Chapter epigram (I.16 at 465) recalls prior chapter epigram (cf. I.15 at 430).
DA again thinking of the “ancient,” despite his prior merging of
ancient and
recent (I.16 at 466). is this part of the “transformation” mentioned in the two epigrams? he had previously imploded certain binaries, but ubermensch de-implodes them? we shall see!
DA‘s failure to “understand the rules of this encounter” (I.16 at 468) throws the politics of interpersonal discourse very plainly into the benjuka treatise, wherein “the rules are the game” (I.10 at 294).
Sleep tied to ignorance and forgetfulness (I.16 at 469): one can’t raise walls, &c.
BBT inherent in “it’s difficult, is it not, to search for those things we cannot see?” (id.).
DA’s impression that his discussions with AK “possessed the character of a voyage” (I.16 at 470) pulls on DA’s earlier imploded binarism of near/far.
“frame of common understanding” (id.) noted in the event that frames show up at some point.
More can’t-raise-walls stuff: “But the matter had already been forgiven and forgotten” (I.16 at 472). My marginalia records the impression that this authorizes the later marriage of AK and esmi (insofar as AK asked about esmi and DA dismissed her as merely a prostitute. of more importance is that “the silences between men are always fraught with uncomfortable significance--accusations, hesitations, judgments of who is weak and who is strong--but silences with this man undid rather than sealed these things” (id.). in addition to being sedgewick’s homosocial masculinity thesis (wherein women simply mediate relations among men), it’s another tidy bit of post-structuralist linguistic joking.
we note that DA undergoes a seeming dialectical transformation thereafter: “Though the increments of such things have no measure, he felt subtly transformed by his encounter with Kellhus” (I.16 at 473).
scythians have a nifty nihilistic astrology (I.16 at 477), though i’m not detecting anything particularly inchie about it.
“scratched breath upon parchment” (id.) is the type of privileging of speech over writing that derrida critiques in
of grammatology. “among the cattle” (id.) is a nice bit of Turkish (I.e., steppe) theory of governance.
gaming/ludic reference (I.16 at 478), in conjunction with reference to “beating his soul down paths of his manufacture.” liking the reference to immaterial manufacturing, “soul” as a product of human labor, rather than divinely given. take that, greasers.
reference to ideology of innocence (I.16 at 479).
reference to CuS dangling on precipice: “he’d found himself battling a strange bodily shyness whenever the man loomed next to him” (id.). is that giddy as a schoolgirl, or something else?
fairly express that AM was “the object of some obscene carnal urge” (I.16 at 480).
ludic reference situates AK and CuS “beyond the benjuka plate” (I.16 at 481), which indicates that all of the gaming references previous hereto are restructured by this admission that though all be a game, some sit apart from it.
nice description of nautzera as someone who believed he occupied the “centre of their time. I live now, they would think without thinking, therefore something momentous must happen” (I.16 at 483). I think of this ideology as hyperpresentism. cf. also
inherit the wind:
Matthew Harrison Brady: I do not think about things I do not think about.
Henry Drummond: Do you ever think about things that you do think about?
more can’t-raise-walls stuff: “they forget how much they’re hated” (I.16 at 487).
more ludics: I.16 at 491, 498, 499.