The other paradoxical feature of atoms, hardly believable, is that despite their smallness and delicate cloud-like fuzziness, they are remarkably durable. It is almost certainly the case that every atom in my body, or yours, has passed through many stars and been part of millions of other organisms before becoming me or you and passing on to be part of countless other entities. In his inimitable way, Bryson (ibid: 176) points out that atoms are so numerous and so enduring, that any or all of us, may now be composed of billions of atoms that were once part of Shakespeare, or Buddha, or Michelangelo, or, spare the thought, any human embodiment of evil you care to imagine \u2013 though it takes, apparently a number of decades before atoms come thoroughly back into circulation after they have been \u2018embodied\u2019, so to speak.<\/p>\n

These characteristics of atoms and their sub-atomic constituents raise obvious questions about our own sense of self-ownership, self-identity and solidity. When Octavio Paz (1988: 405) in a poem entitled, Objects & Apparitions, writes of Joseph Cornell\u2019s small box-like artworks, as:<\/p>\n

\u2018Monuments to every moment,<\/p>\n

refuse of every moment, used:<\/p>\n

cages for infinity\u2019,<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

he could have been writing about each of us. In another poem entitled, A Draft of Shadows, Paz writes of, \u2018the body and its interwoven languages, \/ knot of phantoms touched by thought \/ and dissolved with a touch\u2019. (ibid: 439) In these verbal images he conveys something of the paradoxical, and problematic, nature of our existence as embodied minds, as thinking flesh.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Sir Arthur Eddington:<\/p>\n

The external world of physics has thus become a world of shadows. In removing our illusions we have removed the substance, for indeed we have seen that substance is one of the greatest of our illusions. (in Anon. 2002: 128)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

*<\/p>\n

Writing from a Sufi perspective, Shaikh ad-Darq\u00e2w\u00ee notes, \u2018You are an illusion and a nothingness in a nothingness\u2019. He goes on: \u2018if you were to examine yourself, you would find God instead of finding yourself, and there would be nothing left of you but a name without a form\u2019. (in Baker & Henry 1999: 172 \u2013 my version in modern English)<\/p>\n

The Algerian Sufi master, Ahmad al\u2019Alaw\u00ee, (1869-1934) writes: \u2018Things lie hidden in their opposites, and but for the existence of opposites, the Opposer would have no manifestation\u2019. (in Baker & Henry 1999: 173) One wonders if there are echoes here of Derrida\u2019s diff\u00e9rance<\/em> ?<\/p>\n

*<\/strong><\/p>\n

Inside every apparently solid object there is an infinity of space, just as in every mind there is an imaginative infinity \u2013 though can we really speak of \u2018a<\/em> mind\u2019 (for where are its boundaries) and can a mind (which is an indeterminate field of energies, firing at great speed and unfathomable complexity) have an \u2018inside\u2019?<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

The poet, Robin Blaser, (1974: 37) argues that one of the tasks of poetry (and the other arts) is to make manifest, or demonstrate, the doubled actuality of the world as stuff and<\/em> light, presenting the world as a confluence of energies and forces that have no fixed boundaries – an indeterminate and transparent field of forces. Poetry and art can show us the transparency of the world we usually tend to see as opaque – even though we know it to be at the same time empty of essence and identity. In doing so, the arts also, in Heidegger\u2019s terms, celebrate human being as a clearing or opening in which possibilities arise, challenging any idea of fixed identity. Blaser also speaks of this task as \u2018the open\u2019, (ibid: 40) and it may not be unreasonable to connect this notion with Umberto Eco\u2019s idea of the artwork as an \u2018open work\u2019 and to go further to consider the human self or being as an open work.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

We can approach these thoughts from another, perhaps unexpected, perspective: Adorno\u2019s (1973) ideas about what he calls \u2018negative dialectics\u2019. It seems to me that Adorno considers one of the main purposes of his dialectical method as being to strip away all sense of categorical identities, essential truths (however provisional) and theoretical definites. He argues that while traditional western philosophy has used a variety of dialectical methods to identify or construct positive ideas, positions, theories or \u2018identities\u2019, \u2018negative dialectics\u2019 has no such purpose. Indeed even negative dialectics itself is not to be considered as a theoretical standpoint, but rather as a method for establishing or realising the fluidity and indefiniteness of all standpoints or identities \u2013 a method for demonstrating that no concept or standpoint constitutes an essential truth or autonomous identity. Thus all truths, standpoints and theories imply or invite contradiction. By implication, indefiniteness, what Adorno calls \u2018nonidentity\u2019, and contradictoriness are integral qualities of reality \u2013 or whatever cognitive field we take for \u2018reality\u2019.<\/p>\n

One aspect of Adorno\u2019s critique of Hegel is that Hegel uses dialectics to establish or construct \u2018substantive or essential\u2019 knowledge, whereas for Adorno, if we are to practice philosophy (and to live) in the light of the belief that there are no substantive essences, contents or identities, then we have to give up \u2018the illusion that [philosophy] might confine the essence in its finite definitions\u2019. (1973: 13) Adorno urges us \u2018not to play this game\u2019 of choosing between Yes and No, True or False, as if these qualities or attributes are absolutes or fixed essences. (ibid: 32) He also argues (ibid: 35) that: \u2018Dialectics is as strictly opposed to [relativism] as to absolutism; but it does not seek a middle ground between the two; it opposes them [both] through the extremes themselves, convicts them of untruth by their own ideas. This is very similar to the methodological claims of sceptics like Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus.<\/p>\n

