Dreamtime Structure of Inception

An Introduction to the Aspectual Field based on the movie Inception as a cultural object
that contains the entire field of anamorphic entities with anagogic affects

Kent D. Palmer
kent@palmer.name
http://kdp.me
714-633-9508
Copyright 2013, 2014
All rights reserved. Not for Distribution.
orcid.org/0000-0002-5298-4422
2013.12.28, 1.1-8,12-13; corrected 2014.12.26
dreamtime20130108kdp01v18a
Version 19
Abstract:

An Introduction to the Dreamtime Aspectual Field which contains the Lacanian sub-field of modalities of
desire described by Zizek that are made up of anajective folded self-intersecting eventities (ejects)
prior to the split between Anagogic (subject) and Anamorphic (object) i.e. at the level of Dasein which
are the hinges that prepare for and condition changes in Perspective.

Figure 1. Yes/No Sculpture by Markus Raetz1

1
http://www.maricazottino.com/blog/yesno-sculpture-by-markus-raetz/ See also
http://www.crownpoint.com/artists/186/about-artist See also http://www.kunstgiesserei.ch/en/artists/markus-
raetz/yes-no-2003.html

1
Dreamtime
Dreamtime2 by Duerr is an exploration of Shamanism in Europe prior to Christianity. It nostalgically
looks back to the pagan past that Christianity destroyed and understands it in terms of the worldwide
phenomena of shamanism that was the first proto-religion. Witches and Warlocks are the shamans of Old
Europe. Wicca would revitalize these lost cultural roots that have truly been lost in our culture through
long suppression. But the fact that the Shamanistic Dreamtime of Europe has been lost does not mean that
we are not still immersed in a Dreamtime even with the advent of Christianity and Modernism or for that
matter Postmodernism. Of course, the dreamtime is understood through our anthropological study of
Australian Aborigines and their cosmology. That cosmology assumes that there is a shared cultural dream
that everyone inhabits. One example from a recent movie Inception3 is based on the idea that dreams can
be shared. It is seen as a futuristic technology that allows information to be stolen from (or planted in) the
minds of others. One of the strongest interpretations of Inception4 is that the whole thing is a dream. A
similar interpretation of our modern culture is that the whole thing is a dream (or nightmare) and this is
what produces the contemporary dreamtime, that the real world is in fact an illusion, that truths we
take as self-evident are fictions. What we see as identical is in fact different that we think, and what
appears present is indeed absent in some sense. These are the anti-aspects of Being, and what we are
saying is that there is a case to be made that the anti-aspects of Being dominate our experience and this is
what renders our waking experience a dreamtime.
The point is that this dreamtime has a structure. That structure is both anagogic and anamorphic in as
much as it is filled with partial objects or psychic hinges (traces) we might call ejects that allow us to
radically change perspective. From a Heideggarian point of view vis a vis Being and Time there is non-
Dasein entitive correlate for Dasein (Being There, being-in-the-world) which is prior to the split between
Subject and Object. Dasein is thrown into the world, but its entitive correlate prior to subject and object
must be something that is neither subject nor object like the placenta. The plecenta is a topological surface
that we throw away at birth. Perhaps there are placental objects that we cannot separate from ourselves.
Kristeva calls them abject when we eject them and reject them with disgust. These ejects are prior to the
differentiation of anagogic (subjective) and anamorphic (objective). We might call them anajective if we
can bear another neologism. And we will call this structure of anajective ejects which are self-
intersections in the Aspectual (or sometimes the Lacanian) field which contains anajective eventities that
are like folds or creases or tucks in which a surface intersect with itself like Witney singularities5.
Deleuze talks about theses as being Baroque in The Fold6.

2
DUERR, Hans P. Dreamtime. Basil Blackwell, 1987.
3
Nolan, Christopher, Emma Thomas, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard,
Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger, Michael Caine, Lukas Haas, Talulah Riley, Pete
Postlethwaite, Wally Pfister, and Hans Zimmer. Inception. Burbank, CA: Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc, 2010. See
also Nolan, Christopher. Inception: The Shooting Script. San Rafael, Calif: Insight, 2010.
4
Johnson, David. Inception and Philosophy: Because It's Never Just a Dream. Hoboken, N.J: Wiley, 2012. See also
Botz-Bornstein, Thorsten. Inception and Philosophy: Ideas to Die for. Chicago: Open Court, 2011.
5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity_theory, See also Arnold, V I. The Theory of Singularities and Its
Applications. Cambridge [England: Published for the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei and the Scuola Normale
Superiore by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1991.
6
Deleuze, Gilles. The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993.

2
Figure 2 A Whitney self-intersection line singularity from The Theory of Singularities and Its
Applications by Vladimir Igorevich Arnold
The folding comes about because the projective space does not fit within three dimensional space even
though it is the means of representing three dimensional space in two dimensions. When we try to force
the projective field into the three dimensions we get the Roman Surface7 or Boys surface8. There are
polytopes that have the same geometry as the Boys surface9. The point is that there are folds in the
projective plane when injected into three dimensional space and these folds are equivalent to the
anajective eventities that inhabit the aspectual field when we fold two anti-aspects together into
confluences. But the problem is that Lacan only saw a very small part of this aspectual field which is the
relation between the Imaginary, Symbolic (True), and Real registers. In effect the Aspecual field that
extends the Lacanian sub-field encompasses all the aspects in their relation to the anti-aspects and
exhibits many more anajective eventities than Lacan or Zizek expect exist, i.e. 18 instead of just three.
Every pair of aspects (Truth, Reality, Presence, and Identity) in the Aspectual Field allow us to triangulate
a confluence of the anti-aspects (Illusion-Fiction, Illusion-Difference, Illusion-Absence, Absence-
Difference, Absence-Fiction, Difference-Fiction). Associated with each confluence is also the anti-
property to that which holds between the Aspects such as inconsistency, unclarity, incompleteness,
unverifiableness, invalidity, incoherence. The Banner (flag or pennant) that Lacan and thus Zizek
concentrates on is that which triangulates from the Real and Truth to Illusory Fiction or the Imagination.

7
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_surface
8
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy%27s_surface
9
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrahemihexahedron See also http://homepages.wmich.edu/~drichter/rptwo.htm

3
Lacan singles out the register of the Symbolic Order which is characterized by Truth related to the super-
ego, and the register of the Real related to the ID, and these are related to each other by the imagination of
the ego to give the Imaginary register. In this way Lacan extends the thought of Freud using Structuralism
and Semiotics.
What Lacan via Zizek10 points out is that there are three anamorphic mediators11 of this banner. These are
the protrusion (Phi), the projected upon screen (object petite a), and the little piece of the real S(A)12 as
explained in The Knotted Subject by E. Bronfen13 (someone other than Zizek).

Figure 3 Lacanian Aspectual Sub-field

10
Zizek, Slavoj. Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan Through Popular Culture. Cambridge, Mass: MIT
Press, 1991
11
See Anagogic Logic and The Anamorphic Cycle by the author at http://archonic.net/kent_palmer.html
12
Slavoj Zizek: A Little Piece of the Real, Matthew Sharpe, Hants: Ashgate, 2004.
13
Bronfen, Elisabeth. The Knotted Subject: Hysteria and Its Discontents. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press,
1998.

4
5
6
 Figure 414 Reinterpretation of Lacanian subfield via Zizek

14
Reworking of the diagram in Looking Awry by Zizek.

7
 Figure 5 Banner configuration within the Aspectual Field
Mathematics of Projections
This triangle is a simplification as the topological structure is related to Boys or the Roman surface.
These are immersions of the Projective Plane15 into the third dimension. We know that Lacan was
interested in Boys surface with its self-intersections16 and other topological structures like mobius strips
and crosscaps. The Roman surface17 of Jakob Steiner has a triple singularity at the center and three double
singularities that show up as orthogonal lines related to the axes of three dimensional space.

15
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projective_plane
16
http://www.valas.fr/Jacques-Lacan-et-Jean-Pierre-Petit-Cross-cap-et-surface-de-Boy,296
17
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_surface; See also
http://curvebank.calstatela.edu/romansurfaces/romansurfaces.htm
http://www.math.hmc.edu/~gu/curves_and_surfaces/surfaces/roman.html; See also
http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/zoo/toptype/pplane/roman/ The Roman surface is an image of the real projective
plane. It contains three segments of double points each of which terminates in two "pinch points", or Whitney
singularities. A triple point is created where the three double point segments intersect. and
http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/zoo/features/whitney/ Whitney's Umbrella may be pictured as a self-intersecting
rectangle in 3 dimensions. It demonstrates a pinch point, which occurs at the top endpoint of the segment of self-
intersection. Every neighborhood of the pinch point intersects itself. Pinch points are also called Whitney

8
 Figure 6 and 7 Roman Surface
The Roman surface has three Whitney singularities which are line segments of self-intersection that are
orthogonal and that intersect at a pinch point which is a triple singularity.

Figure 8 Whitney Singularity

In our diagram this anamorphs are the self-intersection lines (Whitney Singularities) and the central
source/sink is the triple singularity where the orthogonal Whitney lines intersect which is the origin of the
three axes of three dimensional space.

singularities or branch points. Also

http://surfaces.gotfork.net/project_album/slides/Steiners%20roman%20surface.html

9
Boys Surface18 is an immersion of the projective plane into three dimensional space with no singularities
but where there is continuous lines of self-intersection instead.

Figure 9 Boys Surface

There is a polytope which has the basic shape of the Roman surface called the Tetrahemihexahedron19. It
is this polytope that relates most interestingly to the set of flags of the Aspectual field. Note that the shape
is that of an octahedron but with sides missing. Think of the fact that we have two tetrahedrons of aspects
and anti-aspects. There are two ways to combine tetrahedrons either by interpenetration that gives an
octahedron or by fusion that gives a cube. The Tetrahemihexahedron is a strange cross between a cubic
structure and an octahedral structure but which still has the symmetries of the tetrahedron. It has three
square faces that intersect at the origin, and it has four tetrahedral faces that are configured to give the
enclosing shape of the octahedron, however this figure is single sided and thus is a non-orientable surface
and is in fact also an immersion of the projective plane in three dimensions appearing as a single surface
in the shape of a self-intersecting polyhedron. We might guess that the six vertices are like the different
flags (pennants or banners) which we identify with their confluence points. An Octahedron has six points
as well, and also 12 lines, but it contains eight surfaces that are triangular instead of seven with four
triangular and three squares. We should not that seven is a significant number with respect to projective
planes as the simplest projective plane is the Fano plane20 which has seven points with three points on
each line. The six points are related to the six lines in the two tetrahedra of aspects and anti-aspects.
Where two lines from each tetrahedron cross is a single point which is a point in the octahedron or
transformed by the immersion of the projective plane into the Tetrahemihexahedron. Thus the Aspectual
Plane has various topological and geometric representations that are useful in both visualizing it but also
in showing that the aspectual plane has a grounding in mathematics of projection and topological
immersion of higher dimensional objects into lower dimensions.
There is also a connection of the real projective plane to octonions21. Octonions22 are connected to
Reflexive Social Special Systems as one of their mathematical analogies. The Octonion projective plane23

18
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~sequin/CS294/IMGS/boysurface.htm, See also http://arxiv.org/abs/1303.6448 See
also http://sketchesoftopology.wordpress.com/2008/06/17/boys-surface/
19
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrahemihexahedron, See also
http://www.mathconsult.ch/showroom/unipoly/04.html Wythoff Symbol: 3/2 3|2, Vertex Configuration: {4, 3/2,
4, 3}, Number of Faces: 7, Number of Edges: 12, Number of Vertices: 6, Symmetry Group: tetrahedral, Polyhedron
has hemispherical faces, Polyhedron is one-sided (nonorientable), See also
http://colinspics.org/life/maths/polyhedra/W67%20Tetrahemihexahedron.htm
20
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fano_plane In finite geometry, the Fano plane (after Gino Fano) is the finite
projective plane of order 2, having the smallest possible number of points and lines, 7 each, with 3 points on every
line and 3 lines through every point.
21
Salzmann, H. Compact Projective Planes: With an Introduction to Octonion Geometry. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter,
1995.

10
is related to Hopf fibrations24 which is what gives the ultra-efficacy to the Special Systems. The Hopf
fibrations are unusual relations between hyperspheres (Sn)

Figure 10 Nesting of Hopf Fibrations from Remy Mosseri

Note that there is a connection of the hopf hyperspheres seen as real elliptic spaces to the Ferudenthal
magic square25. This magic sphere has been hypothesized elsewhere by the author to the limit structure in
mathematics that defies the Emergent Meta-system that is composed of a normal system and the three
Special Systems.

Figure 11 Freudenthal Magic Square and Elliptic Spaces (that are based on Hyperspheres)

22
Baez, John C. "The Octonions", Department of Mathematics, University of California, Riverside CA 92521, May
16, 2001, Published in Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 39 (2002), 145-205.
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/octonions/octonions.html See also
http://homepages.wmich.edu/~drichter/octonions.htm for The Octonions
Yet Another Essay by David A. Richter
23
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopf_fibration See Two and Three Qubits Geometry and Hopf Fibrations Remy
Mosseri arXiv:quant-ph/0310053v1 8 Oct 2003
24
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/octonions/node8.html ; See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cayley_plane
25
Rozenfeld, B A. Geometry of Lie Groups. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1997 page 352.

11
S8 hypersphere in the ninth dimension can be seen as the realization of the Octonion Projective Plane26.
Thus the real projective plane with its perspectives within three dimensional space and its distortions are
also an image of the social mirrors. It turns out that there are four social mirrors as seen in my book on
The Foundations of Agile Teaming. Social Mirrors27 are described by Charles Whitehead28. The three fold
nature of this surface is related in the Octonion to the ternary complementarities (triality29) of the
octonion. Also note that higher dimensional projective planes are simpler than the two dimensional case
and do not have the distortions that produce the anamorphic objects, as self-intersection singularities such
as we see in the Hyper Kleinian bottle which is an image of the Reflexive Social Special System in which
multiple Kleinian bottles share the same self-intersection circle.
An Anajective Interpretation of Inception
We have focused on Inception because it gives an example of each of these anamorphic objects [as Shape
(form), Sign (pattern), Trace (monad), or Propensity (facet)] that affect anagogic (clinamen30) swerves or
perspective shifts in the same narrative or map (story or argument31). The top and other totems32 are
examples of little pieces of the real, they function to denote what is a dream and what is real. But then
we must ask what are the other anamorphic objects such as the protrusion as excesses and the projected
upon blank screen that represents a lack. It is clear that the architecture of the dreams that are projected
upon by the dreamer is the object petite a, while on the other had the overproduction of the cities in
Limbo is the protrusion Phi (Phallus). Because we have all three anamorphic objects in a single story we
can see how they are related to each other. Each anamorphic object is a turning point from one point of
perception to another. But this combines through juxtaposition the line and opposite point (on the fano
plane there are three points per line, and it takes two points to define a line) of the banner for any given
anamorphic object. So for instance between the true and real there is the property of verifiability, so that
the illusory fiction of imagination is inherently unverifiable. As Zizek explains in Looking Awry the
center of the banner is the abyss of Jouissance (the triple point which is the intersection of the three
Whitney line singularities). Zizek in Looking Awry takes different images from different stories of
Patricial Highsmith for the various anamorphic objects. For instance he takes protuberances that arise in a
graveyard of a town for the Phi (Phallic) over production, i.e. hubris which mediates between Imagination
and Reality impinged on by Truth. On the other hand he takes the mediation between Truth and Reality
impinged on by Imagination as the Object Petite a which is the projection screen, or so called McGuffy,
or Black House on which everyone projects their fantasies. These two are nihilistic opposites of each
other representing overproduction and exhaustion, excess and lack. The dual of these opposites is the little
piece of the real in The Button which mediates between Truth and Imagination impinged upon by
Reality. The little piece of the real is a reminder as to what is real. Notice that the reminder of what is real
comes between the imagination and the truth. Similarly Imagination projects upon the object petite a and
that distinguishes between truth and reality. Yet the hubris, excess, or protrusion of Phi exists as a
reminder of truth between Imagination and Reality.

