https://thingorthings.com thing or things Sat, 20 Jun 2026 17:39:07 +0000 https://thingorthings.com en https://thingorthings.com/entry-point Wed, 28 Oct 2020 16:22:33 +0000 thing or things https://thingorthings.com/entry-point <img width="3000" height="2000" width_o="3000" height_o="2000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4da5ba040f9d0f1e2d7e4aa66fd2e9d1027ff008b708d8f784cc2a0330ddf35b/018.jpg" data-mid="251709301" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4da5ba040f9d0f1e2d7e4aa66fd2e9d1027ff008b708d8f784cc2a0330ddf35b/018.jpg" /> https://thingorthings.com/things Wed, 28 Oct 2020 17:15:55 +0000 thing or things https://thingorthings.com/things Thing or Things The word thing is one of the most commonly used words in everyday speech. It is both concrete and ambiguous, indicating what is certain yet unclear, while carrying the weight of existence without conviction about specifics. ‘Thing’ derives from the Germanic ‘ding,’ or the Old English ‘þing,’ which means gathering or assembly. Interests come together in a thing: a thing is composed of attachments—the meaning of a thing is caught in its relations. But ‘thing’ has a charged philosophical history. &nbsp; &nbsp; That a thing bears many qualities has been said by both Plato and Aristotle. Later on, it is expressed in other words and concepts; however, the meaning is generally the same even when the philosophical positions differ. &nbsp; &nbsp; In Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant claims that philosophy has no hope of discussing the way things are in themselves—reality independent from perception—since our thinking and conceptual capacities are limited. This rift divides noumena from phenomena, or the thing-in-itself from its appearance within our conscious experience. Kant’s thing-in-itself is the thing as it truly is, understood apart from our subjective modes of representation. &nbsp; &nbsp; In Phenomenology of Spirit, G.W.F. Hegel rejects the Kantian division between thing and appearance. For Hegel, a thing is the result of a certain conceptual scheme—the thing is what appears as a thing given our methodological approach, or put differently: it is the scientific phenomenon inside of our scientific paradigm. Consequently, the thing is already conditioned by our understanding and is not an abstracted thing-in-itself. For Hegel, human representations are not ultimately determined but are continually molded and reshaped in a process that resembles history. Hegel demonstrates that even seemingly obvious and solid things change constantly and are relative to us. &nbsp; &nbsp; A different way of rejecting the thing-in-itself is found in the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. For Husserl, the reality of a thing is to appear as a phenomenon for human consciousness—any existence of things outside of consciousness is secondary. Phenomenology opposes all forms of naturalism; any explanatory theory about things must give way to a simple treatment of things as they show themselves. In order to overcome scientific naturalism, Husserl restricts things to their surface effects. The project of phenomenology is an attempt to grasp the thing through reduction. Husserl’s contributions to philosophy reveal the ongoing tension between a thing and its qualities—what we encounter in perception is neither the thing nor its raw qualities; perception is always already an interpretation. &nbsp; &nbsp; In some ways, the thing is Martin Heidegger’s most important idea, one that encapsulates all the insights of his career. Culminating in his 1927 masterpiece Being and Time, Heidegger revolutionized our concept of things. For Heidegger, things are events, not perceptual or physical occurrences. They are a how, not a what—in other words, they cannot be reduced to a list of traits and qualities. Heidegger guides us through two dramatic ideas for rethinking things: the first is the concept of tool-analysis, in which things withdraw from presence into their silent function; the second is the concept of the fourfold, in which things become quadruple mirrors, with each pole reflecting all the others. What Heidegger gives to philosophy is a model of things impenetrable to human intellect and equally opaque in everyday human use. &nbsp; &nbsp; For Sigmund Freud, the thing is the lost object, what’s absent in the subject. Jacques Lacan translates Freud’s neuronal understanding of the thing into a semiotic one: the thing is the signifier cut off from the chain of signification. &nbsp; &nbsp; Maurice Merleau-Ponty examines how the perceiving subject distinguishes itself from the outside world, seeking to explain why we don’t think of ourselves as things. &nbsp; &nbsp; Karl Marx is one of the first to notice that things can define society, even more than people; capitalist production is founded on the creation of commodities out of things. &nbsp; &nbsp; Paul-Michel Foucault demonstrates in The Order of Things that the history of the thing—history beyond the subject—was central to the first understandings of “history,” meaning the development of history as an object of study in the 19th century.