Adorno recognises that, as he puts it, \u2018A dialectics no longer \u201cglued\u201d to identity will provoke either the charge that it is bottomless [\u2026] or the objection that it is dizzying\u2019. (ibid: 31) But Adorno seems to value dizziness or vertigo as a positive quality: \u2018In great modern poetry, vertigo has been a central feeling since Baudelaire\u2019 (ibid) and this vertigo is an \u2018index veri<\/em>\u2019 \u2013 an index of truth – which is often accompanied by \u2018the shock of inconclusiveness\u2019. (ibid: 33) So the dizzying feeling we get from engaging with the work of Baudelaire, Ezra Pound, James Joyce or Anish Kapoor may be the result of the fact that these makers realise in their work the flux of nonidentity, cutting the threads that bind us to fixed or essential viewpoints and understandings. As Adorno writes, negative dialectics does \u2018not come to rest in itself\u2019 \u2013 that is, it is always at play, resisting at every turn, reification and the craving for conclusions or answers which, in a sense, is the antithesis of art.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

I\u2019m reminded of Alan Schneider (1979?: 173 or Bair?) reporting that when he was once directing a play by Samuel Beckett, and trying to understand where Beckett stood in relation to one of his characters, Beckett said: \u2018I take no sides. I am interested in the shape of ideas. There is a wonderful sentence in Augustine: \u201cDo not despair; one of the thieves was saved. Do not presume; one of the thieves was damned.\u201d That sentence has a wonderful shape. It is the shape that matters.\u2019 We could interpret this as arguing for a kind of formalism, the sound and shape of the words and sentences as structurally meaningful, as formally autonomous. However, at another level Beckett seems to be suggesting both a kind of symmetry in our relationships to things and a \u2018suspension of judgement\u2019 (epoche<\/em>) in relation to statements uttered: \u2018I take no sides\u2019.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

To take another turn I\u2019d like to consider a key term within Buddhist thought and practice: sunyata,<\/em> or what I\u2019ve called the mutuality of existence. (Danvers 2006)<\/p>\n

The Sanskrit term, sunyata<\/em>, is usually translated as \u2018emptiness\u2019 or \u2018the void\u2019 but this can be very misleading, as it really refers to the Buddhist insight that no entity (object or idea) exists in, or for, itself. Existence consists of a web of mutually dependent or relational phenomena \u2013 none of which have any autonomous identity or self-existence. They are empty<\/em> or void<\/em> of self-existence – what Adorno may mean by his term, \u2018nonidentity\u2019.<\/p>\n

The ideas surrounding sunyata<\/em>\u00a0are articulated in great depth in Nagarjuna\u2019s Sunyavada<\/em>, or \u2018Doctrine of the Void\u2019, otherwise known as the Madhyamika, the \u201cmiddle way\u201d \u2013 a way that, according to Watts, \u201crefutes all metaphysical propositions by demonstrating their relativity\u201d.(1989, p.62) Even the idea of sunyata<\/em> itself, is relative and \u2018void\u2019.<\/p>\n

It cannot be called void or not void,<\/p>\n

Or both or neither;<\/p>\n

But in order to point it out,<\/p>\n

It is called \u2018the Void.\u2019<\/p>\n

(from the Madhyamika<\/em>\u00a0Shastra<\/em>, in Watts\u00a01989: 63)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is reminiscent of Adorno\u2019s injunction not to consider \u2018negative dialectics\u2019 as a particular philosophical standpoint but as a method for engaging with non-identity and the flux of dialectical play.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

D.T. Suzuki: \u2018In Buddhist emptiness [sunyata<\/em>] there is no time, no space, no becoming, no thing-ness; it is what makes all things possible; it is a zero full of infinite possibilities; it is a void of inexhaustible contents.\u2019 (in Anon. 2002: 128)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Perhaps, having linked ideas from physics, poetics, Adorno, Beckett and Madhyamika Buddhism, we should make another sideways leap to consider a kind of dialectical method employed by G.K. Chesterton, the half-forgotten eccentric metaphysician and author of the Father Brown stories. One word can simply characterise Chesterton\u2019s complex metaphysics: paradox<\/em>. Chesterton, in his various guises as novelist, short-story writer, poet and Catholic apologist, explores the supreme paradox: that the Many is One; and, the One is Many. He is a masterful logician and sceptical believer who uses reason to undo reasonable assumptions. As Hugh Kenner (1948: 65) notes: \u2018If [Chesterton] saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them\u2019. There would be no question of trying to reduce the complex paradoxes of existence to what he considered to be reasonable but illogical platitudes. A lamppost is both a hard metal object and a field of light, a fact and a fiction, a mundane thing and an inexplicable mystery. Kenner again: \u2018the world is a baffling place, incapable of being enmeshed in a phrase or a formula\u2019. (ibid: 21) Chesterton accepts that there are no fixed identities, he anticipates, in many ways, Adorno\u2019s idea of \u2018nonidentity\u2019. He sums up his own position thus:<\/p>\n

