ana peraica on 15 Nov 2000 22:55:46 -0000 |
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<nettime> Place where everything makes a sense |
PLACE WHERE EVERYTHING MAKES A SENSE Ana Peraica paper for Understanding Balkans conference, Ohrid, 2000 Identities are simple sense organisations1, meanings binary formed, as: me and the Other, enemy and a friend, felt-into victim and aggressor2, as sides of a war. Unfortunately, things are rather more complicated, than fairytale Good and Evil distinction. Simplifications seem to be done only for explaining behaviour to children, for conditioning latter behaviour. Similarly, other authorities (as political official apparatus, or it's speakers, as media...) never tell only the true or only false. There are variations, degrees of truth-ness, and nuances of identity-reporting overlap, for which they are uncatchable. With globalisation all meanings become un-stable, as influenced by mess of authorities, introducing parameters not locally transparent. They become more and more locally unsensical, meta-physical, and beyond verification, but still being meaningful, as practical for explanation of other things. Identification seems like an old, overcome disease, while generalization processes, flattening of the meaning for more universal usefulness or utilitarity is a common activity. Globalisation simply is standardization and homogenisation for a sale - trade of identity on the identity market. Indeed, some identities trade well on this bazaar.3 This text speaks on symptoms of identification and wars, and globalisation and semantics. Why again Balkans? Reporting on this geographical concept, which was revitalised, after a long time4, to be used in explanation of the territory of ex-Yugoslavia plus states that had to do something with this segregation (not to be named insulting "vulture"), were strategic. Using term such as Balkans is not identification, it is simple generalisation that states - things inside it are unclear to be named, and at the same time not making transparent own interests in segregation. For those reasons, a term Balkans was for a long time only a kind of the court name of "the case", put away to be solved latter, and described as "boiling", "nationalistic", "barbarian"... And with it, it turned out to be one of the most mystified locations of the last decade, mystical case, on which many articles and books were written. But what is interesting here is not so much a Balkans, as it is the way of forming and adopting a myth in the "globalisation time", it is precisely this hype, transparent in media, artworks, and latter book-shells of the West5 (but strangely not on the Balkans itself). The myth was formed from the outside, demonisation together with the closing of the territory, as a reservat of Barbarians. Balkans wasn't some "there" for the Europe, it was inside it, but tried to be kept local and closed, for a long time. But, it is notable - as Balkans is formed as one in the serial of Others of European or European-related cultures, and as the history of this paranoiac identity formation is never single-way, it not only discovered vulnerable points6 of the imaginer, but also made it to change with this concept, as it is impossible that if the one changes - the Other stays the same. They are connected, and are the formation of meaning is simply binary, referring one to another, in two consistent referring sets, there is no escape out until one absorbs the other and forms another binary. This problem arrived from the other one, more ideological and more mythological, that had to have a transit global myth surrogate, as the myth of Balkans turned to be. Previous to this myth, there were other ones, that split apart - on one side it was a socialist fairytale, and with it the interpretation of Evil capitalism that "eat workers". From the other side it was a "zoo park of socialism" preventing individualities to differ, and with it another fairytale of capitalistic space of opportunity. Meaning /// surface / fall of surface / fall of meaning /map as sense, territory / global nonsense and local ad hoc sense But, it isn't simply a "fall of the wall", as it is a fall of the surface, as would be argued in this text, referring to the Deleuze's notion of the surfaces of sense and nonsense, surfaces of walls from both sides. It was a fall of meaning. With it a non-sensical globalisation, that gives no differentia specifica [lat. Specification of difference, from Aristotle] needed to identify, and locate the meaning, but homogenising all meanings for other purposes, introduced - nonsense. Without a barricade it introduced a wind blowing from all sides. Globalisation, it simply means, "becoming a nonsense", or disidentification, or apprehending of it to a local plane, while nationalism means, "going back to the old sense", or re-identification. It is, therefore related to nomadic meaning and settlement of meaning. Can there be a local epistemology of the space? "Understanding Balkans", as is a title of this conference, here is meant as the understanding of organization of senses, previous to the event that mystified Balkans, during it, and its dissolution. More specific, senses were on the Balkans organized in multi-narrative stories, according to the "multy-culty" Yugoslavian happy-family solution. Although that metaphor of warmness and closeness was only functioning for the outside, it indicates reasons of the war (authority problems, and adolescents emancipation). But senses were organized parallely. The simplest example of this parallel narration is in