Pleasure-Text I: Word Count

For me, what dominates this period of my work, I think, is less the project of instituting semiology as a science than the pleasure of exercising a Systematics: there is, in the activity of classification, a kind of creative intoxication known to such great classifiers as Sade and Fourier; in its scientific phase, semiology was this kind of an intoxication for me: I reconstituted, I went in—giving a lofty sense to the expression—for a bricolage of systems, of games; I have never written books except for pleasure: the pleasure of System now replaced the superego of Science: this was already a preparation for the third phase of this adventure: finally indifferent to an indifferent science (an adiaphoric science, as Nietzsche had said), I entered by “pleasure” into the Signifier, into the Text.

—Roland Barthes, The Semiotic Challenge

My original intent was to write a “pleasure-text,” an idea that stemmed from reading Roland Barthes’ essay on Charles Fourier. After many false starts and bad endings, I realized that my interest was in neither Barthes nor Fourier. What interests me is finding, for myself, that wellspring of ambition which spurred both writers to spells of voracious creativity. What inspired them to initiate—and sustain—texts that move from the scholarly to the ecstatic to the absurd and back? Such virtuosity can only come from skill put at the service of total pleasure. Barthes and Fourier enact their pleasure-texts within and through systems with an almost manic insistence: flow is concurrently unleashed and stymied within a rubric of order, an order that has the simultaneous, contrary effects of imparting structure while undermining it completely.

—Jesse Martin, Utopia is Coming

Pleasure-Text II: Quasi-Alphabetic

Aqua Dots
Acquiesce
Acronym
Anachronism

Cyber
Sabre
Bluetooth
Satyr

Democracy
Demolish
Demigod
Demi Moore

Fern Gully
Flagella
Fairly
McFlurry
Faery

Homophone
Homophobe

Monopoly
Morphology

My Little Pony
Myopia
Mia Farrow
Miasma
Mylanta
Mitosis

Palindrome
Palimpsest

Pan’s Labyrinth
Pan-American
Parasite
Paris Hilton
Pareidolia
Paralalia
Paraplegia
Pledge of Allegiance

Pundi
Punky Brewstew
Punt
Putin
Puce
Puke
Pussy Galore

Symbiote
Sycophant

Tyranny
Typhoon
Tyra Banks
Typhoid Mary

Vicodin
Vicar
Valkyrie

Pleasure-Text III: Science, Fiction

I’ve been watching Planet Earth lately, a multi-disc BBC series documenting the countless creatures that populate the globe. Each episode is organized by habitat—so far, I’ve seen Ice Worlds, Caves, Deserts, and Plains (to name a few). David Attenborough narrates the series, eruditely describing the behavior of this puma and that whale. Actress Sigourney Weaver narrates the American version of the series, a fact I both love and find utterly ridiculous: why does there need to be an “American version” anyway, as if Attenborough isn’t speaking English (albeit with a British accent)? I assume this has something to do with attracting viewers via Weaver’s celebrity, a means of drawing in those xenophobic Statesmen who’d find Attenborough’s manner patronizingly pedantic and achingly effeminate. It’s ironic that Weaver (also a conservationist) is best known for her role as the femme fetale protagonist of the nihilistic Alien cycle, the intergalactic, H.R. Geiger-inspired sci-fi epic that follows the murderous ecology of a species of rapidly-breeding, acid-blooded monstrosities.

Then again, there are uncanny corollaries between the preposterous fantasy dystopia depicted in Alien and the quantifiable evidence presented by Planet Earth. The Jungle episode, for example, presents a seemingly innocuous sequence that follows a colony of ants along the rainforest floor. It’s an oddly familiar scene, even though most of us have never observed rainforest ants in their native setting. Nothing would seem out of place if Attenborough (or Weaver) didn’t turn our focus to a single ant, one who marches out of step with the others. The camera zooms-in on this wayward unit as our narrator elaborates on its queer behavior, describing its jerky ambulations, until its fellow ants—apparently privy to this anomaly in their ranks—carries the offending soldier away from its normally-behaving brethren. Our antagonist then proceeds up a stalk, its limbs swerving like a malfunctioning robot, until it finally stops moving, apparently dead. The camera holds a myopic view of the dormant ant as we warp into time-lapse mode. Suddenly, a tendril erupts from the ant’s head—Athena-like—and proceeds to bloom to a span well-over the total length of the host-ant’s body. It’s an astonishing sight. Even the narrator can’t help but observe that this event seems “straight out of science-fiction.” I wonder if the Weaver-variant includes a comparison to how the scene resembles that grisly moment of stomach-bursting conception recurring throughout the Alien quadrinity.

