Theodoros Chiotis
“A cartography of the aesthetics and locality of amnesia: on Samuel Delany’s Dhalgren, Μark Amerika’s Hypertextual Consciousness [beta-version] & Christopher Nolan’s Memento”[*]
Displacing the subject session
29th IAPL Conference (2005), Helsinki
Abstract
In this paper, I aim to discuss the differences and similarities between three separate works of art spanning three decades- Delany’s Dhalgren was published in 1974, Mark America’s Hypertextual Consicousness [beta-version] ( in the late 1990s while Memento was released in 2001. All three pieces share a number of similarities: characters and narrators who wander in landscapes where the interior and the exterior intersect; the characters in the Delany and the Nolan movie are in the process of recovering and recreating via memory recuperation and rewriting personal and collective history while the reader-user of Hypertextual Consicousness [beta-version] attempts to prise meaning out of an unstable critical narrative questioning the notions of textuality, identity and the self in cyberspace; the discourse in all of these pieces is fragmented, disjointed or continually overturned. All of these pieces display a complex attitude to the relationship between the corporeal and the discursive; the urban-primitive mythology and ritual of tattooing and grafting in Memento, the seemingly boundless, seemingly flickering online identity in Hypertextual Consciousness [beta-version]the personal-collective palimpsest-mythologies of Delany all seem to illustrate the fact that the constitution of the self is entwined with the intersubjective and interdiscursive constitution and representation of the mechanics of forgetting and remembering. It is intriguing to observe how all of these discourses seem to overturn the notions of the representations of identity and self in order to replace it with selves, identities and texts in constant upheaval and change. All three narratives illustrate the multiplicities of identity as they are actualised in response to the traumatic event of amnesia and the subsequent rebuilding of memory.
i. m. K. D. (1915-2007)
Introduction
The concept of cartography, of map-making, refers to a series of cognitive practices forming and informing the particular approach of the world we live in; that is to say, cartography is ‘a practical means for getting on’.[1] The notion of amnesia, as put forward in the title of this paper, seems to be in direct contrast to the notion of map-making: after all, amnesia translates into a figurative loss of the map not the drawing up of one. The experience of amnesia, of completely losing one’s way is often thought to be a terrifying one as attested by a number of studies;[2] the perception of amnesia as a cognitive and emotional loss of direction disturbance by Gilles Deleuze, however, pointing out that “to an archaeology-art, which penetrates the millennia in order to reach the immemorial, is opposed a cartography-art built ‘on things of forgetting and places of passage’….One circles around a sculpture, and the viewing axes that belong to it make us grasp the body, sometimes along its entire length, sometimes in an astonishing foreshortening, sometimes in two or more diverging directions: its position in the surrounding space is strictly dependent on these internal trajectories. It is as if the real path were intertwined with virtual paths that give it new courses or trajectories”.[3] We find that in a world maddeningly layered with networks of signification, forgetting can be used creatively in a number of ways. We negotiate our place in the world in a number of ways but primarily by continually engaging in a reinscription of our identity: we know who we are but we change our sense of self incrementally so as to allow for the change in situation. We consciously forget our sense of self, literally ourselves, for fractions of the second so as to form a new sense of self that will accommodate the new circumstances. When we travel to a new city we attempt to find our footing in it. Jonathan Raban in his book Soft City notes that “the newcomer to the city first confronts the hard city, but soon the city goes soft; it awaits the imprint of an identity. For better or for worse, it invites you to remake it, to consolidate it into a shape you can live in. You, too. Decide who you are, and the city will again assume a fixed form around you. Decide what it is, and your own identity will be revealed”.[4]
In the science-fiction novels of Michael Moorcock starring Jerry Cornelius[5] the city becomes a back-drop against which the characters find that the very boundaries which tie them down to a specific identity, to a specific way of life are forgotten and dissolved; the characters in the Cornelius story-cycle die only to reappear again and again under different guises and identities. Ιn Mark Danielewski’s novel House of Leaves the house a family moves into is continually changing; in a passage from the book memorable for the blurring of the boundaries between fiction and reality, we learn that the interior of the house is constantly expanding; the protean interior geography of house comes to define the identity of the multiple narrators.
