Unpacking The Complexity of The Homonym Site/Sight/Cite
jan jagodzinski
London Calling! (the Symbolic Cite)
On September 21, 2005 I received a personal letter (figure 1) from Peter London, a well-established figure in visual art education. It was hand written on his personal designer letterhead. This is what he stated given that the scanned original is difficult to read.
fig. 1
Dear Jan. 9/20
I
read your call for manuscripts in the NAEA Newsletter—with dismay. For a
Journal of Social Theory in Art Education could be written in such arcane,
obscure, stilted verbage (sic.) is appalling – and points to the bemused
and befuddled way in which we (art educations –being those alert enough
to be interested in social issues) are viewed by our society.
Who
outside of a precious few—understand what you mean by your use oh so
clever, and oh so fashionable phrasing: global, imploded moments of time,
absent dialectic, deframing, and such. Indeed you did take a chance on this one
and missed a chance to be understood.
Sincerely,
Peter London
His comments were squarely directed
to the description I had written (fined tuned by Karen Keifer-Boyd) for the
call for papers on the homonym site/sight/cite for this journal. For first time
readers of JSTAE who have not come across this particular description, this is
how it appeared in the Social Caucus Column of the NAEA News, as well on the website (http://explorations.sva.psu.edu/cstae/journal/submit05.html):
Our theme this year
works with a homology that has been dear to jan throughout his writings. It is
a trope that speaks very well to LacanÕs three psychic registers, but authors
need not follow this particular track. Jan, though, will play with the
possibilities, tagging Lacan along when possible.
Site
refers normally to a coordinated space, a ground, something local. But we know
that the local and the global (the so called ÒglocalÓ) provide us with fractal
geometries where spaces have become imploded into moments of time. A flat earth
overlayed with the global sphere requires new imaginings. So what is out of
site in art education? Lisa Parks, for example, tackles the satellite image in
her Cultures in Orbit. Is there anyone out there who might search out imagery in
which many art educators would say lies ÒoutsideÓ our accepted sphere, like
imagery from current science, from marketing, from chemistry, from mathematics?
Site
can also be the psychic place of the Lacanian Real. This is a site that has no
coordinates. For Lacan, the Real is beyond both the Imaginary and the Symbolic
psychic registers. Site, therefore, can be thought of in terms of time—as
DeleuzeÕs pure time (aion)—and the disappearance of materiality
(i.e., dematerialization) as Virilio, since 1983, has told us in his Aesthetics
of Disappearance. Hence, are there art educators who are willing to write about
the digitalized time images of computer art and offer their in(sites) on what
is out of site? ÒOut of site,Ó therefore, might play with both the present and
absent dialectic.
ÒOut
of sight,Ó in Lacanian terms, is much easier since art educators can find
themselves on some familiar ground. Sight as vision offers art educators a wide
landscape of possibilities.
We
invite essays that explore visual regimes that have become established in our
public schools or art departments. ÒOut of sightÓ might interrogate current
ideals, territories, and debates concerning visual cultural education, since
this was a distant horizon first discussed in JSTAE in 1980 and is now looming
closer in mainstream art education. ÒOut of sightÓ might provide us with
concerns over our televised, cinematic images that come at us through popular
culture. For Lacan, sight was always a form of misrecognition, a form of
ÒignoranceÓ as brilliantly explored by Magritte. We are all framed by images.
So, we invite essays that question representation to de-frame it.
Lastly
cite refers to the word, to text. For Lacan, this was the symbolic order, the
level of discourse, the signifier which always tries to ground representation.
ÒOut of citeÓ might be an exploration between image and text. Enough is already
out there to make this a fruitful area of discussion for art educators. Even
the journal Art and Text was created for this question. What are the ways to
theorize, practice and approach these two disparate systems without collapsing
one into the other? How can we work the gap between them? Furthermore, what
voices are not cited in art education literature? Even the history of JSTAE not
being listed with NAEA publications is an area of exploration for the theme,
Òout of cite.Ó
Potential
authors, hopefully will see this theme—out of site/sight/cite—as a
rich homology to be explored in ways that will help the journalÕs mandate to
continue to come to terms with the changed imaged-world around us—now the
world of screen images. Take chances with this theme. Attempt to open up
questions that are needed for us to come to terms with todayÕs decentered
image. It seems that Òart institutionsÓ in all their generic forms can no
longer hold images hostage, so to speak. They are to be found everywhere. We
look forward to you contributions.
