I am working on a train of thought, entitled Crossing and Falling, across asymmetrical movements for elaborating on the ‘initial commitment’ that took me towards the idea of navigation. The ‘initial commitment’ departs from a particular sequence in Harun Farocki’s Parallel II, where the skater crosses the threshold between the Demo Area and the Library, after which he soon will fall into a hole. The notion of ‘initial commitment’ is borrowed from Reza Negarestani’s text Navigate Against Extreme Prejudice (Definitions and Ramifications). The essay’s title might play with ‘terminate with prejudice’, a phrase used to express the brutality of an employer to fire someone, as if Negarestani would fire philosophy from its secured seat in the comfort zone of history without giving philosophy entirely up. It’s at the edge. It’s philosophy and not philosophy. A philosophy under erasure which makes it compelling for me to engage with that text as a ‘pilot’ to that blog. The ‘initial commitment’ operates on concrete grounds, e.g., the skater in the computer-game who crosses and falls that demands next steps, or ‘other entitlements. It operates like a gift which cannot be refused, that means, a gift before any form of politeness. It needs to be followed up further. With commitment, though. And this is the challenge.

“For as soon as a commitment is made, its ramifications – whether as other commitments or other entitlements – grow exponentially. The ramified path structure that an initial commitment opens up is wholly asymmetrical to that commitment. If the navigation of ramified paths always involves decision-making, it does not mean that the initial decision, its conditions and assertional content are preserved throughout the course of navigation.”  – Navigate With Extreme Prejudice (Definitions and Ramifications) Encyclonospace Iranica (Vancouver: Access, dadabase, 2013), 3.

11 Revisions.