... a little transdisciplinarity goes a long way

Majena Mafe






I


HER
a diagram
a picture
a cat’s cradle
a child’s game
a web
a riddle
and the frame of everything

NOTE 1 A genuine and serious problem exists. It is embedded in and about and around language and the interpretation of realities. Strung within a myriad of cultural frames separate disciplines still privilege their own answers to their own questions, argued as they are within their own language frames. There is no room for two or three or four or more truths. Or for the excesses of the truth. The flow-on that results from this, is that certain and even particular ideas (gasp) are refused. Not heard, not seen. This blindness, to that which is excess to language, to a discipline, and to themes that in themselves are thought of as excessive, has its roots in language and the saying of that language. But we often have to go to the margins to find it. In slang, the excess, the too much, the too big to fit, is known as a ‘whopper’. The articulation of the too big, described as the dance of the tongue (think glossolalia), is known as a whopa. Said to be untrue because of their scale and size, the whoppers in life, and in disciplines, can nevertheless be named in terms that themselves are marginalized by or along the same line as the refused. So while a whopper is the too much, by its own root definition a whoppa is how to articulate that ‘too muchness’. The transgressive slang of language holds a space for the excess of language as its own form of jouissance. It articulates this jouissance as it tests and tries and squeals the excess of itself …into articulation.

NOTE 2 The cat’s cradle is a one string performance between two hands that draws out various patterns that tell. The space between the strings holds the transformative and ecstatic frame of the potential. Never the fixed. The space between words, the push and pull between meanings that places them in relation to each other, entails the richest source for a potential rereading of knowledge frames.

NOTE 3 Transdisciplinarity, as a practice, is a ‘whopper’ of transgressions and excesses. Its territory is between, across and beyond disciplines. It is the too big for disciplines. Transdisciplinarity as such can be seen as the meta discipline. In that, transdisciplinarity has a role within language similar to the word whopper, ‘just too good or big to be true’. Transdisciplinary practice is a transgression in that it actively and performatively extends the boundaries between and within each and every discipline or frame of knowledge. It links knowledge frames whilst questioning their empirical processes and opens them towards complexity and diversity. It also draws together disciplinary generated knowledge and non-disciplinary generated knowledge and applies this integration to a broad and complex set of issues. This transgressive act, consistently and intriguingly brings up the problems inherent within and with language. The problem of how to say what’s meant and in particular, what to say and do with the too much of saying, with the ‘what doesn’t fit’, but must nevertheless be somehow said.

NOTE 4 In terms of tracing new lines and connections between separate disciplines creating new language frames or resonances for the perceptible and the thinkable, the work of the French philosopher, Jacques Ranciere synthesizes the idea of trandisciplinarity as a framework that promotes a ‘neutralization of hierarchies’ that govern our sensible experience using the gestures and frames of art as a model. He describes all disciplines bar art as excluding of ‘other’ fields through delineations of borders, their own and others. The act of definition in disciplines in general then, is actually a ‘double operation of exclusion’, as it excludes the other as well as the others knowledge frames. Art, poetry and experimental writing, borrow freely and seemingly indiscriminately from other disciplines. Ranciere describes these creative borders of difference as an attitude that is a-disciplinary or in-disciplinary rather than interdisciplinary, and this is transdisciplinarity, in that it holds and pushes hard at the ideal of no borders.

NOTE 5 The connection between transdisciplinarity and creative practice is especially evident in the cases of practices and theory moving towards performative extremes. Practices with excess as its subject matter know this. And for practices that use excesses in language, as a gesture of representation, it is the main issue. The space of language and by this I mean its linguistics must take into account this non-linguistic. This is a return to the natural push and pull, the making and collapsing of meanings that occurs through placing words in relation to each other. It can also occur as the play of knowledge as it seeps through institutional structures and disciplines and through language itself. If we remember that language like knowledge is inherently transgressive, the fluidity of words and the skewed relationships between them draw to the fore new ways of making meaning, through new forms.

