Bloggrokker (Scott) 9/26

Zero = a po-mo paradox?
Is the concept of zero a totalizing meta-metanarrative?
And, if so, can zero, this totalizing meta-meta, be broken down into singular narratives, "little stories," as Lyotard prefers?
Hell, I don't think I can come near any kind of concrete solution here. All I can do is lay down the back-story to this headscratchin' shebang.
I'm currently whipping my way through a great book by Charles Seife called Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea. As you can probably gather, it's the controversial history of this oft-vilified number--or meta-number, as some future cases might re-define it. I really dig this read. If anyone out there is at all into the origin of the numerical and philosophical idea of nothing, and this idea's rejection in ancient Greek and Judeo-Christian cultures and its embracing in the Hindu and Muslim worldviews, all the way to zero's position as the Holy Grail of mathematical Mad Hatters in its potential to decode the origins--and the fateful ragnaroks--of the universe, then warm up your library card.
And, surprise, surprise, this is where the book spins paradoxical, where the book goes into the concept of zero's dual meaning, infinity and the void--in other words, everything and nothing.
I don't want to delve into the domain of theoretical physicists here, what with their chalk-dusted jacket-sleeves and longings for some kind of Atomsmasher Fantasy Camp, and plumb this paradox--I'll leave it to the chalk-dusted set. I can't. This is where the meta-metanarrativity thing kicks in.
It's simple. If zero encompasses everything, and if everything in turn encompasses every totalizing metanarrative--Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, capitalism, Marxism, science, even paleolithic cave paintings if you stretch things effectively enough--ever spun, isn't zero a totalizing meta-metanarrative?
And, if true, what does this say for Lyotard's battle-cry of "waging a war against totality?"
Lyotard, good li'l po-moist he is, wants to break zero down. He might want to turn to simple arithmetic for reinforcements, zero being largely of mathematical domain.
What happens when you subtract zero? Nothing changes. Void happens.
What happens when you divide by zero? An infinity of a repeated sequence appears. Is this a kind of mathematical simulacra? Is there such a thing as postmodern math? Postmathematics?
Sorry, Lyotard. Zero's not going anywhere. Zero's impervious to your postmodern lashings.
And if the idea of a totalizing meta-metanarrative is a totalizing fraud?
Zero's still got a lot of po-mo moxey.
Consider zero's image. Isn't it the very image of a return to the absent center?
Consider the idea of the void, the gap, the very place, Barthes tells us, to look for true meaning.
Consider the plurality of meanings spewing forth from zero's simple round shape. Everything from Oprah's nom de signifier "O" to a two-dimensional rendering of the known planets--deepest apologies to Pluto--leap to mind.
If not a totalizing meta-metanarrative, is zero perhaps a meta-signifier?
Then there's Ground Zero. Here he goes again, you might scream.
Ground Zero--where an architectural zeroing effect took place.
(A zeroing effect hatched from the cultural region of the world where we got sifr, the Arabic word "empty" and the translated root of the English zero. Don't worry. I'll stop here.)
Everything's got a scary angle to it.
Didn't T. S. Eliot write "I will show you fear in a handful of dust?"
Manhattan's streets were terribly dusty a few years ago.