Tag Archives: language

The word is flat

This is part 2 of 4 in the Logic of Sense series

In the “Second Series of Paradoxes of Surface Effects” in Logic of Sense, Deleuze turns the play between causes and effects to the surface (so to speak). The two are transformed into bodies and events that manifest on the surface. In Alice in Wonderland, the animals (which are deep) are usurped as “nobility” by thickless card figures (p. 9). Deleuze suspects that Alice isn’t about the adventures of Alice (as the original title suggested) but about the single adventure of Alice: “her climb to the surface, her avowal of false depth, and her discovery that everything happens at the border” (9). It is on the surface where bodies produce events and have effects and Lewis Carroll saw this clearly.  In Sylvie and Bruno, the character “[learns] his lessons in all manners, inside-out, outside-in, above and below, but never ‘in depth’” (10).

Manifestation is part of the hermeneutical cycle for Deleuze.  Unlike Heidegger’s hermeneutical circle, Deleuze suggests it is a Möbius strip.  This strip highlights the logical paradox of signification that “‘Z is true if A, B, and C are true…,’ and so on to infinity” (16). The truth of a proposition is much like the Snark in Alice. It is by unfolding and untwisting the Möbius strip that the dimension of sense appears as it animates the (truth of) the proposition (20). The image of the Möbius strip represents the hermeneutical cycle not as a circle but as “the coexistence of two sides without thickness, such that we pass from one to the other by following their length” (22). Sense is not an effect or a result but the extra-Being which inheres or subsists; it is an “event” but “on the condition that the event is not confused with its spatio-temporal realization in a state of affairs” (22). Language itself is the flat world of the sense-event.

On Communication

What is communication?  Can one communicate without langauge?  What would that look like?  In other words, can one communicate meaning without a language?  I would like to argue that this is not (always) the case.

Here’s an example (which triggered this thought process in me)…Imagine a person who is born deaf and never learns a structured language (i.e. sign language, written language, etc).  To this person, letters, words, and phrases do not correspond with what one would expect.  This is no different than one who encounters an unknown language.  Our example person is also an artist.  Must his art convey meaning?  In a recent seminar I attended, some people contended that all art must convey meaning.  However, I disagree.  Meaning is a product of language because meaning can only be conveyed by appealing to a common language.  For instance, the meaning of this post is predicated upon a commonality of language between myself and you, the reader.  When there is no commonality, the meaning I am conveying (if any) is lost; for example, if this post was written in Swahili, the current readership would not be able to understand it.  It is in this sense that meaning is a product of language.

Now, back to our deaf artist.  Sure, he could have been communicating something, but we, as foreigners to his world of language, are unable to discern that meaning.  Any understanding we interpret from his artwork is what we have imposed on the art.  If instead of art, he wrote a text in an unknown language (so unknown that his writing is the only existing sample), we’d have no linguistic context to properly frame it.  We have no Rosetta Stone which we could use to decipher his language.

Furthermore, we have no guarantee that our deaf artist was even trying to communicate something.  For all we know, he was doodling (quite extensively, but doodling nevertheless) without any intent of communication.  He could have been drawing what he saw through a lens of what he felt–in other words, a private language (and I hope my allusion to Wittgenstein is not lost).  We are trying to find meaning where it is possible no meaning exists.

Another example, possibly more concrete, is the recent film Burn After Reading.  Brad Pitt’s character comes across some documents which he suspects are highly classified CIA information.  In reality, these are just notes from a relatively low ranking, retired CIA agent played by John Malkovich.  The movie is interspersed with a running conversation between two higher-ranking CIA officials trying to figure out what is happening.  As the discourse between Pitt and Malkovich continues with attempts to blackmail, extort, and include foreign agencies (the Russians for instance), the two CIA officials are at a complete loss. The entire movie is based on three separate language games: Pitt’s belief that he has valuable information, Malkovich’s discovery that his personal notes have been stolen, and the CIA’s attempt to reconcile those to their understanding that the information is not valuable at all.  In the end, Malkovich and Pitt are removed from the plot and the CIA’s response is on the lines of “whatever happened, it wasn’t important, but we’ll cover it up just to be sure.”  In other words, the CIA never discovers the hidden discourses and continues on with normal life because those discourses did not matter in the first place.  The hidden languages that Pitt and Malkovich operated within had no value in the economy that the CIA was interested–they were meaningless.

