"Mon Dieu, que, si tout le monde vous ressemblait, un roman serait bientôt fini."
("My God, if everyone was like you, a novel would soon be finished.")
Moličre, Les Précieuses Ridicules, Scene IV, 1659.
 
 
MA: SOLITON

A typological inquiry about Solitonism commissioned by Ministčre de l?Architecture.
 
 
Table of contents -
0. Introduction to solitonism: tombeau for John Scott Russell, or perhaps a pavane.
1. Monosoliton: two-bearded orthopriests are haunting Moscow.
2. Coaxial Soliton or how to build arks without an access to the sea?
3. Stroboscopic Soliton, dedicated to Clement Greenberg and the Roving Gypsies.
4. The Golden Gateway of State Security also known as Furtive Soliton.
5. Last skirmish in the Charismatic/Karmic Cycle of the Soliton.
 
 
0. Introduction to solitonism: tombeau for John Scott Russell, or perhaps a pavane.

Ministčre de l?Architecture (MA) is an administration and a production unit, devoted to work on various aspects of the politics of space. The work of this administration partly consists in the production of studies. A certain state of blurriness in the current descriptive lexicon of architectonic phenomena has lead Ministčre de l?Architecture to commission an inquiry about the key discovery of John Scott Russell, Scottish naval engineer in 1834. In the "Report on waves" (1844), addressed to the Fourteenth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Russell, made public his report on what was still called the "Wave of Translation". The cradle of his birthed Solitonism is well-known: John Scott Russel was conducting experiments to improve the design of canal boats on the shores of Union Canal, while he witnessed a strange phenomenon, described here in his own words:
 

Union Canal, Scotland.
 
"I was observing the motion of a boat which was rapidly drawn along a narrow channel by a pair of horses, when the boat suddenly stopped - not so the mass of water in the channel which it had put in motion; it accumulated round the prow of the vessel in a state of violent agitation, then suddenly leaving it behind, rolled forward with great velocity, assuming the form of a large solitary elevation, a rounded, smooth and well-defined heap of water, which continued its course along the channel apparently without change of form or diminution of speed. I followed it on horseback, and overtook it still rolling on at a rate of some eight or nine miles an hour, preserving its original figure some thirty feet long and a foot to a foot and a half in height. Its height gradually diminished, and after a chase of one or two miles I lost it in the windings of the channel. Such, in the month of August 1834, was my first chance interview with that singular and beautiful phenomenon which I have called the Wave of Translation". (1)
 

John Scott Russell, 1808 - 1882.
 
Hopefully, for us poor horseless moderns, after investigating these waves, John Scott Russell managed to reproduce this phenomenon in homemade wave tanks, and defined them in four key points: such waves are stable and can travel over very large distances without flattening out; their speed depends on the size of the wave, and its width upon the depth of water; they never merge; if a wave is too big for the depth of water, it splits into two, one big and one small.

John Scott Russell's prototype has been widely explored by mathematics and physics, knowledge fields much more advanced in the acceptance of nonlinearity: its name was changed in 1965 by Norman Zabusky and Martin Kruskal into soliton (2). In the following inquiry, Ministčre de l?Architecture has demanded to continue the work of these eminent "a-linear" but non-fictitious scientists, by proposing to extend the analysis of this phenomenon to the field of the politics of space, where it has been usually called solitonism. Ministčre de l?Architecture was more precisely interested in its exploitation for reading activities like design or the erection of buildings.
 
 
 

1. Monosoliton: two-bearded orthopriests are haunting Moscow.

Because Ministčre de l?Architecture is confident in its ability to produce a new excrescence to the architectonic grammar, an epitome has first to be defined. This prototypal phenomenon shall be called "Monosoliton", not because it would be a lonely case, but because it is self-sufficient and paradigmatic. As often in the last century's history, the Soviet Union provides efficient paradigms.

