The continuum can never be tamed by the discrete but Bataille's concept of sovereignty is a way of living the one-all through your part or set. Each contracted moment as the whole or equal to the whole or the only whole which is. Slightly different from Leibniz's monadology - more Zen.
How do sovereign moments recognize an other set and aggregate without submitting their sovereignty to some outside truth. This I believe is part of catalysis - the continual encounter with other sovereign sets outside your sovereign set. This encounter can become an event (in Badiou's sense) which provokes the new within a set which becomes assimilated and transformed, or this encounter can be rejected as when the immune system expels, or this encounter can be repressed and deposited inside as trauma repeating itself continually.
Analysis is the counterpart of catalysis - the undoing of the knots or patterns now stagnant in the set - a release of traumas - a dis-integration or differentiation into sovereign moments. Catalysis is the integration or aggregation of sets in a new calculus. For example how and why to bions become cells become organisms become consciousnesses... Now to explore analysis and catalysis.
Posted by scott at April 24, 2004 11:58 AM | TrackBack