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Anthropologists like Bruno Latour and Arjun Appadurai have constructed entire theories of society and history around thing-ness as an attempt to understand the world not as a product of human subjectivity.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Other extensions of thing into critical theory include Bill Brown’s proposal of thing theory as an analog to narrative theory or cultural theory—thing theory is intended to explain how inanimate objects constitute human subjects. But a thing is not just for humans—a thing is for many other things as well, both material and immaterial. &nbsp; &nbsp; In metaphysics, object-oriented ontology is a 21st-century Heidegger-influenced school of thought that rejects the privileging of subject-object relations over object-object relations. Founded by Graham Harman, the object-oriented position makes distinct claims about the nature and equality of relations: all relations, including object-object relations, distort objects in the same basic manner and exist on an equal footing with one another. &nbsp; &nbsp; ‘Thing’ offers itself as an alternative to ‘object,’ dissolving the dichotomy between subject and object. Because of its ambiguity, the word thing carries a notion of the unmediated, a world without a code, beyond the perceiving subject and the representations that are created by the subject around the thing. Thing means anything which meets two criteria: &nbsp; &nbsp; 1. irreducible downward to its components &nbsp; &nbsp; 2. irreducible upward to its effects A thing is any unified entity irreducible to its components or to its effects on the surrounding environment. &nbsp; &nbsp; How does one retain things—neither too closed on themselves, nor too transient? The question of the thing is not a question of how we know a thing, but a question of what things are. What a thing is cannot be reduced to our access to it—access which is highly limited. Things withdraw not only from human access, but from each other as well. A thing is more than its appearance, more than its usefulness, and more than its physical body. &nbsp; &nbsp; There is always more to a thing than anything we can see or say about it. Things lie simultaneously at hand and somewhere outside the theoretical field, beyond a certain limit, as a recognizable yet illegible remainder that is unspecifiable. The ambiguity of things and the ambiguity in things: to be a thing is to be riddled in contradiction. &nbsp; &nbsp; The significance of one thing to another differs depending on the perspectives of both. When one thing characterizes another, the first grasps the second in abstract, enough for the one to make some sense of the other, given its own internal properties. A thing’s means of making sense of another is not universal and cannot be explained away through natural law, scientific truth, or even its own perspective. To understand how a thing operates on its surroundings, or they on it, is not the same as understanding how the thing itself understands those operations.&nbsp; &nbsp; There is an absolute difference between perception and what is being perceived; any reality can be endlessly explored and viewed from numberless perspectives without ever being exhausted by the sum of these perspectives. Reality remains different from our perceptions of it, and every form of perception will never be the exact equivalent of what it perceives. Put differently: all things translate one another, and the things that are translated are irreducible to their translations. &nbsp; &nbsp; Perhaps the most that can be said with confidence about a thing is that it eludes capture by any concept. Concepts can never provide a clear view of things in themselves, but can gesture toward them. &nbsp; &nbsp; Knowledge is less like seeing and more like interpretation, since things can never be directly or completely present to us. The point of knowledge is not to experience the unknowable uniqueness of a thing, but to obtain some sort of partial grasp of the features of a thing that is already in our midst. &nbsp; &nbsp; Everyone searches for an identity, for a single meaning, and common sense about things. Therefore, everyone fixes the meaning of things, of their life, of the lives of others, or of their behavior in specific contexts. Meaning is never given, but obtained through the elimination and relativism of other possible meanings. In truth, this meaning—neither completely existential nor completely semiotic—is simply the possibility of changing from one thing to another. A thing among things. Reading Things Appadurai, Arjun. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge University Press, 1988. Austin, J., et al. How to Do Things with Words. 2nd ed., Harvard University Press, 1975. Badiou, Alain, and Louise Burchill. Deleuze: The Clamor of Being. First edition, University of Minnesota Press, 1999. Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Unknown, Duke University Press Books, 2010. Bogost, Ian. What It’s Like to Be a Thing. 1st ed., Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2012. Braver, Lee. A Thing of This World: A History of Continental Anti-Realism. 1st ed., Northwestern University Press, 2007. Brown, Bill. Other Things. Illustrated, University of Chicago Press, 2019. ---. Things. University of Chicago Press, 2004. Bryant, Levi. Difference and Givenness: Deleuze’s Transcendental Empiricism and the Ontology of Immanence. 1st ed., Northwestern University Press, 2008. ---. The Democracy of Objects. Open Humanities Press, 2011. Bryant, Harman, and Nick Srnicek. The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism. First Edition, re.press, 2011. Cogburn, Jon. Garcian Meditations: The Dialectics of Persistence in Form and Object. 1st ed., Edinburgh University Press, 2017. Colletti, Lucio, and Lawrence Garner. Marxism and Hegel. First Edition, New Left Books, 1973. DeLanda, Manuel. Assemblage Theory. 1st ed., Edinburgh University Press, 2016. ---. Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy. Zaltbommel-Netherlands, Netherlands, Van Haren Publishing, 2013.DeLanda, M., &amp; Harman, G. The Rise of Realism (1st ed.). Polity, 2017. Deleuze, Gilles, and Paul Patton. Difference and Repetition. Revised ed., Columbia University Press, 1995. Derrida, Jacques, and Alan Bass. Margins of Philosophy. Reprint, University of Chicago Press, 1985. Figal, Günter, and Jerome Veith. Aesthetics as Phenomenology: The Appearance of Things. Indiana University Press, 2015. Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. Illustrated, Vintage, 1994. Garcia, Tristan, et al. Form and Object: A Treatise on Things. 1st ed., Edinburgh University Press, 2014. Hacking, Ian. The Social Construction of What? Revised, Harvard University Press, 2000. Hallward, Peter. Badiou: A Subject To Truth. First edition, Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2003. Harman, Graham. Bells and Whistles: More Speculative Realism. Zero Books, 2013. ---. Guerrilla Metaphysics: Phenomenology and the Carpentry of Things. 1st US-1st Printing, Open Court, 2005. ---. Immaterialism: Objects and Social Theory. 1st ed., Polity, 2016. ---. Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything. Illustrated, Pelican, 2018. ---. The Quadruple Object. Reprint, Zero Books, 2011.---. Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects (First Edition). Open Court, 2002. ---. Towards Speculative Realism: Essays and Lectures. Reprint, Zero Books, 2010. Hegel, G., Glenn Gray, et al. On Art, Religion, and the History of Philosophy: Introductory Lectures. Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1997. Hegel, G., A. Miller, et al. Phenomenology of Spirit. Revised ed., Oxford University Press, 1977. Hegel, Georg. Science of Logic. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017. Heidegger, Martin, Metcalf, et al. Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy. Amsterdam-Netherlands, Netherlands, Amsterdam University Press, 2009. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Reprint, Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2008. ---. Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. N, Indiana University Press, 1997. ---. Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle: Initiation into Phenomenological Research. Indiana University Press, 2008. Heidegger, Martin, W. Barton, et al. What Is a Thing? First Edition, Henry Regnery Company, 1967. Heidegger, Martin, and Albert Hofstadter. The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, Revised Edition. Revised, Indiana University Press, 1988. Heidegger, Martin, and Richard Taft. Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. Fifth Edition, Enlarged, Indiana University Press, 1997. Husserl, Edmund. Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. Martino Fine Books, 2017. Husserl, Edmund, and Dorion Cairns. Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology. Martinus Nijhoff Pub., 1977. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgement. Free Press, 2008. ---. Critique of Pure Reason: Unified Edition (with All Variants from the 1781 and 1787 Editions). 