When Lenin died, in 1924, a national campaign was organised in order to decide what to do with the saint's remains. Temporarily, the building of a mausoleum was decided, and Alexey Viktorovich Shchusev was selected to build, on the Red Square, this impermanent storage out of wood.
 

Lenin Mausoleum, Red Square, Moscow.
 
A first project came from the boiling mind of Victor Balikhin, a young architect recently gratuated from the VKhUTEMAS: constructing a "Palace of Soviets", a super-tall skyscraper, that would host the whole Comintern administration, on the top of which, would be installed the mummy of the Communist Saint Georges. The site chosen for this dialectically materialistic basilica was the one of The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. In 1931, the demolition of the tallest Eastern Orthodox Church was accomplished. An international architecture contest for the Palace attracted figures like Kahn, Gropius or Le Corbusier. The Crimean architect Boris Iofan, an expert in synthetism (from neoclassicism to Stalin's Empire style) was appointed to lead the constructing team.
 

Palace of Soviets, project by Boris Iofan, 1932.
 

Palace of Soviets, project by Le Corbusier, 1932.
 
Unfortunately, by an unappropiate aggressiveness, the Wehrmacht, never known for its taste in terms of architectural avant-gardism, interrupted the building of what should have been the tallest building of the Known World. After the Soviets won this side of WWII, the Palace project was abandoned, but the problem remained the same: "Foreigners will come to Moscow, walk around, and there's no skyscrapers. If they compare Moscow to capitalist cities, it's a moral blow to us" as Nikita Khrushchev used to say, probably quoting Stalin like every good Dauphin. This is how, between 1947 and 1953, based on the Soviet synthetic style and on the early twentieth century American technology, the Seven Sisters were built: seven elaborated skyscrapers consisting of the Hotel Leningradskaya, the Hotel Ukraina, the Kotelnicheskaya Embankment Building, the Kudrinskaya Square Building, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Moscow State University and the Red Gates Administrative Building. Lev Rudnev, director of the 50s project, continuously encouraged his designers to work in constant reference to Balikhin's Palace of Soviets Skyline, as if it existed. A kind a Spectre Building haunting Moscow.
 

Hotel Leningradskaya.
 

Kudrinskaya Square Building.
 

Hotel Ukraina.
 

Kotelnicheskaya Embankment Building.
 

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
 

Moscow State University.
 

Red Gates Administrative Building.
 
Following John Scott Russell's definitions, Russian Vysotkism (in Russian, the Seven Sisters are known as ???????, vysotki, "the summits") can be chosen as the basic morphem for a Soliton Grammar: the Monosoliton. A monosoliton is a stable wave, traveling over a large distance without flattening out; its speed is reasonable, because of its size, but its width is huge, because of the depth of its historical implantation; it has never merged, always overtaking smaller waves by its experimental science of synthetism; when a monosoliton is too big for the depth of its current environment, it splits. Indeed. In the case of the Yeltsino-Putinian Moscow, the first important reconstruction has been the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, consecrated in 2000. After having gilded once again the orthopriests' kennel, it was more than time to polish the philosopher's stone of Koba (3).
 

Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.
 
After the New Beetle and the New Mini, let's welcome the New Vysotski. There is a duel in order to determine which one is the Eighth Sister, Edelweiss, blessed in 2003, but only 176 metres-high, or the Triumph-Palace, baptized in 2005, culminating at 265 metres. Both of them are parvenu adaptations of Iron Joe's taste, containing deluxe apartments, but they are already a closed chapter in the History of Art: Moscow is now the theatre of the construction of 13 new skyscrapers, all of them in the Abu Dhabi style, from 150 to 612 metres-high. In these days of globalisation, the survival of monosolitons is an export good: the Triumph of Astana, exact but smaller copy of Triumph-Palace, has been dominating the skies of Kazakhstan's capital city since 2006. After the Emirati solitons' invasion and for the sake of Russian synthetism, let's pray for Lord Norman Foster, and may he build in a close future the Tallest Open-Door OrthoChurch, out of MIR's carcass.
 