26
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/octonions/node8.html for Octonionic Projective Geometry
27
Whitehead, Charles. SOCIAL MIRRORS AND THE BRAIN including a functional imaging study of role-play and
verse, PhD Thesis, Department of Anthropology, University College London. 2003
28
See http://www.socialmirrors.org/cms/
29
Lounesto, Pertti. Octonions and Triality Institute of Mathematics Helsinki University of Technology
http://fqxi.org/data/forum-attachments/Lounesto.pdf
30
See Harold Bloom for the use of this term in a Map of Misreading
31
Related to Fast or Slow thinking respectively See Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 2011.
32
http://inception.wikia.com/wiki/Totem See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totem

12
 Figure 12 Imaginary Banner
When we look at Inception it becomes clear that there is a need for an architect to produce the structures
of the schematic greenscreens held by the dreamer on which the subconscious of the subject projects the
details of the dreamscape33. Controlling this schematic structure on which the subject elaborates is
necessary in order to make the dreams of the dreamers sharing the dream coincide. The architect is
producing what is shared among the dreamers as they explore the same dream together blending elements
from their own dreams to create a reality which is mostly influenced by the dreamer who owns the dream
they are collectively in. It is interesting that the dreamer is supplying the schemas that I discuss in General
Schemas Theory and the subject fills in these schemas with content from his subconscious. Cobb notes

33
Cobb: Sure you are the dreamer, I am the subject. My subconscious populates your world. p.69 Inception The
Shooting Script by Christopher Nolan (Insight Editions, 2010).

13
that the Subject does not have control of its subconscious and because of that is revealing things about
themselves through the projections they create, which those sharing the dream with the subject can talk to
and interact with. The projections mitsein within the subject. It is very interesting that the architect
normally does not come into the dream with the extractors. There are in fact two key players among the
extractors. One is the person who is presiding over the bodies of the sleepers in the designated as real
world or in whatever dream level we are in. This is the dreamer at a given level of a dream who is
providing the schemas at that level. But when we go down to the next level of the dream there is the
dreamer at that level. At each successive level the dreamer must be left behind in order to provide the
ongoing dream structure at that level. The stewardess is the one looking after the bodies at the level of
designated reality in the airplane. Yusuf is the dreamer at the first level; Arthur is the dreamer at the
second level; Eames is the dreamer at the third level, and Cobb is the dreamer in Limbo because he is the
one who had been there before. Now what is interesting in this structure is that the dreamer represents the
a priori structure of the transcendental ego at each N+1 level and they are the keeper of the bodies of the
sleepers. The subject is the one whose subconscious fills in the dream content within the schematic
greenscreens provided by the dreamer who is operating off of the plan given by the architect. The
architect is providing the organization of all the levels, but the dreamer is giving the active embodiment of
those schemas while the subject is filling them in and the other members are the extraction team are
inhibiting their own subconscious from providing content. For instance there is the scene where Cobb
asks Yusuf who two projections are and Yusuf apologizes for allowing them into the scene within the
dream. If we ask who is the dreamer at the designated as real level it would be the transcendental subject.
At other levels the dreamer is acting as the transcendental subject for the next level down. Transcendental
Subject is always opposed to the Transcendental Object which is the Noumena in Kant and it is God who
is giving the coherence between the transcendental subject and the object. The architect is providing that
link in the dreamworlds at all the different levels. And as Schopenhauer says the noumena in us is the
Wille. It is precisely the Will that the Inception of Fischer is trying to change. The extractors are working
as a team, and the head of that team is Cobb who is the dreamer in Limbo, but if the whole of the story is
a dream, even the designated as real level then the question who is the dreamer at the designated as real
level, and Cobb suspects it is Mal. That would place Mal up one level in Olympus beyond the designated
as real level where she in fact claims to be after her suicide at the designated (by Cobb) as real level. This
is why Cobb is using her token to try to tell whether he is in her dream or not all the time but especially
when he has popped up a level. The subject at each level, who is the subject of the Heist, the extractee, is
in the position of Dasein who is projecting upon the greenscreens provided by the dreamer but designed
by the architect. The other extractors keep their projections to themselves and thus witness the projections
of the subject. So the extractee is like the chorus leader and the other members of the extraction team are
like the other members of the chorus in Greek Tragedy. The key here is that the subject is a projection of
himself at the same time as projecting the world content for himself and all the others. The projections of
content which Heidegger calls lived facticity by Dasein within Mitsein (i.e. the group of those sharing
the projected content of the subject). Heidegger singles out Dasein within Mitsein like we single out the
leader of the chorus within the chorus. The actor in Greek Tragedy for whom the chorus is the ground is
the transcendental ego. The one providing ultimate structure at the highest level who is in this case seen
as the transcendental subject of the Mark, i.e. Fischer whose mind they are trying to change and has
power because he is the inheritor of the mega-corporation. But notice that the top level keeper of the
bodies at the designated as real level (the stewardess) and the architect who supplied the schemas for the
dream levels have usurped the power of the Transcendental Ego and supplanted it as the extractee
becomes merely his own projection in the dream. But that projection appears with many others who are
projected as well, as many anonymous people within the dream, or if the sub-conscious is trained, then
the anonymous people act as a security force for the subject, which Mr. Charles is trying to make Fischer
paranoid of his own defenses, subverting them, and making him think that the extraction team are his real

14
defenders. Myself in my projection as the projection of myself is Dasein. So in this sense Inception gives
a good model that shows how Dasein is separated from the Transcendental Subject and what the relation
is between Dasein and Mitsein. The reason that the dreams can be shared is due to the existence of the
They, the One (Das Mann) because the subject normally dreams what anyone would dream and so that is
able to be shared in common between those immersed in the dream. Although the subject projects specific
living facticity, in a sense it is what anyone would project. For instance anyone would project anonymous
bystanders. It is just that in a Shared Dream some of those bystanders are themselves subjects which are
part of an extraction team that is working together to pull off a heist of information from the subconscious
of the extractee, the subject. In Metaphor Therapy one asks the Clean Language questions to extract
information from the sub-conscious of the subject of the therapy. The subject responds with something
specific accessed from within their own unconscious while in trance. What that response will be is unique
to the individual. But what is said comes from common language and expression. It is what One would
say given that one is living in the world which we hold much of in common with each other. And thus the
generalizations of language makes the unique content from the individual intelligible. But we dont actual
know the content from the individual that comes with the response. Thus Clean Language therapy is not
voyeuristic. It allows the accessed content to remain private. We are just dealing with metaphors from the
world we all understand. But what those metaphors bring with them for the client can be left unsaid.
When the Metaphor therapist shifts from talking to the client to talking to the metaphors we have made
the shift to allowing the projections to speak for themselves and they reveal information that the subject
does not necessarily know about themselves. This information may be different in different places that the
subject takes up in relation to other places they have taken up previously. One of the discoveries of David
Grove is that accessing is different at different relative points in spacetime. It is this fact that allows
journeys into ones own personal cosmology to be experienced. It has been suggested in another paper by
the author that Heideggers concept of Existentiells might be a good way to understand metaphor therapy.
Inception has worked out a model of this with the idea that projection of the sub-conscious fills in the
schemas provided by the dreamer. This is similar to giving metaphoric objects to the Clean Language
Therapist (dreamer) by the client (subject, Dasein). It has also been suggested that because Dasein is a
human situation rather than a subject that it might have the structure of a Meta-system which is a whole
full of holes (proto-gestalt) rather than a whole greater than the sum of its parts (gestalt, system) like the
Transcendental Ego. The existenetiells would then be the holes within the field of the human situation
that the metaphors as amphora fill in order to provide expression of their information content.

Totems primarily tell the subjects whether they are in someone elses dream or not. So the little pieces of
the real, i.e. totems, tell us who is the primary source of the projection on the blank architecture that is
the schema that the subject and the other sharers of the dream all share that is produced by the architect.
But if we become lost in the dreamworld and fall into limbo then overproduction is possible and this is
the protrusions of infinite cities, excess, hubris of dreamscape construction gone wild. Cobb has fallen
into Limbo, and there is good reason to believe that everything in the movie takes place in Limbo34. If
dreams are as Hillman35 says analogous to the unconscious which is also analogous to Hades, then Limbo
is analogous to Tartarus, in which the Titans are thrown which is even deeper than Hades. If Cobb is in
Limbo the whole time, then the three dreams of Inception are in fact turned on their head. The layered
dreams are Hades including the fortress hospital, the hotel and the van in the rain. The world that Cobb
designates as real is the world of men on earth, and the layer to which Mal wants to ascend would be like

34
See Let Me put my thoughts in you: It was all just a dream by Jason Southworth in Inception and Philosophy
edited by David Kyle Johnson (Wiley, 2012)
35
Hillman, James. The Dream and the Underworld. New York: Harper & Row, 1979.

15
Olympus36 or what Nietzsche calls a headland beyond the world. It is a standard Ericksonian technique to
tell stories within stories within stories to imprint a suggestion on the hypnotized subjects unconscious
mind. Thus Hades is made up of these embedded stories. Cobb is in Limbo and Mal has escaped into
Olympus which are of course nihilistic opposites. Cobb is holding onto the memory of Mal and that is
why she has turned into a femme fatale. Cobb wanted to get back to the world of men where there
children were and instead she went beyond that designated as real world by Cobb into the nether world
beyond the world of men, i.e. the more perfect world of Olympus. Cobb implanted the idea in Mal that
Limbo was not the real world after she had tried to forget it, but that idea made her doubt the designated
as real world was real, and so she wanted to mystically wake up to the hyper-real world of the gods.
The point is that the anamorphic objects in the story play a crucial role in as much as the excesses occur
in Limbo, and the totems distinguish the levels of reality of the dreams, while the architectures of dreams
is something that must be created by an architect and hidden from Cobb, because if he knows the
architecture then his own subconscious elements burst into the dream and his unconscious can start
messing with the structure of the dream. This is why the master architect Cobb needs another architect
who is better than he is so that he can outwit himself and protect himself from the intrusions of his
unconscious on the schemes that he is working on in the designated as real world in which he performs
extractions and inceptions for pay of large corporations who are global monopolies. The way that the
Banner works is that it allows for a change of angle of perception. Wherever we start there is a major
source of projection of truth, reality or imagination. So, for instance, the Imagination projects upon the
object petit a to produce an illusory fiction which attempts to be verifiable. Tolkiens work attempting to
produce a mythology for Britain is an excellent example of the work of pure imagination. The
imagination fabricates stories out of whole cloth. But verifiability takes the distinction between Truth and
Reality. If we shift perspective to Truth then we project the protrusion that interrupts the relation of the
Imaginary to the real. If we shift perspective to Reality then we project the piece of the Real that
interrupts the relation of the True to the Imaginary. Whichever of these perspectival shifts we take we
have taken in the Imaginary which originally projected on the object petite a and then we can shift to the
other perspective from that pivot point. If we are talking about an anamorphic object then the pivot point
for changing a projection is within the field of the projection. If we are talking about an anagogic swerve
then the pivot point is in the vertex from which the projection emanates. So Truth, Reality, and
Imagination can be pivot points of leverage by which perspectives can swivel or swerve and the
anamorphic object can also mediate the transition to the new perspective giving it a quasi-object within its
field of view. We can think of this in Hegelian terms as a trialectic, i.e. a mediated relation between
opposites that become a super-synthesis. In the case of Hegel it is work that mediates and the
appearance of work gives rise to the appearance of Spirit as a new viewpoint on human history beyond
sense certainty, self-consciousness and reason. Work which is practical mediates between the antinomies
produced by reason giving a criterion for escaping the illusions of reason.

36
Notice that it says in the script that they were like gods in Limbo twice, Mal does not want to give that up and
she wants to ascend to an even higher reality than that which Cobb recognizes as real. Cobb is repeatedly told to
come back to reality for instance by the Professor who is his father-in-law.

16
 Figure 13 Relation of aspects, confluences and anamorphs in Aspectual Field
In the Inception analogy we can see the abyss of Jouissance to be Limbo, and the three anamorphic
objects and their crisscrossing of their perspectives in a stable triangle which keep us from falling
completely into Limbo. In the interpretation which sees the whole of Inception as a dream lost in Limbo
we see the production of the dreams about Fischer as a way for Cobb to stave off falling into Anti-limbo,
i.e. taking the dive to Olympus with Mal. For instance we note that she jumps from a hotel room window
which is oddly opposite the window Cobb sits at as he trying to talk her into not jumping. He even
motions toward himself incongruously when he tells her to come in. The second dream takes place in a
hotel with odd Escher and ultimately Penrose stairs type architecture. But it also has facing mirrors with
reflections off to infinity in the elevator where Saito sees that Eames is not the woman he appears to be.
The dream scene where Cobb tries to talk Mal out of jumping is like the two mirrors that Ariadne
constructs that are reflecting each other when she is playing with the physics of dreams. The first dream
in the rain in the van has a train barge in from the unconscious of Cobb. This is the train that Mal and
Cobb wait for to commit their joint suicide to escape from Limbo when they have grown very old
together. Mal has set things up to force Cobb to commit joint suicide with her in the Hotel where she
jumps from the window of the mirrored room. So there is a relation between the first and second dream to
the problem of Cobb and his relation to Mal. In the first dream Fischer is confronted with the torture of
his mentor played by Eames and in that scene they get the combination of the safe in which is kept the
will. Wille is of course according to Schopenhauer the noumena inside the human being, and the
question at play is whose Will is Fischer going to play out, his own or his fathers. The other Will is kept
in the safe beside the bed of Fischers father according to the kidnappers. However, the problem is that
Fischers unconscious has been trained to fight back against unwanted intrusions, and thus it is necessary
at the next level, in the Hotel to convince Fischer that Cobb is there to help him by revealing that Fischer
is in a dream, so that he will trust Fischer. Cobb convinces Fischer that he must go deeper into the
Fortress in order to find out what is in the safe left by his father, to discover his own Will, the second Will

17
that will allow him to be his own man. What Fischer discovers in the safe is his childhood pinwheel
underneath the other Will. We have seen this pinwheel in a picture that Fischer had placed beside his
father but was ignored before his death, and then that same picture ends up in Fischers wallet. The
picture has the father blowing on the pinwheel and is obviously from a time when father and son were in a
positive relationship from the point of view of the son. But unfortunately at this lowest dream level Saito
finally dies along with Fischer who is shot by Mal, and both are lost in Limbo. Ariadne and Cobb then go
deeper into Limbo to try to retrieve Saito. But of course there they meet Mal. Ariadne and Fischer escape
but Cobb after letting go of Mal goes on to find Saito. The movie leaves undetermined what happens
between Cobb and Saito but the assumption is that they commit suicide together and pop back up in the
plane just in time for Saito to make his phone call that gets Cobb off the hook for the murder of Mal and
allows him to return to his children who turn toward him so he can see their faces which are now older,
and he even gets a hug from his children in the movies ending even if it is not in the shooting script. The
negative reading is that this designated as real level itself is fabricated by Cobb, and the top does not stop
spinning, and the final embrace with the children really does not occur as in the shooting script. The top
cannot distinguish reality for Cobb anyway because it is actually Mals totem, it appears that Cobbs
totem is his wedding ring which he wears in all the scenes where Mal is supposedly still alive and which
he does not wear in the scenes where she is supposedly dead. Cobb is obsessed with discovering using
Mals totem whether he is in her dream. This is the fundamental thing he does not know. When he is in
her dream she can burst through his dream landscape into his dream as she does at the beginning of the
movie, and throughout the movie. There is plenty of evidence that these intrusions also occur at what
Cobb has designated as the level of reality which is not supposed to be a dream. When he is in his dream
he is holding on to her and keeping her alive, and when he is in his reality she is dead because she made
one leap of faith too many. But the question is whether his dream is inside her dream, in which case that
means he just lost her in Limbo when they laid down on the track together waiting for the train to kill
them, and instead of being together they ended up estranged, like occurs in so many divorces or when
ones partner dies. How did Cobb end up with her top totem (he seems to have picked it up in their hotel
room before he sees her on the ledge), when it was locked in her safe spinning. He must have taken her
there to see it, and then somehow he ended up with it when she died having jumped from the hotel
window. Throughout the movie he has her totem and thus she is dead even in the scenes where she is
apparently still with Cobb and intruding on his dreams from where he keeps her a prisoner of his memory.
Apparently, the double suicide in Limbo with the train did not work and thus they were separated and
ended up in a designated reality in which they could not be together. Mal wanted to be with her real
children the next level up in the heavens beyond the designated as real world of Cobb. Cobb settled for
the illusion of Being with his children in the designated as real world at the end of the picture because he
entered into an alternative possible dreamworld in which they turned toward him so he could see their
older faces and in the film even embraced him. He could not see their faces before he had to flee for
Europe. Thus he was stuck with a last look at his children that was incomplete (a moment of regret) where
they do not turn toward him. Cobb wanted to complete this action of seeing the children turn toward him
and this was what he achieved in the designated as real world where everything went well and Saito made
the phone call, and he was able to go home at last, but without Mal. The train in Limbo crashes into the
first dream where everything is wet. Why is everything wet? Is it because Yusuf had too much to drink?
Clearly this is the tears of grief at losing Mal in the double suicide in Limbo. Then in the second dream he
is in the hotel where Mal will commit suicide which has the odd architecture. There Fischer is told he is in
a dream, and the only way out is to go deeper to find out what is hidden in the safe. Fischer becoming
aware he is dreaming is like Mal thinking that the designated as real world is still a dream from which she
needs to escape. Fischers subconscious is attempting to fend off Cobbs extraction at every level. But the
training of Fischer did not take into account the idea of inception rather than extraction. Fischer discovers

