'Bourgeois?'

A classic case of the problem I here investigate is class and status. e.g we might habitually deride and contest 'bourgeois' values, status, taste and class while nevertheless -if we are honest - craving and yearning to become or remain or surpass that most central, secure and empowering middle ground of society. In this respect -and many others I suspect - we all constantly live our contradictions.

Site?

But perhaps what's most useful about our experiments thus far is that we probably CANNOT use antitheses in order to illuminate the self (as we might well have thought we could). What it suggests is that the dialectical model is inadequate for considering something that is not ontological or ontologise-able. Or to put it another way perhaps, that the self is not a 'thesis' to which there can be an antithesis, it is not a 'site' to which thee can be an opposite. Maybe this leads us to Yin and Yan, so let's go there next.

myths?

Here, things are getting messy, but that's OK, thought experiments, like artist's studios and hard working desks are allowed to get messy on the way to finding a new organisation.

What's messy about the previous post is that the self has a self -for a start - and it 'uses that self' for comfort etc. It would just as easy to say that the self is that very comfort. i.e. that the self is really a comfortable denial of its antithesis and its complexity, that it pragmatically 'gets by' on a set of presumptions and assumptions that are neither knowledge nor truth but convenient and manageable, 'myths' perhaps?

Presumptions

So, the antithesis experiment shows up at least the fact that the self cannot presume or assume as much about itself as it would like. If it feels discomforted by confrontation with its presumed antithesis then why should it utilise its 'self' (or thesis) as a comforting site or assurance and positionality?

Antithesis experiment

If I were to consider a self that was the antithesis of myself I suspect it could help me honestly consider myself, in a way that, without this exercise I could not honestly see.

For example, the antithesis of myself should be (politically) Thatcherite, (as an artist) Saatchi-ite, then racist, spiteful, vengeful, dishonest etc. Then I could assume that the opposite of myself would be gay, or black or a woman (as I am none of these).

But the immediate problems thrown up by such considerations are that many of these categorisations do not sit comfortably with my sense of myself blurring or debating the boundaries of these things, as a growing, thinking, becoming and challenging self.

Hmmm, even further, we can see that the exercise produces all these 'things' as ontologies -in which I also do not believe ( my PhD revolved around doubt about Things).

Ying-Yang

I guess Contraself would have to acknowledge the ancient, eastern Ying-Yang (Yin-Yan)theory of balance and reciprocity too, but I'll come back to this once I've developed some more basic or profane thoughts on the matter.

Some translations of the Heraclitus

They do not understand how, though at variance with itself, it agrees with itself. It is a backwards-turning attunement like that of the bow and lyre.

They do not understand how that which differs with itself in is agreement: harmony consists of opposing tension, like that of the bow and the lyre.

THE BOW AND LYRE
"Men do not know how what is at variance agrees with itself. It is an attunement of opposite tensions, like that of the bow and the lyre."

(Heraclitus, Fragment 51)

Wringing Heraclitus

When I wring out my washed clothes, I use a contra-motion, turning the cloth of the garment against itself to squeeze out the moisture. this reminds me that in Heraclitus there is a description of the harmonious sounds produced by a lyre through a kind of contra-tension between the wood and the strings, as it were, pulling against each-other, in a kind of conflict from which the instrument's beauty appears. I'll try to find the quote.

Others?

Is the Contraself (merely) the other, or others? Perhaps not, the Contraself is still Self, no!

Against

Could a man ever truly go against what he is, or presumes himself to be? Turn his politics from Left to Right for example? Adopt the antithesis of what have come to be his views? What are these 'views' anyway? Do they have any great substance, weight, depth, conviction? Are they visceral or fancy free? and what part do they play in constituting a 'self'?

disintroducing CONTRASELF

Goodbye! this is contraself, the part of me that always thinks the opposite of what 'I', or the 'real me' thinks and does, the part of me that regret what I've done, or feels misunderstood because others only see what they think is the real me without knowing that I am also a contraself, the opposite, the negation, the contradiction, the confusion of what and who I am. Probably everyone has and is a contraself, otherwise we would never regret, feel shame, change our minds, etc. etc. So here, perhaps for the first time ever, that contraself is given priority and a clear voice, rather than being a mysterious subconscious or meddling background character in human affairs. Here I can say the opposite of what I have come to feel is my 'self', motivated by the fact that so often I feel and have felt that the 'self' does not nearly, not adequately, represent or accommodate the multitude of thoughts and feelings within me and that 'I' ultimately am.

Am 'I', after all, not just as much the opposite and contradiction of my self as 'I' am that 'self'? Indeed, is that 'self' not in fact evolved out of a dialogue with all that it is not, doesn't want to be? Isn't every one of my 'opinions' a negation or refusal of something by which 'I' form and place my 'self'? Contraself is the extreme of the candid, an unveiling of that which is necessarily and habitually hidden, denied, or pushed away in order to present an acceptable, useful and pragmatic 'self' to the world. But that pragmatism - necessitated by socio/economic/moral/political interactions is also a necessary repression formative of the neuroses and irony that we have come to know as the acceptable face of the 21st Century citizen. Contraself avows that such a subject is NOT the whole story, and that it is, in fact, not only a shallow facade, but the surface of a storm, a panic, a hysteria from which we run, from birth unto death, rescued only by mask after mask, swinging from one self to another like Tarzan through the jungle, stepping on these safe stones to cross the unpredictable and unknown river of life.

And why not? why should life not merely be a safe passage, safe and pragmatic, embracing all that offers the quietest of lives? that is the wisdom of our present pragmatism, and I'I' salute it, nevertheless, it is the role of the artist and thinker and writer to explore, all that he does and all that he is, the way that all that he is influences what he does, and so, 'I' have arrived, today, at this significant moment, in part fatigued by my own thoughts, tired of the tricks my mind plays upon me, no-longer loyal to or trusting of the familiar mantras and positions which emerge like chimeras to respond to events in the world. And I turn to anew excavation, investigation, of all that hitherto 'I' have not been in order to find a way, a way, that is all, after all, that we need, and more, a way is all that we are, a way, far more than a 'self' I believe...