“Homogenous space is no way a smooth space; on the contrary, it is the form of striated space. The space of pillars. It is striated by the fall of bodies, the verticals of gravity, the distribution of matter into parallel layers, the lamellar and laminar movement of flows.” (Deleuze and Guattari, ATP, p. 370)
Necromancers have their own lines of flight, exploring flight not as levitation – or ‘becoming light (levis) on the pattern of gravitate’ i.e. ‘levitate’ (migrating to zones where the gravitational forces of the grund cannot manifest as a dynamic boundary any longer) -- but interlocking with gravity itself and subverting it from within, a technique which will be dissected later. For now, the question that rises here in its most repressed ontological form is: ‘What is gravity?’
Gravity is an attraction which transforms its subjects into measurable / processable agencies, rendering all bodies and motions metronic -- referring to Witold Kula’s Measures and Men (1986) which divides metronic processes to anthropomorphic, lineamentic and syndetic -- configuring them in way that they constitute a horizontal / vertical network which gives any entity a unique value and consequently a ‘traceable’ function in the (striated) space programmed according to the distribution array of gravity forces (pillars? obelisks? striated layers?). Gravity does not capture (the mechanism of capture is the ‘consequence of the network’ that gravity forms; it is not the primary effect of gravity); instead, it provides all flows and bodies with a grund that dynamically molds whatever reaches its threshold of impression (em-presser) and effect. Through and by means of this ground, gravity constructs a homogeneous space which is an accommodating raum rather than spatium. Grounded from both ends -- its zone of emergence and zone of effectuation -- gravity can merely exploit its machinery of attraction as a conduit (channeling / conducted attraction). Gravity is an economical attraction, it has elements of repulsion and efficient distribution of entities in an arrangement which corresponds with the configuration of its verticals -- “space of pillars” (Deleuze and Guattari); the gravitational attraction is not a radical attraction i.e. participative and contagious. Once the economical attraction internalized in gravity affects a body, it works as a switch for separation (apokrisis [1]) and unification, selection and sorting, repulsion and attraction, to form a distributive grid of entities (arranged by verticals-of-gravity stratifying bodies both horizontally and vertically) which initializes a certain weaving process, lining up everything according to parallel forces, verticals of gravity; rendering space as a texture fabricated by economic(al) distributions, interlaced by continuous separations, selections and sorting processes in the form of a textum, a woven space. Such a dynamic interwoven network is able to ‘capture’, widely spread and finally narrate space as a heavily plotted text (textum), a fully grounded scenery. Gravity narrates space via the textum it weaves together, a textum interlaced by the fall of bodies and the verticals of gravity (“strié par la chute des corps, les verticales de pesanteur” [Deleuze and Guattari, ATP]), repulsions, attractions, separations, union, separations, union, ad infinitum. The metronic textum -- dynamically expanding by its spatial dynamism utilized by the economy of the grund (as in the case of Nomads introduced to klimatologic grounding processes; See Excursus I) -- interwoven and striated by gravity, to this extent, should have a central theme with an ever-thickening plot (), a core-narration at the base of the textum i.e. the economical configuration programmed by gravity forces. You cannot explore gravity without immersing in its enriching plot embedded in its textum; and you cannot explore the textum (whether for evading or probing it) without reading its plot. The textum that gravity engineers by its metronic distributions and processes is so stubborn -- so persistent in weaving its texture -- and at the same time so flexible that any attempt to dismantle it, to shut it down from the core, results in a re-formation, a shift in contours and parallel verticals of gravity, generating a transitional zone for the textum to pass from one lattice structure to another, making a new plot, a new configuration for its woven threads. Concisely, gravity flexibly customizes its verticals and metronic processes, the order it distributes is not despotic (solid as rigid), so the offensive counter-gravity operations usually cannot break its verticals or destroy its pillars. The order of gravity is the ‘Order of Textum’, of wires and dynamic lattices, of an autonomously and internally dynamic interwoven space that can adapt itself to any resistance; it is able to shift its uniformity according to oppositions, configuring its laminar flows to be soft towards paroxysmal forces (whose objective is to cut the verticals of gravity and deteriorate their textum) by means of running along their transgressive lines of movement (instead of blocking them); the textum of gravity customizes its grid and distribution array to be with transgressions not against them.
