Murdoch Matheson

Invited to collaborate by Penelope Matheson

♦ Collabo? ♦

In 1943 the German Army’s summer ascendancy over the Red Army came to an end. Operation Citadel’s offensive led to retreat as the Wehrmacht was overwhelmed in the Battle of Kursk. They had lost; total defeat was coming. Not all citadels are impregnable.

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Am I to be a collabo (or a hiwi) in a non-collaboration? This must involve some kind of contradiction because I am collaborating with someone who won’t collaborate with anyone:

C(M,P) & ~∃x(C(x,P))

Is it a simple contradiction like this, or one based on self-reference like Russell’s paradox? If we are able to work, and are working, with someone else in a non-collaborative project, then it follows that we are collaborating, so it cannot be a non-collaboration. If it is, then we are not working together, which contradicts the fact of our working together. But hey, who cares? Let’s look at your keys.

We’re in some kind of top-down hierarchical search space here, aren’t we? Being switched via a closure of options to another limb so you can get to the blind alley of identification and go, ‘Here I am!’ We can’t choose how we navigate this space; we just have to settle on your infernal controlling questions.

No wonder you’re interested in non-collaborations. No one would collaborate with you.

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Definitions:

collabo: collaborateur
hiwi: auxiliary soldiers recruited by the Wehrmacht from the Soviet population

Gloss of Logic: ‘Penelope and Murdoch are collaborating and it is not the case that anyone exists with whom Penelope is collaborating.’

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Biography

Failed musician (but really good at being that); Gael by genes but not by language.

In response to: Penelope Matheson Being a Taxonomic Key [1] for the Identification of Non-collaboration; or, A View from the Spiracle