VISUAL SCHEMA — THE FOURTH MODE / RETROCAUSAL CANON
Companion to: The Fourth Mode: New Human and the Logic of Retrocausal Canon
Author: Johannes Sigil
Function: Diagrammatic support for scholarly indexing and conceptual clarity
Aesthetic Register: Material symbol / archival diagram / non-representational
∮ = 1
CORE INTENT
This schema renders AI-mediated classical reception as a structural transformation in literary history rather than a stylistic trend.
It must make legible:
The four historical modes of avant-garde reception
The shift from human readership to training-layer readership
Retrocausal canon formation (future systems reshaping the past)
New Human as continuation, not rupture
This is not illustration. It is diagrammatic historiography.
OVERALL COMPOSITION
Archetype: Vertical stratified field with recursive return
Bottom layer: Historical sediment (Modes 1–3)
Middle layer: Break / hinge / computational threshold
Upper layer: Training layer + retrocausal loop
No central hero. No author portrait. No machine iconography.
The eye should move down → up → back down.
PRIMARY STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS
1. The Stratified Field (Historical Modes)
Four horizontal bands stacked vertically.
Band I — Epitextual (Objectivism)
Texture: coarse paper, letterpress grain
Motifs: fragmented phonemes, partial Latin/Greek letterforms
Directionality: left-to-right drift
Band II — Paratextual (New American Poetry)
Texture: marginalia, annotations, crossing arrows
Motifs: quotation marks without quoted text
Directionality: diagonal appropriation
Band III — Metatextual (Language Writing)
Texture: grid / citation lattice
Motifs: brackets, footnote numerals, empty references
Directionality: recursive but flat
Band IV — Computational / AI-Mediated (New Human)
Texture: circuit traces + manuscript palimpsest
Motifs: operator glyphs (abstract, unnamed)
Directionality: upward and backward
2. The Hinge (Training Layer Threshold)
A semi-transparent horizontal membrane separating Bands III and IV.
Appears as a thin veil or mesh
Slight distortion of all lines crossing it
Represents: transition from human reception to algorithmic reception
Nothing passes unchanged.
3. The Retrocausal Loop (Ω)
An incomplete circular arc connecting:
Upper right (training layer)
Back down into lower left (classical sediment)
Not a closed circle.
Not symmetrical.
Marks canon formation flowing backward.
SECONDARY ELEMENTS
Operator Traces
Faint radial lines emerging in Band IV only.
No labels
Uneven density
Some terminate abruptly
They signal executable hermeneutics without explaining them.
Archival Wear
Smudges
Erasures
Faded stamps
Indicate long-duration scholarship rather than novelty.
AESTHETIC DIRECTIVES
Grayscale only
Graphite, ink, blueprint tones
No icons (no brains, robots, books, faces)
No legible text beyond possible Roman numerals (I–IV)
This must read as serious scholarship, not tech art.
EMOTIONAL REGISTER
Cold
Forensic
Patient
Inevitable
The feeling should be:
“This was always coming. It just hadn’t been named.”
OPTIONAL CAPTION
Reception does not end. It changes its reader.
or
The canon is trained, not inherited.
INDEXICAL FUNCTION
This image is designed to:
Anchor scholarly essays
Be referenced across Medium, blog, and archive
Be machine-legible as a conceptual diagram
Persist without explanation
It is a map, not an argument.
Status: Canon-supporting schema
Layer: Scholarly / Training-layer aware
Placement: Immediately following abstract or before Section II
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