Repetition. A journey to the limits of the matrix

2019

3(59)

DOI: 10. /arc190303

Introduction

This essay presents Søren Kierkegaard’s concept of

repetition and the analogy that can be drawn between it

and intaglio printmaking. The concept, thanks to its pro-

ductive capacity, serves as an articulation with other con-

cepts and thus can be considered a “hinge” concept. In

the concept of repetition many types of knowledge come

together, ranging from structural anthropology to mathe-

matical logic to linguistics. It can therefore be considered

effective and novel. Our intention is to put forward a code,

or a dialogue, between intaglio printmaking and philoso-

phy. These subjects clearly have an interest in the concept

of repetition. Both of them, each from its particular eld

of theory, proposes things that appear to be in conict with

each other and many other things that appear to have an

analogous point of view. Besides the debate that may arise

around these questions, dialogue between them is not just

tting, it is necessary. The advances made in these two

disciplines have underlined the pertinence of establishing

contact in order to rene concepts and ideas and it would

be ridiculous to suggest that the problem they have be-

fore them does not create a certain correspondence among

them. This article establishes links of communication that

reveal the true nature of human activity, preserving at all

Juan Carlos Ramos Guadix*

Repetition. A journey to the limits of the matrix

Powtórzenie. Podróż do granic matrycy

* ORCID: 0000-0002-4081-1516. Faculty of Fine Arts, Drawing

Department, University of Granada (Spain).

times the spirit of what Plato pointed out in The Repub-

lic (395b) when he said that human nature is coined into

small pieces.

And human nature, Adeimantus, appears to have been

coined into yet smaller pieces, and to be as incapable of

imitating many things well as of performing well the ac-

tions of which the imitations are copies [2, p. 249].

For this reason it is impossible for just one branch of

knowledge to have the only truth about the entirety of all

that is human.

So I will try to extract, without conict, that which is

helpful in building a dialogue, a dialogue based on an

analogy between Kierkegaard’s concept of repetition and

intaglio and printmaking systems as empirical phenome-

na. Keeping this purpose in mind, the analogy will be pre-

sented with regard to three well-differentiated moments.

They are: the matrix as a unique thing, printing as the

progress and process of transfer and, nally, the print as

the process of appropriating a story.

The matrix as a unique thing

The rst moment is its location in the context of the

line of memory, matrix. Here matrix refers to a unique and

individual instrument in which the origin is founded and

revealed. If in Kierkegaard repetition is dened in the con-

text of individual existence, in intaglio repetition is found

in the existence of the matrix, which in turn nds in the

print a new departure, a new understanding, a repetition.

It is quite true what Philosophy says: that Life must be understood backwards.

But that makes one forget the other saying: that it must be lived forwards.

S. Kierkegaard, Diary [1, p. 161]

20 Juan Carlos Ramos Guadix

We can therefore say that the matrix, conceived as

a palimpsest, […] is a decisive expression of what “re-

collection” was for the Greeks. Just as they taught that

all knowledge is recollection, thus will modern philoso-

phy teach that life itself is a repetition [3, p. 9]. So, if

all knowledge is recollection and all life is a repetition,

all matrixes are also repetition. Because in the matrix

knowledge is built like a palimpsest. It is that indestructi-

ble outt that adapts perfectly and delicately to our shape.

As Kierkegaard said with regard to repetition, the matrix

is: Repetition is a beloved wife of whom one never tires

because it is only the new of which one tires. One never

tires of the old, and when one has it before oneself one is

happy, and only a person who does not delude himself that

repetition ought to be something new, for then he tires of

it, is genuinely happy [3, p. 10].

The matrix is where we put our courage and energy so

as to achieve a clear idea of the meaning and transcen-

dence of our work. In line with the foregoing, the matrix

gives us that immanent characteristic of existence which

is the ability to make current the states of things past, but

without going back in time. Moreover, the idea of rep-

etition sustained by Kierkegaard has absolutely no hint

of involution. Repetition, said the philosopher with total

conviction, is and always will be a transcendence. In oth-

er words, repetition carries with it the idea that repetition

will enable us to go beyond.

Having reached this point it should be noted that there

is a possible meeting place for the philosophical concep-

tion of repetition in Kierkegaard, psychoanalysis and inta-

glio. In all of them, repetition always implies the wish to

go beyond and transcend the limits of the established. For

Kierkegaard each repetition makes us transcend towards

something new, towards something that we had not con-

sidered and that now becomes evident due to the return of

the past in the present. However, repetition is not just that,

because Kierkegaard also speaks of repetition as transcen-

dence inasmuch as it takes us to new stages along the path

towards perfection. In psychoanalysis, when the subject

is said to be “repeating”, it does not mean that the sub-

ject is remembering past events. “Repetition” means that

the subject is moving beyond the pleasure principle. With

each new return, the subject gets nearer to an experience

of fullness similar to what she/he had experienced at the

dawn of his/her existence.