NOTE 6 Definitions of words are slippery and unstable in themselves. They spill over. The word whopper pronounced, \hwä-pər\, is slang used to refer to a gross untruth, the incorrect. At the same time it also used to refer to something exceptionally big and remarkable. The word is derived from whop (v.) which is a Welsh word ‘to beat, or overcome’. As the term whopping that is ‘large, big, impressive’ it was first recorded in 1625. Its use of noting as the ‘big lie’ was not recorded until 1791 (Online Entomology Dictionary). In the contemporary Urban Dictionary its use is split into a myriad of meanings. Whopper now refers simultaneously to something of great size and a complete lie. It also refers to something great as in good, meaning very very good, and perhaps not surprising perhaps it also refers to ‘an obscene yet alluring female’, and small malted milk balls, and also the breasts of Wendy in Wendy’s Whoppers a 50’s soft porn film. At the same time it refers to a sandwich that will make your jaws ache because of its size, its sooo big… Though these are the whoppers of lies and excess, there is even more to this word an extension if you like, that is interesting in terms of transdisciplinarity.

NOTE 7 Another word, whopa is closely linked to our double barreled whopper. Whopa, is explained as the exclamation or outburst of the whopper itself… the breathless expression of the object or event’, detailed as a ‘paroxysm of excitement’ of that too big for speech even. (Urban Dictionary).



II


Considering play as a bridge between frames of meaning and non-meaning and their trans-relationship, let’s ply between the index finger and the thumb this swollen connecting thread. The uncertainty as a space of such a space, of the in-between, creates a stage that performs the marginal and the refused.

Curtains up.

Whopper /Chorus girls assemble centre stage in one matching costume.

WHOPPER/CHORUS (sighing and sniggering) Knock knock…Did you hear the one about language not shape’n your reality?

She and Her enter stage right. They both are wearing rubber and mutter.

SHE (turning to HER) The little whopper bites big.

HER It is a not-lie not easily swallowed. The undigested is full of open stops.

SHE Given that it lies along side it also lies, damn it, outside itself…unexamined it’s busy displacing, disrupting and cutting off the depths and heights of how far a human and especially a woman can say or be said to go… show… say and perhaps, yes oh dear… be. It’s nothing personal it’s been said, but those snippets are limits are whoppers that stifle the whopa’s of a gals oversized, abnormally normal, paroxysms of excitement and pleasurably pleasured ec-stas-y.

WHOPPER/CHORUS (splittingly) The big fib endlessly discomforts. Now this is a drag… literally.

Slow waltz starts up.

HER (turning to SHE) Then there is not one ‘true’ aesthetic there is a veritable plethora of them, the strings of the throated are in quiver, this means a big constellation of possible strategies strategically possible. Dance me.

Enter Tunnel of Love dressed as a wide field of possibilities.

TUNNEL OF LOVE (clears throat) ahhm, because…whatever you might like to say or try to say, things are flowing.
Whopper/Chorus girls swarm across field/stage carrying round billboards with undecipherable text and pictures on. They are wearing nakedness from the chin up. They sing, sigh and say…

WHOPPER ONE (dressed as Wendy Whopper) I speak for necessary whoppers - these are textural or contextual situations where lying is low and lying down or up is essential to carry the tits sorry texts capacity to function as fizz.

WHOPPER TWO (dressed as the big hamburger) Useful whoppers – these are disinformations and various misrepresentations common in language everywhere, all over, running down your chin honey. In their place whoppers are often not direct fibs but rather spins put on events. (girls spin around) Weeeee. These, as well as various other withholdings of informations, schemings and so forth are done for strategic gain. The fibbing text may be forced to have recourse to secrecy or dis-informing or dis mentioning in order to be able to maintain a position in or out of the world which is for the most part hostile to such endeavors.

