No More Learning

51. Experts in modern literature are aware of explicidy unreadable texts. Such texts, however, only intensify a limitation that has always existed.
52. For an elaboration of this point, see Chapter 3, below.
53. See Dietrich Schwanitz, "Zeit und Geschichte im Roman--Interaktion
326 Notes to Pages 26-29
und Gesellschaft im Drama: Zur wechselseitigen Erhellung von Systemtheorie und Literatur," in Dirk Baecker et al. , eds. , Theorie als Passion (Frankfurt, 1987), pp. 181-213.
54. In order to elucidate the self-reference of poems (as opposed to hetero- reference), Earl R. Wasserman, The Subtler Language: Critical Readings ofNeo-
Classic and Romantic Poems (Baltimore, 1959), p. 7, speaks of "the interactive capacities of any of the properties of words . . . including connotation and the ca- pacity of a word to carry more than one reference as a symbol, metaphor, ambigu- ity, or pun; position and repetition; word order; sound, rhyme; even orthography. "
55. For an older formulation of this principle (comparing it to the oudine in the visual arts), see Moritz, Schriften zur Asthetik, pp. 99f.
56. Umberto Eco, for example, defines the concept of form as "un tutto or- ganico" {Opera aperta [1962; 6th ed. Milan, 1988], p. 22. )
57. See, e. g. , Abraham Moles, Information Theory and Esthetic Perception (Ur- bana, 111. , 1966), p. 57: "Byform (Gestalt) we mean here a group of elements per- ceived as a whole and not as the product of a random collection. More precisely,
a form is a message, which appears to the observer as not being the result of ran- dom events. "
58. Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art and Painting in Partic- ular(1912; Engl, trans. New York, 1947), p. 47.
59. Ciardi and Williams, How Does a Poem Mean? p. xxii (authors' emphasis). 60. Spencer Brown, Laws ofForm, p. 1.
61. Gilles Deleuze, Logique du sens (Paris, 1969), pp. 37, 41.
62. We shall encounter this insight again under rhe name of "autopoiesis. " 63. Stephan Mussil, "Literaturwissenschaft, Systemtheorie und der Begriff der
Beobachtung," in Henk de Berg and Matthias Prangel, eds. , Kommunikation und Differenz: Systemtheoretische Ansatze in der Literatur- und Kunstwissenscha. fi (Opladen, 1993), pp. 183-202. Mussil points out correctly that the world prior to
all distinctions (for which Spencer Brown has no concept) must be distinguished from the "unmarked space" that emerges when a "marked space" is severed. Ini- tially, Spencer Brown uses only the second concept, which designates the space accessible from the marked space by crossing its boundary. This conceptual lim- itation, while it serves the purposes of a calculus, does not exclude an inquiry into
the state of the world that is severed by the injunction "draw a distinction. " Nor does it prevent us from thematizing the unity of the distinction between marked and unmarked space. Spencer Brown acknowledges this by introducing the con- cept of the "unwritten cross" during a later phase of his calculus. (Spencer Brown, Laws of Form, p. 7. ) See also, Matthias Varga von Kibed and Rudolf Matzka, "Motive und Grundgedanken der 'Gesetze der Form,'" in Dirk Baecker, ed. , Kalkul der Form (Frankfurt, 1993), pp. 58-85 (691". , 77); as well as Hegel's distinc- tion between the infinite as the opposite of the finite and as true infinity in his
Notes to Pages 30-31
327
Vorlesungentiberdie Philosophie der Religion I, quoted from Werke, vol. 16 (Frank- furt, 1969), pp. i78f. For the purpose of distinguishing these two concepts, we
shall speak of the unmarked state when referring to a state of the world prior to
all distinctions and of the concept of the unmarked space when referring to the opposite of the marked space.
64. "And, if such a verse as this/may not claim another kiss. " From "Claim- ing a Second Kiss by Desert," quoted from Ben Jonson, The Complete Poems (New Haven, Conn. , 1975), pp. i3if.