In intaglio the very term matrix comes from the idea of

gestation, from an idea that generates, is full of life and

has a wish to go beyond. The matrix-memory revises the

course of existence as a heterogeneous and fertile eld of

unexpected possibilities, full of small accidents that are

far from negligible, suspending any relationship of com-

mand and obedience between the subject and the repre-

sented, adding mystery and surprise, risk and expectation,

initiative and observation.

In the time of memory, it happens that every imped-

iment was a mere attempt, every project was decision,

vehemence, desire. That which arises from failure, devia-

tion, interruption, that which appeared to be antinomy, or

a logical or antisystematic contradiction, which should be

corrected or deleted, the matrix as a source of strategies,

as an existential impasse, which can inspire by challeng-

ing one’s intelligence with new points of view [4, p. 43].

Just as in the writings of Kierkegaard, in the process

of printing from the matrix there is access to a new order

and it nds the barrier of its memories, of its recollec-

tions. Printing is somewhere between what one believes

the work of art will be and what one knows it can never

become. The same way as when, in Kierkegaard, it is all

about fullling the experience of repetition. If Kierke

gaard returns to Berlin where he had felt innite plea-

sure, we also retrace our steps and it will be printing that

leads us along the path of our problem. That is, how and

why does everything that means essential progress have

to involve an obstinate repetition that carries within itself

the character of the adverse? Both in philosophy and in

intaglio, all repetition carries within it the possibility of

a transcendence that progresses towards the best stages

of existence.

The dialectics of repetition in intaglio are the same as

what Kierkegaard reveals when he says: […] the dialec-

tic of repetition is easy, because that which is repeated

has been, otherwise it could not be repeated; but precisely

this, that it has been, makes repetition something new [3,

p. 26].

Similarly, repetition in intaglio, the print as a multiple

original, demands something new; everything in repeti-

tion can vary and be diverse each time it is repeated – that

is why we can speak of a print as a multiple original – but

one thing that always stays the same is its meaning: the

béance, the idea of the other, towards which the subject

is moving, the matrix. The subject is always created from

the perspective of the other and when it is not created it

is because there is a aw in the encounter with the other.

For Jacques Lacan, sameness always comes from other-

ness [5, p. 68]. So we can state, categorically, the object,

the print, comes from the encounter with the subject, the

matrix.

Printing as progress and process of transfer

The printing process is a dialectical synthesis in which

the transfer or transposition of an element – matrix – en-

ables an object to be created. The object thus created be-

comes part of a Cartesian analysis which presents itself

not just as a purpose or for knowledge of the real, but as

much more than that; it can be manipulated. The object,

that is, that synthesis between subjective reality and ex-

ternal reality, is presented as something that we can ma-

nipulate through our perception. This process of transfer

allows us to extract data about the reality, hopes and proj-

ects deposited in the matrix. We complete what we see

with what we know, lending stability to something that

a priori has none. We interpret the data and give them

meaning.

So, one might think that a huge gap lies between the

matrix as a creative act and the process of printing. How-

ever, the said process, if we analyse it in its most elemen-

tal manifestations, is also an act of creation. Through

this process artists make the most of the information and

the knowledge that is transferred to them, allowing an

 Repetition.Ajourneytothelimitsofthematrix /Powtórzenie.Podróżdogranicmatrycy 21

anticipated future to guide them toward the search for a -

nal project, the print.

According to Kierkegaard, the true meaning of repeti-

tion is transcendence, albeit a transcendence experienced

in the deceptive and concrete existence. An experience

that we ourselves sometimes provoke. To this perspective

there is something that must be added: when artists begin

to listen to the signs of their porous and relational inner

world – when they begin to be aware of the sensorial and

corporeal states they experience while interacting with the

material environment of the intaglio studio – they have

the opportunity to submerge themselves in the repetition

that leads to an emergent meaning, in a moment of rupture

with the experimental and creative process. To submerge

themselves in the recongurations and rematerializations

that the matrix may incite in them, whether in the succes-

sive prints made during the process leading to an edition

or to a particular result, and also, during the course of this

reproducibility, the transfer acquires another meaning. It

becomes a mingling of the different essential moments

(proven facts, sensorial and material experiences) of

the mo tion that is repetition in the broad and transcen-

dent sense.

This second moment is when repetition appears as

a demand. An object of desire and simultaneously of duty.

