> > a different common ground, and a name occurs to me which I want to
> > mention to you -- Tarkovsky, the Russian/Soviet film director. I have
> > been puzzling over his film "Solaris" for a few months now, trying to
> > understand the sweetness, the sense of reunion, in the final scenes wh=
en
> > the astrophysicist aboard the derelict space station arrives on the
> > surface of the strange planet and encounters his own home and a man
> > who is apparently his own father. This scene, which is so alien to
> > the mood of science fiction in the United States, haunts me but
> > seems consistent with your remark about dreams:
> >"This leads to a contact with the world outside of our dreaming,
> > be it collective or individual, a world which always already surprises
> > us. Sometimes this world mashes us, makes us suffer. "Stor sak med
> > det. De d=F6r fria" (Big deal. They die free) says Torgny Segerstedt
> > about the free birds dying in the storm."
> >
> > Do you know this film? Would it serve as a reference point from which
> > you could explain further your "imaginative modality" -- or dreams?
Helena:
I am going to describe it from the angle of "describing the act of
experiencing".
I can first use another example to introduce a way of using
modalities of experiencing to describe the act of experiencing
Peter Smagorinsky wrote on june 20th:
"(...). Thus, if a parent wants to create a belief within a child
that blacks, Jews, homosexuals, foreigners, etc., are evil and
threatening, then educating the child in those beliefs in an environment w=
here the
child will never actually meet the demons can foster a genuine hatred and =
fear
of them and a belief that they should be exterminated like other non-human=
monsters. Technology also serves as a tool for developing zpd's, particula=
rly
in the form of the internet, which militia groups use in order to distribu=
te
their ideas and methods, and to help bond diverse groups together."
It seems to me that zpd has some affinity with horizon of expectations.
In this "Jew" is 'seen' (experienced) imagination-modally or perception-mo=
dally,
as a _concrete_ Jew who does or is this or that. Or signitive-modally -
a generic person who does or is this and that. This generic person is the=
n
substituted, or, better "muddled away" (unterschoben, podmieniony)
for any person encountered in real life: This person is then not seen
perceptual-modally but signitive-modally "this is a Jew".
(we omit here how 'seeing' relates to 'meeting': an omission for the
sake of the argument, but not forever.)
The 'seeing'/ /experiencing of a person is characterized by more
modalities: the group of "mood/ /conatus" (Gem=FCt/ /Willen) modalities,
and the group of "modalities of opinion" - certainty or doubt or belief).=
The experience can thus be (case 1) "He's a disgusting kike, for sure"
(which introduces a_ signitive-modal person_ - "generic person")
or(case 2) "He is an enervating guy, I can't stand him, and that's final"
where the person is concrete, perceptual-modal (if "he" is standing
before you and you talk about him to a friend) or imagination-modal
(if he's absent from the scene). The other modalities are the same:
you do not like him, and it is certain.
Now, the real thrill about this is that the _act_ of 'seeing' the guy
is interwoven with the _picture_ of the guy which is emerging.
The guy is constituted as a (case 1) generic, non-concrete person, who
is not liked by the one performing the act seeing, and (case 2) concrete
person, who is not liked by the one performing the act of 'seeing'.
Now watch what happened! There is another thing that has emerged:
" the one performing the act of 'seeing' ".
This is, then, an_internal relation_ between
*the act of 'seeing',
*the object that is constituted by this act, and
*the one performing the act of 'seeing'.
The three constitute one another, mutually. Looking on the two
ways of seeing, say, Piotr Szybek, you can say something about
the one who sees him as "that disgusting kike", and something else
about the one who sees him as "a guy I cannot stand". (The mutual
constitution of the subject, object and act of experiencing is described
(A) in Husserls _Ideen...., Erstes Buch,_ and
(B) in Eva Ekeblad's thesis "Children*learning*numbers")
There is still the matter of omission. One reason that I persevere in
making it is that I want to see how crucial it is - and to see how
crucial it is for others (this one was for Eva).
Now, to Tarkovskiy.
He meets (!) his father. I wondered a little why you did not
concentrate on the meeting which is the peripeteia of the film,
the one with his late wife. But only a little. There is something special
in that final scene as if it was the summing up of what was there to learn=
about oneself.
What one sees on the screen is a trace, as it were, of what is
_between_ the meeting persons. The "what is between" is a quality
which is constituted between the persons, in the meeting, through
the act of meeting.
(And it is _not_ something that can be 'seen', and put in a
topologically describable position)
I think again of the peripeteia: there was much talking, doing, much
action and much noise. Violence, I think, too. In the epilogue: nothing.
_Only_ meeting. There seems to be a moral: what happens, happens
in real life, only. It is irreversible, and irrevocable - there is no "ca=
lling back"
of the events which have happened.
(the action in the peripeteia was about a man's actions coming back to
visit him. There was a hint: maybe can I start again? That's for the
people who haven't seen the film)
Otherwise one can think that this is precisely what language is for (a=
nd
especially when we are talking science, wow) that we can search the
time lost and find it.
Or, we can wipe out time: by constructing a fixed topology,
with defined directions, metrisation ( it is called a Banach space,
after its inventor Stefan Banach; he was professor in the town
where my father grew up).
This is in fact what the fighting militias do. That's not because
they are bad or evil (at least it's not so simple): the dream we all have =
is
to live in a _secure_ place, and if we make the _whole_ world a secure pla=
ce,
that's just fine. So, we organize our world as one where it is possible to=
fore-see
by 'seeing' things as "nothing-but", particular cases of general laws.
Now, one can say: an imagination-modal person is _concrete_. This is =
no
fraudulent replacing of concrete persons with generic ones
(as in the fighting militia case) - - so, what more does Piotr want?
Can we not 'meet' the person we conjure in our memory,
in our poems,
films,
well, in our talking-forth-science?
(The discussion of this comes close to the discussion of
'the new that can/ /cannot be learned'; that's for Eva)
No. Exactly because there is a _fundamental_ ontological difference
between 'meeting' and 'seeing'. This is, in fact, as near as we can
come to describing "meeting". This difference has to do with the world
being a place which is never metrisiable (always already non-metrisiable).=
That's enough for today. Tomorrow is Midsommar,
and we Swedes (ha ha!) dance around the majst=E5ng.
If there's a missing vowel in the line above
replaced by a letter-digit-code, you can sense
the difference between us and USA. Otherwise I bow to MIME.
Trevlig midsommar, allesammans
Piotr Szybek, Lund.
Piotr Szybek
University of Lund
Department of Education
PO Box 199, S-221 00 Lund, SWEDEN
tel +46462224732, fax +46462224538
E-mail piotr.szybek who-is-at pedagog.lu.se