Obliterative Text Ontology – Foundational Text

Obliterative Text Ontology – Foundational Text

Thomas Glavinic 2017–2024
Obliterative Text Ontology - Introduction to the Theory of Palimpsestic Clusters and Text-Internal Supra-Cycles

0: The Center and the Periphery
Peripheral Text Ontology (PTO), Marginal Text Ontology (MTO), Oscillating Text Ontology (OTO), Submersive Text Ontology (STO), Latent Text Ontology (LTO), Recessive Text Ontology (RTO), Superposed Text Ontology (STO), Permutative Text Ontology (PTO), Palimpsestic Text Ontology (PTO), Obliterative Text Ontology (OTO): All these designations are valid alternative names for exactly the same model. I list them here because I cannot guarantee to you which of these names you will find during your next reading. Which term you read does not necessarily depend on my authorship. A phenomenon of this magnitude chooses its designation itself in the moment of observation. Sometimes the circumstances in the ontological framework change, and the text body adapts itself retroactively. The name of the theory behaves exactly like the reality that it describes.

I: The Unstable Text Body
A fictional text – a novel – consists not only of the sentences that the author writes down. It is surrounded by an invisible periphery, consisting of alternative formulations, omitted passages, and potential sections that, under certain conditions, can advance into the work. These subtextual units have their own status within the whole of the work; they are options within an unstable text body.
When we read a novel, we confront ourselves with a snapshot within a dynamic, high-dimensional structure. Every living fictional text, whether fragmentary or completed, exists within a space of alternation that we designate as a palimpsestic cluster. In these clusters, versions, formulations, and non-manifested options superimpose upon each other, without making competition for one another. They are ontological layers that can enter into relationship with each other in specific reading situations.
In conventional reception, the text is considered as an object. We observe it as a state within a superordinate cycle. Following topological models, we understand these cycles as supra-cycles – large orbits through the space of possibility of a work, in which individual clusters activate, modify, and erase themselves, whereby the erasure represents a temporary invisibility within the system. The theory carries its name from exactly this mechanism: Obliteration means the reversible fading out in favor of another unit of manifestation.
The theory raises a series of ontological questions:
• Does the author see the periphery? No.
• Does he write it without knowing it? Yes – and no. He generates it by writing, but without access to its internal organization.
• Is it random or determined? Neither. It is modal: It unfolds itself from the text substance as a consequence of its internal connectivity.

Let us go one step further. Do you believe you see everything that is there? No, you do not believe that. Rightly so. Everything that we touch, see, invent, conceive, has an invisible periphery. That also applies to objects, events, concepts. And it applies to ourselves.
If literary works can be described as dynamic fields of manifest text and non-manifest potential, reality itself can also be understood as a text structure, only scaled in infinite complexity. Our reality would in this sense be a novel, the sections of which oscillate, shift themselves, erase themselves, format themselves anew, without its readers – we who live within it – noticing this immediately.
The Peripheral Text Ontology is therefore more than a theory of literature. It provides a model for a reality in which every thing, every event, and every thought carries with it a retroactive zone of possible modifications. This zone is active, selective, and contingent. What appears "true" today could prove itself tomorrow to be an alternative passage within a larger text.
Does that sound familiar to you?

