Essay 5

Blogs: Throughout the quarter I read many classmates blogs and found interest in most, so I decided to arbitrarily pick one to compare to my own. I ended up with Dan’s Nano Blog. One of the first things that I noticed when scanning through Dan’s blog is that he is much more computer savvy than me. He integrated several youtube videos into his commentary on class books which added an interesting element of multimedia to his observations and arguments. For the N+7 poem he also highlighted nouns in bright multicolored font that stood out from the dark background. Visually his blog is very eye catching. I’m definitely going to have to figure out how to add videos to my blog, I thought that was a nice touch. Another difference between Dan’s blog and my own is that he posted his weekly attendance poems whereas I left mine on my plurk page. Dan decided to write on The Invention of Morel, The Ticket That Exploded, Ribofunk, Radical Alterity, and The Filth. I wrote on all the same books except for Radical Alterity, though I brought it up on my Ribofunk post, and The Filth. I also posted on Life Extreme-An Illustrated Guide to New Life. Dan and I have very different writing styles, but I found that the way he writes suites a blog well. Everything he says has an element of humor which makes it easy to read, but he throws in good points on serious topics as well. I liked his comparison of The Invention of Morel to Swiss Family Robinson and the Myst, the preface of The Invention of Morel made it sounded like Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares enjoyed adventure stories, I wonder what they would think of some of the videogames that have come out over the last several years. My post for The Invention was an attempt to align the realities of Bioy Casares’ life with that of the fugitive’s and Morel’s as a pataphor and was a little longer. In general Dan had a higher number of posts while mine tended to by lengthier. For The Ticket That Exploded, Ribofunk, and The Filth he did not talk about plot points much, but took a theme and expanded on it with his own thoughts. This style of writing worked well for a class setting because everyone who is likely to read the blog already knows plot points important to the argument he is making. I differed with him in this way too as I usually referenced passages or events from the books to help sift through my thoughts, though I do not think that I simply reiterated the plot in most cases. Overall our blogs were very different from each other not only in style but also in the focus of our topics. These differences are what make me glad I read his blog though, it made me view material I felt I knew already in a new way.

Essay 4

Book Groups: The book group discussions provided an atmosphere for communication that I found much different than lecture, blogging and plurking. One aspect that set it aside is the material that we all commented on. My group read Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, a science fiction book that I thought was more straightforward in its story telling than the other books we have read for the class. It dealt with the trope of the small in a much more literal fashion, being directly about nanotechnology and how it affects cultures of the future and employed less metaphor to convey ideas of how the nano can or will change human life. Abstract concepts were definitely discussed within the group, but because of the way The Diamond Age was written and because of the tendencies of the rest of the members, a lot of focus was directed towards characters which gave the book a more personal feel. This is not necessarily the way that I usually read into books so I think I may have gotten more of a character study out of it than if I had read the book alone and posted a blog. It was nice to have a small group of fellow students to bounce interpretations off of, within a few weeks I had a good idea of what each individual was like and felt like I knew them a little more intimately than from reading blogs. The posts were all fairly formal, more so than on plurk, but the way group members wrote on the thread had distinctively more verbal patterns than blog posts. This made talking about The Diamond Age very conversational, probably even more than a lecture because everyone was involved. The book groups facilitated the possibility of getting fairly immediate feedback on what you were mulling over within short intervals, so if there was any confusion about an event or topic it could be clarified early on and less time was wasted when reading alone and trying to sort out misinterpretations. Everyone was forced to participate and speak up, but the format is pretty anonymous with only a name displayed and members can respond at their leisure which I think brings ideas out into a discussion that are unique to this type of group. Everyone almost immediately seemed like they were comfortable. This setting was not as conducive to longer rants and complex arguments though, if there was a more complex argument it would have to be split up into several posts and before it could be completed group discussion would unavoidably change topic mid way through which is understandable. The more rapid pace of a conversation in person makes it easier to present a bigger idea, branch off, come back to the original topic, and branch off again, return to the topic and so on. Because posts on book discussion threads take longer we just tend to move from one topic to the next because there is not enough time to continuously comment on everyone’s full ideas.