Edelweiss, Moscow, built in 2003, 176m.
 

Triumph Palace, Moscow, built in 2005, 265m.
 

Triumph of Astana, Astana (Kazakhstan), built in 2006, 142m.
 
2. Coaxial Soliton or how to build arks without an access to the sea?

As it has been said, when a soliton is too big for the depth of water, it splits. Not because of its lack of clairvoyance, but because he was born too soon, John Scott Russell did not manage to reproduce in his homemade wave tanks the coaxial soliton. Sometimes, the solition splits in two equal waves mounted on a common axis. EU compatible Hungary, the Virgin's private hunting ground, provides the clearest example of what a coaxial soliton is. This soliton's example is named "The Arks of Budapest".
 

Lehel Central City Market Hall, Budapest.
 
The "Lehel Central City Market Hall" was constructed in the northern section of Budapest between 1998 to 2002. The rehabilitation of this old and popular Lehel Market was decided during the socialist-liberal coalition's government, between 1994 and 1998. The architect László Rajk Jr (4) was chosen for the project for his extreme sagaciousness, especially in the hardcore 80s PoMo style, and absolutely not because he used to be a deputy for the same coalition at the Parliament. László Rajk Jr. took very seriously this opportunity of reconstructing what had been and should remain a symbol of the Folk culture, a city market. The left-liberal leaders have always been as attached to a supposed "Plebeian" cultural corpus as Marie-Antoinette was bond to her "Little hamlet" in Versailles, with true feelings and a high sense of the carnivalesque. László Rajk Jr. managed to build, in four years, one of the most surprising pieces of contemporary neo-agglomerationist/chaotivist architecture. But in 1998, Viktor Orbán, leader of the ex-liberal neo-conservative party Fidesz, won the elections and was appointed Prime Minister. The new government, in order to regenerate the Hungarian counsciousness of the frontier between High and Low Culture, most likely, decided to reply by a non-less striking architectural project, the construction of the National Theatre, on the basis of plans by architect Mária Siklós. The astonishing eureka of Siklós consisted in working symmetrically against Rajk Jr. Poor Grand Ma with her Tea Time Reverie of a Liliputian Sissi Belvedere. Anyways, now Shakespeare, Cats, Vitruvius and the Seven Tribes are real classics, let's wish them that they deserve some luxury. After a record-breaking speedy construction, the Theatre was inaugurated in 2002, the same year as the "Boat" of Rajk Jr. Unfortunately, for their respective neighbourhood, it was neither a conceptual reference nor a metaphor: the two architects built utterly illustrative Concrete Boats, with hulls, masts, platforms and sails, well anchored in the asphalt. Only fired ceramic paddlewheels lack. Dedicated to the "Patrician" culture (the one with the painted beards) and, nevertheless, a neo-operetta galley, the National Theatre, placed in South Pest and pointing to the North, now defies the arrogance of the "propertiless" barge, the Lehel Market Hall, pointing to the South.
 

National Theatre, Budapest.
 
Consequently, it is possible to argue that in the case of the Coaxial Soliton, the two waves become stable and continue traveling, long after their schism. The two parts of the coaxial soliton have the same size and width: the natural parliamentary equilibrium, producing displacements, distributing alternatively some funds to build. Coaxial solitons never merge, they only transfer their forces. Let's consider a coaxial soliton and let's name one of its waves A and the other B. Even if a major ideo-meteorological event produces a new split, only a part of A will merge with a part of B, while the other part of A will merge with the remnant part of B, but the new assembly will continue to ride on the same oppositional axis.
 