1st Edition, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1996. Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. 1st ed., Oxford University Press, 2007.Levinas, E. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Springer Fachmedien, 1980.Lingis, A. The Imperative (Studies in Continental Thought). Indiana University Press, 1998. Meillassoux, Quentin, et al. After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency. Continuum, 2010. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Donald Landes, et al. Phenomenology of Perception. 1st ed., Routledge, 2013. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Claude Lefort, et al. The Visible and the Invisible. 1st ed., Northwestern University Press, 1968. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, and Patricia Allen Dreyfus. Sense and Non-Sense. Northwestern University Press, 1992. Scott, Charles. The Lives of Things. Indiana University Press, 2002. Whitehead, Alfred North. Modes of Thought. The Free Press, 1968. ---. Process and Reality (Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Edinburgh During the Session 1927-28). 2nd ed., Free Press, 1979. https://thingorthings.com/don-t Thu, 29 Oct 2020 22:09:53 +0000 thing or things https://thingorthings.com/don-t &nbsp; Rita / Riri Minissi source-message-channel email: things@thingorthings.com instagram: @thingorthings https://thingorthings.com/more-things Sat, 20 Jun 2026 17:39:07 +0000 thing or things https://thingorthings.com/more-things A symbol is intentional; it intends something beyond and stands for that thing. Every symbol gives birth to meaning by means of interpretation. Interpretation is the work of thought, which consists of deciphering the hidden meaning within the apparent meaning. Symbol and interpretation are correlative concepts; there is interpretation wherever there are multiple meanings, and it is within interpretation that the plurality of meaning is made manifest. The purpose of interpretation is to bridge a remoteness, a space between the symbol and the interpreter. By overcoming the distance, the interpreter can appropriate meaning to themselves: foreign, they make it familiar—they make it their own. <img width="3000" height="1851" width_o="3000" height_o="1851" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7fdc14f6de6d25f55212756c7cd472bce51d3d015b54455e30f44bbf9ab95785/001.jpg" data-mid="251441658" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/7fdc14f6de6d25f55212756c7cd472bce51d3d015b54455e30f44bbf9ab95785/001.jpg" /><img width="3000" height="2414" width_o="3000" height_o="2414" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/1445f40acde7aded263a6795215021777d1d9d35f82cc9b722666f600fde0f0e/002.jpg" data-mid="251636332" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/1445f40acde7aded263a6795215021777d1d9d35f82cc9b722666f600fde0f0e/002.jpg" /><img width="3000" height="1851" width_o="3000" height_o="1851" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/452ba24ad4e88be0ff45b7552c734f89aadea7ebe2e2526cb55bb8bfaf28ae9b/003.jpg" data-mid="251673280" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/452ba24ad4e88be0ff45b7552c734f89aadea7ebe2e2526cb55bb8bfaf28ae9b/003.jpg" /> patterns of feeling and seeing; a movement away or toward; a movement of negative restraint or positive advance; a visceral aliveness; to tolerate the disruption of intellectual order; to produce curiosity; the anxiety of uncertainty, which demands to be embraced; the anxiety of failure, which demands to be overcome; mind wide open to the limits of knowing; to open a space of inquiry <img width="3000" height="3041" width_o="3000" height_o="3041" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/fd2153e7754278a9799348ad0d24afe5e08571642092e4e4dffd18aa259815b0/004.jpg" data-mid="251572669" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/fd2153e7754278a9799348ad0d24afe5e08571642092e4e4dffd18aa259815b0/004.jpg" /><img width="3000" height="2414" width_o="3000" height_o="2414" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/10ed9a459084aa4548ba8b862e3121a830fa8d595d32973ba7c9f422c88a7ea7/005.jpg" data-mid="251663303" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/10ed9a459084aa4548ba8b862e3121a830fa8d595d32973ba7c9f422c88a7ea7/005.jpg" /><img width="3000" height="1851" width_o="3000" height_o="1851" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/fba2bc24585d3782f1e7800606fb5941da61aad0fb2b8a3d88f2c295b407c2b4/006.jpg" data-mid="251509790" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/fba2bc24585d3782f1e7800606fb5941da61aad0fb2b8a3d88f2c295b407c2b4/006.jpg" /><img