Spiritofboz

Alongside our reading excerpts of the Book of Boz (3 podcast episodes are already available to download), we have started a new series of podcasts : the BebozCasts.

What is about here ? Rather than an user guide, "a little red book" or "a summary" of Spirit of Boz, we’ll imagine a commentary, in which we will enter deeper in the work, tracing a road, as a "winding path in our soul, with multiple junctions, stops and drawing odd arabesques"…

The first episode is already available, in the "Podcast" category, on www.beboz.org

In this third letter, we intend to go back over the “five pillars” in order to understand them better. For, eventually, where do we want to go ? What does drive us ? What is the “very substance” of this work being built in front of you ?

1 Theology

Illustrated by the Book of Boz, it will be conceptualized in the Great Commentary Book.

What is it about ?

It’s about two intuitions from which we’ll have to see the subversive charge and the following chain of deductions.

The first intuition is to consider, against all odds, against ancient and recent history,- whatever wars, hatred and deaths may mark out this history -, to consider the three monotheisms as a sole religion, modulated, thought and built from a single vision, dependent of a unitay G. (GLC segment 37).

The second intuition is not to start from G., but from His thought. For, may he exist or not, in se and per se, one undeniable fact remains : His thought has been working on for millenniums, driving billions of people and intervening in their destinies, orientating them (radical islam - a real “G.’s plague” - is the better example today).

He would even be dead and buried, nothing would change : G.’s thought would continue to operate.

Fortified by this intuition, we got down to track, drive out and unveil the fantasy behind this thought. For, obviously, behind rituals and dogmas, something operates on the quiet, just like a ghost. What ? We’ll propose the idea of a long daydreaming, crossed by flashes of conscience, hung on mankind from the beginning and capable, if necessary, to be teared down or open, to let a light of hope pass.

2 Philosophy

Three milestones will be our guide here.

1 -  Plato’s Republic since it traces, in negative, the limits of a “Boz village” in gestation. In this prospect, we will probably proceed by stages : a virtual elaboration on internet, open to any suggestion; a model to determine the ideal architecture; eventually, maybe, a start of fulfillment.

2 - Spinoza’s Ethics, a determining reflection for our intention, since it introduced a staggering vision in thought’s history, with nearly apocalyptic consequences : the passage from  God Subject, dear to Bible, to an immanent quiet down God, decerebrated by abstraction.

3 - Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. This long poem, as bearing the stamp of the abyss, announced indeed God’s death and its consequences : Übermensch’s birth, aimed to close the species. Just think about works and manipulations in genetics to understand how Nietzsche’s vision was prophetic (Zarathustra was written between 1882 and 1885). It appears indeed that, in taking away mankind’s sacred aura (henceforth designed as a cadaver), we couldn’t avoid to open Pandora’s box and hand our fellows over to the abjection of a split up body, which has become the all-fights arena (truly an unspeakable lego game combining forthcoming mutations, less random than deducted and produced by future geneticists’ grace.

3 - Psychoanalysis

We will need thus to determine the parameters of an emergence : emergence of a Subject, differentiated from specular grip and narcissistic splendors. So, we intend to show the way of a strong individualization, so necessary today since a wild globalization has been inducing a quite worrying psyche standardization. All this occurring just as mankind globalization had to be paired with a progressive obliteration of singularities, which are our only stability guarantee. (Economic and psychologic globalizations can be paired).

In this aim, we will rely on freudo-lacanian corpus (without looking down on Jung and his archetypes) to demonstrate that the Subject per se operates outside flesh, just like a pure spirit, independently of the neuronal support.  There is a gap here, an overstepping, a need for acknowledgment, outside which any redemption couldn’t be conceived. A scandalous affirmation for our science loving intellects but essential to our understanding. This, without foreseeing the neurosciences breakthrough and a still more precise cartography of encephalon. In Psychoanalysis and Neurosciences hadn’t we contributed to bridge a precise symbolic pool (Gimp’s archetype) to a determined region of the brain (Penfield homonculus, tributary of sensitive somatotopia ) ? That doesn’t imply this at all : an automatic organicism, as Francis Crick or others.

4 - Visual arts

Their epicenter will be this one and only question : how representing Void without edulcorating or travestying it, and respecting requirements of a radical Transcendency ? After Kandinsky, minimalists have been pushing the argument until its own limits : a working drawing without any semblance (it’s not a coincidence if the first minimalist exhibition took place in New York Jewish Museum in 1966), a working drawing, which, whatever purists may say, was building an aporia : to be in self the image of an absence.

Hence our desire to operate backwards, to reach the much coveted aim : to create a image whirlpool, to initiate a movement in gusts, draining with it, not only one or two, but hundreds (or even thousands) of pictures, in order to unveil another place : an basic gap, an absolute silence, just as somewhere, in another dimension, an Other was working and defining himself by a renewed transgression.

We will say : a Transcendency from which muteness has to shade away to let a still inaudible speech escape.

5 - Practical knowledges

These will be the spearhead of our universe. They’ll be intended in questioning Civil Society in a both seductive and playful mode. In the contrary of our quite dry if not forbidding “letters”, these pieces of merchandising will aim at the mass to divert and enjoy it. They will so be the tip of the iceberg, what you can see, like and enjoy immediately.

Hence their importance.

To be open works, apart of any clique, unpretentious, aimed to be marketed by Boz Company, from which we know the interface : an artwork in itself (see Boz Company manifesto).

To be a trailer, a start, the first term in a meant as ascending movement (from simplicity to complexity).

To be the exquisite solar openly visible part of a always reworked founder myth.

To be, for many people, the first landmarks of a founder thought : crumbs left on the side of the road, so everyone could pursue their journey.

