Bakker XXXIV: Waiting for Grimdark (update: it’s here!)

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

I'm inclined to agree. A brief consideration of chemistry will tell you that the production of a salt (usually through exposing metals to acid) is very from the production of ashes (one reaction releases gas, one absorbs gas from the air - the salt loses mass compared to the acid and the metal, the ash gains weight through oxidisation).

It was clearly stated that Qirri is the ashes of dead Nonman Kings. There's no debating it, its what Nil'gaccas explained to Mimara, and how Akka and Mimara replinshed their supply. By burning and gathering the ashes of Nil'gaccas. The text makes this very clear.

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

phlogiston. duh!

Solo, you've taught me more words than any other source or teacher in my life. I'm indebted to you.

[Larry of the Lawn]

MSJ, nice work. But as for the intelligence of the Inchies.... I think it was Kal (could be mistaken) whobwrote a hilarious post about howbthe Inchies are idiots. I'll try to find it when I'm back on a computer.

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

MSJ, nice work. But as for the intelligence of the Inchies.... I think it was Kal (could be mistaken) whobwrote a hilarious post about howbthe Inchies are idiots. I'll try to find it when I'm back on a computer.

Yea, I can see that, that's the one thing that doesn't seem to fit definitely.

[Guest]

I've never been quite sure how literal we're supposed to take the "salting" of sorcerers or whether it just kind of converts you to an ash-like state. That's why I don't think a qirri to "salt" comparison is a stretch.

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

I've never been quite sure how literal we're supposed to take the "salting" of sorcerers or whether it just kind of converts you to an ash-like state. That's why I don't think a qirri to "salt" comparison is a stretch.

Yea you can compare the two as far as their affects on the user, to a certain extent. But, I'd say there is textual evidence that they are two separate "drugs".

[sologdin]

but if giant anthropophagic annelids show up, wtf man, time to open up a can of metagnostic cants.

[Callan S.]

Hmmm. I don't know. I think it's pretty clear the Ordeal is already going toward their deaths? How many can even think they'll return from Golgotterath?

The dreams where a beaten slave waits in line, just wishing it were over...while shuffling toward the golden room...

In Earwa there are clearly things worse than death. Heck, world born men can rouse their fellow men to likely die in war. This will be something...more...

[Callan S.]

Took me awhile, but what the title of this thread makes me think it should be called "Waiting for no-godot"

[lokisnow]

Clearly chanv is inchoroi poop, perhaps that's why definitely-not-a-bakker-alt was trying to start a conversation about the characteristics of different species' poops.

[Anatúrinbor]

When Bakker says that there is a right and wrong way to worship in Earwa, does that mean that people are damned by default? That even if someone like Achamian was not a sorcerer he would still be damned because he does not worship the correct way?

If so, and Mimara sees herself as saved with TJE, does that mean that Mimara, who believes in Kellhus, worships the right way?

[Guest]

When Bakker says that there is a right and wrong way to worship in Earwa, does that mean that people are damned by default? That even if someone like Achamian was not a sorcerer he would still be damned because he does not worship the correct way? If so, and Mimara sees herself as saved with TJE, does that mean that Mimara, who believes in Kellhus, worships the right way?

And is it possible that a Khahit (sp) like Kellhus, assuming he is one, can alter the "right" way to believe?

[sologdin]

double sorry.

[sologdin]

we left off in our discussion of the khora with plato's timaeus. We now resume that colloquy with derrida's essay from on the name.

we note two precessions, though, of the khora in on the name, prior to the essay actually on the khora (other than the passage cited, supra, in the prior RSB thread):

in "Passions: An Oblique Offering": "And the secret will remain secret, mute, impassive as the khora, as Khora [sic] foreign to every history, as much in the sense of Geschichte or res gestae as of knowledge and of historical narrative (episteme, historia rerum gestarum), and outside all periodization, all epochalization" (loc. cit. at 27). so: mute and secret?

in "Sauf le nom (Post-Scriptum)": "or some khora (body without body, absent body but unique body and place [lieu] of everything, in the place of everything, interval, place [place], spacing. Would you also say of khora, as you were just doing in a murmur, 'save its name' [sauf son nom; safe, its name]?" (loc. cit. at 56). so: incorporeal?

