can this be arrived on a singular or communal context?’ , as presented above.
In any case, I feel DeLueze's intentiona was one
Correlating the two. My communication with You started on the level of finding nexus between the two, and I think You (and I and the OP are at a point, where, the two are corelevantly involved, yet to what degree? I guess it reamains to be seen.
The shift is subtle, almost unnoticable, but present nevertheless. Is it seeking ground, or becoming more and more an excercise into the area of 'what if'? , a hypothetical option, steered toward a possible outcome into unknown territory(ality) And if it is so, is it a matter of a shift toward the middle, a cry for more direction and authority, or, a further wait and see attitude, where the limits have to be set, almost indiscriminately by statistical awareness of those limits ?
Finally, found a book that, as Claire Colebrook did with Deleuze himself, gives me a meaningful steppingstone to Difference and Repetition: James William’s interpretation and guide. It being in e-book form, I turned to it when I found myself reading pages and pages of the Logic of Sense with no payback whatsoever. I just couldn’t take it anymore. But this one is working. And I think the main reason it is is because Williams is not afraid to offer a nominal understanding that, while not completely accurate, will give you a means, on your own terms, to work towards the subtleties and complexities of Deleuze’s concepts.
Consequently, I’ve come to conclusion that, as far as reading, I’m better off engaging in the dialogue of my own day and age (that which I can most easily relate to) and working my way back to the actual texts of the greats. Much as I did with music when I was a musician. Of course the purists and snobs will scoff. They’ll argue that you can never truly understand Deleuze until you read Deleuze. And that might work if I were, as relates to philosophy, out to be a scholar. But I’m not. Not even out to be a philosopher. I care more about writing about it and my experience of it. Beyond that, I prefer to be more of an audience to it. And I can’t be an audience if I’m not, in some minimal sense, entertained enough to want to go on.
And given Deleuze’s emphasis on encounters, the same kind we have with movies or music, I’m not sure he would be as opposed to my approach as the purists might be.
*
One of the cool things I have gotten out of it is the realization that my initial instincts about the significance of difference and repetition were not as inaccurate as my lack of faith in myself would lead me to believe. As Williams’ book points out, it is about the relationship between difference and repetition that makes reality what it is for us: the underlying structure.
For instance: this post. Now, you know it is a post because you have seen posts a thousand times before. And yet you are able to recognize that, through a synthesis of all the posts you have seen before, even though it is different than any post you have seen before. Of course, this is a more obvious example.
But let’s say this was a rock. Of course, you would recognize it as a static object. But the thing, given your subjective experience of time, is that you are always experiencing it at different points in your subjective experience of time. In other words, it is always moving, even though it seems to be standing still.
And this is what gives us an illusion of an orderly world standing still even though it is always in a process of becoming. And it is this illusion that sucks us into the even more dangerous illusion of representation that allows us the delusion of believing that our minds can be like mirrors of reality, if we just tweak them just right.
“Cowardice, cruelty, baseness and stupidity are not simply corporeal capacities or traits of character or society; they are structures of thought as such”
Williams, James (2013-01-15). Gilles Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition: A Critical Introduction and Guide (p. 134). Edinburgh University Press. Kindle Edition: a quote from Gilles Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition.
I have been particularly malicious, lately, with a very dear real world friend (Doug) and a respected message board friend (Vlad). But I’m not going to apologize to them for pretty much the same reasons I would consider any apology from them to be superfluous and unnecessary. It, as far as I’m concerned, was a language game that escalated into a little mutual roughhousing –and little more than that. And I can only hope that my respected peers will, despite our differences, consider this to be as close to an apology as this needs to get.
That said, I need to articulate on the position I’m coming from here. First of all, I tend to subscribe to a Deleuzian, Guattarian, and (to some extent) Zizekian agenda of seeking out all pockets of fascism (purposely with a small “f”) that tend to emerge everywhere –including, and most importantly, within ourselves. Secondly, and lastly, my process always works from the assumption that there is no form of human behavior (including those far worse than I have attributed to Doug and Vlad –neither one of them strike me as being worthy of being tagged as evil) that can’t be understood if we look deep enough into ourselves. If I found a fascistic tendency in either of them, it was only because the potential lies in us all.
