Conversation along the lines of notebook recordings — Heissenbuttel
a machine translation of Gespräch nach dem Muster von Notizbuchaufzeichnungen by Helmut Heissenbuttel — final draft
They stand in the corners and talk to each other.
Andie Wildermuth: the question of how something hits is not incidental. All products have a direction towards the largest number. This is not socialism, but equalisation. It is only in the progressive effectiveness of equalisation that the tendencies that determine production today find their support. This progressive equalisation can be described as the strongest force of all. The question to be asked in detail is in which parts what has an impact; in what the most impacting has its characteristics; how the impact is directed (whether it can be manipulated as such or only along the way and what the delimitation of manipulability is in general, whether manipulability is not just a prejudice); whether it is important to make the path from the origin to all as short as possible, the duration as short as possible.
They sit opposite each other and talk about whether the tendency to duplicate (multiply) reality is characteristic of 20th century art (in contrast to symbolic representation, which is related to ideas) and whether, if so, its law is reproduction and the combinatorics of reproduction. To visualise this tendency in the new media. To see the characteristic of the new media in the fact that they carry out their reproduction tendency more directly
the turtle: aha
than the traditional media. This greater appropriateness to the underlying tendency means that the participant enters more easily into the duplication (multiplication). How does this happen? Do sociological patterns, progressions, fashions, collective-psychological mechanisms play a role? The media are geared towards success, the largest possible number of participants, the greatest possible profit, etc., but this is achieved by making it easier to enter. The largest possible numbers move from books to films, from films to television. The shift towards the easier medium is obviously irreversible. You have to reckon with it. If you want to gain and communicate knowledge in the form of art, you have to reflect anew from this basis. Which is to be accepted. Which is still possible.
Dr Johnson spreads himself across the boundary of the so-called inner monologue. The difference, he says, lies in whether, in the service of a narrative construction, the motivation that holds this construction together can be differentiated further and further.
Helmut Maria Wildermuth: why not
In the one case, it is assumed that literature has a decisive criterion in the formal structure and formal coherence of a narrative construction, a transparent and resolvable context, on the determinability of which every detail depends (to which the plausibility of the characters and events and the vividness of the description serve as the complement that covers the construction with flesh, which, however, collapses without this construction). As long as one adheres to this presupposition, one can indeed go to the limit where one actually incorporates thought mechanisms, but by not taking the presupposition of the narrative construction into account, one is able to avoid the problem.
Andie Wildermuth: achso
such a reconstruction of the thought mechanism (its linguistic reconstruction) remains dependent on something that it contradicts. The insight into the limit consists in experiencing this contradiction. The independent reconstruction of the thought mechanism does not allow for a predetermined
Helmut Maria Wildermuth clears his throat
scheme. What is possible in terms of schematic abbreviations, statistical accumulations, culminations, elongations, repetitions etc. only emerges from the attempted reconstruction. For this is the new invention compared to the earlier counting construction. It goes parallel to scientific registration and systematics. However, its aim is not tables, computers, usability, translatability in practice, etc., but language: a new organisation of language.
They talk about all kinds of things and also about the fact that what the members of a closed culture have as this culture is absolute knowledge of their unique world and the categorisation of this knowledge in a closed and self-contained circle of rules. But to him, for whom the whole earth has become habitable, this seems to simply disintegrate into a multitude of possibilities, none of which he can fully utilise. It is strange that we endeavour again and again to come to terms with such knowledge that closed cultures have, often within a short time, for example on holiday.
short time, for example on holiday. And we do so with a variety of aids, but never as something to be practised, but merely as something learned. Our culture, if you can call it that, consists of a multitude of such selectively learnt things. Everything seems to be geared towards a mean value of absorption and utilisation. Science is increasingly bent out of its exclusivity towards this mean value. Education is in line with this. What we have and what can at best be regarded as that which corresponds to the closed circle of rules in a closed culture is a kind of combinatorial education or an unlimited ability to combine as education (instead of education). Everything that promotes the absolute claim of combinatory ability and fends off its restriction and suppression should be seen as positive. Therefore, all objections of a theological, ideological or political nature are to be rejected.
