Artifacts of Loneliness and Connection

Students often ask me about what it takes to pursue an academic career. One specific question that comes regards research. "How do you find your subject matter?" For the students who seriously want to consider getting their Ph.D.s in a humanities-related field, my answer can sometimes sound foreboding: the process will take you apart and put you together again. It will force you to face issues that are deeply personal, and you'll find that your area of research is often entangled in psychologically loaded subjects. I believe that this is one of the reasons graduate students are prone to mental health issues as the process unfolds. I always advise students to inquire about the availability of counseling services when looking into graduate programs. The most productive research is often tangled with the personal.

These entanglements, however, can bring insights both academic and personal.

One of the first subjects in this blog was the Aokigahara forest (aka the "suicide forest") in Japan. By chance I stumbled upon a This American Life podcast, "One Last Thing Before I Go," presenting another story from Japan which brings to the forefront connections the living and the dead. But this time, the symbolic gesture emanates from the living to those who are lost, rather than the opposite as evidenced by the threads left by suicides in Aokigahara. I'm speaking here of the Japanese "wind phone," through which living relatives symbolically connect to the dead.

While depression may have specific, common symptoms, I think that the affective aspect of it -- how it feels, emotionally, is poignantly unique for each person. Listening to the wind phone podcast, especially the kind of rapid-fire examples of personal grief (and loneliness) it brought forward, made me think a great deal about my own episodes. It sometimes flares unexpectedly, and other times ebbs in slowly like the tide. Understanding it helps me recognize the signs of its arrival, and allows me to work through it and rise above it more quickly. Understanding it also keeps me functional while it's with me. My depression has always manifested itself as varying degrees of disconnection, and it made me think of certain images and subjects -- namely are relationships to artifacts -- that have defined my own research.

When a tsunami hit Japan in March 2011, the world's attention was focused on the Fukushima nuclear power plant. But as waters and time recede, like with any disaster that takes thousands of lives, the larger upheaval calms and retreats into the depths of private, individual grief. Replayed and reconstructed in memories, the ache of loss is normalized into the routine; it becomes a scar around which the body remains. Numb at its center; only announcing itself in the visual space it occupies, and at its discomfort at the edges. At best we forget about it temporarily. At worst, we examine it and remind ourselves of its presence. It speaks as silence; as numbness delineated by the tissue around its edges.

Over 19,000 people lost their lives, multitudes more were left to grieve -- especially those whose loved ones were lost. in Otsuchi, Japan, 421 people were never found. This creates a certain kind of grief. With no physical remains over which to grieve, no physical remainder to fasten ritual or resolution, grief scatters like ash, covering the lives of those left behind. It becomes a fine dust that is only moved around and never quite mitigated. Prior to the disaster, a man named Itaru Sasaki was having difficulty with his own grief. His cousin had died:

He went out and bought an old-fashioned phone booth and stuck it in his garden. It looks like an old English-style one. It's square and painted white, and has these glass window panes. Inside is a black rotary phone, resting on a wood shelf. This phone connected to nowhere. It didn't work at all. But that didn't matter to Itaru. He just needed a place where he felt like he could talk to his cousin, a place where he could air out his grief. And so putting an old phone booth in his garden, which sits on this little windy hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean, it felt like a perfect solution.

For Sasaki, the phone's physical disconnection was not an issue, "because my thoughts could not be relayed over a regular phone line, I wanted them to be carried on the wind ... so I named it the wind telephone -- kaze no denwa [風の電話]"

After the tsunami, people sought out the phone as a means to connect to their loved ones, despite its presence on Sasaki's private property. Sasaki has welcomed the visitors and and estimates that over 5,000 people have visited.

As the story continues, we hear heartwrenching audio of people using the phone. Some are skeptical and say "I can't hear anything," others engage in conversation, and still others cathartically apologies and plea for their loved ones to return.  Grief is a particular, seemingly contradicting type of loss. It emphasizes the present (as the place where the loss exists) while also alienating us from it by forcing us to rely on the memories of the past. But really, I believe that the pain of loss is singularly housed in the present, because it is in the present that we reconstruct the memories of our past. The wind phone becomes an artifact which aides that reconstruction. The "connection" to the dead is open, with nothing to impede the reconstruction -- the re-writing -- of our memories of who they were. The solitary phone booth is a portal; the receiver is a conduit to something within -- which, in this case -- is projected outward, symbolically, through the phone. Dialing the number is a ritual to situate the living. As an artifact, the phone provides a focus that centers the living squarely in their loneliness.