65. The internal rhetoric of the Art & Language Group uses the term re- description but primarily for styles or exemplary works. See Michael Baldwin, Charles Harrison, Mel Ramsden, "On Conceptual Art and Painting, and Speak- ing and Seeing: Three Corrected Transcripts," Art-Language, n. s. 1 (1994): 30-69. However, the full significance of a continual reactualization of "redescriptions" becomes apparent only when it is referred to individual acts arranged as a form. Then we recognize that we are dealing with attempts to objectify double contin- gency, to observe works of art as conversations. Baldwin et al. (p. 63) speak of a "dialogic aura" (where "aura" could be taken to imply a reference to the un- marked space). I am grateful to Christian Matthiessen for arranging a meeting with the members of the Art & Language Group.
66. For an analysis using modern theoretical means, see, e. g. , Friedrich Cramer, "Schonheit als dynamisches Grenzphanomen zwischen Chaos und Ordnung-- ein neuer Laokoon," Selbstorganisation 4 (1993): 79-102.
6j. Spencer Brown, Laws ofForm.
68. Michael Riffaterre, Semiotics ofPoetry (Bloomington, Ind. , 1978), p. 26, understands the poetic value of neologisms in terms of a "a relationship between two equivalent forms, one marked and one unmarked. The unmarked form an- tedates the text, the marked one does not. " See also his "Po&ique du n^olo- gisme," in Riffaterre, La production du texte (Paris, 1979), pp. 61-74.
69. RanulphGlanvilleandFranciscoVarelatackleasimilarquestionin'"Your
Inside Is Out and Your Outside Is In' (Beatles, 1968)," in George E. Lasker, ed. , Applied Systems and Cybernetics: Proceedings of the International Congress on Ap- plied Systems Research and Cybernetics (New York, 1981), pp. 638-41.
70. SpencerBrownbeginswiththephrase:"Wetakeasgiventheideaofdis- tinction and die idea of indication, and that we cannot make an indication without drawing a distinction" (Laws ofForm, p. 1).
71. Hegelraisesasimilarissue--thatoneneedstodistinguishoneselfinorder
to distinguish--but he treats the problem as the beginning of universality and
in this specific sense as the beginning of a reflection that, in its final stage of Spirit, reaches a perfection that no longer has an outside. See, e. g. , Hegel's Vorle- sungen iiber die Philosophie der Religion I, p. 125: "In der Tat aber ist diese Entz- weiung, dafi ich Subjekt gegen die Objektivitat bin, eine Beziehung und Iden-
328 Notes to Pages 32-33
titdt, die zugleich unterschieden ist von diesem Unterschiede, und es beginnt darin die Allgemeinheit. "
72. For an elaboration of this point, see Niklas Luhmann, "Die Paradoxic der Form," in Dirk Baecker, ed. , Kalkiil der Form, pp. 197-212; trans, as "The Para- dox of Form," in Baecker, ed. , Problems ofForm, trans. Michael Irmscher, with Leah Edwards (Stanford, Calif. , 1999), pp. 15-26.
73. See Elena Esposito, L'operazione di osservatione: Costruttivismo e teoria dei sistemi sociale (Milan, 1992).
74. That the exclusion can be observed or can captivate a narrator's interest to the point where he makes it collapse by intervening as narrator into his own nar- ration only affirms the necessity of exclusion. According to the well-known pre- sentation of this problem in Lawrence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, the intervening narrator must be distinguished from the narrator who narrates the narrator's in- tervention. It seems no accident that Jean Paul's Die unsichtbare Loge--an early work in which the narrator is identical with the protagonist's educator and in- terferes with the action in all sorts of ways--remained unfinished, and that the problem is toned down in his following work, Hesperus. On this problem and on Jane Austen's solution via stylistic forms that combine self-reference and hetero- reference, see Dietrich Schwanitz, "Rhetorik, Roman und die internen Grenzen der Kommunikation: Zur systemtheoretischen Beschreibung einer Problemkon- stellation der 'sensibility,'" Rhetorik 9 (1990): 52-67. See also Schwanitz, Sys-
temtheorie und Literatur: Ein neues Paradigma (Opladen, 1990). Only writing leaves the narrator free to appear in his narration or refrain from doing so. In oral narration, the author is present anyway.