Dr Johnson: why not
side are wrong. The sensitivity of communist dogma on this point speaks against this dogma. Question of free time in the process. Combinatorics a matter of labour relations or of leisure. Cancellation of the contradiction in the absolute claim of combinability. What then does labour mean? Etc.
They sit around and hold round-table discussions about, among other things, whether the cohesion of a given historical situation, past or present (the repertoire of the respective possibilities), can be understood in the sense of a control loop. If one were to do so, the characteristic of just such a circle of presuppositions would be that it could not be thought of as closed, but has in itself an indifference component that needs to be filled in. In this filling up, the decision that is made out of the situation makes a decision. The decision is not the result of deliberation and consideration in the usual sense; it must be made ad hoc. Ad hoc would be the definition of a decision. The person making the decision decides according to the degree and differentiation of their contact with the situation, i.e. the realisation of what is to be filled in as an indifference component within the preconditions. This would have to be practised.
They talk about what, among other things, catastrophes cause. In what, for example, the counter-movements of the youth, provos, bums, hippies, students, etc. can be clearly defined. Deformalisation? Is that what becomes effective in any case
d’Alembert clears his throat
simply a shaking off of conventional rules? To see the tendency itself in this de-formalisation? Not a positive goal of the counter-movements. The New Society is just a fetish. Not an idea, but solidarity in the void of unsolidarity. Not non-conformism either. Not renunciation. Deformalisation does not lead to a positive idea. After a while, the deformalised person jumps back into convention, often into particularly rigid forms of restoration. Nothing but letting go of the compulsion to do things right. Not doing wrong: just not doing right. Just wanting to get rid of it. Not: wanting to behave naturally (there is no clear idea of naturalness). Not: rejecting the rules concretely (the idea always remains that rules are necessary for living together). No contract social. Simply: no more daily washing, shaving, observing eating habits
Mrs d’Alembert: aha
put on a white shirt, keep office hours, behave decently, etc. more participation. Failure symptom. Material fatigue. They come back to considerations that some of them have made when editing manuscripts: that thinking is perhaps only a particularly narrow and particularly strongly back-related way of combining words. One speaks of thinking when the greatest possible degree of determination of the individual words through each other, in relation to each other and in the group, is achieved in terms of form and meaning. Literature, on the other hand, would be predominantly formally determined. Particular emphasis would be placed on the determinacy of the part by the group. The ideal determination of language in literary use presupposes something that must first be made accessible through the context of the respective word association (of the work). This element of openness, of determination in the strict formal determination, is what makes literature so splendid.
Andie Wildermuth once again recapitulates the question of whether the given cohesion of a given historical situation can simply not be
Ottilie Wildermuth: why not?
past or present (the repertoire of the respective possibilities), in the sense of a control loop. If one were to do so, the characteristic of just such a circle of presuppositions would be that it could not be thought of as closed, but has in itself an uncertainty component that must be filled in.
d’Alembert clears his throat 267 268. In this filling up, the decision, which is made out of the situation, is a decision. The decision is not the result of deliberation and consideration in the usual sense; it must be made ad hoc. Ad hoc would be the definition of a decision. The decision-maker decides according to the degree and differentiation of his contact with the situation, i.e. the realisation of what is to be filled in as an indifference component within the preconditions. This would have to be practised.
They sit here and there and talk back and forth and also about the fact that the criticism of positivism only applies where positivism proves to be an optimistic belief in reduction. But if a conclusion can be drawn from the critical analysis of the positivist process, it is not that he may be right,
Bertolt Wildermuth: why not
but that says nothing about the situation; the conclusion should rather be that one can only think further with the anti-metaphysical scepticism of positivism behind one’s back. If it is concluded, as Herbert Marcuse does, that the analysis of a general concept such as freedom, faith, beauty, subject, etc. by positivism triggers the definability of the concept in the destruction, this does not speak against the analytical process of destruction. What is to be defined is the thing and the situation. In the present situation, however, the difficulty of general concepts lies in the fact that they no longer designate a thing. When you analyse the concept of freedom or beauty, you are not analysing a thing of freedom or beauty, but a name for a thing of which you basically no longer know exactly whether this name, this conglomerate of definitions and associations (for that is what they have become), still refers to a definable thing. Even if you differentiate between freedom from what and freedom to what, you have a fundamental scepticism towards the concept of freedom.
