Thoroughly postmodern Pynchon

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

Thomas Eckhardt schrieb:

> Doug Millison wrote:
>
> > Only if you start with the assumption that one word in a given text =
> > infinite number of signifiers.  If that's how it's defined, no problem. The
> > definition that was offered earlier, "the signifier, to
> > put it simply, is the word, and the signified is the thing or idea it
> > represents" seems to say something different.
>
> This seems to be the difference between structuralism and post-structuralism.
> Structuralism says: One signifier, one signified (mental concept), the
>  relation
> between the two is fixed and arbitrary. Post-structuralism, up to a certain
> point IMO correctly, states that the relation between signifier and signified
>  is
> not fixed, that instead, sorry, I am only familiar with the cute German
>  version,
> "Der Signifikant gleitet unter dem Signifikaten", which would translate as
> something like "The signified is slipping/gliding under the signifier", and
> which sounds like a sexual innuendo in German, especially given Lacan's
> identification of the signifier with the phallus, and during the eighties was
> the subject of countless dumb jokes I admit to have committed in the presence
>  of
> post-structuralists. Nevertheless, taken as a theoretical statement about
> language, it is quite correct, methinks. But the signified certainly does not
> have an indefinite number of options of where to slip to, if that does make
>  any
> sense - possibilities are not, as Lou Reed used to sing back in those days
>  when
> he was still capable of singing, "endless".
>
> In any case, I just wrote this post to have an opportunity to quote from the
> Magnetic Fields' song "The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure":
>
> I am just a great composer
> and not a violent man
> but I lost my composure
> and I shot Ferdinand
> crying it's well and kosher to say you don't understand
> but this is for Holland-Dozier-Holland.
> His last words were:
> We don't know anything,
> you don't know anything
> I don't know anything about love
> But we are nothing,
> you are nothing
> I am nothing without love.
>
> Of course, one has to listen to the music...
>
> Thomas
>


                              now i can see that my luhmannian intervention did 
                              not fully fit into the debate. luhmann's concepts 
                              of "meaning" as well as of "understanding" stand 
                              in the hermeneutical and especially 
                              phenomenological tradition of german social 
                              theory; recently there's been a lot of research on 
                              this issue (see, for example, alois hahn: "die    
                              systemtheorie wilhelm diltheys", in: berliner 
                              journal für soziologie 1999, heft 1, pp. 5-24). in 
                              context of this theoretical framework, the        
                              possibilities  a r e  "endless" since it is       
                              (correctly, imo)assumed that in the overall       
                              universe of meaning, we're - when we think or     
                              communicate -  a l w a y s  in and never out of,  
                              you can (in principle, not always in fact) get    
                              from one to any other point ... & so luhmann (cf. 
                              soziale systeme [1984], p. 94) writes: "mit
                              j e d e m  sinn, mit  b e l i e b i g e m  sinn 
                              wird unfassbar hohe komplexität (weltkomplexität) 
                              appräsentiert und für die operationen psychischer 
                              bzw. sozialer systeme verfügbar gehalten". 
                              roughly: with  e a c h  meaning, with a n y  
                              meaning unbearably high complexity (world 
                              complexity) gets presented available for the use 
                              by psychic or social systems." this surplus of 
                              hyper-complex references then, of course, has to 
                              be reduced in the concrete single operations to   
                              maintain the psychic and social systems' 
                              self-referentiality.

                              kai (who hopes to find some time on the weekend to 
                              post something on luhmann's rather complicated 
                              relation to pomo) ps: believe it or not, in 10 or 
                              15 years luhmann will be the latest intellectual 
                              fashion in the us! so you better do like dave 
                              monroe and start preparing for it right now. 
                              "social systems", definitely the magnum opus, is 
                              not always simple. a better start might be        
                              "ecological communication" which is shorter and   
                              easy to read. well, "easy" compared to other books 
                              by old nick ...