Loneliness is an aspect of grief. When one is physically taken from us, there is both a physical and emotional space that dominates every aspect of our lives. It disorients us. The depression that often follows loss is part of a longer process of recalibrating the self to compensate for the loss.

Listening to the podcast reminded me of a concert I attended when I was in college. It was Peter Gabriel's Secret World Live tour. The opening song, "Come Talk To Me," apparently, was about the disconnection Gabriel felt after splitting with his first wife, Jill, and the struggle to connect with his daughter in the aftermath of the divorce. The song was haunting enough for me, but seeing it live affected me on a very deep level. Here's a current link, but I'm not sure how long it will remain there.

The stage is dark. Bagpipes drone. And the Gabriel's plaintive voice pleads "Ah please, talk to me / Won't you please, come talk to me / Just like it used to be / Come on, come talk to me / Come talk to me / Come talk to me." As he sings, an old-style British telephone booth appears to rise from beneath the stage. Gabriel is inside, singing into the receiver. He remains in the phone booth through the first stanza of the song as the band rises from the stage and disperses to their places. At the first chorus, Gabriel emerges from the phone booth and attempts to move toward a female singer (Paula Cole) who stands at the far end of the stage (in the studio version, Sinead O'Connor provided the other voice). His progress is impeded by the physical line connecting the receiver to the booth. He pulls and strains against it, making his way closer to Cole. They never connect, and by the latter part of the song, Gabriel is pulled backward toward the box as Cole reaches out to him.

The image has always struck me on a visceral level, just as the story about the wind phone did as I listened to the podcast. In my college days I couldn't understand why the image affected me so emotionally. During my most acute and prolonged bout with depression in grad school, the image would often come up in my counseling sessions.

We seek connection: the image of the solitary phone booth, connected to nothing, in a solitary garden; the image of a man, pulling against a cord that pulls him back into one. In the former, the phone booth is a conduit to the dead. In the latter, it symbolically stands between him and the real person from whom he feels disconnected. Gabriel advances toward Cole with great effort, only to be pulled back and closer to the box. It also brings out the point that the loneliness that often accompanies depression can act as a lense that distorts everything we experience. Chances for connection can be right in front of us, yet we can't or won't see them. People closest to us feel the furthest away, even though they may not have done anything to alienate us. If the people around us are pulling away it can spark an episode, or it can intensify one already occuring.

These seem to be two very different representations of connection, but what makes them the same is the absence that each is trying to overcome, and the means by which -- symbolically -- they are attempting to mitigate that absence.

The wind phone makes sense in a culture where -- according to Meek -- keeping up a relationship with dead loved ones is not necessarily strange. "The line between our world and their world is thin," she says. A conduit, regardless of the symbolism therein, is conceptually easier to establish. Furthermore, the dead are perpetually reconstructed in the memories of the living. Maintaining a shrine in the home, or "speaking" to them on a telephone connected to nothing becomes a mean to reinforce the reconstruction. Whether the conversations are "straightforward updates about life," or requests of the dead to look after others who have died, or the explicit desperation of loneliness, the dead receive their shape from the living.

The staging of Gabriel's "Come Talk To Me" speaks to a different -- and perhaps, more cruel -- loneliness. One in which the memory of those we lost (or, even more tragically, think we lost) must compete with the relentless intimacy of presence. I always interpreted the song as a plea to someone that was right in front of him, yet further away than anyone swept out to sea. "You lie there with your eyes half closed  like there's no one there at all / There's a tension pulling on your face / Come on, come talk to me." In that presence. the disconnection is not only emphasized, but stands in active opposition to the speaker's own memory of what the other had been to him. The Hegelian master/slave dualism comes to bear here, but the "other" withdraws itself, leaving only the phenomenal self like an outline of what was: a cold, solid shadow that deflects attempts to know it.

Both losses are predicated on the spaces between the living and the lost. Those spaces have been theorized by the likes of Hegel, Heidegger, Lacan, and several cultural theorists. Each attempts to sanitize space through theoretical and performative filters. They obfuscate loss the same way that Heidegger accuses humanity of setting-in-order loss through ritual or outsourcing it to the "them."  I've often wondered why certain philosophers take such precautions when addressing solitude, loneliness, and loss. What loss was Hegel, Heidegger, or any of the other continental philosophers or cultural theorists dealing with as they sat in their loneliness? What pushed them to let loose such waves of explanation to fill the void?  Biographers can speculate, but their loss will be as private as each of our own.

Loneliness is. We can sanitize the word into "solitude" but anyone who is swimming through the black water of loneliness knows the difference. "Solitude" is loneliness's noble cousin, bolstered and anointed by volition. A "choice" one makes to escape noise and to retreat temporarily into a private space.