18
his own Will, the alternative Will of his father, but under that Will is the pinwheel, a childs toy from the
primal scene with the father when Fischer was happy. Perhaps something Fischers Father made for him
when he was small as a gift which then Fischer had drawn upon. The pin wheel spins in the wind or when
blown on by the father, it shows that there is motive force to Fischers own Will taken from the father, the
breath of life still in him which he got from his father to forge his own destiny. It is after Fischer finds the
Pinwheel that Cobb is able to give up Mal, to let her go, from the prison of his memory. Mal kidnaps
Fischer and takes him to Limbo to lure Cobb there. Notice that Fischers global corporation has a
monopoly on energy, and will take over half of the entire worlds energy resources if not broken up. Saito
wants to break up the conglomerate so he can still compete and to prevent complete monopoly. In the
Forbidden Planet the Krall created dynamos that used the energy of their planet to allow them to create
anything they wanted, and they used it to war with each other until everything on the planet was
destroyed. It takes tremendous energy to support the monsters of the unconscious. Thus the global
monopoly of energy is what is needed in order to support Cobb and Malls building projects in Limbo. If
Fischer who is the heir to that monopoly of energy is a archetypal projection of Cobbs dilemma, it is that
it is taking a lot of psychic energy to continue building forever in Limbo. In a sense the pinwheel is like
the discovery of alternative energy, i.e. windpower. There is some energy and some Will that is different
from that locked up in the Building project of Cobb and Mal in Limbo. Once this energy and alternative
will has been unlocked then Cobb can let go of Mal in Limbo who finally dies there, she never really left
Limbo when there was the double suicide. Cobb after he lets her go and her projection dies is then left
trying to find Saito who is the competitor of Fischers energy conglomerate. Saito who is almost killed off
by the conglomerate is living in Limbo waiting for Cobb. In the first scene at the beginning of the movie
Mal bursts in to disrupt the extraction, and Cobbs architect betrays him. In the last scene there is just the
older Saito and Cobb sitting across from each other with a gun between them. Saito represents energy not
caught up in the building project of Mal and Cobb together. With this energy Cobb can construct his
designated reality in which his children turn toward him so he can see their faces, and even hug him.
Cobb does not leave Limbo to produce this vision with Saito. It is the dream of both Saito and Cobb that
the entire affair ends successfully. And it does because Fischer escapes and in the Designated as Real
world he breaks up his conglomerate. This leaves the energy of Saito to build the designated as real
ending of the story that is successful as a projection of Cobb and Saito in Limbo. Because it is Limbo it
only takes one phone call to solve all of Cobbs legal problems. Because it is Limbo Cobb sails through
the border control point and gets home to see his children older without a hitch where he sees the
professor Mals Father with the children. But the fact that they turn toward him and even hug him in the
movie version does not say anything about whether he is actually interacting with real children at the end
of the film, they seem to still be projections, and Mal could be with the real children at the next level up
beyond what is designated as real by Cobb. When we read Fischer as the psychic energy drain that over
production with Mal in Limbo takes which sucks away all the available energy of life, then we see that
Fischers inception is the dual of the inception of Mal, an attempt to undo what had been done in the first
inception. The double suicide went badly and separated Mal and Cobb. The fake torture scene implants
the idea in Fischer that there is a safe with a different will, but the question is whether the alternative Will
of Fischer has any life force. The separation from Mal is seen in the attempted second double suicide
which Cobb refuses in the Hotel. But beneath the level of the Hotel where the second double suicide fails
there is the Fortress Hospital in which Fischer finds the motive power for his own Will inside the safe.
This alternative Will and alternative source of energy and power gives Cobb the decisiveness to release
the eidolon of Mal so that he can instead find Saito the competitor to Fischer who has the energy to
produce a new twist in the designated reality where he can go home and see his children turn toward him.
But he does not act with Saito to commit suicide as we apparently see in the film. And everything in
designated reality goes a bit too smoothly to be reality. And so we see that Cobb is using the alternative
energy of Saito and his alternative Will that allowed him to release Mal to in order to advance the frame

19
of his children turning toward him so he can see their faces. He is totally fascinated by that and forgets to
see that the top of Mal does not fall ultimately showing that he is still in her dream, not his own. Limbo is
made up of the debris left over from other peoples dreams, in this case the dreams of Mal.
But in order for this radical interpretation, in which everything is a dream in limbo in Inception to be true
then we would expect the three dreams to somehow relate to the three anamorphic objects. The little piece
of the real for Fischer was the pinwheel. That was hidden away in the safe along with the alternative Will.
The torture scene of his mentor in the rainy city where the train intrudes is the protrusion Phi. In that
scene Fischer is given the idea that there is a safe with an alternative will by Eames. Eames says you need
to dream bigger, when he invents a rocket launcher to take out some of the subconscious defenses of
Fischer. The train barging in and colliding with the cars on the street is a big intrusion of the unconscious
into this dreamworld filled with grief (that train is the one which they commit suicide together in Limbo),
in which Cobb is tortured by the fact that he talks Mal into going through with a double suicide that will
separate them ultimately. This means that the hotel must be the level of the object petite a which is the
projected on object, and of course this is the level where the architects work (creating the Penrose stairs
and the infinity of facing mirrors in the elevator) is most evident. Thus we can see that the three dreams
represent the three anamorphic objects. And these dreams is actually attempting to save Cobbs brain
from disintegrating in Limbo. These dreams are constructed to uphold the fantasy of the designated as
real world where the heist is planned and where he is reunited with his children. Where the first architect
betrays Cobb, the second Ariadne wants to act as a therapist and know too much. Ariadne is better than
Cobb who is lost in the labyrinth fighting with himself over his grief of destroying Mal and losing touch
with his children. Without Mal all he has left is the dream of seeing the faces of his children, and being
reunited with them as he hugs them. As Mal points out the designated as real world where he is constantly
being chased is a lot like the dreams, which Fischers sub-consciousness fights back in. It could well be
that the folks that are after Cobb in the designated as real world are supplied by the subconscious of Mal.
Saito in a deus ex machina saves Cobb who is being chased in Mombasa. He calls Cobb his investment
when Cobb asks him why he showed up when he did. Saito buys the airline that they will attempt the
inception on Fischer in on the way to the USA from Japan. Saito tests Cobb in the first scenes of the
movie before suggesting the inception job to him. Cobbs architect fails the test and betrays Cobb. Saito
dies in the inception heist and falls into Limbo and Cobb goes after him because that is the only way to
get the reward Cobb seeks. They do not escape the Van but go down with it, but then suddenly they are
awake in the Plane together. When Saito and Cobb are setting opposite each other in Limbo is when they
invent the new reality in Limbo where the heist was a success. Saito represents an alternative psychic
energy source where he can build the designated reality he wants where he returns to his children. This
energy source is given life when Fischer breaks up the conglomerate that is using all the psychic energy
that is going into building cities with Mal previously. Fischer returns to designated reality, and that allows
Saito and Cobb to return to their own version of the dream of designated reality. Cobb was falling into the
abyss of the unconscious and losing his sanity as long as he held onto Mal who he had betrayed. He
needed an alternative basis for building a designated reality where he could glimpse his childrens faces
and hug them if he could no longer see the face of Mal who was no longer with him in Limbo.
Cobb salvages his sanity by constructing a triangle of anamorphic objects to fend off the falling into the
abyss that Mal as Femme fatale represents in Limbo which was insanity. This move to preserve his sanity
is probably temporary but effective for the moment in a situation in which he is overwhelmed, i.e. by the
reality of Limbo, i.e. the deep collective unconscious of Jung which is a tartarus inhabited by the old
gods, the titans, below the hades of the personal unconscious recognized by Freud. The important thing
about the collective Unconscious for Jung was that it was objective. All humans have mothers and fathers
and siblings which are realities even in their absence because they are the common to the finitude of the
human species. Archetypes are as real as anything because they are the constants in human experience

20
across the broad range of everyones experience. Cobb gives us an image of someone struggling with his
unconscious as Jung did in his Red Book. Jung ceased working on his Red Book when he discovered
Alchemy as a universal basis for understanding the working of psychic energies that is culturally
universal.
The problem with the normal interpretation of the Jungian idea of the Self in which all the archetypal
projections are actually the individuated individual, i.e. all the various actors are in fact facets of Cobb, is
that it takes the reality out of the picture. This view is really a version of idealism which is ultimately
solipsistic. But in fact what Jung really means that there may be daemons, i.e. that the gods (jinn) actually
exist as uncontrollable forces within the collective unconscious of the society. Thus there actually are
forces that go beyond the Self of the individuated individual with which they must contend, just like in
the real world where there are forces we cannot control within society that buffet us and with which we
must deal some of which are overwhelming. Thus in Inception Mal is one of those forces as femme fatale
that Cobb must deal. Ariadne is the anima. Ariadne is dealing with Mal as crone, i.e. as chthonic female.
What makes Inception compelling is that it is really about the feminine psyche not the male psyche. Cobb
is in the position of the male helper of Ariadne in relation to her own crone, but in her role as anima for
Cobb. The way that Jungian archetypes work is that the male has the anima as his basic archetype but
behind that is the wise old man, i.e. the professor who is Mals father. On the other hand women have the
animus which is an older man trying to trap them, and the male figure (Cobb) is the helper of the female
(Ariadne) against her animus (Saito). And the equivalent of the wise old man is the chthonic female, or
crone. Notice that in Inception the anima of Ariadne the architect who is better than Cobb character
comes from the wise old man who is the professor, who is father of Mal. It is the Professors wife that is
taking care of the children for Cobb while he is exiled. So in this story the chthonic female comes from
the wise old man who also provides the anima to Cobb. Cobb is lost in Limbo and is trying to preserve his
sanity. Ordinarily Saito would be the Animus character who is after Ariadne and Cobb would be saving
her and have a relation with her based on his giving her help. But in this case we have the relation of the
man on the run with the female bystander who gets kidnapped and caught up in the action of the man
trying to escape as in Six Days of the Condor. In this case the Anima comes to his assistance acting as a
therapist and exploring his unconscious with him, and she confronts the Crone in the guise of the Animus
which is a powerful archetypal mixture that makes her the femme fatale. The question is whether Ariadne
will be able to get Theseus out of the Maze of his unconscious, or will she be overwhelmed with him and
lost in Limbo as well. Mal is in the place of the Minotaur who is the creature at the center of the
Labyrinth who must be killed, or in this case released from memory of Cobb. Key point in the story of
Ariadne is that she is abandoned by Theseus as soon as the mission is accomplished. She ends up
marrying Dionysus and being killed by Artimus. Thus Ariadne is an example of a myth in which the
female imitation sequence is preserved. The Female initiation sequence is Pure Being, then Hyper Being,
then Wild Being, then Process Being. The initiate is pure or virgin, but is then given initiation tasks
impossible to perform, in which she meets the Crone, and then on the basis of that becomes a woman
entering into the process of marriage and child birth eventually becoming a crone herself. The initiation
ceremony of the male is the opposite. The male is in the process of war, and in that process goes berserk
(wild), and after the period of insanity comes back to life by meeting the Wise old man who teaches him
about glory (Pure Being). Cobb lost in limbo is in Wild Being as berserker mode. The professor who is
the father of Mal gives him another architect that is better than he is, who is Ariadne. Ariadne is willing to
explore his unconscious with him and confront Mal who is the crone to her but has the force of the
Animus which may overwhelm her. In a sense it is Cobbs unconscious which is the Animus for Ariadne
and this is why the image of the Minotaur in the labyrinth is appropriate because Theseus in this way is
identified with the Minotaur, he is fighting himself for his life and Ariadne gives him the thread that may
save him from himself. The destructive psychic forces in the unconscious of Cobb in the form of Mal as

21
femme fatale is the Animus for Ariadne. As soon as Fischer finds the pinwheel and Cobb is able to
release Mals memory then everyone else besides Saito and Cobb escape from the dreams via the kick.
All these psychic helpers are no longer necessary. Cobb has an alternative source of energy to build an
illusionary world in which his children look at him.
Essentially this is a story of divorce in which the Mother turns the children against the father and all the
father wants is a good relation with his children who have been taken from him by his ex-wife. Given the
rampant divorce in our society, in which the post-divorce state is a living hell fighting over the children,
the movie strikes a deep chord. The real world where the Mother Mal is with the real children without the
father is Olympus. The divorced father has been thrown into Limbo, outside the family circle. His relation
with his wife cannot be retrieved, but he wants more than anything to have a relation with his children
who the mother is trying to turn against him. Once we realize that the whole story is about the post-
divorce state of the estranged father who wants to be with his children but is caught up in the nightmare of
either sharing custody or is without custody rights, then we can see that the father has to release the
memory of the wife, and exchange that for the attempt to have as normal as possible relation with his
children but at a distance because of the interference of the mother. Because this is a very significant part
of modern life with high divorce rates we can see where the psychic power of the movie comes from in
modern life. The Professor is in Paris and his wife is in the United States looking after the children. The
Professor as Wise Old Man is also estranged from his own wife. That estrangement has produced the
monster of Mal who has taken the real children off to Olympus, i.e. the utopian world beyond the Limbo
in which Cobb is trapped. Cobb gives up the memory of Mal in order to transfer is energy to the image of
his children who he hopes will recognize him and look at him. The forces in society where divorce is
prevalent and the living hell where there is competition over the affections of the children of the marriage
produces the psychic forces within the psyche of Cobb as estranged father. The fact that this story is
isomorphic to the structure of film making itself, i.e. the production of illusions in cinema is equated with
the productions of dreams in the deep unconscious is another connection with society at large that gives
deeper meaning to the film. But then we come back to the question of the wider Aspectual field beyond
the Lacanian sub-field. Lacan only talks about the relation between Real, Truth and the Imagination and
the anamorphic objects that preside over the changes of perspective between these aspects and the
confluence of their anti-aspects. But it is an open question as to whether the rest of the Aspectual field
beyond the Lacanian sub-field is expressed by the film. Basically in our worldview it is the relation of
truth to reality that is given preeminent emphasis. However, there are four aspects that also include
Identity and Presence. Each pair of the four aspects produces a banner, or pennant in which the apex is the
confluence of the anti-aspects of that pair of aspects. Each banner has the same structure with anamorphic
objects presiding over the shifts between perspectives governed by the aspects. What we would hope is
that Inception has all these banners not just the one emphasized by Lacan.

