2019 (#162) : Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj , Winnicott , I Ching , Nietzsche

When the mind is kept away from its preoccupations, it becomes quiet. If you do not disturb this quiet and stay in it, you find that it is permeated with a light and a love you have never known; and yet you recognise it at once as your own nature. Once you have passed through this experience, you will never be the same man again; the unruly mind may break its peace and obliterate its vision; but it is bound to return, provided the effort is sustained; until the day when all bonds are broken, delusions and attachments end and life becomes supremely concentrated in the present.

(Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

Whatever I say about children playing really applies to adults
as well, only the matter is more difficult to describe when the
patient’s material appears mainly in terms of verbal communication.
I suggest that we must expect to find playing just as evident
in the analyses of adults as it is in the case of our work with
children. It manifests itself, for instance, in the choice of words,
in the inflections of the voice, and indeed in the sense of humour.

(Winnicott)

VIEW, look at carefully, gaze at; also: a monastery, an observatory; scry, divine through liquid in a cup. The ideogram: see and waterbird, observe through air or water

–

WORSHIP, make sacrifice; recommend or introduce yourself. The ideogram: leading animals to green pastures.

–

inner and outer are in accord; confidence of the spirits has been captured; sincere, truthful; proper to take action

–

(I Ching , hexagram 20)

The natural thing is playing, and the highly sophisticated twentieth-century
phenomenon is psychoanalysis. It must be of value to the analyst to be
constantly reminded not only of what is owed to Freud but also of what we
owe to the natural and universal thing called playing.

(Winnicott)

A spirit thus emancipated stands in the midst of the universe with a joyful and trusting fatalism, in the faith that only what is separate and individual may be rejected, that in the totality everything is redeemed and affirmed …

(Nietzsche)

The mind is no more. There is only love in action.

(Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

2019 (#161) : Winnicott , Tao Te Ching , Bhagavad Gita , Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

I can now restate what I amtrying to convey. I want to draw attention away
fromthe sequence psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, play material, playing, and
to set this up again the other way round. In other words, it is play that is the
universal, and that belongs to health: playing facilitates growth and therefore
health; playing leads into group relationships; playing can be a form of
communication in psychotherapy; and, lastly, psychoanalysis has been
developed as a highly specialized formof playing in the service of
communication with oneself and others. (Winnicott)

The Master gives himself up
to whatever the moment brings. (Tao Te Ching)

By thy grace I remember my Light, and now gone is my delusion. My doubts are no more, my faith is firm; and now I can say ‘Thy will be done’.

(Bhagavad Gita)

All directions are within the mind! I am not asking you to look in any particular direction. Just look away from all that happens in your mind and bring it to the feeling ‘I am’. The ‘I am’ is not a direction. It is the negation of all direction. Ultimately even the ‘I am’ will have to go, for you need not keep on asserting what is obvious. Bringing the mind to the feeling ‘I am’ merely helps in turning the mind away from everything else.

(Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

2019 (#160) : Sri Ramana Maharshi , Winnicott , John Ashbery

Liberation is our very nature. We are that. The very fact that we wish for liberation shows that freedom from all bondage is our real nature. It is not to be freshly acquired. All that is necessary is to get rid of the false notion that we are bound. When we achieve that, there will be no desire or thought of any sort. So long as one desires liberation, so long, you may take it, one is in bondage.
–
(Sri Ramana Maharshi)

I make my idea of play concrete by claiming that playing has a place and a time. It isnot inside by any use of the word (and it is unfortunately true that the word
inside has very many and various uses in psychoanalytic discussion). Nor is it
outside, that is to say, it is not a part of the repudiated world, the not-me, that which the individual has decided to recognize (with whatever difficulty and
even pain) as truly external, which is outside magical control. To control
what is outside one has to do things, not simply to think or to wish, and doing
things takes time. Playing is doing.

(Winnicott)

The real is as it is always. We are not creating anything new or achieving something which we did not have before. The illustration given in books is this. We dig a well and create a huge pit. The space in the pit or well has not been created by us. We have just removed the earth which was filling the space there. The space was there then and is also there now. Similarly we have simply to throw out all the agelong samskaras [innate tendencies] which are inside us. When all of them have been given up, the Self (Atman) will shine alone.

(Sri Ramana Maharshi)

All this came to pass eons ago.

