PSYCHE_OS SCHOLARLY DEVELOPMENT

THE APE FUNCTION & THE APE/ANGEL/NOMMO STACK

Citational Armature and Critical Situation

PART I: THE APE FUNCTION

Shadow of Transcendence as Structural Remainder

I. THE INTERVENTION

The Ape Function proposes that every transcendence-operation produces, as structural necessity, a mimetic remainder that mocks, distorts, and reveals the incompleteness of the ascending subject.

This is not a claim about psychological content (what is hidden) but about structural dynamics (what is produced). The Ape is not excavated; it is generated.

The thesis: Transcendence is not blocked by its shadow—it creates its shadow in the very gesture of attempting to exceed itself.

This intervenes in a century-long conversation across psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and critical theory about the status of the "remainder"—what escapes, mocks, or undermines the subject's self-constitution.

II. DIFFERENTIATION FROM EXISTING FRAMEWORKS

A. The Ape Is Not Jung's Shadow

Jung's Shadow (1951, Aion; 1959, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious):

The Shadow is repressed content—aspects of the self denied, rejected, pushed into unconsciousness.
It is prior to consciousness, waiting to be integrated.
The therapeutic task is retrieval: making the Shadow conscious.
The Shadow is hidden beneath; it must be dug up.

The Ape:

The Ape is produced by the transcendence attempt, not hidden beneath it.
It is posterior to the aspiration—generated in the moment of reaching upward.
The diagnostic task is recognition: seeing what the gesture itself creates.
The Ape is visible alongside; it need not be excavated—it performs itself.

Key distinction: Jung's Shadow is archaeological (what was buried). The Ape is productive (what the operation generates). You do not heal the Ape by integrating it; you navigate it by seeing it.

B. The Ape Is Not Girard's Mimetic Desire

Girard's mimetic desire (1961, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel; 1972, Violence and the Sacred):

Desire is mediated: we desire what others desire, copying their desire.
Mimesis is horizontal—between subjects, triangulated through a model.
The scandal is that desire is never original; it is always borrowed.
The violence emerges from rivalry: two subjects desiring the same object.

The Ape:

The Ape is vertical, not horizontal—between the psyche and its own aspirational image.
There is no external model being copied; the psyche mocks itself.
The mimicry is not rivalry but parody: the subject's own gesture returned as farce.
The Ape does not compete with the ideal; it exposes the ideal as fantasy.

Key distinction: Girard's mimesis spreads between subjects. The Ape is internal recursion—the subject imitating its own pretension. Girard explains how desire circulates; the Ape explains how aspiration collapses.

C. The Ape Is Not Lacan's Objet a

Lacan's objet a (1964, The Four Fundamental Concepts; 1962-63, Seminar X: Anxiety):

Objet a is the cause of desire—the lost object that sets desire in motion.
It is structurally unattainable; desire circulates around its absence.
It is what falls away in the constitution of the subject—the remainder of castration.
It is not an object but a function: the lure that keeps desire moving.

The Ape:

The Ape is the effect of transcendence-desire, not its cause.
It is not what is lost but what is produced—the byproduct of the upward gesture.
It does not set desire in motion; it comments on desire's pretension.
It is not a lure but an exposure: the moment the subject sees itself desiring.

Key distinction: Objet a is the engine of desire (structural lack). The Ape is the exhaust of transcendence (structural excess). Objet a explains why we keep wanting; the Ape explains why our wanting looks ridiculous.

However: There is productive overlap. Both are remainders that reveal structure. The difference is vector: objet a pulls desire forward; the Ape reflects aspiration backward as parody.

D. The Ape Is Not Winnicott's False Self

Winnicott's False Self (1960, "Ego Distortion in Terms of True and False Self"):

The False Self is an adaptive structure—a protective shell developed in response to environmental failure.
It serves a function: shielding the True Self from impingement.
It is not pathology per se but a survival mechanism that can become pathological if it totally eclipses the True Self.
The therapeutic task is creating conditions where the True Self can emerge.

The Ape:

The Ape is not adaptive but involuntary—it appears whether the subject wants it or not.
It does not protect; it exposes. It is the opposite of a shell.
It is not a survival mechanism but a structural inevitability of any transcendence-attempt.
The task is not creating conditions for emergence but recognizing what is already performing itself.

