#title Strange Constellations
#author Friendship as a Form of Life
#date 08.2016
#source Retrieved on 8.6.2023 from https://friendship-as-a-form-of-life.tumblr.com/
#lang en
#pubdate 2023-08-06T20:38:42
#notes Friendship as a form of life a.un.ami@riseup.net http://friendship-as-a-form-of-life.tumblr.com
*** //CONSTELLATIONS//
“It’s four light hours to the confines of the solar system; to
the closest star, four light years. A disproportionate ocean
of emptiness. But are we really sure there is only a void? We
only know that there are no stars shining in that space. If they
existed, would they be visible? And if there existed bodies
that are neither luminous nor dark? Could it not be that on the
celestial maps, the same as on those of Earth, the star-cities are
indicated and the star-villages are omitted?”
We form constellations. Our bodies are never isolated, are
always enmeshed in shifting patterns of relations. Scattered
across space our selves form patterns, trace connections
ethical but unseen. They give us consistency and form outside
of our solitude. When we make our connections material our
constellations take shape, become tactile, make worlds.
When constellations congeal, take form, gain substance, the
individual light of single stars ceases washing over us in a bland
sameness. Commitment, sharing, friendship: our actions trace
and retrace ruts that make a certain type of relation habitual.
Our constellations grow depth, begin to inhabit a world. But a
constellation is never ossified, is never a brittle, fragile thing,
is never a skeleton, its bones unchanging until shattered by
exigencies. Constellations are moving, shifting; they are born
of relation, give form to relation, and change as relations do. At
their best they are contemporary to their world.
Orion is just a handful of atomized stars until it is imbued with
meaning, becomes a hunter roaming the skies with weight
and consistency, myth and story. The light that shone from
the Drinking Gourd in the 19th century American South is
different than the light that shines from the Big Dipper. One
represented freedom and traced a line of flight out of slavery;
the other is a pot.
Agamben, observing the night sky, remembers the unnumbered
constellations that move away from us more rapidly than the
speed of light; their light will never reach us. They account for
the darkness and void in between our named constellations.
To be contemporary is “to perceive, in the darkness of the
present, this light that strives to reach us but cannot.”
The light of our time obscures the present, blinds us with its
brilliance. All existence seems coated in the same cold blue-
white glow of screens, or the bland consistency of millions of
isolated stars, combining their light but nothing more—a dull
homogeneity, a uniform way of perceiving the world. This
is the consequence of living in a world in which the political
nature of truth has been erased by the supposed objectivity
of science. And yet sometimes that homogeneity falters. We
observe a singular place change form and take on new qualities
under different lights. A pond reflects the changing seasons,
becomes an inferno with the sunset, an inky pool of reflected
stars at night, a shifting and ever-changing gray even under
the dullest low-hanging clouds. Or a friend’s face, that looks so
different illuminated by pulsing blue and red lights or flash-
bangs than it does by candles or sunlight filtering through
dripping branches.
Likewise the light from stars falls on us differently. For
astronomers, who barely look at stars anymore, favoring
computer analysis and radio telescopes, it falls as a spectrum.
They can tell us how hot a star is, whether it is fleeing us or
approaching, what planets might disturb its light with every
rotational wobble. They give it predicates, identity, class. For
others, starlight is spectral; it is cold, ghostly, it illuminates
without regard for difference, it renders our world unfamiliar.
In the frigid starlight we might recognize our loneliness and the
indifference of the planet. For ancient sailors, navigating by
constellations, starlight was a guide, a stalwart companion that
could always help you find your way. And, perhaps, there are
other ways to see this world by the light of the constellations:
“Thought needs to move away from everything called logic and
common sense, to move away from all human obstacles in such
a way that things take on a new look, as though illuminated by
a constellation appearing for the first time.”
To look at each other and the world in a different light, “as
though illuminated by a constellation appearing for the first
time,” or by the light of those constellations that will never reach
us, is to consider what is around us in strange and new ways.
And, perhaps, to consider each other, to consider the way that
giving form to a thing, naming a collection of stars, imbues it
with meaning. We contain within us so many overlapping maps
of enmity and affinity. We are created every day by each other
and by this world. And we must remember that nothing—not
a constellation, not a self—can ever be understood in isolation.