3. Stroboscopic Soliton, dedicated to Clement Greenberg and the Roving Gypsies.

In the dense mist, sometimes falling down on Union Canal, problems of perception provoke major typological mistakes. It is not so easy to be an accurate and humble solitonist. Master John Scott Russell himself, by calling solitons "Wave of Translation" and not "Waves of Translations", was abused by his own desire to reduce solitons to a single model. The same problem can be noticed while looking at the conspicuous misuse of coaxial solitons, probably because of their apparent simplicity. Such a thing as the kitschification of solitonism exists. This handicap should be constantly vivid in the mind of its practitioner.

Such cognitive heresy can be observed in the 1939 essay by Clement Greenberg the Monophysite, Avant-Garde and Kitsch. Greenberg was considering avant-gardism and kitsch as a never-to-be-merged coaxial soliton, advocating that the avant-garde role was to defend aesthetic standards from the outrageous decline of taste involved in the Bourgeois society. The Greenbergian Monophysitism has provoked retinal damages, especially for those attempting to consider what could be a neo-avant-garde. Let's present briefly their reading prism: the ogre-ish, consumer society gives rise to a major decadence of the arts, basically called Kitsch, and necessitates a defiance by the leading squadron of rough and tough mama-mama-mama-mama-mama-mama's boys.

As often, in the science of solitonism, it is necessary to go back to the origin of a wave in order to determine its nature. The word avant-garde has first been used by a under- renown mastermind of thinking, Olinde Rodrigues the Saint Simonian. In his essay entitled "The artist, the scientist and the industrial" (L'artiste, le savant et l'industriel, 1825), Rodrigues explains that considering "the power of the arts as indeed the most immediate" in order to reform, every rational society should place the artist next to the scientist to pilot the pioneering social machine. Rodigues had never preached for a Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. His work had been to determine how to improve the industrial society, how to make it peaceful, how to design it as a perfectly balanced and dynamic system.
 

Olinde Rodrigues, 1795 - 1851.
 

In order to plead that the Bourgeois society creates a Kitsch culture, it should firstly be proved that something like aesthetic standards exist in themselves, outside of any kind of agonistic environment. It seems to be clearly an air-headed article of faith, while on the contrary, it can be established that the same Bourgeois society naturally generates an inside deviatory minority, that can be grouped under the word "Bohemianism". Directly coming from the late 19th century French fascination for the myth of the Roving Gypsies, Bohemians are the good sons and daughters of the society that disapproves its conventions and tries to contravene them. By developing their own lifestyle, they produce subcultures that consist in experimenting with new standards for the same Bourgeois society. Just as scientists experiment with new fields for industries. Bohemians pretend that their doctrine is, what we have previously called a "Plebeian" culture, following a common branding technique, "Differentiation". Would Gillette advertise its new 7-blade razor while saying that it is just slightly different from the 6-blade one? Of course, it is radically dissimilar. But a solitonist is nothing more than a surgeon, for whom a corpse is a corpse is a corpse.

The soliton of Bourgeois culture is unquestionably a tumultuous one, mainly because of it?s permanent inside movement, that roll up subcultures on the top of the wave. This digestive juice foams. Near the Union Canal, when the light comes down, the froth illuminates the observer. Precisely because of this intermittent interruption of observation, such solitons are stroboscopic. At this point, for a solitonist that does not care enough about meteorology, inattention leads to a typological error: Avant-Garde and Kitsch are not coaxial, they are a same and unique soliton. But we cannot call it a monosoliton, because of its ability for being misunderstood is wide enough to justify a new language unit: a stroboscopic soliton. Even under the most hygienic KristallNachtPalast, carots grow together with nettle, insensitive to pesticides and Napalm Death.
 

Crystal Palace, 1851, London.
 

Aue Pavillon, 2007, Documente XII, Kassel.
 
