Ostensive-Imperative Generativity and Scenic Design Practices

I’m continuing to work on my technics hypothesis that the construction of a technological world constitutively complementary to the human one is a product of the perfection of the imperative. The dedication to perfecting the imperative—that is, to ensuring that the imperatives you issue are fulfilled in a way that is completely contained within and predictable by the imperator—has the following consequence: it spreads the initial imperative by generating subsidiary imperatives that prove necessary to ensure the repeatability and controllability of that initial imperative; it generates new pedagogical relations by requiring human supervision over relations between primary and subsidiary imperatives; it spreads the imperative order into nature, which must be made to work as part of the human-machinery network. It should be added—it is imperative to add—that any analysis of these consequences can only be conducted within the perfecting imperative order itself. Any attempt to imagine a “human” space unimplicated in the technological would lead to an incoherent ranting against all the implications in the technological the “humanist” denies. But this also means that in developing an analysis, like this one, for example, one must design ways of indicating the spread of the words one is using across the various technological media. This implies a way of writing, and a way of thinking, that is not logocentric, i.e., that depends neither upon the presumed scenic transparency of classical prose nor the Big Scene imaginary.

I’ve already constructed, in Anthropomorphics, a theoretical frame for addressing this set of problems: “imperative exchange.” Gilbert Simondon sees technics as emerging from a breakdown in the world of “magic,” and the concept of imperative exchange enables us to hypothesize this process. Imperative exchange with the center results from ostensive failure, and aims at restoring an ostensive relation to the center. The people consume together the meal they have been granted by the center in accord with the rituals derived, which is to say, commanded by, the center, and in return request from the center that the next meal be made available. If the next meal is not made available, either the ritual was not performed as prescribed and needs to be “tightened” up, or a new command needs to be heard that would apply to this unprecedented situation. We can be economical here and say that every new command would take the form of obeying a command to tighten up of the existing ritual tradition, however significant the change might appear to an outsider. Something more, and with greater certainty, needs to be given to the center. This also means the center needs to be reconfigured in such a way as to match this enhanced demand. The central figure becomes more like us and we become more like the central figure: we dress and orchestrate movements so as to approximate the central figure. At the same time, the central figure become more distant and powerful precisely insofar as the possibility of new commands is assimilated by the community as part of their relation to the center. The center becomes populated, and everything of interest in the human world becomes projected in a far more interesting way in the world of the center.

All this involves design: costume design, stage design, choreography. The people turn themselves and each other into implements. Even as pre- or proto-humans there was most likely some kind of tool and weapon use, as we see among advanced hominids like chimpanzees. In fact, while there’s no need to assume our hypothetical participants on the originary scene were equipped with anything more than hands, nails and teeth as implements of violence, it does not violate the minimality of the scene to assume that whatever implements they did have for use on other occasions (sticks, stones, etc.) would be part of the offering on the evolving ritual scene. Hunting implements, for example, would need to be blessed by the central figure. The relation to the center becomes a totalizing one, as every design both enhances the group’s mimetic relation to the center and further distances the center from the group. The design of the scene coincides with initiatory relationships, within differentiated sections of the community and between the generations: using a tool is inseparable from how and from whom you’ve learned to use it, and from how and to whom you will teach to use it. The ultimate tutors would be the gods. Let’s remember that all worship is ultimately ancestor worship—the animal at the center of the tribal feast is an ancestor and, for that matter, so is the “father” God of the monotheistic faiths. When you use the tool properly, you’re really using it along with its creator deity.

The dissolution of the relation between tool, ritual and deity must follow, I continue to think, the establishment of imperial centers and markets that distance individuals and groups from the ritual center. Under these conditions a “craftsman” occupying a “niche” in a market becomes possible. Even here, we would see elaborate guild-type relations, with high barriers to entry, cultish esotericisms, and so on. Being a metal worker would be a bit more than having a “profession.” The pedagogical relation is deeply built-in here as well, through formalized apprenticeship relationships. But the imperative exchange now begins to involve a technical order irreducible to a sacred center. If we place the emergence of independent craftsmanship alongside the more or less contemporaneous mega-machine composed of masses of slaves, we can add that the craftsman would distinguish himself from that, as a cruder, monstrous, more alienating, even if more productive, form of technology. This is, of course, a tension that re-emerges in the modern world, with the introduction of the factory system. I want to keep insisting that the critical distinction between modes of technics and technology is the extent to which they facilitate or diminish the pedagogical “architecture” supporting the technical assemblages and system. The less teaching and learning a mode of technology calls for, the less open it is to the feedback of its users, the less open those users are to the feedback of those affected by the technology, and therefore the more destructive and detrimental to idiomatic intelligence the technology will be. But this criterion can be formulated in imperative terms: it’s the difference between ordering someone and “charging” someone, which is itself the difference between an imperative that includes the imperative not to modify it and an imperative containing instructions for further revision.

My insistence on this distinction might seem to contradict my definition of technics in terms of the perfecting of the imperative. But the perfecting of the imperative always relies on the transmission of the imperative to humans on a scene, for the reproduction of that scene. From the beginning the natural environment is turned into the condition of the scene, and represented by proxy on the scene. The first technical objects, on this hypothesis, were props. Once the sacred center is broken up, starting with the occupation of the center by the Big Man but perhaps better dated from the overthrow of sacral kingship, what kinds of props are needed? Let’s say: those that distinguish communities of one ancestry from others of different ancestry within a single imperial order. This involves reciprocal protection, creating conditions of exchange, signaling fealty to the imperial center, and establishing internal differentiations. We could say this is the transition from the sacred to the cultural: the form of housing, implements of farming, household utensils, weapons, and so on have “utility” in distinctions within and between groups, which includes what modern economic subjects would consider “utility,” while still tinged with the sacred. They’re still props, which is why no one would ever think of “inventions” that go beyond enhancing one’s one communal scene in comparison with others.