75. A variation on this drawing of a boundary can be found in opera perfor- mances, when ovations interrupt a scene and bring the performance to a halt while the audience is in an uproar. The reason why this tends to happen in opera is that the actor's vocal performance can easily be separated from his role in the play. After all, it is remarkable that an experienced opera audience is not both- ered by the sudden change from the most delicate music or bravura to the noise of clapping hands, whereas one would expect a frightened reaction from an au- dience participating in the mode of everyday experience.
j6. "Signature Event Context," in Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy (Chicago, 1982), pp. 307-30. Signing the text (in print) is of little help in this matter.
77. In literary theory, Paul de Man expounded the idea that the unity of the
world is unattainable and nonrepresentable--but through textual analyses rather
than an elaborated conceptual vocabulary. See Paul de Man, Blindness and In- sight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism (1971; 2d ed. Minneapolis, 1983), and his The Rhetoric ofRomanticism (New York, 1984).
78. See Eva Meyer, "Der Unterschied, der eine Umgebung schafft," in ars electronica, eds. , Im Netz der Systeme (Berlin, 1991), pp. 110-22.
Notes to Pages 33-37
329
79. See Bernard Willms, "Politik als Erste Philosophic oder: Was heifit radi- kales politisches Philosophieren? " in Volker Gerhardt, ed. , Der Begriffder Poli- tik: Bedingungen und Griinde politischen Handelns (Stuttgart, 1990), pp. 252-67 (260, 26j? ).
80. See Yves Barel, Le paradoxe et le systeme: Essai sur le fantastique social, 2d ed. (Grenoble, 1989), pp. yif. , i8jf. , 302f.
81. See, e. g. , David Daube, "Dissent in Bible and Talmud," California Law Review 59 (1971): 784-94; or Jeffrey I. Roth, "The Justification for Controversy under Jewish Law," California Law Review 76 (1988): 338-87.
82. So in Jacques Derrida, "Form and Meaning: A Note on the Phenomenol- ogy of Language," Margins ofPhilosophy, pp. 155-73, p. 172, n. 16. On the notion of "ichnography," see also Michel Serres, Genese (Paris, 1982), pp. 4off. and fre- quently throughout. One could cite further evidence for this basic idea, which underlies the critique of ontological metaphysics and its dependence on the premise of presence.
83. See Arthur C. Danto, The Transfiguration ofthe Commonplace: A Philoso- phy ofArt (Cambridge, Mass. , 1981).
84. Friedrich Schlegel emphasized the work's isolation as the essential step on which everything else depends: "Das Wesendichste sind die bestimmten Zwecke, die Absonderung, wodurch allein das Kunstwerk Umrifi erhalt und in sich selbst vollendet wird" {Gesprachtiberdie Poesie, pp. 157O.
85. According to the "law of crossing" in Spencer Brown, Laws ofForm, p. 12: "The value of a crossing made again is not the value of the crossing," and "for any boundary, to recross is not to cross. "
86. In response to questions raised by Georg Stanitzek at the Center for In- terdisciplinary Research, Bielefeld: "Was ist Kommunikation? Vorlage fur das Kolloquium 'Systemtheorie und Literaturwissenschaft'" (January 6-8, 1994).
87. David Roberts, "The Paradox of Form: Literature and Self-Reference," Poetics 21 (1992): 75-91.
88. See Theodor W Adorno, Asthetische Theorie, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 7 (Frankfurt, 1970). See also Chapter 7, section V, below.