Your program worked out perfectly. You even avoided

The monotony of perfection by leaving in certain flaws:

a backward way of becoming, a forced handshake.

An absent-minded smile, though in fact nothing was left to chance.

Each detail was startlingly clear, as though seen through a magnifying

glass,

Or would have been to an ideal observer, namely yourself

(John Ashbery)

2019 (#159) : Katha Upanishad , Sri Ramana Maharshi , Emerson

The wise man by meditating upon the self-dependent, all-pervading Self (Atman), understands waking and sleeping and goes beyond sorrow.

‘Knowing that the individual self, eater of the fruit of action, is the universal Self (Atman), maker of past and future, he knows he has nothing to fear.

(Katha Upanishad book 2)

That light will be there before the drama begins, during the performance and also after the performance is over. Similarly, the light within, that is, the Self (Atman), gives light to the ego, the intellect, the memory and the mind without itself being subject to processes of growth and decay. Although during deep sleep and other states there is no feeling of the ego, that Self (Atman) remains attributeless, and continues to shine of itself.

(Sri Ramana Maharshi)

We live in succession, in division, in parts and particles; Meantime in man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence ; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE.

These manifold tenacious qualities, this chemistry and vegetation, these metals and animals, which seem to stand there for their own sake, are means and methods only-are words of God

from within or from behind a light shines through us upon things , and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all

Character makes an overpowering present: a cheerful, determined hour, which fortifies all the company by making them see that much is possible and excellent that was not thought of.

The sweet sincerity of joy and peace, which I draw from this alliance with my brother’s soul, is the nut itself, whereof all nature and all thought is but the husk and shell. Happy is the house that shelters a friend!

(Emerson)

2019 (#158) : Jean Klein , Shankara , Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj , Heidegger

Don’t judge, compare, criticize, evaluate. Become more and more accustomed to listening. Listen to your body, without judging, without reference – just listen. Listen to all the situations in daily life. Listen from the whole mind, not from a mind divided by positive and negative. Look from the whole, the global.

(J.Klein)

Those who move about having the conviction
That oneself is always Brahman,
Not for them in the least are there any wrong
actions,
And there are no dangers (distress) arising out of
wrong actions.
–
(Shankara)

It is being free from yourself, free from the image you believe yourself to be. That is liberation. It’s quite an explosion to see that you are nothing, and then to live completely attuned to this nothingness.

(J. Klein)

By focusing the mind on ‘I am’, on the sense of being, ‘I am soand-so’ dissolves; ‘am a witness only’ remains and that too submerges in ‘I am all’. Then the all becomes the One and the One – yourself, not to be separate from me. Abandon the idea of a separate ‘I’ and the question of ‘whose experience?’ will not arise. On a deeper level my experience is your experience. Dive deep within yourself and you will find it easily and simply. Go in the direction of ‘I am’-

(Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

Liberation means to live freely in the beauty of your absence. You see at one moment that there’s nothing seen and no seer. Then you live it.

(J. Klein)

Everything is a play of ideas. In the state free from ideation (nirvikalpa samadhi) nothing is perceived. The root idea is ‘I am’. It shatters the state of pure consciousness and is followed by the innumerable sensations and perceptions, feelings and ideas, which in their totality constitute God and His world. The ‘I am’ remains as the witness, but it is by the will of God that everything happens.

(Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

When thought’s courage stems from

the bidding of Being, then

destiny’s language thrives.

As soon as we have the thing before

our eyes, and in our hearts an ear

for the word, thinking prospers.

We never come to thoughts. They come

to us.

(Heidegger)

–

2019 (#157) : Malaguzzi , Nietzsche , Jean Klein , Derrida , Freud

What the child doesn’t want is an observation from
the adult who isn’t really there, who is distracted.
The child wants to know that she is observed, carefully, with full attention. The child wants to be
observed in action. She wants the teacher to see the
process of her work, rather than the product. The
teacher asks the child to take a bucket of water from
one place to the other. It’s not important to the child
that the teacher only sees him arrive with the bucket
of water at the end. What is important to the child is
that the teacher sees the child while the child is
working, while the child is putting out the effort to
accomplish the task — the processes are important,
how much the child is putting into the effort, how
heroic the child is doing this work. What children
want is to be observed while engaged, they do not
want the focus of the observation to be on the final
product. When we as adults are able to see the
children in the process, it’s as if we are opening a
window and getting a fresh view of things.

