Lurianic Models and Beyond

Infrastructures

To be able to take our analysis of the interwoven levels of our Lurianic model a step further, let us consider them as part of a nested structure of reality. Borrowing the description of Ken Wilber for whom: “the Great Nest is most basically that general morphogenetic field or developmental space” (27) we can work with this definition as along as the Nesting functions top-down and bottom up, that is: holographically. All levels must be co-present to each other. In like fashion, we find that Lurianic Kabbalah has a propensity for fourfold structures turning into sixteen integrated ancillary levels.

Turning our attention to postmodern thinkers, we can decipher several important clues with respect to vacillations and complexities of this open Lurianic system. For scholars like Idel and Wolfson, bringing Derrida into the discussion on kabbalistic texts and ideas is a well established percept. For the sake of expedience, I have chosen to distill Derrida many “positions” down into a few relevant formulations via the work of Rodolphe Gasché. As a particularly shrewd interpreter of Derrida’s, Gasché offers four deconstructive assessments of philosophic “concepts.”

Gasché following Derrida, removes the blinders that tend to isolate concepts in point-like fashion, substituting instead a more cogent alternative that resembles Adorno’s  thinking of the ‘constellation of ideas.’

Philosophical concepts would be entirely homogeneous if they possessed a nucleus of meaning that they owed exclusively to themselves—if they were, in other words, conceptual atoms. Yet since concepts are produced within a discursive network of differences, they not only are what they are by virtue of other concepts, but they also, in a fundamental way, inscribe that Otherness within themselves. (28)

Point-like conceptual atoms are the very “world of chaos” that Lurianic Kabbalah resists. While definitions of concepts seldom appear in Lurianic Kabbalah—at least for a particular concept with a meaning in and of itself—there are abundant instances of conceptual networks or patzufim that inhabit a world of rectification at work. Our “discursive network of differences” include the structures of tanta [the four textual levels] טנת”א and asmab [four modes of Being with their various spellings or fillings out of the name Havayah] עסמ”ב. Each array within itself possesses meaning as the ratio of the terms of that array.

However, a further phenomenon must be re-emphasized in that each of the four terms contain all the others [“every mode of Being (with the spelling of Tetragrammaton that equal A”v/S”ag/M”ah/B”an or asmab respectfully) contains all of the textual levels tanta (Cantillation, Vowels, Crown and Letters) “ויש בכל הוי”ה [עסמ”ב] מהם בחי’ טנת”א”] in interincluded form. Thus we may submit that “they [our four tiered conceptual models] not only are what they are by virtue of other concepts, but they also, in a fundamental way, inscribe that Otherness within themselves [four within four].”

Gasché drives home this notion as the first of four ways in which the production of concepts work against what he calls “the teleological value of the homogeneity of concepts.” (29) First, Gasché maintains in Derridean fashion, going after the “essence” of deconstruction if there is such a thing, that “…a concept is not a simple point but a structure of predicates clustered around one central predicate, the determining predicate is itself conditioned by the backdrop of the others.” (30)

Here, I think it is safe to assign the parallel between any specific term in a Lurianic model like tanta טנת”א acting as the “central predicate” and its installation within “a structure of predicates” or the full array tanta טנת”א. Functioning as a predicate, this term may be applied to any appropriate subject just as the model in its entirely may be grafted onto any of a number of suitable recipients. Predicated of Being, an ontological structure, may disclose the meaning of Being. Alternatively, “the backdrop” of “predicates clustered around” in the image of a constellation, fuels our notion of a text or the complete spectrum of human experience.  No term or predicate lives in isolation.

Secondly, the implication that “…each concept is part of a conceptual binary opposition in which each term is believed to be simply exterior to its other” (31) is dismissed by both Derrida and our Lurianic text. This suggests that the polarization into extremes creates meaning that is territorial. A domain name or space predicated behaves like an acquired possession. This quality belongs to me. And so, Gasché continues, stating “yet, the interval that separates each from its opposite and from what it is not also makes each concept what it is.” (32)

Hence, the diversity of concepts call for one another. Their holographic configuration completes them as a set. They are mutually dependant for their identity. In other words “each term is believed to be simply exterior to the other” when in fact, “no concept…can be thought rigorously without including the trace of its difference from its Other within itself.” (33)

Moreover, Gasché continues, since a concept “…includes within itself the trace of that to which it strives (teleologically) to oppose itself in simple and pure exteriority. As a result of this law constitutive of concepts, all concepts are in a sense paradoxical.” (34) Our previous sense of an ‘inside’ text and an ‘outside’ of diacritics carries this paradox of that which is within the structure and simultaneously outside of it.