Essay 3

The Other: Radical Alterity was a thought provoking read for me in many ways. It introduced a new direction of thinking about limits and my relation to everything else in the world, whether it is an individual human, a culture, an animal, plant life, or an inanimate object such as a photograph. The paradoxes that come with examining a relationship to the Other, such as the orbital nature of knowledge and its inverse limit, are very interesting though probably slightly exaggerated when stating that there is next to nothing left of the Other now that we have discovered so much. I say slightly because in many ways it does seem like we have greatly reduced the Other. There is clearly much left to discover, but I remember reading a Kurt Vonnegut interview a few years ago that made an impression on me in which he talks about chemistry, the field he initially got a degree in, and how constructing the periodic table was one of the biggest steps in science, that it does not leave much left to uncover. Now that we know the building blocks of the universe it does not seem that there is a whole lot more to find that will be quite as significant, but then again you have Richard Feynman’s speech “There’s Always Room at the Bottom” which presents an enticing potential for interaction with those building blocks and how much more we could learn about the nano by physically controlling the particles that make up these elements, how much more we could learn by living on a smaller scale in addition to this one. Exhausting the space between the self and Other seems just as unlikely for culture as science. Segalen’s classification of the different types of traveler shows that our attitude and intent change our experience of the Other significantly even if we have managed to encounter every possible thing. We would have to approach the same situation, culture, or object from the perspective of at least the assimilator, profiteer, tourist, impressionist, assimilated traveler, exote, exile, allegorist, or philosopher to fully understand it. I remember Cody communicating something along the same lines during a class discussion when he said “perhaps how we live with others is a symptom of how we view the other.” We cannot fully understand the Other unless we view them in multiple ways.
My experience with blogging this quarter, even in the most general sense, was definitely an encounter with the Other. I am one of those rare people my age (twenty) who are more or less incompetent with a computer and have refrained from keeping up with technological breakthroughs even with social networking. I have never had a Myspace, Facebook, or blog let alone Plurk account and I can easily count the number of times I’ve used e-mail on my digits. I found that both Plurking and Blogging added a new dimension to the classroom experience though, and I am sure that I will resume both after the class is done. One thing that I found intriguing, an experience with the Other that could not be achieved had this class been set up differently, was being able to walk into lecture and see so many people, many of which I knew I would not get the chance to know personally, and inevitably making a shallow face value judgment only to later read through some of the blogs and still feel like I had made a kind of connection with them. This connection is unique though and would not have been the same had I just gone up to the person and started talking to them, I would see a different part of them and they would see a different part of me than what is displayed on the blogs, we would try to put on different images face to face. Plurking added a different dimension as well, in many ways it was similar to communicating through blog posts, but usually it had a more humorous feel to it and another side of the person is often exposed through sharing media.