Loneliness creeps forward, into one's pores. It wraps around us. Envelopes us. It slithers into our spaces quietly. It tempts. And once we engage it, it clings to us; gracefully at first. The dance is a beautiful one. Loneliness flows like a voluminous coat that catches the air and billows around us. It protects us and accompanies us into the same private spaces we occupy when in solitude. It pulls us back into ourselves as we remain distracted by its movements. And then, without any knowledge of the exact moment of its happening, it enters our senses: the space between the point of interface and the knowing of the sensation -- creating impossible, crushing paradoxes. The light that enters our eyes is too bright, yet too dim at the same time. The sound through our ears is too loud but always muffled and incomplete. Our skin, sensitive to its own presence, yet uncomfortably unfeeling to the touch of others. The subtle smells that help establish our sense of place are just out of range, but the rotten and acrid are always with us. Our taste wants what is never there, and eschews what is.

It sinks deeper. A slow leak from a seal that has deteriorated. Seeping in patterns that efface its source. Already confused by our senses, we struggle against ourselves; questioning every word, gesture, and absence. Speak up. I can't make that out. Why is it so bright? Why is it so dark? Where is the thing with the name I can't remember that maybe I brought with me to a place to which I might not have actually gone? Vertigo. What time is it? What day is it? How old am I? Why can't I ...? Why can't I ...?

Confusion turns to rage; a chemical burn just off center in the chest.  Points of origin grow unknowable. We know things before they happen, or are we remembering them?

Loneliness is a drug. It is an addiction that promises its own cure. It speaks to us and beckons us forward, calling:  Fling yourself toward me. Hurl yourself into me. Use me. Bend me. Fuck me. Deep, deep into me, into you. I promise you release.

The afterglow glistens like pitch. Drips. Then leaves us cold.

When the other is still present, the phone (interface) becomes the barrier between them which, for whatever reason, seems as if it can't be overcome. When the other is gone (dead), the phone has no barrier of presence.

The barrier of presence. In each instance, the function of the phone remains the same, yet in each, the result is different. When it comes to the dead -- especially in a culture where the line between the living and the memory of the dead is much more permeable -- there is no obstruction to the memory. Memories of the dead can be remade at will. Although, for those with debilitating grief, the memories come uninvited. Still, the connection made is not with an other as much as it with the self. The loss of the phenomenal other places the burden on the person who remains to re-create the other. The phone then becomes a reminder, a representational device, that helps those to re-form what they knew. It becomes an icon around which the memories, thoughts, prayers can coalesce for a moment of connection. Even for those who "don't hear anything" on the other end, the memory of the lost is still brought into being through desire.

The "Come Talk To Me" performance, however, represents the staggering wound of loss-in-presence. The person is there, phenomenally. He or she is relentlessly present. Yet, the memory of what they were, how they used to be, how we remember them, or how we think they are competes with what we believe to be the cold truth of the real. Regardless of whether or not they have actually changed, or if we are just perceiving and projecting that change, the dynamic plays out the same way. Although the other is always Other, the disconnection brings out the space between. Attempts to bridge that space only serve to reinforce our attention on it. The distance pleads to be overcome. The space beckons to be filled. We hurl our "selves" forward into it. Lines of connection. Performances. Words. Gestures. Anything that might have meaning. In the void, those objects and texts announce themselves in their stark phenomenality. As they fly toward the other, they are stripped of meaning. Dulled and made bright at the same time. Dull in meaning because what we know of them no longer matches what they are. Bright in ostension because that unknown has made them into someone different, more present, like a stranger in a familiar place.

This is what we used to be. And now, estranged. The real stands in the way of our reconstruction of the other. For those who converse on the wind phone, and imagine the responses of the lost, or imagine that the dead are listening, the phone becomes an artifact through which that reconstruction of the other is made manifest. It disappears in its use. Even for those who "can't hear anything," they continue to speak. In these instances, the phone-as-artifact disappears in its use.

But for those faced with the loss symbolized in the "Come Talk To Me" performance, any artifact of communication only exacerbates the loss. The medium stands as a surrogate for our own inability to articulate ourselves. The performance turns the dynamic inside-out. With the other in front of Gabriel, almost within reach, he remains tethered to the artifact. The phone booth starts as a cage, he emerges from it, reaching out, but must pull against the receiver, and becomes entangled in the cord itself. At the closest moment of contact, leaning against the weight, he is pulled back, struggling against it. He could let go of the phone. But, symbolically, he never thinks to do so. To speak to a disembodied voice, we search for cues to help us understand. Without them, we are caught between an ambiguous voice and our own reconstruction of the other. As the other recedes, the intensity of the medium becomes oppressively apparent. What should connect us has only made our separation even more real.

