Ch. 6 Introduction to the Ego Structure
-
Upload
michael-h-shenkman -
Category
Documents
-
view
217 -
download
0
Transcript of Ch. 6 Introduction to the Ego Structure
-
7/28/2019 Ch. 6 Introduction to the Ego Structure
1/25
Part Three: The Ego Structure
Chapter Six
Introduction to the Ego Structure
The question creates; the answer kills.1
in the same period in which the beginning of philosophy takes place,
the markeddomination of common sense (sophistry) also begins.2
all progress is made by and in striated space, but all becoming occurs in
smooth space.3
The psyche is the form of a peculiar dephasing, a loosening up or unclamping
of identity: the same prevented from coinciding with itself, at odds, torn up from
its rest, between sleep and insomnia, panting, shivering.4
Restoring the Primacy of AspirationTHEASPIRINGEGO. We are embarking into new territory. The workings of the
machinic assemblages we describe going forward, under the name The Ego Structure, bear
no resemblance to those of the Arteous System. In the course of our presentation each of the
assemblages of the Ego Structure we will be introducing will be immensely complex, each on
of them containing many working parts and multiple lines of engagement. That each of these
assemblages harbors multiple assemblages is a distinguishing feature of the Ego Structure.
Indeed, it is this complex multiplicity of machinics that sets the Ego Structure apart from the
Arteous System. Because of this complexity, the Ego Structure supports P/SS capabilities
that summon highly refined and articulated means of engagements with occurrences, which
1 Jabs, The Little Book of Unsuspected Subversion (Stanford, CA; 1996) p. 372 Heidegger, On the Essence of Truth, inPathmarks (New York; 1998); p. 152. Italics set by
Heidegger.3 Deleuze and Guattari,A Thousand Plateaus (op. cit.): p. 486.4 Levinas, Emmanuel, Otherwise Than Being (Pittsburgh, PA; 2009); p. 68.
-
7/28/2019 Ch. 6 Introduction to the Ego Structure
2/25
generates innumerably diverse, idiosyncratic and specially attuned engagements ever greater
proliferations of modes, styles, discourses and productions, and it does so relatively quickly
(some seemingly arise spontaneously). Each new invention that issues from the engagements
enacted by the Ego Structure provides new material for subsequent iteratively enacted
engagements. Many such inventions get lost in the hubbub, fall into the cracks; but enough of
them remain in play, picked up by one or more of the expanding population, so as to become
factors.
Some of the ways that the assemblages of the Ego Structure differ from those of the
Arteous System include these:
Historically Constructed. For one thing, these new operations arise not
spontaneously out of engaging with pure nature or even purely cosmic transversals, as
did the assemblages of the Arteous System. The assemblages into which we are voyaging
form in response to specific problems that arise as the Arteous workings are enacted in
daily living, by a P/SS that is generatively engaged with them. As such, they are P/SS
resources that enact existent solutions, modes of P/SS engagement that are saturated with
historicity, specificity and locality. These are solutions that arose in the Fertile Crescent
beginning some 4,000 years ago, and that were elaborated in Macedonia and Greece starting
around 3,000 years ago.
While these solutions were either ignored or were opposed vigorously by many
peoples (I think of Nargarjuna and other Buddhist and Hindus sects, for example), in the
European-Anglo-American theater, these solutions have established their hegemony over our
sense of what is real, has value and can be accomplished in the human endeavor. Great
institutions have valorized, glorified and enforced (and continue to do so, with great ferocity)
these ways such that they have since become the dominant culture that determines what of an
occurrence and its interpretations is right, good and true. Each such valorization has
contributed to the shaping of the assemblages and their engines as we have them in the Ego
Structure. In this way, they become machinics in a persons P/SS by virtue of that person
belonging to the people, speaking its language, and annealing to its laws. Aspiration, here
gains its shape, its limits and its margins of possibility.
Not Centered. For another thing, these assemblages are not geometrically or
functionally centered by a stationary, relatively (desiring to be) static attractor as is the SP
of the Arteous System. These assemblages can adopt idiosyncratic structures, and these
-
7/28/2019 Ch. 6 Introduction to the Ego Structure
3/25
strangely configured assemblages function quite competently as long as they are able to
iteratively engage the gathered forces that engender the assemblage. The shape of the
assemblage is only mandated by what is required in order to meet the demands of the manner
of individuation it has set out to enact. And, to meet these idiosyncratic standards, these
assemblages orient around attractors of a very different natures than those of the Arteous
System. These new assemblages are oriented around complex engines.
Engines. The assemblages of the Ego Structure are constructed in order to account for
the way individuation is to be conducted at the site of singularizing according to the demands
of a fully engaged P/SS. Whereas the Arteous System happened upon individuation and
generated P/SS systems that supported this factor, the Ego Structure elevates individuating to
a new and unprecedented primacy: making individuatingsingularizing the way occurrences
are engaged, interpreted and acted upon. And, no less important for us, the Ego Structure
enacts this primacy of the complex process of individuation within intensely dynamic milieus
that are driven by ever more diverse, rapid, encompassing and powerful human intentions.
Thus these assemblages are triply complex. As compared to the assemblages of the Arteous
System, these Ego Structure assemblages not only (1) sort out the ways that the engagements
are open to be affected by human, technical and pragmatic actions at the site, they not only (2)
take into account the desire, imagination and concepts that are being deployed in order to
guide those engagements and make sense of the dynamics in effect at the sites of P/SS
emergence, but they must also (3) construct viable means of consolidating those engagements
into IS configurations that are capable of take their places in continually more
encompassing and more expansive ways. Clearly, these assemblages cannot operate with
static memorializations or accomplished verities as their driving cores.
And so, instead of being oriented around a center that attracts to itself the most static
(near equilibrium) and repeatedly asserted energies, as does the Arteous Systems SP, the
assemblages of the Ego Structure are oriented around complex engines. These dynamic
attractors attract to themselves, instead of near equilibrium or quiescent factors, continually
driving energies that remain in motion (appearing and disappearing, moving from one place to
another), but have attributes that are (or are made to become) amenable to articulation and
interpretation (yes, in language). These engines, while being made of structured, organized
and stable materials (skills, talents, learning processes) these engines are constructed in
such as way that they can be relied upon as to enable passages, transformations and
-
7/28/2019 Ch. 6 Introduction to the Ego Structure
4/25
transportation of continually varied impressions into, through and out of their machinic
workings (and into aspiring actions, speech and decisions).
Divided Dominion. The dominion into which we embark is thus also a divided one:
divided between the need to come to solutions to the problems of existence that accord with
the ways of the people in its given status of competence versus taking up the potencies of
aspiring individuation. In its most compressed from we have the Ego Structure as a
battleground between Reason and aspiration. On the one hand there is the drive toward
solutions that accord with the given ways of the people, which precludes that opening and
dislocation, shuts it right down, in order to establish its objects, artifacts and laws. On the
other hand there is the instigating impetus, that of individuation (and aspiration), with all of its
power to open, dislocate our given P/SS accomplishments in order to anticipate
unprecedented ways to engage occurrences in a more expansive and more encompassing
manner.