I, of course, found LondonÕs accusation rather intolerable given that Peter had never whispered anything about the Caucus in the twenty-six years of its existence, until now of course, nor had he ever written anything for the journal, nor had he ever given support for the existence of the Caucus that I know of. Obviously, there was something more that irritated him, otherwise he would have dismissed the description as not worthy to respond to. The description had become his anxious object. Something within it bothered him so much that he felt compelled to write a personal letter to let me know that the intent of the ÒwordsÓ had come Òtoo closeÓ to him because of their jargon and obscurity, as if he was not privy to something that was going on. So, he had to abject them, throw them back at me.
So I fired off a letter back to him (fig.2)
fig. 2
The reader will notice that the letter was returned to me since it failed to reach its destination. I was unable to read his return address on the original posted letter. I thought the address on his envelope said Vermont. The secret of its contents will remainÉjust thatÉ a secret. To those who are devoted advocates of DerridaÕs work will find redemption in claiming that the letter does not always arrive at its destination. It can end up in the postal poubelle, forever lost. However, others—particularly Lacanian psychoanalysts—dispute DerridaÕs claim and maintain that all letters eventually find their destination—as the return of the repressed. This is a return of the repressed response. When the letter arrived, I hesitated. Rather than re-mailing it, I e-mailed Peter and asked him to present a more formal response, since I told him I was going to use his letter as part of my editorial response. Of course, I was trying to bait him into making his private response public. HereÕs what he e-mailed and snail mailed on November 29, 2006 (fig.3).
fig. 3
November 26, 2005
Dear Jan, [capitalized,
Peter is not case sensitive]
I find it interesting
that you wish to publish, in a professional journal, a private correspondence,
especially so, being that my comments reflect poorly on your use of language in
your call for manuscripts. I can only surmise that you are a most honest man,
or that you have some other intentions. Be that as it may, I appreciate your
forewarning me of your intentions and inviting me to accompany my original
letter to you with a more considered piece for public consumption.
My brief (more
colorfully expressed in my original letter) is simply this; it is incumbent on
every author to write in an understandable manner. It is particularly so when
one writes from within a field that is poorly understood and weakly
appreciated. This is even more important an admonition for a field that
addresses the relationship of that field to the general intellectual and social
communities. Your call for manuscripts - true, to members of your own field-
employed esoteric jargon, the meaning of which was not clear to me, and not
clear to a number of other members of our profession, As such, it could hardly
be clear to readers outside our professional circle. Use of language that employs such devices may be clever and au
courant,
but what is the point of that?
Thank you for the
opportunity to write, in more measured words, my original intentions.
Sincerely,
Peter London
As fate would have it, on Sunday March 26, 2006, I ÒaccidentallyÓ bumped into Peter going into the last session of the NAEA, Chicago, in the very room where I had just finished my presentation. I shook his hand and forewarned him that I would respond. ÒYouÕre in trouble,Ó I said. So, whatÕs the ÒtroubleÓ in the ÒtroubleÓ? As London asks, Òwhat is the point of that?Ó
The London Fog (The Imaginary
Sight)
I will not belabor readers of this journal, yet again, how these three homologous signifiers justify the three psychic registers of Lacanian psychoanalysis—almost all writers in this collection took one of the signifiers to develop their essays. Only two writers developed ÒsiteÓ into its Lacanian opposite—as the disappearance of geographical coordinates of space and time, and not their location. Others took ÒciteÓ to refer to those art educators who were not ÒcitedÕ by the broader field rather than seeing ÒciteÓ as the ground for contested discourses that circle and appropriate key signifiers. ÒSightÓ became an obvious trope without calling on LacanÕs claim that this is where misrecognition occurs, and so on. My hope to open up the discourse of psychoanalysis in the field of visual and cultural art education, in this particular journal, was by and large unsuccessful.