All the straight roads of logic lead to some Bedlam, to Anarchism or to passive obedience, to treating the universe as a clockwork of matter or else as a delusion of the mind. It is only the Mystic, the man who accepts the contradictions, who can laugh and walk easily through the world. (in Kenner: 66)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, it is one of the functions of art to reveal or manifest the indeterminate non-identity of how things are.<\/p>\n

\n

\n

Electron microscopy of atoms in a crystal<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

When we encounter the permeable lattice of structures made by poets like Ezra Pound, W.C. Williams, Charles Olson or Anne Carson, and artists like Joseph Beuys, Dove Bradshaw, Anish Kapoor or Helen Chadwick, we are looking through the energy fields of perception, representation and language, into the energy fields of materiality, chemistry, atomic and quantum physics. The artwork is an example of poetic transubstantiation \u2013 each poem or artwork manifests a doubled or indeterminate non-identity, it is at the same time a material object and a zone of possibility, an object in space and an opening of consciousness.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

In our engagements with artworks we are often confronted with a state of actuality that is neither this nor that, neti neti<\/em>, yet also this and <\/em>that, a coincidence of opposites in which truth is always plural, bifurcated, multi-facetted and diamond-like. Artworks are very beneficial partly because they often bring us to a mental clearing – a lightening of mind and being, in which we realise that there are no fixed essences or essential truths but only a network of interdependent possibilities and potentialities open to endless reformulation and change. We find art exciting and revitalising in so far as we become open to many equal and contradictory meanings \u2013 all and none of which are \u2018true\u2019. In a sense we may feel let down or constrained if we encounter an artwork that has an overt \u2018meaning\u2019 or \u2018story\u2019. The imposition of meaning or symbolic-value, by the artist or a critic, is something we tend to resist or react against. Overly didactic, dogmatic or propagandist art tends not to be valued for long, precisely because it tries to insist on one interpretation, on one fixed identity.<\/p>\n

\n

\n

Tony Cragg Figure with Kitbag<\/em> 1980s<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

The artwork and the self or subject can be considered as a nexus of possibilities, a dynamic space within which potential is actualised, interpretations are formed and re-formed, actions are modified and reframed, stories and images are revisioned, and beliefs and values are endlessly revised. The experiential field of the artwork is a field of liminal experience, of becoming, of betweenness, in which irreconciliable oppositions are recognised and handled as manifestations of the indeterminacy\u00a0and mutuality of existence. This view of art as a zone of interpretation and transubstantiation, and as a nexus of possibilities, is radically different to the notion of art as a zone of truth – a place, or object, in which a<\/em> truth resides or is revealed.<\/p>\n

In our encounters with artworks we encounter the paradox of transubstantiation, the uncomfortable realisation that things are both stuff and<\/em> light, not this or<\/em> that, but this and<\/em> that – many things at once. Empty of essence, and indeterminate as to meaning and identity, artworks are a challenge to any tendency towards dogmatism, reductionism and reification. What we look for in artworks is, at the very least, many possible meanings, a zone of interpretative possibility in which ideas about truth are contested or presented in a complex way, or in which our usual notions or assumptions are challenged and our tendency towards binary judgements (true\/false, right\/wrong, good\/bad) are suspended. In being open to many interpretations we are liberated from the dictatorship of one, and are thus empowered. We become, for a time at least, more porous, transparent and open, able to suspend judgement for a time and to enjoy the unpredictable play of sensations, ideas and the intermingling of minds.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it would be useful to carry these ways of thinking and being out of the art gallery or concert hall and use them to live with the conflicts and uncertainties that confront us in the complex uncertain world outside.<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bibliography
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Adorno, T. 1973. Negative Dialectics, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.<\/p>\n

Anon. 2002. Afterword in Tricycle, Spring 2002.<\/p>\n

Bair, D. 1980. Samuel Beckett: A Biography, London: ???<\/p>\n

Baker, B. & Henry, G. eds. 1999. Merton and Sufism: The Untold Story \u2013 A Complete Compendium, Louisville Kentucky, Fons Vitae.<\/p>\n

Blaser, Robin. 1974. \u2018The Metaphysics of Light\u2019 in The Capilano Review 6 <\/em>(Fall): 35-62.<\/p>\n

Bryson, B. 2004. A Short History of Nearly Everything, London: Black Swan.<\/p>\n

Danvers, J. 2006. Picturing Mind: Paradox, Indeterminacy and Consciousness in Art & Poetry, Amsterdam: Rodopi<\/p>\n

Kenner, H. 1948. Paradox in Chesterton, London: Sheed & Ward.<\/p>\n

Paz, O. 1988. Octavio Paz: Collected Poems 1957-1987, Manchester, UK: Carcanet.<\/p>\n

Watts, Alan. 1989. The Way of Zen. New York: Vintage Books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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