MDDM World-as-text

[jbor]

As soon as a person writes or says or thinks or senses (or paints or dances
or whatever other form of expression) that "the world is this or that", he
or she is creating a text, a representation or interpretation, of the world.

The argument is not that the world doesn't exist. And "textual" isn't meant
as a synonym for "verbal".

I would have thought the idea of the world-as-text was quite a familiar one
to most Westerners:

En arche en ho logos, kai ho logos en pros ton theon, kai theos en ho logos.
 
"In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was
God."

http://urizen1.home.mindspring.com/pageart/ancient.jpg

It's the parochial and arrogant belief that any single perception/
representation/"text" of the world is the one and only "truth", which
postmodernism, and Pynchon, are contesting by invoking and/or endorsing this
idea of the world-as-text.

best


> Even sense -- visual, aural, touch, taste, -- perceptions that are
> communicated and understood without verbalization?   Beyond the purely
> sensual, there's a broad range of subjective experience that is never
> translated into words (emotional, spiritual).  I agree it is a common
> experience people to interpret various sorts of sensations, feelings,
> thoughts, experiences, objects, physical realities, smells, sounds,
> memories, etc. of all sorts in verbal formulations, but "always textual"
> claims a totality of experience I don't think you can successfully defend.


Terrance wrote:

> I can't quite get this idea of the
> world-as-text. 
> Can't remember where this idea comes from. Roland Barthes uses this idea
> in the text Otto cited and I think it's a pretty common idea floating
> around college campuses these days.