Reading Orbit: OCSFC Book Club
Analysis: The Crystal World is a novel about the transformation of the universe. Before attempting to say, in one, brief, act, what this transformation is (if this is at all possible. Here we might remember what Heidegger calls an “event,” Ereignis: an occurrence which cannot be appropriated into one’s previous experience or a concept. It is, to take cues from Deleuze and Levinas, a (non-)encounter with the “other.” As Derrida puts it: “The undergoing of the event, that which in the undergoing or in the ordeal at once opens itself up to and resists experience, is, it seems to me, a certain unappropriability of what comes or happens”), I think it will be important to summerize the qualities of this “transformation.”
First, as the protagonist, Sanders, reveals in a letter to a Dr. Paul Derain, time is “flowing-out” of our part of the universe: “We know that it is time . . . which is responsible for the transformation. The recent discovery of anti-matter in the universe inevitably involves the conception of anti-time as the fourth side of this negatively charged continuum. Where anti-particle and particle collide they not only destroy their own physical identities, but their opposing time-values eliminate each other, subtracting from the universe another quantum from its total store of time, It is random discharges of this type, set off by the creation of anti-galaxies in space, which have led to the depletion of the time-store available to the materials of our own solar system.”
The most important consequence of this “withdrawing” of time is that objects become crystalized: “Just as a super-saturated solution will discharge itself into a crystalline mass, so the super-saturation of matter in our continuum leads to its appearance in a parallel spatial matrix. As more and more time ‘leaks’ away, the process of super-saturation continues, the original atoms and molecules producing spatial replicas of themselves, substance without mass, in an attempt to increase their foot-hold upon existence. The process is theoretically without end, and it may be possible eventually for a single atom to produce an infinite number of duplicates of itself and so fill the entire universe, from which simultaneously all time has expired, an ultimate macrocosmic zero beyond the wildest dreams of Plato and Democritus.” Thus objects take on the appearance of “. . . identical images . . . being produced by refraction through a prism . . .”
This metamorphosis is related to the sub-atomic realm. The character, Radek, a captain attempting to control a forest area in the Cameroon Republic which is becoming crystalized, the setting for The Crystal World, at one point describes the process as: “. . . an actual proliferation of the sub-atomic identity of all matter.” My conclusion here is that Ballard may be referring to the “multiplicity” implied in Richard Feynman’s way of visualizing the wave/particle duality, the “sum over histories” approach. As Stephen Hawking characterizes this concept: “In this approach the particle is not supposed to have a single history or path in space-time, as it would in a classical, nonquantum theory. Instead it is suppose to go from A to B by every possible path.” Thus, when later Sanders comes across Radek’s crystalized body, it is described like this: “Sanders gazed into the visor that covered the man’s head, now an immense sapphire carved in the shape of a conquistador’s helmet. Refracted through the prisms that had effloresced from the man’s face, his features seemed to overlay one another in a dozen different planes . . .” Here we are almost reminded of a cubist painting except, perhaps, where the cubists were interested in showing a single object in geometric motion, here we see the multiplication, and thus the elimination, of the single object.
Within this crystalized dimension there appears to be a loss of distinction. As Radek tells Sanders before he reaches the forest: “‘Outside this forest everything seems polarized, does it not, divided into black and white? Wait until you reach the trees, Doctor–there, perhaps, these things will be reconciled for you.’” This loss of difference seems to be implied by the loss of the object. If there is no individual “monad,” there can be no speaking about one thing as opposed to another. As Edward Clair tells our protagonist: “‘There may well be some fundamental distinction between light and dark that we inherit from the earliest living creatures. After all, the response to light is a response to all the possibilities of life itself. For all we know, this division is the strongest one there is–perhaps even the only one–reinforced everyday for hundreds of millions of years. In its simplest sense time keeps this going, and now that time is withdrawing we’re beginning to see the contrasts in everything more clearly . . . There [in the forest], in that place of rainbows, nothing is distinguished from anything else.’” Any “one” possibility, as Henry James knew, is a “single” possibility; and thus a denial of the rest. But to affirm “all” possibilities is to deny every “individual” one. Thus possibility replaces actuality. As Ballard writes at one moment in Sanders’ sexual relationship with Louise Peret: “Sanders looked down at her, aware that for once all the inertia of sexual conventions, and his own reluctance to involve himself intimately with others, had slipped away. In addition he felt that the past day at Port Matarre, the ambivalent atmosphere of the deserted town, in some way placed them at a pivotal point below the dark and white shadows of the equinox. At these moments of balance any act was possible.” The superego surrenders to the id. One might wonder here if this crystalized world is not, in another guise, the romantic life that Kierkegaard described as the “aesthetic” way of being.