So what is the point of all of this meandering?  Only to say that meaning is a product of language and is not always necessary or guaranteed.  Or, to recycle Freud: “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

Postmortem Epistemology

This is part 5 of 5 in the Knowing series

What would a “postmodern” look like? Some turn towards language because they believe epistemology cannot be “solved” until we can be sure that we’re talking about the same thing. Some reject any attempt at epistemology because it is simply beyond our reach. took up an argument similar to Kierkegaard’s in opposition to Hegel and through him comes the “latest” theories of knowledge.

Truth as

Possibly Nietzsche’s greatest contribution to the study of knowledge focused on the of epistemology. In his essay titled “On truth and lie in an extra-moral sense,” Nietzsche describes his position nicely:

What then is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms — in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins. (from The Portable Nietzsche, 46-7).

Simulated Truth

The message is clear: truth as a concept derives from the usage of language and is based solely on language. In reality, there is no Absolute Knowledge; there is no access to an undifferentiated knowledge of truth. Because of language, there cannot be knowledge of any kind of “objective” truth. For Nietzsche, truth and knowledge are really just forays into what is now called deconstruction. It’s all about interpretations of interpretations. To borrow Baudrillard, the language of truth is a set of simulacra that create and re-create a false notion of truth that has been accepted as the real thing. In reality, however, this notion of truth is the lack of the real thing. Slavoj explains how Coke is a great example of this:

We drink Coke — or any drink — for two reasons: for its thirst-quenching or nutritional value, and for its taste. In the case of caffeine-free diet Coke, nutritional value is suspended and the caffeine, as the key ingredient of its taste, is also taken away — all that remains is a pure semblance, an artificial promise of a substance which never materialized. Is it not true that in this sense, in the case of caffeine-free diet Coke, we almost literally “drink nothing in the guise of something”? (from The Fragile Absolute, 23)

Conclusions

There is no “postmodern epistemology” because it requires us to move beyond the confines of language. 20th century philosophy was obsessed about language until it slowly began to realize it cannot be comprehended. Language, as the vehicle of “truth,” cannot be transcended or reduced in order to provide insight into knowledge and truth. Truth and knowledge are embedded in language, the thing to which we humans are bound and chained. The best description we can have of truth and knowledge can be seen in Deleuze’s work The Logic of Sense. In this work, speaks of knowledge as a polymorphic surface on which we oscillate between sense and nonsense, between understanding and non-understanding. There is no “deeper” meaning to language because it is all “surface” level; it would be better to picture it as moving away towards the edges (nonsense) and less as some kind of hidden “deep” structure (yes, Deleuze’s work here is a critique of people such as Noam Chomsky).
This brings the end of this series to an anticlimatic moment. The most recent theories of knowledge only undo the ones before it, bringing us back oddly close to ‘s position in the Meno: we cannot know truth in its unadulterated form. Truth as a concept is buried in our usage of language and neither it nor we can overcome language. We cannot overcome ourselves.

Ancient Future Interpretation

This is part 4 of 4 in the Language & Interpretation series

The last part of this series turns us from what is to how do we use it, particularly in a “” context. Previously, i outlined the liquidity of language and its meaning. In the religious context, how should people interpret their “Scriptures” whether that be the Qur’an, the Bible, or the Upanishads. My answer would be “historically.”

Ancient

The first thing we should do when interpreting a book (or even a conversation) is that we should place it in its context. For instance, in the Book of Mark, how should Jesus’ reference to the “” be seen? Geza Vermes, in his book Jesus the Jew, suggests that “son of man” was an Aramaic idiom simply referring to the person speaking (and also sometimes the person spoken to). In his view, this phrase has no connection whatsoever with Daniel 7, 1 Enoch, or 2 Esdras (the only three locations in what can be called “Scripture” in Jesus’ time where the phrase is used). This view is further supported by going to the claims in 1 Enoch and 2 Esdras. In 1 Enoch, the “son of man” is directly referred to as Enoch himself. To use it as support for some eschatological figure would quickly remove Jesus from the possibility of being that figure. In 2 Esdras, the references to the “son of man” shed no new light on this figure. Furthermore, 2 Esdras is believed to have been written after Jesus was resurrected, thus making it an unlikely source for confirmation. We are left with Daniel 7. Looking at the rabbinic teachings of the era (i.e. the Talmud and the Mishnah), it is seen that none of the rabbis prior to the late 1st century saw the “son of man” in Daniel 7 as some kind of prophecy, let alone one about the . It is not until the 1st century (which is when Mark is written) that we see a shift in understanding. First Christians and then Jews began to re-interpret Daniel 7 as a prophecy of the Messiah.