PRIMACYOF ASPIRATION. It is my proposition that the aspiring mind is primary, or at
least co-primal, with any other P/SS development. In my view, in any logical, sequential or
sensible sequence of events, the aspirational mind the opening, dislocating, anticipating
impetus, the irrepressible urge to create, to individuate was the power, potency and drive
that exerted powers in such a way as to necessitate, impel and drive the formation of
something as complex as an Ego Structure. The primacy of aspiration, the irrepressible drive
to establish individuation as the human way, can no longer be relegated to the background, be
neutralized into mere whims or daydreams, or even be categorically and universally be placed
at the mercy of the regiments of Reason and its theological allies. These ferociously
consolidating (re-centering at the behest of the SPs memorializing sway) were mustered to
the front in order to forestall the affects of the powers being exerted by individuating
aspiration as it accommodates the open, the strange, the unsettling of laws, truths and
certainties.
The Ego Structures Engine Machinics
According to this schema, Ego Structure emerges as a latecomer to the bazaar of
experiments that are ventured in order to engage, accommodate and venture the forces of
individuation and, accordingly, we are neophytes in terms of developing and deploying its
resources, we are far from masters of this domain. The Ego Structure emerges at a relatively
-
7/28/2019 Ch. 6 Introduction to the Ego Structure
5/25
recent time when human engagements have already become massively complex and so the
P/SS already has to deal with fast moving socially engendered changes such as trade,
conquests, new gods and new technologies (metallurgy especially). The issues it contends
with surge to the surface of the milieu at the pace of human communication and
transportation, not natural rhythms; and the intensity of new artifacts, symbols and language
innovations it faces forbids any one-fits-all solution (unless that solution is a meditative
release from it all). The P/SS resource that has to be cultivated therefore has to be one that can
accommodate these dynamics in multiple directions: speed, intensity, variety, different logics
and means of expression, including advancing technologies.
The Ego Structure can operate in a complex manner because it is not the real time
in-gatherer of energies at the site of emergence that the Arteous System is. The Ego Structure
takes up what issues from, what is dispatched to it by the Arteous System. And what is
dispatched are all manner of variations on themes of relation, context, formation, soundings
and dissonances. What is dispatched is a welter of affecting energies, many of which are
stable enough to be named and placed into general circulation, but many of which remain so
complex that only images of the gods suffice to render them into a mode that is amenable to
be experienced and narrated. And still others are so aberrant, so excessively energized and
anonymous in their assaults on the system that they are cast out, banished as renegades, or
held apart in reverence as the sacred and holy of a different order. The job of the Ego
Structure is to make sense of these chaotic missives and thereby put them to work for the sake
of individuating singularization.
INDIVIDUATION ON ITS OWN. The rising of the Ego Structure marks a great and
momentous emergence in the course of the human endeavor. In this moment the more settled
factors that have been constellated are taken together with the less settled ones as moments of
thesame factors out of which sense has to be made.Individuation is thus elevated to the status
ofbeing what is the case, once and for all(for the Ego Structure, that is). The Ego Structure
turns the tables on the axis of singularization/individuation. In the case of the Arteous System,
whatever was generated there had no other drive than singularizing, and this drive was
continually interrupted by the dislocating and distancing affects that engendered the need for
the necessity for machinics that could individuate. On that occasion, when individuation was
added to the P/SS mix, it was secondary, it was an untoward disruption to the primary drive of
singularizing that was eventually (symbiotically) accommodated.
-
7/28/2019 Ch. 6 Introduction to the Ego Structure
6/25
Now, individuation is the only matter or condition that the Ego Structure
knows. Individuation is taken up as being the primary driver of the way of the people; the
state of ambiguity, dislocation, and dispersal and, to say the least, impermanence, is all that is
the case. The Ego Structure rises in orderto make sense, with a strong emphasis on make.
That is, the Ego Structure arises in order to establish engines that do nothing other than put
into play, into circulation and do so with nothing less than hegemonic power, the means,
methods, ways and modes (as in mode-rn) whereby nothing else but individuating
singularizing transpires.
That this mandate will necessitate generating complex machinics is putting it mildly.
And that such a project is still underway in establishing itself, is also not surprising. The
machinics that the Ego Structure develops must be able to continually (and differentially)
engage incessantly pressing states of formation, deformation and change, and then must
concentrate them (interpret them) into modes that can be singularized, or constructed into
unicities (complex subjects) of action, speech and decision. In this way, in this sense,
individuation andaspiration is now fully infused in each and every act, nuance, operation
and production of the Ego Structures machinics (which are machinics of action, operation
and production i.e. are engines). The question is, how to put this into effect in a way that
the human endeavor accepts individuation and aspiration, as much is it now depends on it.
Face it, generating these new machinics is a fools errand. The daunting immensity of
this task has yet to be appreciated. That we have really just begun, that there have been errors,
mistakes, wrong paths and dead ends along the way cannot be surprising either. As we
embark into this domain, which is nevertheless, against the odds, well underway, it might be
worthwhile to review what has to be accomplished, over and over again as aspirations take
shape. The tools that are available are only those provided by the basic dynamics of self-
organization; but even these have to be concentrated, specified and artfully deployed to
accomplish anything remotely effective as a way of individuating in evermore-complex
milieus.
To accomplish its vision of individuating then, the Ego Structures engine-machinic
capabilities have to be able to: (1) envelop energetic, hybrid and still ambiguous Arteous
formations and constellations even the ones that (as dispatches from the fourth orbit, for
instance) remain out of the general circulation of common sense and given reality; (2)
adjudicate these anomalies in terms made available by language so as understand, interpret
-
7/28/2019 Ch. 6 Introduction to the Ego Structure
7/25
and form modes of individuating engagement with blessed and certified facts and laws
and then reactivate their anomalous characteristics; (3)from moment to moment, read and
interpret transversals (thought an language) in ways that specifically, at the site of emergence,
on a case-by-case basis, relate to them to the highly articulated and dynamic states of affairs at
those sites, dynamics that continually develop and change; (4) construct coherent (if not
monolithically unified) ways, methods, interpretations, insights and interventions that produce
means of engagement that are effective at singularizing at the site of engagement, but that are
never finally defined by these interpretations; and then (5) continually develop new
(facultative) capabilities that can serially, iteratively (re)engage the site of occurrence in
manners befitting continually a diversely capable, productive, communicative and creative
individuated singularized being (a being that is capable of conducting itself in a manner that
continually, iteratively opens to the requirements posed by 1 4).
The Assemblages of the Ego Structure
No single operation can accommodate all of these demands. Over the eons since the
Prophetic Intercession and the Greek Pivot, the Ego Structure has so far come to comprise
three assemblages: (1) a Sense-Making Field (S-MF); (2) an Egoic Transducing Array (ETA);
and (3) a World. Each of these constitutes a complex machinic structure in its own right.
