Humpty Dumpty the Playful Agonist

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Terrance" <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
Cc: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Monday, June 09, 2003 1:42 PM
Subject: Re: Humpty Dumpty the Playful Agonist
>
>
> I'm not quite sure why deconstructive criticism tends to be so negative,
> but it does.
> That the New Criticism stressed the indisputable autonomy of the text
> and Deconstruction stressed the very absence of the text may have
> something to do with it (the history of criticism is often described as
> pendulum swings). But whatever the reason, poststructuralists critics
> have denied rather than affirmed, and when they have  attempted to find
> meaning (probably not the word to use but...), this "meaning" hinges
> tightly on the power of denial.
>
> There is no text.
>

What is done by deconstruction, the hierarchy of the binary oppositions is
reversed, turned upside down, and by this the whole metaphysical background
of the original hierarchy is being questioned. Every affirmative sentence
deconstructs itself if you reverse the hierarchy of the oppositions
involved. Deconstruction is especially busy with seriously vs ironical,
literally vs metaphorical, truth vs fiction. "Truths" are fictions whose
fictionality has been forgotten. What about mimesis (object vs
representation) then, claiming to represent the real object?

>
> On the other page, while the poet doesn't give us a poem he does give us
> an opportunity to Play and create.
>
> There is no answer.
>
> On the other cheek, we know something by knowing what it is not, what it
> differs from.
>

Yes, the signifier gets his identity through what it is not, namely the
significate it stands for.

>
>
> The method of Deconstruction is not Analysis, but Conflict.

Deconstruction is always two steps, reversal of the opposites *and* and a
general de-placement of the system by questioning the hierarchy of the
oppositions it relies upon.

>
> The phrase "does violence to the text" is curious one because of the
> ironic fact that the method of dismantling of systems of thought and
> concepts is violence.
>

But the systems aren't dismantled of thought and concept, the underlying
concepts are revealed. Deconstruction works within the system it seeks to
break up.

> Why is that Paul N. sets  thinking against laughing?
>

Well, maybe because if put into relation "thinking" seems to be claiming to
be the higher pole, while we all know that there may be contexts in which
the opposite could be true.

> As I've tried to suggest to Paul N., his method is not analysis, but
> opposition.
> When I suggested that he had recognized a problem on this List and tried
> to solve it he immediately corrected me, insisting that  he was not
> solving anything and that Analysis doesn't solve. He's quite correct.
> Analysis doesn't solve. It RE-solves or separates (something) into
> constituent parts. But deconstruction  re-solves by conflict. It's
> neo-Nietzschean and Freudian. And there is no way out.
>

I agree that it's neo-Nietzschean. The reversal of cause and effect. In
feeling pain we reverse the chronology of cause and effect because the pain,
effect of a needle in our ass (cause), is the cause for looking for what has
caused it. Thus the effect becomes the cause for our operation looking for
it.

> On the other foot, the Playfulness of deconstructionist explorations of
> texts (for example, opting for the use of one's own language versus the
> language of the text and the play metaphor upon metaphor) is quite
> liberating because of its commitment to the principle of creation--the
> critic as creator.
>

Structurally every word is a metaphor, because of the Saussurian
signifier-significate-thing and because of its smuggling of hidden meanings
and connotations.

The binary opposition of literally vs metaphorically can be reversed as
well. For the sake of communication that works things said literally only
have forgotten their metaphorical character.

> How do we know that Broling is a word and Brillig is not?
>
> Saussure would say that we do not perceive words as words but as
> differences between words. So, we perceive NET as different from MET,
> BET, GET, JET, LET, and so on and we attach meaning to that difference.
> NET is significant only inasmuch as it is **not** MET, BET, GET, and so
> on.
>
> So, difference for Saussure is a purely negative concept. It means: NOT
> the same, NOT identical. More importantly, a difference generally
> implies positive terms between which the difference is set up; but in
> language (Saussure insists, "In language there are ONLY Differences")
> there are "only differences without positive terms."
>

One can hardly disagree. Every thing only can be named and recognised
through its name, its unique code through which it can be separated from the
other, differently codified thing.

> Saussure doesn't stop at difference, however. MET may be different from
> MUT (M?T), but it is also different from BUS, WINDOW, SEXUALITY, DIRT,
> CUP, BUILDING and every other conceivable meaningful utterance.
> Everything is different from everything else.
>

But what Saussure is about that this conceivable meaningful utterance can
only be expressed through the difference between signifier and significate.
It's not important that everything is different from everything else but
that the code we use is different from what it stands for, while at the same
time receiving all his identity from the things it stands for, which itself
it is not. Meaning is, can only be displayed through difference.

> But what good is a truism like, everything is different from everything
> else? What does it tell us about language?
>

1. That we're unable to express anything without using differences, the
difference between signifier and significate is the basic character, the
main structural device of language. Every term is just a term, not the real
thing it stands for.

2. That we must be aware of propaganda. Whenever somebody claims to have
found the Truth (a religious or political fundamentalist, or seeker of
weapons-of-mass destruction in liberal democracies) we most likely only will
hear lies. Providence has chosen me said Hitler, taking for given that the
people believe that there's something like providence or a God. Which of
course is not true or as N. claimed: God is dead. He only meant that it's
worth reversing the hierarchy of God vs Man, God being the creator (cause)
and Man the creation (effect). But it's the effect, we, ourselves, that made
us asking for "who did this?" like we've been looking for the cause for our
pain in the ass. Thus we're ourselves are the cause for our search for God.
God is a human invention, a concept according to this view. All metaphysics
are mere concepts in this view. It's the absence of the answer that makes us
asking for it. As you've said recently, the state of mankind after the fall.

> This is where OPPOSITION is handy, footy, cheeky even.
>
> When we oppose MET to MUT (M?T) rather than any other absurdly unrelated
> utterance we are undeniably guided by a perception of a difference, but
> we are also guided by a perception of a relation; MET and MUT are alike
> in a way that does not apply to MET and WINDOW. This double perception
> of likeness and difference is no longer a difference but what Suassure
> calls Opposition. MET and WINDOW are different, but MET and MUT are
> Opposed because they both belong to the same system M-?-T.
>
> Difference is only the first step to Value via Opposition.
>
>
> Gotta run, Otto, thanks much.
>
> T