Eduard clears his throat
scepticism towards the term. The analysis of general concepts should rather uncover the relics that are preserved in them. The direction of the analysis would then always be to expose theological prejudices. The theological prejudice would be traced back to a social prejudice. The social prejudice that determines concepts such as love or beauty should be dissolved into a clear historical situation. The historical situation, indeed history in general, would take on a new aspect, could be experienced anew in the dissolution of such prejudices preserved in the concept. Only this would provide a basis for the design, for the provision of the decision, the invention of the alternative.
They talk about all sorts of things and Ottilie Wildermuth continues as follows: “If the criticism of the state of general equalisation, the pre-recognition of opposing positions, the standardisation under the sign of advanced mass production is correct, then we should ask whether it is not precisely this criticism that is the co-planned. Is it the alternative? It is not, because in truth it only opens up an alternative in the negation of the criticised. Negation as an alternative means recognition. The positive draft would have to provide the alternative. But this can rather be gained from methodical destruction
than from the critique of ideology or society; rather, the latter should itself first be subjected to analytical destruction and dissolved into a description of the thing that is historically prejudiced in it.
Eduard: Criticism of the prevailing social status quo is a critique of the appearance and functions in which it is formed. Anti-capitalism: fine. But does the critique of the capitalist economic and social system still affect the driving motives that produce the appearance? Is it possible to criticise the socialist camp, not totalitarianism, but the economy and society? Is the defence against such criticism already a symptom of the socialist society that has been achieved? The one-dimensional man Herbert Marcuses, for example, as he is described, is strangely enough only partly recognisable as a product of the overall historical process; he is also and decisively a product of the specific progress of socialisation. The question is how
Helmut Maria Wildermuth: why not
why the implementation of all social reforms to date has not contributed to the appearance that Marcuse attempts to describe in the image of the one-dimensional human being. The bearers of perfect equalisation, total production and the doctrine of unstable armament equality are not reactionaries or class relics from eu- dalism and the upper middle classes, but restorative products of the socially reformed society. The realisation of all the programme points of the social reforms did not bring about the new society. Nor the dissolution of capitalism into a functional monopoly. But the one we have today. Everywhere. Aren’t their models imitations rather than utopian designs? Traits of imitation superimposed on doPpelt everywhere: imitation of feudalism by the
Andie Wildermuth clears her throat
bourgeoisie and imitation of imitation mixed with imitation of even more distant models by irritated post-bourgeois restoratives. To see through these superimpositions to the present appearance. The criticism of this itself does not expose the motifs as long as the residues that continue to have an effect are not isolated and destroyed. When critics complain, for example, that the concept has lost its ability to open up and has solidified into technological objectification, this is not least because the concept as a product of Western philosophy, however much it has served the fight against theological prejudice, still contains an indissoluble theological relic within itself; its denaturalisation into the technological, however, is a sign of theological prejudice.
Helmut Maria Wildermuth: why not
logical development. Only in this reduction and in a new topological field reference could it be revitalised. Only then could its relation to the things under discussion be examined. Only then would it be possible to say what is going on. Not in negative dialectics.
The tortoise: aha.
