Alternate Perceptions Magazine, April 2022
MAY 2022 SEGMENT: #2: FROM IT manuscript
by: James Edward Carlos
Thwarting.
Holding on to conditional behavior moving toward stereotyping, our objective nature is given memory as a means to augment the status quo or, rather by comparison, to stalemate the potential of expansion. Change is often frightening. Nonetheless, memory is inherently inclusive as dream language suggests (through imagery and metaphor finding rhythms with fragments and juxtapositions of past related events) while being introduced to and propelled into our future. The inclusive sense of our natures is significant in terms of spirituality, rather than exclusive selectivity. In terms of what is being recalled, if adhering to a concept alone as object-in-standing, the expansive quality is curtailed.
Memory is an internal mechanism that integrates the artificial separations that language via grammar will invent and invert. As a mental process the objective symptom may act as a principle or tenet and lead, therein, to the typecasting of experiences codified which determine such objective instances. A cultural mindset often becomes a desire, such as desiring group-acceptance (cohesiveness) over substance and any real ascendency of meaning.
Despite the intimation of freedom in remembering and recognizing past experiences as augmentations to knowledge, we often readily succumb to constant stereotyping that bombards our concepts and initiates behavior that seems to systematize us, and we respond robotically. Then we are allowing ourselves to remain in a dead-end, mainly I believe, because of what is conceived as threats and fears possibly in facing new situations or in being excluded, i.e., such emotional reactions act by way of retributions and retaliatory measures seemingly through what becomes a related anger and defiance. Outside the periphery of such adherence to a conceptual mode of reaction, a mood may dominate what otherwise could be brilliance because such emotional bondage tends to retain the intensity but otherwise thwarts the luminosity of the intricate, complex, magnificent brain that maneuvers through our bodies via our central nervous system. Thus in this human condition and conditioning we declare some dimension of rationalizing for remaining and hiding in our groups. Regardless of political, national, or societal associations that benefit a wider public and regardless of our defenses and defenders of borders as in, for example, religious isms, political absurdities, corporate greed, and the self-sustaining society we get caught up in fear. We express our fears frequently as anger and hatred of the/an other. The moods maintain themselves fencing off others or events that might change the objective stance of the moods. To our detriment we choose to maintain the barriers that keep our capacities sustained at a diminished level much too often. We humans seem to fear freedom despite acclaiming, cherishing, the notion of being free.
To look sideways at haunting language and to assess what is found in those fleeting shadows out of the corner of the eye and the distancing range of the ear, the landscape of grammar suggests that we react to our verbal abstractions (what all language is) even as we invent and reinvent these abstractions. Subtly shifting and broadening a given meaning, we stretch their meaning from the rules and regulations proposed (often ignored) by various linguists and grammarians.
The difficulty appears to be in the character of transcendence.
In this essay the pronoun it is reviewed through some examples of language variations in useage; the effort is to comprehend implications of word quality in the depiction, as an abstraction, as poetic demarcation as with poet Moore and others, and as an attempt toward the purpose of objectivity (and thus of ownership and even deification). Recognizing a tendency toward stereotyping and/or thus shortcutting enables us to discern what is implicit but part of an ultimate variant direction.
Hence, I explore the English pronoun, it, through a range of juxtaposed forms.
Enter The Philosophers. Knights Exemplar.
To exemplify a rather ongoing philosophical usage of pronoun it, we note the following two paragraphs by Ernest Cassirer in The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (Volume 2: Mythical Thought, translated by Ralph Manheim). The initial paragraph of the next two is a quote from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel utilized by Cassirer that makes rather extensive use of the pronoun, whereas the second paragraph is Cassirer’s own writing. This second paragraph is then repeated with additional commentary concerning what I speculate are appropriate pronoun references. After this I offer a rephrasing for, hopefully, better understanding when allaying pronouns as originally slanted as an affirmation of the noun stated. In this section, I explore such impositions regarding it. (In such, the extensive demarcation of this pronoun seems clearly to obfuscate what is being written and perhaps more deeply intended).