Each has its own materials, its own mode or form of organizing those materials, and its own
machinic engine that activates the individuating impetus.
To attune the reading that follows to this complexity, here is a summary, a brief fly-
over, of the machinics we will detail in the next chapters.
(1) THE SENSE-MAKING FIELD (S-MF). The S-MF takes up and embodies the
craving for producing greater specificity in engaging occurrences, so that the singularizing
that does eventually transpire will be competent and enduring (will incorporate the
individuating that is required of the P/SS at the site of its engaging the milieu). The S-MFs
operations specify how the SP-encoded dispatches and deliveries (energies marked, coded and
inscribed with their relation to the monument/memorialized core of the SP) from the Arteous
System are to be transmuted into entities that can be worked upon so as to accommodate
diverse, rapidly changing and complexly intense human engagements. The work here is to
interpretthrough large but homogenizing methods (concept, imagination, desire) the
loosely constellated impressions the Arteous has been able to configure.
-
7/28/2019 Ch. 6 Introduction to the Ego Structure
8/25
That is, the S-MF makes sense of these impressions, ormakes out of the material it
is given whatcan be accommodated as being sensical and therefore whatcan be deemed
as being amenable to engagement by the already existing, functioning and singularizing P/SS
resources -- but in a new way that activates aspiration, that is more expansive and more
encompassing modes of engaging than had previously been envisioned by the P/SS. The S-MF
concentrates on elaborating and strengthening the dispatches, in a sort of weaving operation
that gathers impressions into the dominant factors that determine a mode of engagement from
moment to moment.5 The S-MF only interprets, generates the idea of what is at stake in the
engagement at this moment of singularizing. The S-MF, in sum, as a shorthand for glimpsing
this assemblages working,specifies individuation as a techne, an ability to discern, analyze
and devise case by case engagements with aspects it can differentiate at the site of the IS
beings emergence.
It does this by delayingthe moments of singularizing action at the site, holding off the
rush to engage. In its machinics allows the dispatched impressions from the SP to course
through an expanse, traverse a distance, so that the individuating impetus has time to exert
its affects on these impressions, by swathing them in light, putting these brute impressions
under thegaze of what individuation has at stake, and what it insists that singularizing take
into account.6The S-MF turns the P/SS from being merely an adapting agent that preserves
5 I understand Derrida to be pointing to the deferring, spacing, opening characters of something likewhat I call selfstreams when he describes the processes that transpire under the heading of differance. This
is the weaving of more effervescent crucibles into new concepts. SeePositions (Chicago;1981); pp. 8 14
and 40 42. For a very elaborate and high level philosophical exposition of Derridas notion see Gasch, The
Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection (op. cit.); pp. 194 -205.6 I take the liberty of crafting the long note that follows because this moment marks such a seminal
occasion in the emergence of the Ego Structure and of Western metaphysics, religion and philosophy over all. It
is in this moment that the encoding and supplementing of energies that have been constellated by thesupplementing affects of soundings come under the aegis of visibility, light and the gaze. This is an even more
revolutionary usurpation than what Heidegger cites in Platos Doctrine of Truth (inPathmarks (op. cit.) as the
domination by the Idea over the notion of aletheia, or unhiddenness. This latter concept, after all, still
operates in the regime of sightedness.
What is accomplished by Platonism, instead, is that by virtue of the opening of a space that is swathed
in light, in the Good, (which, as Heidegger presciently notes makes that which is capable of something and[most importantly for this schema as generativity] enables another[my italics MHS] to be capable of
something (p. 174)),presence is able to be heldby the knowing mind (nous)in an engagement with all of its
affecting energies (supposedly, by means of other P/SS resources recollection and naming for instance --
remaining in play at the site). What able to be engaged thereby only requires can be spoken, described,expressed and written (rendered as a sign: signified signifier), as engendering its being. (And thus, Heidegger
is blind, or deaf, to this assignedand constellated state of soundings, which, to be sure are enroute to becoming
language. By the time being rises to attention, the soundings we refer to here have been into a voice,
which Heidegger takes up in his phonocentric schema this according to Derrida: see for example, Positions
(Chicago; 1981); pp.10ff ). Platonism, in establishing the dominance of the gaze and the visible, places occurring
dynamics (including its appearing/disappearing character) in subordination to the conceptual selfstream of sense
making.
-
7/28/2019 Ch. 6 Introduction to the Ego Structure
9/25
-
7/28/2019 Ch. 6 Introduction to the Ego Structure
10/25
imagination. That is, in the tradition we are considering, these dispatches are analyzed in
terms of three factors: (i) their attraction and significance for the singularizing of an
individuated and individuating Self their quotient ofDesire; (ii) their permeation and or
status in the flow of common language and institutional production theirConcept; (iii) and,
finally, in terms of their proximities, affinities and intensities as still forming processes
Imagination. We call these separated factors selfstreams, reflecting both their source, as be
in dispatches of self-encoded factors, and also the new form they are given as the unique
streams of energizing variable affects of the engaging person. These are commonly referred to
as a persons interests and or talents.
These selfstreams, as factors of individuation, engender feelings that mark the delay,
the interruption -- the inertia-braking that brings one up short, the hiatus in instinctual
reactions -- that is being imposed upon the surge into action. One hesitates to speak, one
draws back ones hand, and/or one catches ones breath, even as the occurrence speeds by.
The streams, as traversing an imposed distance, space, gap or aporia (unwanted, uninvited,
uncanny and uncomfortable questions) call into question any and every thing that might have
once been demarcates as a certainty (able to be acted upon immediately, instinctively). They
thereby impose a new factor into P/SS workings: the needfor engendering a lively, active and
competent circumspecting anticipation.8 We feel this as the need to know, or the lack of our
knowledge; we feel this as being thrown back onto our pure will to proceed, or onto our
values that impose an ineluctable demand for our decision.
In essence, this streaming field of forming senses of what the occurrence demands
exceeds what the former state of the IS being takes it to be, if its former state of being is not
sufficient to engage these new senses hoisted into view, what will be sufficient? And whence
and whereby doe such a sufficiency arise, since my former state has proven to be inadequate?
And how is any new state that is supposed as being sufficient to be certified and vouched safe
in fact being more sufficient than what the previous state had been capable of? Why change,
and if change is being proposed, change to what? These are the questions that stir mere
8 As we noted above, the ancient and classical notions of egoic action were bent on rendering avibrant milieu in some kind of static regime of sense, and, ultimately truth, the standard of the static. But, as
we are now beginning to see, the dynamics of the Ego Structure, in order to capture something and render it
static actually had to undertake a very fluid and active process of its own making. In order to render something
static, the egoic impetus had to undertake a most radical effort at anticipating: encompassing future and present
into what would become the past for things and minds alike. Thus we are beginning to glimpse how the notion
of anticipation will assume prominence in our subsequent discussion of the Ego Structure, and be translated
into a combined neologism of ante-cipation and ante-cedence.