So they sit around and hold round-table discussions and one of them once again revolves around the question of what, among other things, causes catastrophes and in what, for example, the counter-movements of the youth, provos, bums, hippies, students, etc. can be clearly defined. Deformalisation? Is what becomes effective in any case simply a shaking off of conventional reglements? To see the tendency itself in this de-formalisation? No positive goal of the counter-movements. The New Society is just a fetish. Not an idea, but solidarity in the void of unsolidarity. Not non-conformism either. Do not abstain. Deformalisation does not lead to a positive idea. After a while, the deformalised person jumps back into convention, often into particularly rigid forms of restoration. Nothing but freeing oneself from the compulsion to do things right. Not doing wrong: just not doing right. Simply wanting to be rid of it. Not: wanting to behave naturally (there is no clear idea of naturalness). Don’t:
Dr Johnson clears his throat
Reject the rules concretely (the conviction always remains that rules are necessary for living together). No contract social. Simply: no more daily washing, washing, eating habits, behaving decently, etc. No unfriendliness. Failure symptoms — material fatigue.
D’Alembert: Insight in Prague. That certain typological results of dead social forms suddenly appear predestined for certain tasks of a new social organisation, while others do not. Interlocking between the social orders through the type characterised for certain tasks or against certain tasks. Radical bohemians as a link between the bourgeoisie and communism. The petty bourgeois subject as the bearer of fascism. Where functionaries come from typologically and where they assume their functions. Not a conception of the figure in the sense of Spengler’s Clerk or Jünger’s Arbeiter, but a concrete sociological-psychological definition.
After all the talk, they take the floor and spread as follows: If literature and art are absorbed and controlled by the market, it is not because of quality, but because of saleability. The critic, however, is there to recognise the non-identity between quality and saleability.
Ottilie Wildermuth: well, yes
always emphasise it anew and as sharply as possible. He does this by judging saleability and quality according to points of view that are based on the historically current overall situation. His judgements can be formulated in sociological, Marxist, phenomenological, psychoanalytical, formation-theoretical, aesthetic, etc. terminology. terminology. The critic’s task is to keep these statements, formulated in different terminology, in relation to the work to be judged, the artist to be judged, the tendency to be judged. He should make it plausible that what has been brought to deci- sion in the terminologically different formulation hits the nail on the head and indicates the historically current point.
They pick up the conversation again that had been dropped and then come up with the following ideas: The crux of the matter: to look at an object in the traditional way from an aesthetic point of view d’Alembert: why not?
to look at it means to apply certain standards to it, standards of form, of content, of idea. To declare any object to be a work of art, however, means:
to derive the aesthetic standards from the object itself (standards not of a canon of form, of content, of an idea), standards of the materiality of this object. The demand for consideration for the audience is not consideration for everyone. Rather, it is a relic of feudalistic behaviour. The address to a specifically intended reader, listener, viewer and consumer is unambiguous and direct only in a feudalistic society: all art is directed at the ruler and the hierarchy of his court. The focus on a class in bourgeois society does not mean concrete persons, but rather an imaginary group, delimited in its required and imagined group or class behaviour. Dispersion means. Everyone is a potential consumer. Classless art would be defined by this dispersion. The understanding of those potentially addressed by classless art would be unrestricted.
Mrs d’Alembert: well
would result from this, not from the degree of their familiarisation or their intellectual insight, still less from a propagated utility effect. The demand for consideration of a certain public means restoration on a level of intermediate equality of education and intelligence, on which everyone should be able to absorb and judge like an imitated feudal lord of the nth derivation. To recognise that the so-called simple or man of the street is the supreme fetish of the restaurateurs.
Ottilie Wildermuth clears her throat.
He who makes a picture, composes, writes, distinguishes himself by standing outside the matter, by having left it, by having moved away from it. He who debates, who wants to change, who defends himself, who makes plans, remains in the middle. But those who step out can only do something if they try to take it with them. 273 274
You recapitulate: The crux of the matter: looking at an object in the conventional way from an aesthetic point of view means applying certain standards to it, standards of form, of content, of idea. But to declare any object a work of art means: to derive the aesthetic standards from the object itself (standards not of a canon of form, a content, an ideal reference), standards of the materiality of this object. They stand in the corners and talk to each other. Dr Johnson quotes Professor Emil Staiger: “If one begins to admire only the unusual, the unique, the interesting as such, the result is
d’Alembert: oh well
the path inevitably leads via the unusual, the precious to the bizarre, the grotesque and on to the criminal, which does not evoke a well-crafted higher existence in our imagination, but rather is to be savoured for the sake of its own charms and is usually savoured. Presumably many
Bertolt Wildermuth: why not
not comfortable with it. The citizen applauds political terror, the lady of good society sexual excesses, the mere mention of which she would forbid in her own home.