(Malaguzzi)

. . no matter how it happened, each time “the hero” strode across the stage,
something new was attained, a terrible reverse of laughter, a profound emotion for many in their thought: “Yes, life is worth living! Yes, I’m worthy of life!”-Life, you and me, all of us just as we are, we became interesting to ourselves. We cannot deny that in the long run laughter, reason, and nature ended up becoming masters of each of the great masters of teleology: Brief-tenured tragedy finally has always returned to the eternal comedy of existence. And the sea “with its countless smiles”–to speak with Aeschylus–with its waves, will finally cover the greatest of our tragedies. . .

(Nietzsche)

there is a welcoming of all that happens, an unfolding, and this unfolding, this welcoming, is timeless. All that you welcome appears in this timelessness, and there is a moment when you feel yourself timeless, feel yourself in welcoming, feel yourself in listening, in attention. Because attention has its own taste, its own flavor. There’s attention to something, there’s also attention in which there’s no object: nothing to see, nothing to hear, nothing to teach, only attention.

(Jean Klein)

Death, the ‘proper result’ and therefore the end of life, the end without end, the strategy without finality of the living — all of this is not solely a statement of Schopenheur’s. It also coincides almost literally with several Nietzschean propositions that we had attempted to interpret: on life as a very rare genre of that which is dead (Joyful Wisdom), a ‘particular case’ and ‘means in view of something else’ (Will to Power), this something necessarily participating in death; and finally on the absence, in the last analysis, of anything like an instinct of conservation. The unconscious port of registry, at the distance of this generality, also will have been Nietzschean.

(Derrida)

The new world-conception.– The world exists; it is not something that
becomes, not something that passes away. Or rather: it becomes, it
passes away, but it has never begun to become and never ceased from
passing away–it maintains itself in both.– It lives on itself: its
excrements are its food.

(Nietzsche)

From our “mythology” of the instincts we may easily deduce a formula for an indirect
method of eliminating war. If the propensity for war be due to the destructive instinct, we
have always its counter-agent, Eros, to our hand. All that produces ties of sentiment
between man and man must serve us as war’s antidote. These ties are of two kinds. First,
such relations as those toward a beloved object, void though they be of sexual intent. The
psychoanalyst need feel no compunction in mentioning “love” in this connection; religion
uses the same language: Love thy neighbor as thyself. A pious injunction, easy to
enounce, but hard to carry out! The other bond of sentiment is by way of identification.

(Freud)

So many strange things have passed before me in those timeless moments
that fall into one’s life as if from the moon, when one no longer has
any idea how old one is or how young one will yet be–I should not doubt
that there are many kinds of gods– There are some one cannot imagine
without a certain halcyon and frivolous quality in their makeup–
Perhaps light feet are even an integral part of the concept :god– Is it
necessary to elaborate that a god prefers to stay beyond everything
bourgeois and rational? and, between ourselves, also beyond good and
evil? His prospect of free–in Goethe’s words.– And to call upon the
inestimable authority of Zarathustra in this instance: Zarathustra goes
so far as to confess: “I would believe only in a God who could dance”–

(Nietzsche)

you explore, you look, you listen. And you discover that you know only certain fractions of your body, certain sensations, these are more or less reactions, resistance. Eventually you come to a body feeling that you have never had before because when you listen, it unfolds and the sensitive body, the energy body, appears. It is most important to feel and come into contact with the energy body. Because in the beginning your body is more or less a pattern or superficial structure in the mind, made up of reactions and resistance. But when you really listen to the body, you’re no longer an accomplice to these reactions, and the body comes to its natural feeling, which is emptiness. The real body in its original state is emptiness, a completely vacant state. Then you feel the appearance of the elastic body, which is the energy body.

(Jean Klein)

2019 (#156) : Malaguzzi , Montessori , Winnicott , Derrida — “we cannot separate this child from a particular reality … it is the psychic development the creates movement … the play was of a self-healing kind … traces and traces of traces”

We can never think of the child in the abstract. When
we think about a child, when we pull out a child to
look at, that child is already tightly connected and
linked to a certain reality of the world — she has
relationships and experiences. We cannot separate
this child from a particular reality. She brings these
experiences, feelings, and relationships into school
with her.

