Josephine Anstey One Seminar AH 563
Reading about Robert Irwin I notice that I am picking out the bits I agree with - actively reinforcing my assumptions and habitual structures of thought - and I am a little embarrassed.

Caught out, even.

Because he seems to view his own work, and the task of modernism, as taking away the hierachy of values and meaningfulness we place on things. (Lawrence Wechsler - "Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees," p108) And here I sit nodding complacently at the things I already think are true and letting the rest slip out of focus into invisibility.

Irwin would like us to get past our usual, mediated, thought forms. He wants to move from metaphor to "presence", from a representation of the thing to the thing itself.

To recover myself, my post-modernly indoctrinated self, I doubt that this is possible. I rush to the book in which I write meaningful quotations to find ammunition against him and find some in "Borderliners" by Peter Hoeg:

They [Helmholtz and Kant] had insisted that it is impossible to perceive the reality that surrounds us - or to perceive ourselves - any way other than through the senses. And the senses are not passive receivers of reality, they process it. That which we perceive is heavily processed. So there is no point in talking about actual reality outside of ourselves that we have no knowledge of. What we know is an edited version.

Exactly, presence is impossible, life doesn't exist without the structures of our bodies, minds and cultures.

And again by Hoeg:

Time is a sphere made up of language, colors, smells, senses, and sounds, a sphere in which you and the world coexist, an instrument with which to put the world in order and comprehend it, one of the reasons for your survival.

Yes - I think - you don't survive without such instruments, such structures and assumptions, and Irwin reveals that he knows it too. When he talks about actually getting work shown/noticed/out into the world, he says:

You have to use all the currencies, all the processes that are already operative and argue against their inclusiveness even while you're using them, which is a funny place to be.
(Wechsler)

This funny place has also been visited by some feminist theoreticians, arguing for a space for woman as speaking subject in cracks, crevices, silences and contradictions as the structures of spoken languages meet the structures of non-verbal communication.

So I'm vindicated, back on the familiar, shifting, ground of post-modernism.

But I'm still attracted by the idea of "presence", not with my intellect - with my memory of experiences of presence: in art, in nature, in sounds, in cities, in meditation.

However, is it possible that even our experience of presence is invidiously mediated by structures?

It is said that people reach the same levels of meditation, experiencing the same colors and sounds. How can I be sure my experience of presence is not, albeit unconsciously, resonating to a spiritual structure inculcated by my exposure to religion, to poetry, music, pantheistic worship?

I wanted to arrive at a metaphor of wave and particle. The wave is a metaphor for post-modern thought, and deals with systems that are connected, so that every part of the system is effected by every other part. The particle is a metaphor for presence, essence, the thing itself.

Each method of looking is valid - you get out the answers or experiences according to what you put in. Understanding is broadened/deepened by using both methods.

Damn, I don't think I can.