They sit around and talk about it and Mrs d’Alembert quotes from an article by Joachim Kaiser, which says: “A string quartet by the late Beethoven, which had to assert itself on the free market alongside Rossini and Diabelli, but nevertheless not only, indeed almost not at all, probably does not reveal anything tangible, nothing politically effective about the dichotomy between the individual and the general, even if it often lets something be said about it.
Mrs d’Alembert adds: “Beethoven’s music is art for a class. It does not distract them, it confirms them in what they do practically and politically. At the same time, he resists class. What he shows musically demonstrates this contradiction. This contradiction can then also be formulated in purely aesthetic terminology. What is necessary: contemporary art practice
Eduard: aha to recognise in the relations of the current situation. What Adorno said about Schönberg’s work concerns a situation in which only what can also be shown in Beethoven’s work is radicalised. This misses certain aspects of Schönberg’s work.
Andie Wildermuth: The point of view of integration: when Schwitters once combined what could not be integrated according to conventional aesthetic ideas, the waste, into images, he did so in critical contradiction to the usual aesthetics. The critical negation of this aesthetic became the aesthetic standard. Today we already tend to assume that he did precisely what his actions were directed against: he integrated what could not be integrated into aesthetic formations. What strikes us today about Schwitters’ pictures, and sometimes disturbs us, is that they are so beautiful. We think we see that he nevertheless did what was no longer possible to do. The conclusion for today would have to be:
the tortoise: aha
to use what cannot be integrated in such a way that it cannot (never?) be integrated. What does that mean? Isn’t something like art simply defined by the fact that it integrates, one way or another, under the most diverse conditions? Hypothesis: that integration was the hallmark only of historically past art. Art is now that which keeps open that which cannot be integrated. So that alone makes it comparable? What follows from this? Integration would have meant that the material was related to something that made it appear as a whole (and at the same time) transparent; that it was separated through organisation. If this had been dissolved and could never be achieved again, one would first have to assume that the point of reference, the field of reference, had ceased to exist. This would mean: an irresolvable ambivalence of reference possibilities. Scattering 275 276 , multiplication of possible references. That would require a completely different reception and processing. What would remain would be separation. But this momentary, random, ad hoc? Coincidence would be an old-fashioned word. The alternative beautiful-ugly would have become incomprehensible and meaningless. When I remember woodcuts by Ludwig Richter, for example, and these memory images are clearer and more effective than those of real childhood memories, there is, as one would say at the moment, a specific pop effect. But what does that mean? Not homesickness for yesterday. Transformation of the art effect that can no longer be integrated, of art waste into material? Separable. Separable from what? Psychologically? Insight
Helmut Maria Wildermuth: why not
into the prerequisites of my psychological structure? Well. But if one repeatedly presents models of non-integrable disintegration, shouldn’t the awareness of an increasingly dense continuum be generated as a reaction? The disintegration of the everyday sensory register of perception (the stream of consciousness à la Ulysses) always already surpassed by the calculated separation of ever greater divergence? Experiencing this at the same time more and more as ambivalent and multiple? Unlimitedly combinable structural models as orientation markers? In the densification of the continuum of consciousness caused by reaction, the possibility of a change into other continua?
Helmut Maria Wildermuth: If man cannot clearly define himself at the moment (for example as an animal ratio- nale, as homo sociologicus, as a middle ground between God and animal, as an individual, as a solipsist, etc.),
Andie Wildermuth: achso
it seems to be of vital importance for him to formulate at least some provisional definition. This is what the so-called human sciences and parts of contemporary philosophy are trying to do. However, a formulation only seems possible if the relics of earlier definitions have been destroyed or taken into account as prejudice. The translation into practice is included in this provisionally formulated definition. It makes people available to a degree that was previously unknown. At the same time, however, it can be destroyed with one sentence of another formulation. To realise that the possibility of making available is identical with the necessity of a post-metaphysical definition of the essence of man.