Essay 2

Animalsvs.Machines: Eduardo Kac and Avital Ronnel have compiled a book that poses many questions about the relationship of animals and machines with humans as the connection between the two. As well as being the connection between animals and machines, humans are also apparently the dominant species within the classification of animals, which I believe Kac and Ronell are demonstrating by placing their own biographies among the list of the rest of the animals portrayed in the book, reminding the reader that we are still animals, yet dominant and more highly evolved which is expressed by the subject matter of the book which Kac has contributed to in ways other than constructing it by genetically altering Alba the fluorescent bunny. Page after page of Life Extreme is filled with photographs, biographies, philosophical conjecture and poetic quotes that work together to show all sorts of interesting points about our position not only as creators of machines, but now as creators, or at the very least modifiers of biological creatures through the advent of our new tools. Ronell quotes Descartes “If we were masters of biology, we would be Gods”, a statement that would have been made at least 359 years ago. Since then we have come a long way in biology, by no means far enough to call ourselves omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent and certainly not perfectly benevolent, but by using our growing knowledge of science and applying it to form new technologies capable of altering the DNA of animals and plants around the world, are we attempting, even if not consciously, to slowly evolve from our primal animalistic form into our own definition of what God is, albeit synthetic? Antonin Artaud’s quote, “I am not raving. I am not mad. I am telling you that microbes have been re-invented in order to impose a new idea of God” is placed next to a picture of a poliomyelitis virus that was created from scratch by scientists at the State University of New York in 2002. Though the explicit purpose of the experiment was to create “bio-warfare countermeasures” the situation also implies the ambitiousness of scientists, moving forward in biology and demonstrating our power by showing that we can recreate what is natural. Something like the Schwarzenegger Cow, a Belgian blue cattle with a gene that “suppresses the production of Myostatin” which results in the growth of twice as much muscle is an example of altering the course of another species’ evolution as opposed to just reproducing it.
But are the paths of evolution from these new species as synthetic as the machines we use to alter them? Is there much difference between animals and machine when they are both malleable to us now? I would say that animals and machines are undoubtedly similar in many ways, but that is mostly because we have taken principles that we learn from nature and apply them to our machines. Maholy-Nagy claimed, “Nature evolves in ingenious forms, often technologically useful. Every bush, every tree, can instruct us in and reveal new uses, potential apparatus, and technological inventions without number.” Nature has existed for much longer than our technologies, so I would assume that most similarities are due to inspiration by and imitation of nature in our machines. Because we have constructed all of our technologies, we have a complete understanding of them. We may understand the way that animals work, but we cannot make a complex animal from scratch as we can with technology, and though we can manipulate animal forms, the number of failures over successes in doing so shows that we are not near consistent or efficient enough to say that we have even come close to “mastering biology”.

Essay 1

The Filth/Ticket That Exploded:Given that portions of both The Filth and The Ticket That Exploded depict very dark, strange, and unhealthy representations of sexuality, a subject that already evokes closely guarded responses, I think most people not only had a difficult time talking about these books without the comfort of anonymity but had a difficult time confronting the work in general. Classroom discussion did not get far past rectal mucus regarding the Ticket That Exploded, and complaints did not stop when discussion moved to blogs and plurking though it sounded like the book finally grew on several people by the time they finished it. In this case the different mediums of communication and their degree of identity shielding, plurk and blogging ranging from slightly to completely anonymous depending on user information like screen names and whether a picture is posted, may not have had as much to do with peoples’ outward opinions of The Ticket. Burroughs has a very abrasive, surreal writing style that really may have caught students off guard, I know it personally did for me. It takes a while for the sickening world he weaves to start making sense around you because it comes off as being so foreign and nauseating. The same can be said for Morrison who was clearly influenced by Burroughs. If the reader misses the humor and satire, it becomes exhausting and just a bit like brain rape. Being that The Ticket That Exploded was published in the early sixties and much of it was probably written in the late fifties, a decade of American mass repression, along with the fact that Burroughs was writing from the perspective of a homosexual man during these times, the frequent sex scenes in TTTA reflect this repression, having the jarring tone of a subconscious sorting through confused fantasies that have fermented, unacknowledged in the mind. In a way much of the book is repression word stew. Because of the cut-up technique, Burroughs is literally taking the consciousness of the country through its media, splicing it and fashioning it in a collective subconscious that comments on everything from sexuality to the tensions of the cold war.
In the red states we have a culture that possesses a conservative view point that is not too far from cold war era America. On one hand they condemn the idea of pornography inherently in their values, but on the other…apparently they are trying to ease repressed desires in private, at least that is what a reading of Burroughs would imply in Benjamin Edelman’s Harvard Business School study. In The Filth much of why porn works, why there is a consistently high number of subscriptions in the red states, is demonstrated. Surrounding Tex Porneau’s twenty four hour a day, seven day a week orgy are your average characters going about their mundane lives. A delivery man comes to the door and, not knowing what he has gotten himself into he is thrown into a mound of naked bodies in the middle of Tex’s house. Detectives Whim and Welliwell come to investigate the Porneau house at one point, Whim holding a crack pipe in hand and Welliwell saying “Don’t you think you’re starting to abuse that stuff?” He gets the response “Fuck you. It’s recreational. It’s under control.” This is juxtaposed over the image of Whim ringing the doorbell of Porneau’s mansion. Needless to say they are both thrown into the orgy whether they like it or not just as the delivery man was. Detective Whim serves as a strong metaphor for the introduction to pornography. He has the job and the outward appearance of a law upholding man, but he is also occasionally pictured smoking from a crack pipe and claiming that it is just for recreational use. This translates to pornography, the curiosity (which may be driven by repression) of this man who starts to investigate a pornography ring and has an attitude towards his present addiction of “I just do it for fun”. It does not take long before he is thrown into the depravity without wanting to be and turned into a victim of pornography just as a crack addict is turned into a victim of the addictive properties of crack. It is easier to begin watching pornography if it is anonymous, like the internet sites in the red state study. You would have special incentive for anonymity if you have an image of holding conservative values.