22
The Other Banners

Figure 14 All the banners of the Aspectual Field

23
 Figure 15 Speculative Banner
For instance, the opposite banner or pennant is that which is between Identity and Presence. The
confluence of Difference and Absence is the apex of the pennant. Between Identity and Presence the
characteristic is clarity which has the opposite unclear which with difference and absence gives us
Speculation as the opposite of Imagination. Clearly identity is associated with the characters in the movie
which is called into question because they may all be subconscious emanations of the dreamer. Presence
is seen as the dreamstate itself considered phenomenologically as well as designated reality. The only
world that is absent is the Olympian state to which Mal goes when she commits suicide. Between
Presence and Identity the anamorphic object is Perceptual Illusion which we see as Ariadne starts playing
with the physical laws of the dreamstate as she is learning her craft. Between Presence and Speculation
there is Mistaken Identity as an anamorphic object which registers the influence of identity and mediates
between Speculation and Presence. Between Identity and Speculation is Mistaken Percept which mediates
as an anamorphic object showing the influence of Presence. Mistaken Identity shows up in Mal as we see
the many sides of the femme fatale character, the loving wife turned into a monster in divorce. Mistaken
Identity shows up as the fact that Cobb married the wrong woman and that is what got him into this hell
where he has to fight for the right to see his children, and really is only left with memories of them, which
he has to hold onto when his grief allows him to give up the image of his loving wife who he is separated
from by the divorce. Mistaken percepts appear in the various false disguises taken on by Eames. For
instance, he appears as the mentor of Fischer (Browning) or as a woman in the hotel. Perceptual Illusion
appears in the Penrose steps and the facing mirrors that are produced by Ariadne. And, of course,
Inception is a science fiction scenario set in the future and thus is speculative fiction based on the
existence of a future technology of dream-sharing machines. The abyss in the middle of the pennant that
is the opposite of Jouissance is emotion, and we see that Cobb is wracked with emotion mostly regrets in
the various scenes that he has with his wife and children. Emotion can overwhelm us. Speculation is a
way to distance ourselves from emotion when it is dissociation, but it is also a way to evoke emotion.
There are some basic emotions that are universal such as those studied by Darwin. All emotions can be
overwhelming and threaten our identity and our ability to be present. In the case of Inception, Mal is

24
absent, and we see in the various ways that Mal appears deep differences inscribed in the same person as
the femme fatale for Cobb. These deep differences and the absence both of the children and his wife
produce these deep emotions within Cobb in the movie. The set of anamorphic objects around the vortex
of emotion help to prevent our being overwhelmed by emotion, they keep us at a distance from that
vortex. Where Jouissance (probably representing the third level of meta-negation related to Hyper Being)
is a negative vortex that can overwhelm us Emotion is a positive vortex. Where Imagination is something
that comes in toward us to articulate the difference between reality and truth, speculation is something
that allows us to distance ourselves from the difference between identity and presence. Ultimately the
Olympian realm to which Mal goes when she commits suicide in the designated as real world of Cobb is
what is completely different and absent, it is the world where the children are really with their mom alone
when she has custody of them and the father does not have access to the children.

Figure 16 Dual Banners of Imaginary and Speculation

So now we have two banners related to Imagination and Speculation and we see both quite clearly in the
multi-faceted story of Inception. Inception pushes into the unconscious and the Imaginary via the medium
of Science fiction and the concept of shared dreams. One thing that is odd about dreams is that they are
peopled with other human beings that we do not know (the so called projections). There is a whole

25
society within us just like the society that we are immersed in which is full of people we do not know.
Occasionally someone appears who we do know. The speculative element comes with the technology to
produce shared dreams in which we can interact with non-dream people we know inside our dreams as
well as outside the dream. The question of our interpretation is whether any of these non-dream people
actually exist, or are they also dream people just at a different level of the dream stack which Cobb has
designated as reality.

Figure 17 Projection Banner

The next banner or pennant that we should try is the relation between true and identity. The characteristic
between them is completeness, and the apex of the convergence of anti-aspects is incomplete fictional
difference which we call Projection. We will call the anamorphic object between Truth and Identity
impinged on by Projection what Bateson calls the difference that makes a difference. We will call the
anamophic object between Identity and Projection impinged upon by Truth the non-representable. Finally,
we will call the anamorphic object between Projection and Truth impinged upon by Identity Surprise. The
example of the non-representable is the fact that problems that could not be solved in Euclidian Geometry
using a straight edge and compass could be solved by using the techniques of Origami, so that solutons to
problems like trisection of an angle are possible if we just picked up the paper and folded it which could
not be solved inside the representational system of Euclidian geometry and which people tried for
centuries to solve within that representational system. On the other hand Surprise is the key element that
distinguishes information. In both cases there is a difference that makes a difference, either between the
drawings of Geometry and the paper that they are drawn on, or between the Surprising element that brings
with it information and the background noise or lack of relevant difference that produces the basis for
information. When we look at Inception we see surprise in the dreamscapes and their manipulation as a
key element of the experience of the film. Each dreamscape itself is a new medium (and thus a meta-
system) in which things can be done that could not be done in a different dreamscape and that is why they
are layered. So there is a difference that makes a difference between the dreamscapes, and also between
those and the designated as real landscape of so called ordinary reality where the inception is formulated

26
and where Cobb is reunited with his children in the seemingly happy ending. There is also the designated
as true, which is what Cobb believes, Cobb cannot hear it when people tell him he has lost touch with
reality. The center of the projection pennant is Synthesis which is opposite of the center of its opposite
pennant which is Fragmentation. The Architect and the plotter Eames contrive the synthesis in the space
and time of the dream of the various stages of the heist as an overall synthesis which is the ultimate trick
or ruse that will fool Fischer into changing his life and breaking up the company created by his Father.
There has to be something non-representable that underlies the representations, just as there has to be
background noise that underlies the information that is based on surprise. In both of those cases there is a
difference that makes a difference created. The difference in the ruse is between the Will of the Father
and the Alternative Will, this makes a difference in what will happen in the designated as real world ruled
by monopoly corporations. If planted deeply enough the inception idea becomes designated as true, i.e. a
core belief. The premise of the plot is based on the assumption that what goes on in key individuals in the
1% who have almost all the wealth counts in the real world. It is a model of real insider trading where one
is trading on the basis of the dreams of someone else who has the power to know what they will do before
they know themselves. There is a projection of a world by Saito where he can still compete, where
Fischers fathers firm has not gained a complete monopoly.

Figure 18 Experimentation Banner

The opposite banner or pennant is that composed of Reality, Presence and Experimentation.
Experimentation is composed of the anti-aspects of Absence and Illusion together with the anti-
characteristic of Invalidity. Reality and Presence share the characteristic between them of validity. The
vortex at the center of this pennant is Fragmentation. Between the Real and Experimentation is the
anamorphic object of the Secret which is impinged upon by Presence. Between Experimentation and
Presence is the anamorphic object of the Anomaly impinged upon by the Real. Between Reality and

27
Presence is the anamorphic object of the Placebo which is impinged upon by Experimentation. In the
Fischer Heist it is important for Fischer to think he has had the idea himself. Thus we want Fischer to be
healed by a placebo, something which has no effect ultimately. This is done by suggesting that there is a
safe with an alternative Will in it, which will contain a secret, which is represented by the pinwheel. The
Placebo is the idea that is planted in Fischers mind that he might have a mind of his own, he might
become his own man, a self-made man like his father in his own right. The alternative Will within the
safe beside his Dads deathbed is the source of this alternative future for Fischer that gives the
motivational power to the placebo via the reconciliation with the father. The vortex of fragmentation is
precisely what Saito wants to have happen with the Energy empire broken up so he can continue to
compete with his rival. For this to work an anomaly has to be introduced. The anomaly is the son hearing
the last words of the father differently. In those last words there are words of reconciliation which is an
anomaly in the relation of the father to the son, which did not happen in the designated as real world. This
is an induced false memory by the son of the dying of the father. It is what Fischer wants in this heart of
hearts in the frigid fortress at the core of this soul that was created by the father that ignored him and
looked own upon him because the son did not live up to the image of the Father. Experimentation and
Projection are opposites because in one we foist our categories onto nature and in the other we attempt to
torture nature to get its secrets from it. In projection we produce syntheses while in experimentation we
destroy nature in order to find out its secrets by dissection or using atom smashers.

Figure 19 Dual Banners of Projection and Experimentation

But we can see that both Projection and Experimentation are key to the structure of the film. The Heist is
an experiment in Inception, which has only been done once before and that was a failure, the victim (Mal)
committed suicide. On the other hand for the Heist to work an alternative future must be projected in
which it is successful. The heist or ruse, or trick has to have a specific structure to work and it is this
structure that is projected as the basis of the differentiation of the necessary dream stages that would
allow this outcome. The first level plants the idea of the safe with an alternative will. The second level
wakes up Fischer to the fact he is in a dream, and that this may be an extraction attempting to turn him
against his own projections that are militarized to protect him.. The third level is where Fischer makes the
idea of an alternative Will his own by the reconciliation with his father as a false memory. The entire
structure of the ruse needs to be constructed carefully to plant the idea within Fischer without his knowing
that it is not his own idea (it actually comes from conversations between him and his projections, i.e.
Browning at level 2 and his Father at level 3. They are allowing the dynamics of his own Psyche to do the

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action and that only occurs in a multi-layered story as discovered by Erickson in relation to suggestions in
hypnosis.

Figure 20 Doxa Banner

The next Banner to be explored is that between Identity and Reality. The characteristic that they share is
Coherence. Therefore the confluence of anti-aspects is Incoherent Different Illusion which we will call
Doxa which is part of the Divided Line of Plato. Interestingly the anamorphic object between Identity and
Difference is Unmappable Places where the Doxa impinges. The anamorphic object between Identity
and Doxa is Entanglement on which the Real impinges. The anamorphic object between Doxa and Reality
is Superimposition upon which Identity impinges. The center of the banner is inclusion. This is opposite
the banner that is related to Reason whose center is exclusion. The whole of the dreamtime has to
function in relation to the core of the Western worldview which is the Divided Line. That core is seen in
cross relation between identity/presence with reality/identity. Thus we break them up so that reason,
which is related to logos, is dependent on truth and presence, while Doxa which is belief is dependent on
Identity and the Real. Now the Doxa banner is based on the structure of Quantum Mechanics with

29
anamorphs for superimposition which is suprarationality and entanglement which is contradiction,
paradox and absurdity. What is anamorphic between them is the unmappable places that separate the
entanglement from the superimposition which might be called dissonance on an analogy with Quantum
Discord37. The superposition in Inception has to do with the fact that time is overlaid in each of the
dreamscapes so that things are happening simultaneously in the different levels like the Kick that takes
them back out of all the dreamscapes at once. In the dreamscapes time runs quicker in each level so that a
few minutes in an upper dream can be years in a lower dream. Time slows down as you go deeper into
trance, just as time slows down as you go to younger versions of yourself. However, even though there is
a superposition of times between the dreamscapes there is also an entanglement between them because
what happens in one dream like weightlessness in the falling van affects what happens in the adjacent
lower level dream like the weightlessness in the hotel. The point is that the normal stacked dreams have
these superimposition and entanglement effects but Limbo is the unmappable place beyond the
dreamscapes that are induced. Dreams are normally symptomatic of unfounded beliefs. When we wake up
we find that what we thought happened in the dream did not happen and we feel relief. In the dream there
is an incoherent difference in the illusion from what is identical and real. But the superposition and
entanglement of Dreamscapes can be disrupted when unmappable elements intrude from Limbo or the
collective unconscious coming from nowhere, i.e. from unmappable places not taken into account by the
architect, like the Train that intrudes in the first level dream, or the shaky quality of the dreamed hotel
once Fischer learns that he is dreaming at the second level. Basically there are founded and unfounded
beliefs or appearances in Doxa. The founded beliefs are shared by the dreamers sharing the same dream,
but the unfounded beliefs are those that have no basis in shared experience that intrude from the
unconscious of Cobb. The key plot motif is that Cobb is sharing more and more of his world of inner
experience with Ariadne who is helping him sort out what is real from what is not real, what is identical
from what is not identical, and he is revealing to her some of the unmappable places in his subconscious
and memories he locks away and that he keeps hidden from everyone else. Ariadne is being included by
Cobb more and more into his internal life of his consciousness in the dream world as when they descend
in the old style cage elevator to see what is at the various levels. Total inclusion would have Ariadne
sucked down into Limbo with him, but she escapes with Fischer while Cobb goes to look for Saito.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_discord See also http://quantumdiscord.org/ New Scientist Brave new
quantum World by Hugo Cable and Kavan Modi, Nov 16, 2013 p30-31 #2943

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 Figure 21 Reason Banner
The final banner is that associated with Reason which is the other segment of the Divided Line and is the
other part of the core of the Western worldview besides its dual which is Doxa. Reason is based on Logos
which has as its core Logic. Ever since Plato it is Reason which has been core to the Western worldview
as the basic criteria for judging experience. Here truth and presence share consistency as a characteristic
and the confluence of their anti-aspects is Reason as Inconsistent False Absence. Reason is many times
inconsistent with lived life and imposes universals wrongly on life with disastrous consequences; this is
Hegels argument that the French Revolutionary Terror was the outcome of Kants Enlightenment project.
Reason produces antimonies according to Kant which are false opposites that cannot be decided between
by Reason alone, and that is why Hegel develops Spirit as a criterion for deciding between opposites
created by reason. And reason is always an absence from life in the realm of universals, ideas, and
ideologies. Between Truth and Presence is the anamorphic object of Dehiscence, or fracture, as impinged
upon by Reason. Between Reason and Truth is the anamorphic object of Anagogic Swerve as impinged
upon by Presence. Between Reason and Presence is the anamorphic object of the True Lie as impinged
upon by Truth. The fracture in reason is seen in the production of the antinomies, i.e. nihilistic opposite
arguments that cannot be decided between. However, reason has the capability of making an anagogic
swerve and thus changing its point of view on things within the space of thought opened up by the
possibilities of the antinomies. And, of course, Plato is the one who has suggested that sometimes it is
necessary to tell a true lie as the basis for achieving something good, which otherwise would not happen.
The true lie in the Republic establishes its class system among the people of that imaginary polis that
gives rise to the guardians. The best reason can do is exclude things based on its reasoning from life and
that is how we get abstractions, universals, and ideas as well as ideologies that are in fact dead. Life is
inherently messy in its facticity and reason cannot deal with that messiness. The fundamental fracture or
dehiscence that is threatened is to have Cobbs brain scrambled in Limbo, an utter destruction of his
reason and thus insanity. He wants to be truly present with his children. He wants to be truly present with