In other words, in order to truly understand how oppressive social systems tend to emerge we have to look at tendencies that inhabit all of us. If we don’t, there can simply be no real basis for making assertions about “the other”. Without the basis of our common human nature, there would not be any proof for our assertions: they would simply be “the other” with a whole different foundation than the rest of us –kind of like alien life forms. And I find that assumption a little hard to buy in to.
*
To cop off of and revise Russell, philosophy lies in that no-man’s land between science and poetry. Therefore, wouldn’t the main goal of philosophy seem to be to penetrate to our common humanity and take note of the pitfalls it can fall into?
*
One of the main complaints among post –structuralists and –modernists concerning science is that it tends to work with isolated systems. The thing is that we all, when pursuing the life of the mind, tend to work in our own little mental labs. In other words, despite the engagement with reality that we find ourselves in, the armchair nature of what we do involves the isolated systems of our mental concepts. This is why we can be so malicious on boards when we would tend to act otherwise in real world encounters: the other, on the boards, is strictly a matter of their concepts and the language they use to express them as compared to the person as a whole that you tend to deal with in real world situations.
*
However, given that important distinction between 2 ways of interacting, you have to wonder about the potential for fascism (once again, purposely with a small “f”) in digital interaction. You have to wonder if it couldn’t lead to a dangerous reductionism.
James Williams is good. Daniel Smith is even better. Check out his compendium of essays (called, I think, simply Essays on Deleuze).
hi d63. long time no hear-or see. I do not think you need to fear any consequential negative feedback from anyone who knows you even slightly. As far as fascism implicit in a disconnected venue is concerned, the checks are mostly built in as artifacts, mostly in the form of been there done that. it takes specially circumscribed personalities to become prone to these types of concerns, I remember Nixon on his way out publicly admitted of fears of a fascist emergence. periods of weakness tend to give rise to the signifier shift toward a more certain center, and for opportunists, this translates into advantages to be had. At any event to be sure, we must examine the order of our own house to see to it that we do not fall into such traps. There are ongoing forums going on on Deluze, have You taken a look at them ?
I’ll check it out, Onto. Thanks.
Yes, moments of turmoil do tend to compel people to seek order -even if it is a really bad one. It would be hard to deny the role that post WWI economic insecurity and hyper-inflation played in the emergence of NAZI Germany. Interestingly enough, in the midst of our recent economic uncertainty, I have actually found myself confronted with a few people (otherwise decent people) who are actually turning to the Jews as the source of our problems. It’s as if people are trying to deny the very real failures and injustices of Capitalism as America embraces it by diverting the issue to a matter of a specific type (or race) of rich people.
You’ll have to send me a link to those forums.
But then doesn’t simply pointing to “rich people” in general suggest a potential fascism? As Marx pointed out: even the Capitalists are subject to the forces at work in a free market approach to the economy. Or as Jonathon Wolfe, the writer of Why Read Marx Today, pointed out in an interview on Philosophy Talk: you simply cannot submit yourself to such forces without expecting results that are beyond your control.
“In What is Philosophy?, Deleuze and Guattari make the following provocative claim: “Plato said that Ideas must be contemplated, but first of all he had to create the concept of Idea” (WP 6). The assertion that Plato’s philosophy is fundamentally creative appears radically at odds with Socrates’ frequent claims, most notably in the Meno and Phaedo, that knowledge is attained through the reminiscence of our perception of real things prior to the soul inhabiting the body.” - (2012-09-27). The Cambridge Companion to Deleuze (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy) (p. 3). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.
And here we have it: the dichotomy that has haunted philosophy since its very beginnings: the pragmatic/Rortian distinction between understanding as making and finding. And it is that which has culminated in the occasional animosity between continental and analytic approaches.
But then it’s not like there haven’t been overlaps. Rorty (w/ his continental sensibility spoken in his native tongue: the analytic (points to both Quine and Wittgenstein as heroes. And while I can tell you little about Quine, I get it as far as Wittgenstein in that he started with Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (that which focused on philosophy as finding (which followed his adage:
“And whereof one cannot speak, one must be silent.”
:then evolved into his recognition of the import of language games: our tendency to engage in discourse purely for the sake of bringing the words we use to describe reality closer to reality itself: that which focused on philosophy as making.
And we can see a similar overlap in Russell when he describes philosophy as that which lays in that no man’s land between Science (the art of finding (and theology: the art of making. But if we (being in more secular times (replace the term Theology with literature, and replace “no man’s land” with spectrum, we find a domain (a multiplicity to match our multiplicity as molecular individuals (by which we can analyze our own place in the scheme of things as the intellectually and creatively curious.