One consequence of this loss of distinction, perhaps the most important, is the loss of the difference between life and death. As the character, Ventress predicts to Sanders: “‘Look at the viruses, Doctor, with their crystalline structure, neither animate nor inanimate, and their immunity to time! . . . You and I will be like them soon, Sanders, and the rest of the world. Neither living nor dead!’”
Finally, this transformation of existence is associated with various ideas. First of all, “childhood.” As Sanders considers the transfigured forest, he thinks: “For some reason he felt less concerned to find a so-called scientific explanation for the phenomenon he had just seen. The beauty of the spectacle had turned the keys of memory, and a thousand images of childhood, forgotten for nearly forty years, filled his mind, recalling the paradisal world when everything seemed illuminated by that prismatic light described so exactly by Wordsworth in his recollections of childhood. The magical shore in front of him seemed to glow like that brief spring.” This use of the romantic poet Wordsworth reminds us of our previous observation referring to Kierkegaard and the “aesthetic” mode of living. Second, though Sanders has already mentioned it, “paradise.” As Sanders writes to Derain: “All this, my dear Paul, the very absence of surprise, confirms my belief that this illuminated forest in some was reflects an earlier period of our lives, perhaps an archaic memory we are born with of some ancestral paradise where the unity of time and space is the signature of every leaf and flower.” Third, “El Dorado,” the place of unlimited wealth, associated with the city of Manoa; and a mythical South American king who was said to cover himself with gold dust. As the character, Aragon, tells Sanders about finding the crystalized body of Peret’s associate, Anderson: “‘El Dorado, the man of gold and jewels, in an armor of diamonds. There’s an end many would wish for, Doctor.’” At the conclusion of the novel, after Sanders’ full experience of the crystalized forest, he places his experience within a religious, specifically Christian, vocabulary. For example, in referring of the crystalized and abandoned city of Miami, Sanders speaks of its “thousand cathedral spires” as like a vision from St. John the Divine, one of Jesus’ disciples who is suppose to have gone on to write the fourth gospel, three epistles, and the Apocalypse. Sanders even speaks about the transformation in spiritual terms: “As I have said, . . . it’s obvious to me now that its [the transformation’s] origins are more than physical.” In what Sanders next says we are reminded of Jesus’ “transfiguration” (Matt 17:1-9; Mark 9:2-10; Luke 9:28-36); and the possibility of salvation: “. . .there is an immense reward to be found in that frozen forest. There the transfiguration of all living and inanimate forms occurs before our eyes, the gift of immortality a direct consequence of the surrender by each of us of our own physical and temporal identities. However apostate we may be in this world, there perforce we become apostles of the prismatic sun.” All this Sanders says before he returns to the crystal forest, presumably never to leave.
So what are we to make of these characteristics of this transfigured world? First of all, we may have been correct in speaking of Heidegger’s notion of the “event,” that utterly nominal occurrence which cannot be categorized under any concept. There are two ways, I would maintain, to understand (or not-understand) the crystalized world; both amounting to the same (non-) thing. First, what Ballard may be describing is a return of the world to a (non-)state of being (Being) itself. This is a state of pure potential, before any actualization or determination. Being itself, before, or without, any actual, individual, beings. The energy, the possibility, which may give rise to entities. Second, drawing from postmodernism, we would interpret Ballard’s altered world as, again, an undermining of being or the object. In place of the “noun,” identity, there are “verbs,” activities. But in this way: let me give an example from the work of the Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure (who, some argue, is a central figure here through his intellectual contribution to the “style” of postmodernism). Let us consider the question: how does the meaning of words arise? Say, for example, the word, “tree.” Traditionally it has been said that the meaning of a word occurs due to its “reference” to an object. “Tree” has meaning because it refers to an actual object in existence which we have called, “tree.” By contrast, Saussure’s thesis is this: such a word as “tree” has meaning, not because it refers to a thing, but because this word, “tree,” is not the word, “bush,” or “shrub,” or “ground,” or any other word. Now we need to note this consequence and style of Saussure’s thinking: words carry in themselves no “positive” or “affirmative” meaning or existence. A word only has a being because it “is not” any other word. Thus we could say that a word only has a “negative” existence. Another word for this understanding, which is very important in postmodernism, is “difference.” One word is “different” from another–this is how it (does not) exist. For example, Gilles Deleuze’s great work of (non-)metaphysics is titled, Difference and Repetition. Being is difference; and what we take for continuity of being is actually the repetition of this difference.