89. For more on this, see Niklas Luhmann, "Zeichen als Form," in Dirk Baecker, ed. , Probleme der Form (Frankfurt, 1993), pp. 45-69; trans, as "Sign as Form," in Baecker, ed. , Problems ofForm, trans. Michael Irmscher, with Leah Ed- wards (Stanford, Calif. , 1999), pp. 46-63.
90. See also Stanley Fish's critique of a "reception theory" which, despite its proclaimed emphasis on one side, has failed to disengage itself from its oppo- site--production--and is therefore unable to make distinctions. "Why No One's Afraid of Wolfgang Iser," in Stanley Fish, Doing What Comes Naturally:
Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies (Oxford, 1989), pp. 68-86.
Fish's critique falls short, however, because of its own reluc-
tance to make distinctions.
33Q
Notes to Pages 37-40
91. "We see now that thefirstdistinction, the mark, and the observer [whom we had assumed "outside," N. L. ] are not only interchangeable, but, in the form, identical" (Spencer Brown, Laws ofForm, p. 76). We are dealing here with the "reentry" of the form into the form and, in this sense, with a binding of the imaginary space that cannot be thematized.
92. There is no need to derive this--by no means novel--insight from the radicalism of Spencer Brown's formal calculus. Husserl analyzed how determina-
tion is gained through a variation of shades, and these analyses, too, ground a common precondition of experiencing and acting in the conditions of possibility
for determination. See especially ? 41 in Edmund Husserl, Idem zu einer reinen Phanomenologie und phanomenologischen Philosophie, vol. 1, Husserliana, vol. 3 (The Hague, 1950), pp. 9iff. See further his Erfahrung und Urteil: Untersuchun-
gen zur Genealogie der Logik (Hamburg, 1948), and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenominolope de la perception (Paris, 1945), esp. his analyses of C&sanne on the search for identity, pp. 372ff. On the same topic, see Gerard Wormser, "Merleau- Ponty--Die Farbe und die Malerei," Selbstorganisation 4 (1993): 233-50.
93. For fitting formulations, see Lodovico Dolce, Dialogo della Pittura (1557), quoted from Paola Barocchi, ed. , Trattati d'arte del cinquecento, vol. 1 (Bari, i960), pp. 141-206 (170). For an overview, see Luigi Grassi, "I concetti di schizzo, abozzo, macchia, 'non finito' e la costruzione dell opera d'arte," in Studi di onore di Pietro Silva (Florence, 1957), pp. 97-106.
94. While this recognition does not put an end to the elaborate and rather confusing debate concerning a reader-oriented text theory, it does displace its problematic.
95. See Henri Focillon, The Life ofForms in Art (New York, 1992), p. 103.
96. According to a formulation of Z. W. Pylyshyn, "Computation and Cog- nition: Issues in the Foundation of Cognitive Science," Behavioral and Brain Sci- ences 3 (1980): 120; quoted from Klaus Fischer, "Die kognitive Konstitution sozialer Strukturen," Zeitschriftfur Soziologie 1% (1989): 16-34 (24)-
97. We are following the observation that perception requires the repression of neurophysiological information, a "forgetting" of the operative closure of the nervous system. See section I, above. Once again, this condition cannot be lifted; the work of art cannot be experienced as a mode of information processing within one's own brain--it remains "outside. " Instead, perception is transformed into a process of reflection, at least into more persistent viewing or more con- centrated listening.
98. Ciardi and Williams, How Does a Poem Mean? p. 6. See also Menke- Eggers, Die Souveranitat der Kunst, pp. 77ff.
99. In response to this question, Shaftesbury, among many others, suggests that the artist can be interested only in an audience that is critical, competent, and capable of judgment, or, as it was put in the eighteenth century, in an audi-
Notes to Pages 40-47
331
ence that possesses "taste. " See Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, 2d ed. (n. p. , 1714; rpt. Farnborough Hants. , 1968), vol. 1, pp. 243f. But this idea is by far too general and begs the question of how a work of art can be created, if not in view of rules, at least in anticipation
of taste. To respond adequately, one would have to say that the artwork must cre- ate generalized expectations in order to specify these expectations via informa- tion. After all, we are dealing neither with a declaration of norms nor with a functional equivalent of law or morality.