31
his wife. He wants consistency in that true presence within his family and is willing to sacrifice anything
for that even his sanity. He effects an anagogic swerve in Mal when he tampers with the top as
anamorphic object she has hidden away in her safe. She no longer sees the world she is in as real, and
does not accept the designation of reality given by Cobb (their marriage as he defined it). She wants to
really be together which can only occur in the ideal world of reality of Olympus beyond the designated as
real world where the story occurs which is questioned as to whether it is a dream or not by Mal. When
Cobb sets her top to spinning in the safe Mal has created for it he has told her a true lie, that is the
inception, he has given her the idea that Limbo is not the designated as real world and that they must die
together to get back to the real world. But the truth of that lie does not stop when they get out of Limbo
but continues to infect Mals mind so that she has to commit suicide again in order to get back to the real
world. According to Nietzsche all the truths we tell ourselves are the lies we need in order to survive.
Nietzsche in effect does the same thing that Cobb does to Mal to the entire culture of the Western
worldview. Nietzsche says that all truths are necessarily lies, they are necessary to life. Nietzsche also
introduces perspectivalism and thus the importance of the anagogic swerve between different
perspectives. Reason must cope with these changes in perspective and that causes us to have to cope
continually with a deep irony where we know that what we are saying is false but we say it to point to a
truth beyond direct expression, i.e. unmappable concepts and ways of looking at things. The fracture of
truth and presence is taken into the difference and fragmentation between the perspectives. Madness is the
opposite of reason which has a genealogy explored by Foucault. Reason produces insane asylums to
insulate itself against madness. It tortures those who are helpless in their insanity in the name of science.
The only way to maintain sanity is to discover which lies whose truth one can live with and to be able to
change perspectives though anamorphic swerves in order to be able to keep up with the changes in
experience. Cobb is trying to maintain his reason. He is trying to achieve true presence with those he
loves, but he has lost his ability to preserve his relation to Mal and so he turns to his kids and attempts to
attain true presence with them instead. For this he needs an alternative resource of psychic energy which
he finds with Saito, if he can just pull off the Heist that Saito has asked him to do with respect to the
inception of Fischer. The inception is the planting of a true lie. It is a lie that his father is reconciled with
him and has an alternative will, but that is a truth that Fischer can live with and build his life around at the
expense of keeping the conglomerate together. By giving Fischer a false memory of reconciliation Cobb
has implanted a true lie. It is true because Fischer wants to believe it, it is in accord with his psychic
needs. But it is a lie because it is a foreign implantation from Cobb and his inception team. It is truer to
who Fischer is even though it is based on an engendered false memory of reconciliation. That idea causes
an anagogic swerve in Fischer which will lead to the dismemberment of the corporation eventually which
is what Saito wants, but Saito has paid for that by being lost in limbo himself. Limbo is really a dream in
which one is all alone. Strangely this makes all our dreams a part of Limbo. Cobb attempts to save his
own reason in Limbo by planting an inception (a true lie) that will cause an anagogic swerve in Fischer,
but that is also an anagogic swerve in his obsession with Mal, but he is willing to live with the illusion
that he sees the faces of his children turn toward him and in which they hug him and he hugs them and
that is for him a true lie that takes the place of true presence with Mal and his children in Olympus
beyond the designated reality that is the Limbo in which the whole story of Inception occurs. Ultimately
Cobb is excluded from true presence with his wife and children through the divorce that occurred in
designated reality when Mal committed suicide.
Now we have gone through all the banners of the Lacanian anamorphic field, and they all fit within the
complex story of Inception. Because Inception is a complex enough story to hold all these various
anagogic objects in it field we can see their relations to each other within the whole of the film. We dont
suppose that the director had all these factors consciously in mind when he created the film, but rather we
suppose that our cultures dreamtime is based on the creation of works that have as many of these

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anamorphic objects that affect anagogic perspective change as possible within them and it just turns out
that Inception is complex enough and skillfully crafted enough to hold the whole field. By having an
example of a work of art that has the entire field within it we can then begin to look for other works of
similar sophistication, and contrast those with works that have some but not all of the field such as those
that Zizek points out in Looking Awry. Our main interest is the relation between the field of anamorphic
objects that affect changes in anagogic perspectives and nonduality. We show in Appendix 1 how the
precession around the three interlocked points of view occurs and when we look across the entire field
with all its anaject self-intersecting eventities which are 18 in all we see that the change in each sub-field
is 120 degrees and when we take all six of them together then that gives us 720 degrees of angular change
which is what we need as a spinor to stand still in four dimensional spacetime. Thus there is an inner
essential relation between the morphology of the anajective Aspectual field with its distortions which are
self-intersecting folds and the recognition of nonduality which is transformative in as much as it
reorganizes the field. Appendix 2 shows the different parts of the field that are the same emphasized
together within different versions of the diagram for reference.
The idea that the anamorphic/anagogic perspective change inducing field which is an amalgamation of
illusion, difference, fiction, absence ultimately has a connection with the no duality of the fourth
dimension brings us to the central motif of Inception which is the spinning top which is Mals totem
which Cobb uses throughout the movie to work out whether he is in Mals dream and which he abandons
at the end for the vision of his children having grown turning to look at him. If the Top continues to spin
that is supposed to mean it is a dream and not a designated reality. But the fact that the top continues to
spin points to a fundamental characteristic that is being posited for dreams and that is that physical laws
do not apply that would make the top slow down and topple over. These points to the ultra-efficacy of the
fourth dimension which is hype-effective and hyper-efficient. The assumption is that entropy does not
apply to dreams in the same way it applies to normal mundane physical reality in the designated as real
world. Perpetual motion is possible in a dream, and this is signified by the fact that Penrose Stairs can be
build and that they are effective in the dreamworld. Also we can turn two mirrors to each other and
transform that world into an infinity of mirrorings. The interesting thing is that although perpetual motion
machines are forbidden by physical laws in designated reality this is not true of perpetual information
machines. The form of a perpetual information machine is the same as that of the Penrose stairs. We call
them chaotic systems with strange attractors in Complexity Science. They are the dual of the two mobius
strips that make up a Kleinian bottle and the non-orientable surface is an analogy for the Autopoietic
Special System. The two mirrors facing each other that Ariadne creates in her dream is an analogy for a
Dissipative Ordering Special System. The Autopoietic Symbiotic Special System has three mirrors facing
each other and has the analogy of the Kleinian bottle. Of course the Kleinian Bottle is a three dimensional
surface that intersects itself, folds through itself creating anamorphic relations by having a circle of self-
intersection. These are the same type of folds we see in Boys and Roman surfaces which is the
embedding of the projective plane into the third dimension. The projective plane is normally what allows
us to represent perspectives within two dimensional representations. It is the folds in the projective plane
which allows us Escher to draw Penrose stairs. And it is Penrose stairs that are the analogy of a perpetual
motion machine. The fact that not everything that can be represented in the projective plane can be
created in three dimensions is also the difference that makes impossible perpetual motion machines. But it
does not outlaw ultra-efficacy of order producing systems that are self-sustaining such as those needed for
life and consciousness as emergent effects in the physical world. Kleinian symbiosis of Mobius strips in
non-orientable surfaces contributed to the ultra-efficacy of the Autopoietic System and this is composed
of two Dissipative Ordering Special Systems that produce negative entropy, i.e. ordering such as we see
in dreams. Inception posits that there is a level of shared dreaming that is also effective and efficient as a
science fiction hypothesis; this is really something like virtual reality in which the social dimension

33
actually is efficacious in the dreamtime. This is an evocation of the idea of the Reflexive Social Special
System which is analogous to the Hyper Klienian Bottle, i.e. self-intersecting Kleinian bottles sharing
their anamorphic self-intersection circles. The Reflexive Social Special System is related to the Octonion
hypercomplex algebra which is a particular kind of projective space related to the hypersphere S8 in
dimension nine, i.e. the highest dimension with an associated schema, i.e. the pluriverse. The metaphor
for this is the Fano smallest projective plane that has the same structure as the interchange between the
hyper complex imaginaries. The analogy for this emergent level of the Reflexive Social Special System is
when the dream phantoms that are filled in by the subjects self-conscious becomes aware of the foreign
body of the dream sharer and stares at them and attacks them like white blood cells attacking an infection.
This signifies that the subconscious phantoms who otherwise would not act in unison are connected to
each other thorough the unconscious of the dreamer from which they emanate, Jungs so called Collective
Unconscious. However, we can posit that this social level may also be ultra-efficacious and there are
reports of people sharing the same fantasy world in joint guided imagery sessions. There are also
religions which have the idea of true dreams in which there are actual social interactions within dreams
which are meaningful in the designated as real world also. In Sufism there is a tradition of Prophetic or
True Dreams for instance supported by Hadith within the tradition. In other traditions the Dreamtime is
much deeper than it is for the Western worldview and for our tradition we are just on the shore of
understanding the depths of our Dreamtime, whereas other traditions have explored their own Dreamtime
more deeply, for instance in Tibetan Buddhism and Bon or in Hinduism or in Chinese Taoist Alchemy for
instance.
There are perhaps four or five totems shown in the movie that are identified as such. One is a loaded red
dice of Arthur, another is a hollowed out bishop belonging to Ariadne, and the third is the Top once
belong to Mal but now in the possession of Cobb, and finally there is the red poker chip of Eames which
he uses to forge others by some trick. It is possible that Cobbs Marriage Ring is his own Token because
it is only on him when Mal is supposed to be dead. That makes five possible totems. These totems remind
us of the signs of the Beast in Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bte, 1946) film by Jean Cocteau. The
signs of the Beast which are the opposite of those of the hero such as Perseus. These tools/signs of the
Beast and their opposites for the hero are helmet/ring, shield/mirror, scythe/key, bag/glove, and
shoes/reigns. The tools of the Beast appear also prominently in the original novel of The Phantom of the
Opera. Could it be that the totems in Inception owned by the team members who are in fact parts of the
Self of Cobb could play the same role? The die, bishop, poker chip, top and ring could signify the
different metaphors that need to come together and help each other to accomplish the overcoming of the
trauma of Cobbs losing Mal due to his inception of the idea that Limbo was not real. Such a coming
together of metaphors occur often in the Metaphor Therapy of David Grove and Cei Davies-Lynn. Each
of the members of the team has a totem that is theirs alone and identifies them as being unique and also
allows them to tell if they are in someone elses dream due to the facticity of the totem. The loaded die
and the poker chip that generates other chips both suggest gambling and of course the Heist itself is a
calculated risky game. The bishops in Chess stands beside both the King and the Queen and also suggests
a game but not of chance and without the stigma of gambling, building alternative worlds it is suggested
is a game for Ariadne. Related to Cobb is the marriage ring which signifies his broken relation with Mal,
and then there is Mals top by which he tries to work out if he is in Mals dream. Both the top and the ring
are circular, but one is dynamic and the other static, one suggests a fundamental social bond and the other
a law of physics, i.e. entropy. So Cobbs totems are very different from those of the rest of his team. One
of those totems is shared by the Beast which is the ring.

Ring = Cobb wedding ring on in some scenes and off in others

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 Mirror = Appears as the mirror in the bathroom in which he sees Mal and tries to spin the top but
is interrupted by Saito, and also the double facing mirrors created by Ariadne
Glove = Cobb wears gloves in the first extraction scene when he is breaking into Saito palace, but
also in the Snow scene at the third level everyone is wearing gloves but Saito takes off one glove
as he waits to fend off the attackers.
Reign of the Horse of the Beast = All the dreamers are teatered to the dream machine, and this
tether is like the reigns of the horse, but in this case the horse is the dreams that are out of control.
The Horse of the beast take Beauty home and then back to the palace of the Beast. The horse is a
means of magical transportation.
Key = Yusuf has keys but he says that perhaps Cobb will not want to see the dreamers who come
to share dreams in his basement under sedation. Arthur also has a key to their workshop in Paris.
There are hotel card keys to the rooms in the hotel.
Thus it appears that the signs of the Beast do play a role in the movie and we can attempt to align them
with the Totems of the helpers of Cobb.

Ring = Cobb wedding ring on in some scenes and off in others and sign of whether Mal is dead or
not at any given time
Mirror = Bishop (Two bishops on either side of the King and Queen in Chess)
Glove = Loaded Die (One is protected as one takes risks, a good luck charm)
Reign of the Horse of the Beast = Poker Chip (A way to seize Money without work which is a
means to other ends. Gambling as the addicitive wild horse to be tamed.)
Key = Top (Key is the entry way into the enchanted castle of the Beast)
So there is some slight sense to the relation between the five totems and the five object of the Beast. The
key though is not so much in the fact that the five things are really the same, but rather how they function
in the world of the owner of the token. Here we need to introduce the concept of the Meta-levels of Being
in order to understand the role played by the totems. totems are something that are in-hand. There are
several meta-levels of Being discovered in the Continental Philosophy tradition related to Fundamental
Ontology as proposed by Heidegger in Being and Time. He proposes two kinds of Being which is Pure
Being (present-at-hand, pointing), and Process Being (ready-to-hand, grasping). But later in the tradition
both Heidegger, Derrida and Merleau-Ponty propose that there is a third kind of Being (cf. Plato in the
Timaeus) which Heidegger calls Being crossed out, Derrida calls Difference (differing and deferring) and
Merleau-Ponty calls the Hyper Dialectic between Process Being and Nothingness of Sartre. I have given
this mode of Being the name In-hand and believe that it is related to what Levinas calls bearing. I propose
that the totems symbolize objects at this third meta-level of Being that are in-hand and always borne by
their owners and that these objects function metaphorically as the core identity of the sub-conscious
persona that together have to solve the problem of the inception, they each bring resources to that task
that are essential. The problem is that Cobb is carrying two totems, one of which is that of Mal who is no
longer in the designated as real world Cobb gives up the memory of Mal in Limbo and at the end of the
movie he gives up looking at her top to try to find out if he is in her dream or not. Saito has no totem and
so the fact that Cobb has two has a compensatory function. Ariadne brings the mirroring which we see in
the facing mirrors she creates in her experiments with dreams and in the hotel elevator when introduced to
them by Cobb. We see this mirroring in the suicide of Mal where he is in the window opposite hers.
Somehow Cobb is always looking into the mirror of her suicide and attempting to see what that says
about him and his guilt. Arthur is willing to go along and take a chance but he is more cautious that Cobb
he does not want to take chances. He is the loyal sidekick that knows how to help in their extractions but
most of all he wants to get out alive. Eames is just as crazy as Cobb but he is a trickster who can generate
more chips from his token chip, and the fact that he does so is evidence that the designated as real scenes

35
in Mombasa are in fact taking place in a dream. Eames is a plotter and shape changer and is in it for the
thrill and likes to take risks, and is always thinking bigger within the dreamscape. Each of the helpers
have their function but are also very thin characters which is evidence that they are projections of Cobb.
But the point is that each offers Cobb a specific resource in their inception heist which is about revering
the inception of Mal gone wrong within Cobbs psychic economy. Cob is trying to get Mal out of his
system and return to his children who are still part of his designated reality. Ariadne is willing to help him
explore the depths of his unconscious in the face of the onslaughts of Mal (Mal stabs her the first time
they meet) to stick with Cobb. The point is that for Arthur and Eames it is a game of chance which both
want to rig one way or another. But for Ariadne it is a game of chess like that between the knight and
Death in The Seventh Seal. Ariadne is not a pawn in this game but a bishop, one who hears confessions.
For Cobb it is a matter of giving up both the ring and the top and thus letting go of Mal and the general
economy that Mal causes in his Unconscious due to his guilt of his deception of her. In a sense divorce is
always about deception one way or another. But in order to get the healing that Cobb needs he must enter
into Hyper Being, which is an emergency situation in which he and his team have to think fast in order to
pull off the caper. In Hyper Being more possibilities appear (characters say that they must improvize)
than occur either in Pure or Process Being, and it is these extra possibilities that Cobb is using to solve his
problem with holding on to Mal who has returned to Olympus to be with the real children whom she has
custody of without him being part of their lives because of the separation that he has induced in their
marriage which was supposed to be forever and they were supposed to grow old together which they did
in Limbo. Cobb broke is promise (but they did grow old together in Limbo if not in the designated as real
world) of a forever relationship with Mal even if it meant living in Limbo together forever. But the whole
Heist takes place in the Emergency situation of the inception heist with expanded possibilities set in
motion by Saito. But if any of them die along the way as Saito does then they will be lost in Limbo which
is Wild Being where there is a contraction of being-in-the-world which is the opposite of Hyper Being
where there is an expansion of being-in-the-world. The team and Cobb are always on the brink of being
overwhelmed within the various dream levels. In Wild Being things get out of hand and one is
encompassed by the situation one is end as ones possibilities are severely curtailed. The ultimate
curtailment is Ultra Being which in Heidegger is the possible impossibility of death. In Heidegger the
realm of Hyper Being is what he calls Care where there is resolution, the leap of faith, the moment of
vision and other elements introduced by Kierkegaard into our understanding of Religion as paradoxical
and absurd. There are several leaps of faith in Inception primarily by Cobb and Mal. Cobb cannot take the
leap of Faith Mal suggests but he takes the Leap of Faith suggested by Saito to solve is problems in the
designated as real world cause by the death of Mal. Because Inception deals with these existential issues
introduced by Kierkegaard and preserved in Being and Time by Heidegger we can call this an existential
film like Hiroshima Mon Amour or Woman of the Dunes. Fundamentally Cobbs psyche is using the
Emergency situation of the inception Heist as the means of entry into Hyper Being and the transition to
Wild Being occurs when Ariadne, Fischer, and Cobb enter Limbo together to search for Saito, and Cobb
stays while Fischer and Ariadne return. If the whole film takes place in Limbo then this is merely a way
to put off the ultimate overwhelming of Cobb by madness, but it has produced a different economy in the
designated as real world revolving around the children rather than around Mal which Ariadne helped to
engineer. The fact that Inception uses multi-level dreams in the format of a heist movie to display the
meta-levels of Being is also a rare feature of the film. This opens the way to understand the film as a
quintessential existentialist work in which Cobb like in the myth of Sisyphus or other novels by Camus is
dealing with the continued production of meaning in his life and struggling with forces beyond his control
like the world wars in Europe which gave rise to Existentialism. It deals with making sense of an
everyday occurrence for most of us which is dreaming which normally make little sense and can be a
confrontation with nonsense in our lives. Sense making as Deleuze talks about in the Logic of Sense is
dependent on Nonsense as the foil of whatever sense we make in our lives.