Knowing full well that they’ve got a natural money-shot, the Planet Earth editors proceed to scroll through scenes of creatures—all rainforest insects—that’ve fallen prey to this most unusual parasite. We’re informed that this is all the work of a fungus, Cordyceps, whose primary mode of promulgation is by infecting rainforest insects with invasive spores. As we’ve witnessed with the ant, the ingested spore takes control of its host’s nervous system as it grows, ultimately bursting from the creature’s colonized husk as it reaches maturity to release more of its infectious spores. Variants of Cordyceps have evolved to correspond with an assortment of host-insects. Naturally, I began to drift into a slightly-panicked wonder upon viewing all of this, contemplating what would happen if Cordyceps were to begin infecting mammals. Of course, the sci-fi and fantasy mainstream has effectively co-opted these doomsday fears with a litany of biological-warfare, parasitic life-form, and/or mutative super-virus based plotlines: Outbreak (1995), Species (1995), 28 Days Later (2003), Dawn of the Dead (2004), Slither (2006), 28 Weeks Later (2007), and I Am Legend (2007), to name a few.

Pleasure-Text IV: Science-Fiction

1. Core Narrative

1.1. The Escape

“INTRUDER ALERT… INTRUDER ALERT… SECTOR B-5 BREACHED… DISPATCHING NEURO-VAPOURS… ALL APOPHTECH PERSONNEL MUST DISEMBARK OR PROCEED TO DESIGNATED SECURITY QUARANTINE ZONES… INTRUDER ALERT…”

Panic lights flared as the synthetic narrator announced her warning loop for the umpteenth time. If Eek understood English, he would have wondered what a neuro-vapour was, let alone the reason for the electronically administered flood of hysteria erupting all around him. Nevertheless, all Eek knew—if knew was an appropriate term at all—was that he needed to move. Eek needed to move the hell out of this place.

Lozenge-slick, laser-hewn, and fortified with whatever state-of-the-art material preferred by top secret government laboratories, the corridors flanking Eek were built for speed. Quickened by the alacrity of rotating beacons overhead, Eek accelerated forward, leaving the smoky, messy chamber he had emerged from far behind. Suddenly the sirens, hallways, and lights fused into simple shapes—everything merged, and Eek was coasting through an environment of colored lines, soothed by an ambient polyphonic hum. He continued in this manner for a good while, occasionally ascending staggered inclines and slaloming past dark forms underfoot. He would have gone on like this forever had one of those dark forms not grabbed Eek, sending him hurtling unceremoniously to the ground.

“You’re it,” stammered the dark form, now looking more and more like a disheveled man crawling on the floor, “You’re the thing that they’ve been tinkering with on B-5… a goddamn cyborg, for chrissake…”

A. 5Y5TEMZ

INITIALIZING ACADEMIC EXEGESIS
VARIEGATE INFORMATION DISPERSAL
SUBSTITUTE “PARAGRAPH” FOR TRUNCATION “RAFT”
UTILIZE 5Y5TEMZ INTERTEXT

A.1.1. Raft One: INTRUDER ALERT

A word written in all capital letters generally communicates volume, suggesting that an emphasis be made on the capitalized word(s). Capitalization can also connote a mechanized uniformity, such as with the explanatory texts of industrial manuals or generic ATM machines. In regards to “Raft One: INTRUDER ALERT,” we are “hearing” the “voice” of an automaton—specifically, as we learn in the second raft, the vox femina of Apophtech’s security PA system. Here, all-caps suggest the emotionless, pre-programmed candor of a robot. While Apophtech’s disembodied orator is nameless, she reminds us of the homicidally rational HAL 9000 (Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer) from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

A.1.1.1. 5Y5TEMZ INTERTEXT— PITHINESS AND DENSITY

ABOVE RAFT INCLUDES SEVERAL REGULARLY-CAPITALIZED ACRONYMS (HAL 9000) AND ABBREVIATIONS (ATM, PA)

A.1.2. Raft One: Sci-Fi Speak

Our cybernetic narrator’s address contains two neologisms, specifically “neuro-vapours” and “Apophtech,” respectively. Morphology inclines us to regard each term by its parts in order to better understand their meanings.

