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Eversion and the unthinged

The are corners of the crossroad of existences where the virtual becomes ex-huberant and the actual turns into a hub. These are interesting transition points because there the thingic becomes unthinged (unbedingte, in the Schelling word that Hamilton Grant stresses) as what is harboured inside the physics of things exudes. It not so much, for Hamilton Grant, that matter in nature is unconditioned, it is rather that they are unthinged. It is sheltered in things - the genetic question that all recaptulation theories address is how matter generates bodies - and yet it is not fully employed there, it holds on to an excess of productivity. On this excess hinges the physics of what is invested into a body - notice the Spanish term of investment: inversion - but also the physics of ideation. On both these physics rely the relation between information and the body. Matter, thought of as dynamic and self-constituting by Schelling, is invested in bodies but retain the network connections that make them interact - its physics, the physics of all. Matter becomes bodies but there are also corners where bodies dissipate in matter and its self-constitution.

To talk about this process of turning bodies inside out, Felipe Fonseca uses the William Gibson word «eversion». It is not about a confederation of virtualities concocting some thing, as in the genetic question, but rather extracting the connecting matter from the bodies. The bodies become no more than a sign-post for a hub of connections, a platform for interaction. That is, eversion of the unthinged. Fonseca discusses then the movements around an internet of things and intranets of things (http://desvio.cc/). The issue is about how much eversion is allowed to happen, how much of the unthinged elements the things are made to exude. The political battle, he suggests, is no longer only about connectedness but rather also about how things evert their connections.

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