Holographic Multi-Dimensionality and Literature (201909071016)

In my master's thesis I argued that the realist-modernist dialectic could be productively reframed in terms of identity and non-identity in such a way as to enable a synthesizing of the two aesthetic paradigms and projects that would overcome the limitations of each while simultaneously realizing their ambitions, further developing their potentials, and revealing a process by which such emergent aesthetics could continue to respond to changing material and ideological conditions. My recent reading has led me to believe that this reframing might further benefit from the incorporation of a concept of multi-dimensionality derived from category theory, a concept which might provide a useful way of thinking through the operations of literature, specifically the complex relations existing between signifiers, ideologies, material conditions, history, narrative elements, and formal qualities. At the risk of over-generalizing--a luxury afforded by this genre of the informal note--it seems to me that much modern and contemporary theory remains haunted by a vulgar theory of causality whereby one of the aforementioned objects is seen as exerting on another an overdetermining force following a unidirectional trajectory, e.g. ideologies cause certain narrative elements or formal qualities, signifiers inject an ideology into a text, a narrative and form reflect a historical situation, and so on. That such theories might then allow for a second responsive force to emanate from the second term back onto the first in a secondary movement--e.g. the ideologically-conditioned narrative elements or formal qualities then in-turn condition ideologies--does not refute the charge of vulgar causality, for the secondary movement, structurally identical to the first (even though diachronically distinct), does not qualitatively alter its progenitor. Such vulgar causality reduces the reality of the second term, creating a hierarchy of value in which some things are more real than others, reproducing the suspect philosophical (and theological) concept of The First Mover. Such vulgar causality fails to grasp the uniquely holographic structure of not only literature but reality itself. Such vulgar causality reduces radical complexities for the sake of constructing models that are not wholly without explanatory power or use but that then too often seem to become elevated to some status of Truth, replacing the terrain with a map that is then mistaken as the terrain itself. In my reading, Adorno's _Aesthetic Theory_ seems to come closest to avoiding such an over-reduction, but even its model does not entirely succeed in escaping a First Mover insofar as it relegates the status of the artwork to that of history's effect which can only transcend its position through renunciation and withdrawal as a monad, a compressed structure reduced to its relation with that which lies outside itself. A concept of multi-dimensionality provides theoretical means for modeling not only the relations of each of the earlier mentioned objects but also the relations of those relations, the relations of those relations of relations, and so on. Each set of relations opens a higher-dimensional abstract space conditioned by each of its coordinates but reducible to none of them; within this space, each of the constitutive coordinates simultaneously conditions and is conditioned by the other coordinates as well as whatever abstract entities crystalize within the wave pool of their interference patterns. Furthermore, through mediations this higher-dimensional abstract space shares with other abstract and concrete spaces the relation shared by its own coordinates and abstract entities: each higher-dimension conditions and is conditioned by each lower- and higher-dimension. Such holographic multi-dimensionality provides a means for modeling a more complex, dialectical causality no longer haunted by The First Mover, for as the existence of each term is no longer fully reducible to any other, none can claim the status of Most Real, a status often (if not usually) legitimized only through discursive or physical violence. Of course, as category theory allows for a constant creation of new dimensions through the examining of new relations approaching infinity, it will be methodologically necessary to impose a limit, but insofar as such a limit is flexible and self-reflexively arbitrary, it evades the pitfall of self-naturalizing; rather than presenting itself as definite, it remains self-consciously indefinite, thus refusing to prevent further expansion of thought (an important emancipatory quality as limiting of thought is an authoritarian mode incompatible with real freedom). Holographic multi-dimensionality also furnishes a conceptual means for modeling the relations of existing theories to each other and to the primary objects they theorize, thus presenting itself as a means of developing unified theories more capable of modeling and rendering the embodied and interdisciplinary structures of art, thought, and every aspect of life. And of course, insofar as it recovers the richness of thought and life without disavowing the most crucial insights of theory, philosophy, and literature, this holographic multi-dimensionality presents itself as a fruitful theoretical apparatus and methodology for the creative writer interested in writing-as-action, especially those writers with commitments to political and aesthetic revolution. Neoliberalism would have us all inhabit a realm of shadows in which all are but flattened outlines of its Most Real commodity. Here, perhaps, is one means for reclaiming life through unfolding our art, our thought, our selves from the shadows they have for too long been made. This note is but a point of departure; more work remains to be done...