Words Before Things

[cbertsch]

Many of the problems that confront the study of culture -- or, to speak more narrowly, the discipline of cultural studies -- can be solved by retrieving the mental note that falls onto the floor when the wind we generate in walking towards particular works pries it loose from the spot to which we had carelessly affixed it. Edges torn, the trace of a footprint covering the text, it reads, "In the end, we begin with words." The struggle to define what a work is or isn't is fueled by a fantasy of being in which we forget that to be is inevitably "to be."

William James presents a puzzle. There's a squirrel in a tree. Trying to get a look, a man circles below. But no matter how fast he moves in one direction, the squirrel moves faster in the other, denying him what he seeks. "The resultant metaphysical problem now is this: Does the man go around the squirrel or not? He goes around the tree, sure enough, and the squirrel is on the tree; but does he go round the squirrel?" Some say, "Yes;" others, "No." The answer to this seemingly intractable dispute, James goes on to argue, "depends on what you practically mean by going around the squirrel." Words will never fall away to reveal a truth that transcends them.

We find ourselves in the midst of the same dilemma. You argue that "punk" is x. I argue that "punk" is y. We exhaust ourselves trying to come up with examples to prove our points. But the only truth of the matter is that "punk," like "truth" and "matter," was a word before we convinced ourselves it is a thing. And, yes, even "word" is a word, so there really is no way out. To study culture without studying the way we apprehend it through language, is to circle James's tree in search of that squirrel we can never hope to see without obstruction.

Comments

[hollsterhambone.livejournal.com]

Or how language limits our ability to express our apprehensions about culture.

It irritates me that there is nothing before the word or Word or whatever. I want to indulge in the fantasy that there is something. But it's so dangerous!

I like how these paragraphs circle back to emphasize the point you made (in the middle) using the James example (about circling around).

[celebrian-3.livejournal.com]

this reminds me, though only vaguely, of the heisenberg principle. again, more words to understand the things that are the things they are. and i just keep throwing more and more words at it. ha ha.

listen to me shut up now.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_luaineach/]

Put me in the catagory of having always thought "punk" meant that you didn't even remotely worry about what "punk" meant. And that someone saying "punk is ..." wasn't punk enough for me. ;)

On a different note, William James makes me squiggly. I just love him.

I'm not convinced

[jsterne.livejournal.com]

though I do oh so love the squirrel quote and plan to add it to my compendium of quotes about squirrels.

Sure, language can never be truly indicative, but I don't think it follows that being is inevitably "being." James' contemporary Peirce treated language as a special case of signification, which is at least as plausible as the more fashionable Saussurean version of semiotics. We can dwell and be outside of language--music, architecture, pottery, sport and fashion all have extralinguistic experiential dimensions. What we can't do is represent that experience very well in words. Which is why, I imagine, people have so much difficulty with and anguish over "punk."

Best,
--J

Smash Your Head on the Punk Rock

[grandissimus.livejournal.com]

I've just been reading Manuel De Landa's latest "intervention" (Hot damn! How I like to use that word!) entitled, _A New Philosophy of Society_. His arguments turn on what he calls "the linguisticality of phenomena," which I find compelling, because one of contemporary critical theory's perennial shortcomings is, I think, its frequently mistaking epistemological problems for ontological ones. "The linguisticality of phenomena" (unwieldy, I know), while perhaps offers no definite resolutions, perhaps draws the problematics a bit finer.

I dunno. Just wanted to pass that along.