The NASCLS in association with the Nicola Fierst Society invites 250-word proposals for papers and panels for the 2011 meeting of the International Gollesten Circle. The conference will be held May 12-15, 2011 in Kuching, Borneo. Specific Topic Panel: Gollesten and Milosovici: Intersections of Structural Obfuscation in the Natural Labyrinth. Deadline: January 21. Contact via NASCLS web ring.
Showing posts with label Milosovici. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Milosovici. Show all posts
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Interview with Thomas Stalle (Part Two)
If you haven't read the first part of my exclusive interview with noted contemporary labyrinthian and Gollesten scholar Thomas Stalle, you can find it here. In this second segment, Stalle talks more about Gollesten's polarizing tome Science, Poetry, and Labyrinth, and addresses the factious nature of contemporary labyrinthology in the wake of Aaldi. The interview was conducted on 11.29.08 via Skype.
Alex: Why do you think that Gollesten allowed SPL to remain unpublished? Do you feel that it constitutes a finished, fully realized treatise?
Thomas: It's difficult to say for sure. However, Gollesten's letters from the early 1890's do seem to imply that SPL is an unfinished work. Moreover, it seems to have been something of an albatross which he could not complete nor decide to abandon. Take for example, what he says in a letter to Raif Osmanovic from June of 1892. He writes:
"... the ideas explored [in SPL] remain important to me, though I feel that I cannot do justice to them in a hermeneutico-labyrinthological sense. The conflation of poetry, image, science and labyrinthology may strike many as bizarre, even irresponsible. Even still, I feel that such interdisciplinary measures are critical to the exposition of the fundamental being of the labyrinth. Ultimately, perhaps language as such is insufficient, the play of sign and signifier unable to offer us truly primordial access."
I feel that perhaps Gollesten avoided publishing SPL because he did not want the ideas contained therein to be disseminated and codified as "labyrinthology." We note that Gollesten all but stopped publishing treatises in the last thirty years of his life, focusing more and more on lecturing and, later, painting. Ultimately, it is my own contention that the late Gollesten feels that the written word, and thus labyrinthology as such, is unsuitable to the study of labyrinths.
Alex: In this respect, Gollesten reminds me a lot of middle to late period Heidegger, who, as we know, he read extensively towards the end of his life.
Thomas: Absolutely. Gollesten was extremely inspired by Heidegger's tireless search to understand being at its most primordial. In many ways, his labyrinthological project is similarly focused and single-minded in scope.
Alex: Let's change gears a bit and talk about another subject that I know is important to you: the rifts that exist in contemporary labyrinthology in the wake of Kalev Aaldi. Do you feel that Aaldi, Milosovici and the Medial School constructivists are responsible for the almost insidious divergences that exist in labyrinthology?
Thomas: In a word, yes. I feel that the "split" in labyrinthology may be dated back to Aaldi largely because of the type of discourse we find in his writings and lectures. In a sense, Aaldi sought to invalidate the labyrinthologies that he inherited, pre-exteriorism in particular. Accordingly, his writing carries a polemical tone which naturally breeds critical contention. The factions that have emerged in labyrinthology in the last hundred years may all be traced back to Aaldi. We might say, in fact, that contemporary labyrinthology is, in many ways, a footnote to Aaldi, either supporting or rigorously disputing his labyrinthological positions. Gollesten, for example, spent much of his early academic life arguing back the labyrinth from the Medial School (Aaldi, Reede, Milosovici, Ozols, etc.). Subsequent labyrinthians, from circles as diverse as those embodied by the writings of Ambrose Walker and Coulet also have spilled much ink supporting or condemning the Medialists. People talk about various "crises" of contemporary labyrinthology. I think the truest crisis we face is overcoming Aaldi's shadow and mending the fabric of labyrinthological theory.
Be sure to check out part three of the interview, in which Stalle and I discuss contemporary and postmodern labyrinthians whose progressive writings appear to possess what is necessary to mend the "fabric" of which he speaks.