Artifacts extend us. I have stated repeatedly in my own work that artifacts extend our "efficacy." This is true. However, "efficacy" connotes the ability to produce a desired or intended result -- as a means to achieve an end. When that result is not brought about, we become focused in the attempt. And it's in those moments that we grasp the artifact more firmly, and feel its resistance.

Hide and Seek, Part 2: The Sweeping Insensitivity of This Still Life

Hide and seek.

Trains and sewing machines.

All those years they were here first.

Oily marks appear on walls

Where pleasure moments hung before.

The takeover, the sweeping insensitivity of this still life.

- Imogen Heap, "Hide and Seek"

Although inspired by Bennett's vital materialism, I'd like to think about why objects give us comfort from the position of "distributed cognition" which I've written about in previous entries (once again, owing much to Andy Clark's work).   If we follow the hoarder scenario, there is that jarring moment when the extent of the hoard is thrust into the hoarder's perception by some outside actant.  It's at this moment that the hoarder is forced to see these objects as individual things, and the overall seriousness and magnitude of the problem becomes apparent.  I think that even non-hoarders get a glimpse of this when faced having to move from one dwelling to another.  Even people who aren't pack rats find the task of having  to -- in some form or another -- account for each object that is owned.  Dishes can't be packed away in sets.  Books can't be moved in their bookcases.  Everything has to be taken out, manipulated, and handled.  The process is exhausting, no matter how healthy the individual is.

The objects become more "present" in their consecutive singularities. And in each instance, we have to make an effort to justify the existence of each object. And that's it, isn't it?  It is up to us to justify that this object is worth the effort of dusting off, packing, unpacking, etc.  In this way, the objects seem dependent upon us, since we are the ones burdened with bestowing purpose on those objects.  Objects cannot justify themselves.  They are, for lack of a better term, insensitive. We, however, are sensitive; and some of us, as explained by Bennett, are more sensitive than others. Perhaps this helps us to understand the hoarder mentality, especially the tears that are shed when something that seems to be non-functioning, decomposing junk is cast away.  The hoarder has become invested in the objects themselves -- and bestowed sensitivity upon them.  To throw them away is to abandon them.

But here we come dangerously close to the more existentialist viewpoint that it is the subject who bestows value upon the object:  that is to say, the act of bringing an object into being is to automatically bestow upon it value.  But, let's pause on the moment and process of "bringing." Etymologically speaking, "bring" implies a carrying. There must be a thing (even in the loosest sense) to be carried.  The object is at least as important as the subject.  Now, I don't want to just flip the model and say it's the thing which brings "I" into being, because that's nothing necessarily new.  Hegel implies a version of this in aspects of his Herrschaft und Knechtschaft  [Lord and bondsman ... or "master/slave"] dialectic.  And there really is no way around the "I": the embodied "I" is a kind of locus of a specific bio-cognitive process.  The particular I, of itself at the present moment, is made manifest by the phenomenal environment around it.

 The objects by which we're surrounded are (not "represent", but phenomenally, functionally, are) a secondary material substrate through which our cognition is made manifest.  A "first" material substrate would be our physiological, embodied brains.  But, beyond that, our surrounding environments become an "outboard brain" which helps to carry our cognition.

I cannot stress enough that I'm not speaking metaphorically.  The phenomenal world we occupy at any given moment partially constitutes a larger, distributed substrate through which cognitive processes occur.  That environment is not "taken in" or "represented":  it constitutes the very mechanisms of cognition itself.  The process happens as instantly as thought itself, and is highly recursive -- meaning that the better and more efficiently a distributed cognition works, the less visible and more illusory it becomes. The more illusory the process, the greater our sense of autonomy.  So, if something goes awry at any point in the process (whether environmentally, emotionally, or physically ... or any cumulative combination of them), then our sense of autonomy is skewed in any number of directions: an inflated/deflated sense of one's presence, an inflated/deflated sense of the presence of objects, skewed senses of efficacy, body dysmorphic disorder, etc.  When the hoarder, or even the "normal" individual having to pack up his or her belongings, suddenly must account for each individual object, it causes a breakdown in the recursivity of the distributed cognitive process.  The illusion of an autonomous self is dissipated by the slowdown -- and eventual breakdown -- of the mind's capacity to efface the processes which constitute it.  Try to accomplish any complex task while simultaneously analyzing each and every physical, mental, and emotional point during the process:  the process quickly breaks down.  The process of constituting a viable self is quite possibly the most complex in which a human can be engaged.

