Methods Of Recovery In Infinite Jest By Frank Cioffi

methods of recovery. Here we encounter the question that Joelle ponders about the film: is AA a cage or a door? On one hand, the program seems to function somewhere in between; surely, nothing can substitute for the role of belief in the program, in which case the member is fastened into a structural position. On the other hand, the program functions as a successful release from the entrapment of drug abuse. Although there remains an air of uncertainty, Infinite Jest does not appear to function exclusively as a compendium of traps or exits, but both at once—a simultaneity reminiscent of the persistent threat of stratification in the works of Deleuze and Guattari.
The experience of reading the novel involves this two-sidedness as well. As Hal
In his article on Infinite Jest, Frank Cioffi calls this the performance of the reader, arguing that the reader takes part in the construction of the novel. He highlights the points of disruption of narrative flow, which incite cognitive, emotional, and motor activities. For Cioffi, the reader’s cognitive performance is her understanding a formula or passage in the novel, the violent imagery is the model for the reader’s emotional performance, and the motor activity of the reader relates to the heftiness of the book and the physical work one must do regarding the endnotes. The reader’s participation culminates in both the large-scale recollection of multiple storylines and micro-level piecing-together of fractured elements of the plot, endnote data, and other vague understories. Further, the three activities form a kind of Wallacean triangle that characterizes Infinite Jest: cognitive-emotional-motor activity. It may appear at a glance that this triangle correlates to symbolic-imaginary-real triad of Lacan, but this would misrecognize at least two essential points: first, that both the symbolic and imaginary are unconscious orders that involve, equally, but at different levels, cognitive and emotional elements and, second, that all three Lacanian orders have a material substrate and virtual coordinates, which is not
In a way, Dulk points this out, writing that, contrary to the effect of Infinite Jest the film, “there is the novel Infinite Jest, which is expressive of a completely different “infinity”: not an endless, aesthetic irony, but a novel that facilitates endless re-engagement...” Dulk finds the surplus within the reader’s encounter with the text, which, as he states, contrasts with the “ironic-aesthetic attitude” that the film represents. However, the ensuing implication that the film and the novel are operationally separate, in that the latter solves or outdoes the entrapment in the former, is somewhat misleading in that it assumes the reader’s relation to the film occurs exclusively through the characters. However, in some sense this conflates the reader with the narrator, who transports in and out of characters, never establishing sovereignty in relation to them. Instead of claiming that the novel and film function differently, I am arguing that the film itself operates in at least two ways—one in view of the victims and one with regards to the readers—in the same way that relations in the novel involve functions of both capture and escape. Perhaps the most prominent difference between the film and the novel doubles as a key difference between film and literature—whereas in film the viewer is provided images, the novel’s reader must construct them. In