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Nous les penseurs

traduction en anglais : Fiona Sampson

We Thinkers

1. Where I tell you what’s there
     1.1. It’s impossible to knot a string in two-dimensional space unless it shows a join.
     1.2. Knotting string, I work with the three dimensions of space, I work with time.
     1.3. Taking time as a fourth dimension, knowing that knots form and un-form, my imagination arranges this string in every configuration.
          1.3.1. Watching the scene from a little height (time below me along, with the three dimensions of space) the string “slips along itself”.
          1.3.2. These knots don’t hold.
     1.4. In the same way, it’s impossible to knot an unlimited surface in three-dimensional space unless it shows a join.
          1.4.1. Whoever loves me follows me.
     1.5. That remains possible in four-dimensional space.
     1.6. Our shared space – trivial, three-dimensional – can therefore be knotted in five-dimensional space.
     1.7. Including time, we need six dimensions!
     1.8. We thinkers, we need six dimensions in order to knot space-time.
     1.9. But that’s not my plan.

2. What’s my plan?
     2.1. I dream about knotting thoughts.
     2.2. Or about knotting an argument.
          2.2.1. What’s the definition of an argument?
               2.2.1.1.I set out from one position.
               2.2.1.2. I talk from this position, never once losing my thread.
               2.2.1.3. I continue keeping to my thread, and far off I see a position that’s ready to go through one of my circuits in the space of a word.
               2.2.1.4. Organising my argument, I hold the thread by both ends and don’t let go of either.
               2.2.1.5 How to make a knot in these conditions?
                    2.2.1.5.1. How to make a knot without releasing one of the ends?
          2.2.2. I need to learn how to think while occasionally releasing the far end of my thought.
               2.2.2.1. To think backwards so as to make a circuit of these thoughts.
               2.2.2.2. Which are there without being there.
               2.2.2.3. Which snuff themselves out to light up others.
               2.2.2.4. So it contributes and so every thought shows its dependence on lost thoughts.
               2.2.2.5. And so that this knot of fleeting thoughts will make me a language, a language knotted from thoughts, a thread of language to knot into thought, a garment of words and thoughts.
     2.3. For pressing reasons (the supply cable of my electric shaver, for example), I abandon this project.

3. Of thought and its degrees of freedom
     3.1. I am incapable.
          3.1.1. That’s how it is.
          3.1.2. Of thinking about knotting thoughts.
          3.1.3. That’s where I always get lost.
     3.2. I lack a degree of freedom.
          3.2.1. Each of my thoughts, in order to go through one of its circuits, surrenders a degree of freedom.
          3.2.2. Trapped from its beginning to its end.
          3.2.3. After an end is released I lose sight of it.
     3.3. I regularly lose the ends of my thoughts.
          3.3.1. Sometimes I lose both ends.
          3.3.2. I try to rebuild myself with the ends of incomplete thoughts.
          3.3.3. I potter as best I can among lost thoughts.
          3.3.4. I only make knots that fail.
     3.4. I fail altogether.

4. Recurring
4.1. When I visualise knotting thoughts I put myself straight away in a space which surrounds them with two extra dimensions and in this space which is a thought space I manipulate thoughts about thoughts (which can be knotted) and in this space of thoughts about thoughts I continue very carefully until I arrive near a space of thoughts about thoughts about thoughts where I continue so as to come upon a space about thoughts about thoughts about thoughts about thoughts about thoughts about thoughts until this leads towards an infinity of thoughts and there – forcibly – I stop thinking because to really think at a given moment it’s necessary to stop thinking.

5. and lastly – What is a sound picture?
     5.1. Imagine a “thought-knot” in the air.
          5.1.1. Before the “thought-knot”, not far off:
          5.1.2. a very slow diver, horizontal.
          5.1.3. The very slow diver goes through the “thought-knot”.
          5.1.4. Not worrying at all about the two ends.
     5.2. Whoever talks, it’s good.
          5.2.1. Whoever sees, it’s better.
               5.2.1.1. Whoever hears, it’s…
     5.3. Finally, imagine
          5.3.1. a word without thought
          5.3.2. which will make no “knots”
          5.3.3. but “pictures”:
               5.3.3.1.          immovable,
               5.3.3.2.                          inaudible.