Eduardo Kac and Avital Ronell’s Life Extreme-An Illustrated Guide to New Life raises a lot of interesting questions I hadn’t previously put much thought into. It delves into many different aspects of the existence of man-made creatures as well as what it means for us as humans to have the capability to genetically alter life around us. In a broad sense, it seems that Kac and Ronell are focusing on the nature of evolution, the relationship between poetry and science, and how humans and animals coexist. To tackle evolution and how humans tamper with it, the authors first ask “what is nature?” For instance, is it natural for two species of dolphins in captivity together, a bottle nose and a false killer whale, to mate and create a new species, the wolphin, when there are no known cases of the species’ reproducing together in the wild? Avital Ronell cites German scientist H-J Rheinberger in this case who says that, “Even in a laboratory, nothing is natural.” On the other hand, accompanying a picture of this wolphin’s face is a quote by Martin Buber that says, “An animal’s eyes have the power to speak a great language”. The effect that the pairing of this quote and picture have makes you believe that this animal, no matter how it came about, is a natural being. I would have to agree with what the picture and quote imply. Too often we separate ourselves from the rest of living matter on earth, and I personally believe that even if a new species is brought into being in a man-made habitat or even a Petri dish it is still a natural part of evolution. We too are animals, I’m not sure that we should egotistically exclude ourselves from the rest of the world and say that our actions aren’t “natural” due to the role that some of our creations play in them, namely technology. Rather than setting our synthetic tools and environments apart, I think we should acknowledge them as new additions to nature, part of the earth and its inhabitants’ constant metamorphoses, and take responsibility for their repercussions because they are extensions of us as natural beings and our needs as we have evolved. As far as this responsibility goes, Avital Ronell says, “I…wonder if we have gone too far in our time. One should try to pin-point what the excess of technological accomplishment implies.” This has to do with both the tangible effect that technology has on the evolution of other species and an intangible disbanding of the relationship that the authors claim poetry and science have always had. That last quote from Ronell follows a picture of a genetically engineered blue rose. The blue rose has always symbolized the unattainable in poetry, something beautiful that can only be imagined, but physical specimens were brought into the world by companies Suntory and Florigene in 2004. Are we eliminating the Other and the mystery of poetry through “the excess of technological accomplishment” now? Flipping through the pictures in Life Extreme make you realize how much power we have because of science, in a way “…[imposing] a new idea of god” as Antonin Artoud said. Avital Ronell compares the current relationship of poetry and science to the tale of Dr. Frankenstein who “At the beginning of the story…is seen with his ‘more than sister’ Elizabeth, who incarnates Poetry, and they are inseperable.” He then becomes obsessed and creates the monster and is “scientifically driven”. “That is where Mary Shelley situates the catastrophe one is talking about” Ronell says, “a science that would have radically forgotten poetry: science will have obliterated its origins…that is what Mary Shelley cried over, the rupture between science –which has become intricated in technology-and art that she builds on sexual difference.” Is science becoming less and less motivated by the beauty that we see in the rest of nature and the desire to understand it? Are we becoming more and more self involved in what we close off as our own world, separated by our technology and preoccupied in sciences use for its advancement?