It is almost impossible to quantify the damage that post-romanticism did to the solitonist science. Petrification, fossilisation, musealisation, generalisation: all these effortful attempts to reify what is essentially a complex tangle of dynamic fluxes. The solitonists circles' indignation is not due to Antiquity, neither Modernity nor any kind of ?-itysms?. Following a transcendental approach, these questions would be solidified commodities, pieces of the frozen Caspar-Friedrichian Canal. The same, nowadays for doxa, and its wavelets' imagery. Danke schön for the hermeneutics of the debonair Bourgeois collector! He is having his third glass of fat-free Singapore Sling in order to forget the boredom of his post-colonial living room, filled by outsiders masterpieces, such as this bust of Tom Waits by this Tamil Gender-Fighter sculptor, or this landscape of the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City by this misjudged pro-Palestinian, Tibetan icon painter.

The wavelets of post-everythingity are so powerless that they cannot move a single centimeter of the fatty Queen Mary parked in the Canal. By the way, the conjured up mermaids of re-enchantment are choking between the dock and the hull. On the banks of the Post-Everything Canal, hope is a key law that consists in pigeon shooting a clay Airbus. Danke schön for so strongly believing that the EADS stock rate will fall down! The market is already delighted by the upcoming launch of a fresh Sustainable EuroCruiser.

Solitonism reminds us that to navigate consists in compensating a drift by another. As long as one only accepts contingencies as a working place and time, possibilities of a navigation system or an unanimous direction are dissolved. Too many places, too many times, too many climactic variations, too many cyclothymic pilots, too many families of boredom. Let's stop the metaphor here, before sinking in the salon-ish lyrical swamps by describing the Flemish cell of the Situationist International, a.k.a. the "Flying Dutchman and the Seven Seas".

Because it is still not yet punished by the International Creative Commons Tribunal, neither by Olafur Eliasson's lawyers to mimic Sloterdijk, it seems necessary to add what Beata Sphaera forgot while telling the anecdote of Salvador Dalí's performance at New Burlington Galleries, back in 1936 in London (5). Dalí had decided to tell a poem in a submarine exploration scaphander. His assistants had forgotten to open its air supplier. Salvador Dalí was about to be choked and fell into unconsciousness. In the audience, the "précieuses" were thinking that this was part of the performance, and charmingly applauded. In his comatose state, Dalí had a dream, later recorded in a painting entitled "Partial unconsciousness - Cruising on Lake Geneva", which is part of his Paranoiac-Bolshevik paintings, like "Partial Hallucination - Six apparitions of Lenin on a Grand Piano".
 

"Partial Hallucination - Six apparitions of Lenin on a Grand Piano", Salvador Dalí, 1931.
 
In the picture, the Lake is surrounded by snow-capped mountains, sculpted like Mount Rushmore, representing Modern Art Presidents Picasso, Duchamp, Malevich and Mondrian. The Battleship Potemkin is maneuvering next to the Lake shore, while on the deck, savant marines are dancing a curious ballet. They are wearing shiny vinyl uniforms with hoods, on the top of which are chaotically placed 18th century wigs. They are queuing in order to receive their S&M-leather hardcover copy of Lenin's "What is to be done?" in Esperanto. Kion fari? Behind the boat, a sparkling stroboscopic soliton is rising.
 
4. The Golden Gateway of State Security also known as Furtive Soliton.

Solitonism applied to architectonics is not only a question of an outward aspect, of edifices, of styles, but also a studying of the syntax of places. By a precise examination of such a syntax, it is possible to define solitonic functions, also called furtive solitons. The Parisian 1931 Colonial exhibition did not only exhibite to its hypnotised audience its illustrious Human Zoo.
 

Kanaks exhibited at Jardin d'Acclimatation, Paris, 1931 Colonial Exhibition.
 

Paris Colonial Exhibition, 1931.
 