language, the same language could be different named; calling it Serbian, Croatian or even Bosnian, as was used in wider usage, or making syntagms as Serbo-Croatian, Croat-Serbian for official usages was common. Everyone could by that time say the difference, imitating Bosnians, Montenegrins, and Serbians, Croats or Albans sound version of the same language. Those languages were differently spoken and written. Therefore while objects of signification were the same, names were only sounding different, while signs were different in complete. Another, maybe more literate and paradigmatic example can be found in a work by a Serbian (or ex-Yugoslavian?) author, Milorad Pavic "Khazar dictionary"7. The story on Jews, paradigmatic for a Yugoslavian anti-fascism, was adopted and incorporated [not stolen as enriched with new characters and heroes] in three different religions. Same protagonists appear in versions of three European religions; Catholic, Muslim and original Jewish, stories that are reflecting but are different, as at the same time they are incorporated into the "organism" of a bigger myth, of religion. Once Ateh, a princess of dreams, has something to do with Cyril and Method, the other time with Muslim prophets. And while vertically stories are disconnected, horizontally dream hunters travel in all of them, making no inconsistency. It is a simple "version construction"8, as the territory on which they travel is the same one, without meeting their own selves on the same territory. But why latter both language and the myth become topics of the "national expertise" or "expropriation" that is to be elaborated. Of course, it is because of borders. And borders are not only the topic of the nation-states; they are also the topic of the globalisation, the same process that started to threat after the fall of the surface. The difference between those two processes, considering borders is: national state is completely sure in enforcing them, while globalisation at the same time clings between a wish to remove and enforce them9, and double-processing makes it nonsensical. That is precisely the reason why national solution seems sense about, a reaction on globalism. But, is only a look from the inside, while globalisation is a look from above, but keeping the geographic positioning; therefore it is a view of meta-America, meta-EU, but still America and EU. For that non-but-identification it is a precisely paradoxical. Going back to the topic of semantics and logics related to the territory [in which semantics takes a meaning-forming of the identity and a process of the identification, while applied logics of tactics or a strategy of its formation], maps are at the same time problems of the surface and the meaning10 [emphasised again by Deleuze]. Binary system and bidimensional logic was commonly used to explain the power9 of the upper dimension, and reasons of entering to the meta-position, either meta-physics or the strategic positioning of the emancipated from local - space. It is obvious; nonsense of a map suggests an omnipotentence, a perfect control. Maps that are nonsense suggest, on the other side the sense of other maps, although they are nonsensical. As the identity is the sense - in - the territory, map is the sense - of - the territory [that one otherwise wouldn't have]. Of course, beside imagined identities and maps12, there are not [yet] existing territories and not [yet] existing maps, as usually formed with the nationalisation and war politics. But, speaking of the nonsense of globalisation, we can as well speak on nonsensical identities and nonsensical maps. One of the most common examples of the non condensed - sense identity is "American"; as it is a non-identity, defined through ephemeral parameters [as market products, for example, that have nothing to do with most of people inhabiting the territory], that still exists, identity that can be recognized only through flat globalisation-about processes of what is called "Americanisation". Examples of non-maps can be found in the literacy, as the map of the ruler of the country in Hunting of the Snark, by Lewis Carroll13, who is in the possession of the map of own territory, made in correspondence 1:1, but that is completely blank. Borges mentioned similar map, a map of that can cover the whole territory. Those maps are the surfaces of the territory itself, nonsense of "being a map". Covering all, in total, they are not any more signifiers, while signified still exists, with own sense of it. Becoming a blanket of the territory, they can cover - any other territory - more or less, and measure the quadrate of the space. Therefore they can be used only in relation to the other territory, not in relation to the territory signifying. The similar process is in globalisation, in which signifiers are disconnecting from signified, but the same flat surface of in-relation meaning can be applied. For example; "Slovenia exports x times more of a ajvar on the territory than Macedonia", where identities of Slovenians and Macedonians are completely irrelevant, no matter if the good can be for example a kind of a national cuisine related good14. In conflict of global and local, nonsense and [with relativisation always looking like arbitrary] ad hoc senses, or topics in the hype culture of nomadism and settlement, of all meanings, as identities, one can not avoid mentioning a war machine, especially related to the Balkans. With lost of one meaning [dis-identification], that on the Balkans happened with the fall of ideology supporting identity, or socialism, what we