Walter Benjamin knew the necessity of the communal for
encountering the stars:
“The ancients’ intercourse with the cosmos had been different:
the ecstatic trance [Rausch]. For it is in this experience alone
that we gain certain knowledge of what is nearest to us and
what is remotest from us, and never of one without the other.
This means, however, that man can be in ecstatic contact
with the cosmos only communally. It is the dangerous error
of modern men to regard this experience as unimportant and
avoidable, and to consign it to the individual as the poetic
rapture of starry nights.”
*** //MAPS//
The night is still, the moon absent, and the injunction against
lights forces us to trust our feet. We cannot see, so we feel
our way along the road, sensing for the transition from hard-
packed gravel to soft forest duff that lets us know when we’ve
wandered off the road. A thick canopy of redwood boughs
and douglas fir blocks out the sky. There are no constellations
here, only glimpses of solitary stars through black branches.
We are guided by insignificant signs, a cryptic trail that
hides, not in code, but in the quotidian: a certain tag here,
unremarkable amidst the rest of the graffiti on posts and
gates; a certain branch there, lying just so. The low-hanging
tangle of manzanita forces us down, our backs arched until
we resemble cats or apes instead of humans, holding our bags
in front of us, pushing our way through what seems to be a
homogenous bramble but is filled with subtle variation. Turn
here, go forward there, duck under this branch. The muscles in
our backs ache from walking doubled over, from awkwardly
holding backpacks in front of us so they are not torn from us
and swallowed by the brush. Our senses are heightened, we
are hyper-aware, silent, listening, watching for clues.
If you follow the twisting tunnels of manzanita for long enough,
and in the right manner, they might guide you to a refuge; to
a friend’s house, with murmurs and forest calls and candlelight
welcoming you home. And when you arrive, it will not be in
the same way, or the same state, as when you left the car in the
parking lot. There are rules of approach here; it would be easy
to stroll loudly down the forest road with flashlights, find the
right spot, and push through a hedge to arrive at home. And
that ease would attract attention and suspicion, leave traces
not quotidian but extraordinary. The hole in the hedge would
grow larger, the lights would attract curiosity, the carelessness
might bring down strangers or the police. And even if it didn’t,
it would change the nature of visits to the woods. The rules
of approach don’t simply keep friends safe, and they aren’t
simply a prophylactic against police infection. They force you
into certain other behaviors at the same time, coding your
travel. You cannot run through the woods, you cannot be in a
rush, you cannot stroll along in a straight line with your eyes on
your phone and your feet feeling the sidewalk. You are forced
into the present, forced into a state of magic and mystery that
enchants the rest of the experience. And it is not unlikely that,
following the circuitous route through the manzanita, you
might encounter another friend traveling the same path. These
are paths that prescribe certain movements, forms that create
certain relations, ways of being that open up new possibilities.
These are paths that change us as we traverse them, that are not
bound by the functionality of cybernetic maps but that force
us to travel with depth and an attention to how we travel. Not
because of a blind attachment to a system of morals--it is good
that one should travel in this way to reach this destination--but
because how we do something determines our experience of
the thing and the social possibilities that might emerge from it.
“Rather than new critiques, it is new cartographies that we need.
Cartographies not of the Empire, but of the lines of flight out of it.
How is it to be done? We need maps. Not maps of what is off the
map, but navigation maps. Maritime maps. Orientation tools. That
do not try to explain or represent what lies inside the different
archipelagos of desertion, but tell us how to reach them. Portolan
Charts.”
The Portolan Charts referenced by Tiqqun are obscure,
referencing a technology of maritime navigation that emerged
in the 13th century. At their most basic, they consist of lines
connecting various significant ports, with the compass bearing
needed to travel from one to the other in a straight line. Rather
than navigating by landmarks, one could set the compass and
follow it, trusting it would take you to your destination. There
is little data represented on the maps beyond the compass
bearings. They somewhat resemble subway maps in that
regard, spatially and temporally compressed representations
that simply point a direction: travel north by northwest to reach
Pisa, take the J train to get to your friend’s house in Bed-Stuy.
What is curious, though, is that a prescribed route of travel
means you will encounter other travelers regularly. The built
environment is political, and our modes of transportation are
never neutral. We know riot control was built by Haussmann
into Parisian boulevards and into American universities
after the 1960s, and we know the history of isolation and
suburbanization that followed the automobile for the Fordist
worker. But perhaps, by creating our own cartographies, our
own rules of approach, illuminated only by stars and struggling
through dense undergrowth, we can create different political
environments, modes of travel that nurture other ways of
being together.