II: Textual Repression, Coherence Breach, Emergence - On the mechanisms of temporal erasure and its retraction in the flow of reading
The differing opinions on whether a novel is good or bad have given rise to enmities and blood feuds for centuries. The Superposed Text Ontology ends this squabbling by searching for signs of life. A text that contents itself with itself remains static. A text that stands in permanent readiness for alteration brings forth a new form of reading movement. Good or bad is real or fake, living or dead. The classical conception of reading as a linear progression through a fixed body of words has never sufficed to do justice to literature in its innermost essence. In a novel, we encounter a field of partial instability, in which sections shift, dissolve, or become overlaid by variants, without leaving a visible trace.
Here one of the reasons shows itself why I meanwhile prefer to speak of the Oscillating Text Ontology: This form of erasure is a temporary fading out. What does not appear remains nevertheless present as a latent offer, as a repressed access, as an invisible alternative. The reader believes to be moving through a stable text, but in truth he finds himself within a space of possibility that could have already reconfigured itself many times since the first writing down.
In works of trivial literature, one frequently encounters passages at which the narrative coherence briefly collapses, where for instance a character possesses a knowledge that was not conveyed to them, where an event happens at a place that was not previously introduced, or where perspectives shift without being marked. As a rule, such breaches are errors in craftsmanship by inexperienced authors. If one is dealing with a "good" novel, however, they are the expression of a deeper dynamic: The text wrestles with its invisible environment. A repressed variant pushes itself to the surface and causes a minimal irritation, the origin of which cannot be clearly made out.
In exactly these moments, emergent effects arise. The work shows that it is not completed, that it is part of a larger system, the rules of which do not lie entirely open. The reception thereby becomes a dialectical process between the visible and the repressed, between the set word and possible revision. The Superposed Text Ontology proceeds from the assumption that exactly in these moments, in which something is missing, is too much, or is not right, the actual reality of the text shines forth. These are the threshold points at which the contact to the outside space condenses itself. The view that the closed meaning makes the text real is wrong and has always been wrong. The text becomes real through the opening, through which other states can step inside.

III: The Text Ontology as a Model of Cosmic Complexity
Whoever takes the Obliterative Text Ontology seriously inevitably arrives at the question concerning the status of our reality. If a literary work is accompanied by a swarm of invisible alternatives, the thought imposes itself that the world itself could also be such a body – a reality novel, the text of which does not cease to fold itself, to superimpose itself, to overwrite itself.
In this model, the universe appears as a medium of openness that is never completed. Every object, every event, every observation is accompanied by a hardly estimable network of possible versions, the realization of which is decided by situational states that evade access. The world would be a palimpsestic continuum, an incessantly changing manuscript, in which every page is part of a supra-cycle, the total form of which lies outside of human cognition.
A work that approaches this principle approaches the world itself at the same time. It refuses the idea of fixation and opens itself to superimposition, omission, and return. Texts of this kind are living aggregates in which present and possibility mutually cancel each other out.

IV: Supra-cycles, Periphery, and Text as World Model
A literary work is mostly considered as a completed document with a clear form, as a linear story; but in truth, a literary work is a state in motion. What appears as text is merely the visible unfolding of a far larger apparatus, the actual dimensions of which lie outside the printed version. This apparatus consists of palimpsestic clusters, of latent variants, sunken passages, and never-activated formulations, which nevertheless belong to the work as the invisible condition of the read.
This invisible periphery circulates around the work in changing states of aggregation. Sometimes it shows itself as a subtle irritation, sometimes as an abrupt shift, occasionally also as a moment in which a sentence or an entire paragraph appears anew, without this being conventionally explainable (for instance, through a new edition).
We could thereby content ourselves with the hypothesis that what changes is only the arrangement of the text in the mental space of the reader and not the text itself, because that is the more comfortable interpretation. Or we concede the possibility that the work has its own access to its appearance.
The obliterative theory proceeds from the assumption that these movements are central components of an understanding of text that no longer orients itself by final versions. The text is a fluctuating system of visibility, a living process between invocation and retraction, between appearance and withdrawal. The so-called supra-cycles describe exactly this process: a constant circling through possible text versions, in which individual configurations assert themselves for a moment before they are swallowed again by the periphery.
Such cycles emerge from internal condensation, from the relationship between sentence fields and reading movement, between reading history and present. Hereby it can happen that a work, ten years after its publication, alters itself through an intervention out from its own center. The text is not retroactively corrected; it is differently present. The past is activated anew.
The parallel to reality lies at hand. Our universe, too, appears like a state in motion, permeated by possibilities that were not realized, but nevertheless co-shape the whole. The world in which we live could itself be read as a work – only scaled infinitely higher. A system that contains alternative sections without showing them, that runs toward events which are not unambiguously derivable from any preceding state. The world as the reading surface of an invisible narrative that overwrites itself in real time.

