39 Microlectures, page 9
Come along and sing our song
and join our family.
M-I-C
K-E-Y
M-O-U-S-E
7.4 TOMORROWLAND
Fiction often has a strange way of BECOMING fact. Not long ago we produced a motion picture based on the immortal tale 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, featuring the famous submarine “Nautilus.” According to that story the craft was powered by a magic force.
Today the tale has come true. A modern namesake of the old fairy ship – the submarine “Nautilus” of the United States Navy – has become the world’s first atom-powered ship. It is proof of the useful power of the atom that will drive the machines of our atomic age.
The atom is our future. It is a subject everyone wants to understand, and so we long had plans to tell the story of the atom. In fact, we considered it so important that we embarked on several atomic projects.
For one, we are planning to build a Hall of Science in the TOMORROWLAND section of DISNEYLAND where we will – among other things – put up an exhibit of atomic energy. Then, our atomic projects at the Walt Disney Studios were two-fold: we produced a motion picture and this book, so that we could tell you this important story in full detail. Both grew together. Many illustrations appear in both, and we gave them the same title: Our Friend the Atom.
With our atomic projects we found ourselves deep in the field of nuclear physics. Of course, we don’t pretend to be scientists – we are story tellers. But we combine the tools of our trade with the knowledge of experts. We even created a new Science Department at the Studio to handle projects of this kind.
The story of the atom was assigned to Dr Heinz Haber, Chief Science Consultant of our Studio. He is the author of this book and he helped us in developing our motion picture.
The story of the atom is a fascinating tale of human quest for knowledge, a story of scientific adventure and success. Atomic science has borne many fruits, and the harnessing of the atom’s power is only the spectacular end result. It came about through the work of many inspired men whose ideas formed a kind of chain reaction of thoughts. These men came from all civilized nations, and from all centuries as far back as 400 BC.
Atomic science began as a positive, creative thought. It has created modern science with its many benefits for mankind. In this sense our book tries to make it clear to you that we can indeed look upon the atom as our friend.
Walt Disney, 1956
7.5 THE GOLEM OF PRAGUE
Question #1: What is a machine?
When Primo Levi encountered his first computer, he invoked a legend: centuries ago a magician-rabbi built a clay automaton with Herculean strength and blind obedience to defend the Jews of Prague from the pogroms; but it remained inanimate, until its maker slipped into its mouth a roll of parchment on which was written a verse from the Torah. At that, the clay golem roamed the streets and kept guard, but turned to stone again when the parchment was removed. I asked myself whether the builders of my apparatus knew this story: the computer has a mouth. Until I introduce the program floppy disk, it is a lifeless metallic box. When I have satisfied him, he comes alive. In his encyclopedia of imaginary creatures, Jorge Luis Borges wrote: In a book inspired by infinite wisdom, nothing can be left to chance, not even the number of words it contains or the order of the letters; thus thought the Kabbalists. They devoted themselves to the task of counting, combining, and permutating the letters of the Scriptures. One of the secrets they sought was how to create living beings. “Golem" was the name given to the man created by combinations of letters. Eleazar of Worms preserved the secret formula. The procedures involved cover twenty-three folio columns and require knowledge of the “alphabets of the 221 gates," which must be recited over each of the Golem’s organs. The word Emet, which means “Truth," should be marked on its forehead. To destroy the creature, the first letter must be obliterated, forming the word met, meaning “death."
Question #2: What is dying?
The hero of Gustav Meyrink’s 1915 novel The Golem, lost one night in the Prague ghetto, wanders through a tunnel into a chamber. Without explanation he begins to shiver. He paces the room in a vain attempt to warm himself. “This is death,” he says to himself. “The heap of rags in the corner caught my eye, and I pulled them, with shaking hands, over my own clothes. They stank of mould. I crouched in the opposite corner, feeling the warmth creep slowly back into my skin.” He notices a card lying on the floor in the moonlight, and he cannot take his eyes off it. Suddenly he realizes he has wandered into the room where the Golem was once said to reside, he has dressed himself in the Golem’s clothes, and the card which obsesses him is the means of the Golem’s animation. He climbs to the window. “Two old women came hobbling along the street, and I half forced my head through the grating and cried to them. Once they caught sight of me, they uttered one piercing cry and fled. I knew. They had taken me for the Golem.”
Question #3: What is innocence?
