In Plato’s cave men gaze at shadows

At objects that are always already manufactured

They see the same images, shadows, fancies

Fascinated by the gaze of other eyes

Within this twisted cave, all are identical

Identified with prisoners who are the same and other

Caught in the snare of a community project

They can only glimpse by turning their heads

But these men are chained by repetition

Looking fixedly ahead to the instruments of their prestige

To the magicians and to their spells

The community of men is caught in a snare

Thus forced to keep their heads still all their lives

Creates confusion about position and orientation

Seems to breed fakes and fancies

That good sense and proper orientation could clear up

The gaze being turned in the right direction

The head has to be correctly turned and modeled and styled

To suit the illusion on the opposite side

And set up the scene of representation

For it is an illusion that you can return to the same truth

The truth which has always already

Artfully prescribed the detour needed

For its re-cognition

Speculum (1985:260)

An unexamined cave is not worth living in

The myth of the cave 

Read as a metaphor of the inner space

Of the den, the womb or hystera

Or sometimes of the earth

The point of departure

When Socrates tells us that men

Live underground

In a dwelling formed like a cave

Ground, dwelling, cave and even form

All equivalents of the hystera

Living dwelling  for a certain time, or even for all time

In the same place, in the same habitat

A place shaped like a cave or a womb

The Platonic cave functions as an attempt

To give an orientation to the reproduction and representation

Of something that is always already there in the den

Situated in the back

Symmetry plays a decisive part here

As projection, reflection, inversion, retrovision

And you will always already have lost your bearings

As you set foot in the cave it will turn your head

Set you walking on your hands

Though Socrates never breathes a word about the whole mystification

This theatrical trick as you enter into the functioning of representation

Turned Upside-down and Back-to-front (1985:244)

So men haved lived in this cave since childhood

Since time began

They have never left this place, this space

But they are unaware of this

The whole of this cave is oriented in relation to the opening

In the form of a long passage, leading upward

Toward the light or the sight of day

This orientation functions by turning everything over

By reversing, by pivoting around axes of symmetry

Symmetry plays a decisive part here -

As projection, reflection, inversion, retroversion

And you will always already have lost your bearings

This theatrical trick

Is unavoidable

If you are to enter

Into the functioning of representation

So these men have lived in this cave since childhood

Chained, they are fixed with their heads and genitals

Facing front, opposite the back of the cave

To prevent them turning toward the light

Head and genitals are kept turned to the front

Of the representational project

The face, the visage, are maintained by links

By chains that are, as it were, invisible

Thus keeping up the illusion

That the origin might become fully visible

If only one could turn around

Bring it into one's field of vision

If only it were not artificially turned away

One is able only to look ahead and stretch forward

Chains, lines, perspectives oriented straight ahead

All maintain the illusion of constant  motion in one direction

Forward.  The cave cannot be explored, walked, measured

In the round. Which means that men all stay there in the same spot

Same place, same time, in the same circle

Or circus ring, the theatrical arena of that representation

Special Status for the Side Opposite (1985:245)

And the only thing they can still do

Is to look at whatever presents itself before their eyes

Paralysed, unable to turn around

Or return toward the origin

They are condemned to look ahead ar the wall opposite

Toward the back wall of the cave

The back which is also the front, the fore -

Toward the metaphorical project of the back of the cave

Which will serve as a backcloth

For all the representations to come

Heads forward, eyes front, genitals aligned

Fixed in a straight direction, straining forward in a straight line.

A phallic direction, a phallic line, a phallic time

Backs turned on origin.

This project, by which the hystera is displaced, metaphorized

Always already holds them captive.

This transposition envelopes and encircls them

It is never susceptible of representation

But produces, facilitates, permits all representations

Since all are always already marked

Or re-marked in the incessant repetition

Of this same work of projection

The hystera, faceless, unseen 

Will never be presented, represented as such

A Certain Man then - sex undermined(?)

Is chained up in/by this transposition of the hystera

In no position to turn his head, or anything else

Unable to turn, turn around, or return.

Simultaneously concealing and upholding the sexual economy (1985:266)

The play's director, despite all his expertise in mimicry

Betrays a double error, a double faux-pas

So we are forced to understand and conclude

That the error is a necessary part of this truth

His journey to the presence of truth

Takes advantage of gaps,  privileged symptoms

Which will never be taken into consideration

While explicitly taking the false for the true

Simultaneously concealing and upholding the sexual economy 

When  counter opinions and objections are raised 

Based upon a failure to differentiate between

A "good" and a "bad" mimesis

Between a "faithful" reproduction of the truth

And the fantasies, fakes, shadows, copies of copies

Of objects which are already artificially fabricated, mimed

And merely to contemplate which leads to madness

The madness of these "men in chains," for example 

Such men are not even in a position to take the measure of their insanity

Since they are under the spell of magic tricks

And have no "other" truth, nothing truer, no vision of truth.

But this truth, which it is madness to fail to recognize-

Madness being a kind of excess,

Of drifting away from all relation to truth,

Unpegged to truth's standard -

Would always already have covered over, erased

Sublimated the scene of another, forgotten,  "truth"

Or "reality" whose fate is secured and sealed

By the discourse of Socrates