resonant, radical, monster

"Anatomical elements may be arrested or inhibited in certain places by molecular clashes, the influence of the milieu, or pressure from neighbors to such an extent that they compose different organs. The same formal relations or connections are then effectuated in entirely different forms and arrangements. It is still the same abstract Animal that is realized throughout the stratum, only to varying degrees, varying modes...[H]uman monsters are embryos that were retarded at a certain degree of developments, the human in them is only a straitjacket for inhuman forms and substances"(46).

I wanted to continue this thread of "at least two" and decided to use the concept of monster to further our dialogue--a kind of jumping-off point. For my purposes, stratification, within the context of ATP, should be conceptualized as some sort of body; a strange, abnormal, and mutated body that writhes in the continuum of fluxuation. Layers of strata can be perceived, described, organized, constructed, or deconstructed in a multitude of ways--they can take up forms, or point towards an absence that swallows forms.

Implicit in this is the idea of double-articulation. In any stratification, we see the dualness of content and expression--but it is important that we do not reduce this double movement into a simple binary--it must be described dynamically: interweaving, colliding, rising up, falling down, etc. This process of stratification is radical in that it requires an overturning, a (literal) up-rooting of the systems that attempt to contain and imprison ontologies. This notion of the "abstract Animal" points towards a mechanization of ontology, an "abstract machine" that simultaneously envelops a body, (for example, embryonically) and spews it out in new arrangements (the radical/up-rooting movement).

The evidence of this fluid motion, essential to a philosophy of becoming, is never completely erased. In examining a movement like this, i.e. a becoming-monster, there are bits and pieces left behind that point obscurely towards some vague origin--remnants, ruins, residues, resonances that reverberate across the human-animal strata; leaving behind mucous trails like a slug would. It is in these gray areas, these resonances, the resdiual mucous, that we begin to see the figure of monster appear and take effect--horrific, yet unsettlingly familiar.

"There is no doubt that mad physical particles crash through the strata as they accelerate, leaving a minimal trace of their passage, escaping spatiotemporal and even existential coordinates"(55). This "minimal trace," is the residue that lies in the in-between regions of strata (parastrata, epistrata), but to say that it "lies" would betray it's inevitable and capricious movement--the dynamics of territorialization, deterritorialization, reterritorialization are always exerting energy that pushes and pulls in different directions, pointing towards different lines of flight--continually resonating in this chaotic process of movement.

At the end of the Geology of Morals, we have another encounter with Lovecraft (from "Through the Gates of the Silver Key"). This paraphrase offers us a brief glimpse into the dynamic strata of monster that both obscures what is human, while simultaneously retaining a residuum of the "abstract machine"--the ghostly ruins of human artifice (echoed in the hieroglyphics, the coffin-like doorway) that eerily resonate a "cosmic rhythm."