The tact I wish to take, to answer threatened readers like Peter London, is to deconstruct his call to clarity but illustrating that this is a misguided accusation—rather than lifting the fog, it inadvertently creates denser smog. So what irritated London so much to cause him to strike? Obviously because for him the call for manuscripts was Òso clearly not clear.Ó[1] London was not about to take time to understand its Òmeaning through extended and careful consideration,Ó but to immediately recognize it as self-evident non-sense—jargon. LondonÕs logic depended on a radical decontextualization; it is a logic that betrays Òits own kind of essentially speaking: res ipsa loquitur—the thing speaks for itself.Ó
The accusation of the failure of clarity is always played over a ÒsiteÓ of decontextualization as an idealized nowhere place where Òacademics and non-academics congenially unite.Ó Here, London prefaces such a ÒsiteÓ by maintaining that Òwhen one writes from within a field that is poorly understood and weakly appreciatedÓ clarity is needed. ItÕs those non-academics [practicing art teachers?] that are just too stupid to understand the jargon, thereby disavowing that he too is one of those stupid people who does not understand. But, through the accusation of non-clarity he disavows his own ignorance since Òit was not clear to him,Ó claiming superiority because it should have been ÒclearÓ to him. London elevates Òthe thing [language] speaking for itself [clearly] to be the status of an ideal for teachingÓ and for the field of art education itself since it is as he says (again) Òpoorly understood and weakly appreciated.Ó But by whom? —by those ignoramuses Ôout there,Õ those non-academics. So, if he as an academic canÕt get it, surely ÔtheyÕ wonÕt either.
The result of LondonÕs Òlogic of repudiationÓ as a representative who champions the cause of those ÔotherÕ readers and students who just donÕt understand—where jargon is refused for the Òsake of clarity and accessibility,Ó and ÒdangerÓ is refused Òthrough the enshrinement of the right to safetyÓ —leads to Òthe idealization of the thing speaking for itselfÓ and Òlegitimates a radical refusal to teach.Ó Lacan maintains that Òthe thing never speaks for itself,Ó that within the cite of transparent clear language lies the obscurity of its own site (its decontextualization).
LondonÕs aphorism concerning the clarity of language is the essential belief that, as academics, we must be good translators—able to take complex material and break it down to reach a wider audience. This is good pedagogical practice, something that I violated. The common sense notion that ÒeverythingÓ can be said clearly to reach ÒeveryoneÓ has such a strong feeling of democracy about it (according to London, in his hand written letter, I had missed the boat by not reaching out); if only I had written the call for manuscripts in plain language, ÒeveryoneÓ would have understood it. This claim enables London to take the high ground as a moral defender of those disenfranchised by the jargon. This transcendental claim of democracy enables London to posit himself as an ideal self, the ÔoneÕ capable of enacting this fantasy of an ideal democracy, which he is capable of imagining as a stable, reassured ego. This was precisely why Lacan took such an ideal self, as developed in the imaginary mirror that provides a Òreassuring, manageable, and stable Gestalt,Ó to be plagued by misrecognition (mŽconnaisance). It is the curse of an ideal transparent pedagogy. What masquerades itself as a defender of democracy on the grounds of transparent language, is a disguised ideal Master who sets himself up as an ideologue. The presumption of the Ògeneral accessibility of languageÓ as Òthe condition of inclusiveness and communicationÓ has something very sinister about it—some sort of dark stain has appeared in the transparency of language as an object of desire. Sinister, as we know, is Latin for left. Was the accusation made by London against the Left—an unconscious desire to replace it with his own particular left? I shall return to this possibility later. To evoke Foucault here, is LondonÕs call to a regime of transparent writing to regulate the future of the Social Caucus call for papers an exemplary case of a Ôregime of truthÕ as disguised by his Master narrative?
This Òregime of writing (and reading) invoked by clarity must deny itself in order to vanish.Ó This is how London can himself become transparent like the language he is seeking to promote. ÒInsofar as plain language Ôspeaks for itselfÕ its legibility is posited as being not contingent on anything more than language reduced to instrumental communication.Ó ÒKnowledge that can be handled and transmitted as objects can perhaps be best taught plainly and clearly.Ó Too many educators have come across the critique of Ôbanking educationÕ to continue this critique here. London emerges not the defender of democracy but an enforcer of a narrow pedagogical desire of the classical literary canon that collates clear writing with common sense, a desire Lacan had exposed—time and time again.
Lacan made it a point to radicalize pedagogy by questioning what is intelligible, disrupting the glib claim of teaching which maintains a Òspecific linguistic correlationÓ where Òintelligibility turns on legibility, and legibility turns on reading.Ó As Lacan put it,
To make oneself understood is not the same thing as teaching—it is the opposite. One only understands what one thinks one already knows. More precisely, one never understands anything but a meaning whose satisfaction or comfort one has already felt. IÕll say it to you in a way you wonÕt understand: one never understands anything but oneÕs fantasies. And one is never taught by anything other than what one doesnÕt understand, i.e., by nonsense. (Television, xxvi).
