St Anselm’s College: Senior Common Room Discussion
By now, Blottisham has stopped underlining and begun circling entire paragraphs, as though meaning might accumulate through repetition.
Stray has developed a new habit: pausing before turning each page, as if checking whether the page is still authorised to continue existing.
Quillibrace remains, as ever, irritatingly composed.
He reads:
“Differentiation Without Units”
Blottisham reacts immediately.
“Good,” he says. “Finally. Differentiation. That’s what we’ve been waiting for. So we’ve got things now—differences between things.”
Quillibrace does not look up.
“There are explicitly no units yet.”
Blottisham pauses.
“…No units?”
Stray turns one page back, then forward again, as if verifying continuity.
“It says,” she replies, “differentiation without units.”
Blottisham frowns.
“That sounds like contradiction.”
Quillibrace corrects him gently.
“It sounds like discipline.”
Blottisham leans forward.
“Right, but difference between what?”
Quillibrace answers immediately.
“Nothing that qualifies as a ‘what’.”
A silence settles.
Blottisham blinks.
“…That’s not helpful.”
Stray looks at the text.
“It says,” she adds, “that difference must precede objects, but cannot be a relation between objects.”
Blottisham brightens slightly.
“So: pre-object objects.”
Quillibrace exhales quietly through his nose.
“No.”
Blottisham tries again.
“Proto-objects?”
“No.”
“Non-objects?”
“No.”
Blottisham gestures vaguely.
“Look, I’m just trying to give it something to work with.”
Stray speaks softly.
“It seems to be removing what we normally mean by ‘something’.”
Blottisham pauses.
“That feels excessive. Surely we need at least something.”
Quillibrace turns a page.
“We do,” he says. “But not yet in the form of units.”
Blottisham sits back.
“So we have difference without things that differ.”
Quillibrace nods.
“Yes.”
Blottisham stares at him.
“That is… not reassuring.”
Stray adds carefully:
“It says differentiation is not segmentation, classification, or partitioning.”
Blottisham sighs.
“So no dividing things into things.”
Quillibrace:
“Correct.”
Blottisham looks at the ceiling.
“What exactly is left then?”
A pause.
Stray answers first.
“A condition under which something fails to be uniform.”
Blottisham squints.
“That sounds like nothing happening in a particular way.”
Quillibrace corrects again.
“It is not nothing happening. It is the minimal requirement for anything to become distinguishable.”
Blottisham points at the page.
“But distinguishable implies two things.”
Stray replies immediately:
“It implies distinction, not things.”
Blottisham freezes.
“…That is worse.”
Quillibrace continues reading:
“Differentiation must not presuppose differentiated units.”
Blottisham leans forward again.
“So we’re doing difference without differences.”
Quillibrace nods.
“Yes.”
Blottisham waits.
“That seems like it should cancel itself.”
Stray shakes her head slightly.
“It seems instead to be the condition under which cancellation does not occur.”
Silence.
Blottisham slowly puts the paper down.
“I think I preferred it when there were objects.”
Quillibrace responds without hesitation.
“That preference is precisely what is being examined.”
Blottisham looks at him.
“It feels like being examined by absence.”
Stray, almost smiling:
“That may be the most accurate thing you’ve said so far.”
Quillibrace turns another page.
“And we have not yet introduced attention.”
Blottisham groans.
“Oh no.”
Stray looks down at the text.
“I suspect that will complicate matters.”
Quillibrace:
“Undoubtedly.”
Blottisham leans back.
“I would like to formally object to the direction of this paper.”
Quillibrace, without looking up:
“On what grounds?”
Blottisham thinks.
“…On grounds of disappearance of everything I can think with.”
A pause.
Stray replies gently:
“That may not be a procedural objection.”
Blottisham mutters:
“It feels like one.”
No comments:
Post a Comment