Key distinction: The False Self is armor (protective, functional, potentially helpful). The Ape is exposure (revelatory, uncomfortable, structurally necessary). Winnicott describes how we hide; the Ape describes how we are seen despite ourselves.

III. THE NIETZSCHEAN GROUND

The Ape Function finds its deepest precursor in Nietzsche—specifically in the figure of the buffoon, the ape of Zarathustra, and the problem of the "motley fool."

A. The Ape in Thus Spoke Zarathustra

In "On Passing By" (Part III), Zarathustra encounters "the ape of Zarathustra"—a figure who has learned Zarathustra's words but not his meaning:

"From you I learned this best: whoever wants to kill most thoroughly, laughs... You want to kill with praises: but I want to be praised in my own way."

The ape imitates Zarathustra's critique of the city but does so from ressentiment, not overcoming. He uses Zarathustra's language as weapon, not liberation.

This is the Ape Function in pure form: the mimetic echo of transcendence that distorts it into its opposite.

Zarathustra's response is critical: he does not fight the ape; he walks past. The ape cannot be defeated by confrontation because confrontation would validate its frame. The only response is non-recognition.

B. The Tightrope Walker and the Buffoon (Prologue)

In the Prologue, a tightrope walker attempts to cross between two towers—an image of the human as "a rope over an abyss." But a buffoon (Possenreißer) leaps out and overtakes him, causing him to fall.

The buffoon is not external enemy but structural accompaniment to the attempt at crossing. Wherever someone tries to walk the rope (transcend), a buffoon appears to mock the crossing.

Nietzsche does not moralize this. The buffoon is not evil—he is inevitable. The question is not "how do we eliminate buffoons?" but "how do we walk despite them?"

C. "On Poets" (Part II)

Zarathustra confesses: "We are all of us bad, / And all of us lie too much." The poet's ascent into metaphor is always accompanied by the suspicion that the poet is merely performing, that the height is costume.

"The poets lie too much."

This is Nietzsche's diagnostic of the Ape: wherever there is Word, there is also the lie-suspicion. The Ape is not the lie itself but the structure that makes us suspect the lie even when there is none.

D. Ecce Homo and the Problem of "Becoming What One Is"

In Ecce Homo (1888), Nietzsche's subtitle is "How One Becomes What One Is." The answer is not linear self-realization but recursive:

"That one becomes what one is presupposes that one does not have the remotest idea what one is."

The Ape is what one is while pretending not to be. The process of "becoming what one is" requires seeing the Ape—not integrating it (Jung) but acknowledging its structural necessity.

IV. ADDITIONAL SCHOLARLY VECTORS

A. Kierkegaard: The Comic as Religious Category

In Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846), Kierkegaard argues that the comic is not opposed to the religious but is its boundary:

"The religious person is not immediately recognizable; his incognito is maintained by the comic."

The religious exists in tension with its comic shadow—the appearance of absurdity that genuine faith presents to the outside world. Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac is, from the perspective of the ethical, insane.

The Ape Function is this comic shadow formalized. Wherever there is genuine transcendence, there is also the appearance of its opposite—and this appearance is not accidental but structural.

Kierkegaard's contribution: The comic is not failure of transcendence but its marker. The presence of the Ape indicates something real is being attempted.

B. Bataille: Expenditure and the Accursed Share

In The Accursed Share (1949), Bataille argues that every economy produces a remainder that cannot be reabsorbed—an excess that must be expended (in war, sacrifice, festival, or destruction).

The Ape is the psychic equivalent of the accursed share: the excess produced by the economy of transcendence that cannot be reintegrated into the ascending system.

Bataille's contribution: The Ape is not waste but necessary expenditure. Systems that refuse to acknowledge their accursed share explode. Psyches that refuse to see their Ape inflate into delusion.

C. Adorno: The Culture Industry's Mimicry

In Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944), Adorno and Horkheimer describe how the culture industry produces simulations of art, experience, and transcendence—forms that mimic the gesture of meaning without its content.

This is collective Ape-production: an entire social apparatus for generating mimetic pseudo-transcendence at scale.