-
7/28/2019 Ch. 6 Introduction to the Ego Structure
11/25
impressions into driving streams that are moving the P/SS to new configurations. The
composition of each of the selfstreams desire, concept, imagination -- determines what,
how, to what extent and in what relative quotients factors of occurrence need to be
emphasized, valued and ordered for them to be ventured as factors of the P/SSs viable
singularizing. In order to transpose the new and hypothetical or experimental senses into
singularizing action, these selfstreams have to be mapped onto configurations of intention,
will and values. This is the role performed by the engine of the S-MF, the iconic imago.
(1b)Iconic Imago. The machinic engine of the S-MF the attractor/driving
production what its very existenceproduces, takes the form on an iconic imago. This
consolidated formation provides an template and an architecture onto which all the
flowing and dynamic energies in play can take shape as highly individualized affinities,
associations and strengthened contiguities that are able to singularize as a univocal subject
or a unicity, at the site of emergence. 9
Thus the productive act of the S-MF does notconstruct knowledge, and its machinics
do notconstruct a cogito that is strictly devoted to such knowledge. The work of the iconic
imago combines the three selfstreams into an engine, into a concentrated force that will exert
its own singular way of engaging the site of this IS beings emergence, from moment to
moment, in all the splendor (and dignity) an IS being can muster. The S-MFs engine
therefore is not intellect or knowledge, but instead the iconic imago comprises a concentration
of the S-MFs selfstreams, produces and drives into existence a unique and singular
template, a schema of resources that acts to take its place. As an engine, it activates energies
by placing them into relative proximities that can be held together, ventured as a whole, and
9 This notion specifically intends to highlight a different logic of syntax and expression from that
offered by the logic of Reason. Rather than produce sense-elements that are composed of equivalent concepts
of delimited pairs of contradictions (that cancel each other out and are then born on by higher syntheses all the
way up to the Absolute or God), the S-MF in the aspiring mind produces a figuration in which aspects as
sorted out by the selfstreams are composed in asymmetrical, non-equal, non-sequential relations, proximities and
affiliations. This organization is hierarchical in that certain aspects of sense are deployed closer to the site ofemergence and are invested with greater force. But this arrangement is variable and situation dependent, and the
relations of affinity are based on sameness or the variety of means of engagement an arrangement makes
possible and these arrangements are themselves variable from situation to situation. This produces highly
idiosyncratic logics, or highly heterogeneous personae, personalities and role preferences, rather thanisomorphic and homogeneous logics that prescribe right and true ways of engaging. Thus, instead of a table
of categories or a system of logical arrangement of notions and ideas, the S-MF produces an imago of ones
own individuation; and it is iconic in that it is always constructed on the basis of predecessors that foster
comprehension, communication and intelligibility while never repressing the idiosyncratic dispositions of its
composing elements. While the conventional logic of Reason are in view as constituents of what, as constellated
elements of what is dispatched into the S-MF, these are continually displaced and idiosyncratically ordered by
the shape, contours and architecture of the iconic imago.
-
7/28/2019 Ch. 6 Introduction to the Ego Structure
12/25
can act as a touchstone for what occurs from moment to moment in this beings emergence at
the site. It is this engine that produces what we call an experience: literally the shaped
configuration of engagement that is gathered, creating, forming, giving structure to the
perimeters of our own being. And just as experiences are dynamic, are affecting and are
capable of generating affects, all the while being open to being affected and changing course
vis--vis what occurs, so too this iconic imago is complexly interactive and productively
dynamic. 10
The iconic imago projects its way of guiding the engagement at the point of the
persons contact with occurrence (by means of the ETA, which we will introduce presently) in
a unifying and cohering manner such that the way of engaging is spoken of as constituting a
persons role or figuration (including talents, personality, energy level, concentration on a
level of competence, etc.). As such, as this projection, the iconic imago illuminates some
facets and not others of the site. The projection filters what is allowed to be an affecting
aspect of the experience, what is taken to enhance the power of the imago, and what is fended
10 This notion distinguishes the aspirational account from the classical philosophical one that is focused
on knowledge and is dependent on a cogito. The issue for the Ego Structure as a macro-individuating
assemblage is to concentrate the diversity of energetic dispatches from the Arteous into asingle and directed
engagement that is both expansive and encompassing in the face of changing states of affairs from moment to
moment. The Ego Structure in its individuating singularizing aspect has regard neither for knowledge per se nor
an ethical stricture, nor a justification of its way. The Ego Structure puts its P/SS resources out there as the
being that it is, as the IS gathering of forces that it has composed, as the Self that has been assembled as being
at stake.
The classical cogito remains within the workings of language by channeling each and every notion of
sense that is constructed in the S-MF into the concept self-stream. In this account, all of the streams remain in
play, and are organized into the over-arching sense of a personhood or a figuration of ones aspirations
(driving singularizing in the forms of intention, will and values). Each persons imago is unique to a large
measure. That said, the less the S-MF insists on asserting its own constructions, the more likely that imago will
carry out a construction in line with the most available parameters of the good sense, and the common sense
derivatives from the prevailing socioeconomic scene. These become so entrenched and inscrutable to further
egoic interpretation as to act as organs or settled and unwavering faculties. Deleuze deals with thisphenomenon forcefully in The Logic of Sense (New York; 1990); pp. 75ff.
In the Breakout Creatives schema, there is an in between state, between stratification in the commons
and utter chaos of egoic disaster (to use Caputos term). That is there are gravitational tendencies, so to speak, in
which certain concentrations of selfstreams produce (in response to Thought see below) traditions of protestto the prevailing norms of engaging occurrences, and thus result in constructions of imagos that bear certain
traits that form according to a blueprint family, that produces a recognizable pattern of engagement,
nevertheless, and not a chaotic or completely destructive one (as in socio- or psycho-pathologies). The iconic
forms are: Leader/Arch; Artist/Amphitheater; Prophet/Bazaar; and Mystic/Open. It is in the context of these
figural iconic imagoes that we also take up what the world looks like and demands of the IS being at the point
of engagement.
These iconic imagoes are not prescribed, static or domineering P/SS formations. They have the shapes
they do by virtue of what information from the world they are given to organize and figure in the processes of
transduction carried out by the ETA. They are also more or less robust and able to drive impressions at the site of
the occurrence by virtue of the amplitudes and intensities of energies that the P/SS is able to accommodate by
virtue of its biological, neuroanatomical systems (as driven by mitochondrial productions).
-
7/28/2019 Ch. 6 Introduction to the Ego Structure
13/25
off as an assault against it. The iconic imago thus guides what is (able to be) perceived, from
moment to moment, by that being, at that time, and according to the individuated figuration of
all the selfstreams affects, at that site of emergence.