They stand in the corners and talk to each other, and Andie Wildermuth continues: “The subject as a humanity that is always the same and directly comparable without differences in rank is psychologically founded. Its logically producible unity always remains related to the assumed psychological origin of all emotional, reflective and reactive utterances. Language and art appear meaningful when they refer to this subjectivity and confirm it as the origin. Forms and selection principles Helmut Maria Wildermuth clears his throat
of art and literature circumscribe and vary the descent from this origin in an untiring variety (and tiring uniformity). This art and literature is called romantic and its mode of expression symbolic. Their effect is based on enchantment, i.e. a reference to the origin from which they derive. Sentences, verses, colours, compositional patterns, iconographies, melodies, etc.
the turtle: well
which are to be understood as leading to this origin, are characterised as expressions of the subject. However, all this changes the moment the origin of the subject is recognised as a fiction and its unity dissolves into a plurality of scientifically and philosophically formulated conditionalities, for example the primacy of material existence over the superstructure of culture and consciousness 277–278 or the distinction between the unconscious, ego and superego. Now the function of what was previously meaningful as a guiding path in art is forfeited. It is said that art becomes blind to meaning and initially shifts the need for meaning into the technical, that is, into style, invention and method. A kind of feedback first to formalities, then to the materiality of the medium occurs. Art becomes reproductive, recapitulating. Literature
Dr Johnson: why not
that allows its medium, language, to be itself and does not use it to guide us back to its origins, quotes language. Quotation means the principle of such literature and art. As soon as I am no longer able to speak (fall silent) as a subject (as a fictitious entity of psychological origin), I can no longer modulate towards guiding ideas into the origin, use the medium. I now speak tentatively, quoting. I quote words, word associations, sentences, sentence associations, quotations, quotation associations, quotations of quotations. I combine all this into something new. In the unlimited combinatorics, something is created that only endures at the risk of an extreme limit. I have to go to the limit again and again. The meaningless is not permeated by ideal meaning, I assimilate it as a new experience. At the same time, the ability of logical connection and comparative registration does not cease. On the contrary. The materialistic-formalistic science in all its ramifications only now gains its actual meaning.
Ottilie Wildermuth: well, yes
independence. Art and science are on an equal footing, side by side, and are orientated towards the same perspective. What they are working on could be described as something like a synthetic authenticity.
You are now recapitulating what Helmut Maria Wildermuth said: If man cannot clearly define himself at the moment, it seems to be of vital importance for him to formulate at least some provisional definition. This is what the so-called human sciences and parts of contemporary philosophy are trying to do. However, a formulation only seems possible if the relics of earlier definitions have been destroyed or taken into account as prejudice. The translation into practice is included in this provisionally formulated definition. It makes people available to a degree that was previously unknown. At the same time, however, it can be destroyed with one sentence of another formulation. To recognise that the possibility of making available is identical with the necessity of a post-metaphysical definition of the essence of man. 279
There are side conversations and some of them talk about the fact that myth and metaphysics mean the possibility of experiencing a unified and coherent world. That in myth
d’Alembert clears his throat
and metaphysics there must be a place and an explanation for all possible and imaginable phenomena. But as soon as phenomena or only perceptions of phenomena no longer find a place or an explanation, myth and metaphysics begin to lose their function (although they can remain in a restored state for centuries to come). In their place, however, comes the explanation by comparison of what can be registered and its objectifiable (mathematical) derivations. The sciences that do this remain, in principle, in a state of incompleteness. This unclosedness (in contrast to the closedness of myth and metaphysics) also means uninterrupted and unlimited corrigibility. By approaching the unexplained, science corrects itself and explains the unexplained through assimilation. The openness of this process is absolute. The historical dating of this process reveals (and will increasingly reveal): the essence of history. As also
Mrs d’Alembert: aha
the remembered becomes the explainable, the scientific object, the process also extends backwards into past history. Everything remains a draft. The positing of a final state would only mean a relapse into the restauration of myth and metaphysics.
