Neil Loots

The idea of perfect unity or oneness, in Hegelian terms a final Aufhebung which would ultimately signify the end of the dialectical negation of "the other" and the "resurrection" of the self, and which would thus signify the culmination of history in oneness (another word for which is perfect sameness and non-difference), is indeed analogous the idea of the perfect oneness of god. I tend to think of the famous John Lennon song, impossible to imagine because of the infinity of radical, "non-dialectizable" culturally inscribed difference, i.e. history. The radical, time/space infinity of the discursive other/Other "within" history radically exceeds and evades the self's attempts to conceive and thus control it. The end of history in perfection - and here an absolute presence and an absolute absence seem to be two names for the same thing - is precisely impossible because of the becoming time of space and the becoming space of time - the infinite - a point which Hegel fails to take into account in his chronometric conception of history. Of course, there is no end to infinity, therefore God cannot be a perfect whole. God can cetainly not be both infinite, in the sense of transcending, overflowing or radically exceeding any attempts to subsume and thus reduce "him" and "his" radical transcendence under a bounded concept, AND the concept of a perfect bounded whole somehow thoroughly beyond (i.e. transcending) human thought (cognition, conception), i.e. a perfect concept for which there can be no concept because it is perfect and thus not bound to linguistic conceptuality, but which is still thought from "within" (I use this word with caution, for me there is no inside-outside, only infinity) the "realm" of linguistic conceptuality - "mathematical" word-concepts like "perfect," "unity"and "whole" - as a word-concept of the perfect. The absolute void or perfect overcoming of language (indeed "everything") cannot be thought from within language, which relies on an infinite and arbitrary system of word-concept differences for the generation of its meaning ("full" is "full" because it not "half full" or "empty", "absence" is only abscence because it is not "presence", "a cat" is "a cat" because it is not "a dog", nor "a parakeet", nor "a rat", nor "a baby grand piano," nor "Mobuto Sese Seko," nor "god"). "Void" and "perfection" are word-concepts, tied to the "non-appropriable" infinity of the human apprehension of language, culture, history, etc., and thus do not point to something somehow beyond linguistic conceptuality.

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One morning, upon awakening from agitated dreams, Gregor Samsa found himself, in his bed, transformed into a monstrous vermin.