Tag Archives: meaning

Difference and Pluralism

This is a followup of sorts to a previous post, Against Exclusivism.

In David Tracy’s On Naming the Present, he follows Ricœur in arguing for a ‘second naiveté allied to a genuine openness to otherness and difference’. This is a call to pluralism with the alternative leading to a ‘Hobbesian state of war of all against all’.  Naiveté is exactly what it is, as this pluralism subjugates difference to identity so that difference itself is lost. Difference does not just exist; it exists outright and on its own (conceptual) merit. Deleuze argues early on (in Difference and Repetition) that being is difference. Tracy’s argument (and presumably Ricœur’s as well) rests on the philosophical framework that unites the concept of difference with the concept of distinction. In other words, it is a comparison of two different entities; in short, a comparison of identities. Deleuze’s philosophy of difference conceives of difference as something that exists prior to comparison and distinction (c.f. Levi Bryant). A call to pluralism must first conceive of difference in itself, as something intrinsic to an entity’s act of self-identification, as an ontological concept. Pluralism must be open to both simple distinction as well as difference as the ‘prior ground of distinction‘.

However, when this occurs, inter-religious dialogue (i.e. pluralism) itself becomes problematic. This is because openness to such dialogue requires a level of understanding that is not easily possible. Such level of understanding is based on the ability to relate distinctions to known concepts and identities. In other words, communicative understanding takes place within analogies at the contextual level, not within the words expressed at the textual/discursive level. Here is where the problematic of pluralism emerges. If other religious traditions are truly other, that is different, the comprehension at the contextual level is always flawed because it ultimately rests on a conceptual identification where difference is reduced to distinction. Historically, we can see this in the colonial period of religious studies where examples such as Western influences in India created Hinduism as a consolidated tradition, including the ‘trinitarian’ concept of Trimurti.* In the 1970s, Edward Said published Orientalism in which he argues that the Western representation and understanding of other cultures is flawed for reasons similar to what I have noted above. While many pluralists seem confident that we are able to move past these flaws, I take a more critical approach. Even contemporary postcolonial religious studies have kept these flaws. As Ian Almond recently wrote, ‘we have seen how the use [a religious tradition] is going to be put to automatically creates the identity it is going to have…The “otherness” control of [that tradition], like the volume control of any stereo or radio, can be turned up or down according to the required context’ (The New Orientalists, 195).

While pluralism may be possible, it seems clear that we have not yet been able to see other traditions as different. I believe this may be in part because inter-religious dialogue can only treat otherness as objects of apprehension. As an object of apprehension, difference is readily replaced with distinction as we attempt to relate to another tradition through our own identity. It is an implicit action that changes the dialogue into an excercise of relations (i.e. comparison and distinction). Perhaps a better avenue for such discourse is not to relate to other traditions but to discourse with them without apprehension. In other words, by following Blanchot’s remarks about reading and writing*, we can (re-)discover that comprehension occurs after the dialogue, after the discourse—not during. Understanding occurs after the event of communication.

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NB 1: cf. Susan Bayly, Caste, Society, and Politics in India: From the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age and David Smith, Hinduism and Modernity

NB 2: Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster

Which way? Which way?

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

Deleuze immediately makes clear the infinite regress of sense. Carroll’s work is insightful because it makes us confront “a synthesis of the heterogeneous; the serial form is necessarily realized in the simultaneity of at least two series” (36). the infinite regress of sense is itself a series, a series of multiple series that each inhere on each other–a synthesis of series. The two series operate different: one as signifier and the other as signified. The direct result of these two inhering on each other is a disequilibrium created by the excess of one in the other. The signifier series manifests as an occupant without a place, a supernumerary object in the signified series. This signified creates an empty place within the signifier. The excess of each series manifests as both esoteric and exoteric words in paradoxical forms in which each exists “only through the relations they maintain with one another” (50).

magnetThese relations, then, create singularities–that is, points of turning, inflections, tears, fusion, etc. Each of these “correspond to each one of the series of a structure” and is “the source of a series extending in a determined direction right up to the vicinity of another singularity” (52-3). Visually, these singularities create sets of divergent and convergent lines like that of a magnet.  Singularities form ideal events. With regards to time, events in their purest forms are never actualities. They are only tales and stories, events which are about to happen and those which have just happened. They are never in the present, never happening.

