Alan Sondheim on Wed, 15 Sep 1999 02:55:30 +0200 (CEST) |
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<nettime> couplings and linkages, last of 2 parts |
ii (Linkages and Couplings) It seems to me that, technically, couplings may be considered a form of proximity-relation, with the proximity falling off with distance (which need not be measured exactly - which need not even imply a metric); I believe this is a form of relation called a halfgroupoid. Think of a set of elements with a relation defined among some of them. Linkages are a form of connectivity (think of electric); relation is defined across them, nothing falling off. Linkages may be subgroupoids within a halfgroupoid, and may therefore be substructures of a coupling structure. One can think of a _rattling_ or _jostling_ domain consisting of a mixture; the overall formation is a coupling. Since a coupling may have elements with no re- lation with each other, but with relations with other elements that have relations with each other, etc., we can see it as a very weak linkage; in a linkage, all elements are related such that the breaking of a link re- sults in a deep de-linking. A breaking can result in a decoupling as well, the elements torn asunder, into part-objects with full or weakened links. Negation provides a way in. One might define negation within a linkage as the breaking of a link (think of electric); the thing breaks into two linkages, falls apart, most likely into a coupling. A break anywhere with- in a linkage negates the linkage. With a coupling, negating an element says nothing about the rest; the element is removed, no longer proximal. If the coupling is of the form abc, removal of b may weaken the coupling in its entirety. The negation of a negation of a linkage may result in a linkage - in other words, given a coupling of two linkages, created by negation of a link within a single linkage, the negation of the negation might relink them. But within the coupling, there might also be a second negation, removing one of the two linkages, resulting in a single linkage, the coupling transformed. While negation within a coupling implies the coupling as clutter, a-historical, negation within linkages implies that linkages carry history. Negation appears overly complex here; perhaps a negation of a coupling may be considered a contribution to falling-apart, and a negation within a linkage may be irreversible, a 'hard' negation. This in fact is the case within the implicate order, for example, which is linked; a cut into a folded fluid would, I assume, reduce the rest to chaos. But then chaos of this sort is not a coupling, just another form of linkage; all chaos is linked. Consider an addition; then if a coupling is abc, abcd or abdc, etc. can also be considered a coupling. A coupling might now be defined as a frame or framework, nothing more; there may or may not be other relations among the elements. An addition to a linkage results in a linkage, although there can also be an addition such that the linkage is embedded within a coupling; place a cup and saucer next to a radio. An addition may be an addendum, a diacritical mark, a surplus, an inser- tion, an adjacency. A linkage carries its trace, embedding additions; a coupling loses its trace, blind emissions. This isn't mathematics, but the phenomenology of the entities and debris of the world. Once that is understood, it's also understood that contra- dictions are acceptable; deal with the individual frames. One might think of coupling as literally circumscribed by an economy of attention, and linkage circumscribed by internal articulation. Thus within the world-picture there is a movement from organism to loosely-coupled ("de-coupled") assemblages - transcendent causality transformed partly into happenstance, societies of objects re-presented as accumulations of clutter. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net