| He thought he saw an Argument/That proved he was the Pope:/He looked again, and found it was/a bar of Mottled Soap./"A fact so dread," he faintly said,/"Extinguishes all hope."; Lewis Carroll's nonsense verse provokes a smile because it bizarrely and the concrete: arguments and bars of soap. Holy Communion offers feedings that are miraculous mixtures of the concrete (a bit of bread and wine) and Lewis Carroll writes of a "bit of bread, a bit of Shakespeare". What is this "bit" that can provoke a smile or awaken a sense of wonder? Can it become for us a bit of art for a "Transfiguration of the Commonplace"?; A perennial problem among philosophers and artists has been that of the mind and the body. How is it that material reality can embody feelings and ideas? Is this a paradoxical union of opposites? Sense, Nonsense, and Sacrament offers no answer, but uses different approaches to the Body-Mind mystery to awaken wonder and gratitude at the "banality" that there are 'things' and 'thoughts'! An Inter-area study in art, popular culture and philosophy, the dissertation is a work of conceptual art arranged in the format of an Episcopal Order of Holy Communion, and with the purpose of negotiating terms. Gilles Deleuze's model of philosophy was not judgement, but rather negotiation and mediation: a thinking differently that can bring better terms to the "Powers and Principalities" at war.; To elaborate the mystery of Body and Mind, I offer a conceptual collage, including illustrations and music. This includes "a bit of" the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, the paradoxes and nonsense of Lewis Carroll and E.V. Escher, Zen, psychoanalysis, and the sensationalist painting of Francis Bacon. From the area of popular culture I include sacramental reflections on the Grateful Dead. My goal is to provoke thought, expand the sense of life, and negotiate terms---terms that include Sense, Nonsense, Sacrament, Sign, Grace, Law, Body, Becoming, Difference, Repetition, Event and Eternal Life. |
