Yes, Doug, I've been collecting sigs for ages just for
fun. Now I'm getting to use (some of) them for even
more fun. I have a feeling, though, that people can
get bored with them and/or irritated by them. I hope
listees will tell me when that happens.
--- Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Interesting point, Candice.
>
> I guess what I'm always interested in is the way the
> 'I' is
> fictionalized (always, & perhaps already) by the act
> of writing it in.
> And split, or multiplied, too.
>
> Although I try to shy away from actually using it
> too much.
>
> You have been collecting sig quotes! I'm amazed you
> can keep offering
> so many delightful ones....
>
> Doug
> On 20-Feb-07, at 7:49 AM, MC Ward wrote:
>
> > I think the "I" is also implicit in "we." But
> what's
> > really interesting is the double duty borne by the
> > so-called "rhetorical you," where the self is
> being
> > critiqued more impersonally than the "I" could do.
> >
> > Candice
> >
> > "What is conceivable can happen too,"
> > Said Wittgenstein, who had not dreamt of you...
> > (William Empson)
> >
> >
> >
> > --- Christopher Walker <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> >> <snip>
> >> my autocratic (and hence totalitarian) poetics as
> >> opposed to your democratic
> >> poetics [Chris J]
> >> <snip>
> >>
> >> I'm puzzled by this, so better late than never, I
> >> suppose... If by
> >> 'democratic' you mean a poetics that is socially
> >> constructivist, more or
> >> less, then what is 'autocratic'? Presumably not
> the
> >> obverse: a poetics
> >> in which there are only transcendent truths. So
> is
> >> it something weaker,
> >> either a contradictory (all... v some...) or
> >> subcontrary (some... v
> >> some...) relationship?
> >>
> >> Anyway, here is something you said earlier:
> >>
> >> <snip>
> >> Well, as Frederick suggests, it [life?] is a move
> >> from the first person
> >> personal narrative to third person universal
> >> immanent critique [Chris J]
> >> <snip>
> >>
> >> That move from first to third sounds a bit like
> >> Piaget, for whom (via the
> >> transitional phase of egocentric speech, of self
> >> address) the inner speech
> >> of the child becomes the socialised speech of
> >> adults. Likewise Fred's
> >> observation (I rework it just a little) that
> >> *feeling* is to *I* as social
> >> and ethical entailments are to *s/he* and *they*.
> >> All narrative, or so it
> >> seems to me, is both ontologically subjective on
> the
> >> one hand and
> >> epistemologically objective on the other, with
> >> 'let's pretend' in the
> >> middle, as a sort of bridge between private and
> >> public thought, between
> >> Hume's *is* and his *ought*. But that is not, I
> >> think, a matter of the
> >> pronouns, or not of the pronouns per se.
> >>
> >> My own preference is for the social
> constructivism
> >> of Vygotsky. Here
> >> things go the other way, not from but _towards_
> the
> >> self, and where the
> >> alterity of egocentric speech is (audibly) a
> drawing
> >> of the social subject
> >> out of and from the world, a process of
> >> individuation up to the point at
> >> which 'shared apperception is complete and
> absolute'
> >> in the inner speech of
> >> the older child and of the adult.
> >>
> >> But there is, I think, a dilemma nonetheless.
> Should
> >> we (or do we, in fact)
> >> see ethics our entry upon the world, as our
> >> opportunity to talk about what
> >> other people do and/or ought to do, a sort of
> >> deontic imperium (more or less
> >> fiercely policed) in which the actors of whom we
> >> write or speak are of a
> >> different order of being rather as in US foreign
> >> policy US citizens are of
> >> one order of being and everyone else is of
> another?
> >> Or do we view ethics as
> >> our individuation, our resistance to what is
> >> pre-ordained, in us as in the
> >> world? If the latter, then there is indeed an
> >> immanent critique through the
> >> actions which we take and the discourses that we
> >> generate in becoming and
> >> ceasing to be (part) members of the collectives
> to
> >> which we (partly)
> >> belong(ed); history, in other words, is full of
> >> contradictions. If the
> >> former, then the idea of an immanent critique
> >> becomes a bit of a sham,
> >> because there will always be an area in our
> >> discourse as in our social
> >> behaviour that remains beyond critique rather as
> US
> >> foreign policy involves
> >> some sort of myth of full achievement about
> >> conditions back home.
> >>
> >> And so, having said all that, I come back to
> >> pronouns again:
> >>
> >> <snip>
> >> One of the big problems with moving from a first
> >> person lyric/narrative
> >> to third person narrative is the I that in the
> third
> >> person does not say
> >> I but is implied, especially when this involves
> >> dabbling in abject subject
> >> matter. [Chris J]
> >> <snip>
> >>
> >> Again the issue seems to me one of bridging, and
> of
> >> Wittgenstein's
> >> 'refinement' of language relative to the deed,
> >> rather than one of pronouns
> >> or of pronouns per se. So, in general, I don't
> see
> >> much distinction (other
> >> than in degrees of relative animicity) between an
> >> implied *I* and one that
> >> is fully explicit. Denature the language into a
> sort
> >> of articulate
> >> neutrality, on the other hand, and the implicit
> *I*
> >> (if it's there; it isn't
> >> always) is revealed standing at the boundary of
> the
> >> discourse as a sort of
> >> sovereign, both making the Law and standing above
> >> the Law. Which is
> >> interesting; the parallel is with God.
> >>
> >> As to abjection, one gets a hint of how 'the
> abject
> >> has only one quality of
> >> the object and that is being opposed to I' in,
> say,
> >> the semantic differences
> >> between 'I was unpopular', 'they wanted to see
> the
> >> back of me' and 'he
> >> wanted to see my back'. However, reductions in
> >> relative animicity of this
> >> sort are generally available whatever the
> narrative
> >> mode. And of course the
> >> linguistic transformation of animate human
> >> subjectivity into animals such as
> >> pigs, dogs and so forth, vectors of pollution or
> >> 'pieces' are all practical
> >> stages along a road that leads ultimately to
> >> extermination.
> >>
> >> One finds what is essentially the same
> syntactically
> >> ergative formulation at
> >> the beginning of *The Trial*, in which the
> >> exteriority of Josef K relative
> >> to what is happening to him (the same
> individuated
>
=== message truncated ===
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