Verbatim quote · from the corpus

“Our sentences are scraping the data field for demands to be converted into commands. Our bodies, for example, are comprised of a vast set of demands for pleasure, comfort, space and therapy, including anticipatory therapy or potential therapy, while all those demands made from throughout our metabolism are registered by data control centers which use them to create new networks of ostensives, then imperatives, interrogatives, and declaratives encoding demands conveyed elsewhere on the production lines so that bodies can in turn be supplied with data, in form of various treatments, that our organs know how to make use of. We could say that desire is a demand made to the center—ultimately, a demand to be cradled and protected by the center, to have the attributes of the center conferred upon oneself, however that might be imagined. If I recall correctly, Lacan models desire somewhat similarly—you need something, and call out for it (i.e., demand it) and then it becomes desire insofar as recognition by the one upon whom you make the demand is overlaid on the need with which you started. Lacan is thinking of an infant, while I’m thinking of a participant in a scene governed by mimesis. And what is imitation if not attention directed so insistently upon another that the very maintenance of that attention requires the participation of the entire body in tethering (in the face of distractions) the attention to the other—the body becomes a kind of record or measure of attention to the other.”

— Adam Katz, The Sentence as Metric · Apr 02, 2024 · Bouvard Substack