Textually, scholars have suggested that, of the 70+ references to the “son of man” in the 4 gospels, only 5 bear any kind of relation to Daniel 7…and none of those were spoken by . Therefore, it would appear that at the earliest context, “son of man” was not a reference to the Messiah and only became such after Christianity. As such, i suggest that we should not take statements of Jesus in the Gospel as allusions to a greater figure.

Traditional

In the Christian tradition, the idiomatic interpretation of “son of man” has disappeared. Most would see “son of man” as a direct reference to Daniel 7 and the eschatological figure. As such, we should take this when reading it after the gospels, as it is what most Christians believed.

Futural

While this view of interpretation seems rather oddly named because it focuses on both the historical application and contextual usage, it also becomes futural in that it changes. Interpretations change to fit the language and culture of the day, but the message itself does not. With an understanding of the development of ideas, it is easy to see how some views that are proclaimed as historically accurate but have little historical basis (e.g. premillenialism, but that’s another topic!). Furthermore, it is a way to retain historical orthodoxy without excluding the contemporary culture.

Liquidity

This is part 3 of 4 in the Language & Interpretation series

In my previous post in the series, i outlined some strands of the emergence of as it relates to its earliest core: language. Postmodernism is, by and large, a reaction to modernism’s schema of , most notably the that was becoming dominant in the early-to-mid twentieth century. Prior to the “rise” of , there was a major infatuation with language in philosophy. Everyone in that time period was becoming increasingly obsessed with language. Nietzsche, Heidegger, and others while not focusing on language each had their own view of language. Others like Wittgenstein were more focused on the language phenomenon. But, after post-structuralism, language became less of a focus. Of course, there are different trains of thought today when it comes to language, the emphasis has become less and less. The following is primarily my thoughts on language from some kind of postmodern context. It is adapted from a paper i wrote in March on the question of language after postmodernism.

Sense

One of the major strands that arose in the post-structuralist movement was put forth by . He had criticised the concept of “deep structures” where the meaning of a given utterance was below the surface of the actual utterance. His primary suggestion was that meaning was also found at the surface but at the edges of it. Think of it like a plate where the utterances are closer to the center of the plate, but the meaning understood by the recipient is found around the edges and corners. Beyond this, he suggested that there is some kind of “external” reality (although this doesn’t really require any particular kind of epistemological view for it to work) and an “internal” reality. The internal was marked by thought while the external was marked by objects of thought (or even representations of those objects). Communication occurs, for this view, when the two randomly intersect at points Deleuze calls “singularities.” Each singularity is the transmission of thought from one to another. Here, though the meaning of a given phrase is in some kind of contextual flux where the given utterance is understood within the given context and isn’t necessarily understood that way in a different context.

Understanding

Derrida picked up on some parts of Deleuze when he said that “there is nothing outside the text.” For , the meaning of an utterance is only as good as the known context…and everything is context. This is where i will pick up. Deleuze’s “external” reality is more like a formless liquid. The meaning of a given utterance is arbitrary in that something like the word “red” refers to what is considered “red” because it has been imposed upon the “external.” There is nothing inherent to a cherry or an apple that makes it necessarily “red.” That color can just as easily be “grurpue” and those objects would be that. Therefore, i suggest that language is much like a glass which is used to constrain the “external” reality. Language is limited by itself and is self-referential. The “external” reality that remains apart from the glass of language is beyond a given language community’s understanding. Things like death and infinity are beyond most, if not all languages, but that is because the cup of language hasn’t been able to contain those “external” concepts. Communication is only possible when the communicants have some understanding of each other’s cup of language. It is generally assumed that those who use similar utterances are using similar cups, but that is just an assumption. There is nothing inherent in any of my writing here that guarantees i am using English. That is something assumed by you (my reader). In a more functional view, this assumption is worthwhile because otherwise nobody would be certain of their communications.

Sensing Meaning

This leads us to a kind of disjunct where the theoretical differs from the functional. It would be better to continue using the functional for the reason that it is functional. The theoretical is good for conversation pieces, but not for any kind of functional working. Yet, this leads us to the matter of interpretation. Not only should one be concerned with how one interprets another’s communication directed at the one (e.g. how do you interpret these symbols and the meaning contained within their patterns) but also how does one interpret something written by another to another (e.g. how do you interpret something like the Bible which was written by somebody to somebody else…and neither of those people are you). In the next part, i will explain this further and how we should approach interpreting communications that are completely external to somebody. It may well be impossible to place oneself within a totally foreign context, meaning that we may never be certain of the . But, there may be some functional method with which we can have some kind of working understanding that will remain fluid so that if more context becomes available, the interpretation can change.