Let us speak briefly about the earth. It is the ardent, eccentric, intense focal point outside the territory. The earth exists only in the movement of Deterritorialization. More than that, it is Deterritorialization itself: that is why it belongs to the Cosmos, and presents itself as the material through which human beings tap cosmic forces. We could call Deterritorialization the creator of the earth – a new land, a universe. The human produces the transparent entity of technology, and in return, technology offers to retransparentize the human. We must ask ourselves not only how we will USE technology, but also whether we will BECOME technology. According to the legends of the Golem, the means of the BECOMING is language. Meyrink’s hero returns to his human state through the incantations of a holy man; the ghetto’s wise, impoverished rabbi. What the language of technology reterritorializes, the language of wisdom may deterritorialize. In his most famous speech, Mario Savio, leader of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement of the 1960s, opened a window onto the outside of the territory. There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies on the gears, and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus. And you’ve got to make it stop. The machine we may now see as ourselves reterritorialized; the humanmachineBECOMING; the bodies we now see as ourselves deterritorializing. The language itself is the movement by which one leaves the territory, creates the earth. It is the operation of the line of flight – a new land, a universe.
8. HOW DOES A WORK WORK WHERE?
8.1 What is a work?
8.2 What is work?
8.3 What is where?
8.1 WHAT IS A WORK?
To answer the question, “How does a work work where?” we must first divide it into three subquestions: 1) What is a work? 2) What is work? and 3) What is where? Once we answer these, we may go on to the how.
Question #1: What is a work?
A work is an object which is infinite and singular. By infinite, I mean that the singularity of the work, which allows us in fact to refer to it as a work, is itself comprised of infinite events. We can divide those events into two kinds of infinities: first the infinity of microevents on a molecular, atomic, and subatomic level, because anything which is noticeable must be made up of parts which are not; and second the infinity of macroevents, that are happening in our present, and that have happened in our past, and that clearly define a work, and temper and shape our perceptions of it, and our responses to it.
Take for example a painting. Let us attempt to view The Conversion of St Paul by Caravaggio. First, we must travel to Rome. Once there, we must find the Chiesa Santa Maria del Popolo. Upon entering the unlit cavernous church, we see the painting immediately, and see that we cannot see it. It hangs high on the wall obscured in shadow twenty feet away beyond an uncrossable boundary. We notice a small box to our right, labeled with the word luce, below which is a slot the size of a 100 lira coin. One of us volunteers to drop a coin in the slot, and suddenly a miraculous heavenly beam of electric light from the ceiling illuminates The Conversion of St Paul by Caravaggio. Before we can begin our contemplation, we realize that tourists from all corners of the church have swarmed to our position, it being the only illuminated area. Jostling to maintain our view of the painting, we focus our concentration on the cramped and colorful composition. We feel momentarily overwhelmed, not just by the startling structures and figures, but also by the textures. We see St Paul on his back on the ground, eyes closed and arms outstretched to an interior heaven, his horse beside him, one front hoof poised above Paul’s chest, reined by a frightened steward. Above Paul’s head, the horse’s head; above the horse’s head, the steward’s head; above the steward’s head just off the corner of the canvas, in the sky … With a click the light has gone out, plunging the painting back into darkness. The tourists hesitate, waiting for somebody to volunteer another coin. When no one does, they wander off again into the interior of the church.
What is The Conversion of St Paul by Caravaggio? We expected a painting, but found a series of events. Does the painting we expected exist? There is the painting, but there is also the coin box and the coin, ourselves and the crowd, the church of Santa Maria del Popolo and the city of Rome, the shadows and the light. Of course The Conversion of St Paul by Caravaggio exists, but this is not really the question. The question is where does The Conversion of St Paul by Caravaggio stop? What is a work? A work is an object overflowing its frame, converging into a series of other objects each overflowing their frames, not becoming one another, but becoming events, each moving in the direction of their own infinite singularity and difference. Somebody pulls another 100 lira coin from a pocket, holds it over the slot, and says, “Get ready.”
8.2 WHAT IS WORK?
Question #2: What is work?
A human being is an organism that works; this man is a unit of labor. This is not a quote from Karl Marx, but rather what I thought growing up in Flint, Michigan, before I encountered people who don’t work. My grandfather, my father’s father, worked in the General Motors auto plant that gave birth, in 1927, to the United Auto Workers Union as a result of the massive sit-down strike that he participated in. At the outset of our performance How Dear to Me the Hour When Daylight Dies, when my grandfather was 92, I contributed what for me was a homage to his years on the assembly line – a sequence in which I stood very still, lifted both arms to chest level, rubbed the back of my right hand in a circular motion with the fingers of my left hand, dropped both arms, took three breaths, and repeated the gesture. Under Lin’s direction and with the input of the group, the homage took shape. After seven repetitions, I left my right hand raised, and lowered my left only. After nine repetitions of that, I left both hands raised. After twelve repetitions of that, I dropped both arms and began again. The performance of the action required considerable concentration, which I had not expected when I began devising it. As I performed it in front of an audience, in the stillness and the focus which ensued, I imagined the spirit of my grandfather descending on me, even though he was still living, and I imagined my gesture becoming a repetition of his countless gestures at work, my hands becoming his, my face becoming his. My work became the work of becoming my grandfather at work, and when his spirit joined me, it did not descend, but grew from micropoints inside me – in my hands, behind my eyes, in my arms and my chest, and in my feet. When I articulated my intentions at a work-in-progress discussion in Colorado Springs in the fall of 1995, an elderly woman in the audience volunteered the comment that she had once worked on an assembly line, and the experience was just like that gesture. When I called my mother from Glasgow in the spring of 1996 to tell her we had successfully premiered How Dear to Me the Hour When Daylight Dies, she told me my grandfather had died three days earlier. He had died on the day of the first performance.