The gravity also narrates its universal order according to “the fall of bodies” (D&G). However gravity does not narrate the fall of bodies according to autonomous catadromic functions or kata-space [Kata: down; downwards] but an anabatic space (Ana-: upward or on the pattern of the verticals of gravity) which essentially should be grounded: every fall of bodies should have a climax, a basis according to which it can be translated as a metronic process (it can be measured) or tracked as a narrator of gravity and its grounded/ing pillars, and not spatium -- a ground which does not mean a rigid topographic surface but a process. Here, every fall of bodies should finally meet the grund; it should be measured according to ground’s surface dynamics, metronic processes (running through measures, scales, channels of power, criterions), anabatic movements and the verticals of gravity.
Trapped by the textum of gravity forces, every descent or fall is ‘ascribed’ to (or modified according to) the grund, its processes and the characteristics of solidus. The polytics of the Abyss (Abzu) is signified and represented by the economy of the ground. In the same way that the ground appropriates and legitimates (brings to its fold of characteristics) the fall of bodies as a negative anabatic movement based on the ground and not an autonomous catadromic function, it slyly utilizes the levitating line-of-flight (escapism) as an ascension, the Christ on a cross (here cross is itself a domesticated flight-machine, flying along the vertical axis mundi). The ‘utilized’ line-of-escape does not only transcendentalize the ground but also it provides the ground with an accommodating spatiality (through a qualitative expansion). Everything that dwells in this grounding spatiality is molded by capacity; the dwelling / accommodating systems distribute their inhabitants through capacity, over lines of affordance (survivalist / economical openness); they construct niches or grounded eco-spaces whose primal inclination is capacitation, surviving in space by means of affordance (economical openness), seizing a capacity to dwell in space instead of probing it or more precisely, traveling in space as a capacity and not spatium. The grund never quits working on its own domesticated lines of flight -- autonomous fertilizing / expanding machines. The most utilizable line of flight for the ground is a line of escape whose vertical levitation gives the ground a locomotive ability to ‘ascend’, reinventing itself and its processes beyond its surface dynamics or super-ficiality. Through the unique functionality of the line of escape, the grund moves towards accommodating the Outside, engulfing the outside through capacity instead of ‘being opened by the Outside’ (i.e. the sorcerous communication with the Outside). Solidity and the economy of the ground never use quantitative expansion. To fortify itself and unfold its horizon, the ground does not undergo mechanisms of distension, quantitative expansion, volumetric inflation, rigidification or continuous reproduction of itself which are always terminated and undone by overhealth, atrophy or sudden death; hazardous methods which easily expose the ground to the outsiders and ungrounding processes; these modi operandi are too unreliable. On the contrary, the ground manages to engineer a plenum under constant qualitative capacitation, a progressive process towards accommodating the outside; an ultimate economical and survivalist openness (based on ‘affordance’ and ‘dynamic boundary’ beginning from the outer edge to the outside) which indeed is a miraculous phenomenon for the ground and its engineers which are networks of pseudo-fluxes, domesticated lines of flight and slope-infested (Klimatologic) modes of escapism which have become one with the verticals of gravity through climatologic dynamics and the pliable textum that gravity weaves together. These domesticated lines of escape exalt (ex-altus) economy of the ground, elevate and expand it in all direction, reclaiming the ground’s horizon (horismos: boundary) as the apeironic boundlessness, homogenous infinity universalized by the verticals of gravity, secured and con-solidated by economy of the ground. The utilized line of escape offers ground what it always wished to have for conquering the space and transcendentalizing itself without limit: the levis-function, lightness.
However, both sorcerers and necromancers consider gravity as a grounded/ing attraction; and they never miss the fact that attraction is the functioning itself [2] and it is the only path to becoming and unnatural participation; the line-of-flight must be initiated from gravitas and free itself from its grounding forces, defeating the verticals of gravity whether through tactical paths of the line-of-escape or necromantic techniques [3]. Without gravity as an attraction, the line-of-flight is a utopianistic movement, a polytics without resistance, a (dis)simulation of something else, perhaps the Master of Pseudo-flux.
NOTES
[1] Apokrisis or ekkrisis, the Anaximanderian universal pro-creationist process which is prerequisite for unification and ultimate union, since unification and totalization presuppose an economizing separation (which distributes matter into layers, over textums, and through matrices of correctitude and appropriation) of elements, entities and matter for a further ‘purpose’; it is an efficient path to reach a universal homogenizing process leading to economical distributions rather than unification, or the one-ness telos. On Apokrisis, see Theophrastus commentaries on Anaximander; also, Refutation by Hippolytus.
[2] But in the case of gravity it is a grounded attraction.
[3] Necromantic techniques will be discussed in the coming chapters about Necromancy and Cataflight.
Posted by R. Negarestani at November 7, 2004 10:15 PM