Arrow of Chaos: Romanticism and Postmodernity (Theory Out of Bounds)

272 Pages·1997·4.13 MB·English

by  Ira Livingston

Arrow of Chaos
SandraBuckley
MichaelHardt
ErianMassumi
THEOHl 0l:1 OF BOl:I'DS
...UNCONTAINED
BY
THE
DISCIPLINES,
INSUBORDINATE
PRACTICES OF RESISTANCE
9 Arrowof Chaos. ...Inventing,
Romanticism and Postmodernlty IraLivingston
excessively,
8 Becoming-Wom.n CamillaGriggers
in the between...
7 R.dlcal Thought in It.ly.
A Potenti.1 Politics PaoloVimoandMichaelHardt,editors
6 Capit.1 Times.
Talelfrom the ConquestofTime EricAlliez PROCESSES
5 The Year of P....ges RedaBensmaia
4 Laborof Dionylus,
A Critique ofthe St.te-Form MichaelHardtandAntonioNegri
OF
!I Bad Aboriginal Art. Tr.dition,
Medi., .ndTechnologic.1 Horilonl EricMichaels
2 The Cinematic Body StevenShaviro
1 TheComingCommunity GiorgioAgamben HYBRIDIZATION
Arrow of Chaos
Romanticism and Postmodernity
Ira Livingston
TheoryoutofBound. Volume9
UniversityofMinnesota Press
Minneapolis • London
Copyright1997bytheRegentsoftheUniversityofMinnesota
"Gains"and"Composition,"fromBeiDao, OldSnow,copyright1991byBeiDao, arereprinted
bypermissionofNewDirectionsPublishing;Wallace Stevens,"OfMere Being,"from OpusPosthumous,
copyright1957byElsieStevensandHollyStevens,andlinesfrom"NotestowardaSupremeFiction,"
fromCollectedPoems,copyright1942byWallaceStevens,reprintedbypermissionofAlfredA.Knopf,Inc.,
andFaberandFaber,Ltd.;WilliamTay'stranslationofGuCheng's"Curve,"fromAfterMao:ChineseLiteratureand
Society,1978-1981,editedbyJeffreyC.Kinkley(CouncilonEastAsianStudies, 1985),
reprintedbypermissionofProfessorTayandtheCouncilonEastAsianStudies, HarvardUniversity;
andW. B.Yeats,"Second Coming,"fromThePoemsofW.B.Yeats:A NewEdition, edited byRichard].Finneran,
copyright1924byMacmillian,renewed 1952byB.G.Yeats,reprintedbypermissionofSimon& Schuster andby
permissionofA.P.Watt,Ltd., onbehalfofMichaelYeats,
Chapter6,"TrafficinLeeches," appearedinAmericanImagoandisreprintedinrevisedform
withpermissionoftheJohnsHopkinsUniversityPress.
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PublishedbytheUniversityofMinnesotaPress
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PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmericaonacid-free paper
LIBRARYOF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLlCATION DATA
Livingston,Ira, 1956-
Arrowofchaos:romanticismandpostmodernity/IraLivingston,
p. cm.- (Theoryoutofbounds;v.9)
Includes bibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN 0-8166-2794-0(hardcover:alk.paper)
ISBN 0-8166-2795-9(pbk.:alk.paper)
1. Literature,Modern-20thcentury-Historyandcriticism.
2. Chaoticbehaviorinsystemsinliterature. 3. Romanticism.
4. Romanticism. 5. Postrnodernism(Literature) 1. Title.
n. Series.
PN771.L588 1997
809'.04-dc20
96-21764
TheUniversityofMinnesota
isanequal-opportunityeducatorandemployer.
Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgments xv
Chapter 1. Introduction 1
RomanticMachinery 1
Romanticismand Postmodernity 5
RomanticChaos 7
Romanticismand Romanticism 9
MetastibilityandMetastability 11
HistoryMoves likeaSnake 12
Worldsin Collision 14
Posthumanities 18
Panopticonand Pi:TheSchool ofMirrors 20
Chapter 2. Horrors of Order and Disorder 33
Reversal, TurningInsideOut,Horizontalization 34
Mixtureand Fixture: PoliticalThermodynamicsin Burke and Paine 42
TheHegemonyofHegemony:Wordsworth'sFractalDistinction 48
MixingMixtureand Fixture: "TheClodand the Pebble" 53
Counterperformativityand Self-Difference: ElisabethHands 54
In the Wake ofthe Book: "TheMaskofAnarchy" 58
TheRoughnessofthe Beast: "TheSecondComing" 61
Chapter J. Fractal Logics of Romanticism:
Concentricity and Eccentricity 69
WheelwithinWheel: Blake'sRecursive Physics 69
Irony: AVortex amid Vortices 84
Gyroscopophilia: Wordsworth's "Slumber" 90
Timein the School ofMirrors: "TinternAbbey" and "FrostatMidnight" 104
Nesting-DollNarrators:Frankenstein 111
PostmodernPostscript: ConcentricCollapsein Twin Peaks 119
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Chapter 4. Fraeta. Logics of Romanticism: Binary Decomposition 123
Introduction: Paine's HeadlessHydra 123
Genderin the SchoolofMirrors:Frankenstein 125
TheRomanticDouble-Cross: Keats'sLetters 135
InterferenceofText and Workin Stevens's "Palm" 148
Chapter 5. Fraeta. Logics of Romanticism: Rhythming 159
Introduction: RomanticDysrhythmia 159
Blake'sCycles 168
Irresolutionand Interdependence 181
Parkinsonism,Romanticism, Postmodernism: NeurologyasIdeology 183
Chapter 6. Postmodern Postscript 199
TheTrafficin Leeches: Cronenberg'sRabidand
the SemioticsofParasitism 199
TheEndsofDreams 213
Some SemioticPanoctopi 223
ChineseRomanticism, Postmodernity, and "ObscurePoetry" 229
Works Cited 243
Index 249
Preface
To begin, I'll try to indicate punctuallywhat I think this book is about, and in the
process to suggest why punctuality is to an extent inimical to what this book is
about.
Arrow ofChaos is a "chaology of knowledge" insofar as it is a
study of chaos as a logic at work in epistemological processes. "Romanticism" and
"postmodernity" name the blurry beginnings and ends ofa modernity that is for
ever chasingits own tail.
In what sense do the historical and cultural formations of Ro
manticism and postmodernity cohere in or between themselves, or as appropriate
objects for achaology? In whatsense does "chaos" (or "chaos theory") itselfcohere
as a paradigm or logic? While I sometimes address these questions in the chapters
that follow, I do so less to resolve and more to sustain and/or displace what I hope
to show are generative ambiguitiesand constitutive contradictions in formations for
whichdiscombobulationisasdefinitive ascoherence.
Chaologies often identify certain thresholds (sometimes called
"singularities") atwhich occur"spontaneousself-organization" or "emergentbehav
ior" or "orderoutofchaos."Thislast formula ismisleadingsince whatfollows asin
gularitymay be more like another kindoforder(or chaos) more or lessat odds with
the order/chaos thatprecedes it and that may be ongoingly necessary tosustainit:this
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contingencyiswhy "self-organization" is also misleadingif construed assimple au
tonomy. Romantic ideologies of "self" and "organism" continue to be involved in
generatingthese constructions and misconstruals.
ManuelDe Landa, in UTarintheAgeofIntelligentMachines, rounds
up some of the usual suspects to illustrate one form of self-organization, so-called
"spontaneous cooperativebehavior":
Theindividualspinofatomsinametal "cooperate"tomakethemetalmagnetic;
theindividualmoleculesinachemicalreaction "cooperate" tocreatethepeifectly
rhythmicpatternsofachemicalclock; thecellsmaking upanamoebacolony "cooperate"
undercertainconditionstoassembleanorganismwith differentiatedorgans;
andthedifferenttermitesinacolony "cooperate"tobuildanest.(7)
It would be possible to assert that these phenomena are related
metaphorically insofar as metaphor proposes a similarity between essentially differ
ent realms. Here, though, De Landa puts the word "cooperate" in scare quotes to
indicate that it is only apparently an anthropomorphizing metaphor, but also that
metaphor cannot simply be dispensed with: the question ofhow a certain human
intentionality(e.g., "cooperation") has been attributed to nature shouldnotassume
the difference between them; rather, wewould have to lookat how certainpractices
(ideologies, technologies, and soon) differentiate "human"and "natural"byestablish
ing various correspondences and oppositions between them, and also, then, to use
this inquiryto question howhuman intentionalityhasbeenattributedtohumans.
