Spectrosis

         It would seem, if this artist-critic is a satirist, and the satirist establishes continuity and orientation, that there is need for a better understanding of what satire is. It has appealed to me as late as a way of merging comedy and tragedy, humor with a more compassionate poetic art. Comedy had also repulsed me for its being a form of negation, a representation of something psychologically inconceivable, the joke which condemns what it discusses as a joke. Satire seems a bigger, more hard-to-pin-down thing than merely a joke. Also, I have contrasted satire with capital, in that capital converts labor into itself like a parasite, and I have also linked this with psychological notion of authority, against which I have contrasted the "inspiration" provided by art, the indirect communication. Satire behaves like capital in that it can assimilate things to itself, through parody, it can take an advertisement and turn it into a warning sign. Both satire and capital may assume forms into itself, though capital obscures those forms, they being labor, and satire is the force of labor assuming the form of what obscures it. Satire, it is said, both makes you laugh and hurts you, stinging you with its truth. Therefore it is not like a joke, which is funny solely because it dismisses the supposed reality of something, and thereby the joke plays into the techniques of authority, which dismisses the reality of labor, much like criticism dismisses the reality of the artist. Comedy and poetry are aesthetic forms of the critic/artist relationship, the cynic/pretentious dichotomy. Criticism and humor deflates, dismisses, negates, and artistry and poetry inflates, exalts, affirms. The artist provides a perspective on reality, which expresses themselves, whereas the satirist appears to parody reality, rather than represent it subjectively. In this parody of reality, reality is not negated, but neither is it affirmed; it exists and does not exist. Reality is neither a joke, or an imagination; it is neither dismissed as psychologically inconceivable or constructed as psychologically conceived. 

        What form of representation is parody? What distinguishes a parody from a representation is the satirical element it has, that it is critical. Satire is the ultimate dis-course, which in becoming discourse, represents course/continuity; much in the same way we could say that satire achieves orientation through disorientation. Satire judges the form it occupies. It does not simply throw away the form it occupies, the way jokes do, because if it did the total impact would be laughter. Rather, there is laughter and sadness, meaning, humanity in a simultaneity. It would seem to me that it is like the artist whose loves make up their relationships, and inspiration, being given form in poetry, then turning against that very poetry as a form which can contain that love, which breaks the mirror-relation with criticism. By rejecting the love poem at the same time the love poem is stated, in the name of a love which goes beyond the poem, the criticism is prevented, and the criticism itself is turned upon itself. Satire is the discourse which goes against discourse, the dis-discourse, the parody of discourse. But such that it can do so to the greatest possible extent, it is necessarily to make a serious joke, a joke which expresses its heart, a joke which does not have a trifling, dismissive origin, but a rather passionate purpose. This makes satire continuous with art, and criticism, while discontinuing criticism. So, it is more parody of discourse than parody of reality, a parody of discourse which establishes in the negation, reality, much like a joke, though what emerges is already present with it. Satire does not defraud its intentionality to the same extent as comedy, and this is what is poetic about it, its sincerity, its subjectivity. It is communicating directly and indirectly at the same time, being emotional and critical. It is not merely a goof, but a poetic statement. It has all the power of subjectivity and all the authority of objectivity. There is no "other" for the satirist, no reply to be made. It is not capital, authority without labor, without subjectivity, and nor is it art, labor without authority, without capital. It is the orienting judgment of a disorientation. The satire is personal and general, subjective and objective, a relatedness which does not fixate on self, but shows self in action, as poetic judge. It disparages and affirms, it performs criticism. Satire is art that performs criticism on criticism, and it does so by disputing its own form. It represents the disorientation of spectrosis. 

        Let us say the signified-signifier relationship corresponds to the artist/critic, analysand/analyst, inspiration/authority dyads. Satire is the artist, analysand, and inspiration which materializes within criticism, analysis, and authority without dematerializing, because its materialization is a dematerialization to begin with. It produces a non-signifier, which the artist is keen to do, being a self-symbolist rather than the self-signifier that is the critic. But like in Jungian thought, the symbol is presented for analysis, establishes that dialectic, whereas the satire is self-explanatory. It is a modifier, not a signifier; a dream which accomplishes its own interpretation, which is not obscure. The self of the artist is visible within their work as a critic because everything is not given over to form, the image of the world. The artist invites the critic into their life because they present their criticism as an image-of-the-world, and the critic in turn seeks the artist, the image of the world to connect with their criticism. The critic seeks to erase what they support, by establishing its conjunction with the social order, rather than acknowledging the attack upon the social order the work represents. The artist is then bribed, flattered, into serving the social order that their work aims to criticize, paid for their repression. The issue is overtaken, surpassed, bypassed by the position of the satirist who is both creatures at once, who is no longer exclusively aesthetic or critical. Between the signified and the signifier what permits us to understand their connection? It is the signifying which is the critic's vocation. Language is on their side. But the satirist both signifies and symbolizes, criticizes and artifices. The signified only has the attribute, separate from being subject to signifying, of thing-ness. Its form is separated from agency, within language, it does nothing. We might, maybe, be able to say therefore that signified-signifier runs parallel with symbolizer-symbolized. In that with respect to the signifier of the word, the signified is a symbolizer. Reality symbolizes language; language signifies reality. Satire does both and neither. It both symbolizes and signifies criticism, and it does so by symbolizing the criticism in such a way that rejects the symbol. And this why satire essential duty is parody, as we speculated before, because it is parody which both symbolizes and signifies at once in this way, which embraces a form, like an artist, and denatures it, like a critic.

        In all my favorite authors, filmmakers, musicians, it seems, the form is disavowed as it is embraced, parodied, which lends humor, and yet it is expressive, it is artistic. To find this in philosophy is difficult, for here we are in the language of truth, the signification of truth, the form of truth, which must then find a word to describe this which is the parody of truth; it must be parody of reality to be parody of discourse. A philosophy which gives form to truth and yet takes it away, which reality symbolizes, and which signifies reality. Spectrosis could be used to describe the way reality parodies philosophy, and the way philosophy parodies reality. Spectrosis is the disorientation within reality, the instability of reality, in which the real and the absurd meet. It is the spectre of reality within reality, and the spectrum of its knowable possibilities. Spectrosis is the disavowal/embrace of reality, the orientation of disorientation. Spectrosis is the inspiration which is self-authorizing via having a form which is self-deprecating. Spectrosis is an ease which is mentally considered a disease. It is critical anti-criticism because it is the illness of the making-visible, an idea that cannot and will be taken seriously, the unknowability of the knowable, and the knowability of the unknowable. Spectrosis is the total criticism of reality, the sickness that is perception, which is our greatest health. It invalidates/validates the form of living. As neither joke, deconstruction, or poem, construction. It is however a poetics, a post-poetics. It is a parody of an idea, which itself is a parody of life. It is the claim that reality itself is a parody of itself.