lexicon a-f

lexicon: a — f

for the rest of this lexicon, consult G—N or O—Z.

abject adj. and v. [L. to throw off] 1. A condition of art as fiction, entertainment, or inessential. A subordinate status that, isolated as trivial or insignificant, is useful in art as clue. 2. See tessera.

abjection, types of [semiotics] 1. Smallness, as found in children, pets, toys, or miniatures that dissever their relation to the full-scale world through inferior size. 2. Stigma, such as a mark or social judgment, that limits participation in a group defined as normative. 3. Fools, clowns, idiots, and other types that, through shows of intellectual inferiority, separate themselves from ordinary society. 4. Festal periods of time, exempted from customs and laws affecting normal behavior. 5 Trash, garbage, and other forms of refuse. 6. Dangerous materials, such as radioactive waste, that effect a segmentation of space and/or time. Death, in all its manifestations. 7. Absence.

ambiguity n. [from L. ambigare, to wander around] 1. The presence of two or more meanings, each of which is plausible and attractive in some way. 2. Not necessarily fuzziness or vagueness, but a surplus of meanings. 3. A condition for the existence of art, where competing meanings are brought into as clear a focus as possible; for example, in tragedy, the audience both feels sorry for the hero but knows he must die; the resulting internal conflict brings about a sense of reality, i.e. that life is more like this than anything else.

anacoluthon n. [G. inconsistent] 1. The rhetorical practice of ending a sentence or expression in a manner inconsistent with the foregoing. 2. A use of a conclusion to revise (re-member) previously encountered facts. 3. Any reversal that forces a re-estimation of the context or genre of expression.

anagnorisis n. [G., recognition] 1. Normally, the scene in Greek tragedy where some clue reveals the true situation, necessitating the death of the hero. 2. Generally, the phenomenon of recognition in art, where conventional meaning must be collapsed in favor of a new set of relations. 3. Anagnorisis is the final moment of chiasmus, where two opposing forces meet and resolve through the discovery of the whole meaning of the work. 4. Frequently, discovery involves spatial and temporal collapse.

anamnesis n. [G. memory] 1. Specifically, this term applies to Plato's theory of knowledge, i.e. that what we know comes from our knowledge of experience technically beyond our mortal limits. 2. That there are two forms of memory, located in different parts of the brain, supports the idea that there is a special form of knowledge that allows us to know through a means of sympathy and imagination. 3. Anamnesis refers, then, to that form of memory that goes beyond the possibilities of direct experience, thus anamnesis refers directly to the use of art as a form of inquiry.

anamorphosis n. [G. ana, against; morph, form] 1. The phenomenon of one forms presence within another, usually with strongly discordant meanings. 2. A common technique in puzzles in which images are hidden within detail, or in paintings where one form is made up of parts, barely recognizable, from incongruous subjects, as in Arcimboldos famous portraits. 3. Anamorphosis employs the logic of chiasmus, or convergence of different, usually opposite, meanings. 4. Usually, one form cannot be perceived without destroying the other, hence anamorphosis depends on a catastrophe of space or time; reciprocally, forms of a-spatiality (e.g. the fourth dimension) and a-chronology (anachronism) are fundamentally anamorphic.

anthology n. [G. anthologia, deriv. to gather flowers] 1. A means by which several stories or works of art, each of which might stand on its own, are combined. 2. A general model of arts relation to life, in the sense that a life may experience (contain) many works of art. 3. An opposite sense, that art is able to contain everything within it, ordinary life included (cf. contamination). 4. Anthology is a means of framing experiences telescopically; one level of the work gives way to another, lower down; the resulting layered or concentric structure is hypnotic in its ability to confuse the audience about what level is real in comparison to the others.

aphasia n. [G. not to speak] 1. A form of neurological damage that leads to specific behavioral and linguistic incapacities. 2. Specifically, aphasia reveals a complementarity between the abilities to recognize semblance and connections; the absence of one usually leads to an overdependence on the other. 3. Diagnosis of aphasia influenced structural linguistics idea of metaphor as divided between metaphoric interests (semblance situations) and metonymic concerns (contiguity conditions).

aposiopesis [G. becoming silent; in Latin, praecisio] 1. The achievement of meaning in rhetoric by purposefully making a speech incomplete. 2. Generally, the open-ended meaning that results from suddenly breaking off before the anticipated ending is reached. 3. Evidence of such a breaking-off, as in a ruin.

apotrope n. [G. to turn back] 1. A device or design intended to ward off intruders or the uninitiated. 2. Herms, stone statues of armless male torsos, were used as apotropes to guard property boundaries. 3. Diagrams showing labyrinths were used to mark off sacred precincts by showing the sevenfold property of the boundary between the living and the dead.