The notorious unscientificityofmetaphormay enable the "got
cha" effect of showing the absolute reliance ofscience upon metaphor, but at what
points does this dialectic begin to compromisethe distinction betweenmetaphorand
science? Takinganother tack, would it be possible also to maintain thatmetaphoris
a process in nature, that "poetics" also has purchase on the world typically thought
to be monopolized byscience, and notexclusivelybycritiquingscienceasasecond
ordersimulation? These are open questions.
Unfortunately, it is against metaphor that De Landa casts "re
cent advances in experimental mathematics" as finding "deep" similarities between
the only apparently very different processes he assembles (7). In other words, De
Landa claims his examples as cognate epiphenomena ofa single and definitive ab
stractlaw(or"gene"or "machine"),more likeanidentityamongmembers ofthe same
realm (dubbed "the machinic phylum" after Deleuze) and thus not metaphorical.
Clearly, De Landadoesn'twant militaryhistorians to find thatthey're readingabook
on poetics. But setting aside De Landa's revamped Enlightenment masternarrative
viii,ix
ofscientificprogress, and even allowingthe "depth" ofthe "family resemblance" he
remarks, what the resemblance means in practice-howit can be lived-remains an
open question: it may mean that some reconfigured discipline (probably not poet
ics, but I'll do my best) could claim partial authority to study termite colonies and
magnets, butwhatopportunities and constraints does it offer for those who are or
ganized only partlyby the "emergentbehavior" in question? Do termites and mag
nets enjoysome special intimacy? Affiliations alwayssprawl across categories, and if
an organism is always a provisional (and high-maintenance) affiliation ofmultiple
and contradictory constraints and reducible to no single one of these (i.e., a "fuzzy
set"), whytalkabout anunderlyingidentity? "Singularity"comes into questioninturn;
metaphoropensup into acatachrestic and centerless orbit-a tail-chasing-which
isthe kind ofaboutthatthis bookisabout: lessreferentiality(about as"in regard to")
and more ofa "strange attractor" (about as "around; by a circuitous way; here and
there").
Returning, then, to De Landa's assemblage, what does it mean
that the apparently scientific phrase "spontaneous cooperative behavior" seems to
be aroughlyprecise description of the effect of akind ofpower (atypicallymodem
and postmodern power) alreadydescribedin culturaltheoryas"hegemony"? To be
gin with, looking at how scientists are "constructing" nature (and mathematics) in
the image ofpostmodern powermay be anecessary-politicizing-step in correct
ing the aestheticizing and scientizing that are rampant in the discourse of fractals
and chaos. I get tired ofhearing the mandate that humanists must learn to engage
scientists on their (the scientists's) terms and to fight for apiece of the high ground
of "objectivity" and "truth," but maybe this mandate is better received as a perfor
mative imperative (whose meaning is its always partial and selective recruitment
function) rather than a totalizing edict. In any case, it seems important to demon
strate to one's own satisfactionthat one who believes he has discovered an objective
fact ofnature is only looking through the wrong end of an epistemological tele
scope at his own cultural navel; however, as everyone knows, scientists are mostly
licensed to care almost nothingfor such a "gotcha"- or may even laugh with you,
as they say,all the way to the bank (where you've got an account, too). In frustra
tion, one may be driven to engage amore difficult double mandate: neither/both to
cop a certain authority by scientizing, nor/and to show how scientific claims are
driven and shaped-or at the very least thoroughly inflected-by economic and
political logics. At least, a historical truth-effect may be recognizable in its charac
teristic doubling back onto itself: to study the "emergence ofemergence" must be
to throwthe paradigmback into its historicity. Asin poetic self-reference, this dou-
Preface