[Charlie Stephen] “Things that don’t change”
{AK}: Firstly, what determinate ‘thing’, doesn’t ‘change’?
What is this ‘change’?
Is it an apparent, perhaps structural, set of variations over an invariance?
Does this alleged invariance arise through comparison?
If it does so arise, is this invariance not contingent on such comparison?
What is this ‘comparison’, how does it arise, what does it involve?
If this comparison is structured, in such a way, as to provision a discernment of structure, and, moreover, a structure that always takes a certain ‘form of apprehension’; seeks out particular patterns of sense and arrangement; imposes a certain grid of interest; then are not these suggested fulcrums of invariant eternity merely the corresponding effects that arise along with such comparisons, apprehensions, and interests?
This is not to suggest any psychologising of the issues, psychology itself could equally be seen as being taken up within such comparative operations. Neither are idealist or materialist closures necessary, such hypotheses would merely be operations of interest.
The attribute of ‘change’, is a specific and comparative determination, it has to refer to something else in order to obtain. It has to be attached to something, to an identity assumption, in order to obtain. Thus, it is inherently a relational attribute, constructed out of assumptions of identity and structures of mutual self-reference.
If those comparative structures of mutually referring identities seem to trace formal patterns of relational process, suggesting idealisations inhabiting the temporal, yet producing the mirage of non-temporal effects, this is merely due to the equally constructed nature of temporal idealisation, itself contingent on assumptions of the ‘momentary punctum’, as commonly assumed foundation.
The ‘non-temporal’ arises with respect to a particular scenario of temporal assumption. Commonsense ideas tend to subject that scenario to all kinds of substantialist, mystifying inflations, throwing about that temporal assumption with a ferocious generosity of coverage that bespeaks perhaps some fundamental anxiety. But these mystifications, originating out of the narcissistic busyness-business of so many sordid and petty self-interests, arise only out of that inflationary scenario, clinging onto it with all the fervour that petty insularity can muster.
But at each and every point of this scenario, permeating it thoroughly and without remainder, is the ‘non-temporal’, the mere logical corollary, to that assumption of busy insularity, but it’s a corollary whose specificity most have habituated themselves not to see.
I’m not going to go into this here, but if identity assumption is going to be indulged, the notion of scale and scaling is important, as a theoretical agility lending itself to a fresh scenario of insights. That’s a hint of just one possible direction, there are lots of others.
Because of the contingencies of specific determination involved in attributions of change, those attributions are therefore contingent. Likewise, because of the logical structures of mutual self-reference involved in suggestions of the ‘non-temporal’, those suggestions are contingent, not only on those logical structures, but on the initial, identity assumptions, with which they, all, mutually arise.
Given the possibility of increased specificity as regards factors of identity assumption, temporality and non-temporality; attributions of the ‘essential’ and of ‘change’; it is perfectly possible to construct scenarios of processual ‘change’, as it were, whilst locating them entirely outside of specific conventions of temporality, outside of certain, specific chronologies, and ‘their’ scenarios of temporal assumption. If those conventional scenarios attempt to recoup such unconventional scenarios of processual ‘change’, under some vague and mystifying assumption of pan-temporality – merely the corollary reflection of its own inflationary insularity – then this ambition of an imperialising chronology attempting to substantialise itself, it’s dogmas and its outlooks, can only ineluctably lead to its own, quite specific, undoing.