36
However, this brings us to another important point, which is that the Lacanian invention of the Sub-field
of the Aspectual Field which he takes from his semiotic and structural reinterpretation of Freuds Id, Ego
and Super-Ego is dependent on the ideas of Sartre as well as those of Heidegger. Lacan was always
interested in Surrealism and what that could tell us about the unconscious, and was a friend of Salvador
Dali inventor of the psychic-atmospheric-anamorphism38.

The move to the structural and semiotic levels in a philosophically significant way is made possible by
Heidegger in Being and Time, the foundational text for French Existentialism. Being and Time is the text
that all the main players in French Existentialism were struggling with before and after the second world
war. But even though Being and Time opens up the door to escaping the Subject/Object duality via
Dasein (the projected projector, i.e. the extractee subject of Inception) it does not provide Lacan with a
way to view the Subject from the newly discovered landscape opened up by Existentialism. It is we
believe Sartres Being and Nothingness that makes this possible for Lacan, and what Sartre introduces is
meta-negations starting with the Nothing of Heidegger and the fact that Nullity Nullifies as suggested in
Being and Time. Sartre takes this suggestion to heart and makes it the center of his black hole theory of
consciousness in which nihilation is the major dynamic that is occurring in consciousness. This makes it
possible to understand psychic dynamics as variations of the dynamics of nothing which is so prominent
in the works of Lacan at least as interpreted by Zizek. The aspectual field is the result of distortions which
occur when we try to see the projective plane as within three dimensional space which it overflows. What
Heidegger does is he isolates the projective aspect of the human situation from subjectivity. Dasein is like
the head of the chorus in relation to the Major actors in the Greek tragedy. Once we have removed
ourselves from the Transcendental Subject we can look back on the subject as Ego and see that the subject
is caught up in an illusion, i.e. is dealing with a dynamic that is essentially empty even though it appears
as if it is full from the point of view of the subjects involved. Dasein is like the position of the child in
relation to the parents who are engaged in a family drama. In both cases either as chorus members or
children Dasein is essentially a bystander. But in the case of Heidegger it is precisely the projective part
that Heidegger as isolated which in Inception is the part which gives the content from the subconscious to
the schemas offered by the dreamer. But also Heidegger forgets the body. Sartre remembers the body and
places the negative dynamic of nothingness not just in consciousness but also explores its implications for
the body. This remembering of the body is placing the projective capacity back into three dimensional
space and it is precisely this that produce the anamorphic warpage of the Aspectual field. The subject
comes equipped with this warpage but does not know it is there. It is only when we separate out Dasein
and then place it back in the body that we see how the projective field is warped by its injection into

38
Weiss, Allen S. The Aesthetics of Excess. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989.

37
spacetime within the body. It is this insight that comes from Sartre that Lacan used in order to ground his
exploration of Freud based on semiotics and structuralism. Once we know there is are meta-negations that
correspond to the meta-levels of Being then we can use that to generate not just the field that Lacan sees
but even more complex and deeper fields at higher meta-negations. In our case we realize that it is the
Aspects of Being that Lacan is using for his point of departure in defining his sub-field between reality,
truth and imagination. All we need to do is realize the structure of the sub-field and how it relates to the
anamorphic objects that cause anagogic swerves in perspective and then apply that to all the relations
between the aspects and anti-aspects and we get the entire aspectual field presented in this paper. We
posit that it is one of the functions of culture to generate stories that contain anamorphic objects that cause
anagogic swerves between perspectives. Inception happens to contain the entire field which is probably
unusual. The reason that culture must produce these artifacts that embody anamorphic objects is that it
allows us to navigate the world by transforming our perspectives. The world contains all possible
perspectives but navigating perspectives is always a problem for the inhabitants of the world. The point is
that the subject is blind to the anamorphic objects normally because all it sees is the target of its gaze and
does not see the things that nudge its conceptual perspective on things within the world. However, since
Nietzsche the influence of Perspectivalism in philosophy has grown. Prior to that it perspectivalism was
mostly thought of in terms of vision and perspective painting as a cultural object. But now we take for
granted that there are multiple perspectives on everything as we see famously in the film Rashamon.
Anamorphic objects are things that nudge our glance from one perspective to another and produce an
anagogic swerve in our way of looking at things generally.
In our rendition of the Anagogic Aspectual Field with its strange Anamorphic objects we have named the
relations between the confluences and the various aspects and we have named the bisections of each point
of view that locates the anamorphic object. The anamorphic object can cause our gaze to shift to either of
the two other perspectives in a given banner or sub-field. We have named the central sources and sinks at
the middle of each banner. But all of these names are conjectural and may all change in different cases
because all the elements of the field are diacritical. Aspectual Anamorphic objects are seen as hinges or
traces that appear in Hyper Being as loci of Differance as discussed by Derrida in Of Grammatology.
Thus we assume that the Aspectual field is Structural and Semiotic. But we prefer the semiotics of Peirce
rather than de Saussure. And this helps us understand the Aspects as well because we identify Identity
with Firstness (isolata), Truth with Secondness (relata), Presence with Thirdness (continua) and Reality
with Fourthness (synergy). So this gives us a basis for understanding what the Aspects of Being are, they
are the embodiment of the various dimensional philosophical principles as discovered by Peirce and
Fuller. Beyond those are Fifthness (integrity) and Sixthness (poise) beyond which there is a singularity at
Seventhness. On the other hand before Firstness is Zeroth and the Neganary which is where imaginary
numbers are found. So the field of principles go beyond what is seen in our tradition as the Aspects of
Being which needs to be explored further. However, some of the implications of this are looked at in my
dissertation on Emergent Design39.
Prestige
One way to test our hypothesis about Inception is to compare it to Prestige another film by Christopher
Nolan about two competing magicians. It is clear that the film itself is attempting to be a ruse in its
portrayal of a series of more and more spectacular tricks as the magicians attempt to outdo each other and
also get revenge on each other. It seems that Nolan is using Quantum Mechanics as the underlying motif
that is being played upon where the transporting man trick is quantum tunneling and quantum
teleportation, and not knowing what knot was tied is the Heisenberg undecidability. The author of the

39
http://emergentdesign.net

38
original book Christopher Priest did not make the connection to
Quantum Mechanics which is I believe the key to understanding the movie. Quantum tunneling and
Quantum transportation are real phenomena which are in fact Magical, i.e. utterly unexpected and
wondrous aspects of nature. And it brings together three phenomena that are related which are
entanglement, superposition, and discord. In Prestige we see the entanglement of the two magicians lives
through their conflict. We also see in both Borden and Algier superposition at work. In the case of
Borden40 the superposition two people with the same identity sustained in their real lives in order to
support their magical trick. In the case of Algier it is the duplication of the same person in two supposedly
identical clones, i.e. bilocation. What is amazing is that we even get the equivalent of Schrodingers cat
because in the book the prestige materials are left behind dead, while in the movie the prestige materials
are left behind alive. Thus in the two presentations of the story in different mediums there is an
undecidability whether the prestige materials are alive or dead. Discord appears in the relation between
the core magical trick, either traditional with doubles, or through science fiction technology by actual
cloning and the rest of the world, i.e. the ripple effects of the core secret into the real world surrounding
the magicians. Newtonian physics stands in for normality of life and its exigencies, while quantum
mechanics and its oddness is associated with the world of magic, as what makes magic real. And
connecting that with our emphasis on projection spaces it can be seen in the literature that there is a
connection between projection space weirdness and quantum mechanics41 via the Hopf Fibration. This
unexpected connection between quantum mechanics and projective geometry exists because of the
relation of projective geometry to the hypercomplex algebras and thus the Special Systems. In the Special
Systems something extraordinary really does occur and that is the basis of life, consciousness and the
social. This confluence between something real which is quantum mechanics (the most tested physical
theory) and projections which are unreal in three dimensional space, but appear as representations of three
dimensional in two dimensional space, give us a basis for what is referred to in the film Prestige as Real
Magic. Only thing is that bilocation, teleportation, and quantum tunneling as far as we know will not
work on a large scale in a Newtonian universe after discord has prevailed, i.e. the quantum regimes are
broken up. However, making quantum mechanics the basis of Magic in Prestige is an excellent way to
extend our understanding of these mysterious phenomena by relating them to something we do
understand better within our world. The movie makes a point of explaining the structure of the Magic
Trick and emphasizing that as a way of understanding Magic better.
Thus we can see in Prestige how the various aspects of Being come into play:
Truth is when Borden says he loves is wife and she says today he does or next day he does not. Borden is
living a lie. Todd McGowan42 gives an excellent discussion of the meaning of deceit in Prestige and the
other movies of Nolan. The whole emphasis of the movie is on Secrets and Lies that protect them, that is
on negative information. In the Special Systems our emphasis is normally on negative entropy rather

40
http://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/4470/is-it-possible-to-tell-who-is-who-in-each-scene
41
In quantum mechanics, the Riemann sphere is known as the Bloch sphere, and the Hopf fibration describes the
topological structure of a quantum mechanical two-level system or qubit. Similarly, the topology of a pair of
entangled two-level systems is given by the Hopf fibration
S^3 \hookrightarrow S^7\to S^4.
(Mosseri & Dandoloff 2001). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopf_fibration See also
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/octonions/node8.html And also see
http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/104729/what-is-a-very-simple-example-of-the-way-projective-
geometry-is-used-in-quantum; See also http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=262; See also
http://business.highbeam.com/436977/article-1G1-68278466/suppressed-drawing-paul-dirac-hidden-geometry
42
McGowan, Todd. The Fictional Christopher Nolan. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2012.

39
than negative information. We note that there is also negative matter which is anti-matter43 that
annihilates with matter, and negative energy in space called the Casimir effect 44 in space. At a key point
Borden says that Magic is the only way to get beyond all this, and he hits a wall of a building meaning the
material world45. Angier also alludes to that in his final speech: The audience knows the truth- that the
world is simple. Miserable. Solid all the way through. But if you could fool them, even for a second, you
could make them wonder. Then you got to see something very special... We do not see anti-matter nor
the Casimir effect at the macro level in the Newtonian universe in which we live. But negative
information and negative entropy play a large role in our existence as organisms that can be described by
the Autopoietic Theory46 of Maturana and Varella as closed self-producing systems or what Robert Rosen
Anticipatory Systems47. All living organisms have secrets, i.e. hidden information and they exhibit self-
organization. This is also true at the social level. But all this has its origins in what Prigogine 48 calls
Dissipative Structures in which Order is dissipated from a singularity at the center to the boundary of a
chemical or other type of system that converts its environment into itself and thus reproduces itself in far
from equilibrium environments. But we now know that the whole universe which is accelerating in its
expansion is a far from equilibrium system, just like the earth supplied with energy from the Sun. In such
environments we can find conjunctions of Dissipative Ordering Special Systems, i.e. Dissipative
Structures of Prigogine, which create Autopoietic Symbiotic Special Systems which in turn conjunct to
produce Reflexive Social Special Systems49. It is these Special Systems that make possible life,
consciousness and the social as key emergent phenomena that make our existence possible. In Prestige
the emphasis is on the negative information (secrecy, lies, misdirection) and the role it plays in society in
the form of magic. But there is an inner unexpected connection between this negative information that
makes deception possible not just at the social level but in the strategies developed in various species in
the food chain studied by ecology, for instance, in camouflage. The Projective plane is a non-orientable
surface. There are other examples of non-orientable surfaces like the Kleinian Bottle which is made up of
conjuncted Mobius Strips. There is an interesting relation between the Penrose Steps and other optical
illusions such as those produced by Escher in his drawings that depend on the non-orientability and what
we see in the Special Systems which are analogous to the Mobius Strip (Dissipative Structures) and
Klienian Bottle (Autopoietic Systems). The Penrose Triangle50 is the image of the perpetual motion
machine.

43
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter
44
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect
45
Borden: Total devotion to his art... (looks at Angier) Utter self-sacrifice. It's the only way to escape this. Borden
SLAPS the bricks of the wall behind them.
46
Maturana, Humberto R, Humberto R. Maturana, and Francisco J. Varela. Autopoiesis and Cognition: The
Realization of the Living. Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Pub. Co, 1980. Mingers, John. Self-producing Systems:
Implications and Applications of Autopoiesis. New York: Plenum Press, 1995.
47
Rosen, Robert, Judith Rosen, John J. Kineman, and Mihai Nadin. Anticipatory Systems: Philosophical,
Mathematical, and Methodological Foundations. New York: Springer, 2012. Rosen, Robert. Life Itself: A
Comprehensive Inquiry into the Nature, Origin, and Fabrication of Life. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.
48
Prigogine, I, Isabelle Stengers, and I Prigogine. Order Out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature. Toronto:
Bantam Books, 1984.
49
See Special Systems Theory by the author at http://kentpalmer.name; See also
https://independent.academia.edu/KentPalmer for other papers and books on the subject
50
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose_triangle

40
 Figure 22 Escher Waterfall = perpetual motion machine
But these machines cannot exist when there are conservation laws with respect to energy and matter in the
third dimension. However, with respect to information we see that they can exist and we call these
perpetual information machines strange attractors in Complex and Chaotic Systems theory. Here we
want to make the connection between Penrose triangle and the steps of a magical trick emphasized in
Prestige.

Figure 23 Penrose Triangle

Instead of Real the emphasis in Prestige is on ILLUSION of the Trick which is explained to have three
parts:
"Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge". The
magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object.
Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably
isn't. The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do
something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course
you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet.
Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic
trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige"." http://kp0.me/19erKIM

Pledge = Piece of the Real that is shown to the audience [the character Cutter as mentor of both
competing magicians where Algiers wife who drowns is the what is pointed out].
Turn = Lack Object Petit a, The object disappears or turns extraordinary in some way [the
character Broden (a working class man who achieves his desire through discipline) as the object
of hatred but who cannot remember the knot he tied Julias hands with.]
Prestige (presto) = Excess, Phi (Phallus), The object is brought back as a surprise but it is as if
one is seeing it for the first time, or in a new way that one never saw it as before. Here the excess

41
 is the Transported Man trick. [the character Adrian who is the subject (a rich dilatant willing to
achieve his goal by any means at any cost) consumed by hatred due to the loss of his wife and
willing (has the hubris) to go into the supernatural or technological to achieve his goal of ultimate
superiority over his opponent and his revenge]
Imagination is when one tries to create a new trick that no one else has come up with to stun other
magicians, i.e. an emergent event, and is also the audience's attempt to understand the Illusion of the
trick.