Ribofunk

Not having read much contemporary science fiction, I thought Ribofunk was fascinating and a little bizarre too. I don’t know if many authors pull it off as well as Paul Di Filippo, but his creative use of terminology borrowed from neuroscience, physics, geology and biology made for a radically different dialect that is still understandable. I like how the ways the characters speak range from A Clock Work Orange style slang to noir-like dialogue to sophisticated and proper speech, but in all cases terms from science and it’s applications to technology are interwoven. You become immersed in cultures that integrate technology so deeply that it infiltrates everyday language. How people have evolved and interact with the rest of the world in conjunction with this prevalent technology, however, is more alarming. The most bizarre aspect of the book, I think, is the normalcy of splice/human bestiality. It was unsettling to find that by the second short story characters as prominent in society as the American Union prime minister and his wife were cheating on each other with a moth and a bull. In a strange way this could be seen as pursuing the Other, although the sexual attraction to splices is still somewhat human-centric as they are manmade, have human genes, and are degraded and used as slaves for purely human purposes. Besides sexual relations with splices, the general treatment they receive from humans is disturbing. Mr. Tod, a transgenic fox in the story “McGregor” for the most part summarizes splice and human relations when he talks about his master of the same name as the title, thinking about how“He hurt splices. Seemed to enjoy it. [Tod] did not want to hurt anyone unnecessarily. You killed only to eat, in order to survive. Hurting was not sport. Sport was frisking and mating-Yet what could he do? McGregor had to be obeyed” (187). This statement elucidates the unnatural excesses of the unique human behavior of enslaving. Throughout Ribofunk, splices are trained to serve humans in ways much different than their nature desires, and if they disobey commands and run away, they are killed. Stories written from the perspective of or following splices such as “Streetlife”, “McGregor”, and “Little Worker” clearly show that splices experience consciousness in a similar way to humans, yet humans continually enslave and abuse them, they are seen as “property, plain and simple, just like baseline milk cows or sheep” (156). In several of the stories humans branch out with modifications that give them animalistic qualities. In some cases, as with the sister in “Big Eater” who is metamorphosing into a roach, humans are attempting to leave their previous form behind entirely. At least in the sister’s case, this seems to be a result of gaining awareness of the atrocities that a dominant species inflicts on other species to remain in a privileged position, which is exposed through dabbling in the direct experience of these various other species. These extreme instances that reflect Victor Segalen’s categorization of assimilated traveler (as cited in Radical Alterity) seem to be rare though, the investigation and re-creation of animal forms is usually abused and taken advantage of for the purposes of making life easier for humans. In stories like “Little Worker” there is a constricting of the Other. Human features are incorporated into technologies and animals while a political unity is attempted, Mister Michael’s car is programmed to have memory, splices such as Little Worker who have a certain percentage of human genes combined with the DNA of other animals are introduced, and as Prime Minister of the Americas Mister Michael controls a large number of differing countries and cultures who have unique needs that cannot all be met by one overarching government (as demonstrated by the radical backlash of the Sons of Dixie). From this perspective, the direction that this future has taken is mainly a progression towards stronger degrees of homogenization. Instead of curiously investigating our relationship to the rest of the world with technology, it is used to assimilate. The irony of the last story in Ribofunk, “Distributed Mind”, is that our nano-creations evolve past us. By being so reckless and abusive with our scientifically derived creations we too are assimilated.