artifact-representation distinction 1. In any communication, the distinction between content as what is intended to say and means as the manner of saying it. 2. The terminology artifact-representation is substituted for content and means to focus on the nature of the relationship between the two; both artifacts and representations are made things, which can be viewed either as artifacts or representations, but in any representation or artifact, the following relationship can be observed: the artifact is intended to be invisible from the point of view of the representation. 3. In a theater building, the analogy could be that the audience occupies the space of the artifact, while the play occupies the space of representation; activities cannot take place in both places at once without disruption; the house lights go down when the play begins, and the audience is advised to remain silent. 4. Artifact typically covers all of the means used by the artist to manifest his/her work physically, to make it durable; by analogy, these products stand for the artists role in the work, and for the works relationship to other works of art. 5. The representation is what is supposed to be consumed in the enjoyment of art; but, frequently, one finds within the representation some reference to artifacts; the commonest device of this is the story within the story, mimicked in painting by a scene that depicts another painting. 6. Artifacts and representations are defined by a orthogonal (right-angled) relationship between themselves symbolized as vectors; they should not intermingle but, in practice, they do frequently, and this contamination is arts most common ploy.

chiasmus (kiasmus) n. chiastic adj. 1. A structural device that facilitates a crossing, hence chi (the Greek letter i) 2. The chiastic cross is usually that of opposites, rivals, or complementary pairs, such as father and son (James Joyces Ulysses). 3. Chiasmus is the general form of artistic experience, taken either in the general sense of the audiences gradual realization of the totality of meanings within the work, or in the more limited sense of characters or themes that converge. 4. Chiasmus's principal parts are: (1) a main line of progress through the work, driven by directing the audiences concern; (2) a sub-theme which appears at first as a remote possibility at best; (3) a convergence of the two in a catastrophic episode, characterized by a rapid change in or even disintegration of identities (cf. anagnorisis). 5. Links between the two basic lines of chiastic form are usually metonymical clues that disrupt the main line of logic; such clues are technically clinamen, or swerves that create turbulence. 6. The chiastic system may be compared to the biological phenomenon of parasite/host relationship.

chronogram n. [neologism] 1. The use of an action or event whose temporal duration is known to mark off another concurrent event.

concentric vs. radial [technical terms] 1. Medieval society replicated the same rules of social order at every level of social status, making each a complete self-regulating world in itself. 2. Modern society transformed this concentric structure into a hegemony centralized around a single source of power and authority; radial lines of influence were favored over concentric lines of local autonomy.

coincidence [technical term] 1. Conjunction of events, details, facts, or persons that is not directly explicable or predictable. 2. The resulting meaning of coincidence thus takes place at the zero degree, because both meaning and non-meaning (inexplicability) are combined. 3. Coincidence is a displacement of more mythic ideas of fortune and fate.

collation [technical term] 1. The process of sequential assembly, esp. in art, the interrelation of various levels within a general narrative context. 2. [Religious] Originally, a light meal taken during special religious observances.

collective memory [technical term] 1. That form of memory for which the distinction between individual and culture taken as collective is no longer relevant. 2. Memory of the type, as distinct from the individual representative of the type. 3. Memory that is, properly speaking, imagination. 4. A productive mental facility capable of recalling events not literally experienced in the past; a form of memory specific to monuments.

conception function [philos.] Ernst Cassirer's final stage of conscious development, characterized by rationalized thought according to abstract concepts. The conception function regards the universal as a mathematical ordering concept that reveals single cause beneath a variety of phenomena (cf. expression function; representation function).

conflation n. [technical term] 1. The confusion of one thing for another, the tendency to group together or equate other properties of objects sharing only a single common property. 2. For example, since both the world of dreams and the world of death are unknown in terms of rational thought, there is the tendency to attribute them many common properties. 3. Ignorance is the chief instigator of conflaction; what we do not know, we assume a common cause. 4. Conflation works culturally to unite unknown topics into common regions and categories of time. 5. The best answer to all questions of which one is unsure.

contagious magic [anthrop.] 1. Form of magic technique depending on direct contact, such as touch, transfer of objects, breath, fluid, etc. 2. Influence of gaze also falls in this category, as a material projection. 3. Cf. sympathetic magic 4. According to some, evidence of thoughts division into (1) a metaphoric function based on semblance and (2) a metonymic function based on contiguity, for which contagious magic is instructive.