(Malaguzzi)

After birth psychic development takes place following
the line dictated by behaviour. In other words, it is the
psychic development which creates movement. The
instincts which in other animals seem to awaken at birth,
as soon as the animal comes into contact with the outer
environment, must in man be built by the psyche. It is
the psyche which must construct the human faculties and
along with that the movements to correspond to those
faculties. And while this goes on the physical part of
the embryo finishes its development. The nerves become
mielinized and the cranium ossified. It seems as though
the human embryo were born incomplete because its final
form and its functions must wait until the psyche has
built itself.

(Montessori)

the play was of a self-healing kind. In
each case the result was comparable with a psychotherapeutic
session in which the story would have been punctuated by
interpretations from the therapist. A psychotherapist might perhaps
have refrained from actively playing with Diana, as when I
said I heard the teddy say something, and when I said what I said
about Diana’s children’s dreams being played out on the floor.
But this self-imposed discipline might have eliminated some of
the creative aspect of Diana’s play experience.

(Winnicott)

not toward death but toward a living-on [sur-vie], namely, a trace of which life and death would themselves be but traces and traces of traces, a survival whose possibility in advance comes to disjoin or dis-adjust the identity to itself of the living present as well as of any effectivity. There is then some spirit. Spirits. And one must reckon with them. One cannot not have to, one must not
not be able to reckon with them, which are more than one: the more than one/no more one [Ie plus d’un].

(Derrida)

2019 (#155) : Malaguzzi , Montessori , Derrida , Joseph Campbell , Winnicott , Prasna Upanishad , Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj , Derrida

The environment you construct around you and the
children also reflects this image you have about the
child. There’s a difference between the environment
that you are able to build based on a preconceived
image of the child and the environment that you can
build that is based on the child you see in front of you
— the relationship you build with the child, the
games you play. An environment that grows out of
your relationship with the child is unique and fluid.
The quality and quantity of relationships among you
as adults and educators also reflects your image of
the child. Children are very sensitive and can see and
sense very quickly the spirit of what is going on
among the adults in their world. They understand
whether the adults are working together in a truly
collaborative way or if they are separated in some
way from each other, living their experience as if it
were private with little interaction.

(Malaguzzi)

The first organs which begin to function in the child
are the sensory organs. Now what are sensory organs
but organs of prehension, instruments by means of which
we grasp the impressions which, in the case of the child,
must be incarnated ?

(Montessori)

This condensation of three meanings of the word “impression” was only able to imprint itself in me in a single stroke, apparently in an instant of no duration, after much work, discontinuous though it may have been, with Freud’s texts, with certain of his writings, but also with themes, with figures, with conceptual schemes which are familiar to me to the point of obsession and yet remain no less secret, young and still to come for me: thus writing, the trace, inscription, on an exterior substrate or on the so-called body proper …

(Derrida)

It’s primarily a spiritual
exercise, and the society is supposed to help us have
the realization. Man should not be in the service of
society, society should be in the service of man. When
man is in the service of society, you have a monster
state, and that’s what is threatening the world at this
minute.

(Joseph Campbell)

Here in this area of overlap between the playing of the child
and the playing of the other person there is a chance to introduce
enrichments. The teacher aims at enrichment. By contrast,
the therapist is concerned specifically with the child’s own
growth processes, and with the removal of blocks to development
that may have become evident. It is psychoanalytic theory
that has made for an understanding of these blocks. At the
same time it would be a narrow view to suppose that psychoanalysis
is the only way to make therapeutic use of the child’s
playing.

(Winnicott)

Everything is fixed in life, as are spokes in the hub of a wheel
‘Life, Lord of Creation, moving in the womb, there bringing yourself to birth, master of the five streams! A ll things offer you their tribute.
‘Life! Creator, Protector, Destroyer! Sun in heavenly circuit! Master of stars!
‘Pour down the rain, let all things find their food, thrive, rejoice.
‘Life itself! Purity itself! Fire itself, Eater, Master! All the world your food, Father in Heaven!
‘May your body be in our speech, hearing, sight, mind

(Prashna Upanishad)

Yes. It is like a cinema-show. There is the light on the screen and the shadows flitting across it impress the audience as the enactment of some piece. If in the same play an audience also is shown on the screen as part of the performance, the seer and the seen will then both be on the screen. Apply it to yourself. You are the screen, the Self/Atman has created the ego, the ego has its accretions of thoughts which are displayed as the world, the trees and the plants of which you are asking. In reality, all these are nothing but the Self/Atman. If you see the Self/Atman, the same will be found to be all, everywhere and always. Nothing but the Self/Atman exists.

(Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

There is no such thing as a “metaphysical-concept.” There is no such thing as a “metaphysical-name.” The “metaphysical” is a certain determination or direction taken by a sequence or “chain.” It cannot as such be opposed by a concept but rather by a process of textual labor and a different SOrt of articulation. This being the case, the development of this problematic will inevitably involve the movement of differance as it has been discussed elsewhere: a “productive,” conflictual’ movement which cannot be preceded by any identity, any unity, or any original simplicity; which cannot be “relieved” resolved appeased by any pholosophical dialectic; and which disorganizes “historically,” “practically,” textually, the opposition or the difference (the static distinction) between opposing terms.

(Derrida)

2019 (#154) : Malaguzzi , Derrida , Montessori , Winnicott , The Odyssey , Joseph Campbell . Derrida , John Ashbery — “in the things that they dream about … can only maintain itself with some ghost … the solution is found in the child … the special psychic form of the child … playing is doing … deep in her arching caverns … dig for Indian arrowheads …one may exceed the limits of the game toward the play of the world … set free on an ocean of language … the waves talk to us”

It is necessary to give an immediate response to a
child. Children need to know that we are their
friends, that they can depend on us for the things they
desire, that we can support them in the things that
they have, but also in the things that they dream
about, that they desire.
(Malaguzzi)

If it-learning to live-remains to be done, it can happen only between life and death. Neither in life nor in death alone. What happens between two, and between all the “two’s” one likes, such as between life and death, can only maintain itself with some ghost, can only talk with or about some ghost. So it would be necessary to learn spirits. Even and especially if this,
the spectral, is not. Even and especially if this, which is neither substance, nor essence, nor existence, is never present as such.

(Derrida)

The solution is found in the child, whom we can call
the instrument of the adaptability of humanity. The child
whom we saw born without any special movement, not
only acquires all the human faculties, but also adapts the
being that it constructs to the conditions in his environ-
ment. And this takes place because of the special
psychic form of the child, for the child’s psychic form is
different from that of the adult.
(Montessori)

I make my idea of play concrete by claiming that
playing has a place and a time. It is not inside by any use of the word
(and it is unfortunately true that the word inside has very many
and various uses in psychoanalytic discussion). Nor is it outside,
that is to say, it is not a part of the repudiated world, the not-me,
that which the individual has decided to recognize (with whatever
difficulty and even pain) as truly external, which is outside
magical control. To control what is outside one has to do things,
not simply to think or to wish, and doing things takes time. Playing
is doing. (Winnicott)

By now,
all the survivors, all who avoided headlong death
were safe at home, escaped the wars and waves.
But one man alone …
his heart set on his wife and his return—Calypso,
the bewitching nymph, the lustrous goddess, held him back,
deep in her arching caverns, craving him for a husband.
But then, when the wheeling seasons brought the year around,
that year spun out by the gods when he should reach his home,
Ithaca—though not even there would he be free of trials,
even among his loved ones—then every god took pity,
all except Poseidon. He raged on, seething against
the great Odysseus till he reached his native land.
(The Odyssey)

In those days there was
still American Indian lore in the air. Indians were still
around. Even now, when I deal with myths from all
parts of the world, I find the American Indian tales and
narratives to be very rich, very well developed.
And then my parents had a place out in the woods
where the Delaware Indians had lived, and the Iroquois
had come down and fought them. There was a big
ledge where we could dig for Indian arrowheads and
things like that. And the very animals that play the role
in the Indian stories were there in the woods.

(Joseph Campbell)

He piles up hypotheses: the child throws his bobbin. he brings it back in order to say this or that to his mother, and so forth. I won’t attempt to reconstitute here this whole very complicated scene. To be sure, the theme of play is there. However, if one understands the fort/da beyond what it seems Freud intends to say, then one may exceed the limits of the game toward the play of the world where the fort/da is no longer simply the relation of subject to object. It is. instead, that which has absolute command over all experience in general.