WHOPPER THREE (dressed as malted milk balls) I represent useless and perennial whoppers - text lie’n out of habit, (watch it- careful) and give’n false impressions in order to please or be socially accepted, (think good latex). Exaggerating languages accomplishments and hiding its failings, all in the context of regular small talk. Such lying is at times unnecessary but can be used in the service of dissipating stuckness and subtly or substantially increasing new frames for subjectivity. Have a suck.

WHOPPER FOUR (dressed as too much) Lily white whoppers… ahem whoppers will sometimes be accessorized and motivated by noble motives such as concern for the true facts of others. Fortunately the truest word does not change the whir-ld.

WHOPPER/CHORUS (in a sing song voice- a bit preachy) All together now. Whoppers are the too too much. One consequence of our fibbing is increasing the fictionalization of little ‘I's, where one little ‘I’ misleads or Ms Reads another, thus going directly contrary to the goal of forging an internal unity. Another effect of whopping is increasing the effect of dis-discernment. But be warned habitual whopping promotes un-sleep and introduces internal noise conflicting with the signals from those parts of self which do not believe the lie to self. So beware.

SHE (breathlessly) I am breathless-ly. In it all as dis-course, is a full of riddles and half truths and multiple mis-truths that work as a filters that stopper the stuff of ideas from coming through. Where does the slang’n begin?
The whole stage fills with texts squirming and swirling.

HER The locking in, of truth is the locking out. These slippery, slithery text soaked frames and their voices create a radical and tangible perspective that is ex-seed-ing-ly valuable in terms of a fervent questionings of the limits and how to say them. In this sure, there is both the shock- a jolt of alterity, and the pleasure of that same alterity, at the same time, and there is also a sense of inviting that in even though we do not know what it is. Both reek PLEASURE. Unstill and unstall the unseamed. The voice that is esteemed stable or sort of unable is gone.

Whole of the whopper/chorus lifts up into the air,( using the rope pulley), singing the Whoppa Waltz in A major.

WHOPPER/CHORUS (singing) Everything sings. Everything is sing’ings. Sing-ings-ly. (repeat repeat repeat)

SHE (struggling to be heard over chorus) The really big whoppers are the whopas, the tall ones at the back, they are the heard hidden all over, in this here, there is one in the first pause in every sentence, there are three in NOTE 4. Two hundred and forty four overall. The whole lot. There whole lot is PLEASURE, more than you’re thinking.

WHOPPER/CHORUS (repeat in a staccato rhythm) … said… sayed … said… sayed …
said… say-ed.

HER and SHE This is our theme song. Link’n whopas. Singing burly lullabies to our own towing tongues. Who was it that said nothing? What as nothing did they show and say? And how did their rosy lips shape it? The almost insurmountable, luckily, does not preclude an almost deadly serious examination of potential approaching approaches toward the gap’n silence. Approaches that must by their very nature begin towards language’s edge but further out inside it, lie as a gag, as a mouth piece that talks. Changing concepts as the spatial frames central to language, structured round distance and time, screen’n or sift’n the felt sense of the moment of experience elsewhere… lead to else here as the whoppers gallop into whopas, ply’n across language frames that exclude, by a re-positing of a un-common knowledge variant as an alternative frame of reference-being…new techniques as transgress’n practice.

The extravaganza of strings and possible sounds erupts. All voices enter.

TUNNEL OF LOVE (through fog horn) exactly, because…whatever you do say or try to say, things are flowing. And the best-est reason to embark on this flowed-ed journey, towards the beautiful and beloved other, across any terrain, is the P-L-E-A-S-U-R-E of the ride. The perverse flowing sounded-ness-es of the journey of the meeting at every point will rattle your sense of the lie as it shows you what must be laid down. And when you arrive you are full of its arriving. This is a bargain you buy. Where to get on? Every outside the inside, that’s where. Outside the frame, the truth, the discipline. Anywhere outside? It need be a place busy in rubbing till erasure of its forms un-limits. There is always waiting for you a type of euphoria of the sweet. Once out here, in here, dear one, you are free from the anguish of the referenced as other as herself. Past meaning, turn right at the double dip there is the type of euphoria that occurs when she writes/speaks past unspeakable meanings, waiting just for you.

