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MYKL WELLS

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2.2

“It is my weakness as an author (so the critics have

always said) that I appear incapable of presenting a
theme energetically and simply. I must always wrap it up
in tissue upon tissue of proviso and aspect; see it from a
hundred angles; turn laboriously each side to the light;
producing in the end not so much a unitary work of
art as a melancholy cauchemar of ghosts and voices, a
phantasmagoric world of disordered colors and sounds;
a world without design or purpose; and perceptible only
in terms of the prolix and the fragmentary. The criticism
is deserved, of course: but I have often wished that the
critics would do me the justice to perceive that I have
deliberately aimed at this effect, in the belief that the old

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A Thin Veneer of

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unities and simplicities will no longer serve. No longer
serve, I mean, if one is trying to translate, in any form of
literary art, the consciousness of modern man. And this
is what I have tried to do.”
Consciousness
CONRAD AIKEN, BLUE VOYAGE

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“The ambiguity in Aiken’s novels derived not

from faulty writing, as was frequently suspected, but
from his insistence that it was an essential condition
of consciousness…. In only one realm was Aiken an
unvacillating servant—in his priestly dedication to the
pursuit of consciousness.”

CATHARINE F. SEIGEL, THE FICTIVE WORLD OF CONRAD AIKEN

“Conrad did have a world view and it emerges in

his criticism. It is, to use a phrase that Matthiessen
borrowed from him and used in his book on Henry
James, the religion of consciousness. The development
of consciousness in scope and refinement—the finding
of the word that reveals a new facet of consciousness—is
the great historical movement to which a writer should
attach himself. But Conrad’s great notion attracted little
attention.”
MALCOLM COWLEY, LETTER TO ALLEN TATE,
NOVEMBER 21 st, 1973

“Gnowthi seauton—that was still the theme, the open

sesame, Freud had merely picked up the magic words
where Socrates, the prototype of highest man, had let
Conrad Aiken, 1950 them fall, and now at last the road was being opened for
the only religion that was any longer tenable or viable, a

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poetic comprehension of man’s position in the universe,
and of his potentialities as a poietic shaper of his own
destiny, through self-knowledge and love. The final phase
of evolution of man’s mind itself to ever more inclusive
consciousness: in that, and that alone, would he find the
solvent of all things.”

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CONRAD AIKEN, USHANT

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TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS

Scofield Thayer 2 Thoughts on Conrad Aiken: A Prelude to 24

Sculpture by Gaston Lachaise Great Circle
Commentary by Graham Greene

A Thin Veneer of Consciousness 2

Painting by Mykl Wells Figure from Utriusque Cosmi #1 24
Drawing by Robert Fludd

Conrad Aiken, 1950 3

Photography by Unknown A Selection from Great Circle 25
Fiction Excerpt by Conrad Aiken

Table of Contents 4
Six Inches of Brick Separated Me from the 29
Tragedy of My Boyhood
Beyond Which Lies the Dark 11 Photography by Phil Hanrahan
Letter from the Editor by Tyler Malone

Selections from An Outline of Psychoanalysis 30

Introduction to Wake 11 15 Philosophy Excerpt by Sigmund Freud
Letter from the Editor by Seymour Lawrence

Skull with Burning Cigarette 31

1883 Phrenology Chart 16 Painting by Vincent Van Gogh
Drawing by Unknown

Foreword to Conrad Aiken’s Selected Poems 32

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Conrad Aiken Selected Bibliography 17 Essay by Harold Bloom
List of Works by Conrad Aiken

Palimpsest: The Deceitful Portrait 36

Conrad Aiken Ports of Entry 18
Poetry by Conrad Aiken
Recommended Reading by Various Authors

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The Vague Glimmer of a Head Suspended in 40 The Scarlet Door 59

Space Essay by Phil Hanrahan
Lithograph by Odilon Redon

Diovadiova Chrome Kitty Cash IV 71

Toward a Copernican Word: Psychoanalysis 41 Painting by Kip Omolade
Through Conrad Aiken’s One-Eyed Cather
Essay by Conor Higgins
A Selection from Conrad Aiken’s Philosophy of 72
45 Consciousness
Conrad Aiken, 1960
Critical Excerpt by Ian Kluge
Photography by Unknown