This perspective of Saussure’s has been carried on in any number of disciplines: anthropology (Levi-Strauss), psychology (Lacan, Kristeva, Guattari), literary criticism (Barthes), history (Foucault), philosophy (Deleuze, Derrida), politics (Althusser). But what we need to emphasize here is the overcoming of being. The object, the repository of identity, is overthrown through both these accounts of Ballard’s novel. In Sander’s account of the cause of the crystalized world, the loss of time, he begins with the non-object, “anti-matter.” It is the existence (or anti-existence) of anti-matter which implies the existence of “anti-time.” And here we might consider the relationship of being and time. Is it, as with Plato or Heidegger (though they both draw opposing implications from this), that time undoes being? That the movement of time makes the unchanging being, and therefore being itself, impossible. Or, as with Kant, that without time, along with space, as an aspect of “sensibility,” the object cannot exist? Whatever may be the case, in Ballard’s novel both matter and time appear in mutual annihilation. The very process of crystallization is itself the loss of the object. Instead of the unified “thing,” we now have “spatial replicas,” “substance without mass,” “infinite number of duplicates,” “identical images.” Sub-atomically, this is, again, Feynman’s “sum over histories.” With the loss of being, there is the loss of distinction (and, as we have said, the loss of the categories of life and death). We must conclude that, for Ballard, such a (non-)state is to be associated with “childhood,” the myths of “paradise” and “El Dorado;” and perhaps also Sanders’ religious associations (though, I think it could be argued, this is a misinterpretation on Sanders’ part. I say this because, at one point in the novel, Sanders uses the cross to melt the crystals of the forest) of St. John’s visions and the transfiguration.
This metamorphosis of the world, in particular, the “image” of the forest, is the “center” of Ballard’s novel (though perhaps a comedic center?). It might also be said to be a phenomena which carries implications for understanding the rest of the elements in Ballard’s story (I resist calling it an “organizing principle” as such a concept is too reminiscent of logos). The image of the forest as the “center” of The Crystal World is an idea suggested by John Bowen, a member of our science fiction club. But the understanding of the “image” here needs to be ironic. Or, as Ezra Pound treated the image, it needs to be “spun;” “energized,” “moved;” turned into a “vortex.” The reason for this is clear: images “re-present” objects.
On the subject of the movement of the image’s implications for other literary elements in Ballard’s novel, I would like to discuss here the protagonist, Sanders; in particular, his being as indicated by his motivations and actions. As for his motivations, here we will be concerned with his affair with Suzanne Clair. For his actions, here we will concentrate on his active sojourn in the crystal forest. For these discussions I would like to use as a resource Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s study of Kafka’s work, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature.
Sanders comes to Port Matarre at the beginning of Ballard’s novel to see Suzanne Clair. But for what reason? Their affair previously had been an adulterous one, at least for Clair. It had gone on for two years. Three months before Sanders’ arrival, Suzanne and her husband, Max, had left Fort Isabelle for Port Matarre. Is Sanders still in love with Suzanne? Does he wish to continue the affair? Is this why he follows her? The answers to these questions are uncertain. The reason for this is that Sanders himself is uncertain as to how he would answer these questions. And this uncertainty would seem to only continue as Sanders moves deeper into the crystal forest. As is said in the novel’s first chapter: “Ventress [a fellow passenger on the boat that brings Sanders to Port Matarre whom Sanders will meet again in the forest] had referred to the Matarre forests as a landscape without time, and perhaps part of its appeal for Sanders was that here at last he might be free from the questions of motive and identity that were bound up with his sense of time and the past.” Sanders, before he reaches the forest, is unclear about his motives; which, by extension, is an uncertainty as to who he is, and the actions he should take. Later in this same chapter it is said: “Sanders’s affair with Suzanne had lasted for two years, kept going only by his inability to resolve it in any way. His failure to commit himself fully to her made it plain that she had become the focus of all his uncertainties at Fort Isabelle. For some time he had suspected that his reasons for serving at the leper hospital were not altogether humanitarian, and that he might be more attracted by the idea of leprosy, and whatever it unconsciously represented, than he imagined. Suzanne’s somber beauty had become identified in his mind with this dark side of the psyche, and their affair was an attempt to come to terms with himself and his own ambiguous motives.” Leprosy, associated with Suzanne’s beauty and the “dark side of the psyche,” is in Sanders’ mind related to his “ambiguous motives.” Perhaps we should see leprosy here as also an undoing of the object; in this case, the human body object. Though Sanders takes the action of attempting to resolve his psychic uncertainty through his affair with Suzanne (this is even part of the reason for his relationship with Louise Peret), no resolution occurs–and this continues to be the case by the novel’s conclusion. The reason for this ambiguity as to identity, motives, and one’s actions is because, I would suggest, these three concepts are associated with being. Identity is “what” a being is. Motives are the “reasons” which move this being; in other words, they are the causes of one’s actions. With the overthrow of being, as Deleuze and Guattari would argue, all there is left is action; but not the acts which arise out of the conscious or subconscious workings of any being’s psyche. Here we mean “pure” acts; the actions of acts. Acts as unmediated “verb;” that is, the verb unconnected to any noun. As Deleuze and Guattari write of Buchner’s Lenz in Anti-Oedipus: “He does not live nature as nature, but as a process of production. There is no such thing as either man or nature now, only a process that produces the one within the other and couples the machines together. Producing-machines, desiring-machines everywhere, schizophrenic machines, all of species life: the self and the non-self, outside and inside, no longer have any meaning whatsoever.” The “machine” is one tool in overcoming is-ness. Sanders here is no longer a person; no longer a unified cognito. Like the forest he is a pure multiple activity; a movement around a circle without a center; an unconscious motion, a pure id, desire, moving through an internet.