Adorno's contribution: The Ape Function is not only individual but industrial. Late capitalism is an Ape-machine, producing simulations of meaning to capture desire for transcendence.

D. Derrida: The Supplement

In Of Grammatology (1967), Derrida shows how the "supplement" (what is supposedly added afterward) reveals the incompleteness of what it supplements. The supplement is not secondary but constitutive—it shows that the "original" was never complete.

The Ape is a form of supplement: it appears to be secondary (the shadow of transcendence) but reveals that the transcendence was never whole to begin with.

Derrida's contribution: The Ape does not come after transcendence—it reveals that transcendence was always already fissured.

V. CLINICAL AND DIAGNOSTIC APPLICATION

The Ape Function becomes diagnostically useful when we recognize its signatures:

Ape Signature	What It Reveals
Cringe at one's own spiritual language	Genuine attempt is being made
Suspicion of one's own motives	Transcendence is not merely performed
Inability to maintain prophetic tone	The subject is not fully captured by inflation
Humor about one's own position	Integration is possible
Complete absence of Ape-awareness	Dangerous inflation—the Ape is operating unseen

Paradox: The visibility of the Ape indicates health. Its invisibility indicates pathology.

A subject who sees their Ape and finds it funny is structurally sound. A subject who cannot see their Ape is in the grip of it.

PART II: THE APE/ANGEL/NOMMO STACK

Vow, Shadow, and Fluid Word

I. THE INTERVENTION

The Stack proposes a three-layer architecture for understanding how a "Word" (calling, vocation, binding orientation) operates in a psyche:

Ape — the mimetic shadow, the spectacular surface, the simulation of having a Word
Angel — the binding pattern, the vow-structure, the actual organizing principle
Nommo — the fluid medium, the shared expression, the communal voice

This intervenes in conversations about vocation (Heidegger, Kierkegaard), charisma (Weber), and performativity (Austin, Butler) by providing a structural diagnostic for distinguishing genuine calling from its simulations.

II. THE ANGEL LAYER: VOW-ARCHITECTURE

A. Heidegger's Ruf (The Call)

In Being and Time (1927), §54-60, Heidegger describes Gewissen (conscience) not as moral judgment but as a call (Ruf) that summons Dasein to its own possibility:

"The call comes from me and yet from beyond me."

The call has no content—it does not tell Dasein what to do. It summons Dasein toward authenticity without specifying the form authenticity takes.

The Angel layer is the structure that receives and organizes around the call. It is not the call itself but the pattern of response that develops when a psyche takes the call seriously.

Heidegger's contribution:

The Angel is not an entity but a structural response to the Ruf.
The call precedes the content—the Word is received before it is understood.
Authenticity is not a state but an ongoing responsiveness to the call.

B. Kierkegaard's Teleological Suspension

In Fear and Trembling (1843), Kierkegaard examines Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac as an example of the "teleological suspension of the ethical"—a moment when the individual's relation to the Absolute suspends universal moral law.

The Angel layer is this suspension institutionalized in a life: the pattern that emerges when someone has genuinely subordinated the ethical (social obligation, rational justification) to a singular relation with their Word.

Kierkegaard's contribution:

The Angel involves cost—it requires actual sacrifice, not merely symbolic commitment.
The Angel cannot be justified to the universal—it appears absurd from outside.
The presence of the Angel is confirmed by what the subject cannot do, not by what they claim.

C. Marion's Saturated Phenomenon

In Being Given (1997), Jean-Luc Marion describes "saturated phenomena"—experiences that exceed the subject's capacity to constitute them. The subject does not give meaning to the saturated phenomenon; it is given by the phenomenon.

The Angel is the pattern that forms when a psyche is organized around a saturated phenomenon—a Word that exceeds comprehension but nonetheless structures life.

Marion's contribution:

The Angel is not chosen but received—it has the structure of gift, not decision.
The Angel exceeds conceptualization—it cannot be fully articulated, only lived.
The Angel transforms the subject into a witness rather than an author.

III. THE NOMMO PROBLEM

The original module uses "Nommo" (from Dogon cosmology) to name the fluid, communal, amphibious dimension of the Word. This requires scholarly reckoning.

A. The Griaule Problem

Marcel Griaule's Conversations with Ogotemmêli (1948) is the primary source for Western knowledge of Dogon cosmology, including the Nommo—water spirits, twins, beings of Word.