have is a nomadic, open space without sense, or with senses of pure becoming. Local sense become unsensical, and what happened was a quest for a meaning, a stabilisation, introducing a war machine, pure sense of trying "to become" sensical. War machine/// nomadic war machine and travelling concepts/ semantic-war machine paradox of a war machine - drawing on a map / Despite only using a terminology from a Deleuze and Guattari's script "Nomadology: A war machine"15 there are several truth anticipations of the authors to be noted. First of them is - wars indeed are previous to state formation. Although it seemed on the Balkans wars were happening in-between different just formed and acknowledged states, those states didn't exist [or they existed nominally, but not functionally]16. If it is a machine about - it is a Trojan horse17 one, as states were waiting on the end. Or, they were still not existing, but were own causa finalis, goals of those processes. On the start only sketched identities were filled through the time with more details for the identification. They were indeed nomadic, but about final settlement, as nomadism in most of cases is18. War machines were simply capturing of those "travelling concepts"19, meaning-makings in sense of localisation of meaning, introducing differences and using them as rules of strategic analysis, not generalisation. Second true anticipation can be found in Deleuze's "Logic of Sense", where the author speaks on senses of "becoming" that if connected to the same process in the Nomadology script, lead to the concept of the semantic-war machines, as they are about becoming sense, from nonsense. War was, despite bloody, cruel and bad in real space, a contraction, and over-production of the virtual explanation space of meaning, ideology defining lost identity in the nonsensical surround. Meanings were, previous to this separation not only "becoming" in sense of filling a purpose of self in the single way, but also tested. They were tried and then abandoned in a short time-period, like was the case with too hard nationalistic falling outs that caused restrictions from the EU or similar institutions, which function more as identity lost and recovering. In relation to the theory on sense of Deleuze, and one on war machine, written together with Guattari, the notion of reversal meaning-formation in sense of becoming is interesting. Becoming bigger than one was (on the example of Alice and mushroom) is at the same time becoming smaller than one would be. And the local situation can be described as follows; some states indeed become smaller than they were intended to, while other ones mythologically20 appeared first time in visible form. Becoming bigger they miniaturised in own history, needed for the formation of consolidating identity, and for those reasons we have identity problems on some territories, as Bosnia, for example. And this strange ontology is one of the reasons Balkans appears to be a myth of bubbling territory. Identity /// paradox of the endless identity / identification and dis/identification / identity overlap / Contest of personal identity and lost of the proper name / dictionary and version construction / conscience of a dictionary / stasis of meaning and the state Identification and nationalism indeed was an undeniable relation of becoming smaller, despite many of plans to become bigger (for most of involved agents - pre-states). Becoming specific simply is becoming smaller, and becoming general is becoming bigger (as even 'cosmopolitanistic' ideology, another nice narrative that introduced not so ideal global market economy). One is about condensing meaning, the other about endless identity. Endless can be circular definition, but also an algorithmic one, but in both cases it leads to the "contest of personal identity and lost of the proper name, guaranteed by the permanence of savoir". "Paradox is initially that which destroys good sense as the only direction, but it is also that which destroys common sense as the assignation of fixed identities."21 And global identities, caught by generalisation simply cannot be named. Less about Croatian or Serbian language, seems global used languages are not any more identity about belonging to none.22 Concerning identity it is about - becoming nonsense. As was already mentioned, nonsense is meta-territorial, and therefore always including a topic of the power over it. Deleuze refers to the source related to a territory named Wonderland (that can not be defined cartographically23). And a topic of the nonsense is related to sense full - believing to be a precisely that stratum of sense. - Alice "There is no sense to try. None can believe in impossible things." - White Queen: "I would say you lack some practice..." "When I was your age, I was always practicing at least half an hour a day, until I would believe even up to six impossible things, even before the breakfast." 