Yes crumbs.

Or stones.

Or even : some tiny light points thrown away in the night for an absolute loving traveller.

For the rest…

After having set down the five pillars on which lay the Boz universe (theology, philosophy, psychoanalysis, visual arts and practical knowledges), we thought interesting to indicate the three moments directing its elaboration.

1) The time of creation

Spread over more than 30 years (the affair begins in 1975 with an article published in the Annales de Philosophie of the Université Libre de Bruxelles, titled « Jules Lequier ou la question du savoir divin » (“Jules Lequier or the divine knowledge question”)), the work will erect slowly, book after book, painting after painting, with contrapuntally sporadical speeches, minimal interventions in the media, solitary practice of meditation, coupled to an analysis “in continuous” of inner life.

We were then living an almost monastic existence, devoted to a creation which, paradoxically, was existing outside us.

Far from the demiurge, voluntary modelling his work by the sweat of his brow, we revealed ourselves as a passage place, the inconscious occasion of an update. The work was dwelling in us, building itself, across vicissitudes and hazards of life. Confronting it, we were rather its child than its founder father. We had besides to wait the year 2006 to discover its leitmotiv : the elaboration of a modern spirituality, non sectarian, fiting our always mutating societies. An awakening which staggering aspect would turn our existence upside down and promote a new attitude toward the outside world.

2) The time of diffusion

Then the question was asked clearly : Was there, yes or no, a work ? In the event of an affirmative answer, should we, yes or no, defend it ? If yes, how ?

Answers were worded slowly in a kind of long daydream, almost a fantasy, along January 2006. It was a slow perlaboration of experience, not without critical mind, but which issue wasn’t making any doubt : a brutal and uncompromising affirmation of the necessity to master ourselves.

We had no more choice.

We had to come out of the cavern and rejoin our fellows.

The “ivory tower” had collapsed, letting us alone, facing an alarming solitude.

Alone.

This time, we were really alone, condamned to go toward the Other, to intruct him about a rather unusual course. We hadn’t any other option anymore : now, we had to face it, go forward and become the pilgrim we never had wanted to be.

Defending our work supposed to broadcast it toward third party, from the outset accepting reviews, comments and contributions. This, far from a self-closed, condescending and dogmatic “gospel truth”. But, also : far from false modesty, cautious and hypocritical.

Defending our work supposed also to expose ourselves, to risk our fellow man in his all dimensions (sometimes venomous - for, eventually, who does he think he is, this guy ?).

Carefully, then we projected ourselves into the future. For, how many time should we dedicate to this “diffusion” before it impregnates us and transforms us in a vile  sycophant tirelessly looking for success ?

“Four or five years, in the maximum”, whispered a voice, deep down inside. “If G. wants”, added the same voice, aware of our fragility, of the encountered difficulties and our own pain. “For, after, you won’t have any strength for it anymore”, insisted the same voice, undoubtedly too lucid.

So.

“And why not ! This voice could be right”, I thought, with the neat impression of having a stone in my shoe.

The fact is I should jog along, with many difficulties, risking a fall at each step, as it should be for the author of a book bearing this revealing title : The Gimp’s Legend (renamed by the PUF in Psychoanalysis and Neurosciences - “unless the booksellers will file you under “kinesitherapy”, I was said).

3) The time of transmission

Begun more than 30 years ago, on a minor mode, we’ll express here the desire it could continue and grow in the ten years to come.

It would be question of  “the very substance” of a too well-stocked work. It would be question of a small group of friends (we don’t need a lot of people) really questioned by the Boz. It would be question of a vision of our future, extrapolated, sketched and developped from the former breakthroughs. But, it would especially question of a Transcendence, devoted to the strange dream of a founding Act - for, feel reassured, if the Boz had to last, grow an be enriched, we wouldn’t responsible for much.

Only, were we a light wind, a suspended gesture, a vague attempt… before the end begins.

In this era where the old-time great utopia are about to collapse and sects or hucksters are flourishing, we propose to open a research which proven goal will be to produce  this “soul supplement” so many are requesting.

To this purpose, different disciplines will have been investigated, dependent on our own journey (this leading to consider other journeys, different than ours, able to impregnate the work in progress).

Mainly, it will be :

1 A theology, based less on God than his fantasy.

2 Philosophy, where, while rejecting Plato’s Republic, which banished artists and poets, we will attempt to set up a “village of Boz” focused on plastic arts. The concept will be a “new social link” designed as a piece of art.

3 Psychoanalysis, considered as an investigation of the psychic apparatus, without foreseeing the priceless contribution of neurosciences.

4 Plastic arts and poetry, considered as a “rampart of freedom” against any dogmatic threat.

5 Practical knowledges (fashion, comics, video games,…) whose march will concern everyone, everyday. They will be as the front row of a universe seen as free, not elitist, and open to everyone.

A huge program so. So large it will request to display different complementary strategies. This one, for example : a progressive as slow as possible unveiling of the gained knowledge.

An unveiling progressing unobtrusively from resonance into resonance, piece by piece, thought after thought, in order to create the core image of the Great Work. Effectively : a universe in quest of the Divine.

Julien Friedler was born in 1950 in Brussels. Psychoanalyst and writer, former Jacques Lacan’s analysand, he directs “La Moire” he founded in 1994 in the purpose of promoting a multidisciplinary reflection on the psychic apparatus.

He wrote Psychanalyse et neurosciences : la légende du Boiteux (Puf, 1995)(Psychoanalysis and neurosciences : Gimp’s Legend), L’œil d’Œdipe (Puf 2004) (Oedipus ‘ Eye), poetic tales and works of fiction.

His artistic work ranges from painting through performances to installations.

Read more on Wikipedia (in French)