Diagram and Notes: Scaffolding of Selves
The key metaphor at the centre of this work is that of the scaffold. I propose a view of individuals as procedural architecture, process and structure in synthesis – not as mere self-reproduction (autopoiesis) but rather continuous growth and transformation, an excessive reaching out into the void scrambling not to collapse under its own weight, its own ambition (epipoiesis). The image is of intricate networks of platforms, beams and precarious bridges ever reorganizing around new works – around points that demand to be re-formed or re-inforced. For scaffolding can equally serve the purpose of fixing something in place as it can facilitate renovation and restoration. Thus, this move centres at once stabilisation and change, which are revealed to be nothing but two sides of the same coin – lived importance and lived abstraction (Massumi).
In this picture I seek to capture three key aspects of selfhood. First, its extended nature – fundamentally a reaching out, a process of tacking on, attaching and, eventually, overlap. This is the aspect of the cyborg. Second, a radical provisionality – the scaffold is a temporary structure shaped by the demands of a specific purpose and situation, but demands change and reconfiguration occurs. In this way, the self is always a work, unfinished and open but also subject to constraint by existing structure. Third, the phenomenon of occlusion – as the scaffold grows, the innermost, most load bearing aspects, take on further weight and must therefore become reinforced, solid. This is the dynamics by which the 'I' becomes rigid, and the deeper sources of this rigidity fade from view under an accumulation of layers.
The lived experience of rigidity in one's being can be quite painful, specially when it comes to those features of the self that most contribute to ascription of norm-relevance (gender comes to mind). In some cases, these can be terribly hard to modify, and their hold on desire presents a challenge of significant magnitude. This project was born as an inquiry into this problematic of self-experience. In this regard, the work has both a theoretical component, concerned with revealing and characterising the constraints stabilising the self, and a practical component that seeks to mobilise them in generative ways, thus producing new practices of self-transformation. Here self should be understood in the sense of an individual's self but also as the concept of self itself and their relation – all of these are, simultaneously, the object of choice for this investigation.
Figuration
Images and metaphors have great speculative potential, they invite thought into arenas that dry theory alone can seldom reach, leverage meaning to develop not only argumentative but also semiotic structures. The greatest manifestation of this, however, is the figure (Haraway), inviting not only contemplation but living and embodying the forms put forward – a melding of theory and practice.
As a scaffold, the self is a palimpsest – accumulated layers of make up, stretch marks upon scars under ink twice rendered into flesh and covered by fabric, uninhibited proliferation of modularity – the obscuring of the old by bringing new appearance to the surface, or the obscuring of the new by reproducing old appearance on the surface. It is the game of masks, played up to a point where you forget whether the next move is to add or remove, and it turns out to make no difference.
And though the scaffold takes centre-stage here, it works also as platform for other active symbols – the cyborg, masks, mirrors, spiralling, echoes, folding. Explorations of these, both playful and serious, is key throughout my work.
The figure of the Cyborg is of particular importance to me – even more relevant now, perhaps, than when it was first mobilised critically by Haraway and Clark. Times have only added new ways in which technology entangles with and transforms us – ever more complex and immersive virtual environments and the ubiquitous digitalisation of life and experiences, for instance. These developments, have been going for a while, however. Most novel is AI, and its fast reconfiguration of the ways we work, think and relate. Already the notion of scaffold finds a home in this sphere, as those attachments built on top of LLMs to endow them with extra capacities, such as coding, search, memory, etc. In this way, as in many others, these models stand to provide a mirror of our own nature, I propose.
Genealogy
Part of my method consists in exposing myself to as many views as I can, and trying to understand how they relate to one another. The evolution of self as concept and particularly the emergence of frameworks that denounce it (see for instance Manning, Moten and Harney, Barad) are of great interest and inform the direction of my research.
Pattern theory of self
Thus, this project is essentially comparative and eclectic from its very roots. Gallagher offers a useful theoretical framing for this type of comparative work. In his theory, selves are dynamic patterns that arise from the complex interplay of factors, which may include embodied, experiential, affective, intersubjective, behavioural, psychological/cognitive, narrative, ecological, and normative processes. Rather than giving a substantive account of selfhood, this is a framework that enables comparing different such accounts in terms of which factors are given relevance, what kinds of interactions between these characterise the dynamics of pattern formation and the character of the resulting pattern.
Dance of the Spiral
I offer an affective interpretation of Gallagher. The self-pattern is a pure sign in Bateson’s sense – a sign that refers to nothing outside of its own enactment. In the way that dancing, another pure sign, both enacts and refers to the dance being performed, so may we say that a self-pattern(ing) enacts and refers to an ‘I’, and this ‘I’ is nothing above and beyond the processual becoming of the pattern. Like a dance too, a self-pattern(ing) is subject to spontaneous change that exceeds it – a form of natural improvisation, i.e. play. It is through thinking of selfhood as both gesture and subject to ludic modulation that we produce a generative understanding of being an individual. The meaning of ‘I’ is enacted through the gesture of its worlding – this is the crucial act of individuation that produces a ‘singular’ aspect to the plural. Like other forms of play, the truth of the ‘I’ is of an affective order, but, as pure signs are relational, they cut across levels and arenas of activity, facilitating integration.
I anticipate pushback on this characterization, particularly, on the ‘I’ as a sign. As an alternative, one could see self-patterns as real patterns in Dennett’s sense. But of course, the ontic status of real patterns is also controversial. As a last option to fall
back on, then, we may simply take ‘self’ as a heuristic – this requires only that we assign significant practical value to it. The important point is that all three of these formulations allow for self to be individuated as a meaningful category in relational ontologies (contra some detractors), with some 'truth' to it. It is another matter whether any of these characterisations ought be assented to.
Operations
As part of the residency, I have tried to use Sepideh Majidi's operations to get a fresh perspective on my project and expand my work.
Operation 1
This operation deals with grounding – the start of inquiry, its foundations, should be made secure. Not in the sense of justifying them, indeed they are presupposed, but in recognizing them as presupposed and acknowledging that which permits their intelligibility. Keeping this in mind permits the inquiry to proceed without becoming too flighty, without abandoning its original base into equivocal abstraction. Sepideh Majidi centers the organism as this ground, but it need not be that. Indeed, it can be anything that serves as the spark of the inquiry, and to serve this function it must be graspable – an experience, or an idea (but a firm one). In either case something with which one has certain intimacy. Through this process of intimation we come to understand exactly which aspects of the inquiry must remain, and further it helps us keep within sight our own part as inquirers in the process. An inquiry must be owned, and it must be anchored – it must stand on firm feet, and those firm feet are someone’s, yours.
In following this operation, I sough to zoom in on those aspects of the self that were of most importance to me, both in factors and interactions. I constructed a simple diagram with the purpose of functionally individuating them – i.e. this purports not to be a complete model nor an accurate depiction, rather just a reduction to those parts in the work that I should not give up without overwhelming reason to, a map of my intimate relation to the object of inquiry. In the process of diagramming this I found that I don't have a very good understanding of embodiment as factor, despite its very rapid inclusion as key. I might initially attribute this to my own issues with it, as produced by gender dysphoria – this, in itself, represents a significant discovery and point for further inquiry.
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