As we will see momentarily, this imago projects its iconic figuration, ventures and
radiates it right into the engagement. It does this by means of the next assemblages actions,
that of the Egoic Transducing Array. In that assemblage, the iconic imago has the form of a
hologram that has been rendered onto a membrane of this assemblages enacting
vocation. And thereby, in this projected exposure to the site of emergence, the imago itself is
placed at risk, as it is exposed to its own limits in enacting its engagement; and, by virtue of
its failures, its errancy, its states of inadequacy and uncomprehending navet, the imago is
thereby pressed to individuate to engage the occurrence in a manner that is more expansive
and more encompassing than the current state of its iconic form permits.
(2) THE EGOIC TRANSDUCING ARRAY (ETA). The S-MF is all preparation, is all
deep construction that goes on out of sight, but not out of mind (it is thus not what I would
consider activity that is of an unconscious nature). The Ego Structure, of which the S-MF
is a part, emerges out of the Arteous System so as to provide distance, delay and deferment,
so as to allow individuation the time/space to specify individuating amid highly volatile
circumstances. Clearly, to only to endow occurrences with sense does not fulfill this mandate.
To act therefore then requires another assemblage.
And since we are considering the aspiring mind here, the notion of action requires
some qualification on our part. The aspiring mind undertakes ventures, risks and
experiments. These are not the actions of the certain cogito that goes about its actions with the
fully authorized intention of exerting its singularizing potency to the hilt, even to the point of
destruction of all else at the site. The actions of the aspiring mind are always ventured,
meaning that they are imbued with all the ways that doubts and demands for greater
encompassments have their affects. That is why in our schema notions such as meaning or
action or world require our attention: in this context these familiar notions are most certainly
in play, but they just do not quite work in the same way, or have the same status, or value as
they do in those more conventional contexts.
And so, here, instead of a sense providing sufficient grounds or justification for a
particular action (an autonomic neuromuscular response, for instance), we have to describe a
more complex process: on in which even as an action flourishes in its expression, it is
-
7/28/2019 Ch. 6 Introduction to the Ego Structure
14/25
permeated with factors that diffuse any solidity, and that also include moments, fully
anticipated, in which these actions will be thrown back into the sense-making machinics, will
directly displace some elements of the iconic imago, and will then repeat this process of
venture, transmission and displacing. In its most important sense then, the incitement to action
in the context of aspiration, as venture and risk, is one of incessant learning, and reshaping
of the IS being that is in play.
(2a) Transduction. When we think of this inciting into action, we all can appreciate
that at a minimum, a change in the quality of the energies is engendered as they are driven to
move from being formative (making sense) to being expressive (acting), as the P/SS drives its
energies from being matters of internal construction to being factors that determine motor
enactments. We sometimes feel this change taking place, as when we feel the need to take a
deep breath, or the need to visualize the situation (which we will discuss below as world),
to get a handle on it before we plunge into series of attentive concentrations, motor motions
and exertions that the action requires. In this moment of gathering of resources, as the P/SS
presses the action onward, a transduction takes place: there is a bearing onward of
something that already has aformed quality into something else, something that has
engagement with another state of affairs (other than its own processing) as its priority. We
can rightly imagine that there needs to be a space in which energies can undergo a
switching of direction, amplitude and force can be affected; metaphorically we can liken sucha space to a sensate skin or membrane, or touch-sensing tissue that enacts this transduction
from one state to another.
Operationally, as a transducing agent of the Ego Structure, as an assemblage of the
aspiring mind, its mode of action is akin to firmware, not hardware. It provides for
machinic transformation, but not for definitive sculpting or determination. Its primary
sensitivity is to changing, not to consolidating. Thus, while maintains a coherent integrity
as an integument, it also morphs or reshapes from moment to moment, within a certain
range of action, according to the iconically shaped imago delivered up to it (to its surface) by
the S-MF.
(2b)Holographic, fractal dissemination. Furthermore this membrane is not
physically situated; it is not of the nature of an organ that is situated in only one physical
locale on or in ones body, as is skin, or a nose, an ear or a brain (or even the distributed
system of neurons). Instead, we have to imagine this acting and probing operation to be taking
-
7/28/2019 Ch. 6 Introduction to the Ego Structure
15/25
place and being operative all over and throughout the organism by means of a virtual cellular
distribution (or dissemination, in Derridas terminology). One can think of its dissemination
throughout the P/SS organism as taking place fractally. On the one hand it does its
venture/sensing as one operation, as the operation of one being; and also it does so in a
completely innumerably multiple, in a differentially and minutely distinctively separated way
at every single molecular or fractal locality at which our P/SS is making sense of
occurrence. Both of these moments are transpiring, from moment to moment, in every morsel
of the body, in every cell of the skin or constellation of neuronal synapses in the nervous
system, in every word, phrase, concept and question that is evoked in the Ego Structures
sense-making effort. At each and every one of these fractal locales, we might say, the ETA
concentrates into a projecting agent, one that carries forth the structured sense that now has
the shape of the iconic imago, the persona that is reaching into the occurrence with the senses
of what is at stake for it assembled, coherent and competent.
We are aware of this aspect of the ETAs operations when we sense something in
the air, even though our sensate organs are not in play. We cant say where this feeling is
getting its impetus, and we cant locate where or on what organ this feeling is having its
way. There is just this indefinite tingling that comes and goes, affecting ones heart beat, or
giving one goose bumps, or just loosening ones grip on the situation in general. This sixth
sense or intuition always heightens our anticipations at the scene, and as often as not
renders our sensate, conscious motor system inoperable as it overwhelms or enigmatically
freezes these organs in wonderment or fear. From experiences such as these we get the feeling
that something besides our sensate organs are engaged at the site. We get the feeling that
something else of our being is projecting into the scene and is picking up on affecting factors
there, of another quality than noise or odor or flash of light.
In terms of our schema we translate these feelings into the image of the ETA
comprising holographic fractals of enacting P/SS energies that have the shape of the iconic
imago, the senses it bears, at each fractal locale. This holographic projection splays out into
an array all manner of scaled, combined, iterated, superimposed and one-off surges of
holographic energies that are iconically arranged into an imago of a persons way. This
fractally composed array has a quality of integument, of binding its senses of engagement, in
all their pluralistic, multiple and varied modes, into a unicity, into a single, configured drive
(one with my name on it) tosingularize its intentions, will and values at the site. It composes
-
7/28/2019 Ch. 6 Introduction to the Ego Structure
16/25
an array, or a tapestry weaving, of different modes, qualities, codings, amplitudes and
intensities of engaging into a texture or a context that operates as a singular composing
agent, as an individuated covering over an expanse of occurrence, and illuminates what it is
competent and capable of discerning in and of that occurrence (and thereby also affecting the
nature and transpiring of that occurrence in the process thereof).
This holographic projection always and everywhere -- in each fractal and cumulatively
as the fractals compose larger arrays -- has the shape of the iconic imago. We could say, in a
more analytical frame, that each fractal projects onto the scene exactly and only the senses
that have been made of the occurrence (in a previous iteration) by the S-MF. Thus what a
person knows of the occurrence into which it is risking its being, is what has always already
been constructed as veritable and worthy of engagement. The holographic icon sorts and
filters what is discernable at the scene to begin with, and acts on those aspects of the (projects
its energies to those sense-constructed locales) scene it can already encompass. And, in its
anticipatory character (as a component of the Ego Structure), the sense of this constructs
passing and being made ready for the next learning or the next iteration of sense making is
also implicit in these operations.