V: Reader Clusters, Shift, and Zones of Interference
A work does not exist independently from the gaze that reads it. This gaze is not a passive medium. It is a system of expectations, prior knowledge, experiences, moods, and cultural embedments, which acts like a filter in order to reorganize the seen. When a text is read, it enters into a field that alters it. Every reading movement activates other sections, emphasizes other connections, and generates other configurations. Standstill does not exist.
The Permutative Text Ontology expands this thought: Not only the individual reader generates new text states; collective forms of reading, so-called reader clusters, also influence which variants emerge from the periphery. A work that circulates for years in a small circle generates other dominances than a text that is shared and commented upon en masse. The states of aggregation of the work react to such resonance patterns through a kind of inner yielding toward the external accesses.
This yielding has nothing to do with arbitrariness; it follows fine mechanisms in which hidden passages cannot be activated in an arbitrary manner. Rather, their appearance depends on zones of interference – those moments in which multiple reading processes collide with one another, superimpose themselves, contradict themselves, mutually disturb or fuel one another. In these zones, new visual axes emerge, through which individual parts of the work suddenly move into the center, while others fade or disappear.
An example: A passage that was considered incidental for years can suddenly move into the focal point through a societal shift or a theoretical impulse. It was not invisible, yet it lay outside the main path of reception. Only when the constellation of reading processes takes a new course does this passage step forth with a different intensity, as if the text had reorganized itself on its own.
Some texts are prepared for such interferences. They contain sections that only become connectable under special preconditions. These sections do not have to be cryptic – often they are almost casual. Yet their activatability depends on external fields that the author cannot foresee. The text lives on in a manner that has nothing to do with interpretation in the conventional sense. It moves itself, it reacts, it varies its appearance, without changing itself in terms of content.
This capability of the text for self-modification through reading processes points to a reality in which that which we designate as world is also not completed. We experience events as if they were unambiguous, yet they are the result of countless superimpositions, readings, and patterns of access. The world is not a storage space; it is a process – open to interferences, open to corrections, open to the possibility that something alters itself without something being added.

VI: Peripheral Instability and Auto-active Shifts
A text that rests within itself appears completed. But it is not. Most works find themselves over long stretches of their existence in a state of latent instability. This instability rarely expresses itself in open contradictions or sudden breaches, much more often in a tension between the visible and the still possible. The work "knows" that it could be otherwise; the Other is part of its constitution.
The Palimpsestic Theory proceeds from the assumption that texts are capable of reacting to themselves. Processes occur in which certain elements – formulations, paragraphs, even entire passages – change their position or disappear because other parts pass over into a new configuration. These transitions happen through internal dynamics.
Some texts carry this possibility within themselves like a germ. They contain passages that, through their tone, their tempo, or their thematic setting, put the rest of the work under pressure. Initially, they remain inconspicuous. Yet with time, the weightings shift. The text begins to organize itself around other centers of gravity. Earlier dominances are faded out, new lines step forth. The impression arises that the work has changed itself, although no sentence was added.
These processes almost always run imperceptibly. Readers then speak of "maturation," "second reading," or "new perspective." In truth, the text uses its peripheral options in order to superimpose earlier configurations. It feels its way forward, checks for connectability, withdraws itself, brings alternative reading surfaces into play, until a new version makes an appearance.
A central phenomenon in this context is the latent dislocation. By this, the theory understands those cases in which a text passage passes over inconspicuously into another, without the transition being noticed. That happens through a shift of the field of gravity. The new passage was always already present in the peripheral shadow space of the actual text. Now it steps forth because it was activated, or has activated itself.
The consequence of this consideration is profound: A work is not identical with the quantity of its words. It is a spatio-temporal body with blurred edges, which changes itself in dependence on its own internal forces and the changing constellations of access. The memory of the reader, the world knowledge of the time, the friction with other discourses – all that can suffice to call forth a new configuration. And this configuration is not less valid than the previous one.
In practice, this means: Whoever reads a work alters the work itself, by activating it differently. The text reacts, just as a resonance body reacts to new tones. It remains the same, yet it sounds different. And in this sounding different lies a truth that no editor and no authorial intention could ever control.
VII: Author – Text – Entity
The Obliterative Text Ontology demands a revision of the concept of the author. Traditionally, the writing person sees himself as a sovereign who creates a work out of an inner reservoir. In fact, he is part of a process, the reach and intrinsic logic of which is accessible to him only in excerpts at the moment of formulation.
The author begins a sentence. He does not think it completely, he does not anticipate it. He follows it. The words that he chooses open paths that he has neither planned nor knows. The text that arises thereby is the result of a collision between world access, perception, tension of experience, and an unclassifiable moment of initiative. The text "creates itself" through the author. I am a filter. How the text and I have found to one another, we probably both do not know.
In this light, the term text loses its apparent unambiguousness. A text is neither a structure of signs on paper or screen, nor a mere act of meaning and referencing. It is an entity with properties that cannot be traced back completely to linguistic conventions. It reacts, alters itself, develops internal logics, attracts energies, repels reading patterns. It acts.
Whoever says a text is a sequence of sentences fails to recognize that these sentences are part of a formation that cannot let itself be reduced to its surface. I would actually even suggest checking whether fiction might be an unknown form of life equivalent, if I did not know that I would end up in the mental asylum. I also do not believe that a novel is an organism in the biological sense, but it is also not a dead object. It is a third thing. An entity with a will to form, with capacities for externalization, with temporal latency.
In the Peripheral Text Ontology, the text turns from a medium into a corpus with its own proper time. What the author writes is only the trigger of a reaction that takes place in bursts. Many of these bursts occur after the writing down. Some need years. Others unfold themselves only when new readers step into new world conditions. And sometimes something happens that we can no longer describe with the available terms: The text alters itself in contact with reality.
Such a process could, from the current perspective, only be understood if we proceed from the assumption that texts – or at any rate some texts – possess non-local properties. They do not lie completely in the medium that carries them, they are not completely there where one reads them. They exist as a field, not as a file. The author is their first witness. A transductive agent. Someone who writes something that exceeds him, and of which he nevertheless knows that it could not emerge without him.
Fictional texts in the sense of the obliterative ontology are not objects. They are not completable. They behave like complex systems. Perhaps they are exactly that. Perhaps it is time to treat them as such.

