The Mittelwerke: Site--Para-Site--Non-Site.

What is it about the middle that makes it such an unreliable place? Is it that, when standing exactly midway between two points, one can regard the overall distance as both half-traveled and half-untraveled? Apparently, the fuzzy logic of the middle does something to the road: it submits it to contradictory predications--traveled/untraveled. Equally, the middle does something to the traveler: it delays his arrival at the destination by making him first pass an infinitely recursive midway of (the midway of (the midway of (the midway ...))) (Zeno's dichotomy paradox). Somewhat like a hurdle, the middle intervenes between beginning and end and precludes simple duality and facile directness in their relation. Instead, it breeds complexity, hesitation and difficulty. A confusing bifurcation and a veritable vortex of possible roads can emerge in the middle of the way. And what if this vortical middle swallows up the beginning and the end? What if everything becomes middle? What if nothing remains for the traveler to do except roam in this medial limbo--this in-between interval, stretched to infinity? When the middle takes over, it can turn even the most sensible journey into a schizophrenic stroll (cf. Deleuze and Guattari, AO 2) that neglects purpose and destination and yields to the delirium of a movement for movement's sake. To prolong movement indefinitely, the middle organizes itself as a medium of straying, swerving and lingering. Moreover, its dynamics of deviation can govern not only the journey but also the story that renders this journey into literature. Such a strolling story is very different from the classical quest romance that starts from a beginning and, passing through some commotion of experiences in the middle, manages to close on a tidy ending. The teleological structure of the traditional quest narrative seems to undervalue the trials and tribulations of the middle as if they were a mere action-sequence serving to fill in the interval between the truly substantive questions "Where are you going?" and "Where are you coming from?" The formula of origin-and-destination and the successful transfer of meaning between them despite the turmoil in the middle "impl[ies] a false conception of voyage and movement ... that is methodical, pedagogical, initiatory, symbolic" (Deleuze and Guattari, TP 25). Though edifying, this "methodology" of beginning and ending fails to do justice to what actually makes up the journey: the peregrinations, passages and vortical motions. As if performing a phenomenological reduction, the origin and telos of the classical quest story bracket the middle, two sober impasses bounding on two sides a delirious process of passing.