Below, I Saw the Vaporous Contours of a 77

Toward a Completion of That Great Circle: 46
Human Form
A Conversation with Joseph Killorin
Lithograph by Odilon Redon
Interview by Tyler Malone

The Narrator and the Madman: King Coffin’s 78

The Streams of Our Consciousnesses: 50 World of Uncertain Ends
Expressing Consciousness in the Written Essay by Sam Allingham
Word, Pt. I
Fiction Excerpts by Various Authors
Simpler 84
Poetry by Josephine Rowe
You Left Me—Sire—Two Legacies— 56
Poetry by Emily Dickinson

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The Biographer’s Tale: A Conversation with 85

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Edward Butscher
A Selection from Justine 57
Interview by A. M. Davenport
Fiction Excerpt by Iben Mondrup

Figure from Utriusque Cosmi #2 86

Tadeus Langier, Zakopane 58 Drawing by Robert Fludd
Photography by Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz

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TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS

A Selection from Conrad Aiken: Cosmos 87 Diovadiova Chrome Tia I 109

Mariner Painting by Kip Omolade
Biographical Excerpt by Edward Butscher
Two Poems 110
A Selection from the Entry on “Consciousness” 97 Poetry by Carmen Giménez Smith
from A Dictionary of Psychological Medicine
Dictionary Entry by Charles A. Mercier
Five Attempts 111
Essays by Matthew Vollmer
A Selection from “Idiosyncrasy and Tradition” 99
Critical Excerpt by Conrad Aiken Haunting 119
Lithograph by Odilon Redon
Conrad Aiken Historical Marker 101
Photography by Byron Hooks From the Mystical Text to the Machine: 120
Aesthetical Approaches to Consciousness
Essay by Germán Sierra
A Selection from Nicomachean Ethics 102
Philosophy Excerpt by Aristotle
A Selection from Ushant 126
Autobiographical Excerpt by Conrad Aiken
Between the Poles of the Conscious and the 103
Unconscious
Poetry by Kabir
The Streams of Our Consciousnesses: 129
Expressing Consciousness in the Written

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Word, Pt. II

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Struggle 103
Fiction Excerpts by Various Authors
Photography by Robert Demachy

Diovadiova Chrome Karyn II 134

Beyond and Beneath Blue Voyage 104 Painting by Kip Omolade
Essay by Nathan Goldman
The Life in the Fiction 135

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Shifting and Transitory Windows: A History 138 A Selection from Discourse on the Method of 171
of the Stream of Consciousness Technique Rightly Conducting One’s Reason and of
Essay by Thomas Murphy Seeking Truth in the Sciences
Philosophy Excerpt by René Descartes

This Consciousness That Is Aware 152

Poetry by Emily Dickinson The Blood Beating in His Brain: Where Is 172
Consciousness in the Modern Novel?
Essay by Jason Tougaw
“Exactly Like You” from Unbearable Splendor 153
Poetry by Sun Yung Shin
The Thinker 180
Sculpture by Auguste Rodin
Roots Run Deep 157
Painting by Mykl Wells
On the White Bench: Thomas Bernhard’s 181
3 Days
A Selection from Between Life and Death 158 Review by Jon Bartlett
Fiction Excerpt by Yoram Kaniuk

A Selection from “The Day Before the Daybreak” 184

Platted a Crown of Thorns: A Conversation 162 Critical Excerpt by R. P. Blackmur
with Christof Koch
Interview by Tyler Malone Conrad Aiken and the Eternal Re-Currents: 185
Ceaselessly Pushed Forward and Borne Back

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I’ve Got the Coffin—You’ve Got the Body: 165 Essay by Tyler Malone
On the Friendship of Conrad Aiken and
Malcolm Lowry Ushant 198
Essay by Dustin Illingworth Satellite Image by Spot Image

A Second Selection from Ushant 168 The Mismeasure of Consciousness 199

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Autobiographical Excerpt by Conrad Aiken

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Wheatfield with Crows 202 Great Thinkers on Consciousness 222

Painting by Vincent Van Gogh Quotations from Various Authors

The Streams of Our Consciousnesses: 203 A Selection from The Fictive World of 225
Expressing Consciousness in the Written Conrad Aiken
Word, Pt. III Critical Excerpt by Catharine F. Seigel
Fiction Excerpts by Various Authors

