Ways of looking at ways of looking -- in a period of invasive surveillance

Anticipating When Blackbirds Sing Chinese (Part #9)

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It has been noted that in his poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird Wallace Stevens' description of a Turdus in a snowy autumn landscape alludes to the Cubist painting tradition of observing subjects simultaneously from numerous viewpoints to present a novel perspective.

In the current period, following the controversial disclosures regarding the degree of invasive electronic surveillance, how might a variety of ways of looking be elicited and juxtaposed. In that respect -- perhaps such that together their strange integrity rendered them meaningless to conventional observation. Umberto Eco might be said to offer an example (Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt, New York Review of Books, 22 June 1995, pp.12-15).

There is clearly a strong case for exploring more complex understanding of "ways of looking" in the current period, with active discussion of more (world) wars to come. This is especially the case in a period characterized by the following oft-quoted lines from the first stanza, as articulated by another poet, W. B. Yeats following the First World War (The Second Coming, 1919):

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity

The challenge could be framed in terms of a quest for clues as to an appropriate response (In Quest of Uncommon Ground Beyond: impoverished metaphor and the impotence of words of power, 1997; In Quest of Mnemonic Catalysts -- for comprehension of complex psychosocial dynamics, 2007). The above arguments suggest a way of framing the relation between the "reality" of Realpolik, as preoccupied with the real, and Noopolitik, as preoccupied with imagination, and with how looking can be variously framed.

One approach is to make explicit use of the complex plane of mathematics to interrelate the real and the imaginary as suggested by the following schematic, discussed separately (Imagining the Real Challenge and Realizing the Imaginal Pathway of Sustainable Transformation, 2007)

Memespace mapped in terms of the plane of complexity?

The above schematic helps to make the fundamental point that all "ways of looking" are essentially inadequate -- necessary but not sufficient. The issue is then how to take the argument further.

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