What is work? Work is life.
A human being is an organism that works;
this man is a unit of labor.
This man is free,
not because he is determined from within,
but because every time
he constitutes the motive of the event that he produces.
What he does, he does entirely,
that being what comprises his liberty.
8.3 WHAT IS WHERE?
Question #3: What is where?
Where is inside. What does inside mean? Inside means inside my car. What is my car doing? It is traveling along its own particular road. What is inside my car? I am inside my car, and since I am inside my car, I cannot perceive anything outside my car until it enters my point of view, which is inside. Thus we can say that not only am I inside my car, but in fact, everything is inside my car – the road is inside my car, The Conversion of St Paul by Caravaggio is inside my car, and my grandfather who built my car is inside my car. Does my car have windows? No, it is a windowless car, because how could it have windows when everything is already inside? In fact, there is no outside, there are only more windowless cars. Each one speeds along its own particular road. Each one contains everything else, including its own particular road and all the other windowless cars. But each everything inside has a certain pattern of emphasis, of clarity and obscurity, depending on the car’s specific speed, direction, and point of view. In this way there are different everythings. Each car comprises a different everything. We are not speaking of closure, but of infinite convergences. The convergence of all the windowless cars of my body and mind comprise the windowless car of my self, in which everything happens. But not every everything, only my particular everything. So this is not to say that there is nothing outside of myself, but rather that every everything is inside of itself and every other everything, including me.
Question #4: How does a work work where?
A work is an object overflowing its frame. Work is an event in which the human participates; the human is an organism that works. A work works when it becomes an event of work. A work works when it becomes human. This becoming occurs when we realize it. Specifically, it occurs when we realize it where it occurs. It occurs inside. We do not need to find a way into a work, since the work is already inside. Instead we realize a work and its harmony with our point of view. Then it and we begin to work, and the play of work begins.
9. THE KALEIDOSCOPIC SELF
9.1 What is a barbarian?
9.2 The stalwart words of Gibson’s Wallace
9.3 The kaleidoscopic self
9.4 Waiting for the Barbarians
9.5 What is the world?
9.1 WHAT IS A BARBARIAN?
Question #1: Who is excluded?
Arab geographers in ancient times applied the word barbar to the people of northern Africa. The word means to talk in a noisy and confused way. By the sixteenth century the word had found its way to Europe as barbarian. There it came to refer to a foreigner in language and customs. For the Greeks the word retained its linguistic aspect, designating one who does not speak Greek. To understand the Roman alteration of the word’s meaning, we must also understand the word nation. Deriving from the Latin root meaning to be born, a nation refers to an extensive aggregate of persons so closely associated by common descent, language, or history, as to form a distinct race or people, usually organized as a separate political state and occupying a definite territory. One could argue that in Roman times the notion of political unity came to ascendency over the previously held definition of a nation as linguistic. For the Romans, a barbarian meant one born and living outside the Roman Empire, its civilization, and its political state – a non-citizen. As history progressed, the term barbarian came to refer exclusively to the northern nations who overthrew the Roman Empire. Thus a nation became by definition that which it is still today – an organized state which excludes an outsider; furthermore, the outsider also represents the nation’s greatest threat. Without a dangerous foreigner, there can be no nation.
Question #2: Who is included?
The history of nations, beginning with our own, is always already presented to us in the form of a story. The story attributes the continuity of a subject to our nation. The formation of our nation thus appears as the fulfilment of a ‘project’ stretching over centuries, in which there are different stages and moments of coming to self-awareness, which the prejudices of the various historians will portray as more or less decisive, but which, in any case, all fit into an identical pattern: that of the self-manifestation of the national personality. Such a representation clearly constitutes a retrospective illusion. The illusion is twofold. First, it consists in believing that the generations which succeed one another over centuries on a reasonably stable territory, under a reasonably univocal designation, have handed down to each other an invariant substance. Second, it consists in believing that the process of development from which we select aspects retrospectively, so as to see ourselves as the culmination of that process, was the only one possible, that is, it represented a destiny. The illusion of national identity founds itself on the two symmetrical figures of project and destiny, and thus on a ‘past’ which has never been present, and which never will be.