The London fog begins to slowly drift in, creating a fantasy space of clarity to find comfort in the dismissal of jargon—creating the paradoxical frame for a clear fog. The Òseductiveness of plain languageÓ is ÒpreciselyÓ its instantaneous uptake, its consummerabilty into fantasy where comfort can be immediately taken by the self-assured ego. ÒClarity is associated with writing that is transparent to ideas. Language thus becomes clear when it makes itself disappear, so that the ideas that it represents can be grasped in themselves. É Clarity aims at an impossible ideal of telepathy, where thoughts from one mind are directly communicated to another, in a perfect transmission, as if its medium is not there at all.Ó This is what Derrida also referred to as Òphonocentrism,Ó and his attempt to deconstruct this claim by comparing it to its false binary—writing. The homology site/sight/cite specifically tries to escape this binary dualism between the spoken and written word—the former being transparent and ephemeral, while the latter being material and opaque. When the homology is pronounced it loses its density, it is only through writing that one can grasp the complexity of its three interwoven signifiers.
The primary definition of jargon is not Òspecialist vocabularyÓ but Ògibberish.Ó It is language that Òsomeone or some institution is satisfied to repudiate as unintelligible,Ó providing Òa kind of legitimatized liberation from reading it.Ó Put differently, itÕs not unlike the Greeks who called those who could not speak their language ÒbarbariansÓ because all the sounds that came from their mouths sounded like Òbar-barÓ—nonsense. Doug Aoki is so good here that I must quote him at full length.
Plain language is championed for its populism and set explicitly against the posited elitism of private language, but any condemnation of jargon necessarily leads to nothing other than the constitution of a new elite: those who are both intelligent enough to recognize what is jargon and artful enough to write texts that are free of it. The call for clear writing is therefore a form of eliticism presenting itself as democracy, positing its self-determined standard as the ideal for all writing and teaching, while presuming to be acting in the name of all people and all readers. And eliticism is always a refusal of someone.
Adorno punningly called this the Òjargon of authenticity.Ó At that time he was referring to phenomenology, which always claims it has first grabs on the Ôessence of thingsÕ through poetic language. London is disturbed by the barbarian that resides within him, which he sees manifested in the jargon ridden call for papers—words that glare back at him, which he must now abject. This barbarism strikes out and attacks the phobic object that annoys him, which gives a hint as to the smog that haunts him from within. This is where his uncanny Real self resides—the Ôstranger within,Õ as Julia Kristeva named it.
There is another aspect that emerges when LacanÕs call to teaching is taken seriously. By demonstrating that the Òclarity of the Ôart of teachingÕ is not so clearÓ brings with it just the opposite—the ÔartÕ in the Ôart of teachingÕ turns out to be Òa text of consummate opacity and complexity.Ó ÒIn a Lacanian reading, safety [of clear language] means danger.Ó In contrast, the professor who ÔteachesÕ places students in danger—s/he shatters or at least shakes up their worlds, their safe frames of references. Such a professor is a ÒmurdererÓ of sorts, since s/he murders safety, making it impossible. Institutionally, Òthe student has the right to safetyÓ and yet beliefs and opinions within the Academy are meant to be challenged. The result is a divided Òacademic subject, whether student or professorÓ who is conflicted Òinto two parts: the intellectual, whose safety is purposefully suspended, and what the university calls the personal, whose safety is a core right.Ó This mind/body split is what makes any ÔclearÕ sense of safety a Òlogical deadlock.Ó Personal safety is established Òas the very ground of intellectual perilÓ as any teacher or student can tell you who has experienced an infamous critique of their artwork(s) by an art professor. The artwork is the intellectual property that is to be divorced from the body that produced it. ÒThe University guarantees a safe Ôpersonal spaceÕ for its subjects for the express purpose of exposing them to intellectual danger.Ó Hence, this reply to London is anything but polite. It is rather the doing away with the catch 22 of Academic safety. It becomes dangerous. His letter was not polite, but Ôcolorful.Õ ItÕs better that the critique becomes ÒpersonalÓ since then there are no pretenses in contrast to an aggressively coated well-mannered discourse where violence is only heightened by the very contrast of an outright attack. Egos are continually being ÔwoundedÕ in the Academy through the various acceptances and rejections of papers, books and juried artworks. LacanÕs basic insight is that subjectivity (moi) is a fraught relation of an imaginary identity to both symbolic/linguistic performances that both sustain and threaten that identity, as well as to the workings of the unconscious, which harbors yet another subjectivity (Je) that concomitantly represses and jibes the ego towards transgression.
