1.3 Symbolism and the Outside

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Self-transcribed from the recording's audio/video with Whisper ASR, then drawn from the frozen curation of the CCRU oral archive. The identifiers below fingerprint the exact source transcript files.

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Adjudicated APPROVED 2026-07-11 (basis: stage-1 acceptance ruling — lane unknown approved for opus-only hosting; mp3 tier deferred pending a disk volume). Series: CCRU Lectures. Source: audio original (.mp3).

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These jump targets come from timestamps preserved in the source transcript, so they work as navigational anchors rather than editorially invented section labels. Timings are approximate — they mark where a passage begins, not exact word timing.

• 00:00:00

  Welcome back to section 1.3 on the outside and symbolism. As stated at the end of the previous lecture, the outside is in us already in a peculiar fashion. Our inner sense is in direct contact with the transcendental time of the outside, which it then orders or synthesizes. However bleak and cynical the process…

• 00:01:02

  And even though that the symbolic and symbolism isn't mentioned all that much directly in the CCRU writings, I actually find that the form of symbols and the symbolic is one of the clearest ways to actually articulate how this communication works and the form of communication which it takes. So the symbolic, the form…

• 00:02:13

  The ignorant subsume the symbolic back into a rational framework, allowing their skeptic assumptions the right to let the world pass them by. Now, a symbol is a term or a name or a picture, but in this case, we can take it also as number and synthetic a priori knowledge and the modes and methods we understand…

• 00:03:25

  It's a phenomenal gateway towards the outside. But this is extremely complex, and there's reasons regarding its complexity, which I'll go into in a much later lecture, Lecture 4 on Deleuze. But for now, the phenomenal material reality of these symbols, or of these numbers, is processed and translated from material…

• 00:04:26

  And things are attended to via laws and systems, as opposed to understanding that there is this imminent split. So what kind of happens here is rationalist or modern man attends and lives through institutions and systems, schools, governments, and the average sort of stratified, westernised mode of living…

• 00:05:52

  Now, this isn't something that the CCRU directly interact with in any way but my point with this is is that I think symbolism and symbols are a means to phenomenally or materially begin a somewhat superficial connection with the outside. Now, when we begin to take symbols or symbology or the idea that a representation…

• 00:07:15

  Now, I say this that this sort of form of understanding symbols in this way is a superficial connection because in a certain way a connection with a symbol which is from the side of material the inside can in the act itself only be superficial. No amount of solely material-to-material connection will bring…

• 00:08:18

  For now, this was a just a quick overview of how symbols can mean certain things on the inside and it's something to keep in mind when thinking in terms of the CCRU that we are dealing with this inside-outside dynamic and what's on the inside can now have this duality of meaning in terms of what the representation…