What then, are the implications to posthumanism?  What I'm getting at here is something which a follower of mine, Stephen Kagen, so eloquently said in a response to my Aokigahara Forest entries: "my bias is that the artificial distinction between human, technology, and nature breaks down when examined closely."

Yes it does.  The distinction is, in my opinion, arbitrary.

Technologically speaking -- and from a posthuman standpoint -- this is very important.  Current technological development allows us to manipulate matter on an unprecedented small scale:  machines the size of molecules have already been created.  It is theoretically possible for these machines to physically manipulate strands of DNA, or structures of cells. The boundary between human and machine is now -- literally -- permeable.  At the same time, developments in artificial intelligence continue, as we begin to see that robots that are learning by physically exploring the spaces around them.

The distinction does, in fact, break down.  Posthumanism steps in as a mode of inquiry where the arbitrary condition of the subject/object divide is the starting point -- not the end point.  Ontologically and ethically, the lack of boundary between self and other is no longer just a theoretical construct.   It means viewing our environments on the micro- and macro-level simultaneously.  We must fuse together what we have been warned must remain separate.  The smart phone is no more or less "native" to the space I occupy as the aspens in the distance.  Within my locus of apprehension, the landscape includes every "thing" around me: things that grow, breathe, reproduce, talk, walk, reflect light, take up space, beep, light up, emit EMFs, decay, erode, pollute, and pollinate.  And, the closer and more recursively these various objects -- or gestalts of objects -- occupy this sphere of apprehension, the more integrated they are to my cognition.  They manifest my topological self.

And I think this also is where one can start to articulate the distinction between posthumanism and transhumanism.  More of that in another post.

Aokigahara Forest, Part 3: Empty Spaces and Pieces of Mind

[This is the final installment of the Aokigahara posts]

"Studying how people co-exist with nature is part of environmental research.  I was curious why people kill themselves in such a beautiful forest.  I still haven't found an answer to that."

Sometimes my literary theorist upbringing can really do me a disservice.  I was initially going to jump all over this statement and say that Hayano is actually not looking to see how people co-exist, simply because he is finding the things that seem to not belong to nature.  After all, it is the objects themselves which lead Hayano either to  decomposing corpses (which, as per the end of the video, are transformed into objects or markers of pity, "Sometimes I feel sorry for them"), or to nothing.  But even if nothing is found, Hayano populates the empty space with a narrative of what might have happened.  By no means am I faulting him for this, or even criticizing him for it in an academically snarky way.  On the contrary, this is what humans do.  This is how our brains operate.  And I believe that this narrative-making is actually the manifestation of a truly human instinct. All living things have a survival instinct.  But if we're going to really figure out what makes human specifically human, it would be our unique way of creating narratives (whether literary as in the creation of myths, or scientific in the creation of theories and postulates).  I also think that the way in which humans utilize objects is also an aspect of that narrative.

What Hayano is studying is our co-existence with nature, and, by his own admission, he cannot seem to rectify the beauty of the forest with what he sees as the ugliness of decomposition.  Instinctively, we should see decomposition as ugly: decomposing corpses are toxic and can pollute water and food supplies.  They can attract vermin and other scavengers which are detrimental to health.  Yet, one of the ongoing markers of "humanity" or at least advanced thought, has been ritualized burial.  And what is ritualized burial but an attempt to re-integrate the body with the earth, and simultaneously ameliorate a sense of loss.  The two are not diametrically opposed.  We memorialize the dead, as a way to simultaneously remember (bring to mind) and forget (return the body to the earth, and mythically, return the soul to whence it came, or liberate the life-force).  But we don't really want to forget,  do we?  We need that act of burial to mark an end, to find closure, and to leave a remnant behind which can focus our memories when we need them to be focused.

Now, let's think of this in more posthuman terms.  To circumvent the deleterious effects of decomposition, we find elaborate ways to either preserve or dispose of the dead.  Whether we choose a "green" burial and commit the body naked into a pit and foster decomposition; or we burn it to ash, make the ash into a diamond, and wear it around or necks; or if we mummify the dead to be unearthed millenia later and put on display in a museum, they are all, essentially, the same action:  a reintegration into the landscape as object, and an integration of loss into the conceptual landscape of self.  Mourning is a reconstitution of self in light of an absence.  Instinctively, I want to jump to the emotional/affective loss.  But I'm going to resist that urge again and focus on the physical loss.