You’re a Literary Man, Conrad Aiken: An 232

Figure from Utriusque Cosmi #3 207 “Unsuccessful but Undefeated” Life in Letters
Drawing by Robert Fludd Essay by J. T. Price

How Do You Explain Consciousness? 208 Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear 235
Transcript of Speech by David Chalmers Painting by Vincent Van Gogh

Seascape at Saints-Maries 212 Sorties, Series, and Spirals: Conrad Aiken and 236
Painting by Vincent Van Gogh “These Old Familiars”
Essay by Joanna Hodge

Down Kaleidoscope: Aesthetic Consciousness 213

in Conrad Aiken’s Blue Voyage The Abandonware 245
Painting by Mykl Wells
Essay by Stephanie Tilden

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What Passes for Fun 220 Aikenesque 246
Fiction by Josephine Rowe Recommended Reading by Various Authors

A Selection from Essay Concerning Human 221 A Thought-Tormented Essay: Themes and 249
Understanding Variations

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Depth Psychology and Aiken’s Vision of 252 Thoughts on Conrad Aiken: Selections from 279
Consciousness an Editor’s Letters
Essay by Ted R. Spivey Letter Excerpts by Maxwell Perkins

A Selection from “Senlin: A Biography” 263 Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe 280
Poetry Excerpt by Conrad Aiken Painting by Vincent Van Gogh

The Divine, Difficult Pilgrim 264 What It Might Mean to See: Peter Godfrey- 281
Essay by Jack Hanson Smith’s Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea,
and the Deep Origins of Consciousness
Review by Megha Majumdar
Diovadiova Chrome Janderie II 266
Painting by Kip Omolade
Figure from Utriusque Cosmi #4 282
Drawing by Robert Fludd
Nothing But the Stream to Be Conscious Of: 267
Literary Critics on Consciousness in Literature
Critical Excerpts from Various Authors Human and Non-Human Consciousness: 283
A Conversation with Peter Singer
Interview by Conor Higgins
To Edgar Poe (The Eye, Like a Strange Balloon, 271
Mounts Toward Infinity)
Lithograph by Odilon Redon Starry Night 285
Painting by Vincent Van Gogh

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Unresolved Issues 272
Fiction by Nicolas Sampson On Our Nightstand 286
Recommended Reading by Various Authors

Old Man in Sorrow (On the Threshold of 278

Eternity) Big Appetites 289

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Covering Aesthetics and Symbology: A 290 A Graveyard 302

Conversation with Michael Vrana Poetry by Marianne Moore
Interview by Kate Jordan

Conrad Aiken’s Grave Bench 303

View of the Sea at Scheveningen 291
Photography by Mark Coggins
Painting by Vincent Van Gogh

A Creative Movement: A Word from Conrad 292 A Selection from “Appendix A: Conrad Aiken” 303
Aiken’s French Translators from Collected Poems
Commentary by Philip Blanchon and Joëlle Naïm Critical Excerpt by David Markson

Queer Martini 295 A Selection from The Unconscious: 304

Cocktail Recipe and Photography by Paul Zablocki The Fundamentals of Human Personality
Philosophy Excerpt by Morton Prince

Conrad Aiken… This Way… 296

Photography by Phil Hanrahan Long-Forgotten Letters and Disturbances 305
of the Heart: An Introduction To Conrad
Aiken’s Final Letter, Addressed to Me
Panel of Dead Authors 297 Essay by David Crumm
Comic by Charlie Meyard

A Letter to David Crumm, July 30th, 1973: 308

Death of the Author 298 Final Correspondence

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Comic by R. E. Parrish Letter by Conrad Aiken

The Aiken Family Business 298 Masthead 309

Comic by Unknown
Dramatis Personae 310
The Frisch Questionnaire 299 Portraits by Prisma

