So
not only at the nexus
of
escape and refuge but
of
concealment and exposure
all servile, surveilled
a
salient valence
of secrets swerves veils
the airplane
functions
as a FOULCAULDIAN Panopticon
with a
concerted distribution
of bodies,
lights, gazes
a
privileged place
where one
is “able to judge at a glance
without
anything being concealed from [it]
how the
entire establishment is functioning”15
seatbuckled.
in. contained. resistance.
And through blankets, shrouds, masks
dogs,
computers and metal detectors
the
airplane as language is marked by uncertain subjects16
all
vulnerable and aporetic
and in
constant negotiation
through
contemporaneous constellations
consultations,
councils, consoles, kinships
operating
as a democratic space --
a
dialectics of otherness grounded in ex-static possibilities
not
just an airplane but a their planecircumcised words
folding into and across, weathered wings / aluminum lungs
marking covenant, between all that is overt and covert,
coveting ravenous, cavernous
in parasidical polysemia
a multiplexity of disseminative slicing
as the plane cuts sky cuts skin cuts off, into
rites of passage
flying through embroidered curtains
robed in metallic spans
veiled weft, woven breath
of gilded
spurs all slippery and lexuriant –
through
laws, lulls layers,
orbits,
ambits, gambits
gaming the
sky
The
Airplane Game or Plane Game is a style of pyramid scheme active in
the 1980’s which involved joining an "airplane" where
"passengers", "flight attendants" and “co-pilots”
payed pilots who collected $12,000 from passengers to retire. The game
progressed until each participant became “a pilot” who then themselves
collected $12,000. Though the common version required passengers to pay $1,500
to receive $12,000 as a pilot, some airplanes were being run with $5,000
passengers and a $40,000 pilot payout.
Also
called Concorde, Golden Galaxy, Cosmic Adventure and Flying Starship
the
airplane remains a site of games plots, schemes
Highlighting
Wittgensteinian language-games and Lyotardian Game Theory,
where even
if we know the codes of “the game”, the rules are always-already local,
fluid,
changing and contested, the airplane reminds us how, with every enunciation
re-articulation,
there is a celebration of discourse as a series of traces
markings
and echoes
phantomatic
projections, introjection,
exilic
trajection;
a syllaboration of communication as polysemous
play
where we
inhabit, dwell
in the interstices, the aporias in a
superfluity of folds
in the unheimlich space
of
multiplicitous systems of social and cultural signification
a
hybridized syncretic space between cultures and idioms
where that
interlingual complexity
doesn’t close down but builds dialogue
and
celebrates the deterritorialization
of joue le
jeu the en jeu; of appelez’s play
of
seduction addiction s’diction of slippery ellipses,
where
play’s placed in a plaisir of pliant
pleas a replayed display
where “the
play’s the thing”.
like language
itself, marked by distances, values, solitudes, convergences
the
airplane travels through compressible fluid mediums of elastic particles
aching and
desirous
in
conversation with the sky
where thinking comes alive in
dialogue, through modes of engagement, rejoinders
establishing a collaborative poesis
that averts a single lyric destination
but rather deploys multiple psyches,
engines, economies,
conversing reversals, subversals
a
diasporic polyvalence / polyVOLÉnce
negotiating
itself
as an
uncanny object
a cultural
node in bracket space.
And
sometimes flashing17 you before takeoff
waiving
its well-formed upturned tail18 (tale)
with
wide-bodied elegance
each model
struts along the runway --
Haus
of Asiana
Avianca
Haus of Emirates
TigerWing Sunwing Haus of Vistara Volaris
Porter Peach Mango
Haus of Kulula of Vueling Silkair Luxair
Aer Lingus, Volotea Aeroflot, Haus of Spirit Spring SWISS Swoop Aerolineas Jeju
Jet2 Jet Blue Fiji Finnair FyBe French bee Frontier Virgin Vistara Saudi Sun
Country TAP Pegasus Namibia Serbia Arabia
Skylanes Scoot
SAS
Haus of
Tran-
sat
And
through sculpted inscriptions, encryptions
permission,
emission, admission, transgression
hiding in
plane cite
sometimes
it’s crying out under the weight of its
reference
re-navigating
from one
destination
to another
performing
its own genealogy
A desiring machine
which functions
smoothly at times
at other
times in fits and starts19
la machine de l’éte, machine of being
marked by
its big nose and full body
gliding
through an ærotics of visceral clusters syllabic grafts lifts rifts drifts:
a chordal
accordance of discordant concordance
a flight of fancy
a Concord20 of s’ecrit sounds
all
exilic, textilic, diasporic and nomadic
asserting,
So
much dépense21
upon
a
red steel
aero
glazed
with rain
water
And just
like how truth in language
is never
naked and exposed
as nakedness is another form of
apparel
an unmasking that is masking the
mask,
the unveiling that is veiling the
veil --
the naked body of the airplane is
“garmentless”
semantically ascending through the
utterance of its being
Yet maintaining its flight path
it mirrors the functioning of
syntax; the set of rules, principles
and processes that govern the
structure of sentences in a given language.
