Lecture by Franco “Bifo” Berardi
The explosion of the semiotic sphere, the utter intensification of semiotic stimulation has provoked simultaneously an enhancement of the horizon of possibility and a panic effect in the social neuro-system. Panic marks the inability of Reason to master the dissipating flow of events and enunciations both in the info-sphere and in the psycho-sphere. Schizophrenia may be defined as an over-inclusive mode of interpretation: schizophrenic thought appears to “over-include” various irrelevant objects and environmental cues in the interpretation of an enunciation; the schizo seems unable to limit attention to task-relevant stimuli, because of an excessive broadening of conceptual classes to incorporate stimuli falling beyond the boundaries defined by relevant cues. This is why Félix Guattari sees the schizo as the bearer of paradigmatic change (of chaosmosis, in Guattari’s parlance). The schizo in fact is the person who has lost the ability to perceive the limits of metaphoric enunciation and tends to take the metaphor as a description. The horizon of possibility marks the space of a chaotic field, the dimension in which a possible new order of meaning can emerge.
© Film and Production by Dusan Solomun