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Mystical texts favor the fleshy lexicon of touching

and tasting to convey that, in the mystic’s feeling, the
From the Mystical Text returning trip from an altered state of consciousness has
left an awareness of altered-state possibilities that cannot
to the Machine: be easily communicated through a standard narration,
and therefore they should be transmitted by using material
Aesthetical Approaches to Consciousness metaphors that involve non-declarative memory traces.
According to the neuro-philosopher Thomas Metzinger,2
non-declarative experience is available for attention and
I.
and sensory-motor control, but not for cognition—so the
In the Western mystical tradition—from Augustine’s attempt to put them into words summons a void, and it’s
Confessions to Dostoevski’s Prince Mishkin—a new state in this void where consciousness swims. David John Roden
of consciousness, regained from a returning trip from and Eugene Thacker, among others, locate experiences
extasis, is often materialized in an alegorical mystical text. in which there is a radical gap between perception and
Thereby, consciousness materializes by turning around conceptualization in a realm of “dark phenomenology”
in a journey that, in the Christian faith, would end with that characterizes life itself:
death and the subsequent appearance in the presence
of God. Mystical consciousness implies becoming one It would seem that the life common to all living
with death while refusing to fulfill the desire to die. It’s beings is ultimately enigmatic and inaccessible
ouroboric—it interrogates itself about its own ontological to thought, since any given instance of the
status. One of the most famous verses in the Spanish living (as subject or object) is not life-in-itself,
literary tradition—“I die because I do not die,” from but only one manifestation of life. It seems
Teresa de Ávila’s poem Vivo sin vivir en mí—resumes there is some residual zone of inaccessibility
the paradoxical nature of mystical consciousness. After that at once guarantees that there is a life-in-
extasis, she has believed to have travelled beyond the itself for all instances of the living, while also
remaining, in itself, utterly obscure. It is precisely

CONSCIOUSNESS
limits of human knowledge, embodying a flesh-changing

CONRAD AIKEN
experience that escapes rationalization. Deeply erotic, the as living subjects, with life given as objects for
mystical experience is an aesthetic experience as well as a us as subjects, that we are cut off from, and yet
technological one: enmeshed within, life in itself.3

the retro-necromancy of the rot god that whispers When confronted by darkness—inner, cosmological,
[input] hears [blackening] and goes back [out-put/ or abyssal darkness—, humans build a machine. Darkness
ek-stasis].1 could only be addressed through speculative aesthetics4

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This is why consciousness and machines appear so the morning, crammed with ideas, and visions,
intimately entangled—both are distinctly human modes and so on, and can’t dislodge them, for lack of the
of exploration6 —that contemporary imagination often right rhythm. Now this is very profound, what
confuses them. The irruption of “conscious machines” rhythm is, and goes far deeper than words. A
is one of the most illuminating myths of our epoch just sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind,
like gods were the major myths during most of the time long before it makes words to fit it; and in writing
humans have been on earth. (such is my present belief) one has to recapture
Twentieth century neuroscience worked on this, and set this working (which has nothing
presenting mystical experience as a neurochemical/ apparently to do with words) and then, as it breaks
neurophysiological disfunction but, as it happens and tumbles in the mind, it makes words to fit it.7
with mental illness, this does not mean that human
consciousness has not been enriched by it. The In the meanwhile, consciousness remained a
ungraspability of extasis shows that our brains—even the philosophical fetish for cognitive neuroscientists (the
augmented collective cognition system we’re part of—are latter work of John C. Eccles and Fanrcis Crick are
no match for the Universe. Actually, it’s not unlikely that good examples), and for the human sciences in general,
what we consider reasoning today was initiated thousands because it seemed to involve a particularly dynamic set of
of years ago by our ancestors’ exploration of the limits of complex biological arrangements that looked unnecessary
human sensory-motor systems. for survival. It looked like, as Steven Shaviro recalls, a
For modern literature, early scientific discussions about superfluous luxury, a Bataillean “expenditure without
consciousness helped to give shape to a poetic structure return.” Furthermore, the word “consciousness” itself was
of the self—informed by the writings of William James, regarded as problematic because its wide use to “insert”
Sigmund Freud, and Henri Bergson as much as by Michel idealistic principles in the natural sciences—evoking
de Montaigne, Blaise Pascal, Fiodor Dostoevski, and concepts that have been deployed largely in fortifying the
some nineteenth century’s mystic artists such as William comfort of what Wilfred Sellars calls the “manifest image,”
Blake—that runs across the work of Henry James, Marcel the inherited, traditional human self-conception.
Proust, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Samuel Beckett,

CONSCIOUSNESS
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among many others. For modernists, writing was a way II.
to let consciousness flow from some—Freudian or not—
hidden unconscious, and style was somehow synonymous In many speculative fictions involving androids (Ex
with that flow: Machina, Blade Runner, the Alien and Terminator sagas,
etc.) there is a recurrent scene in which the protagonist
Style is a very simple matter: it is all rhythm. suddenly discovers that some other main character is
Once you get that, you can’t use the wrong words. not a human being, but a robot. Up to that point, the