And this is rooted in a problem the ancient philosophers were dealing with: how to establish stable truths in a universe that was constantly changing. Of course, Plato’s solution was to come up w/ (make as Deleuze points out (a metaphysical realm of ideal forms that all earthly efforts (nature, art, language ( are trying to immolate. And this could only lead to the ethical assertions of Plato’s Republic based on an analogical hierarchy based on mind, emotion, and body. In this lies the heart of the classicist disposition.
But after several generations of authoritarian social systems based on Plato’s model, we made the romantic break by reversing the early civilization notion of civilization good/ nature bad. This went on to the bridge provided by Nietzsche from romanticism to existentialism (with the neo-classicism of the analytic serving a reactionary role (on to modernism and then (via structuralism and post-structuralism: that which recognizes the futility of language in the face of the reality it is trying to reflect (on to postmodernism.
Against this background, we can see the import of philosopher’s like Deleuze and Rorty (and even Zizek despite his assertion that “the truth is out there” (in that they represent the diametrical opposite of Plato’s assertion that philosophy is a matter of gravitating towards the realm of ideal forms. They, rather, embrace the creative potential of language in the face of a reality that can never be ideal. They establish themselves as an endgame in the ancient dichotomy between making (the side they’re on (and finding.
Okay! Time to get back to business:
“Such is the reason why Platonism seeks to nip this anarchy and rebellion in the bud, by hunting down, as Plato says, simulacra and rogue images of all kinds.” -(2012-09-27). The Cambridge Companion to Deleuze (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy) (p. 57). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.
And here we get at my issue with neo-classicism and (in a perhaps loose manner (alliance with Deleuze’s clearly stated anti-Platonism. For me it is the issue of ideal forms that lie at the heart of the classicist sensibility. This is because such ideal forms, by their inherent nature, must form hierarchies. And Plato’s ideal society should have clued us in given its downward vertical structure that ran, analogically, from mind to emotion to body. We can, furthermore, see as much in the difference between progressives (who seek to work with things and people as they are (and conservatives who retrogressively seek to make people what they should be: that based on the ideal forms of days past.
Now this may not seem to fit the reality (especially in America (given the Wild West nature (the so-called rugged individualism (of the conservative sensibility. But what we have to understand here is the ultimate failure of the romantic break from classicism in that it ultimately proved to appeal to the ideal form (the so called “real thing” as compared to the simulacra (that, in turn, only led to another hierarchy that followed the same Platonic scheme that was vertical in nature and based on the ideal form of the mythological hero. And this, of course, has bled into the higher status we tend to give to the superstars of Capitalism: the ones who “made it”. The edges may be a little rougher than those of Plato’s ideal forms. But the same dynamic is at work.
And this is why I can apply the issue to the ultimately authoritarian nature of a thinker like Rand who, once again, was primarily working in terms of ideal forms. And I would note here her preference for the heroic and mythological (as was demonstrated in her fiction (as compared to her disdain for stories of the underdog beaten down by forces beyond their control. And we can see as much in the neo-Nietzscheian gospel of the fearlessly fanciful: what Putman described as Macho ethics and Raymond Tallis as Darwinitus. Such people claim to embrace a less than ideal situation. But the ultimate goal of it is to achieve the ideal human: the Overman to put it in Nietzsche’s terms –an ideal form which they, of course, assume their selves to be approaching.
The problem with this lies in a distinction made by the poet Coleridge: that between fancy and imagination. Fancy, of course, is that which taps into the domain of so-called ideal forms. Imagination does the footwork of revising those ideal forms in the face of the world as is. And in this sense, it is the non-classicists (the postmodernists who embrace conceptual play over futile strivings for the truth (those who reject any loyalty to the ideal form (who are the true realists –despite the neo-classicist claim to the contrary.
And I find a common issue and agenda with Deleuze as is pointed out later in the above book concerning Deleuze’s postmodern reaction to the classicist sensibility:
“Rather, it is a matter of distinguishing between copies and simulacra, but with a view to affirming the rights of the latter, and subverting the distinction constitutive of representation: “Crowned anarchies are substituted for the hierarchies of representation; nomadic distributions for the sedentary distributions of representation” (DR 278).” - (2012-09-27). The Cambridge Companion to Deleuze (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy) (p. 74). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.