For, as some of them say: what can be found at the bottom of the dialectical quandary is homesickness for the theology that explains everything. Kierkegaard in Hegel dialectically negatively and purely mediated. Everything else is a mask. Often melancholic, sometimes just ambitiously speaking, many interesting individual viewpoints. Always full of jealousy. Homesick for the security in the lap of secularised theology, with Schrammel music that should sound like Alban Berg.
Ottilie Wildermuth: why not.
So they stand in the corners and talk to each other, and Mrs d’Alembert finally says: “The basis remains observation. Registration of what can be perceived by the senses and with technical aids. Shortening what is registered into suitable sign systems.
D’Alembert clears his throat.
They sit opposite each other and counter each other, and Otilie Wildermuth raises her voice again and says: “If language is not only a means of communication and expression, but at the same time has a cybernetic effect, a supra-personal memory, then one must realise one thing: that this language is reactionary by its very nature. It is reactionary because it holds on to what has been handed down. We become aware of its reactionary nature because we are no longer in a position to change the tendency handed down and held fast by language in the direction of this tradition. Language retains what is no longer there, all content, forms and ideas. By using this fixed language, we must place ourselves in relation to what it still says. We do not freely speak what we perceive, recognise and think. That which is no longer fixed always speaks. What we are trying to do is basically not to speak; we are trying out how to show with language. We have to bear in mind that the unique, the most human 281
Bertolt Wildermuth: why not
invention of man loses its mediating role. That the possibility of its replacement by other combined processes exists. One must realise that this gratitude can only be grasped in this medium that is losing its place. We must recognise what a never-recurring moment arises for us in the fact that we cast our first glance at what has been handed down as that which is being lost. It is we who for the first time recognise the immeasurable supply as a supply. As a usable stock. We are the first to perhaps be able to utilise its usability.
D’Alembert: A swaying scaffold with itself always to be drawn anew. Their renewed meaning spans the second net. Everything that can be named is significant. Naming is the definition of struts. Falling through on the names of people.
They talk about all sorts of things.
Eduard clears his throat. 281
They agree that you have to overcome the vanity with which you want the highly esteemed to be publicly recognised. The literary work of Kurt Schwitters or the work of Walter Benjamin, as published in 1968, have more chances if they are spread as rumours. Canonisation, recognition makes the rumour wither away. Only the rumour continues to work.
They sit around and hold round tables.
D’Alembert: Recognising no rules of the game. Independent. Don’t let yourself be overwhelmed. Know all the rules of the game and know how to use them. Be aware of any kind of dependence. Operating in this awareness. Always overwhelmed by everything.
Bertolt Wildermuth: The unbearable is the idea of a memory of sensory perception that is lost and can never be repeated (the blind person who remembers what can never be seen again; the deaf person who remembers what can never be heard again; the double amputee who remembers what can never be touched again). It is the idea of it, not finding one’s way in the changed, restricted practice. The inconceivability of the cessation of memory and you talk about all sorts of things. Projection. Never again: tomorrow. Where does that leave: me? As soon as the hereafter is understood as an illusion, there is no consolation.
You sit here and there and talk back and forth.
The tortoise clears its throat.
They sit around and talk round and round.
After all the chatter, one of them speaks up.
They pick up the conversation that had been dropped and carry on.
They stand in the corners and talk to each other.
They sit and talk around each other.
They stand in the corners and talk to each other.
There are side conversations.
Helmut Maria Wildermuth: Why not?
Andie Wildermuth clears her throat.
Helmut Maria Wildermuth: Why not.
The tortoise: aha.
Dr Johnson clears his throat.
Ottilie Wildermuth: well, yes. D’Alembert: why not.
Mrs d’Alembert: well…
Ottilie Wildermuth clears her throat.
D’Alembert: oh well.
Bertolt Wildermuth: why not.
Eduard: aha. 282
