I am fascinated by John Bennett's quote from Wittgenstein. Since I've
recently started commuting down into the suburbs - via train - I've noticed
the further the train gets from the City the less likelihood of signage of
any sort. As if the ideal suburb - except for street signs and numbers - is
essentially deaf. True there is signage in the shopping areas - but with the
"ideal" mall, language is kept to the minimal Corporate icons (Macys,
Emporium, etc.) The improvisatory, imaginative, noisy leaps that you get with
the signage on small, independent or family run shops (of old) becomes an
eccentric residue (almost a taboo.) Sometimes there is perhaps one block left
in the town (the old town) in which the old Irish bars and/or start up Asian
and Latino restaurants or "antique" shops represent character. I experience
the larger absence of language (signage) with a mix of regret and resentment
- as if I (a City person) have witlessly entered a linguistic morgue -
inside of which most of the bodies are covered.
This sense of a "deaf landscape" I find ironic because it is Silicon Valley -
the one that's ostensibly driving this globe's new informational landscape.
However, I am not trying to say it's uninteresting. I have to put my ear to
it in a much different way. I listen very closely to the language of my new
companion cyber-engineers, the ones laying the new "pipes" through which we
here (hear) "speak," the medium of which is constantly being transformed.
There - in that language, the current frenzy of it - I find myself in a state
of awe, totally mesmerized by the imaginations and the labyrinths afoot.
Whether all this activity will fertilize the growth of local speech and
literature - multiplying W's neighborhoods - or will it hasten the demise of
many, I'm not yet prepared to even guess. When an engineer speaks of
"multiple addresses located at different places in the memory," is it in
terms of differentiation and pluralism, or is the phrase only representative
of the same thing repeated again and again at those different locations
("addresses")?
Cheers,
Stephen Vincent
In a message dated 2/20/0 9:48:45 PM, [log in to unmask] writes:
<< Wittgenstein compared language to 'an ancient city: a maze of little
streets
and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from
various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with
straight regular streets and uniform houses.' Philosophical Investigations,
para 18 - but what now - suburbia?
>>
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