Territorial circulation is the first curve introduced into the continual flow of the earth’s movement.
Thomas Nail The Figure of the Migrant
The paleontologist Juan Luis Arsuaga proposes that the human is not only a languaging being but also a storytelling species. In my own terms, the human is homo narrans. This means that as a species, our hybrid origins only emerged in the wake of what I have come to define over the last decade as the Third Event. The First and Second Events are the origin of the universe and the explosion of all forms of biological life, respectively. I identify the Third Event in Fanonian-adapted terms as the origin of the human as a hybrid-auto-instituting-languaging-storytelling species: bios/ mythoi. The Third Event is defined by the singularity of the co-evolution of the human brain with—and, unlike those of all the other primates, with it alone—the emergent faculties of language, storytelling. This co-evolution must be understood concomitantly with the uniquely mythmaking region of the human brain...
Sylvia Wynter & Katherine McKittrick Homo Narrans
This research that questions the use of language and the construction of myth in occupied territories both by the colonised for the creation of national identity and the counter myth of imperialism. My research is about women who have militated against the occupiers. Freedom fighters or terrorists, depending on what point in history their story is told. Or whether it is by the occupied or occupier. The case study that I am using to interrogate concepts of myth as both social control and lines of flight is a little told story of a goddess from the occupied territories of Ireland. Macha was a goddess associated with the Triple headed goddesses that included Badh and Nemain and are collectively known as The Morrigan or Cailleach. Even this sentence belies the convoluted and complicated unpacking of the palimpsest of this goddesses story and it has been written and rewritten, embellished and elided throughout the centuries according to the mores of the time. Macha also means plain as in low-lying land and Emain Macha (Macha's Twins) is also known as Navan Fort (See image) and this was a seat of power for high kings in Ireland prior to occupation. A place of ritual king making.
plain noun /pleɪn/ (LAND) a large area of flat land
Gaelic/ Irish > English
macha gu macha, iol machaí (PIECE OF LAND)
Mácá Mhácá (BEAN) EN Maacah (WOMAN)
I have to admit here that I have had very little interest in mythology. I’m more interested in technology and so I’ll interrupt this flow to say that this will be a materialist reading of mythology and I am currently more concerned with how AI is serving what I believe to be a similar purpose as myth. But for fun I am aiming to bring the myth and the technology together in the form of a cyborg goddess. Here I am taking inspiration from Jasbir Puar’s essay that builds upon Donna Haraway’s essay “I’d rather be a cyborg than a goddess.” I apologise for the plot spoiler, but this is how academic essays are supposed to work. I will be talking about techne, logos, bios and mythos and how these pertain to the construction of how place and narrative are employed in the movement of power through time. I will also explore noise in the construction of myths and how this can be an element of reshaping what myths mean over time.
I have been increasingly interested in how the communication of what AI is and can do for humans appears, to me, to echo myth-making. In the myth that I am using as my case study I have traced the potential for mistranslations (Macha into the greek Machae - war sprites) and the evolution of particular characteristics ascribed to Macha and those who were named after her. The creation of Macha the war goddess was used for various ends throughout the centuries. Another reading of her actions could be one of preventing war through inflicting the pangs of child birth on the men who would go into battle. In this Macha could be deemed a pacifist.
I will explore how noise theory and complexity theory in the field of myth and AI can be a useful way to understand AI’s inductive and deductive methods. I work with concepts about lanuage as technology following Malaspina and this usage in Natural Language Processing after de Jager. These theories around language, data sets and modelling will be frictioned with theories from the philosophy of noise referencing Malaspina, Inigo Wilkins and Mattin. Using these theories along with Sylvia Wynter I will circle back to the Macha myth as an origin story, one that was literally superseded by the construction of the first christian church on Macha’s height, Ard Macha (Irish/ Gaelic) or Armagh city in Northern Ireland.
From here I will also reference theories of escapology. The rewriting of myths to engender a new code or algorithm of social emancipation. Here I will reference an essay by an anti-war anti-imperialist feminist who spent time in Armagh Gaol with female political prisoners in the 1980’s The Bitch Goddess. I will be pointing here to Marxists such as Silvia Federici’s theories of land enclosure and Gerda Lerner’s The Creation of Patriarchy with the idea that anything that can be constructed can be deconstructed. Here I will finally speculate about the construction of a cyborg goddess and how a newly encoded mythology might point the way to future freedoms.
While this writing will be constructed as an academic text, the research is forming the basis for the speculative fiction that will be the body of the audio essay for the Intelligence | Love | Revolution residency.
This research is made possible by the support and collaboration of Siphonophorae, The Guesthouse Collective, The Arts Council Ireland and Foreign Objekt (Sepideh Majidi). Thank you also to Jennifer Redmond and Roy Wroth for thinking with me in conversation and in making.
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