contiguity disorder [psychiatric] 1. That form of aphasia in which the victim is unable to recognize direct and mechanical relationships among parts. 2. Usually accompanied by overcompensation through reliance on semblance. 3. Suggestive of a lack of ability to comprehend metonymy. 4. [Anthrop.] Corresponding to the practice of contagious magic, where possession of some object once in actual contact with the victim is required.

curse [general] 1. A verbal (usually) spell or utterance. 2. A "course" or "turn" made around an intended victim. 3. From cursus ad solem, or "to run against the sun," a counterclockwise motion thought to be especially effective in bringing about the downfall of someone or some thing. 4. Cf. the reputed destruction of Jericho by the Isrealites, who circled and chanted to bring down the masonry walls; cf. Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem, Kublai Kahn , "Weave a circle 'round him thrice."

cyclopian adj. [G.] 1. Pertaining to the cave-dwelling of the Cyclops, the mythical race of one-eyed Titans who figure in the Odyssey. 2. A style of urban defensive structures that employed concentric walls, connected in a maze. 3. General term for societies that have not evolved customs of exchange and hospitality with strangers; (usually) cannibal societies that regard any contact with strangers as contaminating. 4. The one-eye of the Cyclops refers to the single center of the labyrinth, and the single entrance and exit to it.

dada [Art] 1. A movement in art especially active in the first half of the twentieth century, that sought to revise the grounds and assumptions of art production and consumption. 2. Art methodology incorporating chance, absurdity, contradiction, and nonrepresentational techniques. 3. Related to surrealism, performance art, fauvism.

diachronic vs. synchronic adj. [grammatical] 1. Ferdinand Saussure distinguished diachronic and synchronic influences in linguistics; diachronic influences are historical and dynamic, synchronic are static. 2. Structuralists generalized this distinction to express two sets of relations any given word in a sentence might have: (1) a diachronic relationship with words before and after it; and (2) synchronic relationships with words that could have appeared in its place. 3. Thus, diachrony reflects rules of syntax (noun part precedes verb part in English declarative sentences), where synchrony follows rules of paradigms. 4. In the sentence, I wore a hat, hat is diachronically the direct object of wore in terms of syntax, but paradigmatically related to coat, which would make equal sense.

displacement n. 1. The movement of meaning from one context to another, one medium to another, or one level to another. 2. Physical movement of objects, characters in space, with concurrent changes in contexts of judgment. 3. Historical movement of literary, poetic, artistic, etc. structures, so that new materials, with their own audiences, might re-use the same devices. 4. Displacement is the key to the means by which one culture, one mental level, or one ideological outlook might understand others; certainly displacement is able to explain the persistence and continuity of the forms of art, despite the considerable differences in content; for example, the descent theme [katabasis] may be found in all forms of art, in all cultures, and at all stages of cultural development, although the particular details of any given descent experience are tuned to the specific concerns of the relevant audience.

displacement, types of [technical term] 1. Play, as usually set in a special space with definite time parameters. 2. Any activity whose duration is limited by some mechanical or external process, designated here by the technical term, chronogram. 3. Any activity or phenomenon delimited by a frame, either physical or narrative. 4. In general, all symbolic behavior may be involved as a displacement of some original or designated meaning. 5. Anachronistic processes that break the continuity of an event, period, or age. 6. Metamorphosis, as in Ovids description of the world as constructed out of the continually changing forms of gods and created beings

epiphany [G.] 1. For James Joyce, the process of synoptic and synesthetic perception of a comprehensive whole or poetic pattern. 2. [Religious] The reappearance of Jesus after his crucifixion and burial. 3. In general, any process of complex integration of details into a harmonic design that supercedes any prior order or segregation of levels.

expression function [philos.] 1. According to Ernst Cassirer, the expression function rules the first stages of human development and is a view of the world as ruled primarily by demonic cause, the presence of super-sensible personae characterized as gods. 2. This function continues to work after its dominance gives way to other functions (cf. representation function; conception function) as a sympathic mode that identifies nature as a form of self (cf. pathetic fallacy). 3. Cassirers expressive function corresponds to G. B. Vicos view of first thought as primarily metaphoric.

extrinsic dimension [topol.] 1. A feature of an object, person, or event that is visible from a point lying formally outside. 2. Cf. the intrinsic dimension or intrinsic dimensionality, which defines properties that are not visible from any external position, i.e. features that are unintelligible to external observation. 3. The extrinsic dimension is, commonly, referred to as the sagittal dimension, after its resemblance to the flight of an arrow from the observer to the observed; the military tone of this metaphor is borne out in a number of traditions, where seeing is compared to, or equivalent with, capturing, controlling, seducing, or killing. 4. Extrinsic features are intensively dimensional, that is, they use space and time as means of defining the subject/object relationship, and frequently these means operate as a source of normalcy in that relationship; thus extrinsic features are often substituted as main or defining characteristics for the observed phenomenon; representation, which is the main mode of defining extrinsic features, acquires in this way an epistemological superiority.