Cassirer, like Hegel, utilizes it and itself to qualify appreciable ideas; I employ the same sentences, however, to analyze the implications of their use of pronoun and what it qualifies. By eventually restating each sentence without these particular pronouns I offer a version, rephrasing said passages utilized for this thought-experimentation, with reference to the implied significance and meaning. In a way I am gaming, but hoping the game ultimately is instructive as to the provocative, invocative, and evocative nature of language as frequently used by philosophers, poets, and others, and why the pronoun takes on the intensive relevancy proffered. The following examining of pronoun usage by both Cassirer and Hegel are a preparation for the then following section of this paper introducing what I consider to be an equally permissive usage of the pronoun it in phenomenologist Michel Foucault’s writing. Following, thereafter, are the implications of It based on the philosopher Foucault’s usage, as preparing us for another example but in religious rather than as a phenomenological idiom. “The Crown of Light--Keter”-- Trinitarian apex is explicated in The Zohar while referencing Itself, Himself, and Herself as symbolic pronoun manifestations of Light, Wisdom, and Understanding. In this case, rather extraordinarily, the pronouns assume an identity as noun, indeed as Proper Noun. Such references suggest how frequently the pronoun is used as a catch-all “phrase” for a variety of implications and cultivated as integral to a depth of meanings. The Cassirer quotes from Hegel’s philosophy of the spirit express Hegel’s concern for science. Considering how it-its-itself are utilized in the Hegel quote, as if to abridge one factoring to another immediately following my own interjection as stated, and from within the sentence I thereby assuage an implied reference for each pronoun it-usage. In this process, then, I present the implication as an italicized parenthesis. Those original sentences are darkened in the paragraph of the quoted material; additionally, the Hegelian sentencing is throughout fragmented into component parts thereby emphasizing the it pronoun. Although this effort is an attempt to elucidate implications of the usage, I discover that an element of obscurity persists in this particular passage.
First the original Hegelian thought with nine it-based pronouns:
Science must unite such an element of the unreal with itself, or rather show that there is such an element and how it pertains to purpose which for the present is only an inner something, not spirit but only spiritual substance. This thing in itself must manifest itself and become ‘for itself,’ which means simply that self-consciousness must equate it with itself. Knowledge as it is at first or spirit in its immediacy is the spirit, less the sensory consciousness.
Then, the intruding orientation as to a possible explication, with parenthetical inclusions by myself:
Science must unite such an element of the unreal with itself, or rather show that there is such an element and how it” ... (i.e., the element of the unreal) ... pertains to science. For in default of such reality science is a mere content as such, a purpose which for the present is only an inner something, not spirit but only spiritual substance. ...This thing in itself ... (i.e., an object-based connotation referencing “this thing” and moving back to the preceding sentence we confer that “itself” as “thing” further infers the “inner something” that is only ((i.e., merely, by implication)) spiritual substance and not spirit per se) ... must manifest itself ... i.e., (again, this double reference inferring the spiritual substance) and become ‘for itself,’ (i.e., repetitive implication of the spiritual substance) ... which means simply that self-consciousness must equate it with itself. ... (i.e., this double equation of it with itself again infers the inner something of a spiritual manifesting that is deigned as refuting the premise of “spirit;” thus this modification, like “science” infers both part and whole of a spirituality inferential to science at some level). Knowledge as it ... (i.e., an implicit knowledge containing the various aspects of spirit) is at first or spirit in its (i.e., spirit interiorized in that presumed knowledge as distinguished from what follows, i.e., sensory consciousness being further distinguished from the animating spirit) immediacy is the spirit, less the sensory consciousness.
(p. xvi. Cassirer’s quotes from Hegel’s Phänomenologie des Geistes, “Preface,” The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Ernst Cassirer). (Note: With the parenthetical inserts; I began the shift from the version of it-used short-cutting thereby in Hegel’s writing, and shift into what might be an unstated but intended meaning thereof. See Cassirer’s Introduction thereof).
We note the convolution involved and a philosophical obscurity when the pronoun refers to abstractions that precede the extended thought, which in this case the nouns inferred act as a continual shifting of metaphors somewhat undefined. Elucidation insists on caution, however, about the pronoun-noun enterprise. When an equation is inferred through repetition, therein observed when retracing the use of it and itself, an encompassing occurs throughout the examples thus involving several intimations including science and spiritual intimations whose digressions for Hegel, then, incorporate the unreal element within science, an inner something, and the spiritual substance as distinguished from spirit.