This would require map-making, but not the maps we are
used to; new maps, as Tiqqun says. But, before suggesting new
cartographies, we must take precautions against the liberatory
maps of the past.
Standard maps are state maps: they designate identity, delimit
borders, claim objectivity, depict the world truthfully. State
maps are uniform: every feature fits into a category. One can
glance at a map and see quickly how large a city is, what country
it is in, what roads connect it. They are a birds-eye view, seen
from the point of view of the police, or a ruler, or a military
satellite. In the past it might have been enough to suggest
rhizomatic maps, routes that burrow and that spread and turn
unpredictably, that move nomadically. But rhizomes, too, have
been seized by power. The old regime, of standardized maps
and objective truths, has been shaken, only to be replaced by
cybernetic mapping.
Now, maps are fluid, shifting, constantly updated by a
multiplicity of nodes and sensors, a dense array of citizen-
scientist-snitches who collect data horizontally, the phone in
their pocket constantly transmitting information. Resiliency
is the new buzz word for states and capitalists: resiliency of
city utility grids in the event of climate disaster; resiliency of
distribution and shipping networks in the event of proletarian
disruption and work stoppages. Organicity, machine learning,
and emergent networks define the new maps. A recent
experiment used slime mold to design interstate highway
networks: researchers placed piles of oats on the location of
cities in a map of the United States, with the number of calories
available in each city correlating to the population. They then
introduced a slime mold on the East Coast, which slowly traced
a resilient network from city to city, expending the least
energy to access calories while building as much redundancy
as possible. “The mold has found the most efficient paths and
sticks to them, but as the continuous activity highlights, the
resilient creature could always form new networks if needed.”
Organic, rhizomatic, and resilient, these new maps are still
designed for power and capital—but for the new, cybernetic,
flexible management and production that is the hallmark of
the current era. Rhizomes cannot be our answer: now even
soldiers travel rhizomatically, burrowing through building
walls, to stamp out insurgencies.
If we are to design maps that are of use to us, that help us to
inhabit a world of our making, these maps must be encrypted,
opaque. Rather than traveling along visible routes, along the
illuminated lines of standard constellations and google maps,
we might seek to travel in the dark spaces, those areas where the
light of receding constellations has yet to reach. We can draw
maps for friends, share stories of secret routes, knowing that
the maps we draw can never be objective and always contain
something of ourselves in them. Our constellations, then, are
made of dark matter; untraceable and unseen, existing in the
interstices of the illuminated skies.
*** //FORMS//
We read by the light of absent constellations, we travel along
obscure but communal paths. And, perhaps, we can create
forms that allow us greater freedom and better sharing. Not
rules of the state, nor rules of a communal covenant. We aren’t
interested in the self-managed hell of cybernetic socialists, or
the democratic process of drafting a new constitution--we do
not seek constituency in any form. When we speak of rules or
forms, we aren’t describing a set of licit and illicit behaviors, or
determining normality and deviance. A form does not contain
the suspended violence of the state, waiting to strike whoever
deviates from it; nor does it contain the soft self-management
or peer pressure of community agreements. Instead, it is an
experiment that can produce new ways of being together. The
simplest analog is a game: in playing chess, or Go, we accept
a certain set of rules. There is nothing preventing us from
upending the board, from hurling white and black pebbles,
from creating patterns of our own design and our own will.
There are no police. And yet, in playing these games, we
temporarily agree to abide by the internal logic of the game.
In turn, we are granted something else—a different way of
relating to one another, a different way of relating to the world.
Likewise, when we eat together and craft rituals together, we
open space for a different type of coming together.
If we institute certain rules, certain forms temporarily, we are
not imposing rule and authority on formlessness, on unfettered
egos. All of our behaviors and interactions are already coded
by our society; our habits and affects are the product of certain
apparatuses, of power, of violence, of jealousy, of fear. We
are not—we are never—“free”, especially now. We are already
bound to certain behaviors, to certain unspoken rules. Some of
them are imposed by dominant society, some a by-product of
our subculture. Imposing new rules might instead allow us to
act in different ways. Thus a dinner with questions could just as
easily be any other potluck, with clusters of in and out groups,
with lackluster discussion and a fear of speaking honestly lest
one reveal a weakness or be jumped on by relentless critique.