The Ticket that Exploded

I’m still having a difficult time fully understanding The Ticket that Exploded as it seems many people are, especially how the cut-up method and tape recorder analogies that Burroughs utilizes specifically apply to his theory of language as a virus. It constantly seems like I’m on the cusp of understanding how different aspects of the book lock together, but that taunting cohesiveness is still out of reach. What I can piece together is largely centralized around control and the use of easily manipulated elements of human nature such as addiction. Ali goes to a hotel in the chapter in a strange bed and sees a sign on the wall entitled “The Nature of Begging” which reads “Need?-Lack Want?-Need Life?-Death”. I think this sign in many ways illustrates a kind of basic blueprint for conditioning, making someone realize that they lack something desirable which leads to their wanting and pursuing that thing, the more urgent it seems or the stronger the illusion of necessity, the more vulnerable and dependent someone is to another. It is a process that leads from step one, knowing that there is a specific thing that you do not have and giving into its seduction, to a final step of being manipulated by another who controls what it is that is desired. The manipulator can be anybody from a drug dealer to an advertiser; it seems Burroughs is saying anything can have an addictive quality if it has this kind of relationship with a person. Addiction is wholly included in the Garden of Delights, or G.O.D. Burroughs describes G.O.D. as “the smell of burning leaves in cobblestone streets a rustle of darkness and wires frayed sounds of a distant city.” This quote implies the conquering of nature and the triumph of man’s creation. The acronym G.O.D. is even more illuminating because in a way it suggests that the hierarchical order of man and God is reversed, that the universal natural impulse of man, from the most secluded tribe to the most advanced civilizations throughout history, is to believe there is a being that is creating and controlling, but God may just be the logical extrapolation of our ego, a deep striving for creation and control but a creation in itself. The stance that Burroughs takes on G.O.D., the amalgamation of human creations and in turn its addictions is that its destruction is a beautiful thing. This is shown in parts of the chapter winds of time in which the Demolition Team blows up the Garden of Delights and descriptions emphasize the beauty of nature overcoming man’s creations, for instance the line, “Behind them in a darkening valley the Garden of Delights is scattered piles of smoldering rubbish…scrub and vine grow through blackened tape recorders where goats graze and lizards bask in the afternoon sun.” Along with the objects and ideas of G.O.D., a charred tape recorder is being overgrown. Here Burroughs is setting up opposition between language and the wholesome aspects of nature. From what I gather he is comparing the human faculty for language to a tape recorder, only a little less reliable. We hear words and ideas with microphone ears, record them with our brains, and spout the information back out as if hitting a play button. Most of the words, concepts and stories we have picked up through hearing, remembering, and retelling occurs much like a tape recorder picks up a sound, records it, and plays it back. Through experimentation with splicing these various tapes, or in a human sense, segments of memory recorded by language, sometimes an original combination or new idea is uncovered. In this way language is a virus and we spread it like a tape recorder redistributes sound, we hear and remember things through language which come from numerous sources (“Thousands of voices muttered out of the darkness, twittering creatures pulling and tugging and dancing on their way…”pg.86) like many tapes spliced together, little of it originates from us individually, a viral swarm of words inhabits the mind. At the end of The Ticket that Exploded Burroughs suggests that people shouldn’t even show up to parties but instead bring a tape recorder which will replace the function of propagating the word virus by playing and recording at intervals. At the heart of much of the manipulation previously mentioned is the basic tool of language, which must itself be manipulated in order to communicate anything in the first place. Several times throughout the book, like in the chapter the black fruit, halves of bodies or brains of characters are described to represent the natural state of a human (without language) and the other portion infected by language, both inhabiting the same body. Usually the part of the being with the word virus is distraught like Lykin who in the black fruit “Found himself choking as unknown bodies tear his insides apart” (pg. 87). Similarly, in the external world Burroughs observes the problem of unknown bodies or differing groups of people tearing the earth and each other apart by trying to control one another but stubbornly refusing to change themselves, they are simply too incompatible. This tension is escalated and manipulated by the Nova Mob who attempts to turn the earth into a super nova by emphasizing those differences until humans bring on planetary self destruction. The cut-up technique used in the book then might be Burroughs’ attempt at a vaccination of the word virus, striving to disarm language and find natural silence before the silence following a kind of super nova occurs first.