24 Of course reading a fairytale from the topic of sense and a war machine - it starts to be a horror. This "reading through the sense" as well makes as well a war-semiotic machine the worst of horrors; meanings become established or even forbidden before they manage to adopt. Holding of the sense - stasis, state by any agent is a simple demagogy used for the formation of the meaning, as semantic theory of truth25 appears to be, as well; - "Full hand of the bear... Here I give you the undeniable approve that it is as I told you!" (Humpty Dumpty)26 - "You would find out I told it twice." "The argument is complete if I say it thrice. Right place for Snark! I told it three times, and what I say three times is the truth" (Snark)27 "Because I said so", a semantic tyranny argument, is that other form of the semantic-war machine and the formation of ideology, obvious in real in totalitarian media politics. To say something in thousands of copies, not even to repeat is nothing more than a nonsense game of semantic tyrants Snark and Humpty Dumpty. In time of semiosis, semiotic truth functions as the "White Queen Breakfast", believing arbitrary sense, or in a long-term, a nonsense. Of course, at this stage it is obvious, without changing identity it is impossible to adopt those new "truths", and the identity in question is a believer, a personal one. The only possible way is in becoming someone else, and believing to be someone else. It is therefore in becoming mad. Transformable identity can not simply pass out of this schizophrenic believing to be someone else, but schizophrenia is nothing but an insane explanation of a sense28. The relation of empty or literate, usually narrative, identity and formation of it through a historical narration is interesting. Why narration functions the best for the formation of identity is precisely embodiment and feeling-into that is this form's norm of reading. Reading own identity and recognition can arrive again to completely schizophrenic forms. One of the most radical examples I heard during the war in Croatia was precisely related to the book that meanwhile become embodied version construction - three different stories of Pavic's dictionary, sharing signifier (the protagonist) on the same territory (language), never meeting each other. A professor of history tried to explain Croats are White Khazars. Why paranoid? There were of course Black Khazars, who were not Croats by the definition. Who where those Others? Speaking of identification and language, of course, we know those times are usually accompanied with a large production of dictionaries, that can include even a semiosis, known in Croatian case29. On the other hand, lost of meaning in global flattening is something, maybe again the best described in the non-territorial Wonderland: - 'You can call that a nonsense, but I have heard for such a nonsense according to which this one is conscience as a dictionary." (White Queen)30 In those terms it can only mean - it was more global. Holding of the sense, stasis, state of meaning and states of identities (national states), of course is the end of the semiosis, end of a nomadic quest, end of non-sensicality. Dictionaries function as the constitution books of the official meanings, not only signifiers, in which differences are introduced very specifically. This paradox of resolution of own self is the same with all components of the war machines of "becoming". Related to the problem of surface (of both meaning, identity and a map) can be recognized precisely in that it doesn't arrest a territory to the map, but on the contrary, it introduces drawing to the territory that would be drawn, taking it to the sense of signifier. Strategically: plans, drawing on the map become a sketch for a new map.31 The same identities and other meanings are embodied. War machine and meaning /// proliferation of meaning / meaning - making and semiosis / paradox of hyper-existence Wars are over, and systematic meaning-making in that manufacture is, as well. The period of semiosis passed. And indeed, today, ten years latter those senses are embodied identities still connected horizontally, for example through the language that again travels in different myths never meeting self. But they are not connected vertically [ideologically]. Because of that, from the outside, they seem like overlapping identities, although they are not - languages we speak about are simply Croatian, Serbian or other, because they belong to their inherent embodied sense-full narration. It has more sense they are Croatian, Serbian and other, as those are completely different consistent sets, with some members in common. The same signifier can function for several meanings (like "Kosovo Polje"), but even the same thing is signified several different ways (as "Karadjordje's steak", "Zagreb's steak"32), as soon as it is context-consistent. There is no hierarchy in meaning-making (including identity) as world-making33; no distinction can be done between original and spurious worlds, those simulacrums. Finally, there is nothing like a stealing a language... Although, on the other hand this reminds on a paradox of hyper-existence or a proliferation of meaning, devalvations of sense, noise of scenarios and worlds, making virtual (constructed) territory bigger in potentials (or the only fallacy is - all of those plans could not possibly apply at single territory in question at the same time), where seems it is not a problem of a binary right-wrong, but of the space redundancy. And that is the Balkans, as well, revitalised again until the meanings and identities are stabilised, a place not politically united to be something like EU, but completely inverted - disunited space of dealing with local senses [pl.]