Symbolism: throwing things together, the measure of authenticity?

symbolism 1654, “practice of representing things with symbols,” from symbol. Attested from 1892 as a movement in Fr. literature that aimed at representing ideas and emotions by indirect suggestion rather than direct expression; rejecting realism and naturalism, it attached symbolic meaning to certain objects, words, etc. Fr. symboliste was coined by poet Paul Verlaine (1844-96) in 1885.
symbol Look up symbol at Dictionary.com->

symbol c.1434, “creed, summary, religious belief,” from L.L. symbolum “creed, token, mark,” from Gk. symbolon “token, watchword” (applied c.250 by Cyprian of Carthage to the Apostles’ Creed, on the notion of the “mark” that distinguishes Christians from pagans) from syn- “together” stem of ballein “to throw.” …

… The sense evolution is from “throwing things together” to “contrasting” to “comparing” to “token used in comparisons to determine if something is genuine.” …

… Hence, “outward sign” of something. The meaning “something which stands for something else” first recorded 1590 (in “Faerie Queene”). Symbolic is attested from 1680.

First: I’m struck by this notion of symbolism meaning “throwing things together” - I suppose for something to stand for something else, it must put its back up to it and project [blank], that is, project its case for standing for something else.

Second: What is sense evolution? An interesting phrase, because what of the sense remains the same and what changes?

Third: In a curious and potentially unconscious/ conscientious move, “Saudi authorities” in 2004 replaced the three jamarats, obelisk shaped targets in the Stoning of the Devil ceremony that is part of Hajj, with three walls accessible by a great multi-levelled bridge.

The expressed reason for the reconstruction is safety, and that makes perfect sense, but what I see in the wall is an enlargement of the pillars to unrepresentable proportions. To remain a jamarat (a pillar), the community of participants must fill in that which lies beyond the crop marks to its imaginable size.

Thanks to imagination, the wall can secure the well being of the masses as they reject the devil.

Yet this is not the only activity taking place. There is a projection involved in securing a safe site of projection. The act on the day is a “throwing something together”, but so too is the jamarat bridge - this passageway over and upon which the projection is made - a throwing of concrete, a throwing of people. This is the Jamarat Bridge and one can see the three pillars.

The site is being reconstructed again. 362 died in 2006 at the event, something to do with luggage getting in the way of the flow of the crowd. Apparently not everyone makes it over the bridge. According to Alexander Trevi at Pruned:

Dirk Helbing, a professor in crowd dynamics at the Dresden University of Technology, et al., will be complemented by a reorganization of the streets leading up to the bridge, and a time schedule and route assignments as determined in real time through video monitoring and on-site surveillance.

As stones are throne at these pillars/half-done, people are throne across the bridge. And this is how a community of self projection evolves, through conscientious and imaginative commitment to throwing something together. This is how the obelisk is built.

Trevi’s piece on the Bridge pointed me to something analogue to this - the 10 Mile Spiral, a great big coiled rattlesnake of a roadway near Las Vegas that conceptually give you all the pleasure of Vegas while maintaining efficient throughput.

Benjamin Aranda and Chris Lasch, authors of this concept in their book Tool, have, like the developers of the Bridge, decongestion and cultural facilitation as their aim.

First, it acts as a massive traffic decongestion device… by adding significant mileage to the highway in the form of a spiral. The second purpose is less infrastructural and more cultural: along the spiral you can play slots, roulette, get married, see a show, have your car washed, and ride through a tunnel of love, all without ever leaving your car. It is a compact Vegas, enjoyed at 55 miles per hour and topped off by a towering observation ramp offering views of the entire valley floor below.

The obelisk of the 10 Mile Spiral appears to be negative-space obelisk, but I don’t know if I buy that. The folks at BLDGBLOG, who introduced me to the 10 Mile Spiral, point out some scene in J.G. Ballard’s Concrete Island, where a character driving around in the madness of London’s motorways loathes the other drivers. The stick shifts of other drivers could quite possibly be our obelisks, but so what if I loathe everyone today and care little tomorrow? There’s nothing very together about it - I still go out driving. I like a spectacle. A mass gathering - congregating to maintaine the etymological integrity of symbol-the-verb. Motorways spin around a city, perhaps that is our obelisk (or obelisk park, since all respectable cities are filled with them.) Washington D.C. spins around the Washington Monument - there’s an obelisk that took a couple of decades to build!

But on the stones we throw in Vegas, I know something:

It is dice we throw together.

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Žižek on the formally evil: unconditional love

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/DhDuYfZa5dE" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

“Assume the mistake and go to the end; this we call love.”

I buy it.

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Best birthday card ever

Thanks, Zack, and everyone else who signed the card and came to La Conner. It was the pleasantest of surprises.

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Foreign Policy calls Boer cause in Boer War a sham

It’s understandable that a group feeling its loss of status would want to reach back for icons and moments in history to be proud of. But, aside from the fact that chanting a general’s name is a strange habit in a democracy, the cause that De la Rey fought for was less than commendable. Sure, the Boers were resisting British imperialism, but it was for the sake of their own right to marginalize and exploit the African population without British interference. - Thursday Video: Rock song rekindles ethnic tensions in South Africa - FP Passport

Michael Cognato’s expression of the “cause they fought for” may be an unconscious slight of the American and Canadian causes which motivated self-government in these countries. A mimetic desire to defer guilt or at the very least, a sense of responsibility, for our American and Canadian past upon the Boers is a curious, but I believe real phenomenon in North America. The Boers/Afrikaners are so well known by their critics here on the North American continent, because the Boers are a vivid image of themselves.

But there is great cause for self-doubt, problems for the language which we decide to frame the past of South Africa and for assuming that the Boers do not share a common history with their Canadian and American counterparts: Milnerism is one (which mhambi puts out well), but another problematic phenomenon to be wrestled with is the “race conciliation” discourse of Louis Botha’s first government of the Transvaal and subsequently of the Union. That discourse, albeit referring to white - white race relations, ought to jar our ability to wholesale blame the past - for there is something there that sounds very similar to the most progressive or perhaps simply the conscientious of us.

H/T: mhambi

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Pick an enemy, make community.

“It is only out of a community forged by the recognition of a shared danger that a common readiness for responsible action can come into being.” - Moltmann, C of G, 211)

Which is the most legitimate enemy and why? Despots, Democrats, Death, Deities or Global Warming? Any other suggestions? Is ethics dependent on the recognition of a shared danger?

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