community

[James Whitehead]

Society has become the exposed source of value? And so echoes itself as
meaning. there is no longer a transcendental veil.

The transcendental horizon always prior to the post modern epoch provided a
framework which was hidden, value was and is always located in the
contextualizing framework, in terms of meaning, signification etc. This
value was chosen arbitrarily for the need of meaning or truth or power and
if there is a real transcendental meaning, and any real meaning must
transcend the signifier to obtain meaning, it is not for us in the world, we
are in effect if we ask for meaning demanding an external transcendental
framework, then we close this meaning, the very thing we wished for, from
us. this causal chain of meaning it not fixed at what we call the
transcendental but must continue in any causal framework. only with a non
causality which asking meaning of makes no sense can the hierarchy be
terminated.
this poses two questions, can a non causal framework exist, and can it
function, in particular if it is itself a cause, if it can be a cause, in
effect a first cause.

We could phrase the question along the lines of how a non meaningful system
can create meaningful systems, and how they can evaluate meaning. Such a
system might know about the rules of signification and be able to manipulate
them, only perfect non causal systems would be incapable of doing this.

[James Whitehead]

Interestingly even community and or communism have been seen as attempts at
overcoming death . As also religion and philosophy in finding a meaning to
the world. Yet meaning must, to be, must always be outside the signifier,
outside what we ask meaning of. Why this is so lies in the process of
signification where the sign stands for something other, the sign therefore
in itself is arbitrary regarding what it signifies. The objection that a
sign pictures the signified is still dependent on reading the sign, i.e.
Interpretation of it. All symbols are reduceable to simple two state systems
where the arbitrariness is obvious, this very feature is to the principles
underlying cybernetics and cybernetic communication systems. Signals which
are clearly arbitary in such systems are likewise interpreted, significantly
by contextualization within and referene to, external frameworks. All
signifiers are read, interpreted, and once interpreted completed, and so
redundant.

meaning is not then located in the signifier but in the interpreted
framework which validates it.

Meaning of the world , in the world is not possible , or understanding of
anything which is in the world, as understanding lies outside , after. The
signifier itself is never understood. Such was always the case but only now
is it fully exposed as a reality that can be seen , and not just felt or
understood. This is the emptiness of post modernity, its irony in its
attempt to say something meaningful within this impossibility, and is double
irony of exposing and playing with this imposibility. This could well
explain the criticism of its lightness.

Yet any idea of a nihilistic emptiness is also has problematics, Causality
implies purpose, and though the structures of the texts in the world cannot
decode themselves or be decoded within themselves they can present the
opportunity for external frameworks to decode them.

It should now become obvious that this decoding of an non encoded text, that
is encoded by the same framework, an identical framework, never can take
place here. Our frameworks here are pseudo structures, as they are only
attempting an understanding of codes that are not their own, and from within
the process of signification itself if it is to say its attempting some
meaning.

[James Whitehead]

only ,the limit closes off the signifier and so de-limits and allows a
signified. Without boundaries , without closing off the text there can be no
signified, meaning appears after the reading is completed, after the
signification does meaning appear. All art , history, writing, all,
communication is possible only by a framework which closes off the
signifier. A frame work , within art that was once literal, became
situational and finally social, economic in the post modern systems of
governmental institutions which sponsor the arts and accredit the gallery
system.

Frameworks as such have always created the signified, or allowed the
signified. For instance historically and anthropologically the contexts
boundary within the religious act or performance closes off the sign and so
posits an object, in itself, the concept, such as the host, or what has now
become known as the work of art. It is only very recently that this has
become obvious , and so within our culture the truth, value , worth,
aesthetic is now seen as a product of the contextualizes, the institutions
which support and create the frameworks, and not in the works or acts , or
objects themselves , the creation of the works, or the creators of the
works.

This historical event causes all previous activities , works, etc. to become
re evaluated. The empirical proof of this is in the re-evaluation, the
re-structuring, and de-structuring of how this past is presented. In effect
these products are one time pads, having no implicit meaning or worth, which
is Apriori the attribute of the signifier. The signifier is a promise whose
value depends on the institutions honouring this promise. This promise and
its honouring is the reality of the present and past, however and
importantly, it is not held or given up by the signifier , which is empty,
but produced by the framework itself.

if art or literature then is significant, it must be arbitrary in itself. It
cannot be created, it becomes what it is, if it is significant in anyway,
only by its contextualization, anything else is a myth. An illusion. The
forces of contextualization are the socio political institutions of survival
and power creating Value by what can only be described as a deceit which it
is now openly displaying. Such is the confidence of the post modern
institutions in their force, power, social and political, economic strength.

if the truth or value of a proposition is decided by the framework which
limits it, which nullifies the signifier, so the ascription of value to it,
is wrong, as its value resides like its meaning outside of itself, it lies
in the functioning framework which ascribes value and nullifies the
signifier in its closure.

The modern project of being and the meaning of being is now under review,
and in that like any idea, being and its meaning no longer has its value
located within itself but in the framework which determines it, closes it
off, effectively destroys it, which accounts perhaps for the long history of
being and the simultaneous successful description of being as its
overcoming, as the end of philosophy, elsewhere the end of art, literature
etc.

So does it follows that
individuals exist only after their demise, exist in their demise, in the act
which removes their necessity, else they exist as unbounded and chaotic, as
a lack of existence in a never ending attempt at being. Unlike Sisyphus
however they neither know themselves, never know their task, or the reasons
for their existence, but are faced with the impossibility of being as an
illusion, or as an infinite task or in the last event their own destruction.
They suffer both the illusion of being and its lack, so neither can have
knowledge of a transcendental being or a nihilistic nothing. One could not
imagine a more difficult scenario.