Our first term, neuro-vapours, is a combination of the prefix neuro- (suggesting nerves or the nervous system, including the brain) with the English spelling of the noun vapour. Together, they suggest either a kind of mist associated with the nervous system or an aerosol which acts upon the nervous system. Context clues suggest the latter hypothesis over the former, as our vox femina announces that neuro-vapours have been “dispatched,” followed by a suggestion for “Apophtech personnel” to “disembark” or move to “quarantine.” It is therefore implied that neuro-vapours are dangerous and most likely meant to immobilize who (or what) has “breached” “sector B-5.”

Term two, Apophtech, is presumably the name of where our Core Narrative takes place. The suffix –tech points us to the term technology or it’s predecessor techné, both which allude to the making of things. In present times, there are thousands (if not more) of businesses and corporations that include tech somewhere in their identity (i.e. Petratech, Metatech, Infotech, Techserve, Techsport, etc.). Somewhat divorced from—if not diametrically opposed to—its craftier roots, the contemporary usage of tech signifies the dealings of a computerized society. Like corporations themselves, individual identities are subsumed by the conglomerate in order to form, legally speaking, a new individual. Rather than the tangible handiwork associated with classical techné, tech evokes an alienating superstructure threaded with clandestine circuitry.

Apoph initiates the words apophony and apophenia, each which we may look to for further elucidation. Apophony is a wholly linguistic term preoccupied with sound and meaning, while apophenia is a relatively young word that describes the act of assigning connective meaning to apparently disparate, unrelated things.

A.1.2.1. 5Y5TEMZ INTERTEXT—CONFUSION, PATTERN, AND (DIS)ORDER

PARADOLIA
CLUSTERING ILLUSION
FALSE ETYMOLOGY
SYNTAX ERROR
DISCORDIANISM
OULIPO
ECHOLALIA
SCHIZOANALYSIS

A.2.1. Raft Two: Enter Eek

It is here that our introductory narrator and central character are disclosed. And if any stake is put into origins and synchronicity, we may assume that the vox f?mina and Eek are intimately connected—even in the sense that the emergence of the later spurred the speech of the former. Narcissus pined for his own reflection as the nymph Echo pined for him, though Echo was cursed to repeat only that which was previously spoken. This curse (now a nervous condition: Echolalia, repeating tongues) was maddening for Echo and irritating to Narcissus. Both were trapped by manifestations of their own repetitions, doomed by feedback loops.

A.2.1.1. 5Y5TEMZ INTERTEXT—MYTHIC DIGRESSIONS

ABOVE RAFT SACRIFICED A THOUROUGH REVIEW OF 1. CORE NARRATIVE—1.1. THE ESCAPE, RAFT TWO IN FAVOR OF AN EXHUMATION OF ARCHAIC FABLE
KEY-POINT SUMMARY OF 1. CORE NARRATIVE—1.1. THE ESCAPE, RAFT TWO:
CHARACTER “EEK” INTRODUCED
“EEK” DOES NOT UNDERSTAND ENGLISH
“EEK” HAS IMPULSE FOR FLIGHT

A.3.1. Raft Three: Hyperspeed

Following his impulse for flight, Eek “accelerates” through what we can assume are Apophtech’s corridors. While Eek is all excelsior, we are made privy to the fact that he has just “emerged from” a “smoky, messy chamber.” Again, this scene brings to mind multiple cinematic extraterrestrial moments, ranging from…

A.4.1. Raft Four: Dark Matter

2. Core Narrative

2.1.

B. 5Y5TEMZ

B.1.

B.2.

B.3.

B.4.

B.5.

“INTRUDER ALERT… INTRUDER ALERT… SECTOR B-5 BREACHED… DISPATCHING NEURO-VAPOURS… ALL APOPHTECH PERSONNEL MUST DISEMBARK OR PROCEED TO DESIGNATED SECURITY QUARANTINE ZONES… INTRUDER ALERT…”