A Symbolic, Imaginary Projection into the Abyss episode artwork

EPISODE · Jan 9, 2026 · 42 MIN

A Symbolic, Imaginary Projection into the Abyss

from Failure Is Freedom · host https://www.martinessig.com

There may be actual degrees of freedom in the register of Imaginary if it is possible to relate determinate being to the open indeterminacy of the void. Jean-Luc Marion's Saturated Phenomena relate the objective determinations of the intention to the failure to determine of the affective intuition as the indeterminable hermeneutics of too much givenness, or of too much aboutness for the intention to reify into phenomenal or conceptual objects. Is it possible that this affective intuition cannot be fully determined because it intuits the irreducible ambiguity of actual indeterminacy, something like the indeterminacy or superposition of Quantum? If this were the case, then this irreducible ambiguity would contain actual degrees of freedom, particularly the freedom of the non-local, symbolic imagination to project itself into the abyss of meaning to generate new semantic meanings and virtual worlds that have real effects on being, or are ontologically real themselves, as virtuality is for Deleuze. For Hegel determinate being can step outside of itself, or self-alienate, to imagine itself as an object. It is the lack of total objectification of and in the subjective intention, or the lack of symbolic interpolation, that constitutes the subject's "singularity" in Zizek's formulation, or that allows for some relative degrees of freedom in the register of the Imaginary. The Real is the absolute resistance to the symbolization and the objectification of the intention, but the Imaginary can imagine into, or across, the open spaces of the Real outside of and within determinate being. Lack of interpolation can also be seen as the excess of indeterminate being that allows for an excess of interpretations, which is too much being to determine. There is too much being because being is an indeterminate becoming, which is always becoming more than what the signifiers and concepts of the Symbolic can frame, so that there is an ongoing need for concept creation. It is this excess of being beyond objectification that allows for the imaginary freedom of interpretation. The interpretation of determinate being is the freedom of the symbolic imagination given by the indeterminacy of the void.https://www.martinessig.com I mix the mixtapes that I post here but...,Baddass vibes mixed by James Reeves of Midnight Radio: jamesreeves.co for the intro and outro music of most episodes.

There may be actual degrees of freedom in the register of Imaginary if it is possible to relate determinate being to the open indeterminacy of the void. Jean-Luc Marion's Saturated Phenomena relate the objective determinations of the intention to the failure to determine of the affective intuition as the indeterminable hermeneutics of too much givenness, or of too much aboutness for the intention to reify into phenomenal or conceptual objects. Is it possible that this affective intuition cann...

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There may be actual degrees of freedom in the register of Imaginary if it is possible to relate determinate being to the open indeterminacy of the void. Jean-Luc Marion's Saturated Phenomena relate the objective determinations of the intention to...

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