Humpty Dumpty

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Terrance" <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
Cc: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sunday, June 08, 2003 3:43 AM
Subject: Re: Humpty Dumpty
>
>
> > >
> > > Otto wrote:
> > > >
> > > > No, the world is not a text. The world is chaotic energy in
different
> > forms.> > > But you and I can only speak about the world in the form of
some text,
> > ie> > > some kind of representation.
>
>
> > >
> > > And when my apprentice is sitting on his ass with his thumb in his
mouth
> > > and I'm up on a ladder, a mouth full of nails, and I kick a rung so as
> > > to cause the mud to be loosened from the soles of my boots onto his
> > > daydreaming skull is that chaotic energy in  different form (the
world)
> > > or my speaking about the world in which I want my apprentice to get
off
> > > his ass and get me another piece of lumber?
>
>
> >
> > Depends on the apprentice how he interprets it. Does he get the message
or
> > not?
> >
> > Otto
>
> OK, let's say, yes. He gets the message. He gets the piece of lumber.
>
> But how did he know that  the mud loosened from my boots onto his skull
> was a message instructing him to get off his ass and get me a piece of
> lumber? How does my apprentice know  "mud" as message and "mud" as
> merely mud?
>

Learning to interpret the environment is essential to survive. Even a
paramecium in a puddle will try to get away if the medium it is in is
contaminated by some mud (oil, dogshit) loosened from your boots. It gets a
different message from the same signifier than the apprentice. His
perception gets attracked by the fact that there's something coming out of
the sky. This is a change in his environment and he immediately,
involuntarily, automatically starts to interpret because his sensory
apparatus has learned to do so from a certain moment in his mother's womb,
maybe when she had drunk some alcohol or took some pills, and in this case
he would have been in a pretty similar situation as the paramecium.

> Or, how do we know that "broiling" is a word and "brillig" is not?
>

Because we've learned it. You as a native speaker of English from your
parents, siblings etc., I as a foreign speaker at school. The first is in my
"stock" of English and the second is not. It's missing. It's negative
quality of not being there where it should be to make sense gives me the
information.

> Why have theorists appropriating S's idea that we do not perceive words
> as words but as differences between words?
>

Because it is the truth. Language won't work without the binary opposition
between signifier and significate. Like the frige won't work without the
binaries of electric current. Or the green moroccan won't work without the
difference between transmitter and receptor. I wonder what's so difficult
about this.

> Are they attracted to negative thinking?
>

Wrong question, there's nothing negative about it.

> Negative Liberties in the works of Morrison and Pynchon and so on?
>

That has nothing to do with negative thinking. Why does "Beloved" start
with: "124 was spiteful" -- Morrison chose this string of signifiers "124"
to tell that the third child isn't there. It's the third child that the
story is about. The story will most likely be to tell us why the third child
is missing. Is that negative thinking when I got information out of what is
missing? I don't think so. It's master storytelling to get it managed
putting in the first sentence already what the story following will be
about. Like "A sceaming comes across the sky." Or even in the title of the
book. Being a apprentice of lit-crit my sensory apparatus immediately is
alerted when I start reading a book. "Pale Fire" sounds good to me. I'm
curious. Is that negative? I guess the next one should be "Pattern
Recognition."

> Difference in Saussure is a purely negative concept. Tit is not tat. It
> is not top, tet, set, wet, net, met, metempsychosis or any other
> meaningful utterance.
>

What is negative? I don't understand the above. Can you explain in plane
words, please?

> So what?
>
> Difference really doesn't tell us a hell of a lot.
>

Difference tells us everything. The D. between God and the devil, heaven and
hell, day and night, earth and sky, man and woman, cab and bicycle
(bicyclists are the natural enemies of cabdrivers). But between black and
white there's the whole rainbow-spectrum of colours.

> We need to consider it with its counterpart, Opposition.
>

Of course, that's at the heart of every perception. If we don't learn to
differentiate between what's good or bad for us we're run over by the next
cab if we cross the road like a crazy chicken.

> When we chose to oppose mat to met we are guided by a perception of
> difference (m?t), but we are also guided by a perception of a relation:
> mat and met are alike in a way that does not apply to met and
> metempsychosis.
>
>
> Is this making sense?
>

No. What's got metempsychosis (in the fourth chapter of "Ulysses" -the
Calypso-chapter- Molly asks Leopold what the word means) -- Seelenwanderung
in German -- to do with (m?t);  the word Molly doesn't know has a lot more
signifiers (letters) and he's at first unable to explain the concept
expressed through this string of letters to her in plane simple words:

--Tell us in plain words."
(...)--Some people believe, he said, that we go on living in another body
after death, that we lived before. They call it reincarnation. That we
all lived before on the earth thousands of years ago or some other
planet. They say we have forgotten it. Some say they remember their past
lives.
(...)
--Metempsychosis, he said, is what the ancient Greeks called it. They
used to believe you could be changed into an animal or a tree, for
instance. What they called nymphs, for example.

Otto