HER The paradox…given that to speak of real-real or true-truth is impossible in both text and language, but remembering that language makes tangible the intangible ordering of human consciousness with this then I proclaim the beauty of the way it is said, the whopa. Slang the taboo, the picture language, the graffiti of the tongue, the transgressor with no face.

WHOPPER/CHORUS The all acts like a herniation of the frame of the thread, fibs are in bloom, think juice, think song, inserted in the code as it occurs as slight asides. Her-Miss Re-present-ations and She take a mitigating step, uttering utterances both within language and the undisciplined literary, working hard at that edge of subjectivity know as ‘we know that’, to redefine both itself, themselves and the self in terms of a broad new and even untrue language as an emerging exceptionally large pleasure. Bless your cotton soxs. What cannot be said in one language is found can be said in another, spilling outwards and outwards and towards…


Curtain stays open.


III

NOTE 8 Transdisciplinary practice is formed from the middle ground between knowledge frames, as disciplines and inserts itself inside the known as an alternative perspective. But it is also at the edge. All knowledge frames even slang itself seems to hold these spaces within it. This is an open space for serious play. Transdisciplinary practice as this potential can perform these spaces as both the shape of potential and the dynamics of this potential. As it works through engagement with the present world, transdisciplinarity is a shifting field rather than any fixed reality. With its emphasis on engagement, investigation and participation rather than a singular truth or clarity, transdisciplinary approaches towards language both in literature and in the disciplines has the potential to move us towards that which is too big for us to hold…and a way to say any ‘thing’, as the more than enough.

VOICES OF THE DISCIPLINES Theory. Philosophy. Literature. Psychology. Critical Theory. Art. Lacan wrestles from Freud notions of desire as an excess for theory and for the psyche. The French feminists, Irigaray and Kristeva, introduce a specific feminine jouissance that is beyond binaries and beyond language as a signifier. A jouissance that purrs. Deleuze develops Jung’s idea of the Rhizome to describe theory that sees itself as multiple, non-hierarchical in terms of representation and interpretation. Cixous is writing and espousing ‘ecriture-ly about knowledge coming out from the body, and the writer A group of girls dressed as whoppers are telling lewd joked about knockers and vibrating tongues. Psychology is asking why and Philosophy is wailing why why why, and why not. Gertrude Stein opens her mouth and begins elucidating about how to write as song. The whole is performing. Language is in the midst of shift and displace, un-bordering something within itself.

NOTE 9 Excesses as jouissance points to the real. Is this excess accommodated for in the gesture of transdisciplinary practice? We will never really know. Is the excess of the whopper and in particular the whopa as the space of the excess of language its own jouissance, beyond language, order and sense? That too we might never be truly able to say. But if we understand that jouissance is diametrically opposed by the symbolic indeed refused by it, than the spaces in language that already border the ‘order’ such as slang, sounded language, slurs, riddles word games etc…can be seen as the closest that language can ever come to it. Though they can never perhaps be jouissance, these spaces in language nevertheless are in some way playing or plying at the edge of it. And this linguistic dynamic, between language and its excess be it poetics, disciplinary speak or register differentiation, slurred song or criticism, contains within it the elements, qualities and gestures towards otherness always held open in potential.


THE STRING OF THE CAT’S CRADLE My next plan is to reactivate and articulate events such as these in raffia. No it isn’t.



Online Entomology Dictionary. http://www.etymonline.com/ 10.5.08

McNamara, A. and T. Ross. 2007. On Medium Specifity and Discipline Crossovers In Modern Art. Artforum: 85-93. (Ranciere)

The Urban Dictionary. http://www.urbandictionary.com/ 10.5.08