Mapping Amnesia
This paper proposes to examine three distinct works of art using of amnesia as the engine propelling their narratives; in Dhalgren, Memento and Hypertextual Consciousness [beta-version] an operation mapping the uses of cognitive disturbance (in this case, varying degrees of amnesia) is carried out. I am following in the footsteps of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in that I propose that these three works use amnesia as a conceptual tool to trace lines of becoming. The function of memory (and its disturbance) is what propels not only the narratives of these works but also our own reading of said works. In all three works both narrator and narratee are dealing with a continual loss and reclamation of memory: the subject-as-narrator-and-as-narratee is undergoing a continual becoming-amnesiac. The function of memory and the memories presented in the works I would like to talk about in this paper are simply points in trajectories of becoming; the memories presented therein are memories of forgotten selves lost in the past; of multiple selves which are always possible in the present and the future; of reading selves which make all other selves possible.[6] The androids in Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? possess implanted memories allowing them the illusion of a continued existence. Memory in the P. K. Dick novel (and in the Ridley Scott film version of the novel, Blade Runner) becomes a map based on which what is thought to be fake and lifeless (the androids) is made real and alive. The manipulation of memory, the sheer use of this memory-map is how a new reality is constituted. This process is dynamic in that new realities are constituted endlessly. Gilles Tiberghien in Land Art notes that “instead of copying a territory, the map creates a new reality which is another map, a map so concrete (territory-map) or so abstract (map-territory) that it cancels itself as such and suggesting another map, a map to the second degree, itself referring to a third, and so on until infinity”.[7] Memory in these works no longer refers just to the psychological function for recollection, neither does it denote the collective memory of a small people; memory becomes “the strange faculty which puts into immediate contact the outside and the inside…the people who are missing and the I who is absent, a membrane, a double becoming”.[8] Memory reterritorialises by way of function; memories offer points of identification providing an identity. The function of memory based on points of identification is very much evident also in the art of mnemotechnics; mnemotechnics is a system for accurate, conscious recollection based on a punctual organization whose main function is to assign points of view. Mnemotechnics, and memory by extension, are essentially how we interact with the world: we unconsciously create maps and place our selves in them. In a very real but also very symbolic fashion identity is formed in the interconnections made by memory. Gilles Deleuze in Difference and Repetition notes “we do not contemplate ourselves, but we exist only in contemplating – that is to say, in contracting that from which we come”.[9] Deleuze here notes that self-awareness is made possible through interaction with the world. Memory synthesizes the past in relation to the present so that the past can be crystallized into a series of instants upon which one can reflect.[10]
Memory is intrinsically linked to awareness and self-awareness. Awareness as a state is essential to the formation and representation of meaning.[11] Neurologist Walter Freeman in his discussion on how consciousness and awareness are formed suggests that “each of us is a source of meaning, a wellspring for the flow of fresh constructions within our brains and bodies, sheltered by the privacy of isolation. Our constructions are by the exuberant growth if patterns of neural activity from the chaotic dynamics of populations containing myriads of neurons. Our intentional actions continually flow into the world, changing the world and the relations of our bodies to it. This dynamic system is the self in each of us. It is the agency in charge, not our awareness, which is constantly trying to catch up with what we do. We perceive the world from inside our boundaries as we engage it and then change ourselves by assimilation. Our actions are perceived by ourselves and others as the pursuit of individual goals, and as the expression of our meanings by gestures, signs, words and numbers, that is, by representations”.[12] Neurologists hold the belief that memories are stored in order to help us navigate through our everyday life but this is an unconscious, automatic process; we negotiate with our environment using our stored memories. The Jonathan Raban quote at the beginning of this paper underlines the fact that we acquire meaning by the interaction with our environment as much as we contribute to its meaning. Freeman notes that “the nature of our learning processes makes us more and more isolated as we grow older, as our cumulative episodic meaning structures become more complex with time and experience….The more we learn, the more specialized we become, and the less competent we are to understand one another”.[13] Self and identity seem to be based on accumulated knowledge around which awareness and self-awareness are organised. The increasing complexity of our self-awareness is such that we often have trouble recognizing our own selves in the past. When Karl Abraham wrote to Sigmund Freud informing him of the fact that he had located and bought a paper written by Freud forty-six years prior, Freud wrote back saying: “It is making severe demands on the unity of the personality to try to make me identify myself with the author of the paper on the spinal ganglia of the petromyzon. Nevertheless, it does seem to be the case, and I think I was happier about that discovery than about others since then”.[14] Freud confirms the fact that a unique process of forgetting takes place wherein existing meaning structures are dissolved so as to allow new ones to take their place. Freeman calls this process ‘unlearning’ in order to distinguish it from memory loss resulting from fatigue, habituation or disease: “A good ‘forgettory’ is better than a good memory, because psychiatrists know that more people live in mental anguish because they cannot forget than because they cannot remember, but the process of unlearning is closer to forgiving than forgetting”.[15] This “forgettory” function becomes a useful conceptual tool for observing and deciphering the world as if for the first time. Deleuze and Guattari point that “a punctual system [memory in this case] includes a certain utilization of lines, and the block itself assigns the point new functions”.[16] In the three texts, I am discussing in my paper this ‘forgettory’ function is crucial in allowing us to invent and exercise new paradigms of reading, watching and interacting with the world.