100. Usually this point is expressed--though not forcefully enough--with reference to the permanent need of significant artworks for interpretation.
101. This beginning before all differentiation is, upon closer inspection, no be- ginning at all--despite Hegel's formulation--but rather a. permanentprecondition
of all the operations of "Spirit. " On Hegel's mode of presentation, see, e. g. , the following excerpt from Hegel's Vorlesungen iiber die Philosophic der Religion I, p. 94: "Aber beim Anfang hat man noch nicht unterschiedene Bestimmungen, Eines
und ein Anderes: beim Anfang ist man nur beim Einen, nicht beim Anderen. "
102. On this problem, see also Niklas Luhmann, "Sthenographie und Euryal- istik," in Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and K. Ludwig Pfeiffer, eds. , Paradoxien, Dis- sonanzen, Zusammenbruche: Situationen offener Epistemologie (Frankfurt, 1991), pp. 58-82. A logical concept of paradox is not at issue here. Logic, no matter how
it presents paradox (e. g. , as a necessary collapse of the distinction between lev-
els), considers paradox as something to be avoided. By contrast, we suggest that operations that observe, even those of logic, cannot avoid only unfolding para- doxes, that is, replacing them with distinctions.
103. Foroneofmanyexamples,seeGiovanniPaoloLomazzo,IdeadelTempio della Pittura (Milan, 1590), p. 43: the tempio itself cannot be seen. On "imitation" as the downscaled reproduction of a nature that cannot be grasped as a whole, see Moritz, Schriften zurAsthetik, p. 92.
104. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore, 1974), p. 70.
105. See, e. g. , Antoine Coypel, Discours prononcez dans les conferences de L'Acadimie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (Paris, 1721), p. 72.
106. Within an ontologically inspired frame of observation, one could only say that the boundary is "nothing. " See, e. g. , Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks (New York, n. d. ), pp. 61, 73f.
107. Perhaps we should abandon the word "object" altogether and return to the "thing" (in the sense of res). However, we retain the "object" since in English and French literature the reconstruction has concerned this word. See also, in German translation, Ranulph Glanville, Objekte (Berlin, 1988).
108. One would have to add that symbolization is necessary because the pre- supposed simultaneity of other consciousnesses blocks access to these conscious-
332
Notes to Pages 47-53
nesses. See especially George Herbert Mead, "The Social Self," Journal ofPhibs- ophy 10 (1913): 374-80; Mead, "A Behavioristic Account of the Significant Sym- bol," Journal ofPhilosophy 19 (1922): 157-63; and Mead, "The Genesis of the Self and Social Control," InternationalJournal of'Ethics 35 (1924/25): 251-77.
109. Serres, Genese, p. 146.
no. von Foerster, Observing Systems, pp. 273fF.
in. Another well-known example from religion is persons transported into
ecstasy, whose public obsession points to transcendent powers without there be-
ing a need for verbal communication. For biblical evidence, see Michael Welker, Gottes Geist: Theologie des Heiligen Geistes (Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1992), pp. 79ff.
112. Serres, Genese.
113. This conceptual choice requires a distinction between meaning and infor- mation. See Donald W. MacKay, Information, Mechanism and Meaning (Cam- bridge, Mass. , 1969).
114. Umberto Eco, too, in Opera aperta, e. g. , p. 119, considers the increase in information to be a general poetic principle; but not until today does art explic- itly aim at this principle and press it to its limits. According to Eco, artworks should therefore remain "open" to further information.