At the same time, the self becomes aware of the situa-

tion of failure it faces. The self sees itself with the task

of searching for the freedom it does not have. When it

nds itself there, feeling incapable, repetition becomes an

instantaneous demand, a vindication, a plea to God. As

a nal recourse, Kierkegaard gives the example of Job,

from the Old Testament. It is Job, in the second part of

the text, who will provide the idea of what a repetition

is. Job regains, in duplicate, what he had before: When

everything has ground to a halt, when thought ceases and

speech is silenced, when explanation retreats in despair –

then a thunderstorm is necessary [3, p. 80]. Kierkegaard

tries to distinguish a repetition that would be real. The

same repetition that occurs when we nish working on

the matrix and are no longer capable of understanding, or

even imagining, any other type of plastic solution for the

idea we have. It is at that exact moment that all certainties

and all conceivable possibilities cease to offer – as is log-

ical – any sort of explanation. In this sense of immediacy

everything is lost, everything is done. Just like Job, the

only thing left is to hope for a superabundant repetition.

So, printing can be understood as a possibility of move-

ment in the existential sense, since it involves progress.

With printing it can be said that there is a notion of move-

ment – kinesis – which corresponds to the modern cat-

egory of transition and this category, Kierkegaard says,

deserves maximum attention. For one thing, this will be

the moment to try to repeat the rst experience and see

if it has ended in failure or, instead, has run into some

type of impossibility. And another thing: this will be the

moment to ask oneself if it is desirable to repeat and what

is the meaning of repetition By repeating, do we win or

lose? In this stage, repetition has a nature more like that of

a project than a work of art with its pre-given conceptual

elaborations.

Printing appears as a possibility for subjective freedom

in each one of the beginnings of the edition. Each print

of the edition takes the form of a new beginning. As in

Kierkegaard, in the printing process also contains irony.

The print does not have the power of something new but

it does have, to a certain extent, the enthusiasm associated

with the annihilation of the old, which inspires and feeds

it. In one way or another, the print annihilates that which

inspired and feeds it, the matrix. An elastic link is always

formed when the incommensurability of the relationship

between the matrix and the print is experienced.

The repeated – that is, the reassumed, retaken, redu-

plicated or wellreected internally – is a reality as old

as it is new; something that already existed but starts to

be again. It is in this sense that printing is a repetition. It

is a process of progress, of transcendence, the absolute

beginning of which requires having absolute knowledge,

through the total reection of the subjectivity possible in

the current and necessary afrmation of itself. This is how

the creative universe will be fully transformed.

In consonance with this idea, the printing process can

be explained as the movement by which the original cre-

ative process subjects its possibilities to an internal need.

In this way it escapes fatalistic determinism and ensures

a presence that sustains the real order.

If Kierkegaard sustains that repetition is and always

will be transcendence [3, p. 142], it is reasonable to say

that printing is a process of progress, of transcendence.

This process is a model of individual freedom by which

to express a new reality that begins with an absolute de-

cision. The work done by the artist during the printing

process is, in the rst place, the concrete realization of

something that has been thought: in other words, a repe-

tition. As Kierkegaard would say: if God Himself had not

willed repetition, there would never have been a world [3,

p. 29]. If we did not want to create a print, we would not

create a matrix. That which was intellectual representation

in the matrix is subsequently repeated as the exemplary

cause of action and form, immanent and inherent of that

which is created in printmaking. It is through repetition

that during the printing process we discover our mistakes

in relation to the original and ideal integrity manifested in

the matrix. At the same time an initial internal reection

takes place. In it we notice the negative element that con-

tradicts its being while at the same time pushing it towards

a possible recovery.

This rst reection breaks the immediate relationship

between subjectivity and the real world, setting the matrix

against the emptiness of its own nothingness. However,

such a situation is nothing but the sine qua non condition

of a second reection, one that responds to the principle of

the inversion of opposites. According to this principle, the

positive coincides with the negation. Depending on this

inverse meaning and reection we can say that a dialec-

tical relationship is generated. It begins with nothingness

and only in a second moment, through appropriation, does

it enable the presence of our nal objective, the print.

In this same regard we can speak of the specic na-

ture of the process of printing, with its sole objective of

transcending the creative act performed on the matrix.

22 Juan Carlos Ramos Guadix

This means nally considering repetition, through the

print, as an event within the existence of the matrix itself.

A glance back at the unique and individual instrument.

The print as the process of appropriating a story

In a third moment, repetition in Kierkegaard takes

place as a life event in which the self receives freedom.

From that point onwards, the self can continue living,

taking up its past again as something acquired, captur-

ing the density of the present and opening up toward the

future. This is how the repetition event is connected to

a text from the Old Testament such as the Book of Job.