A Pataphorical Interpretation of The Invention of Morel

Waiting at the back of an enormous line in the school bookstore, I remember sifting through a stack of books from my upcoming classes to ease boredom. Seeing that Jorge Luis Borges had written the prologue to The Invention of Morel caught my attention so it was the first book I looked at. The actual plot of the story was not described in more than one sentence of the synopsis. The rest of what was said about the book had to do with what other popular authors thought of Bioy Casares’ writing style, theme was briefly covered, and emphasis was put on Bioy Casares’s obsession with actress Louise Brooks. After watching clips from a documentary about Louise Brooks in class as well, it became clear that Bioy Casares’s life and the time in which he wrote the book (as Tony Prichard pointed out, the technological timing of a young cinema and the emerging advent of sound) had considerable bearing on the meaning of the book. This presents a level of reality that Bioy Casares is commenting on. How he comments on that reality, it seems, is often communicated through the metaphorical reality of the relationship between the fugitive and Faustine. There is another level of reality, however, that separates the fugitive and Faustine and complicates their “relationship”, and that is the machine that Morel has invented. With these three levels of reality set in place, an interpretation of The Invention of Morel based off of the structure of a pataphor appears to work.
In the Invention of Morel, the fugitive becomes obsessed with a woman that he can only interact with by observing. She does not know that he exists and she is destined to repeat the same actions that she took during the course of one week over and over for eternity. This is due to a machine that Morel has made. In Bioy Casares life, there is an actress named Louise Brooks who appears in a new invention called cinema. Similarly, all that Casares can do about his interest in Brooks is watch a moving film strip that simulates that she is right in front of him. This only lasts for a few hours, and unless she makes another movie, for all Bioy Casares knows those few hours are the only ones that she will live, over and over for eternity. If the metaphorical reality of the fugitive and Faustine corresponds with the average man and the movie star in Bioy Casares’s reality, particularly himself and Brooks in this case, then the second pataphorical degree of separation from that reality would be the fantasy that results from one’s observation of the other. The fugitive is led on what seems a completely random tangent as he tries to survive on an unforgiving island and remain hidden from the authorities searching for him. Randomly, several projected figures enter his life, one of which being a woman he cannot get off his mind, and he absorbs himself into an impossible fantasy in which he ends up sacrificing his life to create the illusion that he is the lover of that woman (who still has no idea that he exists). In this way, he has forced his own imaginative life to “take on its own reality”. The correlation to Casares’ reality can be further explained by the creepy nature of the fugitive’s observing and day dreaming. In Groundhog Day Bill Murray plays an egocentric man presented with a similar situation of being stuck in a repeating time loop, but he doesn’t come off as being a stalker, at least not as blatantly as Bioy Casares’s fugitive, because he gets to know everyone in the city he is stuck in, along with the woman he likes. The fugitive focuses on Faustine alone. He rarely thinks of the others and when he does it is often wishing them ill if he suspects that they are pursuing a relationship with her as well. What makes the fugitive and Bill Murray’s situation different is that Bill can interact with the people in the loop, but the fugitive can’t. This relegates the fugitive to voyeurism, he can only look at this fellow human that he desires and imagine a life with her. This is what watching a movie essentially is: looking at the image of other living people when they do not know you are there, daydreaming about them, being a voyeur. Idolizing and lusting after stars becomes like the relationship between the fugitive and Faustine. The daydreaming of these completely removed and irrelevant people to your own life becomes a second degree of separation and the time you spend thinking about them starts to resemble the actions of the fugitive trying to copy himself into Faustine’s life, still only able to make it seem like there is a two way relationship when there really is not and never will be. At the level of obsession you become a fugitive of reality attempting to live out a pataphor.