115. On this concept, see Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco Varela, The
Tree ofKnowledge: The Biological Roots ofHuman Understanding (Boston, 1992),
pp. 7sff. , i8iff.
116. See Alfred Gierer, Die Physik, das Leben unddie Seek (Munich, 1985), esp.
pp. mff.
117. For a semiotic theory, see, e. g. , Menke-Eggers, Die Souverdnitat der Kunst,
pp. 6iff. Aesthetic experience defines its own signifieds as significant.
118. Disregarding this distinction regresses to the epoch of the cult of genius, which--although it formulated for the first time the radical temporality of art as opposed to its mere historicity--went too far in inferring the rank of an artwork from its unexpected appearance and the genius of the artist from the suddenness
of his insights. See Karl Heinz Bohrer, Plotzlichkeit: Zum Augenblick des asthetis- chen Scheins (Frankfurt, 1981).
119. Critics might suspect that this is stilted nonsense: How is a tautology (art communicates by means of artworks) supposed to sound less trivial when backed up by theory? Precisely this must be shown. The formulation may prove fruitful to interpretation, or it may be capable of synthesizing insights (of a historical and systematic nature) that would otherwise remain isolated.
120. For a special perspective on this question, see Niklas Luhmann, "Das Kunstwerk und die Selbstreproduktion der Kunst," in Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht
and K. Ludwig Pfeiffer, eds. , Stil: Geschichten undFunktionen eines kulturwissen- schaftlichen Diskurselements (Frankfurt, 1986), pp. 620-72.
121. The notion of clearly defined artistic genres has become increasingly prob-
Notes to Pages 54-58
333
lematic. Genres do not constitute autopoietic systems in their own right, but they obviously facilitate the autopoiesis of art by making possible an observing that is restricted and trained, including the recognition of astonishing but intelligible de- viations from given formal models. On the integration of genre distinctions--lit- erature feeds off literature, representing nothing beyond itself--see, e. g. , Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, trans. Richard Howard (Cleveland, 1973).
? 2
1. This differs from Fichte: the observer does not begin by positing himself.
2. The question whether such observers "exist" and who they are must be left to sociology.
3. SeeChapter1,sectionIX.
4. See Humberto R. Maturana, who limits his analyses to living systems:
Erkennen: Die Organisation und Verkorperung von Wirklichkeit: Ausgewdhlte Ar- beiten zur biologischen Epistemologie (Braunschweig, 1982), pp. 34, i49f.
5. Negations are thus no longer primary operations as in classical logic. We shall return to this point when discussing modern art--an art that negates art. See Chapter 4, section II, and Chapter 7, section V, below.
6. As does Novalis in his Fichte-Studien: "Wie wird das absolute Ich ein em- pirisches Ich? " (quoted from Novalis: Werke, Tagebiicher undBriefe Friedrich von Hardenbergs, ed. Hans-Joachim Mahl and Richard Samuel, vol. 2 [Darmstadt, 1978], p. 31)-
7. See the corresponding propositions in George Spencer Brown, Laws of Form (1969; rpt. New York, 1979), p. 105.
8. As insiders will notice, we are thinking of Paul de Man.
9. See Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago, 1982), p. 66.
10. A selection of the above-mentioned literature includes: Heinz von Foer-
ster, Observing Systems (Seaside, Calif, 1981); Humberto R. Maturana, Erkennen; Maturana, "The Biological Foundation of Self Consciousness and the Physical Domain of Existence," in Niklas Luhmann et al. , Beobachter: Konvergenz der Erkenntnistheorien? (Munich, 1990), pp. 47-117; Dean MacCannell and Juliet F. MacCannell, The Time of the Sign: A Semiotic Interpretation ofModern Culture (Bloomington, Ind. , 1982); Spencer Brown, Laws ofForm, Gotthard Gunther, Beitrage zur Grundlegung einer operationsfahigen Dialektik, 3 vols.