The Pledge is the initial situation where they are both Magicians are working together with Cutter
as their mentor before the wife of Adrian, Julia, dies.
The Turn of the movie seem to be when each magician is alone and is reading the others fake
diary.
The Prestige of the movie is the idea that Angier is really creating copies of himself in order to do
the transported man trick, and the revelation that Broden has a twin.
The magic trick is a showing and hiding process and in that sense it is a nihilistic and false disclosure. To
be able to do something only sustained by Magic for real cuts through this nihilism and becomes a true
disclosure. One question is to what degree is Heidegger's disclosure in Being and Time a false
disclosure, a trick. My idea all along has been that Being is an Illusion and everything associated with
Being is a false disclosure compared to Existence. Thus the reference point for Being and the Magic trick
is the stuff of Existence (which is nondual as Void or Empty) as it is without value projected upon it.
Existence is the rock beside the road that no one cares about. Heidegger in focusing on Dasein narrows
down from Subjectivity to just the projection mechanism within our lives posited by Kant. He moves
from a historical emphasis on the unified totality of the Subject as System to the disunified detotalized
Meta-system of Dasein, i.e. the human situation of a being-in-the-world. In this we see the paradox of a
being that projects the world that they end up in, like the trinity represents on a theological plane, as a
happening within the world within which we are implicated. The trinity and incarnation as Kierkegaard
says is paradoxical and absurd. Heidegger removes this paradoxical and absurd element from the Subject
and posits that it is part of the human situation, i.e. our finitude within the world. Projection is paradoxical
and Death as the possible impossibility is absurd. Absurdity is a combination of two Paradoxes just as
Paraoxicality is a combination of two contradictions. Priest51 explores Para-consistent logics that can
allow paradox. N, Hellerstein52 develops the Logic of Paradox that he takes from G. Spencer-Browns
Laws of Form53 in his Diamond and Delta Logics. In the Diamond Logic there are paradoxical values like
A yet B, and B yet A which means mixtures of A and B with a predominance of one over the other in
each case. When you combine these paradoxical mixtures we get absurdities. And in the case of Prestige
the paradoxical mixtures are Algier and Borden. One emphasizes showmanship but does not understand
how tricks are made, the other emphasizes the artifice of the trick itself, and the creation of new tricks, as
well as the toil and the suffering that this entails. Trickery goes back deeply into the Greek tradition and is
known as Metis. The famous tricksters in that tradition are Prometheus54 and Odysseus. This brings us
back to the Divided Line which has as its boundary trickery which relies on contradiction, paradox and
absurdity to work its magic as in the case of the Trojan Horse. The limit of the Divided Line of Plato is

51
Priest, Graham, Richard Sylvan, Jean Norman, and A I. Arruda. Paraconsistent Logic: Essays on the Inconsistent.
Munchen: Philosophia, 1989.
52
Hellerstein, N S. Diamond: A Paradox Logic. New Jersey: World Scientific, 2010. Hellerstein, N S. Delta, a Paradox
Logic. Singapore: World Scientific, 1997.
53
Spencer-Brown, G. Laws of Form. London: Allen & Unwin, 1969.
54
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus

42
the Supra-rational. These two limits appear in Quantum Mechanics as entanglement (paradox) and
superimposition (supra-rationality). Between these two limits are the stages of the divided line:

Limit: Suprarational (superimposition)

o Ratio: Non-representable Intelligible: Sophos of Virtues
o Ratio: Respresentable Intelligible: Episteme of Sciences (present-at-hand)
o Doxa: Grounded Opinion or Appearance: Techne of Poesis (ready-to-hand)
o Doxa: Ungrounded Opinion or Appearance: Phronesis of Praxis (Dasein, pragmatism)
Boundary: Contradiction, Paradox, Absurdity (entanglement)
The Ratio is the realm of Logos and the Doxa is the realm of Physus as it appears to human beings about
which we have opinions and from which we receive appearances. Magic is the combination of Sophistry,
i.e. the use of language for persuasion, and Trickery, i.e. pragmatic strategies, ruses and sleight of hand, in
a word the irrational. The movie uses the realm of magic to comment on the famous rivalry between
Edison and Tesla and portrays Tesla as a Wizard someone who can do things wondrous via science which
is real. However, the movie picks out something that is still impossible for science which is macro
teleportation. The two magicians cover the divided line between them because Algier represents sophistry
and Borden represents trickery. Borden wants to use techne in order to produce ungrounded opinion in the
audience that something fantastic has occurred. Algier on the other hand is concerned with showmanship
which sets up the act using flowery language and sophisticated business to showcase the trick. In that he
uses representations to point to the non-representable, but ultimately he appeals to science based in
epistemic knowledge to produce in reality what the trick attempts to do in terms of the production of an
illusion of Transportation of a human being through space instantaneously. The sophist hides in the non-
representables alluded to by language, while the trickster hides in appearances. Algier ultimately goes for
blilocation55 which is a kind of cloning in spacetime which is impossible at the macro scale but appears
plausible due to non-locality at the micro scale.
What we realize is that Prestige in both the novel and movie mediums present the two points of view 56 of
the magicians, and part of the story is how each magician comes to understand the point of view of the
other magician and how they are complementary and should have resulted in collaboration (as mentioned
in the novel) rather than enmity and strife. What is fascinating is that the diaries of the two magicians are
presented as true in the novel but in the movie are each presented as deceptions in the movie another
nondeterminism. But the diaries in the novel stand up within the context of the movie and give added
depth to the points of view of these characters that we see in the alternative fictional world of the movie.
Most interestingly we see the split personality of Borden in his diary played out in interesting ways. But
in the novel even Algier is ultimately split by a failed bilocation. Since Anagogic/Anamorphism is about
the change in perspective, we are interested to see how the two points of view come to appreciate each
other (or revolve around each other, if not implicitly turn into each other) in the novel which remains an
incommensurability in the movie (another nondeterminism). The key point in all this is how the novel,
but more spectacularly the movie, produces images of the anamorphic objects which produce an anagogic
swerve between these two perspectives within the Lacanian Sub-field of the Aspectual Field in terms of
the structure of the movie itself, the structure of the characters of the three magicians, and the structure of
the magical trick all harkening back to the structure of the Penrose triangle.
But our most pressing question is whether beyond this it is possible to connect the Story of Prestige to the
other Sub-fields of the Aspectual Field. And the only way to ascertain this is to go through them one at a

55
http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/29110; See also Bells Theorem at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell's_theorem
56
http://www.pgtc.com/~slmiller/perspective.htm

43
time to see whether we can find in the movie anajects that will play those roles as hinges or traces around
which the perspectives can revolve.
Imaginary

True
o Blank (object petit a) Cutter, Turn
Real
o Protrusion (Phi) Algier, Sophist, Prestige
Imaginary (Illusory Fiction)
o Piece of real S(A) Broden, Trickster, Pledge
[True]
We have already discussed this Lacanian Sub-field and it is quite clear that it is represented in the movie
Prestige.
Speculation

Presence
o perceptual illusion
Identity
o mistaken percept
Speculation (Absent, Difference)
o Mistaken Identity
[Presence]
Magic revolves around perceptual illusion which is produced by misdirection of the attention of the
audience and a showing and hiding regime that discloses produced illusion. Thus we have a disclosure
(Alethia) that is at the same time a covering up (Lethia). Ultimately what is at stake is the identity of
Borden which is split by being twins inhabiting the same life, and really split in the clones of Algier. Thus
what appears to be the same in perception, i.e. identical, is actually different, and this is what causes a
mistaken percept through a mistaken identification and this is affected by the use of absence, or hiding.
Borden hides his brother and Algier hides the Prestige Materials, i.e. the bodies of his clones. We can see
that it is in this triangle of Speculation mediating between Identity and Presence and their anti-aspects that
the trick is actually preformed and where the secret of the sophisticated trick lies. Thus where the
Lacanian Sub-field structures the difference between the stages of the trick as anamorphic objects, it is in
the Speculative sub-field that the secret of the trick actually lies. There is a secret or negative information
that is hidden in the trick, i.e., how it is done. This information is useless once it is revealed, but as long
as it is kept secret the trick remains viable to be performed. The performance is a showing and hiding that
uses presence and absence, but what the ruse or sleight of hand does is confuse identity and difference. As
in the central metaphoric trick of the bird vanishing from its cage it is identity that is exchanged by the
sleight of hand. We see the bird as produced as being the same as the one that was smashed under the
handkerchief. As the little boy says, where is its brother who was killed. In other words there is a
difference that is hidden in the absence between two birds that look alike. What vanishes is not the same
as what appears. We see a continuity of identity where there is in fact difference and discontinuity. This
illusory continuity is the essence of this iconic magic trick of the disappearing and reappearing bird.

44
Projection

Identity
o difference that makes a difference
True
o surprise
Projection (Incomplete Fiction)
o non representationality (orgami)
[Identity]
A magic trick tries to produce a difference that makes a difference to the audience out of a difference that
does not really make a difference in order to produce a surprise, or wonder, or awe in the audience, but
this is mediated by non-representability, i.e. as the movie says that you really are not looking because you
dont really want to know how the trick works because if you did the trick would not surprise you
anymore. In other words the audience is implicated in the trick and it could not be performed if they did
not play along and allow themselves to suspend their disbelief. Non-representability in this case is the fact
that the audience does not want to represent how the trick works in actuality to themselves, and that is
what sustains the surprise and allows the difference that makes a difference that the magician made for
them stand, rather than being erased by knowing the secret. The audience in general, i.e. the They, the
One (Das Mann), want the secret to be kept and do not want to know what it really is even though they
exhibit curiosity. This is based on the ambiguity of the audience who want to be fooled. The trick
gives them something to engage in idle talk about. Thus the relation of the audience to the trick is what
Heidegger calls Fallenness which is ascribed to the temporal ecstasy of the present. Throwness
(befindlichkeit) related to the past and Understanding (verstehen) related to the future are also types of
projection. The magic trick takes expectations from the past and the ruse in the present to obscure the
understanding of how the future prestige occurs based on the trickery of the turn.
Experimentation

Real
o placebo
Presence
o anomaly
Experimentation (Absent Illusion)
o secret hidden
[Real]
Magic Tricks are developed as a practice that confounds theory which is possible because Theory cannot
understand Praxis as Bourdieu discusses in the Logic of Practice57. However as de Certeau58 says this
black box of praxis that exhibits structural patterning is not completely obscure, because we can tell
stories about it and thus have a partial understanding of what happens in it through the tropes of rhetoric
in speech. Praxis, i.e. in the practicing of the Magician, and the actual performance of the tricks is where
the magic actually takes place and thus the secret is show to be efficacious (efficient and effective) for the
trick. But the secret is dependent on some anomaly in perception and its relation to action that allows
what is really going on to be hidden and a different reality to be presented. The magic trick is like the
placebo in as much as sugar pills that contain no medicine are highly effective in producing cures because
people want to get well and they want the medicine to work and all things being equal, even nothing when

57
Bourdieu, Pierre. The Logic of Practice. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1990
58
Certeau, Michel . The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.

45
given as a medicine by a doctor has an effect called a placebo. The magic trick is like a plecebo for the
materiality of life according to the movie, because it produces wonder in the midst of the mundane nature
of life. The placebo is dependent on a psychological anomaly that just wanting to get better helps to make
one better physically. But we only know about the effectiveness of the placebo because it is a secret who
gets the medicine and who gets the sugar pill in the double blind experiment, i.e. neither patient nor
experimenter knows who gets the real treatment. So placebos are known to be effectiveness due to the
secret of their administration, and real medicines that are effective must be more effective than plecebos
in order to be seen as having real effects. Science must rise above the level of Magic to be counted as real
science. We have cases like cold fusion or polywater where the Scientists fool themselves. We have
scientific hoaxes where scientists try to fool their colleagues and the public by falsifying data from
experiments. Real Science must prove itself in experiments to be different from presented hoaxes which
are tricks which normally fail under the conditions of replication by outsiders or under double blind
experiments that are conducted faithfully. Science, of course, is trying to find Objective Reality, but this
is compromised by Quantum Mechanics that implicates the observer in what ends up being observed by
the people who undertake the toil of science. However, at the Newtonian level Objectivity has always
been the gold standard by which science is judged where experiments are used to prove predictions of
theories which are rooted in mathematics. But Objectivity has its own problems in as much as Scientism
can produce a split between Objective Science and the Lifeworld that Husserl talks about in Krisis59.
Experimentation is the realm in which the Magician works out the pragmatic performance of the illusion
as a praxis.
Doxa

Identity
o unmappable places (Discord)
Real
o superposition
Doxa (Different Illusion)
o entanglement
[Identity]
We have already mentioned how Nolan takes the Prestige concept and maps it to Quantum Mechanics in
order to add force to the story. And thus there are allusions to both superposition and entanglement within
the story. The two different twins lives are superimposed on the same personal identity by Borden/Fallon
duo. This is interestingly played out in Bordons diary in the book. But also there is the act of projection
back onto the dead body of the Prestige Materials by the transparent spirit of Algier in the book which
supposedly produces a horrific superposition of life on death which is seen at the ending of the book but
left to our imaginations once we find out that the prestige materials to not decay. The unmappable places
are like the discord that exists between the Quantum and Newtonian realms, i.e. Micro and Meso scales at
which we exist. The whole of the Divided Line exist between the limit and boundary of superposition and
entanglement. But the fact that consciousness is implicated in physical processes through observation
means that appearances are to some extent not just grounded in physical phenomena and that there is
something extremely strange behind the appearances ultimately that we see in quantum mechanics and
relativity (Macro phenomena). Quantum Mechanics and Relativity Theory produce paradoxical results at
the Planck level. But since the universe physically exists there must be some reconciliation between these
two incommensurate theories. Superposition and entanglement both question identity yet are real

59
Husserl, Edmund, Edmund Husserl, and Edmund Husserl. Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy:
Philosophy As a Rigorous Science, and Philosophy and the Crisis of European Man. New York: Harper & Row, 1965.

46
phenomena. When we bring these together we get the unmappable conceptual space that we know as the
mystery of Quantum Mechanics. This calls into question the difference between grounded and
ungrounded appearances that we see as eidolons emanating from physical reality. In effect the entire
scientific edifice in some way unexpectedly is built upon quicksand and Objectivity is called into question
if it is divorced from consciousness, life and the social emergent levels of phenomena that produce the
observers. In a sense this is where Prestige derives much of its force as a movie which is from the
analogy with Quantum Mechanics that it implies.
Ratio

Presence
o dehiscence, fracture
True
o anagogic swerve
Reason (False Absence)
o true lie
[Presence]

Here we want to mention again the commentary of Todd McGowan on Prestige as an excellent
commentary on the force of the true deceit in Nolans films in general and this film in particular. Plato
made famous the necessity of the Noble Lie and Nolan is seen by McGowan as pushing cinema to a new
limit by emphasizing the role of deceit as the source of truth, as the means of the disclosure of truth. The
point is that the positive force of deceit is in the creation of new ways of looking at things, i.e. anagogic
swerves, opening up new conceptual vistas for understanding the world. For instance, if we understand
quantum mechanics relation to projective space that helps us to understand some of its strangeness
because we know the illusions such as the Penrose triangle. If we understand Quantum Mechanics at the
meso level of human life through Magic then that allows us to understand something that otherwise
would be utterly mysterious when approached only conceptually. If we understand the relation between
sophistry & sophisticated showmanship on the one hand and trickery & artifice based on work and
suffering on the other then we have a greater appreciation of the essence of Magic and the role of the
ingeneur60. There is in fact a splitting of perspective which we see as a dehiscence or fracture that makes
possible the transformation of one perspective into another and perhaps a change in our point of view
which is a more rich concept than just perspective. But, of course, visual perspectives are merely an
analogy for changes in conceptual perspectives and the perspectivalism that Nietzsche avows as the
natural state of mankind. What is true from one point of view may be false from another point of view so
we get the nondeterminism between points of view such as we get in Rashamon. The true lie or noble lie
is something that would cause a perspective shift such was we get in inception. Thus an anagogic swerve
is when the perspective pivots in place and a different vista is seen, while an anamorphic object is when
some trace or hinge in the conceptual field is a locus around which a perspective shifts so that the actual
perspective point of view shifts. We can see many perspectives from a point of view, but when a point of

60
German Wikipedia: The Latin word ingenium is called "ingenious invention" or "acumen". The derived
therefrom Italian word ingegnere (ie "stuff Master," "War builder") was in the Middle Ages only in relation to
military equipment and in the German as well as limiting loanword engineer needed. Only in the 17th Century was
the French word Ingnieur "expert in the technical field with theoretical education". It came in the 18th Century
from there again as a loan word engineer in German, but now in the more general significance of the French and
displaced during the 19th Century and as usual in mining and hydraulic engineering designation arts masters .
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenieur via Google Translate. This is the word for engineer in French and German.