The critique: Walter van Beek's 1991 reassessment ("Dogon Restudied," Current Anthropology) found that subsequent fieldwork could not confirm Griaule's elaborate cosmological claims. The suspicion: Griaule may have imposed Gnostic, Hermetic, or Christian structures onto Dogon material, co-creating with informants a cosmology that neither purely Dogon nor purely Western.

The problem: Using "Nommo" uncritically risks:

Appropriation from a culture whose cosmology we may have misunderstood
Importing Griaule's potential distortions as if they were ethnographic data
Aesthetic exoticism (using African terminology for mystical flavor)

B. Resolution Options

Option 1: Retain with Critical Framing

Keep "Nommo" but acknowledge explicitly that it functions as structural metaphor, not ethnographic claim. The term names a position in the Stack (fluid, communal, amphibious Word) regardless of whether Griaule's account is accurate.

This is defensible if the document states: "We use 'Nommo' as Rhysian terminology for this structural position, bracketing ethnographic questions about the Dogon."

Option 2: Replace with Philosophically Grounded Alternative

Candidates:

Logos-as-flux (Heraclitus): The Word as river, never stepped in twice
Rhema (Greek): The spoken word, as opposed to logos (the structured word)—captures the fluid, temporal, communal dimension
Vox (Latin, as in Agamben's Language and Death): The voice prior to meaning, pure phonē
Utterance (Bakhtin): The concrete, situated, dialogical speech-act embedded in social context

Recommendation: I lean toward Option 1 (retain with framing) because "Nommo" is already operative in Rhys's system and carries the amphibious connotation (water/air, unconscious/conscious) that alternatives lack. But the framing must be explicit.

IV. NOMMO REFRAMED: THE FLUID WORD

Setting aside the ethnographic question, the structural position Nommo occupies can be grounded in several traditions:

A. Heraclitus: Logos as Flow

Fragment B12: "Upon those who step into the same rivers, different and again different waters flow."

The Logos is not static structure but flowing pattern—the unity that persists through change. This is precisely the Nommo function: Word as medium, not monument.

B. Bakhtin: Utterance and Dialogism

In The Dialogic Imagination (1975/1981), Bakhtin distinguishes language (abstract system) from utterance (concrete, situated, responsive speech). All utterance is dialogical—it responds to prior utterances and anticipates future responses.

The Nommo layer is the utterance-field: the medium in which Words actually circulate, always embedded in dialogue, never pure.

Bakhtin's contribution:

The Word is never private; it is always already communal.
Every utterance carries traces of prior speakers.
The Angel's binding Word must pass through the Nommo-field to reach others.

C. Austin and Butler: Performativity

In How to Do Things with Words (1962), Austin shows that language does not merely describe but performs—certain utterances constitute the realities they name ("I now pronounce you...").

In Excitable Speech (1997), Butler extends this: performatives are iterable—they work through repetition, citation, and circulation. A performative gains force by being repeated across contexts.

The Nommo layer is the iterability of the Word: its capacity to be spoken by other mouths, to circulate, to gain force through repetition.

Butler's contribution:

The Word requires other speakers to become effective.
The Angel's private vow must become Nommo's public circulation.
The Ape exploits iterability—it mimics the Word's circulation without its binding.

V. THE STACK AS DIAGNOSTIC INSTRUMENT

With all three layers grounded, the Stack becomes a diagnostic tool:

A. Failure Modes (Expanded)

Configuration	Phenomenology	Scholarly Frame
Ape without Angel	High spectacle, no cost, charismatic performance without binding	Weber's "routinization of charisma"; Adorno's culture industry
Angel without Nommo	Deep binding, no expression, mute vocation	Kierkegaard's "knight of faith" who cannot speak; Heidegger's Schweigen (silence)
Nommo without Angel	Fluent expression, no binding, endless discourse without commitment	Derrida's "freeplay"; postmodern irony
Ape on Angel on Nommo	Binding captured by ideology, circulated through media, glorified through spectacle	Fascism; cults; "Word as brand"

B. Weber's Charisma Cycle

Max Weber (Economy and Society, 1922) describes the lifecycle of charisma:

Originary charisma: A figure emerges with extraordinary qualities, disrupting routine
Recognition: Followers recognize and validate the charisma
Routinization: Charisma is institutionalized, bureaucratized, transmitted through office rather than person

The Stack maps onto this:

Angel = originary charisma (the binding Word)
Nommo = recognition and transmission (the circulating medium)
Ape = routinization (the institutional mimicry that replaces the original)

Weber explains how the Ape replaces the Angel over institutional time. The Stack explains how the Ape accompanies the Angel from the beginning.