width="3000" height="2000" width_o="3000" height_o="2000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a9b660cbebf3167b9bc1c2f8f0b8015f833d71b90d2e19907111401e3afe2b7a/007.jpg" data-mid="251509836" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a9b660cbebf3167b9bc1c2f8f0b8015f833d71b90d2e19907111401e3afe2b7a/007.jpg" /> <img width="3000" height="2414" width_o="3000" height_o="2414" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/278c311fb8564f7ab619f249018171f62f7f81994f469448ef7c387a69ea5233/008.jpg" data-mid="251509874" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/278c311fb8564f7ab619f249018171f62f7f81994f469448ef7c387a69ea5233/008.jpg" /> The terms fetish and fetishism have long been used to mark specific ‘problem-ideas’ for modern social theory. Despite the use of this terminology in a variety of disciplines that claim no common theoretical ground—the history of religion, Marxism and positive sociology, psychoanalysis and the psychiatry of sexual deviance, philosophy—there is a common configuration of themes. Four themes that consistently inform the idea of a fetish are: (1) the untranscended materiality, (2) the historicality of its origin: rising from a singular event that creates a fixation, (3) the dependence of the fetish for its meaning and value on a particular order of social relations, and (4) the active relation of the fetish to the body of the individual. The central conflict of fetishism, whatever form it may take (commodity, sexual, anthropological), is between belief and knowledge; it is the belief that the fetishist acts upon, not knowledge alone. This reminds us how deeply knowledge is structured by the framework of interpretation, because it is the process of interpretation that most profoundly affects our understanding of a thing. Fetishism’s attention to the thing, its inappropriate emphasis on the thing, transgresses the boundaries of identity and enables us to become or do something we otherwise could not. Fetishism is a means for focusing on the meaning and constitution of the relation between things; a point of mutual interest and exchange; a bridge between social reality and fantasy or psychic reality; a hermeneutic strategy that uses materiality to embody symbolic aims; an epistemology—a way of coming to know a thing. There is a certain degree of reciprocity in coming to know a thing, as our reaction to the thing changes through the course of coming to know it. Knowledge is the responsive process of interaction between things, as the thing known is transformed through the process of knowing and simultaneously exerts a transformational force on us. <img width="3000" height="1851" width_o="3000" height_o="1851" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a4e3ef8fb638a941b2ffc6b32d72e3c43b56c243fa348270982ec1bed14b2f24/009.jpg" data-mid="251509923" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a4e3ef8fb638a941b2ffc6b32d72e3c43b56c243fa348270982ec1bed14b2f24/009.jpg" /> <img width="3000" height="2414" width_o="3000" height_o="2414" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7305770f0ec142d6dad385fd803fe5a03fe8f428337b13b1cf305bd22c5dc29e/010.jpg" data-mid="251510001" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/7305770f0ec142d6dad385fd803fe5a03fe8f428337b13b1cf305bd22c5dc29e/010.jpg" /><img width="3000" height="2014" width_o="3000" height_o="2014" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/40ca835a0f1329e65b617871288b4bc97778a6395da8a58e2c4c44fa4ad55976/017.jpg" data-mid="251442003" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/40ca835a0f1329e65b617871288b4bc97778a6395da8a58e2c4c44fa4ad55976/017.jpg" /><img width="3000" height="1596" width_o="3000" height_o="1596" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c107f56cba6fba0d9a7ded37596727e7214099bed19df31cc538ed6ce0910993/013.jpg" data-mid="251511624" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/c107f56cba6fba0d9a7ded37596727e7214099bed19df31cc538ed6ce0910993/013.jpg" /><img width="3000" height="1851" width_o="3000" height_o="1851" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f3a72db865437e48a7c48febcedc145ff16d666b25a2e7ef182e0e1f017f8c8f/012.jpg" data-mid="251510842" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/f3a72db865437e48a7c48febcedc145ff16d666b25a2e7ef182e0e1f017f8c8f/012.jpg" /><img width="3000" height="3232" width_o="3000" height_o="3232" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/21a687bd4e13788a0b4d81502c0accb93379479ff7a45ebd3f634fd0f149b094/019.jpg" data-mid="251443275" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/21a687bd4e13788a0b4d81502c0accb93379479ff7a45ebd3f634fd0f149b094/019.jpg" /> <img