47
view shifts we also see perspectival shifts but keeping the anamorphic object in the field of view as the
hinge or lever which affords the swerve from one viewpoint to another. The other possiblity is that the
whole triangle of interlocked perspectives shifts around the center which is the source or sink which the
anamorphic objects help us keep from falling into. Dehiscence is the source of the possibility of the shift
because that is what fragments the subject in such a way that it can have multiple perspectives. The true
lie is the means by which the possibility of the new perspective is communicated from one person to
another, or from one perspective to another, and the actual shift of perspective is the anagogic swerve. We
are constantly shifting from seeing things from the point of view of Algier or Borden or Cutter during
Prestige. And we are immersed in all of their tricks on each other and the director Nolans trick on us
which is the entire movie which exemplifies the trickery of every film ever made61. The fracture between
the incommensurable viewpoints on magic is made clear that is associated with each of the magicians.
But at different stages of the movie different interpretations of the characters seem to predominate based
on who is winning the feud and as we find out, for instance, that each of the diaries are fake. Slowly the
depth of the deception is revealed until we see that each has deceived not just each other but themselves.
As we revolve through the perspectives we get an overview of the entire landscape of the views one can
have on magic and thus we come to understand the illusion of magic much better as a very serious game
with ramifications in the lives of people. The true lie is ultimately that the distortions of the
anagogic/morphic field have truly real results in our lives in spite of their being embodiments of the
confluences of the anti-aspects. We are living in an age of real magic, compared to the time in which the
movie and novel are set as we deal with the technological miracles of our age, many of which are based
on the reality of quantum mechanics and also to some extent relativity theory. A. C. Clarke famously said
that high enough technology appears as magic to those who do not understand that technology. Thus our
technological age would be an age of real magic for those who lived at the time of the film even though
that was a time when electricity was first being understood and utilized for all manner of inventions. But
now we also live in an era of postermodernism in which the fragmentation of perspectives is a major
phenomenon that we have to deal with since Nietzsche and that is why the distortions of the Aspectual
field are important. It is these distortions that make it possible for the perspectival changes to occur that
ultimately lead to differences in points of view, and the arising of new points of view, and the change
from old perspectives to new ones based on the advent of emergent events.
Ultimately we see that we can apply all the sub-fields of the Aspectual Filed to Prestige just as we had
done to Inception. And we can see that the two films are complementary to each other and mutually
informative when we see them as transformations of each other within the aspectual field. So just as we
have the transformations between the points of view of Borden and Algier, between Novel and Movie, we
can add to this the transformation between the two Nolan movies which make his work particularly
significant from a philosophical perspective.

Totems and Props

Another thing that appears quite interesting is the relation between the props for magic tricks in Prestige
in relation to the Totems of Inception. Significant here is that the tools of the Beast also appear in
Prestige.

61
Platos prisoners in the cave in this case pay money to be enthralled by the play of light and shadow within the
darkened theater.

48
Glove gloves appear in multiple scenes but most importantly in the scene where Borden is asked to take
off his glove because that is what makes him unique and this precipitates the brother having to cut off his
fingers as well.
Mirror Mirrors are remarkably absent from the movie except at the beginning where they appear in the
background when women are dressing backstage and Angier and Bordern are talking with Julia and
Cutter. But they also appear at the end where Cutter is explaining the trick to Bordens daughter. In this
scene we have Cutter reaching to get a bird, and we see down through the cages of the birds as if we are
looking into an infinite regress in a doubled mirror. The absence of the mirrors is offset by the fact that
the characters of the magicians are themselves doubled as if mirrored.
Reign Here we see that the rope plays a role in the hanging of Julia before she drowns in the tank and in
the hanging of Bordens wife Sarah. There are also the reigns seen specifically when they are carting off
the prestige materials and delivering the Tesla machine at the end of the movie.
Key Key presented by Borden to his wife Sara, but more generally the TESLA key word to Bordens
diary.
Ring Borden has a ring in his hand as he is talking about the fidelity of Algiers lover who has now
come him. Here we see the woman as exchange object and the question of her fidelity is discussed as
Borden plays with the ring. He says he needs to get inside her mind to find out if she has real fidelity to
him and she shows that by being part of the trick to get rid of Algier. Algier also takes off his ring when
he gets into the Tesla contraption.

There are of course other props of Magic tricks such as

Red Ball Most prominent of the magical props.
Coin with two heads Early suggestion that Borden is doubled
Bullet The Bullet Catch is the trick that goes wrong when Bordern loses his fingers, just before which
Algier is making a bullet disappear and reappear
Flower (trifle) Seen on stage and thrown to the audience
Bird The major trick of which the Transported Man is a version of as done by Algier
Handkerchief Exchanged between man and woman audience members

But then there are other objects that are key to the plot of the story
Black Hat First object of the experiment
Black Cat Second object of the experiment
Card under glass Means of getting attention at the bar twice in the movie
Knot Ties hands of Julia causes her to drown (unknown which one is tied)
Lights with no wires of Tesla Demonstration of the Magic of Electricity

49
Distorted Hand (Fingers shot off) What makes Borden unique, which he is told he should show off
instead of hiding by Algiers mistress when she comes to Borden

In Inception the totems are associated with the characters, here the props are associated with the tricks.
However, some of the props of significance are associated with the movie as a whole (Black hats and
cats) as meta-trick rather than specific tricks performed by a particular magician character. This change in
the totems that measure reality into props for magic tricks partially show how the different movies are
configured in relation to the Aspectual field. In Inception for the most part we see the characters not their
totems (which they hide on their person) except for the case of Cobb. In Prestige we are constantly seeing
the items that are used in magic tricks produced out of nowhere in a continuous showing and hiding
process. But in both movies we see the things of the Beast which serve as a kind of structural reference
axis between the two movies which is very interesting from an archetypal perspective. The Beast rules
through the mystique of magic and thus technology. These tokens appear archetypally in the interface we
have with the automobile. They are associated with the Animus in Phantom of the Opera.

Notes:
Touching -- At the end of the film Cobb touches his children as he hugs them and they hug him. This is
not in the shooting script. This is the sign of the resolution of the trauma of Mals death. This is seen over
and over again in Metaphor therapy that after the metaphors have coalesced based on the resources
brought to bear by the persons psyche that the final resolution of the trauma is signified by touch. Touch
is the sign also of Dasein. Between the pointing hand and the grasping hand there is the hand that touches,
which is midway between Pure Being and Process Being. There is the chiasm of touch touching that
Merleau-Ponty points out in the Visible and the Invisible. Wild Being is chiasmic and reversible around
the dehiscence or inscribed differance of Hyper Being. In Hyper and Wild Being we have the self-
reflexive touch touching itself with its inscription of difference and its motility around that differance that
is chiasmic and reversible. Thus Dasein is more than anything else the touch whether reflexive or
responsive.
Irony -- The anamorphic self-intersection that allows for the anagogic change of perspective that we have
called the anaject, the eject which is a self-intersecting eventity, is represented in our tradition by irony.
Irony is the saying of one thing but meaning another which is how we indicate with language subtleties
that cannot be captured directly by language or in order to hide while at the same time presenting
ourselves in social situations that are impossible but must be endured. Irony is one of the master tropes
along with Synecdoche and Metonymy which frame Metaphor. Metaphor establishes a connection in
Being between very different things. Odysseus IS a Lion. Odysseus is not just like a Lion as a simile
would indicate but there is an underlying substance of Being that connects Odysseus and the Lion
intrinsically. This is the power of Metaphor, and it is a power we use in our language all the time as
pointed out by Lakoff. But we see here that there is a lattice relation between Irony at the top and
Metaphor at the bottom of a diamond in which Synechdoche and Metonymy are partial ordered
alternatives. Synecdoche is when the part stands in for the whole. Metonymy is when the name stands for
the thing. Thus we see that Synecdoche is related to Physus and Metonymy is related to logos as the two
sources of signs. Irony can be thought of as the anamorphic twist, swerve, fold that allows us to take

50
different perspectives on things which is what allows us to have a world which is the sum total of all
possible perspectives that can be transitioned into and out of within our compass. Metaphor is what
connects different things within the world and thus point toward concepts that rise above language. Key
point here is that in the difference between Synecdoche and Metonymy is an interspace and that
interspace is the nondual barzak62, i.e. barrier or interspace, between the physus and logos. Irony looks
down on that interspace and sees it as the difference by which perspective changes are made. Metaphor
bridges that interspace by projecting the illusory continuity of substance that connects despite difference.

Conclusion
The Aspectual Field can be used to understand both Prestige and Inception by Christopher Nolan. They
represent a structural field at the trace or hinge level in Hyper Being rather than at the sign level. Beyond
that is the field of Wild Being which appears as the Mandelbrot Set. The structural level normally talks
about the sign level which is the level of the props and totems. In some way the props and totems
transform into each other and are arrayed in relation to the things of the Beast which are also archetypal
signs. But the Aspectual Field is completely different from this level of signs, or that of the Symbols like
the Characters themselves. This is the field that Zizek thinks we should understand alluded to and taught
by Lacan. But Lacan and Zizek following him concentrate on only one Subfield that related Truth and
Reality through Imagination. This is one of six sub-fields and the whole field is of great interest because it
extends the role of Anamorphism that causes Anagogic changes in perspective. The fact that there is at
least one pair of cultural objects that display this whole field suggests that there may be others. Study of
the trace level field as a whole is a new way to interpret cultural artifacts building on the work of Lacan
and the further application of the idea of Lacan to cultural interpretation by Zizek. If we know the whole
field at the trace level that is manifest in Hyper Being below the level of signs then we can get a clearer
idea of how artistic works function as a means of transforming our perspectives visually but more
importantly producing conceptual transformations. It is possible to hypothesize that the Work of Art that
embodies a worldview should function at the Symbol (Form), Sign, Trace and Propensity levels. This
means that the Work of Art that embodies the Worldview is an Emergent Event whose advent is a
prestige that brings together all the meta-levels of Being within the world and provides an inception of
new ideas within the worldview that reorganizes it in a fundamental way.

62
Arabic word

51
Aspectual Field with Anajective eventities

Figure 22 Four Banners

52
Figure 23 Two Banners related to Divided Line

53
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Bloom, Harold. A Map of Misreading. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975. (clinamen for swerve)
Boyle, Jennifer. Anamorphosis in Early Modern Literature: Mediation and Affect. Farnham, Surrey
[England: Ashgate, 2010.
Castillo, David R. (a)wry Views: Anamorphosis, Cervantes, and the Early Picaresque. West Lafayette,
Ind: Purdue Univ. Press, 2001.
Clark, Stuart. Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European Culture. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2007.
Cohen, Tom. Anti-mimesis from Plato to Hitchcock. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Conley, Katharine. Surrealist Ghostliness. University of Nebraska Press, 2013.
Greenblatt, Stephen. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. New York: W.W. Norton, 2011.
Kent, Phillip: http://www.anamorphosis.com/index.html accessed 20140101
Kunze, Donald, Atlas of the Obverse, self-published, Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. 2012
http://art3idea.psu.edu/locus/atlas.pdf accessed 20140101
Kunze, Donald. The Art 3 Idea: A Third Way to Study Art. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt, 2000. See
http://art3idea.psu.edu/ accessed 20140101
Kunze, Donald. Thought and Place: The Architecture of Eternal Place in the Philosophy of Giambattista
Vico. New York: P. Lang, 1987.
Lemoine, Roy E. The Anagogic Theory of Wittgenstein's 'tractatus'. The Hague: Mouton, 1975.
Lukacher, Ned. Time-fetishes: The Secret History of Eternal Recurrence. Durham: Duke University
Press, 1998.
Miklowitz, Paul S. Metaphysics to Metafictions: Hegel, Nietzsche, and the End of Philosophy. Albany,
N.Y: State University of New York Press, 1998.
O'Regan, Cyril. Gnostic Apocalypse: Jacob Boehme's Haunted Narrative. Albany, NY: State University
of New York Press, 2002.
O'Regan, Cyril. The Heterodox Hegel. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994.
Psychoanalyzing Cinema: A Productive Encounter with Lacan, Deleuze, and Zizek. New York, NY:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2012
Swanson, Roy A. Blue Margin: Versions of Rhetoric. Bloomington, Ind.: Xlibris Corp, 2008.
Taussig, Michael T. Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. New York: Routledge,
1993
Thurston, Luke. Literary Ghosts from the Victorians to Modernism: The Haunting Interval. New York:
Routledge, 2012

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Varini, Felice, Lars Muller, and Fabiola Lopez-Duran. Felice Varini: Points of View. Baden, Switzerland:
Lars Muller Pub, 2004
Voruz, Veronique, and Bogdan Wolf. The Later Lacan: An Introduction. Albany: State University of New
York Press, 2007.
Zizek, Slavoj, Stanley Fish, and Fredric Jameson. Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the
Critique of Ideology. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993
Zizek, Slavoj. Enjoy Your Symptom!: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out : with a New Preface by the
Author. London: Routledge, 2008.
Zizek, Slavoj. Everything You Wanted to Know About Lacan but Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock.
London: Verso Books, 2010.
Zizek, Slavoj. Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. London: VERSO
BOOKS, 2013.
Zizek, Slavoj. The Parallax View. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2006.
Zizek, Slavoj. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso, 1989.

Appendix 1: Precession around Sub-fields

This is how the dynamic Parallax View Precession of the Anajects in the Aspectual Sub-field Banner
works:

Figure 24

55
Starting at a given Aspect there is a projection of the field that includes the Other Aspect and the Anti-
Aspect Confluence. The bisection between these produces the point where the fold occurs in the field that
gives rise to the Anaject which is a hinge between the two new perspectival points of view. Say the Anti-
aspect Confluence is chosen then there is a projection from that point of view.

Figure 25
A second projection occurs from the Anti-aspectual confluence perspective which takes in the entire field
of the two original aspects. The bisection of that field is then the fold where there is a anaject that makes
both aspectual perspectives visible and lets say that the other aspect is chosen, then there will be a
projection from the perspective of that other aspect.

Figure 26

56
Next step is that there is a project from the other aspect 3 of the whole field including the fold where the
anaject occurs which makes visible the hinge between the first aspect point of view and the confluence
point where we started.

Figure 27
This sequence when taken gives a change of 120 degrees. Six times this is 720 degrees which is the
angular change that is needed to stand still in four dimensional space. The aspectual field is directly
related to the nonduality of four dimensional space as the means of maintaining a stationary point of view
in that space by acting like a spinor.

57
Appendix 2: Similar Parts of Field
Boundaries emphasized

Figure 28

58
Figure 29

59
Bisections emphasized

Figure 30

60
Figure 31

61
Anamorphs emphasized

Figure 32

62
Figure 33

63
Acknowledgements:
I would like to acknowledge the many conversations with Bruce Cantor and Rodney Swearengin in our
philosophical reading group dubbed Groundless Grounds which has met at Keans Coffee in Orange
County in 2013 which helped me understand these previously developed ideas extending Zizeks
interpretation of Lacan based on a deeper reading of Being and Time and its antecedents than I had hither
to undertaken and would not have undertaken without their accompaniment on that journey.
Also I would like to acknowledge many fruitful discussions with Steven Briggs and Cei Davies-Lynn in
our Metaphor Research Group.

64