(2c)Mobius Form. And so, this array is not thrown over the occurrence like a wet and
laden blanket that covers over the occurrence, weighing it down and so tamping down or
repressing the lively character of the occurrence. The array that touches the occurrence is
itself in motion. It does not linger there, hovering and blanketing the occasion, covering it
over with ossified meanings and significations. It is a transducing energy that allows itself to
be affected, moved, emotionally charged by the scene. Thus the transduction, lightly glancing
its caress on the scene transmits its energies in two directions: (1) toward the occurrence
and (2) back toward the S-MF as information that must be accommodated by the iconic imago
in its individuation.
The surface of the ETAs array of holographic fractals thus forms into a helical
membrane that rotates in the midst of the Ego Structures engagement with occurrences . It
takes the form of a turning mobius strip that continually has some aspects of its surface in
contact with the site, and others in contact with the S-MF, and still others in between, in the
process of enacting the turning itself. To enact the affective aspect of the Ego Structures
work the array thus continually exposes its surfaces to both the site of occurrence and the S-
MF in a continually changing, multi-faceted manner that transpires by ever-varying degrees of
-
7/28/2019 Ch. 6 Introduction to the Ego Structure
17/25
face-turning motions. It is engine that permits continual, varying and yet contiguous flow
between the S-MF and ETA. The result is the sense of experience, of an occurrence that is
not-me that is nothing other than me, but is never what I, myself, am, from moment to
moment.
The engine drives a constant generation and regeneration of communicative
engagements between the occurrences active elements (its own individuating forces) and
those of the IS being. Every act of this being, therefore, incorporates well and deeply
adjudicated senses (meanings) into highly individuated expressions (behaviors: acts, speech
and decisions) such that each taking of place generates a unique and primally original
(originating) locale. We are now beings who are free in the most profound sense, to actualize
occurrences in ways that generate open fields of endeavor if we so choose, that is.11
(3) WORLD. The final assemblage in the Ego Structure is more of a generated
meaning and interpretation than it is a thing or a set of objective forces that impress on the
sensate organs. (In contrast to the DC of the Arteous System, which more directly engages,
encompasses raw energies of occurrences.) The periphery of the Ego Structure, therefore is
not raw occurrence, but a fully endowed and affecting complex of energies that are taken up
into its drive to individuate and aspire to a more expansive and more encompassing manner of
engaging the occurrence that at stake in this moment, as it is touched upon by and touches the
ETAs iconically figured sense.For that reason, when speaking of the third assemblage of the Ego Structure, in its
individuating, aspiring impetus, I place the term, worldin quotation marks, rendering it
world. With this notation I want to keep in view that individuation and aspiration do not
have as their counterpoised state of affairs any composed or posited verity that is deemed
worthy of standing over againstthe IS being as a fact, certainty or set and finished nature.
To be sure, and to separate this notion from any nihilist insinuation, this world is utterly,
completely, without qualification in affect. Everything that individuating singularizing has to
take up and is placed at risk, does so because of the affects that constitute the conditions at the
site of emergence of the IS being is in play in this world.
World however, is not a fixed and objective fact. It is what that site of occurrence
11 A picture of schizoid, free-forming engagement such as this is offered by Guattari, The Machinic
Unconsciousness (Los Angeles; 2011); pp. 170ff. Also, Lyotard refers to such a configuration, in ways that
accord with our intent here, in The Libidinal Economy (Bloomington, IN; 1993); pp. 2ff.
-
7/28/2019 Ch. 6 Introduction to the Ego Structure
18/25
and P/SS emergence becomes for the IS beings Ego Structure, as a matter of the
engagement it anticipates and is organizing toward, so that its singularized enacting can
emerge competently and remain there for a duration as an affecting agent in its own right
(such that the milieu will take account of it, will recognize and respond to it).
Taken in that light, is nothing in the machinics of the Ego Structure that peremptorily,
presumptively or a priori establishes in advance that there is a necessary construction of a
world, as a picture, as an entity or force. Correlatively, there is no aspect of what occurs at the
site that necessarily generates affects in a prescribed manner such that one world is in play
for all time (for the life of the IS being) or for all people. World is thus neither given nor
is it assured that one will appear. The Ego Structure may as likely produce a blank, an
agglomeration of energies that the neither the SP nor the S-MF can encompass, as it is likely
to produce a coherent locus for engagement. And, given the groundless, liquefied,
phantasmagorical states of its machinic self-organizing engenderment, there is no guarantee
that what the Ego Structure renders (by means of the imagos cores on the surface of the
ETA) is actually there, for all and everyone. Indeed, let us keep in mind, that as an organ
of aspiration, the Ego Structure is most robust, is performing at its most energized peak of
generative production, when what appears to it is, in fact, relative to the standard renditions of
the world (with no quotation marks, and so, paradoxically, what is recited by the denizens of
knowledge and common sense), not apparent at all.12
The engine of the world thus drives these continually affecting dynamics into such
vividness and specificity that they resonate back and through all of the Ego Structures
aspiring assemblages. This engine comprises saturating phenomena.13 Such phenomenal
12 To the extent that knowledge of the site is at issue, this world takes up those aspects of thesynthetic unity of apperception of the transcendental imagination that Kant describes, and also the factors of
recognition that are in play in Hegels formation of self-consciousness (as the determinations of the Masters
intended usage of the factors of the occurrence). But to the extent that these anticipations take up individuating,
and therefore allow affects that exceed what knowledge requires for pragmatic and technical engagement, this
world also conveys aspects as ghosts, specters, and saturating phenomena that are not at issue in Reasons
adjudications. No thing in itself is at stake at all here; only the differentiata and traces of energies that openonto prospects for new horizons, that promise a coming, and not just a perception.
What we are speaking of is rather the corollary to what Derrida suggests as a text of modes of
engagement with occurrence (remember, the Ego Structure arises with the realization of the efficacy of the
word, narrative and thus textuality). This is the realm of engagement that is engaged by the project, as hecalls it, of deconstruction. Once again, Gaschs account of deconstruction is the most thorough and complete
rendering I know of; and it is appropriately difficult for that reason. See, Tain of the Mirror(op. cit.); pp.109ff.13 This term is taken directly from the ideas formulated by Jean-Luc Marion. See, for example,Being
Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness (Stanford, CA; 2002). In his onto-theological formulation
(which we appreciate but do not subscribe to), saturatedphenomena are notions of existents that the
cogito does not perceive, but a larger, more encompassing soul-like intelligence does. It is these existent
phenomena, richer and more vibrantly pressing than the Husserlian phenomena that are pressed into scientific
-
7/28/2019 Ch. 6 Introduction to the Ego Structure
19/25
are aspects of the Ego Structures machinics precisely because they ensue from the
individuating impetus that the Ego Structure establishes. No moment, complex, nuance or
iota of the Ego Structures productions will evade this mandate. Saturating Phenomena
therefore, drive individuation and the space freedom and temporal extension (duration) into
every construction it ventures. In this way then, aspiration knows nothing else but a
world that is amenable to individuation and to the impetus for this IS being to engage
occurrences as occasions for more expansive and more encompassing engagements.