width="3000" height="2001" width_o="3000" height_o="2001" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/72822a5727ec11856cace0d85ee9ea543d4e152bf0a3c466c55f5687e979115a/014.jpg" data-mid="251511627" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/72822a5727ec11856cace0d85ee9ea543d4e152bf0a3c466c55f5687e979115a/014.jpg" /><img width="3000" height="2000" width_o="3000" height_o="2000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f379163a86a67d4dc7566eb38da9e7df9070cbcce1dfd14be83a7f0e8605c060/015.jpg" data-mid="251511707" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/f379163a86a67d4dc7566eb38da9e7df9070cbcce1dfd14be83a7f0e8605c060/015.jpg" /> The body is the most basic structure of our awareness of the world—its first-person character. It is always an awareness from a particular point of view, a "here" that no one else shares. Its non-disclosable, non-expressible aspect arises from the fact that, at a certain level, each body constitutes a sphere of the private that escapes linguistic expression and escapes being known. People in their self-making live in the tension of the private and the public, the non-communicable and the communicable, the true-for-me and the true-for-all-of-us. To be human is to be constantly engaged in the double perspective of public and private; regarding each side from the vantage of the other; grasping each in the claims it imposes on the other, continuously negotiating between the demands of both. The relationship between what is private and what is public needs to be continuously redefined, though it is less necessary to give answers than to ask new questions—for example, questions about what is private and what is public. Intimacy differs from privacy in that what is considered private is related to social structure, whereas what is intimate is an anarchic component of the self. In contrast to privacy, which is both a social-psychological and social-political issue, intimacy will not be regulated by social systems of control. Accordingly, intimacy contains a powerful critical capacity. It also offers the possibility of catharsis. <img width="3000" height="2000" width_o="3000" height_o="2000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d70662d414e3d4627a68de2b7bb86dcc3a8ccc15570bd90489a34e5ac8d0efba/016.jpg" data-mid="251511787" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d70662d414e3d4627a68de2b7bb86dcc3a8ccc15570bd90489a34e5ac8d0efba/016.jpg" /> <img width="3000" height="2014" width_o="3000" height_o="2014" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c97cb530879ed843309f550f4ad9221c45f1ccd8ac798c58862a1fafc7379381/017.jpg" data-mid="251512003" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/c97cb530879ed843309f550f4ad9221c45f1ccd8ac798c58862a1fafc7379381/017.jpg" /> <img width="3000" height="2000" width_o="3000" height_o="2000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e24370a1843dce8ced1c994e489292dc6abb6d19cf14908e7daf261aa134843c/018.jpg" data-mid="251512018" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/e24370a1843dce8ced1c994e489292dc6abb6d19cf14908e7daf261aa134843c/018.jpg" /> <img width="3000" height="3041" width_o="3000" height_o="3041" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b4c7af522e7e2f0fdd55d01aa92d377996da4f14b680d7b4b230fd0c5b3e26b6/018.jpg" data-mid="251709732" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/b4c7af522e7e2f0fdd55d01aa92d377996da4f14b680d7b4b230fd0c5b3e26b6/018.jpg" /> <img width="3000" height="2400" width_o="3000" height_o="2400" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/fc2f9470d05ae3a3e6c303b7f1fdbbbbb61eb3fe84eaac5619eda73ec49a4806/019.jpg" data-mid="251512024" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/fc2f9470d05ae3a3e6c303b7f1fdbbbbb61eb3fe84eaac5619eda73ec49a4806/019.jpg" /> There is a type of death that is not the transformation of the body into a corpse, but rather the transformation of the body into another body within the same body, due to a sudden brutal event. Destructive transformation imposes a new form on the old form, when no possibility for escape exists. The body dies without being dead. A living-dead rises out of the wound, an absolute other, someone else, someone who will never be reconciled with themselves again, someone who will be this form of us without redemption, outside of time. Between life and death, she becomes other to herself; a stranger to herself who no longer recognizes herself, who no longer remembers herself. The subject revives herself in the end, as if emerging from her own destruction. I lose myself; I reappear. <img width="3000" height="2000" width_o="3000" height_o="2000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e21e2f3acf2f71c486044da1a0a34bb010833ff0aa11e80e544b092283c531f4/020.jpg" data-mid="251512044" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/e21e2f3acf2f71c486044da1a0a34bb010833ff0aa11e80e544b092283c531f4/020.jpg" /><img