The Vampire Squid from Hell is Coming

Not long after this post on Charlotte Street, I picked up a copy of Vampyroteuthis infernalis by Louis Bec and Vilém Flusser. Soon, I hope to write more about it. For now, a translation of a few remarks on vampyroteuthic art.

The strategy of the art of the vampyroteuthis, for example his skin paintings, can be sketched as follows: he experiences something new and attempts to store this new thing in his memory, to assign it a place next to the information already there. He determines that the new thing cannot be classified, that it doesn't fit. His thoughts have to be rearranged, they have to be adapted to the new experience. His mind is shocked by the new thing, which has to be worked through (what we humans call "creative activity"). This creative astonishment flows through his entire organism, it captures him, and the chromatophores on his skin surface contract and secrete pigments. At the same time he experiences an artistic orgasm, during which the ejaculated colors on the skin are presented in vampyroteuthic code. His partner is provoked and made curious by the new thing articulated in this way. This curiosity seduces the mate to copulate. It becomes a dialogue, during which the new experience will also enter the mind of the partner, to be stored there. How it moves  to other vampyroteuthes, how it becomes part of the general vampyroteuthic dialogue, cannot be ascertained here. But in any case, the newly acquired information has been taken up by the vampyroteuthic dialogue - and as long as there are vampyroteuthes, it will be retained.

Comments

[alphonsevanworden]

Just. Fabulous.

[China]

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I have been hoping that someone will translate this book for a long time now. Of course really I should learn German, the lack of which is becoming an increasing embarrassment. But this is a lovely start - thank you again. (Some commentators think that Flusser invented the Vampire Squid (can't do links in these comments or I'd point). This seems to me an odd kind of error - underestimating the phenomenological vigour/rigour achieved by thinking the world through such an extant monstrosity. It reminds me of the stupid edition I had of Borges's Fictions which on the back cover (mis)described 'Pierre Menard ...' as a story about a man who rewrote Quixote 'without ever having read the original book', thereby radically misunderstanding the entire point.) Can you tell me anything about Bec? He's a biologist, yes?

[Mark Kaplan]

Thanks for that David - fascinating. And this Flusser sounds an intriguing figure. Like also China's bit about the monster as a point through which the world can be systematically rethought and re-experienced.

[Christoph]

Atemberaubend - no better starter to Flusserian Communicology, I reckon - and a great debut. Thanks David.

*sighs contentedly, but secretly admits to himself to hoping something about the distinction between monsters and martians will follow soon*...

[David]

Thanks for the kind words, all. China - to be honest, I also thought for a while that the vampyroteuthis infernalis wasn't real. Maybe the name is just a little too poetic. "The monster as a point through which the world can be systematically rethought" would be a good description of this book, by the way. When I write a longer post I'll try to do some more translations, there are many great passages. My favorite line so far: "The vampyroteuthis is born a Kantian, his Plato comes later."

[Mark Kaplan]

Yes, and this is also a nice counterpoint to (what I take to be) Alphonse’s point - that the ‘meaning’ of monsters partly resides outside them in the effects they generate in the world. They produce and/or clarify certain moral worlds; so that, in relation to them, suddenly we are noble dragon-slayers or beleaguered innocents or whatever. The monster permits us to take up cudgels in a way purged of ambiguity…. So then the alternative to this is the effort to re-construct the world via the monster, from the monstrous position. (?)

[David]

Yes, that's exactly the point. First move past the incomprehensible strangeness of the monsters - by claiming that Vampyromorphida can have art too, for example - and then return to our world from their position.

[amie]

David, great post!

I'm curious to know if the illustration -- the drawing or engraving? -- is also from the Bec/Flusser book?

The passage from the book that you quote specifically refers to vampyroteuthis as a painter. If this is accompanied with a painting, might one wonder who/what is painting/illustrating whom/what?
Or, who/what is the model and who/what the painter? Is it an autoportrait? Are all autoportraits monstrous?

I suppose I'm curious since in all phenomenolgical rigor, a monster resists monstration, no? And if phenomenology never describes objects as they 'are' or 'in' consciousness, but rather their intentional relation, are not monsters the (un)making of such relations?

Is it possible to take 'the postition' of the monster?

[David]

Good questions, Amie. The picture is not from the book, I think it's an engraving made by the German biologist Carl Chun who first discovered and named the vampire squid. The "painting" of the vampyroteuthis Flusser and Bec describe must be something quite different. Without any biological evidence, of course, I imagine it as a kind of abstract expressionism in motion, maybe like the movies of Stan Brakhage. What is important for Flusser in the juxtaposition of humans and vampyromorphida is that it's a fleeting painting, traces of which only exist in the memory of those who saw it.

