The distinction of "indivisible" and "divisible" is the clue to the construction of the "screen" between the subject and world, a composite structure made by combining a metaphorical substrate ("all possible views") with a particular, finite point of view derived from the subject's bodily and spatial limitations. This explains how a given scene can appear different even when taken from the same physical viewpoint (the metaphorical substrate is different) or how the scene viewed from radically different viewpoints can be "the same" (stability of the three-dimensional construct).

Ø is "metaphorically constructed," meaning that it is developed, inside culture through a cumulative process involving many modes and kinds of art and popular lore, as a continuous narrative and visual protocol. Some argue that all such "metaphors" are linked to a canonical set of four (comedy, tragedy, irony/satire, romance — Frye, Pepper, White, etc.) but the case is possibly more complex. The compelling structural feature of all "meta-phors" is their similar reliance on a logic of originary wholeness, fragmentation based on the violation of some interdiction, and the restoration of the whole based on some variation of the theme of the "return of the Real." In this restoration, the issue of location, typically established through some metonymical procedure (re-tracing tracks, precise measurement, memory of precise verbal formulæ, etc.), is key.

Lacan's idea, that "the letter always reaches its destination," is the paradoxical guide to the logic of this Eden/Wilderness/Restoration sequence. Also, the famous objet petit a, the "small object of desire," stands for the ability to (artistically) materialize the missing center that serves as the vital heart or seed of the lost paradise. This small object can become detached, lost, or stolen; it can float, along with other signifiers, as a destabilizing, volatile element. Just as the vanishing point serves as the antipode to the subject's fixity in perspective drawings, the small object of desire is the antipode of the subject's projection of desire via a fictionalized representative (f).

The relationship between the representation ("point of view," sum of R's) and artifact (Ø, collectively coordinated by metaphor) is that between the "reality" created by the illusion of narrative sequential experiential encounters and "the Real" created anamorphically within this narrative sequence. When R is restricted to a single image, anamorphosis is created "traditionally," as an image requiring a displacement or adjustment to the point of view. When R is taken as a temporal sequence, anamorphosis can be developed through clues, marginal spaces, symbols, etc. The collation of Ø is often guided by the materialization of the 'a', the small object of desire. In Hitchcock films, for example, this can be the famous MacGuffin (a logically superfluous element that justifies action) or some small object that is the precipitate of a story (the lighter in Strangers on a Train; the matchbook cover in North by Northwest; the song in The Lady Vanishes).

The irrationality of the small object of desire is that it seems to be insignificant but nonetheless is capable of motivating characters and creating dramatic structure. Action "always returns" to such small objects, always pivots around them. "What are the thirty-nine steps?" in The 39 Steps is a question that, when answered, seems ridiculous but nonetheless "solves the mystery" of why Nazi spies have attempted to murder the wrongly accused fugitive, Richard Hannay. The question itself is a combination of artifact and representation. The steps are not "steps" in the literal sense but, as "Mr. Memory" is tricked into automatically reciting, a ring of spies.

The 39 steps was, before the film used the phrase as a title, a bit of wartime trivia. Estates along the coast of Kent often had staircases leading down to small sandy beaches. A particular staircase on the estate of Broadstairs was blown up by British forces in 1940 to prevent any invading Germans from gaining access to the headlands from the beach. This same staircase was the key to a mystery set during World War I, from which Hitchcock's screenplay was drawn. The author, John Buchan, gave the clue for finding the headquarters of German spies: "Thirty-nine steps — I counted them — High tide, 10:17 p.m." was scrawled in a dead man's notebook. The hero, Hannay, uses this clue to locate the house. Hitchcock's version, quite different, de-literalizes the staircase clue and centers the give-away on the performance of a vaudeville mnemonicist.

—summary from D. E. Scherman and R. Wilcox, Literary England: Photographs of Places Made memorable in English Literature (New York: Random House, 1943-44), §50.

The combination of the R-sum and Ø-sum "logics" focus on the role of the anamorphic perceptual encounters that are simultaneosly the basis for the "reality" of the barred subject, $, and "the Real," characterized by loss and restoration/return and the intransitive cycle of desire.

This composite diagram is cast in the language of literary fiction, where "two things happen at the same time," via the doubled messaging of the anamorphic/literal "images" developed visually or through narrative. As a theory of reading, this "topology" contrasts with "super-reader" theories that involve a transcendent or all-knowing point of view. Anamorphosis requires a thoroughly embedded "fictim," continuous imaginative projection of a point of view with access to the object of desire via something concealed within the text or image. This object is the key to the restoration of the Other, the structure of authority, which is characterized in terms of its central lack (or surplus) that cannot be accommodated symbolically.

Placed outside of the network of symbolic relations (the horizontal structure), the imperiled object of desire keys into purely emotional response. Hence, Hitchcock's systematic exploitation of suspense in his films consistently developed structures that supported this extra-symbolic function.

The loss and return of the object of desire explains how centrality and marginality are, essentially, the same when it comes to a-symbolic relations. "The king in exile or disguise" is a common folkoric motif embodying this. Pascal's image of God as "a circle whose circumference is nowhere and center everywhere" is a loftier expression. On whatever level, the motion of the small object of desire, forever unsymbolizable but often materializable (Zizek: "Coke is it!" — the quilting of signifiers set sliding by their "accidental" artifactual properties) is the engine of desire that chiastically drives narrative, imminent experience.

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Note: Parenthetically, it should be noted that the vast majority of those who use the term, "phi phenomenon," are in fact referring to the beta phenomenon. Both terms were coined by Max Wertheimer, in his 1912 work, "Experimental Studies on the Seeing of Motion." The phi phenomenon should properly refer to the apparent movement of "background space" with the off-on successive flashes of (typically) fixed points or dots of light. The experience of movement generated "between" two still images is, properly, the beta phenomenon, but so few people recognize this distinction that I will repeat the idiotic error of improperly confused terms, trying to add whenever appropriate, this "disclaimer." The discerning reader is referred to the discussion of this confusion in Wikipedia:

"The classic beta phenomenon experiment involves a viewer or audience watching a screen, upon which the experimenter projects two images in succession. The first image depicts a ball on the left side of the frame. The second image depicts a ball on the right side of the frame. The images may be shown quickly, in rapid succession, or each frame may be given several seconds of viewing time. Once both images have been projected, the experimenter asks the viewer or audience to describe what they saw."

Ahem!