To encourage debate about all dimensions of queer life

Friday, 2 November 2007




The well reknowned queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick came to York. Her talk covered a multitude of autobiographical, art, Buddhistic and physics topics, which at first seemed a little incoherent, however, after reflection the elements began to become fused into a mantra of connectivity. A move away from poststructuralist deconstruction, she introduced David Bohm's ideas of the of hidden orders of patterns or enfolded order much like those you capture when ink is on water and when you place a sheet of paper or cloth upon the pattern (like in the base of the picture on the left) and capture the unfolding of the waves. While this touch upon physics did not go as far as I would have liked, I sensed this connectivity because I was reading the The Holographic Universe By Michael Talbot, where I had just been reading about Bohm's contribution to the theory of the enfolded and unfolded (dis)order of the universe. Although a mind-boggling set of ideas for me I will try and explain what I think I understand and put it forth for discussion. Everything in the cosmos is connected and is part of the same unfolding and enfolding 'order(s)' of the fabric of the universe, much like viewing the different patterns in an ornate carpet as part of the whole. The threads of the carpet may 'come loose' and and someone may wish to reform the fabric, the pattern may not be the same but it is still part of the same carpet. This allows us to contend the basic tenets of enlightenment thinking about scrutinising each part in their separateness, like such things as size, rate, or other 'respective' part. This way of looking at 'things' can in fact misguide our judgment of the whole. This is not to say that these things are not 'visible', 'audible', or anything like that, but 'they' are only abstractions in order to allow them to stand out in our perceptions. Bohm prefers to call these respective parts "relatively independent subtotalities."

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