Hiya Rebecca and Chris and list

Rebecca, the article you quote from is the paper on anguish by Anna
Gibbs I was referring to. Tomkins also argues that affects are
contagious and anguish is one of his innate affects. Anna is head
of the writing department at UWS so a lot of her writing is very
useful to other writers. Tomkins is also used to teach undergrad
writing students using a formal application of his affect system.


Tomkins is one of the key psychologists who provides the theoretical
basis for recent evolutionary psychology. Evolution through contagion
and contingency rather then the transitive notion of evolution. An
aleatory evolution or evolution as throwing a dice.

Just to put it a bit more in perspective all I am really doing is laying
out a problematic series as a basic technical skill in doing philosophy
and I am doing philosophy to solve some problems which have blocked me
from finishing the first novel in the series I am writing and to open
the second novel which requires a novel thinking of information
technology. It also involves developing a theory of artificial
intelligence both of which break with Cartesian and Phenomenological
theories. (Phenomenology is not science but fairy tales from the
perspective of epistemology.)

Tomkins has eight and later nine different innate affects. By innate he
means these affects have to be created in the first place but become
innate in a complex system of affects, complex in the sense that the
physicist Gibbs uses the term. There is a definition of innate in
complexity science which I forget, but I can take a reading of innate
from Einstein's theory of Relativity where matter comes at the same time
as space. That is, there is not an empty space for matter to fill but
space and matter appear together at the same time, according to
Einstein's theory. So, in this sense space and matter, which are innate
to the system also have to be created as innate. Further to this, in
such a complexity system of affects which Tomkins presents, this would
be a system in disequilibrium, if I am to follow the reading from
Einstein-Gibbs. (Einstein's Relativity is a disequilibrium system and
hence according to the mathematics of Relativity the universe is
expanding.) What this then means is that the affective responses to
interactive media need not produce stasis or homeostasis or a blockage
to thought and curiosity but also undergo bifurcations and as a result
according to Tomkins concept of control, control is freedom and if I am
to link this up with a reading of Henri Bergson, control is also
creative. While the world to us in our everyday observations may appear
to be relatively unchanging and appears to be in equilibrium or
homeostasis which makes life as we know it appear as possible, on a
cosmic scale it is in continual change and disequilibrium with the
expansion of the universe. In terms of Leibniz's theory of
consciousness, understanding the world as homeostasis or stable
equilibrium is a perception or worldview which with Einstein crosses a
threshold into a new understanding as a cosmic consciousness of an
expanding or changing universe. Perceptions change and a new way of
seeing is presented. So while interactive media may appear to produce a
homeostasis, a sort of numbing like deer in headlights, it also creates
a potential for a threshold to be crossed or a bifurcation so control in
this sense is always bifurcating into non-time reversible affects as
freedom of affects. This is the diverging series of control, or
bifurcating series of problematics I referred to.  Slavoj Zizek in _The
Plague of Fantasies_ (London: Verso, 1997) on the other hand argues that
interactive media such as cyberspace acts as a sort of Objet (a) in
Lacanian terms which returns us to the Symbolic Order or the super ego
in terms of a dualist or Cartesian analysis which produces what appears
to be a homeostatic control mechanism or a type of numbing effect. So,
you can see, I hope, that two different concepts of control are being
presented. Zizek presents a dualist notion of control which can be
synthesised under a false Hegelian monism but is really a Cartesian
dualism and Tomkins concept of control which is a truly monist concept
of control where the one of monism is multiple. While the Cartesian
notion of control closes off the possibility of thought, Tomkins concept
of control is open to time in the spirit of Henri Bergson (and American
pragmatists such as Santayanna, I suspect.) Of course, it is possible in
terms of Lacan's Objet (a) as a sublime any space whatsoever to cross
the borders of Cartesian thought where the logic of the Objet (a) is
situated and when this happens a new type of perception or in Leibnizian
terms a new consciousness is created which would be innovative or novel.
This would refer also to Lacan's problematic third register of the real.
zizek is also not the only media theorist or IT theorist to present this
sort of anaysis, of course. i am just using this as a more interesting
example. The others are just plain dull.

As an aside, Deleuze presents a philosophy that in a different domain to
Tomkins yet around the same time and appears to be in agreement with
Tomkins when Deleuze presents Univocity of Being as being is becoming.
(See; Logic of Sense.) So you have all these different domains, Deleuze
in philosophy, Tomkins in psychology, scientists working in complexity
science and cosmic physics all producing a new type of statement in
terms of a Foucaultian analysis which itself also becomes possible in
this new way and I date this as the 1960s. Further to this past science
and philosophy is also able to be read in a new way, such as a new way
of reading Leibniz as a philosopher and mathematician and inventor of
digital logic or binary numbers along with differential calculus.

This also links to my theory of AI as already very much with us. The
problem is merely one of perception. Richard Stallman's innovation known
as the GNU Free Software licence is a good example I am currently
investigating to get this theory moving along. Again, what blocks AI
advancing as a science is the Cartesian and phenomenological
epistemology it is chained to (and those who once wore chains will
always wear chains.)

Anyways, a longish post, not focused exposition, but confusion is needed
for a successful hypothesis since if it were a clear exposition then
logically it could not be a hypothesis... best go

best wishes, Chris Jones.

On Wed, 2003-12-10 at 05:13, Rebecca Seiferle wrote:
> Hi Chris,
>
> Thanks for the interesting post, and, yes, I do think that last quote
> particularly does resonate with the preceding threads on
> nostalgia and pastoral among others.
>
> I went to this link you gave and couldn't find the Anna Gibbs
> paper on anguish, I may be blind since I have a headache,
> though I did find an article by her in the archives
> Contagious Feelings: Pauline Hanson and the Epidemiology
> of Affect which was interesting too, with its discussion
> of affective contagion.
>
> I copied out these two quotes:
>
> We might say, then, that the media act as vectors in affective epidemics in which something else is also smuggled along: the attitudes and even the specific ideas which tend to accompany affect in any given situation.
> In the context of affect contagion,
>
> Hanson's very inarticulacy was efficacious, at least insofar as it functioned as an immediate manifestation of distress rather than simply as a sign for it.
>
> which seem apt to other political situations than the one discussed.
> Especially that idea of inarticulacy as efficacious and I would guess,
> via media, acting as a kind of vector for an affective epidemic, and
> how what is conveyed is that sense of "having had enough" which
> is communicated all the more affectively/effectively byvirtue
> of being inarticulate.
>
> Anyway, if you could give me a hint as to finding the article on
> anguish, I'd be glad to read it!
>
> Best,
>
> Rebecca

>
>
>
> Chris Jones <[log in to unmask]>