Teratogenesis

Teratogenesis is a medical term from the Greek, literally meaning monster-making (τέρας = monster), which derives from teratology, the study of the frequency, causation, and development of congenital malformations-misleadingly called birth defects.[1]

Teratogenesis in the sense of deformation is an un-detachable part not only of the morphogenetic processes but of any kind of productive process; it is embedded in all the possible products of these processes. Evolution itself is a constant deformation, mutation and hybridization, actively participating in its processes creating new species and causing others to transform or even extinct.

The result of any process, any kind of thing that could be considered as product, is always deformed therefore impossible to be absolutely predefined or predetermined. But on the other hand, also initiations are being deformed in the process of working towards the result. Maybe, even the word "result" is just a convention since everything is in a state of constant "becoming". I can find no better way to illustrate this than what Henri Bergson said "Reality... is a perpetual becoming. It makes or remakes itself, but it is never something made."

The praxis of creating this text, the "becoming" of its body and content, is consistent with the basic idea of it and somehow underlines it. This text didn't start with an aim towards an end; it didn't start by knowing a problem and aiming at a solution. The text itself, both as a content and a form, became as a result of various manipulations and negotiations among its parts and the whole, among the linearity of the text and the intertextual connections of the different parts of it while it was growing and becoming, attaching new words and excluding others. It is the result of a "derive" (as the situationists defined it), the record of an aimless vagabond that constantly attempts to find ends and link them but never concludes. It is a theory made by the praxis of its own writing, a praxis that has as an aim the writing and not the end of it.

The text grew in a rhizomatic way and this is why there are branches that end up nowhere but are still pending for further growth or connection with other branches. This fragmentation is the result of the attempt to synthesize the anchoring points for the development of a continuum; it is not a text of accomplishments but a text of intentions. Not concluding is for keeping open the possibility to conclude. This is why there should be no end. What we need is not a conclusion or a fixed answer but rather the constant elaboration of a consciousness.

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[1] Source Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teratogenesis