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Date: Thu, 14 Aug 1997 12:07:39 GMT
From: JAMES DAVID CLARK ALLISON <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Integrating Writing and Place
Re a recent posting to the 'british-poets' list I feel compelled to
make the observation that though self and 'place' may be integral,
there are a great diversity of ways of interpreting this problem,
which is one perhaps for hermeneutics (Heideggerian path-following,
or something akin to it).
For instance, is occupation of a place (leading to an assured
condition of being in one's element) actually co-extensive with, as
it were, co-opting it, in that, the saying goes, possession
constitutes nine-tenths of the law (I got here first, and I
can do what I want, right?).
By extension for we speaking subjects there is the further issue of
how language is 'occupied' (Silliman is good on this, and indeed I
think it's a main concern of the Langs - Bernstein really seems to
struggle with Olson in 'Content's Dream' before seeming to want to
relinquish the unwieldy sense of sheer overload in trying to take
on the whole conceptual apparatus).
Does naming a tree on the mundane level, for
instance, 'tree' vs, say, 'arbre' make the perceived *specific*
object in substance either of these things, or is the
language-to-object attribution simply arbitrary, as Saussure thought,
or a kind of rhetorical 'dress', as Johnson did?
I think there is more than enough rope for self-deception here -
I tend to defer to a kind of pragmatic 'If the word fits, use it, but
don't assume it's going to suffice in every instance', more like the
bricks/straw/thatching that go into building a house than the earth
this resides on.
As Marshall McLuhan asked in the wonderful queuing scene from "Annie
Hall", could it possibly be that the fallacy is wrong? Or who's
zooming who? (Aretha Franklin)
If someone's got a definitive answer I'd be curious to hear about it.
Regards
Clark Allison
Offline in Aberdeen
[currently contactable at [log in to unmask]
until I know otherwise]
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