The closer I am to the person who has died, the more likely their physical presence is attached to the idea of them.  In fact, I can actually get a visceral response when I think about the people whom I love the most simply not being there physically.  In the topography of everyday life, the physical presence of others around us is more important, I believe, than even emotional connection.  I think that existentialism may have done us a disservice in that it has elevated the concept of the consciousness to a point where it becomes unduly synonymous with the emotional, intellectual, and conceptual self.  We become so focused on getting over a loss on a conceptual level, that the sheer weight of physical absence is overlooked.  If thinking, then, is truly distributed over the specific topological spaces we occupy (as per Andy Clark's work), then the physical absence of a person with whom we've shared a specific space would have a profound effect on the mechanism of thinking itself.  The process of cognition would occur with a major piece missing, literally.  One would be thinking with a piece of his or her mind missing.

One last bit from Hayano to bring this home:

 "I think the way we live in society these days has become more complicated.  Face-to-face communication used to be vital, but now we can live our lives being online all day.  However, the truth of the matter is we still need to see each other's faces, read their expressions, hear their voices, so we can fully understand their emotions.  To coexist."

To some extent, every physical object that constitutes our immediate, regular environments is a part of the thinking self -- literally.  A truly distributed cognition system consists of the biological brain, body, and physical objects within a person's specific living environment.  One can say that the machine through which one "co-exists" with others virtually also makes up part of that cognition system, but somehow, that virtual presence is qualitatively different than having a face-to-face, "real life" interaction with someone.  A distributed cognition might explain why an online, virtual presence "just isn't the same" as the "live" alternative.

Aokigahara, and the suicides therein, gives us an albeit extreme way to recharacterize the lebenswelt  (or life-world: our lived experience in our specific, individual space and time).  I don't pretend to try to get into the minds or the inherent anguish these individuals have experienced.  But as someone familiar with the impact of loss (especially the kind involved with suicide), it is the intricacies of the physicality of loss which often remain unexplored or de-emphasized.  If we miss out on the role of physicality in the tragedy of death, we'd be even less inclined to see the role it has in our everyday interaction with the world around us.

Aokigahara Forest, Part 2: Vitally Active Debris

I don't want to get too hung up in terms of rendering people as "debris" as much as I do elevating the "debris"  -- which would mean elevating all of that which is left behind in the suicide forest on an -- and I have to take a deep breath when I write this -- equal ontological footing as humans.  But I want to do this hypothetically, as a thought experiment.  What if we were to look at those non-human objects which were left behind with the same ontological weight as human beings?  It's not easy to do, unless we begin by thinking in terms of agency first.  Can we possibly think of those objects as having the same agency as the humans who left them?

One way to do this is to follow Jane Bennett's lead in Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, and think of the role that "vitality" plays in how human beings separate themselves from other objects. In her book, Bennett calls for a reconceptualization of what we tend to consider inanimate matter into something with more agency -- to think "beyond the life-matter binary" (Kindle location 422 of 2417).  As much as I enjoyed Bennett's book, trying to find a solid definition of "vitality" or the "vibrancy" of which she speaks is difficult; but I do not think that's necessarily her fault.  To think about what is traditionally thought of as inanimate matter (or objects, or instrumental technology) on equal ontological footing with the human subjectivity which "knows," "experiences," or "utilizes" such matter is intrinsically counter-intuitive.  It's not easy to do, and less easy to explain.  But I think the following section sets up some parameters, and helps us to at least figure out a sense of what she's getting at:

"Why advocate the vitality of matter?  Because my hunch is that the image of dead or thoroughly instrumentalized matter feeds human hubris and our earth-destroying fantasies of conquest and consumption.  It does so by preventing us from detecting (seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling) a fuller range of the nonhuman powers circulating around and within human bodies.  These material powers, which can aid or destroy, enrich or disable, ennoble or degrade us, in any case call for our attentiveness, or even "respect" ... The figure of an intrinsically inanimate matter may be of the impediments to the emergence of a more ecological and more materially sustainable modes of production and consumption."  (Kindle location 36 of 2417).  

I chose the quote above because it stands in contrast to the objects we're seeing in Aokigahara:  Those objects seem to be poignant reminders of life.  But if we think about the objects which the individuals have left behind, they themselves would seem, by traditional standards, to lack a certain "vitality."  In fact, the only way they do gain some kind of "life" is by another living witness's granting of agency upon them.  In other words, a person such as Hayano comes across an object; the object is granted a kind of subsidiary vitality via the connection (by another) to its imagined "owner" (i.e. human agent).  The vitality of the object seems contingent upon human subjectivity.  It only means something if there is a human witness there to give it such a meaning.   But, from an alternative -- but not opposite or reciprocal --  view, the object itself does have a real impact on the vitality or agency of the human.  That is to say, my instinct here is to flip the sentence rhetorically and say 'what if  human subjectivity were contingent upon the vitality of the object?'  But in doing that I'm still kind of stashing a little human ontological nugget into the object itself:  "vitality of the object" does nothing for the present discussion, because "vitality" here still has human connotations.  It is difficult to think of vitality any other way than in human terms.  So "vitality of the object" simply means "object with human agency projected onto it."