I feel that perhaps Gollesten avoided publishing SPL because he did not want the ideas contained therein to be disseminated and codified as "labyrinthology." We note that Gollesten all but stopped publishing treatises in the last thirty years of his life, focusing more and more on lecturing and, later, painting. Ultimately, it is my own contention that the late Gollesten feels that the written word, and thus labyrinthology as such, is unsuitable to the study of labyrinths.
Alex: In this respect, Gollesten reminds me a lot of middle to late period Heidegger, who, as we know, he read extensively towards the end of his life.
Thomas: Absolutely. Gollesten was extremely inspired by Heidegger's tireless search to understand being at its most primordial. In many ways, his labyrinthological project is similarly focused and single-minded in scope.
Alex: Let's change gears a bit and talk about another subject that I know is important to you: the rifts that exist in contemporary labyrinthology in the wake of Kalev Aaldi. Do you feel that Aaldi, Milosovici and the Medial School constructivists are responsible for the almost insidious divergences that exist in labyrinthology?
Thomas: In a word, yes. I feel that the "split" in labyrinthology may be dated back to Aaldi largely because of the type of discourse we find in his writings and lectures. In a sense, Aaldi sought to invalidate the labyrinthologies that he inherited, pre-exteriorism in particular. Accordingly, his writing carries a polemical tone which naturally breeds critical contention. The factions that have emerged in labyrinthology in the last hundred years may all be traced back to Aaldi. We might say, in fact, that contemporary labyrinthology is, in many ways, a footnote to Aaldi, either supporting or rigorously disputing his labyrinthological positions. Gollesten, for example, spent much of his early academic life arguing back the labyrinth from the Medial School (Aaldi, Reede, Milosovici, Ozols, etc.). Subsequent labyrinthians, from circles as diverse as those embodied by the writings of Ambrose Walker and Coulet also have spilled much ink supporting or condemning the Medialists. People talk about various "crises" of contemporary labyrinthology. I think the truest crisis we face is overcoming Aaldi's shadow and mending the fabric of labyrinthological theory.
Be sure to check out part three of the interview, in which Stalle and I discuss contemporary and postmodern labyrinthians whose progressive writings appear to possess what is necessary to mend the "fabric" of which he speaks.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Edgar Milosovici and the Constructed Labyrinth
Although I, like most other contemporary labyrinthians in the continental school, revile many of Edgar Milosovici's labyrinthological positions, his writings have proved extraordinarily influential in our field. Certainly anyone with a sustained interest in Gollesten or eco/loco labyrinthianism must be well-versed in his thought.The following excerpt comes from Milosovici's Basic Questions of Psychical Labyrinthianism (trans. Patel), perhaps his most famous text. In this passage, Milosovici addresses the question of the labyrinth after Aaldi, reiterating his mentor's dismissal of the possibility of a non-psychical, extra-mental labyrinth.
"How can we, in the wake of Aaldi’s thinking, assess the question of the labyrinth? We might ask ourselves at this juncture, what is left for labyrinthianism? As Aaldi points out, the inner function of the labyrinth is now understood to be quantifiable. With skepticism cast over the possibility of an extra-mental labyrinth, we observe persuasive evidence of Reede’s position vis-à-vis the cognitive component of the labyrinth as ontological proof. Moreover, cognitive centrality has proved the locus of theory once more. Our engagement with the constructed labyrinth is a dualism.
The notion of the perimeter, posited initially by Scaruffi and since refuted in the labyrinthological project of Aaldi and the Medial School, has been destroyed. As Hume tells us in his Enquiry, “To form monsters, and join incongruous shapes and appearances, costs the imagination no more trouble than to conceive the most natural and familiar objects.” Such phantasy is the case with the notion of the perimeter, and the same may be said of the argument for the existence of any extra-mental labyrinth as such."
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