Lotte Lenya: Life After Kurt Weill (1950-1981)

Items

• Schema of the Signifying Semiotic
  "The signifying semiotic: overcoding is fully effectuated by the signifier, and by the State apparatus that emits it; there is uniformity of enunciation, unification of the substance of expression, and control over statements in a regime of circularity; relative deterritorialization is taken as far as it can g by a redundant and perpetual referral from sign to sign. … (1) The Center of the Signifier, the facility of god or despot. (2) The Temple or Palace, with priests and bureaucrats. (3) The organization in circles and the sign referring to other signs on the same circle or on different circles. (4) The interpretive development of signifier into signified, which then reimparts signifier. (5) The expiatory animal; the blocking of the line of flight. (6) The scapegoat, or the negative sign of the line of flight. … Without privileging one regime over another, it is possible to construct schemas of the signifying and postsignifying semiotics that clearly illustrate the possibilities for concrete mixture."
• Schema of the Postsignifying Semiotic
  "The postsignifying semiotic, in which overcoding is assured by the redundancy of consciousness; a subjectification of enunciation occurs on a passional line that makes the organization of power (pouvoir) immanent and raises deterritorialization to the absolute, although in a way that is still negative. … … Without privileging one regime over another, it is possible to construct schemas of the signifying and postsignifying semiotics that clearly illustrate the possibilities for concrete mixture. (1) The point of subjectification, replacing the center of significance. (2) The two faces turned away from each other. (3) The subject of enunciation resulting from the point of subjectification and the turning away. (4) The subject of the statement, into which the subject of enunciation recoils. (5) The succession of finite linear proceedings accompanied by a new form of priest and a new bureaucracy. (6) The line of flight, which is freed but still segmented, remaining negative and blocked."
• Arborescent Schemas
  The subordination of the line to the point is clearly evident in the arborescent schemas: see Julien Pacotte, Le reseau arborescent, scheme primordial de la pensee (Paris: Hermann, 1936), and the status of centered or hierarchical systems according to Pierre Rosenthiehl and Jean Petitot, "Automate asocial et systemes acentres," Communications, no. 22 (1974), pp. 45-62. The arborescent schema of majority could be presented as [in the figure].
• Triangle of Reference (Thoughts, Words and Things)
  This may be simply illustrated by a diagram, in which the three factors involved whenever any statement is made, or understood, are placed at the corners of the triangle, the relations which hold between them being represented by the sides. The point just made can be restated by saying that in this respect the base of the triangle is quite different in composition than either of the other sides. Between a thought and a symbol, causal relations hold. When we speak, the symbolism we employ is caused partly by the reference we are making and partly by social and psychological factors–the purpose for which we are making the reference, the proposed effect of our symbols on other persons, and our own attitude. … Between the Thought and the Reference there is also a relation; more or less direct (as when we think about or attend to a coloured surface we see), or indirect (as when we 'think of' or 'refer to' Napoleon), … Between the symbol and the referent there is no relation other than the indirect one, which consists in its being used by someone to stand for a referent. Symbol and Referent, that is to say, are not connected directly (and when, for grammatical reasons, we imply such a relation, it will merely be imputed, as opposed to a real relation), but only indirectly round the two sides of the triangle.
• The Concept of the Cartesian Cogito
  he example of one of the best-known signed philo­sophical concepts, that of the Cartesian cogito, Descartes's I: a concept of self. This concept has three components—­doubting, thinking, and being (although this does not mean that every concept must be triple). The complete statement of the concept qua multiplicity is "I think 'therefore' I am" or, more completely, "Myself who doubts, I think, I am, I am a thinking thing." According to Descartes the cogito is the always-renewed event of thought. The concept condenses at the point I, which passes through all the components and in which I' (doubting), I" (thinking), and I"' (being) coincide. As intensive ordinates the compo­nents are arranged in zones of neighborhood or indiscernibil­ity that produce passages from one to the other and constitute their inseparability. The first zone is between doubting and thinking (myself who doubts, I cannot doubt that I think), and the second is between thinking and being (in order to think it is necessary to be).
• The Effort Rose
  "Action mime shows us that everything a person does in their life can be reduced to two essential actions: ‘to pull’ and ‘to push’. We do nothing else! These actions include the passive ‘I am pulled’ and ‘I am pushed’ and the reflexive ‘I pull myself’ and ‘I push myself’ and can go in many different directions: forwards, to one side or the other, backwards, diagonally etc. I call this the effort rose. It comprises a multi-directional space which can be adapted to all human movements, whether physical or psychological, whther a simple movement of the arm or an all-consuming passion, a movement of the head or a profound desire, everything brings us back to pull/push. … Three main directions are contained within the effort rose: verticals, horizontals, diagonals. … These three movements refer to three different dramatic worlds. Horizontal 'pull/push' corresponds to 'you and me'. This is dialogue as found in commedia dell'arte or the clown routine. Vertical movement situates man between heaven and earth, between zenith and nadir, in a tragic event. Tragedy is always vertical: the gods are on Mount Olympus. Bouffons are also vertical, but in the other direction: their gods are underground. As for the diagonal, it is sentimental, lyrical, it flies off an we cannot tel where it will come down. This is the terrain of the broad emotions of melodrama."
• A machinic portrait of Kant
  "We could imagine a machinic portrait of Kant, illusions included (see schema). The components of the schema are as follows: 1) the ""I think"" :is an ox head wired for sound, which constantly repeats Self = Self; 2) the categories as universal concepts (four great headings): shafts that are extensive and retractile according to the movement of 3); 3) the moving wheel of the schemata; 4) the shallow stream of Time as form of interior­ity, in and out of which the wheel of the schemata plunges; 5) space as form of exteriority: the stream's banks and bed; 6) the passive self at the bottom of the stream and as junction of the two forms; 7) the principles of synthetic judgments that run across space-time; 8) the transcendental field of possible experience, immanent to the "I" (plane of imma­nence); and 9) the three Ideas or illusions of transcendence (circles turning on the absolute horizon: Soul, World and God)."