. Characteristics of nonsense/// nonsense is spatially endless / nonsense is eternal / nonsense and becoming mad Several things there are to be noted about the nonsense at the end, things that would be learning from the Balkans on the other side: 1. Nonsense is spatially endless. Once a Croatian politician rightly noted that a state is going to enter to EU "over Turkey"34. From the position of the just over cartography and semiotic phase of the state-formation that was a joke: how can possibly something go more East to arrive on the West? Of course, it is possible with the nonsense-cartography, of one whose maps can be applied anywhere else to measure the territory.35 2. Nonsense is eternal. Another example, again from the local politics is fruitful. The other politician noted, "Twentieth century started with Balkan wars, and will end up with them". This "Balkan loop"36 similar to the Mad Tea party is about remembering and future; about "being born into the memory" and obligation of its embodiment, but as well about impossibility of a global memory and with it even self-identity lost. (White Queen: "Poor is that sort of remembering that goes only retro verse.") 3. Nonsense is therefore about accepting non-local and not-timed senses, accepting at the same time and place many of them. Globalisation cannot be other than becoming mad and schizophrenic. Finally, getting back to the topic of identity, and a false dichotomy of the me and the Other, or again between Deluze's monotone infinity of nonsense37 and nonsensicality of any of states - as binary systems used for the formation of identity are as well, the whole system leads us in making choice in-between unknown globalisation and old national hypothesis, pure hypothesis as the sense itself, a war of sense. That is a contest of the identity - me and a pulsating magma of defining me - locally defined and the global black hole. The problem finally is not about what makes more sense, but more what to choose in this fake solution - being nationally paranoid or a globally schizophrenic? All out or all inside? Globally lost or locally imprisoned? A territory of imposed identity or the identity of the other? It is a heterotopia of sense - the prison itself - being locked up into temporary meaning: ghetto of local meaning or the global nonsense. The conclusion is - the fairytale of binaries should be abandoned, and identity seen in nuances, in less conflict-based and fake-dichotomy solutions. It should be seen as - both, before is either completely lost or become completely virtual. (Brussels, 2000) BIBLIOGRAPHY: - Bey, Hackim: Millenuim, Autonomedia, 1997). - Carroll, Lewis: The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits, ed. by Martin Gardner and Henry Holliday (Penguin Classics, 1998) - Carroll, Lewis: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Trhough the Looking Glass, illustration by John Tenniel (Reissue Edition, 1995) - Castells, Manuel: The Power of Identity, The Information age; Economy, Society and Culture, Vol. II, (Blackwell Publishers, 1997) - Culture, Society and the Media, ed. by Michael Gurevitch, - Tony Bennet, James Curran and Janet Woolacott (Methuen & Co, 1982, reprint Routhledge, 1990) - Deleuze and Guattari; A Thousand Plateaus, Capitalism and Schizophrenia (The AthCom Press Ltd, 1998) - Deleuze, Gilles: The Logic of Sense (European Perspecives:A series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism), ed. by Constantin V. Boundas, translated by Mark Lester and Charles Stivale (Columbia University Press, 1990) - Morley and Robbins: Spaces of Identity, Global media, electronic landscapes and cultural boundaries (Routhledge, London and New York, 1995) - Pavic, Milorad: Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel in 100.000 Words/ Male edition, Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel in 100.000 Words/ Female edition, translated by Christina Pribicevic-Zoric (Vintage Books, 1989) - Virilio, Paul: Open Sky (Verso, London, New York, 1997) FOOTNOTES 1 See for example Morley and Robins "Spaces of identity", especially interesting for the explanation of European formation of the Other, "In Renaissance discourse, the relevant moral and intellectual framework was religious. The non-European alien was coded in terms of the "pagan", "heathen" and the demonic. For the Enlightenment the key of feature of the Other was "ignorance" and "superstitious". In the nineteen century, when modern anthropology was born, the primitive was coded in terms of "development" and "evolutionary time." (Atkinson, 1992) The line of locating own identity, of "us" and "them" was moving over Arabs, Turks, England, Soviet Union, Japanese" (Morley and Robins, 1995), or beside Schleisinger, in Atkinson, Hall's notion of "West and Rest" (Hall, 1992). 2 Similar to felt-into character in narrative genres (literature, theatre, movie) 3 Selling of identity depends on the market. Usually Bad News People (to paraphrase Glasgow media group) pass well the media reports, as it is based on the bad news speed (McLuhan), while they don't pass geographical borders. Selling tears and stories is therefore wishful for the media-bazaar. 4 A term was not in such a frequency used since the start of the century, as states on it had different political system (demagogic socialistic, socialistic flirting with capitalism or capitalistic) and the relation of the Western media was for those reasons cautious and individually related to each country (for example Yugoslavia had a better position than Albania, Greece than Yugoslavia). Before it was used in studies of medieval age, especially Otoman Empire (that narrows the definition of Balkans), and introducing terms such as Balkanology as systematic research. 5 Simple search on Amazon.com gives a 1002 titles on the topic of Balkans, most of books (excluding medieval studies, and economy studies...) were written by Western artists, among which even some diaries of tours through this location). 