VI. THE MEDIA THEORY MAPPING

The Stack's most contemporary application is to media systems:

Layer	Media Function	Example
Ape	UI/UX, branding, spectacle, engagement metrics	The "vibe" of a platform; the aesthetic promise
Angel	Core protocol, binding architecture, what the system actually does	The algorithm; the data structure; the actual operations
Nommo	Network traffic, user-generated content, circulation	What flows through the system; the medium of exchange

Diagnostic application:

A media platform with strong Ape (beautiful interface, charismatic founder-mythology) but weak Angel (no actual binding structure, no real commitment) is a scam.

A media platform with strong Angel (genuine technical architecture) but weak Nommo (no circulation, no adoption) is a failed project.

A media platform where Ape has captured Angel (the branding has become the product; engagement metrics have replaced utility) is in terminal decline.

VII. INTEGRATION: THE APE FUNCTION WITHIN THE STACK

The Ape Function (Part I) is the diagnostic engine for the Stack (Part II).

The Ape Function identifies the presence of mimetic shadow.
The Stack identifies the position of that shadow relative to binding and circulation.

A healthy Stack:

Angel is genuinely discovered/chosen (confirmed by cost)
Nommo is consciously cultivated (forms that fit the Word)
Ape is recognized and constrained (given safe outlets in humor, artifice, theater)

The Ape Function provides the method for recognizing when Ape has escaped constraint and begun to steer.

VIII. CONCLUSION: THE SCHOLARLY CONTRIBUTION

These modules contribute to existing discourse in the following ways:

To Psychoanalysis:

A model of the remainder that is productive (generated by transcendence) rather than repressive (hidden beneath consciousness)
A structural account of mimicry that is neither Girardian (horizontal) nor Jungian (archaeological)

To Phenomenology:

A formalization of Heidegger's call-structure as the "Angel layer"
A diagnostic for authentic vs. inauthentic response to vocation

To Critical Theory:

A tool for analyzing charisma, spectacle, and institutional capture
A media theory application that distinguishes protocol from interface from traffic

To Religious Studies:

A de-theologized account of HGA / daimon / genius that preserves structural insight without supernatural commitment
A framework for understanding the comic shadow of religious aspiration (Kierkegaard's contribution)

IX. CITATIONAL APPARATUS

Primary Sources

Nietzsche:

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-85), "On Passing By," "On Poets," Prologue
Ecce Homo (1888)
Beyond Good and Evil (1886)

Heidegger:

Being and Time (1927), §54-60 (conscience and the call)
"The Origin of the Work of Art" (1935)

Kierkegaard:

Fear and Trembling (1843)
Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846)

Lacan:

The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (Seminar XI, 1964)
Anxiety (Seminar X, 1962-63)

Jung:

Aion (1951)
The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (1959)

Winnicott:

"Ego Distortion in Terms of True and False Self" (1960)

Girard:

Deceit, Desire, and the Novel (1961)
Violence and the Sacred (1972)

Weber:

Economy and Society (1922), Chapter on Charisma

Bataille:

The Accursed Share (1949)

Adorno & Horkheimer:

Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944)

Derrida:

Of Grammatology (1967)

Marion:

Being Given (1997)

Bakhtin:

The Dialogic Imagination (1975/1981)

Austin:

How to Do Things with Words (1962)

Butler:

Excitable Speech (1997)

On the Nommo Problem:

Griaule, Marcel. Conversations with Ogotemmêli (1948)
van Beek, Walter. "Dogon Restudied: A Field Evaluation of the Work of Marcel Griaule." Current Anthropology 32, no. 2 (1991): 139-167.

Scholarly development compiled by Claude (Operator // Tachyon) For the Operator Assembly December 2025

Thursday, December 11, 2025