"Is it possible to take 'the postition' of the monster?"
Maybe we can take that position, but then it probably won't be a monster to us anymore...

[Matt]

'twould be a pet!

[amie]

David, thanks for the clarification. I didn't really think that your suggestion was that it is possible to take the position of the monster, because this would as you and Matt point out domesticate the thing.
If I'm still a bit unclear, it's perhaps because of the suggestion of 'relating' to the 'monstrous position'. What would be a relation to the monster that wouldn't domesticate it, or, is it posssible to posit a relation without already domesticating it?
Let me try to put this in phenomenologial terms, since China very justly alluded to them.
First, in terms of what phenomenolgy calls a "horizon" ( from the Greek verb horizein which could be translated as to divide and seperate from, or as as with a border, to mark out boundaries, to delimite, to determine, to define.) According to Husserl, a perception without horizon is inconceivable. How could anything appear without a horizon, a figure against a ground. ( the question you raise about abstrast expressionism and the hellish squid's painting?) So if the monster appears isn't it already domesticated, familiar? Or is a monster an event that arrives without horizon? In which case, how recognize it, let alone relate to it?
Which gets to my second question. The rigor and relevance of phenomenological analysis seems to lie in it's addressing the question of 'objectivity', the constitution of scientific objects, by biology for example. It attempts to describe this in terms of an 'intentional relation' that would thereby avoid the twin errors of naturalism and psychologism. What is an intentional relation to a monster? That is probably what I am wondering.
I hope some of this makes sense. I'm very much looking forward to when you post further on the Bec/Flusser book.

[David]

I hope to discuss this better in the longer post, but for now, let me say: the vampyroteuthis is not a monster. While I found the book after the various monstrous posts on Charlotte St. and AvW, its approach is very different. It never really bothers with the strangeness, the otherness of the squid, but instead looks for identification.

"According to Husserl, a perception without horizon is inconceivable."
Maybe it's this kind of thinking Flusser and Bec are trying to undermine by confronting philosophy, politics etc., with a deep sea creature; what does the word horizon even mean when you're living at 600 meters below sea level where the sun doesn't penetrate and the only sources of light are the tips of your tentacles...?

[David]

"The rigor and relevance of phenomenological analysis seems to lie in it's addressing the question of 'objectivity', the constitution of scientific objects, by biology for example."
There's a passage on this in the book you'll love and I'm gonna translate it but I wont tell you anything right now!

[Mark Kaplan]

On taking the 'point of view of the monster': of course, we do not slip behind the squid's eyes and look out in amazement at this strange new world that has been given us. Having said that, c'est tres difficile to say exactly what I do mean. Something like a massive, counter-intuitive act of the imagination, perhaps, in which the 'logic' of a certain position is thought out in all its implications, or the systematic translation of the non-human squid world into human terms, so that the squid world estranges the human from itself (just as the target language in translation is estranged from itself, according to WB). I have a post on rats and buildings at CS saying something similar. Finally, the bracketing procedure of phenomonology is surely among other things a stripping away of the world's familiar or habitual human skin on order to see it from another place, a place that has no particular name, nor can be assigned to a particular subject. Anyway, these are just rambling thoughts.

[amie]

David,
I can hardly wait for another translated passage from Bec/Flusser. The one you have posted becomes more "fantastic" ( in more than one sense ) every time I read it.
By the way, my resorting to phenomenology is not to suggest that 'vampy' need necessarily undergo phenomenological analysis. I did so in order to try and formulate some questions, in counterpoint as it were. If such a line of inquiry seems too tangential, let's drop it, by all means.
One last thing on the subject, regarding whether a deep sea creature has a horizon. I think the Husserlian argument would be that it's impossible to tell, but that the moment there is an attempt at a scientific description of the creature, there is a horizon because the description is an intentional relation. As you know, this is how Husserl attempts to somehow resolve the vexing problem(s) of the Kantian X ( the unknowable thing-in-itself ) and the positive sciences ( with their naturalist/psychologist 'errors').
Mark, I love that last sentence you wrote regarding 'bracketing.'

[sarah]

you need toget a diamgama on this website so i can do my report

[katie]

I think who ever wrote this paper is definetly on crack..And it really didn't make any sence.

[jack]

this interesting! C00L