But, a slight tweak may get us on the right path.  Perhaps, "what if the vitality of human subjectivity were contingent upon the object?"  To achieve what Bennett calls for, I believe that "vitality" must always be associated with humanity; vitality is a placeholder for "humanness."  It's a kind of anthropomorphization-lite.  If we think of objects having vitality, according to Bennett, then we aren't giving into that hubris-feeding, earth destroying fantasy of conquest and consumption.  Human subjectivity works as human subjectivity because it must bestow a vitality on objects it comes across within its field of experience.  Even if we see an object as something to be destroyed, used, or otherwise exploited, we must imagine it as such -- visualize it.  It must come into our field of experience.  This, I believe, is the vitalization Bennett's calling for, and if this is the case, then her call becomes an existential one -- albeit a very reformed, avant-garde existentialism, in which the centrality of subjectivity is de-emphasized to pull the importance of the objects/matter into the foreground.

So then, if we take that vitality as a kind of neo-existentialism (perhaps a materialist-existentialism?), then we can more easily occupy the "object" space in a kind of inverse eidetic reduction.  How does this object "activate" my subjectivity.  How does it "ping" the self?  Getting back to Hayano in the forest, the objects he's handling are not really acting as reminders of the humans who left them there.  In reality, those objects are bringing Hayano's self-reflexively forward out of the forest, allowing Hayano to think of the possiblities of the people who may have left these objects behind.  These objects are not direct links or reminders of people, instead, they are actants which activate Hayano's subjective experiences, and thus his epistemological processes which provide a series of possibilities as to where these things came from, who they belonged to, and even the more involved -- and presumptive -- narrative origins of how they got there.  The objects activate the thinking-Hayano; the self-reflexive Hayano who is aware of himself being aware of his spatio-temporal position amid the environment of the Aokigahara forest.  The objects reinforce his imago in extremely complex and manifold ways.

In this way, the objects are vital as per Bennett's definition, but only because they are actants upon the vitality-bestowing capability of the human being itself.  I think the objects are "vitality"-inducing.  I'm tempted to say that these objects -- really, any objects -- act as a kind of ongoing efficient cause of selfhood.  All objects perpetually trigger, reinforce, and reiterate the self.  But, the most important thing to remember is that it is a self which is composed of the objects around it.  It is a self that is unique to that specific topology and temporality.  How is this different than a Husserlian model of consciousness, where the self is dependent on phenomena (it's own biological phenomena as well as the phenomena around it)?  Husserl implies that phenomena allows the self to come into being -- as a raw material -- that fuels the consciousness; and that the overall modality of experience is contingent upon the internal structure of the consciousness.

Let's try that another way.  For Husserl, what we experience "out there" in the world around us is actually occurring internally -- within our consciousness.  So, the distinct qualia of our own, personal experiences is determined primarily by the consciousness itself.  The phenomena (of our biological functions, as well as the sense data from the external world) is always already filtered through the process of consciousness.  For me, however, I feel that the very processes and mechanism of consciousness itself is determined by the external.  So, it's not just the shape of thoughts ... it's the mechanism and shape of consciousness which is determined by what we traditionally call the external world.  So, how the consciousness functions, and the qualia of experience, is a tapestry in which the biological phenomena of thought, memories, emotions, etc, are woven together with the specific topography that particular human being occupies.

This isn't that difficult to conceptualize, actually, when we think about extreme examples of how we experience the world.  When we are obsessed to the point of distraction with something, it's the emotional phenomena which rises to the surface and affects experience the most, pushing the "external" to an almost dangerously low level.  It is an aspect of "self" which takes center stage, and seemingly detaches us from the world we physically inhabit.  Conversely, when we are completely subsumed in the external world ... say, in those moments when we are "running by instinct" alone,  or are completely in the moment, that "self" is subsumed to the point of not even being able to form a coherent temporal schema (i.e. "The car hit a patch of black ice, it started spinning, and the next thing I knew, I was upside-down in a ditch").