width="3000" height="2000" width_o="3000" height_o="2000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/db4c2d059103fd58d49f43b0a697936a25fba69f1971f92b2e3d66347cc4bce9/022.jpg" data-mid="251512078" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/db4c2d059103fd58d49f43b0a697936a25fba69f1971f92b2e3d66347cc4bce9/022.jpg" /> <img width="3000" height="2414" width_o="3000" height_o="2414" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f71f881d94e3dec4dfa643eac30f59c37e62190aab5aa0c691e2b3f7f319c97b/021.jpg" data-mid="251512077" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/f71f881d94e3dec4dfa643eac30f59c37e62190aab5aa0c691e2b3f7f319c97b/021.jpg" /> <img width="3000" height="2000" width_o="3000" height_o="2000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a1f783fb2d94df7b035f65e3edfb7b7c8306235bced5249b8428e1c906e1ea7c/023.jpg" data-mid="251512079" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a1f783fb2d94df7b035f65e3edfb7b7c8306235bced5249b8428e1c906e1ea7c/023.jpg" /> <img width="3000" height="987" width_o="3000" height_o="987" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/8db95ff8a8dbbc49b053f1c440174d054c1eed73a1abc8ac73baa9406fd8cabe/024.jpg" data-mid="251512106" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/8db95ff8a8dbbc49b053f1c440174d054c1eed73a1abc8ac73baa9406fd8cabe/024.jpg" /> Flesh is the dimensionality of our being. As a physical membrane that sheds and reconstitutes itself continually, flesh is never the same material, but always a contour in process. Flesh exists provisionally as a shifting physical perimeter, a limbic surround of virtual containment, and a visible tracing of the body. Metaphorically as well as materially, flesh is an envelope: a limit inscribing the juncture between inside and outside, but also the site of their joining.&nbsp;Life reveals itself in flesh in a way that no act of thought can, since it is only through living that we can know what life is. <img width="2000" height="1334" width_o="2000" height_o="1334" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/eb8a7e3be989bce9478e18898c135b7029e3fee35ede7836e8db538a8e0c6011/028-insert.jpg" data-mid="251709822" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/eb8a7e3be989bce9478e18898c135b7029e3fee35ede7836e8db538a8e0c6011/028-insert.jpg" /> <img width="3000" height="2027" width_o="3000" height_o="2027" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/60c6eaf3da651ff367349952abe7693ed36f1b38f43237d1f5be22bb5079c8c8/026.jpg" data-mid="251707908" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/60c6eaf3da651ff367349952abe7693ed36f1b38f43237d1f5be22bb5079c8c8/026.jpg" /> <img width="2000" height="1333" width_o="2000" height_o="1333" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/307818c4a5c5e13391af9a814caf8c784c520ae3b6f07cee1e216c51ef5c30f9/27-insert.jpg" data-mid="251667467" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/307818c4a5c5e13391af9a814caf8c784c520ae3b6f07cee1e216c51ef5c30f9/27-insert.jpg" /><img width="3000" height="2027" width_o="3000" height_o="2027" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d099bf61424e95bce6c9b3a8840576687469d2c4efebee84de71237255c4a9c2/027.jpg" data-mid="251707872" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d099bf61424e95bce6c9b3a8840576687469d2c4efebee84de71237255c4a9c2/027.jpg" /> <img width="2000" height="1333" width_o="2000" height_o="1333" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3a168de6b4855ba2d6e30d377ca11fbe1613511ce5a1bffc735258d65ed39c0a/028-insert.jpg" data-mid="251669522" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/3a168de6b4855ba2d6e30d377ca11fbe1613511ce5a1bffc735258d65ed39c0a/028-insert.jpg" /> Although the physical body is part of being human, it is not the totality of what a human being is. We are beings whose consciousness always already belongs together with others. The self is constituted by its relations to others: identity necessarily requires contact, association, and exchange. In certain modes of interaction, we overlap with, extend into, and are continuous with others who extend into and are continuous with us. Not only is the self social in that it depends upon others to be what it is, but the self is also social in the sense that one self opens onto another. This complexity lies at the heart of how two things can be distinct, but not separate—or together as one, but not one and the same. <img width="2000" height="1334" width_o="2000" height_o="1334" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e866a6e7046e8e73d5e84a404a36b451b9acfbe0106068311b7b6f6602bc465b/029-insert.jpg" data-mid="251672815" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/e866a6e7046e8e73d5e84a404a36b451b9acfbe0106068311b7b6f6602bc465b/029-insert.jpg" /><img