It has also inaugurated the brand new Palais de la Porte Dorée ("Palace of the Golden Gate"), a 16 000 m˛ refinement due to the French architect Albert Laprade. Here, the soliton can be observed in the following uses of the building: first, it has been the "Permanent Museum of the Colonies", then the "French Overseas Territories Museum", then the "National Museum for African and Oceanian Arts" (until 2003), and it will soon be (re)inaugurated as the "National Museum of the History of Immigration"(Cité nationale de l'histoire de l'immigration). Let's hope, for the sake of French National History, that the funders of the project will conserve the former Museum of the Colonies' antechambers: two oval rooms, perfect replicas of colonial salons, one dedicated to Africa and the other to Indochina. Tiger carpets and pure ivory origins guaranteed. How to define a Furtive soliton? The building is the same; the topic is the same; it looks like a frozen Canal. In this case, the soliton concerns the social use of an architectural device. The instrumentalisation of colonial-related issues is definitively stable; it travels over very disruptive lexical variations. Its level of explicitation depends on the depth of current social assumptions. It never merges with other issues, in order to keep well chalked the frontier between the alleys and the zoo.
 

Palais de la Porte Dorée, Paris, 1931.
 

Palais de la Porte Dorée, Paris, 2000.
 
Just another example to be fair about the fact that the Furtive Soliton is not restricted to the (post-)colonial area. Another museum, once again in Budapest, the House of Terror, created by Viktor Orbán's government, previously mentioned. It is dedicated to the dark chapters of the Hungarian History: partly to the fascist Arrow Cross Party regime, through mainly to Communism. The House of Terror's purpose it to level them. Even if it has never been the purpose of a Museum to propose an objective analysis of documents, the location of the House of Terror is again, here, a particularly eloquent Furtive Soliton. Indeed, the building under the address 60 Andrássy street had been first, from 1937 to 1945 "The House of Loyalty", headquarters of the Ultra-Right Arrow Cross Party, its basement being used as a prison, then, between 1945 to 1956, as State Security Police Central Office, and finally turned out into a House of Terror. Who said dematerialisation?
 

House of Loyalty, Budapest, 1937 - 1945.
 

House of Terror, Budapest, 2000 - ?.
 

5. Last skirmish in the Charismatic/Karmic Cycle of the Soliton.

Solitonism is a discipline that fundamentally accepts looting as a methodology. Because it cannot be referred to linear systems, solitonism borrows from Pythagoreanism and to early Nietzscheism, the opportunity of the eternal return. This necessity comes from some solitonist facts, observed when a soliton suddenly disappears and then reappears. Following the definition of Master John Scott Russell, such a thing would not be possible: a soliton is stable (monosoliton), even if it is extremely fast and tumultuous (stroboscopic soliton), eventually it splits (coaxial soliton) or it is hidden (furtive soliton) but never merges. And what if, in a specific contingency, a soliton is temporarily overtaken by a storm, seems to disappear and then, suddenly, appears again, unchanged?

The topic of transmigration (movement through something, for example, movement of a soliton through a tempestuous contingency that makes it disappear for a while) only exists if one accepts a non-linear temporality. Such recurrences should be considered following their own sequences, thus under two different terms: charismatic and karmic solitons.

A charismatic soliton is the one that has already reappeared. The word charismatic, derived from the Greek word for a grace" or "a gift", describes a soliton "blessed" since its beginnings, almost genetically programmed for resurgence. This gift has been offered by its biotope (or should we call it a thalassotope?). This tope, without being able to control all its perturbations, needs a permanent motion from such solitons.
 

Destruction of Colonne Vendôme, Paris, 1871, cover of "Le Fils du Pčre Duchesne".
 

Destruction of Colonne Vendôme, Paris, 1871.
 
