.
├───┐AxS:0
│ ├───┐ AxS:00
│ │ ├── AxS:000
│ │ │ ├── AxS:0001
│ │ │ ├── AxS:0002
│ │ │ └── AxS:0003
│ │ │ ├── AxS:00031
│ │ │ ├── AxS:00032
│ │ │ └── AxS:00033
│ │ ├── AxS:001
│ │ │ └── AxS:0011
│ │ │ └── AxS:00111
│ │ ├── AxS:002
│ │ │ └── AxS:0021
│ │ │ └── AxS:00211
│ │ └── AxS:003
│ │ ├── AxS:0031
│ │ └── AxS:0032
│ ├── AxS:01
│ │ └── AxS:011
│ │ └── AxS:0111
│ ├── AxS:02
│ │ ├── AxS:021
│ │ └── AxS:022
│ │ └── AxS:0221
│ │ └── AxS:02211
│ │ └── AxS:022111
│ └── AxS:03
│ ├── AxS:031
│ ├── AxS:032
│ └── AxS:033
├── AxS:1
│ ├── AxS:11
│ ├── AxS:12
│ │ └── AxS:121
│ │ └── AxS:1211
│ └── AxS:13
│ ├── AxS:131
│ └── AxS:132
├── AxS:2
│ ├── AxS:21
│ │ └── AxS:211
│ │ └── AxS:2111
│ │ └── AxS:21111
│ └── AxS:22
│ ├── AxS:221
│ │ └── AxS:2211
│ │ └── AxS:22111
│ │ └── AxS:221111
│ │ └── AxS:2211111
│ │ └── AxS:22111111
│ └── AxS:222
└── AxS:3
├── AxS:31
│ └── AxS:311
├── AxS:32
└── AxS:33
1. “In a multilinear system, everything happens at once” (ATP 297). This is Oedipus’ fatal discovery. By the time he knows what has happened, he also realises that what occurs always had to be the case.Oedipus’ early, unwarranted, belief that he is master of his fate is, of course, totally necessary for hisfated destiny to unfold – as it always will have done. Oedipus, as he himself says, is “unwittingly self-cursed”.
I have written elsewhere at length on tragedy as a cybernetic narrative. Briefly, the claim is thattragedy anticipates cybernetic explanation (or – and this is obviously the same point from anotherside – cybernetics recalls tragic fatalism). In both cases, time unravels into a flat system or singularity(feeding back into itself, recursively, rather than moving forward, successively (recursion isobviously a major pre-occupation of the ‘Flatlines’ text, both in its themes and in its format (withparentheses used to produce recursion as a textual embedding process (like this (...))))).
A crucial figure here is self-fulfilling prophecy; as I argue in my Curse, Recursion, Recurrence, “themost effective prophecies are always self-fulfilling” (36). Walter Cannon has established that self-fulfilling prophecy is a positive-feedback circuit. In his important essay, ‘Voodoo’ Death, Cannonshows that much sorcerous cursing operates by inducing vicious circles of fear (producing more fear(producing more fear) (etc.))) to the point of destroying the organism. To be told you're going to die istherefore, in certain circumstances, quite literally a sentence of death. For a more detailed account ofthese tangled webs, see my Fatal Loops: Tragedy as Cyberfiction and Smashed Optical Implants:From Time-Space Sunglasses to Cyberpunk Mirrorshades (this last draws extensively, and perhaps ‘illegitimately’, on the work of my esteemed colleague, R. E. Templeton).
(L.T.)