Chaosophy - autonomous learning

that stops moving, can remain immobile for years and years. In
the cases of Nietzsche, Van Gogh, Artaud, Roussel, Campana,
etc., there is doubtless a coexistence of the two elements. First
there's an amazing "breakthrough," a breaching of the wall. Van
Gogh. Nerval-and we could cite so many others!-have broken
through the wall of the signifier, the wall of the "Mommy-Daddy"
system, have traveled far beyond that point, and speak to us with
a voice that is the voice of our future. But the second element is
still present in this process: the risk of collapse. No one should
treat lightly the risk that the "breakthrough," the breaking apart,
may coincide with or degenerate into a kind of collapse. We need
to consider this danger as fundamental. The two elements are
connected. And there's no point in saying that Artaud was not
schizophrenic. Actually it's worse: it's shameful, it's idiotic to say
so. Obviously Artaud was schizophrenic. He accomplished his
brilliant "breakthrough," he broke through the wall, but at what
risk The price exacted is a collapse that must be defined as
schizophrenic. The two·· things are not identical; the "breakthrough"
and the collapse are two different moments. But it would
be irresponsible to ignore the danger of collapse in these processes.
Even if the risk is perhaps worthwhile.
In a psychiatric hospital the doctors defy a prohibition .from the director
of the clinic and make it a habit of playing cards in the room of a
patient who has been for years in a state of profound catatonia. He's
become an object, without words, without gestures, without movement.
One day the doctors are playing as usual. Suddenly the patient, whose
face had been pointed toward the window by the nurse that morning,
cries out, «The director is coming!" Then he falls back into silence. A
few years later, without ever speaking again, he dies. So that's his message
to the world: «The director is coming!"
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