The imperative remains bound to the ostensive, while generating new ostensives in turn. Technology emerges as a reality in its own right when the implementation of imperative orders generates ostensives from which further imperatives can be elicited within a scene separate from imperial scenic design. It may have been necessary for liberalism to shatter the center and make explicit the struggle over distribution for technology to be liberated from the last remnants of the sacred. This “scientific” space is one in which generating further ostensives is the purpose of the space, and the only imperatives accepted are those which elicit new ostensives. These ostensives feed imperatives back into the technological system, but even more importantly transmit imperatives to create spaces of inquiry and curiosity within technological or engineering spaces. This maintains the pedagogical margin essential to friendly human-technology relations. This means that there’s an intrinsic value in revelation—in showing the new, even without purpose or context. Creating ostensives in search of the imperatives that would enhance their accessibility is the highest form of idiomatic intelligence. Here is where the model declarative explored in my previous post becomes especially useful. The declarative itself has as its vocation the uncovering and generation of ostensives, and therefore defers imperatives that preclude them. But, now, deferring imperatives that narrow the ostensive consequences of their fulfillment entails lending voice to as many possible ways of fulfilling the imperative as one can, so as to zero in on the one that combines local certainty with global possibility. We want things that work very well without fixing in advance all the different ways they might work.

The person best equipped for this kind of stacking is the one always on the lookout for conversions and translations. All the things humans do can be converted into things machines can do; all the things machines can do can be translated into things that humans can’t necessarily do but can be converted so as to receive. Everything we do tacitly, moreover, can be made explicit, which in turn creates new tacit knowledge. If you think too much about how to walk while you’re actually walking you will disable yourself, but such stumbling is a useful prelude to reassembling the practice of walking. How do we read, write, think, move, feel, experience things (lots of different ways)—we know some kind of simulation of all these activities can be created (many already have been) and so why not participate in the practice by enacting as many possibilities as we can? Develop ways of making easy things difficult and difficult things easy. Surface the design principles of our environments so as to make it possible to revise them. Become a prop among props.

Building the imperative order is the way we listen to the center. My way of explaining what is entailed in listening to the center has generally focused on imagining a form of adjudication that would make the case you brought to the ‘court” inoperative. I’ve discussed this most often in terms of what I’ve called the “sovereign” or “central” imaginary. You want something—universal healthcare, abolition of copyright, free trade, the abolition of abortion, or immigration—in fact, put together all the things you want. Imagine the government that would do everything you want—what would it look like? Who would be in charge? What chain of command would lead to the result you would recognize as what you wanted? It wouldn’t look anything like the government we have now, which means your desire has shifted from a bunch of policy preferences to a form of government—but now that form of government would not necessarily do any of the things you want; moreover, if we had that form of government, there may not be any point to wanting those things. Following this line of inquiry would be listening to the center, the more so insofar as it’s deployed to suspend desires across the board. We can scale this model up or down, to world history or daily decisions—a judgment occurs to you in the course of some interaction, which implies some adjudicator who would rule in your favor, initiating the sequence I just laid out.

Now we can bring to bear on this model the perfecting of the imperative. Start obeying the commands that would issue from the sovereign in whose name you have suspended your desire, and work on perfecting and installing that imperative. (In fact, begin with the command you’re obeying right now, which is to say, with what you are doing right now, and set yourself to perfecting it.) The entire infrastructure, the Stack, must be conveying those commands even while it’s been hijacked by the sovereign who has produced those now suspended desires in the first place. The problem you set for yourself is to design assignments that would situate those transmitting the imperatives circulating through the technological system in front of this discrepancy. The center is now less adjudicating and more issuing instructions on how to instruct and be instructed. It’s not a question of settling disputes but of rendering all the scenes stations of conversion and translation. This is how you give yourself over to the center as a sample in the data exchange. You don’t know which scenes, across all the media, you might be acting on—there are delayed or protracted scenes upon which you might turn out to have been acting that take shape a century ahead. All you can do, or all you can want, is to maximize the data you register and transmit by contributing to the perfecting of the objectified imperatives whose commands you keep taking in. What must ultimately be holding the whole technological system in place is that originary imperative to deploy and muster all to simultaneously concretize, mimic and distance the center. This means that the more technologically attuned and alert one is, the more one is noticing places where the center remains too abstract and mimicry of it too incomplete, suggesting impending collapse into the vortex of hysterical displacements of the center. Technological thinking, then, is bringing elements within more vulnerable technological assemblages into a match with those generating new and articulated forms of pedagogical accountability. Whatever form of idiomatic intelligence would have Facebook or Twitter doing what you think it should is an idiomatic intelligence that would distribute itself very differently than through vehicles like Facebook or Twitter (even if only through knowing those social media could this other mode of distribution be initiated). Think in terms of creating an assignment to inculcate a practice that is itself the creation of an assignment that would enable more people to create a more effective version of the original assignment. The identification of new sub-practices and the compression of those sub-practices so they can be shifted online would continually suggest new innovations in the programming and in the hardware that can accommodate such programming that would in turn provide new problems to be assembled into new assignments.