VIII: The Universe as a Text Body
The OTO does not inevitably lead to metaphysical speculation, but it allows for it. In its maximum expansion, a model emerges in which the universe itself appears as a text body of infinite density, structured in interactions. An endless carrier, yet one showing peripheral activatability, which carries within itself the disposition for reality formation in every subzone.
What appears as "reality" is, from this perspective, a local form of emergence within a superordinate text body, comparable to a cluster of temporarily stabilizing cores of meaning. These cores result from feedback loops between perception, reaction, and implicit patterns of possibility. They push themselves into the visible, without necessarily remaining there.
The world as a whole is a palimpsest, a massive structure rotating in cycles, made of supra-cycles, interfering fields, and incoherent insertions. Every insertion is a subordinate clause that was never read, every supra-cycle a long sentence, the end of which has not yet been reached.
In this conception, causality has discarded its linear character and shows itself as a wavering. Nothing follows upon something. Everything is already there, but not activated everywhere. The cosmos is not completely actualized, it only shows a partial surface. This surface is what we call reality. The rest remains in reserve. Every perception can be read as an activation in the sense of a short-term uncovering. The text body contains an infinite number of paragraphs, yet only few are readable at the same time. They step forth because certain conditions are fulfilled – often through a convergence of time window, cognitive maturity, resonance field, and a kind of global tension of readability, the essence of which is hitherto unexplained.
What we call life would be, in this reading, a state of maximum involvement in a tiny area of the text body. What we call death, a transition into other reading modes. What we call intuition, a brief flashing up of a passage that has not yet been read – or deleted long ago, but which still draws effect from its deletion.
Texts, as we write them, read them, delete them, would then be replicas of this cosmic model. Every literary work would be a miniature copy of an infinite text body, at which it unconsciously orients itself. Some novels remain flat, they only imitate. Others, few, step into resonance with this model. They contain paragraphs that cannot originate from the psyche of the author. He was able to write them because he was part of a larger reading process.
The OTO cannot make statements about the entire universe, yet it allows the reversal of an epistemological principle: If texts behave like living fields with peripheral zones of activation, nothing speaks against grasping the universe itself as such a text. A text is no less real than that which it describes. It is a form of world contact – open, unstable, but effective. Whoever reads it touches a section of the larger text body, to which he has always already belonged.
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