For example: during the Parisian Commune, after uncontrolled disturbances of the biotope, two importants solitons suddenly disappeared in crosscurrents: the Colonne Vendôme and the Hôtel de Ville ("Paris City Hall"). Colonne Vendôme, modeled after Trajan's Column, was made out of the 133 cannons captured at Austerlitz by Napoleonic troops. Gustave Courbet and some of his urban guerilla friends laid it down. Hôtel de Ville, determined by King François 1st and finished by King Louis XIII in 1628, has been an important place, symbolising the power of Paris, especially during the first French Revolution. Communards chose it as a headquarter, and during one of their last battles, set fire to it. After the pacification (30,000 killed + 50,000 executed + 7,000 exiled), Colonne Vendôme was rebuilt as well as Hôtel de Ville, following the plans of the 16th century French Renaissance building, within the stone shell that had survived the fire. Here the biotope, in order to regenerate itself, needed the return of its original solitons, as in the case of Berlin Reichstag, Dresden Frauenkirche, World Trade Centre, Christ the Savior Cathedral, etc.
 

Hôtel de Ville, Paris, photograph by Stéphane Touraine.
 
But another kind of recurrence exists in solitonism. It is this moment when a disappeared soliton waits for a change in its biotic environment in order to return. Those are karmic solitons. They are not lead by their biotope's intrumentalisation, but by the desire they used to produce when they were acting, as well as on the remnants of this desire. Because of their strong karma (they are not in the Nirvana because they have never been able to separate from the phenomenal world) they enter the perpetual chain of karmic rebirth. Their recurrence is not based on the biotope balance, but on the phantasmal effect they have produced while disappearing. This is the case for example of the Berliner Stadtschloss, residence of the Kings of Prussia and of the German Emperors, demolished by German Democratic Republic authorities in 1950. Most of the site of the former Stadtschloss was occupied from 1976 to 2006 by the Palast der Republik ("Palace of the Republic"). Once the Palast is completely demolished by German Federal Republic authorities, a replica of the Stadtschloss has been planned to be rebuilt. A definite decision has to be made in order to transform the Stadtschloss from a karmic soliton to a charismatic one. Same situation for the Paris Tuileries Palace, here again destroyed by the Communards, for which rebuilding is currently pondered.
 

Destruction of Palast der Republik, Berlin, 2007.
 

Berliner Schloss, construction project.
 
Even if it is time for a temporary conclusion, let's confess that solitonism, even if it is a highly materialistic sodality, recently accepted that the Holy Roman Catholic Apostolic Church proclaimed Charles Fourier patron of solitonists. Probably because solitonists were thinking that this good action would rebalance Fourier's karma and that it would reinforce his ?becoming-charismatic?. What else could push the current Sarkozy-ist Restauration to re-install Fourier's statue at Place Clichy, erstwhile destroyed by the definitively-not-interested Wehrmacht? Not the Flying Dutchmen, for sure.
 

Charles Fourier statue's base, Place de Clichy, Paris.
 

Matter is memory. A wave is the memory of a movement. Marguerite Yourcenar, with pre-solitonist reflexes, was doubtful about blocks of knowledge as well as blocks of people: "They are algae floating on the ocean." Precisely. Solitonism is all about dancing algae.
(1) J. Scott Russell, Report on waves, Fourteenth meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1844 >>> return.
(2) SOLITON, noun, a pulselike wave that can exist in nonlinear systems, does not obey the superposition principle, and does not disperse [solit(ary) + -on] >>> return.
(3) Koba, Joseph Stalin's first pseudonym, originally a Georgian folk hero in the style of Robin Hood. Koba means "The Indomitable." >>> return.
(4) László Rajk Jr, 80s opponent to the Communist regime, samizdat activist and son of László Rajk senior. Rajk senior, mythological figure of Hungarian Communism, former commissar of the Rakosi Battalion of XIII International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War, then Resistant against the fascist Hungarian Arrow Cross Party during WWII, was finally minister of the Interior of the post-1948 Communist Regime, and by this way organizer of the AVO, the Hungarian secret police. In 1949, a little bit too popular in the eyes of General Secretary Mátyás Rákosi, Rajk Sr. was sentenced to death as Titoist Spy during his famous "Rajk Trial" >>> return.
(5) Peter Sloterdijk, Sphären 3. Schäume, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 2004 >>> return.