Or, it can take on a different form when given structure, rules,
an atmosphere. It is imbued with meaning, enchanted, creates
space for vulnerability and sharing. It is given a halo. A new light
shines on the relations of the current world, and everything
remains as it was, but seems just a little bit different.
Curiously, the infamous nihilist Frere Dupont suggested
something very similar when attempting to confront what
he calls the “pre-human”; the ways in which ritual, repetition,
socialization, and games of truth condition our existence and
restrict the possible, the ways in which the infrastructure of the
present, consisting of the dead labor of our forebears, holds us
captive. In his essay “For Earthen Cup”, after acknowledging
the limits of “consciousness” or “deciding to change the world”
when faced with the enormous accretions of the past, he
somewhat jokingly suggests a communist roleplaying game.
This would be a way to develop communist rituals and forms
that take on weight and meaning with repetition, become
less contrived and more real. While his proposal seems in
part a suggestion to circumvent the problem of the vanguard
by projecting it into the future (what we small few do now
will have greater impact on future generations), it remains
intriguing for the way in which he recognizes the importance
of ritual, of form, of rules, for conditioning life. If we are more
concerned with experimenting with communist forms-of-life
in the present, with imbuing our friendships with intention and
the light of an absent communist constellation, we might still
take seriously this experimenting with form, self-conscious
though it might be.
Those of us who came up in the era of regular parlor games
and contrived strange dinners in anarchist houses might find
some resonance in this. It might be ridiculous—it certainly
seems so from the outside—but perhaps a certain suspension
of disbelief and a willingness to experiment is worth enduring
ridicule.
There is always the question of power written into this, of
who designs the games, who makes the rules, who establishes
the forms. This is true whether we are explicit about it or not;
perhaps a certain degree of honesty in our experimentation
will allow us to challenge and play with the implicit rules and
social hierarchies that already exist and shape us.
*** //CELESTIAL NAVIGATION//
Unseen constellations; affective and ethical linkages between
us; secret cartographies and modes of travel. Perhaps we
could view these things as political components of a celestial
navigation, a way to navigate through this world, with each
other, to maintain reference points which might not exist, or
which might be too far away to see. Perhaps we can form the
very constellations we navigate by. Others might simply say
that we must build the world we will inhabit. In many ways, we
already do—the linkages that exist between places, between
friends, the commonly traveled routes and annual encounters
create patterns between us whether we are aware of them or
not. If we can look at those patterns, if we can see them in a
different light, if we can bring intention to them and create
new, experimental forms, we might begin to feel some of
that light shining on us, the light of a distant, imaginary, and
unreachable constellation that nevertheless enchants our own
experience of this world.
“the unfulfilled dreams and desires of humanity are the patient
limbs of the resurrection, always ready to reawaken on the last
day. And they don’t sleep enclosed in rich mausoleums, but
are fixed like living stars in the farthest heaven of language
whose constellations we can barely make out. And this, at
least, we didn’t dream. To know how to grasp the stars that fall
from the never dreamt-of firmament of humanity is the task of
communism”
That is the beautiful, poetic vision of friendship, of maps, of
constellations and communism. It gives me hope, makes me
feel powerful, but there is a darkness here that might be more
than the absence of light from distant constellations. The
darkness of the outside, of those we reject, of those outside of
our shared hopes and our social power. I would prefer to end
unsettled, disturbed, remembering that there are never any
solutions but only experimentations.
The question remains: as we build worlds, as we form
constellations, as we use each other as reference points, how
do we avoid building states? How do we continue to believe in
friendship and the small communism of sharing our lives, while
refusing the impulse to differentiate between inside and out,
refusing to build walls and permanent collectivities? Sorting
the world into friends and enemies is useful for war—which
we wage everyday, against the existent and this world—but it
doesn’t solve the question of the stranger, or the outsider, or
the way that social cliques form and exclude others. An ossified
constellation excludes the possibility of the encounter, the
possibility that our world might dissolve and disaggregate,
and then take new forms with others. This is a tension that we
must always engage with, keep at the forefront, even as we
build our shared worlds.
Roland Barthes addresses this tension, and I will end with his
words: not as a solution, but as a yet another reference point to
navigate by, to keep glancing at as we chart our way.
“the project involves the impossible establishment of a group
whose Telos would be to perpetually destroy itself as a group,
that is to say, in Nietzschean terms: to enable the group (the
Living-Together) to leap beyond ressentiment.”