Defined by
semantic corridors
conventions,
altitude blocks
fixed
coordinates
both the
airplane and language
operate
within rigorously calibrated
socio-linguistic,
technologic and geographic systems
highlighting
how limit and restriction engender ultimate possibility22
This sense
of paradox is further evident
in that
both the airplane and language
are the “home” that is the place of
isolation and aloneness but also
the place of unison23,
the haven of solitude and the womb of relationality
soaring
through networks transfers
avowals
consonance aeros eros contours corridors recourse concourse en cœur’s
discourse; trails tracks lines queues
QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ
QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ
QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ
QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ
QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ
QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ
QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ
QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ
QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ
and with
giddy truance, says: s Q’s me or --
skip the
queue
cruising
through a circuitry of skewed cues --
we are the
letters traveling through space and time
private
and public, intimate and open
as par avion – where secreted in its very
name,
l’envois,24 envoy (messenger) carrying la vois (to see)
and voi[x] (to voice) and by extension voile (veiling)
And through the reveille veils, avails,
values, volés
as secrets
mist binding days where dawn threads
majestically
through the raging sky
the airplane reminds us that between seeing and saying
and the infinite veiling and unveiling
of language, meaning, being, communication and travel
as medium, en medias, as message and messenger
the airplane is always already massaging the ærotics of the secret and
the social
through an ever-swirling circulation
of
permission, submission
gradation,
celebration
measured
and weighed
encasing the weight of jouissance
the weight of reference representation the weight of context contrails
contingency control the weight of expectation, translation relation
topographies echographies the
weight of seduction memory and
upheaval the weight of meaning’s
production
and the price of process
claimed and reclaimed from an
ever-spiraling carousel25
reminding us that the limits of [our] language
means the limits of [our] world
(Wittgenstein)
Thank you for flying with
us.
Please enjoy a safe
evening and an easy transition
to your final destination
Notes
to pp. 20-44
10.
And also for Batailles: “The limit is
only there to be overreached. Fear and horror are not the real and final
reaction; on the contrary, they are a temptation to overstep the
bounds.” – Georges Batailles, Eroticism:
Death and Sensuality
11. Marquis de Sade, Justine
12.
For according to Batailles, “extreme
seductiveness is at the boundary of horror”. See both
Visions of Excess and Story of the Eye.
13.
In French, déborder means
excess, exuberance, profusion, overflow; pleine
à déborder: full to overflowing
14. According to Kabbalistic
hermeneutics, not only is the gematria for airplane (matos) commensurate with
“assir” (captive) and “arah” (to flee) –
but also and “l’aymar” – to say.
Read
through a 13th C. numerologic frame, the airplane further highlights
that to speak is to flee; to fly into language, through planes of being
15. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish. Also, “The gaze
is alert everywhere” and “The panoptic mechanism arranges spatial unities that
make it possible to see constantly and to recognize immediately”. And as the
letters traveling the space, with lateral [ ]visibility we become that compact
mass, a locus of multiple exchanges.
16. ie open to
hijacking, illegality, emigration, it’s is always in a state of negotiation.
See
Derrida in “Autoimmunity” “vulnerable spaces such as air[planes] are integral
to the existence of democracy, in their very vulnerability”. Rogues
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005).
17. Aerotically exposing its
internal circuity, wing flaps regulate lift or drag.
18. Or more specifically, called emPENnage,
derived from the French, empenner, to
feather an arrow [aero], the structure at the rear of an aircraft that not only
provides stability during flight but controls pitch.
19.
Gilles Deleuze
& Felix Guattari. Anti Oedipus. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2000.
20.
Like how language as a chordal concordance cuts across international codes,
systems, boundaries, the Concorde supersonic jet co-developed by the British
and the French, was the first airline company to be co-owned internationally.
Taking its name from the word “concord” (from Middle English and Old
French concorde, Latin concordia, from concors ‘of
one mind’, and from con- ‘together’ + cor, cord- ‘heart’;
a coming together), it’s very being is synecdochic of linguistic usage -- how a
concord refers to the agreement between parts of speech; “…a concord of sweet
sounds…” William Shakespeare, Merchant of
Venice, Act V, Scene I. Also the Concorde was the only passenger plane to
ever cross the sound barrier.
21.
Excess, expenditure, sacrifice, ecstatic abandon as laid out in Georges
Bataille’s, La Notion de dèpense.
22. This sense of limit is reminiscent of the
Kabbalistic nation of Tzimtzum – how
contraction is expansion; and
infinite essence must be contained.
Or, in the language of the Azriel of Gerona, the sefirotic potencies which
collectively are the disclosure of the Tetragrammaton, are the limited force
that is unlimited.
23.
Or in Heidergerian terms (einklang). einklang klang klang goes the trolley
24. In
some ways related to how Derrida writes in La carte postale: De Socrate à Freud et au-delà using
the form of the private to inadvertently create something public; i.e. as a mode of both public and
private transportation, this is particularly noteworthy in that we literally
become par avian, mailed through
space and time. Jacques Derrida, The
Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1987.
25.
Like language communicated by way of the internet, (armed with data and broken
up into individual packets is, sent out and connects back at its destination
where it unloads its “information”), claimed and reclaimed from both intended
and unintended destinations, the airplane metonymically stands in for the
infinite ways information gets transmitted.