This action without persona is the meaning of Sanders’ rapid journey through the forest. Perhaps it has occurred to one to ask: what is the purpose of this adventure? But it is just such a question which cannot be answered. The reason for the movement is its own reason, just as Kierkegaard’s Silentio says that the “ethical” is its own justification. It is movement for movement’s (non-)sake. The same can perhaps be said for Ventress’ competition with Thorensen for the body of his crystalized wife. What is important here is that both Sanders and Ventress’ acts are related to eros, desire: Sanders’ connection to Clair; Ventress to his wife (and the replacing of Thorensen’s desire). Desire is the unmediated movement of movement; and thus of nothing. In speaking about both the erasure of the subject and this non-subject’s movement, we will look to Deleuze and Guattari on the subject of the name, “Milena” (in reference to Milena Jesenska, one of Kafka’s companions in his final years). Here we do not mean the name as a “reference” to a particular person. Rather the name here is of the (non-)order of energy: “intensive, marking a fall or a leap as a threshold of intensity contained within the name itself.” But how is this?: “But how can we define this procedure? Of sense there remains only enough to direct the lines of escape. There is no longer a designation of something by means of a proper name, nor an assignation of metaphors by means of a figurative sense. But like images [refer to our previous discussion of the ironic image above], the thing no longer forms anything but a sequence of intensive states, a ladder or a circuit for intensities that one can race around in one sense or another, from high to low, or from low to high. The image is this very race itself; it has become becoming–the becoming-dog of the man and the becoming-man of the dog, the becoming-ape or the becoming-beetle of the man and vice versa. We are no longer in the situation of an ordinary, rich language where the word dog, for example, would directly designate an animal and would apply metaphorically to other things (so that one could say ‘like a dog’). Diaries, 1921: ‘Metaphors are one of the things that makes me despair of literature.’ Kafka deliberately kills all metaphors, all symbolism, all signification, no less than all designation. Metamorphosis is the contrary of metaphor.” Metamorphosis is the contrary of being. Such is the vision, the “pure vision,” of The Crystal World.
Finally, it would be best to consider Ballard’s title of his novel ironically. We have spoken of a “transformation,” but perhaps it might be better to speak of eschatology, an ending; an ending of all transformations. Finally, there is no “world,” for such would be a being. Perhaps such an “ending” is so final in its overthrow of being that it is not even proper to speak of an “ending.” Perhaps, to the extent that language is concerned with “reference” (though, as with Saussure, it need not be), we are at the end of language. We have, thus, become (or not-become) the act of speaking or writing (thus effacing the distinction between the “subject” and the “act”). Or, we are “in” the act of speaking, and writing, itself; for its own sake. The title of Deleuze and Guattari’s book speaks of a “minor literature.” But has this not always been the case with science fiction? Is this what Ballard has done for science fiction: drawn our attention to it as a minor literature? “A minor literature doesn’t come from a minor language; it is rather that which a minority constructs within a major language,” writes Deleuze and Guattari. But note the first characteristic of a minor literature: “deterritorialization.” Borders, boundaries, are gone beyond. The spaceship takes flight. Time is transgressed, both narratively and, seemingly, technologically. But what establishes the “territory?” The object.
Henry A. Jimenez
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