text || Alan Sondheim

Why Spencer Brown is Wrong

"The idea that everything is understood can be indicated by revolving the
Pradesini (index) finger and also eye-sight and by pressing the Alapadma
pose.

"The sound to be heard should be indicated by contacting the ear (with the
palm) and the objects to be seen by appropriate looks. Things pertaining
to over [one's ?] self, to others or to some one should also be expressed
by the different looks.

"The performer should indicate lightning (the falling of) meteor, thunder,
of the cloud, the sparks and the flame and the whip by contracting the
body and narrowing the eyes."

-- from Priyabala Shah, Art of Dancing (Classical and Folk Dances)

It's impossible to believe that the logical foundation of the physical
world doesn't originate (isn't tied in) with the Sheffer stroke and its
dual; this isn't about the foundations of (abstract) logic, but the
ontological nowhere implied by "neither A nor B" - expulsion - as well as
"not both A and B" which, like negation itself, points elsewhere. Not both
A and B however is constructed around a kernel or Pale; anything else,
abstract or otherwise, is acceptable. But neither A nor B opens up an
uninscribed and possibly fissured space; nothing is present. Both Sheffer
and dual are generators of the propositional logic; both participate in
the desert of ontology that ensues.

If S.B. is going to draw a distinction, he's already plummeted through
Merleau-Ponty. If he's going to construct an imaginary, he's run through
Husserl's internal time-consciousness as well.

"not both a and b. neither a nor b.": are nothing, tokens, graphemes,
textual displacements, koan. S.B., there's nowhere to go; he insists on
traveling, dragging the body with him, all well and good, but already a
physics drawing a logic drawing a physics etc.

What's unmarked is marked as unmarked; what's marked is unmarked as
marked. A mark is always already. A mark has nothing to do with this text.

or its dual for example as the basis - neither a nor b - not both a and b
the same, not both a and b, neither a nor b

dual: "neither A nor B"; Sheffer: "not both A and B"; the fundamental

But meaning may be produced even out of tautology. For example, proposi-
tional logic may be derived from the Sheffer stroke, "not both A and B";
it can also be derived from its dual, "neither A nor B." What can we say
about these? Only that they represent, as processes or cullings of
particular bounded universes, an unbinding/unbounding - "neither A nor B"
points elsewhere altogether, and "not both A and B" points either else-
where or towards an underpinning of union. At the heart of this reduction
of propositional logic is a tendency towards dispersion, wandering, the
nomadic, even though the symbols within the calculus proper are completely
mute. The Sheffer stroke and its dual are related as well to the processes
of inscription - for what is x^-x, than an inscription of an entity, a
process of coding (and all coding is inscription of one form or another)
the real for the purposes of comprehension, a process that produces, not
only meaning, but all the meaning there is. There is no outside to the
sememe, just as there is no landscape without a viewpoint. In this sense
we are bounded, bound to be bounded.

not both A and B well I never stroke A|B, not both A and B, and its dual
AYB, the hidden V conjoint, Sheffer stroke, not both A and B, and its
dual, neither A nor B, as a domain. The work relies on the Sheffer stroke*
("not both A and B") B' points elsewhere altogether, and 'not both A and
B' points either 0: neitherness, not both A and B, neither A nor B (a
priori mathesis) 0, 0': neitherness, not both A and B, neither A nor B (a
priori mathesis).

emotions or prime numbers; bricks or philosophy. Obscenity is valuable
in its valuelessness; it works, working through nothing; it is contrary
or wayward, contradiction; obscenity occurs within the Sheffer stroke

Therefore "by default": given that there is none, that there is none
other; our ethos: subsummation of the other; recuperation of the other
within the same; recuperation of the same within the other.

poetry remains elsewhere (neither A nor B). For that matter, text is never

neither A nor B - signifiers of expulsion, building blocks of logic.
Sheffer stroke, not both A and B, and its dual, neither A nor B. In order
that h. is _neither here nor there,_ _neither A nor B._ So and its dual
("neither A nor B") to construct a logical picture bolstered by "neither A
nor B," which, I have shown in other texts, and B'; it can also be derived
from its dual, 'neither A nor B.' What can "neither A nor B"; in its
elsewhere; in its range outside the organization

particular, neitherness, neither a nor b, throws the phenomenological
or its dual for example as the basis - neither a nor b - not both a and b

Negation: chain/elsewhere/classical/non-classical/neither a nor b/a|b
Chain: not-A goes somewhere else; not-not-A is not an automatic return,
doesn't cohere.