The London Smog (The Real Site)
It is a rudimentary principle of Derridean diffŽrance that signifiers are always slipping. Lacan was in agreement with this general condition of language, claiming that the signifier was always sliding over the continuum from which the signifier was being selected. The recoding of key signifiers that hold beliefs in place is the contested zone of ideology. When key signifiers begin to decenter in meaning—for example, what is considered a documentary today is undergoing massive restructuring as the fact-fiction divide begins to slip and slide—we have now cinema veritŽ, mockumentaries, docuHoaxes, digidocs, docudramas, docuphantasy, and so on—the very foundations of the ego are shaken. Clarity is always unstable—letÕs call LondonÕs fog a necessary evil that we have to live with—which happens to be movement itself—the creative act of becoming as life itself. This shows that translation (from complex to ÔsimpleÕ ideas) is not a Òrelation of language to ideas, complex or otherwise,Ó but has to do more with Òone language to another, Ó the network of constructed signs. There is a gap between these signs and their imaginary signification, a gap where LondonÕs fog seeps in and must be blown away to give the illusion of clarity. The displacement of one signifier by another in an act of translation is true of all language—plain or complex. ÒEven plain language [and clear writing] must be translated; even teaching must be constantly reread, rewritten, reinterpreted, and relocated.Ó For the practical Imaginary, the Òsignified is sufficiently captured by our discourse for everyday purposes.Ó However, the moment we attempt to ÔtrulyÕ and ÔessentiallyÕ pin down the exact definition of the way things are, they become messy. And, ethically education is about what is messy, not what is squeaky clean, transparent and plain. We must conclude that Òa fundamental and inescapable unclarity is immanent to clarity.Ó And this is the lesson of LacanÕs above stated comment concerning the act of teaching . ÒThe translation of complex ideas necessitates engagement with those ideas. The Ôart of teachingÕ is thus definitionally linked with what is not immediately understandable, with exactly the opposite of its graspable object.
And, so it is with London. Within the fog that covers up the clear day there
is a massive amount of impenetrable smog that remains repressed—ready to strangle those caught up in its web should the contingent moment appear. And, it did on Sept. 20, 2005 the day he hand wrote the letter after reading the call for papers. London bills himself as a holistic art teacher. He is the author of Drawing Closer to Nature—the title is a double entendre on the thesis the book presents: Through art we are ÔdrawnÕ closer to the mystery of Nature, and through art we are able to capture its essences. His ideological orientation is aligned with deep ecology of Arnold Naess, Fritjof Capra, Tom LovejoyÕs Gaia hypothesis, and so on. All life is interconnectedÉwe are all somehow intertwined, affected by mystical forces we will never fully understand. But, as artists, we must suffer, and try to capture the transcendental essence of things, the Žlan vital of things, even though we will ultimately fail at our tasks, the processes is all worth it. It is cathartic and self-purifying. (After writing this, I almost signed myself up to start ÔdrawingÕ with him!) His workshops have been conducted at the famous Schumacher College noted as Ôan international center for ecological studies.Õ It is sort of a Mecca, a place of pilgrimage to find community by all sorts of global ÔsoulsÕ looking to find ÔtrueÕ Nature out on its surrounding moors, which are prone to mists and changes of mood and atmosphere...becoming positively sublime. So, through art the essence of Nature is revealed evoking the heights of Heideggerian transcendental flurries into finding der Weg (the Way) with the artist's work bringing the earth into the Open (Lichtung) of the artist's world. You can ÔwalkÕ with Richard Long at Schumacher College and ÔdoÕ art at the same time by becoming involved in environmental ethics—all very noble endeavors. To become involved in poetic revealing through art has such a seductive ring to it, who can refuse? In this mystical poetic world of transcendental Being, Oneness will be found. Spirituality is a longing—an algia in our postmodern technologized world.