width="3000" height="2027" width_o="3000" height_o="2027" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/cb0b8fd4ce4367cfb2f46baccddcedc3068aeb60188c3ca1b584981cd45bb129/028.jpg" data-mid="251673595" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/cb0b8fd4ce4367cfb2f46baccddcedc3068aeb60188c3ca1b584981cd45bb129/028.jpg" /> <img width="3000" height="2001" width_o="3000" height_o="2001" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/05b60ada5f6cfacc701c3e6bbdbb3d72f14f683eb42bd3683bf7d98ff1bddbb5/029-insert.jpg" data-mid="251513202" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/05b60ada5f6cfacc701c3e6bbdbb3d72f14f683eb42bd3683bf7d98ff1bddbb5/029-insert.jpg" /> <img width="3000" height="2027" width_o="3000" height_o="2027" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4eb4f76e51c191bb9ab6e9038b5d79437a4c6cc3c3eac5ae16f08bd0cdf29aa8/029.jpg" data-mid="251673594" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4eb4f76e51c191bb9ab6e9038b5d79437a4c6cc3c3eac5ae16f08bd0cdf29aa8/029.jpg" /><img width="3000" height="2000" width_o="3000" height_o="2000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/bb5d6b8eef7df70fd920a2fa08f8fb42b31d86e2b14f3b4436720fae4373f6ac/031-insert.jpg" data-mid="251571603" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/bb5d6b8eef7df70fd920a2fa08f8fb42b31d86e2b14f3b4436720fae4373f6ac/031-insert.jpg" /> Emerging as a sudden opening in a system of established and expected meanings, wonder disrupts our perception of things. To be wonderstruck is to be without words in the presence of a thing that exceeds existing frameworks of understanding. Inviting a thinking that might open itself to other ways of doing things, to wonder is to question the order of things, the meaning attached to things, and the value assigned to things. Wonder is the possibility of transformation. Wonder is openness to difference. Wonder restores dimensionality to an otherwise flattened preconception of things. It is a refusal to reduce reality and a reminder that reality has not yet been exhausted. Things don’t have to be as they are. <img width="3000" height="2400" width_o="3000" height_o="2400" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9f01e14ef421d47ce5041d3ad2d212dd54cbeb25366566b04accc43d52b3fcd8/032.jpg" data-mid="251698196" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/9f01e14ef421d47ce5041d3ad2d212dd54cbeb25366566b04accc43d52b3fcd8/032.jpg" /> <img width="3000" height="3728" width_o="3000" height_o="3728" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f762bb13bad6f72cb66280a4f3c9af743cadc202c3c30ef139bcd6d809f54747/033.jpg" data-mid="251708437" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/f762bb13bad6f72cb66280a4f3c9af743cadc202c3c30ef139bcd6d809f54747/033.jpg" /><img width="3000" height="2400" width_o="3000" height_o="2400" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/11af3e37ea703c18eb9b761bb7f1e95f75ab5d91cb23333484f71006f2611417/036.jpg" data-mid="251698315" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/11af3e37ea703c18eb9b761bb7f1e95f75ab5d91cb23333484f71006f2611417/036.jpg" /> <img width="3000" height="2414" width_o="3000" height_o="2414" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4e5bf559bb2feb9d147b2aa6aa1f82758e90a54549e68d683b3d0e38172087d1/035.jpg" data-mid="251708438" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4e5bf559bb2feb9d147b2aa6aa1f82758e90a54549e68d683b3d0e38172087d1/035.jpg" /><img width="3000" height="1851" width_o="3000" height_o="1851" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0d8ecf7e16f5a2e81aed5a183ba48eeae82a047a7802c7453a78ec8caa9014bf/034.jpg" data-mid="251708439" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/0d8ecf7e16f5a2e81aed5a183ba48eeae82a047a7802c7453a78ec8caa9014bf/034.jpg" /> This is about an interaction that makes something possible that would not be possible otherwise. It is about the space in which connection can unfold, for things to reveal themselves. It is about collaboration. Art is always more than itself: it refers to something else. Art can deconstruct perception. Art can devote itself to disruption.Art can express the bitter undercurrent of life. Art can aim for compassion, grief, and humility. &nbsp; Art is a call from the deepest pit. Another possibility for art: running away. Sometimes it fails, and that is just as well, because that too is meaningful. Misinterpretation is an important part of interpretation. Art can question the real and imagine the possible. Art, as a practice, must be understood as chance. &nbsp; https://thingorthings.com/even-more-things-1 Mon, 11 Mar 2024 15:27:08 +0000 thing or things https://thingorthings.com/even-more-things-1 December 2026