Siegle's Loop

In addition to finding it amazing that I had a harder time getting through the readings using literature as a frame of reference than I did the piece by the economist, perhaps the other biggest takeaway from this past week's reading is the loop that Siegle diagrams on page 2 (The Politics of Reflexivity).

Dr. Steier and any other colleague from class will have a leg up here, because I am being too lazy to scan the page for other people, but I will try to describe it, and why I took so much away from it.

For the most part, "reflexive turns" are diagrammed to be circular. A straight line (a certain course) is maintained until it loops back upon itself, crosses itself and then continues in the same straight line. See the loops below, but ignore the text, I'm really only using this to show the pattern.

This was ok with me until I saw the way that Siegle diagrams it. Siegle refers to it specifically as a reflexive circuit (instead of loop or turn).

Ok, so I've changed my mind. I will use the picture, but I've taken a least-resistant path of just taking a picture of my printout using my phone. Here it is:

Now, what I most grokked on about this is the way that the loop is shown to not only cross through the original path in the creation of the loop - but how when the course is resumed it is not running on the exact same path it was before, but a parallel course to the original.

(You can see my little arrow I drew in the space between)

So not only is the new path informed by the reflexive loop, which seems to say that once you make that turn that when you get back on track you won't be quite the same, but I also really like the notion that with that reflexive turn that a space is created between the original course and the new course mapped via the reflexive turn. What can we find in that new space? what other opportunities does that afford us?

That's pretty cool, isn't it? Well, it was to me anyway. All this off a "simple" drawing. The image conveyed more to me maybe than anything else this week regarding the topic of reflexivity, and I'm not at all sure if Siegle was aware of the possibilities in that illustration - they aren't really discussed.