Point of departure for the khora essay proper is an epigraph by mr. j-p vernant, regarding how "the mythologist was left with drawing up, in conclusion this statement of deficit, and to turn to the linguists, logicians, mathematicians, that they might supply him with the tool he lacked: the structural model of a logic which would not be that of binarity, of the yes and no, a logic other than the logic of the logos." (on the name at 88).

fuck me, yo. the relevant structuration there is accordingly logos/mythos. essay itself is a hyperformalist close reading of the timaeus. no need to rework all that stuff. (it is of course very cool, and i recommend it.)

the khora fits in as what "goes beyond or falls short of the polarity of metaphorical sense versus proper sense that the thought of the khora exceeds the polarity, no doubt analogous, of the mythos and the logos. [...] the thought of the khora would trouble the very order of polarity, of polarity in general, whether dialectical or not." (on the name at 92). to 'trouble' something in Bigg D is classic 'solicitation,' the shaking of the foundations of a structuration. here, D solicits the structure of binarism, polarity--which had been the basic assumption of deconstruction hitherto--that things were structured around binaries that could be solicited. the khora apparently deconstructs deconstruction. that's brainmelty shit.

anyway, lots can be said of this essay. but here, we pull out bits obvious for the RSB:

"Not having an essence, how could the khora be beyond its name? The khora is anachronistic; it 'is' the anachrony within being, or better: the anachrony of being. It anachronizes being." (op. cit. at 94).

"Does the thought of khora, which obviously does not derive from the 'logic of noncontradiction of the philosophers,' belong to the space of mythic thought? is the 'bastard' logos which is regulated according to it still a mythos?" (op. cit. at 100).

"According to Hegel, philosophy becomes serious [...] only from the moment when it enters into the sure path of logic: that is, after having abandoned, or let us rather say sublated, its mythic form: after Plato, with Plato. Philosophical logic comes to its senses when the concept wakes up from its mythological slumber, Sleep and waking, for the vent, consist in a simple unveiling: the making explicit and taking cognizance of a philosopheme enveloped in its virtual potency. The mytheme will have been only a prephilosopheme offered an promised to a dialectical aufhebung. This teleological future anterior resembles the time of a narrative but it is a narrative of the going outside of narrative." (op. cit. 100-01). this is fairly awesome, the teleological future anterior. what comes when determines what comes when, again? do we need a prophet of the past to sort that shit out?


overall point of the essay is remarkably plain (for a derrida writing, at least):

Should one henceforth forbid oneself to speak of the philosophy of Plato, of the ontology of Plato, or even of Platonism? Not at all, and there would undoubtedly be no error of principle in so speaking, merely an inevitable abstraction. Platonism would mean, in these conditions, the thesis of the theme which one has extracted by artifice, misprision, and abstraction from the text, torn out of the written fiction of "Plato." Once this abstraction has been supercharged and deployed, it will be extended over ll the folds of the text, of its ruses, overdeterminations, and reserves, which the abstraction will come to cover up and dissimulate.

(op. cit. at 119-20). that's kinda deconstruction in a nutshell. as a conclusion, it is warranted by the essay that precedes it; the khora is something that does not fit in with the standard interpretation of 'platonism' as the synthesis of the parmenidean aletheia and the heraclietean polemos. instead, the khora is the triton genos that unravels this tidy reading. it is a marginal concept in a marginal portion of a marginal text of plato; it is classic deconstruction to use this brief interlude as the point at which the entire narrative comes apart, the now standard 'oblique approach.' it is neither sensible nor intelligible; it is neither logos nor mythos. i.e.:

If the cosmo-ontologic encyclopedia of the Timaeus presents itself as 'probable myth,' a tale ordered by the hierarchized opposition of the sensible and the intelligible, of the image in the course of becoming and of eternal being, how can one inscribe therein or situate therein the discourse on khora? It is indeed inscribed there for a moment, but it also has a bearing on a place of inscription, of which it is clearly said that it exceeds or precedes, in an order that is, moreover, alogical and achronic, anachronistic too, the constitutive oppositions of mytho-logic as such, of mythic discourse and of discourse on myth. On the one hand, by resembling an oneiric and bastard reasoning, this discourse reminds us of a sort of myth within the myth, of an open abyss in the general myth. But on the other hand, in giving to be thought that which belongs neither to sensory being nor to intelligible being, neither to becoming nor to eternity, the discourse on khora is no longer a discourse on being, it is neither true nor probable and appears thus to be heterogeneous to myth, at least to mytho-logic, to this philosopho-mytheme which orders myth to its philosophical telos.

(op. cit. at 113). the point has been to implode the timaeus' notion of 'probable myth': "The demiurge formed the cosmos in the image of the eternal paradigm which he contemplates. The logos which relates to these images, to these iconic beings, must be of the same nature: merely probable." (op. cit at 112).

so: the chorae will dick up the teleological future anterior. and, yeah, it is pandekhes, "a whole gamut of senses and connotations: to receive or accept (a deposit, a salary, a present), to welcome, to gather, or even to expect, for example, the gift of hospitality, to be its addressee." (op. cit. at 111). this is the womb/receptacle stuff. the chorae are there to unravel tidy narratives and otherwise persuasive schematics. text tells us that they are inscribed with aporetics, which is a well known deconstruction term. thing is, in our world, these aporetics will apply generally; in RSBland, they are contained within the aporos, whereas proper sorcery can apparently articulate undeconstructible language. that be some real fantasy. not only is the RSB a fantasy of demographics, but is apparently a fantasy of linguistics too.

pretty sure that's all cleared up now!

[Gasp of Many Reeds]

When Bakker says that there is a right and wrong way to worship in Earwa, does that mean that people are damned by default? That even if someone like Achamian was not a sorcerer he would still be damned because he does not worship the correct way? If so, and Mimara sees herself as saved with TJE, does that mean that Mimara, who believes in Kellhus, worships the right way?

I think a good question would be if anything like free will exists in Earwa, and if the Dunyain are right about the Darkness that Comes Before, then it very likely does not. Which suggests that we essentially have predestination going on here, i.e. humans damned on the false pretence that they can choose the right way to worship.

Perhaps possessing the Judging Eye and thus being able to see damnation from the perspective of the God can allow Mimara to avoid this, which would imply that her particular practices are not a good indicator of their correctness as worship.

[Darzin]

When Bakker says that there is a right and wrong way to worship in Earwa, does that mean that people are damned by default? That even if someone like Achamian was not a sorcerer he would still be damned because he does not worship the correct way? If so, and Mimara sees herself as saved with TJE, does that mean that Mimara, who believes in Kellhus, worships the right way?

I think it's like the real world Abrahamic religions where yo need to be saved be believing the right way. You need to be saved from the demons of the outside. If i had a guess to who is right, the Fanim are saved by the grace of the Solitary God, the Zeumi fall to oblivion, and the Inrithi damn themselves by worshiping demons and even reach for them in the outside. You can be damned without the mark but the mark means your interesting enough to the hundred that the will catch you and nom on your soul.

[Callan S.]

When Bakker says that there is a right and wrong way to worship in Earwa,

When did he say that?

[Larry of the Lawn]

When did he say that?

I'm guessing it's a reference to the "entire nations will be damned" quote. Which if you think about it seems like it's an indictment of Intrithism, although really it could mean pretty much anything.

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

I'm guessing it's a reference to the "entire nations will be damned" quote. Which if you think about it seems like it's an indictment of Intrithism, although really it could mean pretty much anything.

I read a interview Baker did right after WLW came out, and they asked him if the whole 144,000 was just a "Easter egg". He said something along the lines of, "Well is a Easter egg a "Herring"? If so, the books are loaded with them." Got me thinking, a lot of the shit we try to figure out and discuss, probably don't mean shit in the grand scheme of things.

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

http://fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com/2011/06/new-r-scott-bakker-interview-part-1.html?m=1, there's the interview.......