In this sense, working from a univocal sense of Being, Deleuze (w/ and w/out Guattarri (champions the idea of production simply for the sake of production as compared to production for the sake of some end: that which lies in the transcendent realm of ideal forms.
“The problem with this lies in a distinction made by the poet Coleridge: that between fancy and imagination. Fancy, of course, is that which taps into the domain of so-called ideal forms [the Platonic and classicist]. Imagination does the footwork of revising those ideal forms in the face of the world as is. And in this sense, it is the non-classicists (the postmodernists who embrace conceptual play over futile strivings for the truth (those who reject any loyalty to the ideal form (who are the true realists –despite the neo-classicist claim to the contrary.”
“Their difference is ultimately temporal: whereas the Platonic and Aristotelian distinctions aim to grasp the permanent and stable behind the fleeting and becoming, the Stoics understand the incorporeal as the eventful , which opens up a different modality of time.” - (2012-09-27). The Cambridge Companion to Deleuze (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy) (p. 68). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.
First of all, at this point, I am doing a as Deleuze advises us in Difference and Repetition and writing at the edge of what I know. Therefore, I have to take each step with heavy consideration while treading lightly through the sublime and complex.
And I suppose the best place to start is my issue with the neo-Nietzschean gospel of the fearlessly fanciful. Now, on one hand, their approach would seem to fit the bill of the latter quote. They would seem to be the more stoic in their acceptance of things in a constant state of becoming. This is why a social democrat such as myself (through a half-assed interpretation of Nietzsche (would seem to them as weak since I am allegedly entertaining the bad faith of looking towards the ideal form of a perfect state: a kind of watered down socialism. But there are several problems with this:
First of all (and at the most superficial (is the notion that those (social democrats like myself (who want to make things better for people are necessarily trying to create an ideal state. There is a big difference between trying to improve things for people and seeking the ideal form of the perfect state.
Secondly, stoicism is not just a matter of accepting things as they are; it is equally a matter (as is implied all over Deleuze’s notion of desiring production (as well as the evolutionary relationship between the brain and its environment (of acting on it with the added courage involved in recognizing that one will always continue to have to act up upon it. And therein lays the true stoicism of the reformer.
Furthermore, the false stoicism of the Neo-Nietzschean lies in their claim to accept things as they are (the fashionable cynicism (while seeing an ideal form in those who are willing to suck it up in the fanciful hope that the Overman (or a half-assed understanding of them (will emerge. In other words, for all their raw edges and less than ideal forms, their appeal remains with a neo-classicist appeal to ideal forms.
Even less stoic is their appeal to fashionable cynicism which argues that things are what they are, therefore the best strategy is do as the Roman’s do and seek power through things like submitting their intellectual process to what is basically an in-crowd or player mentality -once again: expressions of yet another Platonic realm of ideal forms as we can see in many TV ads. Their fashionable cynicism claims to be dealing with reality as it is. But all it is really doing is succumbing to the fancy that marketers (and the Platonic realm of media (feeds into them everyday via the fantasies they are entertaining about themselves: the pro-Capitalist media version of the Will to Power. Think, for instance, of the ideal and mythological form of Rambo: the rugged individual who, regardless of what is thrown at them, can deal with it.
And we can apply the nonsense (the fancy and false stoicism (at work here to the nonsense and fancy at work in the fashionable cynicism of Republicans and Randheads.
The real stoicism lays in the ability to see things as they are, recognizing that what is is all there is, and seeing the suffering of it (due to exploitation: an expression of power (as a cause to act to make things a little better without entertaining the illusion of a final solution that will bring the struggle to an end. And I fail to see how simply arguing that the world is shit and the only solution is to look out for my interests fits the Deleuzian concept of stoicism and its related anti-classicism.
One of the cool things about philosophy is that you will be going along and dealing with certain terms and concepts, and understanding them in an empathetic way. Then all it takes is some beer (American pisswater is my preference (and Jager (or maybe a tap off some adequate to really intense pot (and you suddenly find yourself sympathizing: what Joyce referred to as an epiphany.
It happened tonight with the Deleuzian term: traverse. To traverse is to dance lightly (like a stone skipping across water (across the field of experience (the plane of immanence (or even the BwO (that allows you to…. that opens you up to the possibility of saying something profound: of producing something that can never completely represent the experience: the experimentation.