Multifractals and literature

Here's an interesting article on literature and multifractals. Therein it is revealed that stream of consciousness literature was most representative of multifracticity (aka Multipli City). Multifracticity itself 'interweaves' other fractals, thereby displaying synius behavior. This appears to support my thesis stated many times in the Ning forum that its structure is more stream of consciousness than linearly structured academic writing. Hence the former is more an enactment of multifractivism. Interesting indeed.

I'm also reminded of this article by Hayles. An excerpt:


"Derrida's deconstructive methodology is strikingly similar to the mathematical techniques of chaos theory. Recall that Feigenbaum attributed the universal element in chaotic systems to the fact that they were generated from iterative functions. He showed that for certain functions, individual differences in the equations are overwhelmed as iteration proceeds, so that even though the systems become chaotic, they do so in predictable or regulated ways. Derrida claims that his iterative methodology is similarly regulated, in the sense that its production of undecidables is not a capricious exercise but a rigorous exposition of the text's inherent indeterminacies. For both Derrida and Feigenbaum, iterative methodology is closely tied in with the concept of the fold. Feigenbaum showed that systems which make orderly transitions to chaos always have folds in their iterative paths. Within the complex regions created by these folds, orbits wander in unpredictable ways. Where does this unpredictability come from? Since the iterative formulae and computer programs that enact them are perfectly deterministic, it could only come from the initial conditions. Iteration produces chaos because it magnifies and brings into view these initial uncertainties. Similarly, Derrida attributes textual indeterminacy to the inherent inability of linguistic systems to create an origin. In Derrida, the fold marks the absence of an origin, just as the inability to specify initial conditions with infinite accuracy marks the onset of chaos for Feigenbaum. Thus nonlinear dynamics and deconstruction share not just a general attitude toward chaos, but specific methodologies and assumptions.”

This also relates to my recent ruminations in another thread about putting new wine in old wineskins. We have all these great new ideas floating about but if we are restricted to forcing them into the traditional academic format and language (old wineskin), which typically only validates itself while marginalizing more open-ended forum or discussion groups, aren't we enacting the same old paradigm of which this practice is a part? Which, by the way, is why I appreciated LP's recent thread about his aesthetic writing on Gebser. 

Also see Gardnier's comment to this article which explains how Derrida's notion of differance is more than a concept but enacts itself in its performance.

"Derrida intended the word not only to be a signification of the concept he was trying to get across, the play of differences within language, but also an immediate enactment of that play. [...] So 'differance' is Derrida's word coined to describe, but also to perform, the play of differences in language that makes terms capable of meaning anything."

And this from Bryant's "The time of the object":

"Différance is a non-concept that both makes an argument and performs the argument it is making" (5).