Gasché hits a third principle in that:

…concepts are always (by right and in fact) inscribed within systems or conceptual chains in which they constantly relate to a plurality of other concepts and conceptual oppositions from which they received their meaning by virtue of the differential play of sense constitution, and which thus affect them at their very core. (35)

This lack of isolation of concepts, the ‘being part of a chain’ (linked causally and conceptually), meshes well with the kabbalistic notion of an evolutionary development or great chain of Being [Seder Histalshelut סדר השתלשלות] wherein each of our sets of concepts [four worlds, four modes of Being, four textual levels (טנת”א, עסמ”ב, אבי”ע)] represents a interlocking chain in sequence. The re-sequencing of our chain of concepts in turn modifies their functionality and definition. Concepts, like people, don’t live in solitary confinement, but rather participate in a network of social relations.

Finally, in his fourth observation, Gasché relates how “one single concept may be subject to different functions within a text or a corpus of texts.” (36) Thus implying a internal range or multiplicity of functions at the core of the concept, a kind of Deleuzean sense of “difference in itself”—that is, that the concept with respect to itself does not have a fixed singular meaning but rather differs internally from sub-context to sub-context and from moment to moment in the temporalzing of the concept.  Concepts often serve as ‘strangers in a strange land’ under foreign rule. Yet, they can choose to assimilate or maintain a strong individualistic sense of identity. In summation, for Gasché: “…philosophical concepts are not homogeneous. Their nonhomogeneity is manifold, caused by the very process of concept formation and concept use.” (37)

If we’re willing to risk a bit more, the Derridean subversion orchestrated by Gasché can strike still deeper into the heart of conceptual coherence. Derrida himself refers to the “regulated incoherence within conceptuality” (38) regarding which Gasché writes: “…the motive of homogeneity—a teleological motive par excellence—not only blurs the incoherence within concepts but also organizes the philosophical conception of texts.” (39)

Here I think this follows the sampling of data in science, where incoherent data readings that don’t fit with the general thrust or whole are omitted. Chaos theory is the great exception in its willingness to embrace the “incoherence” and not try to artificially manage it. Perhaps this ‘blurring’ or intentional concealment of incoherence, the compression and reductionism that lends science its confidence in its own ability to design sleek and efficient systems devoid of flaws, is precisely what the kabbalists are seeking to uncover. Perhaps, a more honest evaluation, one that can embrace the chaos hiding underneath, is what the Lurianic motivation unveils in what Elliot Wolfson calls a anti-system or non-system.

These structures with all there ‘implicate order’ to use David Bohm’s popular physics terminology, are really infrastructures. Be it on the plane of Ontological investigation or textual inquiry, our models under examination exhibit functionality similar to Gasché’s use of the term infrastructure. “The infrastructure is what knots together all the threads of correspondence among certain heterogeneous points of presence within a discourse or text,” (40) according to Gasché.

Outlined at fourfold ‘points of presence’ our Lurianic conceptual sets record little beyond the polyvalent bonds that unit them. The knots that tie a model within itself achieving its internal unity are further compounded in the complex links and interfaces, parallel ports and docking mechanisms, between one model and another. Folded into one and other, we sense that the structure of these models commands a place in sync with Derrida’s usage: “…structure in Derrida has the meaning of a nonregional and transcendental opening that represents the condition of possibility of the minor structures and the accidents that they suffer.”

Arguably we’re dealing with a sense of structure in our kabbalistic context that is used as a active ingredient for all meaning production or reproduction. As soon as it’s holographic in nature, it’s ‘non-regional.’ The complexity of the system in turn certifies its ‘transcendental opening’ which, in turn, provides for the possibilities of signification for the ‘mirror structures’ at work within the text.

²⁷ Ken Wilber. Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy, p.30.

²⁸ The Tain of the Mirror, p.128.

²⁹ Ibid, p.128.

³⁰ Ibid, p.128-129.

³¹ Ibid. pp.128-129.

³² Ibid, p.129.

³³ Ibid, p.129.

³⁴ Ibid, p.129.

³⁵ Ibid, p.129.

³⁶ Ibid, p.129.

³⁷ Ibid, p.130.

³⁸ Of Grammatology, pp.237-238.

³⁹ The Tain of the Mirror, p.130.

⁴⁰ Ibid, p.152.

http://www.interinclusion.org/news/the-syntax-of-being-part-4/

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