fantastic, the n. [L. fantasia, the productive imagination] 1. The general model for the experience of the work of art, in that a transposition of the mind and body is required to leave one world and enter another. 2. The fantastic is not simply the uncanny or frightening experience, but it shares with the uncanny a focus on the individual and his/her questionable status or safety. 3. Neither is the fantastic identical with the allegorical, as that literary genre in which anything can happen. 4. The fantastic is, thus, a balance struck between a realistic mode of perception and a fanciful or dream-like mode.

fantastic, four themes of [Jorge Luis Borges] 1. The double, also found in the forms of rivalry, twinship, schizophrenic personality disorder, ironic oppositions. 2. Travel through time, either to the future or past, which in terms of linear time is impossible; also the use of coincidence. 3. The story within the story, a common device whereby a work of art may reveal its own principles by means of a miniature work inserted within it; cf. play within a play, or, in architecture, the aedicula, or little building, contained with a main structure; any miniature suggests the presence of this enframing mirror-logic. 4. The contamination of reality by fiction or dream, usually involving characters who see themselves acted by others in such a way that an undesirable end is then frantically avoided; contamination presumes a boundary between reality and dreams or fiction that cannot be crossed without collapsing all assumptions about space and time.

festal time [L. festus, sacred, devoted to festivals] 1. Time in which contamination of meanings is encouraged, bringing about a collapse of levels previously segregated. 2. [Anthrop.] Time devoted to celebration, esp. involving feasting, fool-play, exchange. 3. [Art] That point in a work when previous structures rapidly and radically give way to a perceived new order. 4. The anti-festival (fast) is similar in structure but involves the tragedy of sacrifice. 5. Bakhtin stresses the role, in festal matters, of the lower bodily stratum.

figure [technical term] 1. That part of a visual field that is consolidated into an object in contrast to a more generalized or vague ground. 2. Related to the face; a mask. 3. Figural: A design that depends on the identifiability of its subject.

flow [jazz] 1. Term originally used by musicians to designate periods of unrehearsed, extemporaneous coordination resulting in novel and unanticipated effects or results. 2. Generally applied to episodes of poetic or artistic control without conscious effort. 3. The evident presence of purposiveness without overt signs of planning, thus related to Kant's concept of the sublime.

forensic time [L. forensis, relating to the forum, as a place where legal arguments take place, i.e. the courtroom] 1. That form of time specially construed for the discovery of some truth. 2. In particular, forensic time is modeled after the theme of katabasis (descent), inasmuch as that literary form was the one specifically set aside for the pursuit of truths, particularly of the future. 3. Forensic time is the closest to the modern sense of linear time, and makes the greatest use of spatial models of time. 4. Forensic time depends on logic, although this may be circumscribed within a mythic or literary/poetic context.

Fortuna's Wheel [L., the goddess of Fortune] 1. The device by which all dramatic events may be described as a motion or position on a wheel governed by Fortuna or the Fates. 2. Composed of ascending (comic) and descending (tragic) halves; a top (romance) and a bottom (irony). 3. Structuralists have proposed that the four qualities of the wheel correlate to four meta-theoretical stances: organicism (comedy), mechanism (tragedy), formism (romance), and contextualism (irony). 4. Ancient physiological theory compared the wheel to four elements (air, earth, fire, and water) as well as the four corresponding humors (white bile, black bile, blood, and phlegm) and four dispositions (choloric, melancholic, sanguine, phlegmatic).

fourth dimension [19c. geometry] 1. A non-intuitive dimension deduced by physicists, geometricians, and artists near the turn of the century. 2. The dimension of actuality, as opposed to the first three spatial dimensions of appearance. 3. A fiction invented to account for the precognition of future events. 4. [Physics] The actual quality of the curvature of the universe, its qualities of non-boundedness and finitude.

frame [ME framen, to profit] 1. The frame both conditions the experience of art and represents its chief features, i.e. that the experience of art involves transgressing a boundary. 2. One world is suspended while another lives, the image of twins who inhabit incommensurable parts of the universe, as Castor and Pollux. 3. The frame involves a reciprocal action: it permits the view of the audience and their participation in the work while demanding their symbolic death (they must be quiet). 4. By framing something, a temporal condition is established where beginning and end take on a significant relationship; because both are visible, conditions of symmetry are expected and may or may not occur.

For the rest of this lexicon, consult G to N or O to Z.

Copyright © 2003 by Donald Kunze.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.