(Derrida)

Yet one does know why. The covenant we entered
Bears down on us, some are ensnared, and the right way,
It turns out, is the one that goes straight through the house
And out the back. By so many systems
As we are involved in, by just so many
Are we set free on an ocean of language that comes to be
Part of us, as though we would ever get away .
The sky is very bright and very wide, and the waves talk to us,
Preparing dreams we’ll have to live with and us

(John Ashbery)

2019 (#153) : Malaguzzi , Winnicott , The Odyssey , Montessori , Joseph Campbell , The Odyssey , Derrida — “our presence, which has to visible and warm … the early use of a transitional object or technique … the ultimate stages of a human being’s capacity for cultural experience … the wheeling seasons brought the year around … to adapt itself to any climate … your recognition of the new role that you’re in … start from where you will — sing for our time too … paleonymy”

We need to know how to recognize a new presence,
how to wait for the child. This is something that is
learned, it’s not automatic. We often have to do it
against our own rush to work in our own way. We’ll
discover that our presence, which has to be visible
and warm, makes it possible for us to try to get inside
the child and what that child is doing. And this may
seem to be passive, but it is really a very strong
activity on our part.

(Malaguzzi)

For me the meaning of playing has taken on a new colour since I
have followed up the theme of transitional phenomena, tracing
these in all their subtle developments right from the early use of
a transitional object or technique to the ultimate stages of a
human being’s capacity for cultural experience.

(Winnicott)

By now,
all the survivors, all who avoided headlong death
were safe at home, escaped the wars and waves.
But one man alone …
his heart set on his wife and his return—Calypso,
the bewitching nymph, the lustrous goddess, held him back,
deep in her arching caverns, craving him for a husband.
But then, when the wheeling seasons brought the year around,
that year spun out by the gods when he should reach his home,
Ithaca—though not even there would he be free of trials,
even among his loved ones—then every god took pity,
all except Poseidon. He raged on, seething against
the great Odysseus till he reached his native land.

(The Odyssey)

Now, when we study the human kind and compare
it with the animal kind, we find some differences and an
important one is that the human kind has not had allotted
to it a special kind of movement or a special kind of re-
sidence. Certainly, it is a facilitation of life to have one’s
task assigned by nature. The study of nature shows, how-
ever, that there is no animal which is as capable as man
to adapt itself to any climate or to any place upon this
earth. We find man in frozen lands where certain animals
such as tigers or elephants cannot live. Yet if you look in
the jungle where elephants and tigers are to be found there
man can also be found. Man can be found even in
deserts. So we can see that man has been allotted no fixed
place. He can adapt himself and can live in any part of
the world, for he is destined to invade every part of the
world. Let us say then that because of this adaptability,
man is the only being who is free to go wherever he likes
upon this earth.

(Montessori)

Young people just grab
this stuff. Mythology teaches you what’s behind
literature and the arts, it teaches you about your own
life. It’s a great, exciting, life-nourishing subject.
Mythology has a great deal to do with the stages of life,
the initiation ceremonies as you move from childhood to
adult responsibilities, from the unmarried state into the
married state. All of those rituals are mythological rites.
They have to do with your recognition of the new role
that you’re in, the process of throwing off the old one
and coming out in the new, and entering into a
responsible profession.

(Joseph Campbell)

Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns …
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.
Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds,
many pains he suffered, heartsick on the open sea,
fighting to save his life and bring his comrades home.
But he could not save them from disaster, hard as he strove—
the recklessness of their own ways destroyed them all,
the blind fools, they devoured the cattle of the Sun
and the Sungod blotted out the day of their return.
Launch out on his story, Muse, daughter of Zeus,
start from where you will—sing for our time too.

(The Odyssey)

While the form of the “book” is now going through a period of general upheaval, and while that form now appears less natural, and its history less transparent, than ever, and while one cannot tamper with it without disturbing everything else, the book form alone can no longer settle—here for example—the case of those writing processes which, in praaically questioning that form, must also dismantle it. Hence the necessity, today, of working out at every turn, with redoubled effort, the question of the preservation of names: of paleonymy. Why should an old name, for a determinate time, be retained? Why should the effects of a new meaning, concept, or object be damped by memory?

(Derrida)