6 The serial of attributes in this distinction turned to be; passionate - bloody cool, wild - apathic, or simply hot and cold. 7 Milorad Pavic: Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel in 100.000 Words/ Male edition, Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel in 100.000 Words/ Female edition, translated by Christina Pribicevic-Zoric (Vintage Books, 1989) 8 Version construction (see Deleuze Logic of Sense, ibid) 9 As is a case of for example a policy of European Union 10 The basic relation between sense, nomadism and war is "that what stays out of a map" - or defining a surfacex of sense; that what surrounds it, or unknown - unexpected and un-normal. 11 Bidimensional worlds as a hypothesis is usually associated with an expertise from the third dimension that makes creatures inside those worlds to be "stupid" [In Plato's argument of the cave, Plato: State], "imprisoned" [as in Kaku: Hyperspace...]. 12 As in literacy, detailed and consistent correspondence is for example in Pavic's Khazar's dictionary can be taken. 13 Lewis Carroll: The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits, ed. by Martin Gardner and Henry Holliday (Penguin Classics, 1998) 14 Referring here to scandalous event with national food product of Macedonia that was patented by Slovenians with the law of copyright, and with which Macedonia lost rights to sell own product under the traditional name. From this paradox of the global - national identity question follows a problem of the copyrighted identity. 15 Deleuze and Guattari's script Nomadology: A war machine in Deleuze and Guattari; A Thousand Plateaus, Capitalism and Schizophrenia (The AthCom Press Ltd, 1998) 16 Referring here to the collapse of jurisdiction, economy [not only caused by wars] related to criminal, especially corruption none could deal with 17 The Trojan horse despite being first war-machine is also a strategic movement of covered goal; becoming the meaning of the state, territory becoming a map. 18 Referring here to historical nomadic movements of tribes, and movements of state-less tribes 20 Once dwarfs were explained to small children as kings of the kingdoms that get smaller with each new generation, "those you see now are right about to disappear, together with their kingdoms". It is completely impossible something disappears from the map, or appears on it, although on it is only obvious. Things can only disappear or appear in signified territory. 21 Gilles Deleuze: The Logic of Sense (European Perspecives:A series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism), ed. by Constantin V. Boundas, translated by Mark Lester and Charles Stivale (Columbia University Press, 1990) 22 As for example English has less and less to do with England itself. 23 Wonderland is a territory that cannot be drawn, on the contrary to another Carroll's tale on the land after the mirror, which is a simple chessboard. Wonderland is a "subjective world" that constantly changes attributes or even existence (disappearing), related to Alice's wishes or against it. 24 Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Trhough the Looking Glass, illustration by John Tenniel (Reissue Edition, 1995) 26 /ibid/ Humpty Dumpty, renting words is a nominalist, and very often used to describe positions of the "follower" Bertrand Russell, P.L. Heath in the Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, states Humpty Dumpty was in anatomical level taken as the Hegelian, but his giving of fixed meaning to names and denying of the same for general terms, with his reliable philology and shaky mathematics, announce him, out of doubts as an early eccentric linguistic analyst. 27 Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark /ibid. / 28 Slight schizophrenia, as specialist show, can be even healthful to organize things in contemporary life, holding functionality through split identity (as being parent, being businessman and at the same time golf-player) 29 Croatian "encyclopaedists" of start of the century nationalism were forming new words similar to ones Carroll uses for example in the literate paradigm of semiosis (Wonderland) where for example a belt was around-stomack-trousers-holer, similar, but inverted from Wonderland's butter-fly 30 /ibid/ 31 With the total demystification of distance, pshychotopology (mapping the territory) was succeeded by the psychotopography (mapping the map, drawing on the blank). Phychotopology was a "political abstract grid, a gigantic con enforced by the carrot \ stick conditioning of the "Expert" state - until for most of us the map becomes the territory." (Bey, Millenuim, Autonomedia, 1997). 32 And making total chaos in trying to define mutual relations between differentia specifica in name - if both are steaks is Zagreb Karadjordje? 34 At the time Turkey was proposed for the EU 35 Globalization influences maps, as well all transport and transmit technologies do. The world inside it is distorted even more than famous Rem Koolhaz' map of the world stretched and condensed according to the frequency of flights. Arbitrage of territory finally reaches a meta-physical connotation in which a horizon that disappeared (Virilio) appears to be the geographical border." Penetrative" geography of media in which global-local nexus is connecting outside, inside, real and virtual, border and territory (Morley and Robins, 1995) messes up the old sort of those who do not write history, or who only repeat it. It influences on the orientation and disorientation of identity, in the twilight of real and virtual space of real travel, it influences on fixity and mobility. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net