I think that each of the individuals who enter Aokigahara doesn't just experience the forest differently, I think they are the forest according to their individual experiences.  As soon as they step into it, they become all that the forest is, including what they know of it before they enter.  For those that enter determined to die, they leave no trace of themselves, but instead willingly subsume their "selves" into the topology of the Aokigahara itself.  They disappear.  Those who step in with doubts must find a way to assert their "selves" against the topology of the forest, and thus leave behind lifelines, notes, and other marks distinguishing that self -- either to save their own lives, or to leave a bit of themselves to be found by an other.  Not to be morbid (probably too late, I know), if a person wants a part to be found, then there was always doubt -- always an aspect of them which desired to live.  The debris -- or remnant -- is an inanimate surrogate of self; as if to say, "I cannot bear the prospect of living, but nor can I bear the prospect of nothingness."  That object left behind (whatever it may be), isn't alive, but it's not nothing.

Ironically, to leave something behind becomes the final mark of the human survival instinct.  The object is what remains of the human.

This is all leading somewhere, and I'll wrap up my Aokigahara thoughts in the next post.

Aokigahara Forest, Part 1: You Always Find Something

I came across this video recently. It's been making the rounds on various blogs and Tumblr, mostly in the context of suicide prevention and various religious discourses. On an emotional level, it's quite moving. On an intellectual level -- especially in the context of posthumanism, it's fascinating. Watch the video before proceeding. Heed the disclaimers, though, because there is some imagery that might be disturbing to some.

From a posthuman perspective, I was struck the most by geologist Azusa Hayano's statements regarding the tape that had been wound around trees and tree-limbs:

"People who are indecisive about dying, wrap this tape on trees along their way so they can find their way out ... In most cases, if you follow the tape, you find something at the end. Either you find a dead body, or you find traces that someone was there. You always find something."

Hayano's statement here is telling. For him, indecision and doubt are marked by the existence of physical evidence/objects. He later implies that those who are determined to commit suicide walk into the forest without any kind of objects to leave behind. They seem to walk in and "disappear" completely. From a posthuman perspective, it would make sense that doubt would be marked by objects. Objects have the quality of holding one to a specific time and place. On a practical level, they can mark goals or destinations (literally, a starting line or finish line, or monument, or landmark). On an affective level, they become representations of a specific moment in time and space, and take on the a kind of emotional burden. As I've said previously in Posthuman Suffering, we seek out technology as a means to "lift out" pain and suffering from our human selves. We want technology not to alleviate that suffering, but to actually suffer with us. Note, that's with us, not for us.

For objects, the relationship is similar, I think. But because of the physically simple nature of a single object -- in this case, the tape -- the practical/affective boundary is indistinct. The tape in Aokigahara Forest allegedly serves a singular practical purpose: to allow the individual to find his or her way out should they decide not to kill themselves. But how can we not assign a more profound, symbolic purpose to them as well: traces of lives; tendrils that anchor the individual to the possibility of living. The tape becomes, literally, a lifeline back to the world. And, given Japanese technoculture, that 'world' is one represented by technology, or that which is not nature (Hayano discusses this toward the end of the video, more on that later).

I can't stress enough exactly how important the affective/practical nature of that lifeline is. For the individuals who want out of the Aokigahara, the tape is their only way to navigate back to the main trail system. Furthermore, it seems as if those who do actually decide to leave the forest still leave objects behind. Granted, those objects may simply be trash, but they are evidence of their presence nonetheless. Even the tape remains behind. Are these texts? Testimonials to moments of despair? I wonder how many of those who decide not to kill themselves ultimately pick up after themselves and take the tape with them. I would be inclined to believe not many at all; but that is pure speculation. The objects seem anonymous enough to not specifically identify an individual (and thus not bring the potential for some kind of public shame), but are personal enough that they represent an individual life or path. I'm reminded here of Sting's "Message in a Bottle." At the moment of despair, "100 billion bottles washed up on the shore," testaments of lonliness for 100 billion castaways.

On the other side, however, for those who do succumb, these lifelines are only lifelines in the past tense. For the living, the life-lines represent the final moments of a person, and mark the final trajectory of a life. And, in such a fashion, what is found at the end of the line are "things." As Hayano stated, "you always find something" whether it's scattered objects, or a corpse. And in that moment, the person is now definitively a "thing." That thingness is even more emphasized by the state of the human found.  And it's up to the people on the other end to bestow upon the corpse its human-in-the-past-tense status.  If the corpse is never found, it becomes indistinguishable from the forest itself. In a similar register to the Heideggerian "they," the corpse-as-thing, devoid of a certain essential "human-ness" (very problematic term here, I know), becomes obfuscated by the otherness of the forest itself.  It is only found when there is someone else there to find it; and furthermore, it is found because it is not of the forest -- but is distinguished in the same fashion as the other artifacts which themselves are markers of a once present human.  Poignantly, the suicides of the forest are rendered into debris; the debris of modern life.

More in the next post.