Monday, November 15, 2004

more about cowboy boots

Again on the subject of internal coherence- I need to split hairs further on the issue of "real" versus "simalcrum." I'm treading on thin ice here, as these are loaded nouns. So I'll make it simple: I'm not talking about context. A cowboy boot in New York City is still a cowboy boot. It's a matter of process: this object is invested with an intelligence created from its context, a process that doesn't invest heavily in self-consciousness, instead going for performance and coherence. The simalcrum, however, disregards process in favor of end result-- an end result that is about image or symbol, not performance. I guess, in the end, what I'm talking about here is a difference between symbol and object, sign and shed. So this has all been said before, go to work.

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