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extension, to the unadvised viewer. However, once the for which consciousness is a delusion, a fiction, or a side
machinal nature of the interlocutor has been exposed, after effect of heuristically-processed, ecologically-driven neural
we realize that we’ve been fooled by the android’s human activity. For Bakker:
appearance and behaviour, the fiction of consciousness is
automatically replaced in the viewer’s imagination by the we happen to be a certain biological solution to
programming fiction. This common narrative “revelation” an indeterminate range of ancestral environments,
resource is not just proper to science-fiction, but also an adventitious bundle of fixes to the kinds
popular in the fantastic genre (when the supernatural of problems that selected our forebears. This
nature of a character is revealed), horror stories, and in means that we are designed to take as much of our
mystical texts. The difference in that particular case is that environment for granted as possible—to neglect.
revelation involves a particular dialectics of consciousness This means that human cognition, like animal
versus programming, which often translates as free cognition more generally, is profoundly ecological.
will, autonomy and self-control versus determininsm, And this suggests that the efficacy of human
predictability and calculation. cognition depends on its environments.8
Consciousness, however, has nothing to do with free
will. Consciousness differs from programming because Consciousness is, indeed, a fiction, but eliminative
the former is a way to deal with the unpredictable—it materialism does not seem to fully understand what a
can’t be reduced to a set of rules, no matter how complex fiction is. A fiction is not a solution but an open question;
and exhaustive it might be—so we are entitled to mistrust an ongoing hypothesis, a journey—and more specifically
the android’s predictability because it might be a delusive a returning trip from the outskirts of our capacities to
tool hiding human intention (i.e. the secret intentions grasp reality. It involves heuristic rules but it’s never a set
of its programmer). No matter if the android goes on of fixed, heritable rules. The adventurous bundle of fixes
behaving in a more humane way than humans themselves: mentioned by Bakker has not been selected in some past
it would do it as an imitation game, because it has been time, but it’s being selected as the environment—which
programmed by humans to fake humanity. While it lasted, has never been stable or predictable—changes. Moreover,
android consciousness was the mask, the persona, the often the environment is certainly “dark”, but not a radical “out

CONSCIOUSNESS
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unintended act itself of fooling humans into believing that there” we would need to adapt to. It is an assemblage of
it was human. recursive feed-forward and feedback loops among all the
“Human cognition is thoroughly heuristic,” writes elements of reality, including human beings. We’re part
R. Scott Bakker, “which is to say, thoroughly dependent of the environment, and we change it while it changes us.
on cues reliably correlated to whatever environmental We have become such an essential part of our environment
system requires solution.” Bakker follows Nietzsche, that we have called our present epoch “Anthopocene.”
Sellars, Rorty, Metzinger, Churchland and others in the Consciousness is a fiction, and by being a fiction it’s a

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morphospaces (the ensemble of all “cognitive shapes” thus recognizable and understandable by humans. Much
an organism might be able to adopt across space/time) recent philosophical thinking has been so concerned about
ranging from the assumption that they know that they dismissing human exceptionality that it has approached
know to the rejection of ignoring that they don’t know. this problem in two extreme ways: either consciousness
But consciousness is also an instrument to explore the does not exist (or it’s an irrelevant side effect of data
limits of that cognitive morphospace and the result of an processing), or it’s a general property of complex systems,
evolutionary adaptation for recognizing otherness. Life so it might emerge as a consequence of computation.
works as a permeable metabolic insulation-from-otherness Either machines will have to become conscious when
occurring through membrane exchange. Consciousness, as their abilities to learn and process reality equal the human
perceived by the individual, reflects the complexification of ones, or they would never become conscious because
otherness-recognition patterns, continuously evolving into consciousness is unnecesary, as Steven Shaviro writes in a
an apparently-enclosed semiotic system known as “self.” commentary of Perter Watts’ novel Blindsight:

III. Blindsight suggests…that consciousness

is dysfunctional, a “creaking neurological
The second question often addressed by speculative bureaucracy” that is always getting in the way.
fictions is: what happens to machines when they acquire It does not help us very much in the struggle
(humanoid) consciousness? Not surprisingly, almost all for survival. Indeed, consciousness imposes
those narrations develop around how conscious machines heavy costs upon any organism that has it. In
would interact with humans, and most often they times of danger, “advanced self-awareness is an
reproduce the delusion scheme. Humans seem to be, one unaffordable indulgence”. And even at the best
way or another, necessarily fooled by machines—no matter of times, “It wastes energy and processing power,
if machines are conscious, autonomous and intentional, or self-obsesses to the point of psychosis”.
not. Maybe humans are built to be fooled—les non-dupes
errent, famously wrote Jacques Lacan—and consciousness The critique of human exceptionality often overlooks
evolutionary-shaped human uniqueness. Consciousness

CONSCIOUSNESS
represents a practical way to take an evolutionary

CONRAD AIKEN
advantage from being fooled. is the consequence of a particular human-environment
The hypothesis of consciousness’ emergence in non- interaction and, despite being a recent phenomenon in
biological media is based on the functionalist assumption the history of the Universe, it looks like a remarkable
that “a mind” would spontaneously appear when a system evolutionary advantage. Consciousness should be
is complex enough, independently of the components of the explanable by the same physical laws that (try to) explain
system. In this view, consciousness is something that could any organism-environment interaction: not so different,
be acquired—and, by anthropomorphic extrapolation, any for instance, from the shape or color-shifting abilities

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contextual, not general—in this sense they are not Both Kauffman and Ayache reckon that probabilistical
transferable to other organisms exactly as they are. thinking requires knowing in advance the “sample
Consciousness is an exaptation of neuronal functions, space” within which all possible outcomes are contained.
not a byproduct of computation. It’s a performance of However, biological and techno-cognitive evolution
the body for a Deleuzian becoming across the limits of the change the very shape of this space itself. Organisms
cognitive morphospace. It is a morphing process, thus an are improbable, they exist beyond the very category
aesthetical one. It is not a byproduct of reason or of non- of probability because they don’t just choose among
rational experience, but the same possibility of irrational already-existing possibilities, but change, or expand,
aesthetic experience in an unpredictable environment or even annihilate what is possible. All the unknown
where machine accuracy fails. and unpredictable possible changes of the sample
Stuart Kauffman9 wrote that an organism is a space comprise what I have been calling the “cognitive
hypothesis on the environment. In taking already existing morphospace” of an organism. Organisms, as Ayache once
phenotypic features and detourning them to new uses, wrote about the market, “propose a way of thinking of the
organisms explore what Kauffman calls the “adjacent future that is no longer mediated by knowledge.”
possible of the actual,” and thereby expand the range of While organisms are hypotheses about the
actuality in unforeseen and unforeseeable ways. Organisms environment, machines are meta-hypotheses—similarly
are radically contingent, not deployed in probability to how, in Ayache’s terms, financial derivatives open
fields, and all science can do to know their evolutionary the way to derivatives on derivatives, to bets on bets.
dynamics is to describe them afterwords. As Elie Ayache Machine consciousness, if it ever emerges, would require
explains: the overcoming of probabilistical computing in order
to navigate futures no longer mediated by their own
Probability theory and the metaphysical category knowledge. Consciousness would be, at least for human-
of possibility are based on the notion of “states of built machines (or artificial intelligences which may
the world” (or possible worlds) […] Contingency evolve around the human cognitive morphospace), meta-
is a very general category that is independent of consciousness: an untotalizable, para-deterministic space
the later division of the world into identifiable of knowledge about human knowledge.

CONSCIOUSNESS
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states or the recognition of the different possible The problem faced by cognitive neurocomputing
worlds that the world might be. Metaphysical is that no one has been yet able to clearly separate
thought later works contingency into the notion “subjectivity” from “objectivity.” It is possible that the
of separable possible states. However, pure and boundaries of the scientific method—the same limits
absolute (and initial) contingency only minimally that made it so successful in producing performative
says that the world or that the things could have been and reproducible models of reality—might require to
different.10 (Emphasis is mine) set this problem aside. Until now, neither eliminativist

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have allowed us to undo the knot. Maybe it was never that, from our viewpoint as humans, is necessarily
meant to be undone. As Shaviro says: anthropic but shouldn’t be anthropocentric.

