Schizotypal in a Baudrillardian World
Excerpt from essay Machine and The Schizotypal (working title) that I hope to finish by the fall 2025. I will be taking notes and posting them on a regular basis so; this one is a peep-inside WIP post.
Psychosis is the most widely spoken language in the modern world, though spoken in private, or in the company of a domestic cat, et all. What in modern language leaves the speaker betrayed and retreating into quiet gestures? Does that not make Language— one of the first generation machines? A system that reveals as much, as it hides? A formulation that denies the possibility of an Outside. In Luhmann’s terms, there’s no outside, because a system which cannot communicate, can’t exist. That is true for any system such as biological, cognitive or physical ones. A divergent unit—say, a Schizo; is never really addressed in Luhmann’s system. It remains outside the loop, unworthy of theoretical closure, much like how Descartes struggles to prove his own existence beyond thought, which has to find a surface to bounce off, and get into his dickhead in a timely manner.
Anthony Giddens points at “Trust in Abstract systems” as a possible missing piece of puzzle in the modern world’s cognitive mechanization. This essay takes the Lacanian lack as a central argument, and traces the “absence” in the discipline of philosophy from Descartes, Deleuze, Luhmann, and returning to Deleuze’s Schizophrenic. Sounds Schizo enough?
When gaps in cognition emerge, the schizotypal emerges too. Some rot, others make a point with their cats. A Schizo often has better insight about those available spaces, as they have accessed those spaces in their hour of need. A place where one could hide from mechanics of Cogito, perhaps find love and dignity too. A world away from a constant persecution by “reason”. A place, where to love and to be loved can still make a sense— as a private act; incognito. A world which doesn’t need excessive ontological theorization of the reality.
Art/image courtesy: Bailey, Pamela & Newman, Jane. (2022).
