USER
http://www.alansondheim.org/mentis.png
More on addiction/users - around 1995; the other material is at
http://www.alansondheim.org/subjectnet.txt . "Clara" is an
emanent (online emanation, avatar semiosis), I wrote to/through/
under.
USER.TXT
If the user is an addict, Clara. A user *is* an addict; one who
uses on a constant basis is a user. Or so it seems to me. But
addiction - that's something else. Or in order to define -
Addiction by means of the withdrawal at the other end or in the
midst of the thing. So that withdrawal - a particular
symptomology perhaps - might be the key to it. And beyond
withdrawal -
It would be a doubling, a +/- - withdrawal, which is an absence,
but an absence always already conditioned by a presence, of the
drug itself.
By drug - meaning only *that substance* which is the root-
directory of the addiction - not even substance, but *entity* -
and by *entity* - it extends further - one includes patterns of
behavior, whole cultures - pathways through a universal
discourse -
But it always refers back to the *thatness* of the entity - just
as science is *that which* is ideologically problematic in
relation, say, to religion or magic, sympathetic or otherwise -
Or the articulation, say of *painting* by *paint* - there are a
lot of examples - the movement of the Tonya-Harding-blade upon
the ice - which it seems to me is a case of obsession or
devouring - so that in all these instances, there is an
introjection of a discrete other, an identified other - coupled
with a particular symptomology of withdrawal -
The addict circumscribes the *entity* - an inscription which
also binds or writes the coagulation of the ego - a form of
scar-tissue. Now what about the screen? Doesn't the screen
always refer back to or upon itself, a referral implicating the
user - the two of them caught in an inextricable matrix? One has
to consider first of all the *inner voice* occasioned by the
screen - the screen is the internal speaking-of-words, not a
legible exteriority. The screen is also non-linear in a deep
sense - the scrolling and insertion of files, deletions, the
presence of graphic affect - all point to a cranial
articulation. The screen itself is always this interiority; the
user's body is bound to it. Note that it speaks in a whisper -
which is why flaming is so problematic, since it contradicts
inner speech, insisting on an other that literally shouts to be
heard. So that it is more than argument; it appears to be an
*ontological shift* in language's construct, which is difficult
to absorb. I FLAME: THEREFORE I AM. See how the typography
itself carries the philosophical argument, which is no longer an
argument, but the appearance of the Other.
But the appearance of the Other *is* the argument; there would
be no argument otherwise. To argue Other-wise is already to
bracket the signifier, each and every signifier, by a
problematic transcendence; I don't buy this - I return to the
leakiness and obdurate quality (similar to but not equated with
Kripke's rigid designators) of every signifier - the signifier
as *this* signifier tenuously embedded in the imaginary, always
unaccountable - and always *unaccounted-for.* It is this last -
that I cannot account *for* the signifier - that intensifies the
discussion. For to account *for* the signifier, *this*
signifier, is to take responsibility *for* it - as well as,
within an/other derivation, to construe its *origin.* Thus I may
account *for* my eyeglasses by (virtue of) my weak eyesight,
which I may account *for* perhaps by heredity (or not): This
constructs a complete epistemology of eyeglasses in terms of
originary trace. The other that releases itself in flaming is an
*incontrovertible argument* or no *argument* at all, just as
this discussion is the result of a doubling or its presence.
In addiction the *other* is the *same* because it is bound
within and without the coagulation of the ego; the absorption of
the *other* is always troubling.
Why? Because the other is absorbed solely on the basis of its
use- function, and the use-function is *a priori* reductive; the
leakiness is constrained. The presence and absence of the entity
are channeled *through* the use function; at the same time, the
entity becomes a clouded ontological (the being of the body /
being of beings) and epistemological (the horizon of the body /
the horizon) arena, which is - ultimately - an arena of
contestation.
Why? Because it is through and against the entity that
procurement occurs, for addiction is always a situation of
procurement (continuous or otherwise). Procurement sets the
addict at odds with the other, with each and every other from
*entity* to (other) addict; procurement also construes community
with the other from *entity* to (other) addict. With computer
communications becoming more and more zero-loss ecologically,
with the networking transforming from skein to membrane, with
resolution moving from low to high, the potential exists for the