It is not difficult to identify the utopian organicism of such an ecological vision. ItÕs all over LondonÕs personalized designer letterhead of half globes that ÔpeerÕ out the sides of his letter. The vision sounds so interconnected and universally idealÉagain, who could refuse? There is that same sense of crystal clear health and wellness about it where people come together to celebrate the EarthÉpagans and Christians alike as one big holistic family. Small is beautiful. It does little good to critique this notion for its Romanticization of Nature, as a self-acclaimed postmodern form of becoming a Noble Savage, like Gauguin tried to do; an escape from the decadence of what was then post-Colonialism, now global capitalism. Belief systems are fantasy formations supported by an intricate symbolic structure of significations—and deep ecology discourse has developed and changed itself to match—step-by-step—the technocratization of the globe by corporate capitalist greed. They form a binary whose choice should not be either/or but worse or more worse. London was expecting the Caucus on Social Theory to have come on board with this critique—which is what I think he implied in his letter given that Peter sees himself as concerned with social issues. Instead he faced a barrage of nonsense that spewed out and engulfed him. When I read his hand written letter, the designer half-globes became for me uncanny objects—like eyeballs of surveillance rather than the reminder of the complexity and fragility of the earth they were meant to convey as my own frame of reference became shaken. But, all that remains sealed in the letter that never reached him.
The moors surrounding Schumacher College are often idealized for their beauty and arresting changes of color and light. But, how often is the fear of their changeability repressed? The way when a fog sets in, one becomes totally disorientated—lost. Walking in directions that end up elsewhere than expected, discoverable only when the fog mercifully lifts and the clear sky and horizon are seen again. It is in such moments of disorientation that the familiar becomes unfamiliar. The canny object becomes uncanny, when the psychic register of the Real bursts through as sight/cite disappears and we find ourselves facing our own anxiety. This is the site of learning, a meeting up with non(sense) and our own ignorance about ourselves. The controlled and distant objects of perception that frame vision have become too close. What was beautiful is drained of its desire and becomes ugly and threatening. Things inverse: ÔBig is beautiful in its ugliness.Õ This is not an experience of NatureÕs sublimity É the sublime (after Kant) suggests that such moments of anxiety can be overcome through a superior supersensible (masculine) strength and force—the dynamic sublime. É or through (feminine) flow through ÔartÕ as the ecofeminists maintain, which helps reestablish the fantasy frame of Imaginary control—the mathematical sublime. But that frame bursts apart by the smog of the object when it changes—when it becomes too close or too big to be grasped sublimely. Here lies the difference between the two visions of teaching. Lacan would have us face the risks of the danger that always threatens the paranoid structure of our egos where aggressivity abounds. London would have us go back to framing the fog through art in the safety of the Imaginary. ItÕs easier to re-frame the fog than face the smog within it.
And so it seemed to be the case when London read the call for papers. The clear vision that he imagined he should read to further the deep ecological juggernaut was not to be found. Instead some impenetrable discourse of nonsense confronted him, shattering his complicit frame of serenity. He took pen in hand and began to ÒcolorfullyÓ write—a euphemism for his anger. The gentle spiritual ecologist became a pissed off critic, revealing the London smog that always policies what threatens the frame of its Imaginary ego. The ego is a paranoid structure according to Lacan, making us realize that teaching does not happen when we simply bask in the frames of our egos, but actively try and work through what threatens them. Ironically, Ôcloser to NatureÕ are the forces of the drives (FreudÕs Triebe), repressed by our unconscious under ÔnormalÕ circumstances. ÒThe repudiation of jargon Éis the outraged refusal of the word.Ó Hence, Òthe act of teachingÓ becomes the very opposite of this missed opportunity. It becomes Òa practice where the miraculous, the definitively human, and the paradigmatically pedagogical are inverted as exemplary failures of both writing and teaching.Ó É Otherwise we continue to remain ignorant of our Real selves.
This is my final curtain call as
editor of JSTAE. I wish to thank Bill Wightman for the past few years in being
such a supportive co-editor. And, I wish the very best to Wanda Knight, who,
along with Bill, will be co-editor for our next journal on Possibilities/Possibilities.
I wish to thank Arthur Guagliumi whose collaboration on the cover designs over
many years has been fruitful and inspirational; itÕs a longstanding friendship
that has never broken down. Lastly, I wish to thank all those who have helped
me by way of referring journal articles. This is always the most trying and
difficult of tasks since the range of convictions is, as in any organization
that tries to be democratic, right across the political spectrum, even when we
all lean to the Left. Bye for now. As they say, Ôthanks for the memories.Õ