"Who Are You?"

This question "who are you?" implies a double deterritorialization; first, of a question (primarily for identification or responsibility) that we use to affix someone to a certain range of power, certain possibilities for interaction, and their social "place" as it relates to us. "Who did this" when asked of evidence of the exercise of a human body--whether creative or destructive. Who stole my sandwich? Who fixed my car? "Who is that," when asked of someone we see at a gathering of people that includes those we aren't familiar with. We dont ask "who is that?" for people that we've lived with unless we don't recognize them, or "who did that?" for actions that already have markings that inextricably imply one known to us. Except--we can do this and there is nothing stopping us from doing this; it is a deterritorialization of a response to the strange that falls upon the familiar, making the familiar all the stranger.

The second deterritorialization is when this strangeness is asked of someone by someone else, placing before that person a violent question. We are, surely, the last person who could possibly answer for ourselves "who are you?" The problem is not that we don't have a narrative,but that we have far to many that we tell about ourselves, and they are all contradictory. We have privledged access to the events of our life, and this is what makes the telling of a story that "fits" impossible--we know all of the special cases that contradict the descriptions, and all the things that get left out in the recounting. We can hide things that conflict with a public narrative, but those things aren't hidden to us. We can even veil certain memories from ourselves, but they always return as repressed.

This questioning affixes the "who?" to the lacuna of self-definition and its impossibility, making it universal. This transforms the nature of all "who," whether of ourselves or of others. Strangeness pervades everything. I think Jesus may have clued into this when he spoke of hating one's father, mother, siblings, etc. Even one's own self! In a sense, ecumenism starts with the universalizing of natural human xenophobic even to one's own self. Though, when one places the exotic within one's self we gain that beloved paradox: the love of the neighbor and of God the same as one's self.

But the question, when asked properly, does invite us into this strangeness, and to find the power in us that is outside of all the narratives we incessantly tell ourselves. My father was a long veteran of the commodity exchanges in Chicago; he saw much of their rapid rise since the early seventies, then their slow decline into nothing, as the system of total, global economic commodification of the earth as resource ceased to territorialize itself on hyperactive and very, very social interactions between human beings on a trading floor, to the rise of computerized trading. Along the way he experienced many legendary ups and downs in fortune. He was able to make lots of money for other people, investing their money in futures and options. but when he invested his own, he became self-conscious and failed miserably. it was the detachment, and i think a certain knowledge of the ephemerial nature of the whole thing, that gave him this power. They even had a nickname for him "Its Not My Money!"

During one down period, when he was working as a clerk on the floor during a tumultuous time in the market he applied the knowledge gained in this way to predict the moves of the market. he would predict the prices of major indexes and of individual stocks with a seer's accuracy, often within cents and a hour of the predicted move. But, having no money and being down and out in the bussiness, all he could do was impress his collegues in a lower-eschalon job that went unnoticed by the real desciion-makers. finally, he impressed one fellow by calling the decline of the market during the crash of 87, just before the news reports came in on the television screen. and on the chart he was working with he whimsically drew a little hat on top of the the last peak and proclaimed "I have capped the market." And then the crash happened. The person he was talking to had nothing to say expcept:

"...Who are you?"

The answer, if one was given, is unimportant. The question isn't answered with either a story or a definition. I just told you the story--it doesn't answer, but merely begs the question "who are you?" "I'm the guy who capped the market." "Yes, I know...but who are you?" It is asked when things don't add up and can't add up using the narratives we have available. It is the question asked of knowledge and deeds from outside of what is possible within the confines of a system, coming from a place that is outside of the predictable: ie, outside of the stories that we can tell about the future. It is the out-power versus the over-power; the power that proceeds from mystery, rather than within a circumscribed set of rules meant to limit, direct, and contain human potential and which serves ultimately to feed back into those limits. The power that exits control, but also the power that is already exited, and the power that was never under control in the first place, but feeds into it for its own purposes.

It is so for iracles, as well. Pilate asked Jesus, in the face of the miracles "are you the king of the Jews?" and the only reply was "you have said so." But the truth of the question that Pilate asked was not in the reply, but in the actions themselves: the miracles. "“Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else? Jesus replied, 'Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.'"

But more than the miracles, it was the place from which they came and still proceed outside of, as a healing power; as the saving power. The font of all miracles, including the foremost miracle of the order that miracles could violate. The ground of miracle is in the...violable. Not in the absolute anarchy or the ironclad law, but in their crossing into each other across a line that makes them both. not a line as irreconsilable ceasura, but a line declared across one place, that has an effect on the mind, just like when you're a kid and don't wanna "step on a crack and break your back." Except what if mind itself is the building of these rules out of the great spirit?