The world ofaspiration, one has to conclude, therefore is vastly different from the
world given in knowledge.
Transversals Disturbing the Ego Structure
For all this complexity, we are still not quite done with our overview of the Ego
Structure; for once again, transversals muddy and roil the waters. However, the transversals
that are affective in the Ego structures, particularly in the S-MF, are of a different status and
composition they are, you guessed it, more complex than they were in the context of the
Arteous System. By this time in the process, the effects of transversals as forces that exceed
the instigating moment of singularization are largely quieted. The constellating forces exerted
by the SP are sufficient to engender a context of composed and viable entities (if not quite yet
objects) can be taken as vouched safe, at least as spirits, gods or natural regularities that canbe named. The transversals of stance, gender and onwarding that bedeviled the initial
singularization are now encompassed in relations that the people can appeal to, idolize and
worship that is ritualistically enact and evoke. As a result, notions of stance and gender and
even onwarding are translated into being spiritual projections from out of the ways of the
people, and are productively symbolized in its practices, artifacts and hierarchies.
New Transversals of Ego Structure. There are two exceptions to this peaceful
cohabitation with those DC-based transversals: they are, Language and Thought. These are
transversals that are generated by, or in excess of, the very workings of the Ego Structure
knowledge, that bespeak of God. I regard Marions account as being a particularly retrograde retreat into Arteous
formulations. I discuss this difference at greater length in later chapters.Briefly, I distance my appreciation for Marions ideas in this schema by naming saturating
phenomena. These factors are direct affects of the individuating impetus of the Ego Structures machinics of
world, and so are at once given, generated and pressed into active service at the site of occurrence by these
P/SS machinics as they engage the dynamic and complexly assertive powers at the site of emergence.
While the expansive and opening impetus of Marions depiction is appreciated and acknowledge by our
intentional and purposeful adoption of his terminology, our adoption implicitly imparts a bright line of difference
with his notions.
-
7/28/2019 Ch. 6 Introduction to the Ego Structure
20/25
itself. Well introduce each of these presently. (and, if the reader is interested, he or she can
refer to the appendices for considerations of each of these transversals as they make their way,
undergoing their transformations, as they course through the P/SS assemblages we have
diagrammed.)
Language as we know it takes shape only in this moment of our schema.
The complexity of this transversal derives from its status as being quasi-primal as
originating in the soundings from the redimensioning affects that impel the divergence of
individuating from singularizing (in the Arteous System). By the time these soundings are
taken up by the Ego Structure, many of them have already become factors in the human
milieu as language: first as artifact and repository of human-engendered names, and then as a
means to characterize discernments of the non-material factors that generate the Ego Structure
per se (as instigated by the Prophetic Intercession and the Greek Pivot). Language as such is
nevercompletely accounted for, subsumed or encompassed (or finalized) by whatever
formations the P/SS is able to enact.14
Of special consequence for us are those innumerably multiple ways soundings
supplement the anomalous surges of imagations and unincorporated energies in the fourth
orbit of the SP. These murmurs are hardly intelligible factors of everyday speech, but they do
provide some heft to the anomalies that roil established certainties and P/SS
accomplishments. Some of these combine with the language transversal sufficiently to
register an affect on the SP, even if the affecting is slight. In certain cases, however, for
certain people, that is, these constellations have a greater effect. They create larger
disturbances in workings, machinics and engines of the Ego Structure, not allowing them to
form robust constructions. Some of these anomalies actually firm up, form embolisms,
bubbles of grit (to use an impossible figuration) so to speak, that begin to roam freely
throughout the P/SS, causing havoc wherever they roam. These, as we will first note below
are what we call naked conceptualities, which constitute surging centers of what I call
thought.
Thought and the Naked Conceptuality. These anomalies, now robust enough to exert
their own affects, disturb the operations of sense making in the S-MF. They call into question
whatever is constructed there by subjecting them to strong, internally generated disruptions
every kind of disruption to linguistic/conceptual contradiction, to existential doubt, to
14 I offer a more complete account of this stream of development in Appendix One.
-
7/28/2019 Ch. 6 Introduction to the Ego Structure
21/25
psychological crises of anxiety, despair and psychic paralysis. They roil and disturb any and
all structuring of each and every line of continuity that the S-MF can assemble. I call these
missives from the beyond, so to speak, Naked Conceptualities. (NC)
The name indicates that they make no claim to having a definitive content or an
essence of their own, and so are bearers of immanent openings onto whatever structures are
ventured as elements of an iconic imago, its projections and worlds.15 But that is only one
side of their character. Because they also bear the marks of imagations that are supplemented
by soundings, that only emerge from the workings of the already affecting Arteous System,
they alsobear the markings of the IS beings P/SS engagement as being (ultimately) at stake.
NCs thus also bear the sense of anticipation, potential, indeed the aspiration for performing
the gathering/saying/inscribing functions that the S-MF transforms into new concepts.
However as confluences of very active, assertive and intense differentials (as
imagations and fourth orbit anomalies), as free radicals and unaffiliated affinities, no such
stabilities are allowed by them to be constructed with any firmness or conviction. In the
context of the S-MF, however, they can find aspects of formulated occurrences, fragments
and shards, so to speak, that have been hardened by the iterative transductions between the S-
MF and the world, as driven to some level of firmness by the ETAs singularizing impetus.
Forced into confrontations with these firm constructions, the NCs also congeal into firmer
factors. In their own way, then, as intruders, interlopers, nomadic insurgents, the NCs in theirown idiosyncratic manners, can construct their own alternative sense-making assemblages
(abstract machines). These can then be ventured into the world, by the transducing process
we outlined above, as twists in the iconic imago, as strange utterances and envisionings that
shows itself in ones behavior as either craziness, or what may even become new ideas.