The disequilibrium of sense, which Deleuze points to through the various dualities (e.g. empty square and supernumerary object), is always in relation to itself as the paradox of nonsense (66). Nonsense, however, is not the lack of sense. The relation between sense and nonsense is not simply a copy of that between true and false. Instead, there is an original relation between the two. Sense is always produced, an effect of the relation between the signifier and signified. The paradox of sense is that nonsense is also present within sense and within the event of signification. Nonsense must be understood as being opposed to the abscense of sense because it produces sense in excess.

Sense should not be confused with “good sense.” “Good sense” always come second to sense as it presupposes a distrubution of sense. It, like the arrow of time, determines the direction which sense runs. The paradox of sense, though, is that it goes both directions simultaneously. Common sense identifies the objects within a language. Yet in Alice, identity is completely lost. The paradox is this reversal of both good sense and common sense. Alice discovers through the looking glass that common sense has long disappeared. Yet, at this very point where language itself seems impossible, “having no subject which expresses or manifests itself in it, no object to denote, no classes and no properties to signify according to a fixed order,” that the gift of meaning occurs before all good and common sense (79). With the passion of this paradox, language reaches the height of its power. The two directions of sense, of becoming-mad, are represented in by Carroll’s doubles. The pair of the Mad Hatter and the March Hare each live in one direction, the two inseparable from one another. Each direction segments itself to “the point that both are found in either” (79). The Hatter and Hare killed the present which survives only in the Dormouse. The present subsists only as the abstract moment, infinitely subdivisible into past and future. The maifestation of sense is always a fragile one within and without the abstract moment of the present.

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.”

Post-whatever

This is part 2 of 4 in the Language & Interpretation series

The structuralists (see “Language”) were quickly followed by what became known as the post-structuralists. They saw many of the problems inherent to and sought to find a better way to conceptualize .

Lacan

first saw the problem of seeing language as purely sound waves. His most famous example is that of the restroom door. Suppose a boy and a girl were on a train approaching a train station. When they both see the restroom doors, the boy may say “we’re at the boy’s room.” The girl, finding this wrong, would suggest “no, we are at the girl’s.” The truth is, though, they were at both. The problem is that the two doors (each a signified) were identical except for the placard above them (signifier). Lacan then suggests that the signifier enters in the signified to form the sign. Without that signifier, it would be impossible to determine which door leads to which restroom.

Derrida

Later philosophers would suggest that language is primarily a written form, but they were quickly dismissed upon discovering that many undeveloped cultures do not have a written language. In , we find an idea that language is both written and spoken. His famous example is that of differance. In French, difference and are pronounced exactly the same. Difference is a “real” word that translates as “difference” (amazing!), yet differance is one Derrida coined. As Derrida said, differance “is not: it has neither existence nor essence” (Differance, 111). It comes from primarily two other words defer (meaning “to put off”) and differ (”to be unlike”) while using a gerundive ending to place the word between active and passive voice. The basic reasoning for this term was to suggest that language is in flux as a fluid object. The idea of a clear, stable meaning (which was found in the structuralists) was rejected. The meaning of a word could only be described by using other words. In other words, language is self-referential.

Blanchot

The self-referential idea of language enters into what becomes the postmodern discourse and becomes a key point. Yet, it is Maurice who kills any possible obsession with language. In his The Writing of the Disaster, Blanchot points out that language is unable to do some very important things as it encounters its own walls. Blanchot speaks of the disaster (well, more of dis-aster, coming from the etymology of the word used to imply cataclysmic events such as a star falling) as being the limits of language. Language is unable to fully grasp the dis-aster. Blanchot ultimately concludes that language is highly over-rated.

Meaning

Here is the primary activity of language, yet it is not simply some kind of concrete definition. Some languages make a distinction between the of a word (i.e. how does the dictionary define it?) and the sense of a word (i.e. how is it used in its current context?). By making this distinction, we can account for idiomatic expressions. “Kick the bucket” is no longer bound to one’s foot striking a bucket but can be extended to imply one’s death. This will be important when trying to interpret texts as it requires a context. This sentiment can be found in Derrida’s statement that “there is nothing outside the text.” There is so much relevant to a given text that the interpretation requires but yet this context is so often excluded on the basis of it being irrelevant. When we get to the problem of hermeneutics, we will see that the context of a given text includes all of history coming up to that point and the culture in which it was written. An informed interpretation of the book of Daniel may not be the “common sense” literal reading of it.