Yes Daniel

I also believe that you're quiet mad. Dude, there might be a Wittgenstein fan-club
somewhere on the net. I've joined this chat group to explore poetics for a specific
poetry project. You're keen on very European theories of language. Fair enough. At
uni I used to love drinking people like yourself under the table and telling'em to
stick their Logos up their... From memory, there was a sadly polite hostility
between the cultural theory students and creative writers. Then in the Honours year
sell-out good-for-nothing prose writers joined the theory kids ("creative non-
fiction") to get brownie-points, publications and grants, so me and other would-be
poets started a performance poetry troop. Basically, I'm not comfortable at all with
your logical deconstructive stance or whatever turns you on, and I find people like
you destructive to the ART (vs the criticism) of poetry. I'm out of this discussion.
May the Logos be with you.

Ali A

P.S. There was a movie about Wittgenstein a few years ago. Did you catch it?
Directed by Derek Jarman I think.

---- Original Message ----
From: [log in to unmask]
Date: Wed 2/14/01 7:24
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: statement

Are you having fun, Daniel? I'm inclined to Robin's "bemused horror": I
can't work out what you're talking about, largely, I suspect, because you
don't really know. You are not, er, very logical: especially in ignoring
that when "we ask what a word is", we are using language to ask what it
is.

I don't know how you can distinguish between "logical Grammar" and
"language" on the one hand and language as it is actually used; your
statement that there is no articulation except linguistic articulation is
outrageous, ask any animal, painter or baby. Have a look at a few Rodin
sculptures. Are you attempting to talk about the neurological structures
of the brain and how they affect language?? - such structures are hardly
immutable, as Darwin pointed out, though very interesting - at another
point you seem to be saying that the temporal nature of our existence,
that we do things one thing after another, is "logical grammar": but
really, you seem to be talking about articles of faith rather than
arguments.

The main point of value of Wittgenstein for me (and I do indeed find him
very interesting) is that he points out with acid clarity the _limits_ of
language and logic, which as he says in Tractatus, cover a very small
problem of existence. "The rest," he said famously, "must be passed over
in silence". Poetic disobedience for me lies in prodding that silence.

> We endow words with meaning when we read them, not the other way
>around.

Well, that was what I was saying.

Best

Alison