Christopher, some very interesting comments, so many thanks.
At first I did think that some sort of bridge was needed between the
metaphysical set up of autocratic as diametrically opposite democratic,
but have instead thought that perhaps what is needed is a disjunctive
synthesis. This is a bit of a groan as I would have to now rethink
disjunctive synthesis, which I haven't yet done.
I agree that it is not a question of pronouns but also feel I need to
think this not as a bridge but again as a disjunction and to think free
indirect style/discourse in this way (which is not a question of
pronouns, of course.)
"My own preference is for the social constructivism of Vygotsky. Here
things go the other way, not from but _towards_ the self, "
This above I find is very much along the lines I am thinking. The idea
of a subject that comes after, which is why I can't think of fictional
characters as subjects but first as bodies as flesh and blood and nerves
and bio-chemistry etc etc which goes toward a finite subject which in a
sort of continuous line is being constantly interrupted and remade again
as subject. It is not Piaget but more so Silvan Tomkins which I take
this from. So affects as real flesh and blood and hence sensation as
flesh brings me into conflict with Deleuze, for starters. Vygotsky
interests me greatly but I have not had the chance to read more of his
writings, so far. The ethical and political problem then returns to the
autocratic / democratic opposition, as you outline and again I am at
least beginning to think that again this needs to be thought of as some
sort of disjunctive synthesis, maybe? I don't yet know, just a
suspicion, but disjunctive synthesis may need to be thought as
interruption?
I feel the above response is not adequate but it will do for now, I
guess.
On Mon, 2007-02-19 at 16:01 +0000, Christopher Walker 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 exteriority as that of
> the 'man from the country' relative to the Law in the parable of the
> doorkeeper later on) is first announced: 'Someone must have slandered Josef
> K' ('Jemand mußte Josef K. verleumdet haben'). But again it isn't the
> pronouns that are made to bear the load.
>
> CW
> _______________________________________________
>
> 'What's the point of having a language that everybody knows?'
> (Gypsy inhabitant of Barbaraville)
>