Bogost and Harman both provide aesthetic ———————————

responses to Nagel’s dilemma. For Bogost’s
analogy and Harman’s allusion do not claim 1 Anonymous. Depressive Noise Symposium. 2016
to reconcile first-person phenomenological 2  Metzinger, Thomas. Being No One. The Self-Model
introspection with third-person objective Theory of Subjectivity. The MIT Press, 2003.
observation and scientific experimentation. If
3  Thacker, Eugene. “Darrklife: Negation, Nothingness,
anything, they suggest that such a reconciliation and the Will-To- Life in Shopenhauer.” Parrhesia 12,
is impossible. Instead, Bogost and Harman offer 12–27. 2011
approaches that are irreducible alike to first person
identification and to third person verification. 4  Shaviro, Steven. Discognition. Repeater, 2016.
These analogies and allusions are not empirically 5  Mackay, Robin; Pendrell, Luke and Trafford, James.
testable; but they also cannot be determined by Speculative Aesthetics. Urbanomic, 2014.
means of reason, intuition, or eidetic reduction. 6  It is arguable that consciousness might be a distinctly
Rather, they unfold in an aesthetic dimension: one human feature. Consciousness has been attributed to
that is neither scientific nor strictly philosophical, many organisms such as other non-human mammals,
and that is oblique to both subjectivity and cephalopoda or slime molds by several neuroscientists and
objectivity. Such an aesthetic approach is philosophers. However, a general theory of consciousness
programmatically that of science fiction. (Emphais (like, for instance, discussing if human consciousness is
is mine.) qualitatively or just quantitatively different from other
organisms’ cognitive milieu) is well beyond the scope of
this article, so I am specifically referring here to what we
Human and non-human beings belong together commonly understand as “human consciousness.”
in networks across which agency and consciousness
are distributed. Maybe the best way to approach the 7  Woolf , Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf, Volume

CONSCIOUSNESS
CONRAD AIKEN
III, 1923–1928. Harvest Books, 1980.
study of consciousness is by first admitting that it’s a
peculiar, aesthetic, and erotic way to explore a perpetually 8  Bakker, R. Scott. “Crash Space.” Midwest Studies in
unknowable otherness—that it is never there, it can’t Philosophy, 39: 186–204, 2015
be programmed, but can be written. It is precisely 9  Kauffman, Stuart. Reinventing the Sacred: A New View
its inaccuracy, fictionality, and heuristic character— of Science, Reason, and Religion. Basic Books, 2010.
alternative and complementary to both computation 10  Ayache, Elie. The End of Probability. The Best Writing
and conceptual normativity—what provides it with the on Mathematics, 213, 2013

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ecological robustness required in a cognitive morphospace

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THE SCOFIELD

PRISMA PRISMA

Germán Sierra is a Brian Smith is a writer and

neuroscientist and fiction teacher. He lives in New Orleans
writer from Spain. He has and admits an unhealthy
published five novels—El obsession with Walker Percy.
Espacio Aparentemente Perdido, In this issue, he recommends
La Felicidad no da el Dinero, Conrad Aiken’s story
Efectos Secundarios, Intente collection The Collected Short
usar otras palabras, and Stories in our Ports of Entry
Standards—and a book of short stories, Alto Voltaje. This section and Walker Percy’s novel The Moviegoer in our
issue features his essay “From the Mystical Text to the Aikenesque section.
Machine: Aesthetical Approaches to Consciousness.”
Carmen Giménez Smith is
May Sinclair was the publisher of Noemi Press and
pseudonym of Mary Amelia author of five books, including
St. Clair, a British writer of Milk and Filth. She co-edited
poetry and prose. She was Angels of the Americlypse: New
also a significant critic who is Latin@ Writing, an anthology
credited as the first to use the of contemporary Latinx
term “stream of consciousness” writing (Counterpath Press,
in a literary context, in an 2014). The poems in this
essay discussing the novels of Dorothy Richardson. This issue are from a forthcoming volume in the City Lights
issue features an excerpt from her essay “The Novels Spotlight series. This issue features her poems “A Set of
of Dorothy Richardson” in our compilation of literary Conspiracy Theories” and “Being There.”
critics on consciousness in literature, “Nothing But the
Stream to Be Conscious Of.”

CONSCIOUSNESS
CONRAD AIKEN
Peter Singer is an Australian
moral philosopher. He is
perhaps best known for his
1975 book Animal Liberation.
Conor Higgins interviewed
him for this issue.

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