making cuts

The originary moment for the creation of a system, according to Niklas Luhmann, comes when an observer makes a cut. Before the cut - before any cut - is made, only an undifferentiated complexity exists, impossible to comprehend in its noisy multifariousness... The cut helps to tame the noise of the world by introducing a distinction... What is outside is left behind, an undifferentiated unity... But no matter how many cuts are made there will always be an excess, an area of undifferentiation that can be understood only as the other side of the cut, the outside of the form (Hayles Making the Cut 2000: 137).

critiquing

[C2] ...

[C4] ...

reflecting

I wonder about language; about "the metaphors we live by." (Lackoff and Johnson) Is there a difference between "making a cut" and "choosing a focus"?

[R2] Cuts are irrevocable: Ragged edges, sharpness, blood. Created by knives, razors, scissors, perhaps scalpels - for surgery, dissection, vivisection. Cuts radiate pain. They are difficult to repair, to heal, to undo.

[R3] A focus is different: it can shift. It can be enhanced or get lost or get stuck. A focus can be fuzzy or sharp - but the sharpness is crisp and clean, and can be muted into something softer. Not like the sharpness of a cut, which is ragged, septic, requires healing. A focus requires no healing, just filtering or re-centering.

[R4] Cuts can be accidental, although making a cut is intentional: the precision of surgery; the mechanical punching of sheet-metal cutouts again and again and again. Making cuts can be creative too: smooth lines of woodcarving; careful, artistic self-infliction.

[R5] Choosing a focus can also be artistic, intentional or accidental - perhaps reactive: an unwilled change such as a focus caught by movement, by sound. Attention is startled; drawn suddenly to a point. Or more relentlessly, a focus can be beaten into submission through dogged manipulation.

[R6] But let's remember what I began with here. I am thinking about metaphors that enable us to grasp or to communicate about grasping or communicating about reality. The point of Hayles' phrase is to describe the act of differentiating the undifferentiated - mine is an alternative. There are more metaphors than 'cut' and 'focus' here, then.

[R7] Is choosing (a focus) different than making (a cut)? Is it more intentional? Always? [aside] Does choosing more readily encourage recognition of the active and ethical nature of differentiation? Choosing implies more than one option; it implies the need for contrasting and weighting - even if minimal criteria are considered.

[R8] Are there more appropriate metaphors to express or describe this act of differentiation? And why do I even wonder?...

[R9] My objective here is to move away from metaphors that signify boundary creation or delineation. I want to find metaphors - with their undercurrent meanings and implications - that speak to fuzzifying distinctions; to relinquishing boundaries. 'Making a cut' draws a boundary; 'choosing a focus' draws attention to particular perceptions - processes, objects, relations. With a cut, the undifferentiated is severed, removed; with a focus, the undifferentiated remains. It looms like a shadow, just beyond focus - not known, but not forgotten. Perhaps - as with peripheral vision, which has a greater sensitivity to movement - there are particular perceptual aperati that remain vigilant, observing the undifferentiated below the conscious horizon...

[R10] A cut is an object, or a verb: something acted upon something. A focus is a process. Even as a noun, it is a process involving an observer... A 'cut' conjures physicality. A 'focus' is visual, it conjures mentality, although not necessarily mind. Is there a conceptual equivalent? Choosing a _______________?