This is the province of prophetic activity.16
15 I cannot resist quoting Derridas self-citation on the term thought: In a certain way, thought
means nothing.Thought (quotation marks: the words thought and what is called thought) means nothing:
it is the substantified void of a highly derivative ideality, the effect of a differance of forces, the illusoryautonomy of a discourse or a consciousness whose hypostasis is to be deconstructed, whose causality is to be
analyzedSecondly, the sentence can be read thus: if there is thought and there is, and it is just as suspect, for
analogous critical reasons, to contest the authority of all thought then whatever will continue to be called
thought, and which, for example, will designate the deconstruction of logocentrism, means nothing, for in thelast analysis, it no longer derives from meaning. Wherever it operates, thought means nothing. [Italics by
JD]. Positions, (op. cit.); p. 49.16 There are important precedents for this description. This description is intended to be in accord with
Derridas notion of differance, as a generator of pure difference out of which binary notions such as truth and
falsity, existence and nonexistence, being and non-being are generated in philosophy. It also accords with his
account of Platos Khora. Derrida deploys the notion of differance throughout his texts. One could do worse
for an introduction to this notion than refer to the essay Difference inMargins of Philosophy. ___, or for an
-
7/28/2019 Ch. 6 Introduction to the Ego Structure
22/25
The Topography of the Aspiring Mind
SURFACES, INSIDEAND OUTSIDE, IN FLUX. Concluding this introduction to the
Ego Structure, there is one more task to complete: we need to construct a picture of how these
two great macro systems (the Ego Structure and the Arteous System) interact vis--vis oneanother. This is not going to be a straightforward image, of one system being enclosed in the
other, or of one system operating first and then passing on its products to another system
that trails behind it as in a train. They relate to each other in the form of a figure wherein the
constant exchange with one another as to what is inside, what is outside, what is first in touch
with the milieu and what is second; And then what constitutes the interior of the
singularized engagement versus what is its outside or contacting surface. This
inside/outside depiction is in continual flux between Arteous System and the Ego Structure,
as one assemblage or another acts as the salient force at the site as to touching and/or being
touched. integrity, is nevertheless permeated at each and every fractal of its emergence with
the other.
Both the Arteous System and the Ego Structure are concerned with singularizing, and
each is capable of establishing itself as either an inside of the singularization that is in
contact with an external site in the milieu in which it is emerging (as a distinct site as well)
or as the outside of the contacting surface. The processes we describe are most certainly
temporal and sequential in that the Arteous enacts an instigating encompassing, whereas the
Ego Structure enacts the machinics of localized individuation (a singularizing efficacy,
already in effect, that is situated in a context). That said, the machinations of the Ego
Structure comprise that assemblage of world. The Ego Structure thus has as a moment,
and engages as an engine of its emergent formation, the saturating phenomena that drive all
its formations with that sense of the milieus otherness. The point is that what is thus sensed
as other, or as milieu has an immediately ambiguous character as being utterly external
and yet as also being or as having been encompassed by the I
S potency already. To someextent, that is, whatever the DC encompasses in an instigating moment has nuances that bear
markings, traces of the workings of Ego Structure, as it already being its world that is in
play and is therefore already at stake.
exposition that places this notion in larger contexts of Derridean intentions the essays in Positions (Chicago;
1981) are helpful For his exposition of Platos notion of Khora, see the essay by that name, in On the Name
(Stanford, CA;__). for example Then, for a detailed elaboration of the factors that are in play in terms of
emergent linguistic and conceptual structure, see Gasch, The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy
of Refection (op. cit.); pp. 142ff. Guattari, TheMachinic Unconscious (op. cit.); p. 182
-
7/28/2019 Ch. 6 Introduction to the Ego Structure
23/25
Figure __. Inside Out. From this simple figure we can see how a surface can fold such that
its inside can also be its outside in another space, by means of a fold.
------- = Arteous System;_____= Ego Structure.
STATESOF PRIMACYAND DERIVATION So, structurally, as to their juxtaposed
relation to each other, the Arteous and the Ego Structure are in constant states of exchanging
what is touching and is touched by the external milieu. We can create an image of this as
one of a rotating, tumbling, involuting and folding, multi-dimensional surface. Think of a
folded sheaf that unfolds and refolds, turning, twisting and tumbling through a vast space,
driven and being opened by the forces of that space. We can also think of that surface as
comprising a mosaic of differentially arrayed combinations of the Arteous and the Ego
Structure as to what is inside or outside of one another, but that at each and every site, or
fractal of emergence of this combine, one system permeates the other, while remaining
integrally and machinically differentiated.17
And then, just to keep our picture adequately complex, the various states of the
transversals we have cited are in play at each fractal tile of the combined systems as well.
There is never any necessity, at any one site, or at any single surge of experiencing
the occurrence in play, as to what mode or proportion of combine will be dominant from
moment to moment; and in fact, in ever intensifying or compressed instances, one combined
agency will be in dominant effect and then, another will be. Depending on the scale at which
the P/SS is engaging the site (what its Ego Structure adumbrated intentions, will and values
17 Lest the reader think this is a notion of completely unhinged fantasy, consider the lowly Volvox. This
multicellular organism forms by collecting into a colony of single cells. According to an article my Douglas G
Cole and Mark V. Reedy in Current Biology (13:19 September 2003), During its development, the multicellular
green alga undergoes inversion, in which spherical embryos turn their multicellular sheet completely inside out.
-
7/28/2019 Ch. 6 Introduction to the Ego Structure
24/25
are set out to engage the site), one, the other or some combination of all can be summoned
into play.
Now, it is also true, in terms of the schema as we are presenting it, the Arteous
System is older and is more developed, or at least is better practiced, rehearsed and
iterated than is the Ego Structure. This latter system, in fact is very much still in its
developing stages. That said, however, some people have such highly affecting egoic
energies in play (especially as roiled by NCs), that no matter how unformed one or more of
their assemblages might be, these relatively chaotic (Ego Structure) energies impart to the
engagement a primacy of affect at the sites of the ISs emergence that may not be either
warranted, healthy or viable. And so, even the more highly developed and practiced
Arteous may not be able to wield its rightful hegemony in terms of shaping the actual
engagement at the site of the experienced emergence.
ASPIRATIONAND MENTORING. When we combine that notion of
underdevelopment with the role that the Ego Structure plays in our schema, as the enacting
assemblages of individuation and aspiration per se, we see that what presents itself as a
persons aspirations, will most likely reflect the undeveloped, underdeveloped or merely
nascent state of development of one aspect of the Ego Structure or another. Mentoring the
aspiring mind thus usually entails envisioning what kind of iconic imago is at work (how it
organizes what is occurring at the site for this person), nurturing the ability of that person towithstand the fluctuations that ensure from the shifting perspectives that the ETA engenders,
and then enduring the ineluctable, irrepressible sense of strangeness and otherness that
permeates the individuating/ aspiring minds world. That persons DC will only have these
ambiguities available to it as what characterizes the milieu to begin with.18
The mentoring engagement then does not cure, fix or nail down what is true for the
aspiring person. Instead, it aims at using language and thought as means toward constructing
robust Ego Structure assemblages, ones that are capable of engendering individuated
singularizations at the site of developing the unique facultative resources that the
construction requires at that moment, given the resources that can be mustered at that
moment, and then let go of that construct when more complex engagements, ones that are
18 This state of ambiguity of P/SS resources that are essential for the full realization, expression and
activation (in the mode of a creative figuration of role) also requires a specialized conversation between an
aspiring mentee and the mentor. This is the reason I am personally a strong advocate of specialized mentor
training that is attuned to the structures of aspiration and is able to sort out their affects from the leveling powers
of conventional language.
-
7/28/2019 Ch. 6 Introduction to the Ego Structure
25/25