The act of forgetting becomes a creative act bypassing between mnemotechnical systems[17] in the process creatively assembling new types of reality. In this manner, a new type of reality is made; Tiberghien in the passage quoted earlier in the paper suggests that every map that is drawn up cancels the previous one but this new one is by definition cancelled by the map that is bound to follow it. Memory and forgetting share this uneasy relationship: new memories are overlaid on old ones resulting not in their erasure but also in their modification. The act of forgetting, amnesia, is a becoming par excellence in that it creates the need to redraw the map endlessly. We will see that forgetting is essential to the function of memory; forgetting in a very real sense is an individualistic act, it is an act of identification: what one forgets is as individualistic as how one knows to read. This uneasy negotiation with memory (i.e. forgetting) contributes ultimately to the renewal of memory. A good metaphor to use in order to understood this uneasy negotiation between memory and forgetting is the example offered by T. S. Eliot regarding new works of art: when a new work of art is inserted in an existing order of works of art, the new work of art contributes to the ever so slight alteration of the existing order.[18] The influx of new data is accompanied by some sort of forgetting that alters the existing memory system; it is this alteration that renews the closed system of memory. Deleuze and Guattari have already pointed out that “the line-system (or block-system) of becoming is opposed to the point-system of memory. Becoming is an antimemory. Doubtless there exists a molecular memory, but as a factor of integration into a majoritarian or molar system. Memories always have a reterritorialisation function. On the other hand, a vector of deterritorialisation is in no way indeterminate; it is directly plugged into the molecular levels, and the more deterritorialised it is, the stronger is the contact: it is deterritorialisation that makes the aggregate of the molecular components ‘hold together’”.[19]
We begin with memory; that is to say, we begin with what is about to be lost but what also can never be lost: “memory is not in us; it is we who move in a being-memory, a world memory”.[20] This “world memory” is neither a memory-bank found in the dystopic novels of Philip K. Dick nor Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious but is rather the topography of an impersonal consciousness in which the subject is continually constituted. Felix Guattari in an essay entitled “Institutional Practice and Politics” wonders: “How to reassemble a de-alienated subjectivity without seriality, a subject I name ‘processual’ because it produces its own existence through a process of singularisation, because it engenders itself as existential territory to the extent that it constitutes itself as analytic cartography?”[21] This “world memory” that Deleuze speaks of and which Guattari maps as an “existential territory” is the topography of the human creativity.[22]
In these works what is experienced and deciphered in a highly subjective manner (inner reality) eventually subsumes objective reality becoming the one and only reality; all ideas and preconceptions about the nature of reality diverge from what is immediately describable and perceivable. In Samuel Delany’s Dhalgren, the story of the protagonist (initially known as “Kid”) unfolds in all possible narrative directions; in fact, the concept of linear narrative progression is barely stable in the narrative framework of the novel. Dhalgren is a novel structured like a Chinese box: several narratives and discourses are nested within each other often interpenetrating each other. Dhalgren, much like Deleuze’s and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus, is a matrix of cross-referential discourses; the multiple narrative strands in Dhalgren comment on each other while simultaneously expanding the narrative. In Mark Amerika’s critical text on the exploration of the concept of consciousness in cyberspace, the concept of the linear progression of the theoretical argument is eschewed (and playfully “forgotten”) in favour of a discourse best described as an interfaced-streaming consciousness. The act of reading on what is or what might be a hypertextual consciousness constitutes this very hypertextual consciousness. Reading a hypertext is a more participatory experience when compared to watching a television program; John Fiske in his 1987 essay ‘Television Culture’ notes that “television broadcasts programs that are replete with potential meanings, and…it attempts to control and focus this meaningfulness into a more singular preferred meaning that performs the work of the dominant ideology”.[23] The experience of reading and navigating Hypertextual Consciousness [beta-version] is akin to the experience of reading Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus: the reader of this particular text is loaded with the implicit task of building a network of virtual connections between the text’s component parts.[24] The creation of a network of virtual connections, albeit in this case it is done chronologically backwards but semantically forwards, is also central to the comprehension of the plot in Christopher Nolan’s film, Memento. In the film the story of Leonard Shelby, an insurance fraud investigator hunting for his wife’s murderer while suffering from anterogarde amnesia[25] and apparent confabulation (this is in combination often known as the Korsakoff psychosis), unfolds simultaneously in both a backwards and a forwards direction. In a very real sense, Memento is the first hyperlink-movie in that everything in the movie is like the RDF mechanism;[26] the movie is plotted in such a way that the chronologically reverse (shot in colour) and forwards (shot in black and white) sequences of the movie are treated as being equally important. Shelby seeks to piece together the jigsaw puzzle of his life but the narrative forming his life-story, or more accurately his life-fiction as we will see, is pieced together in a backwards fashion: the film begins at the end of the story. All three works are apparently fragmentary in their construction-process and involve their reader intimately in the production of subjectivity contained within them. Each of these three pieces requests the reader to be extremely attentive to the minute details of the creative process of these particular conceptual universes. this demand on the reader is succinctly expressed in a conversation in Dhalgren between the protagonist, Kid, and the poet Newboy: “ ‘The aesthetic equation’, Newboy mused. ‘The artist has some internal experience that produces a poem, a painting, a piece of music. Spectators submit themselves to the work, which generates an inner experience for them. But historically it’s a very new, not to mention vulgar, idea that the spectator’s experience should be identical to, or even have anything to do with, the artist’s. The idea comes from an over-industrialised society” (164).