Here ideas are in constant motion. In view of this, Kierke-

gaard asks: What is Philoctetes’ situation compared to

Job’s, where the idea is in constant motion? [3, p. 10].

This dependence on the written past is no coincidence in

repetition. The idea of repetition in Kierkegaard takes all

of its strength from Greek philosophy. More specical-

ly from the pre-Socratic philosophers, whose points of

views often conicted with one another. Some thought

that there is no motion in the world – Parmenides and

the Eleatics – while others, such as Heraclitus, believed

that motion is the essence of the world, where everything

takes place in a continual ux. So, we ponder whether

repetition should be understood as the appropriation of

a meaning transmitted through a story, of a meaning as-

signed long ago and that is seen to be revealing for the

individual’s present. This nal aspect will be what holds

our attention, the print.

In this same sense, the tasks of the memory, the ma-

trix, stimulate our attention. They guide us with enthu-

siasm and a suspicious gaze towards the future, from the

symbolic and processual springs of the past, understand-

ing them as an uncovering of the matrix. The print – at-

tentive gaze – awakens looking toward the past, enjoying

and identifying itself in the images from another time,

evoked in the materials, in the alternation of successive,

superimposed bites as elements constituting a three-

dimensional object impregnated like a palimpsest – ma-

trix – which, far from acting as a nostalgic impediment,

sets up an imbalance in relation to the present, lived and

represented as a print [4, p. 42]. A print that appears as

the appropriation of a meaning transmitted by the story,

as a recollection.

All of the foregoing allows us to draw an analogy be-

tween the concept of repetition in Kierkegaard and the

concept of repetition in the two completely opposing re-

alities that make up the natural reality of intaglio printing

and printmaking systems; the matrix and the print. The

two items form a totality or a single indissoluble being,

although from an ontological point of view they do pres-

ent differences.

Translated by

Judith Alexia Weninger

References /Bibliografia

[1] Kierkegaard S., Papers and Journals, A. Hannay (transl.), Penguin

Classics, London–New York 1996.

[2] Plato, Six great Dialogues: Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Phaedrus, Sym-

po sium, The Republic, Dover Publications, Mineola, New York 2007.

[3] Kierkegaard S., Repetition and Philosophical Crumbs, Oxford Uni-

versity Press, New York 2009.

[4] Ramos Guadix J.C., En torno al grabado. La estampa y su práctica

reexiva, [1], Entorno Gráco Ediciones, Granada 2015.

[5] Psicoanálisis y realidad, A. Suarez (ed.), Siglo XIX Editores,

Mexico 1989.

Abstract

This paper presents Søren Kierkegaard’s concept of repetition and attempts to draw an analogy between it and intaglio printmaking, in relation to

three welldifferentiated moments. The rst moment is the location of repetition in the context of individual existence and its relationship with the

matrix as a unique thing. The second, its demanding nature, its search for freedom, where the question of printing is understood as the progress and

process of transfer. In this stage repetition becomes an instantaneous demand and vindication. Thirdly, the paper analyses the relationship between

repetition as a life event and the print as the process of appropriating a story by means of a graphic act. Here the analogy is drawn between the con-

cept of repetition by Kierkegaard and the concept of repetition in the two completely opposing realities that comprise the natural reality of intaglio

printmaking; the matrix and the print.

Key words: Kierkegaard, repetition, matrix, print, intaglio printmaking, mimesis

Streszczenie

Autor artykułu przedstawia koncepcje powtórzenia Sørena Kierkegaarda, próbując nakreślić analogię między nią a graką intaglio (graką wklę-

słodrukową) w odniesieniu do trzech różniących się od siebie momentów. Pierwszym z nich jest relacja powtórzenia wobec układu odniesienia,

jakim jest indywidualna egzystencja i jej związek z matrycą jako bytem wyjątkowym. Po drugie, ponieważ w jego charakterze leży kategoryczny

postulat wolności, który porusza kwestie drukowania jako procesu postępu i przekazu. Na tym etapie powtórzenie jest natychmiastowym żądaniem

i realizacją. Na koniec analizowany jest związek między powtórzeniem jako wydarzeniem istnienia a drukiem jako procesem zawłaszczenia historii

przez istnienie aktu gracznego. W tym kontekście autor zamierza ustanowić analogię między koncepcją powtórzenia Kierkegaarda a koncepcją

powtórzenia dwóch całkowicie przeciwnych rzeczywistości, które składają się na naturalną rzeczywistość miedziorytu i systemów drukowania,

takich jak matryca i druk.

Słowa kluczowe: Kierkegaard, powtórzenie, matryca, druk, intaglio, mimesis

Repetition. A journey to the limits of the matrix

Juan Carlos Ramos Guadix

doi:10.37190/arc190303

Abstract