Regarding, then, Cassirer’s own words as part of a paragraph that is about three pages in length as published, the thirteen sentences in this excerpt are below numbered in each version of the same quote to expedite the concerns and considerations of the paragraph and the use of the English pronoun, it, acting comparatively. In this first citing, thereby, only the numbers are added to the excerpt. 1). Modern critical epistemology, the analysis of the laws and principles of knowledge, has detached itself more and more resolutely from the assumptions both of metaphysics and of psychologism. 2). The struggle between psychologism and pure logic in this field seems today to have been finally decided, and we may venture to predict that it will never recur in the same form. 3). But what is true of logic is no less true of all independent forms and all original functions of the human spirit. 4). The determination of their pure content, of what they signify and are, is independent of the question of their empirical genesis and its psychological conditions. 5). We can and must inquire in a purely objective sense into the substance of science, into the content and principles of its truth, without reflecting upon the temporal order in which the particular truth and insights are manifested to the empirical consciousness, and the same problem recurs for all forms of cultural life. 6). We can never do away with the question of their essence by transforming it into an empirical, genetic question. 7). For art and myth as well as cognition the assumption of such a unity of essence implies the assumption of general laws of consciousness which determine all particular formation. 8). In the critical view we obtain the unity of nature only by injecting it into the phenomena; we do not deduce the unity of logical form from the particular phenomenon, but rather represent and create though them. 9). And the same is true of the unity of culture and of each of its original forms. 10). It is not enough to demonstrate it empirically through the phenomena; we must explain it through the unity of a specific “structural form” of the spirit. 11). Here again, as in its approach to knowledge, critical analysis stands between metaphysical deduction and psychological induction. 12). Like the latter, it must always start from the given, from the empirically established facts of the cultural consciousness; but it cannot stop at these mere data. 13). From the reality of the fact it must inquire back into the conditions of its possibility.
(p. 11,” Introduction,” The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Cassirer).
In the following these same thirteen sentences are repeated (separately) as part of our examination of the implications thereof the resonances that the pronoun produces and to examine the question of what noun is thus modified by that pronoun. My commentary is, again as above in the Hegel quote, in italicized parentheses while I retain the double-spacing of the original, the quote is analyzed as to some integral suggestions in this study...
1). “Modern critical epistemology, the analysis of the laws and principles of knowledge, has detached {itself} more and more resolutely from the assumptions both of metaphysics and of psychologism.” (I have removed “Itself” after “detached”; in this instance the pronoun is unnecessary in that modern critical epistemology is the subject but the pronoun when included suggests that the removal of epistemology from the assumptions of metaphysics and psychologism is an interior mechanism based on knowledgeable assumptions within epistemology).
2). “The struggle between psychologism and pure logic in this field seems today to have been finally decided, and we may venture to predict that it will never recur in the same form.” …and... 3). “But what is true of logic is no less true of all independent forms and all original functions of the human spirit.” (I conditionally retain “It” herein because “it” is confusing as to meaning and implication because of the various nouns to which “it” might relate. Note: The relationship could be one of the following: the word ”struggle” (the first noun in the sentence) references both “psychologism” and “logic,” but “field” may bear the notion of a widening of situation. And, “today” (the date of this edition/printing is 1957) while an implication exists in phrasing for decision and prediction, and form); the form of struggle appears as the relationship to “it” to an intended assumption of meaning. Looking to the original French version, the pronoun modifies the gender thereby suggesting the noun should be complimentary). ... The third sentence seems to affirm that it bears a relationship to the form, i.e., to the structure that the struggle takes.
4). “The determination of their pure content, of what they signify and are, is independent of the question of their empirical genesis and its psychological conditions.” (Commentary as to what precedes “its”: The plural “their” and subsequent plural ”they” connect a reader to the forms and functions taken by epistemological laws and principles in that relevant forms bear empirical structures further implying that an objective truth is rendered in the notion. ”It” infers genesis while lingering from the beginning of the sentence as to the possibility of “determination”).
5). “We can and must inquire in a purely objective sense into the substance of science, into the content and principles of its truth, without reflecting upon the temporal order in which the particular truth and insights are manifested to the empirical consciousness, and the same problem recurs for all forms of cultural life.” (Science’s truth is clearly the basis for the possessive form of “its.” That “problem” is continuing to be a concern, paralleling “struggle” about the implications of empirical consciousness. In the preceding sentence the assumption dances between “form” and the problem previously as to “struggle.” The matter of the issue precedes this additional thought, however, in the form of the struggle. Thereof, we leap back to previous sentences as to context for a perhaps wider implication.
With: 6). “We can never do away with the question of their essence by transforming it into an empirical, genetic question.”….and... 7). “For art and myth as well as cognition the assumption of such a unity of essence implies the assumption of general laws of consciousness which determine all particular formation.” (Contained thus is the “question” in “of their essence” isibleremanded in cultural forms that include art and myth; critical is the thought that in the “essence” of cultural forms an interiorizing consciousness is inferred by which the forms are subsequently determined and implicit to knowledge. Knowledge presumably is also one of those cultural forms).
With 8). ”In the critical view we obtain the unity of nature only by injecting it into the phenomena; we do not deduce the unity of logical form from the particular phenomenon, but rather represent and create though them.” (“It” in this instance stays close to the modifying base: i.e., the “unity” of nature. The term, “unity” will carry us on to a continuation of the thought in progress). 9). “And the same is true of the unity of culture and of each of its original forms.” (The presumption in this instance of the pronoun may imply that “unity” is the centralizing agent of any such cultural form, but as well, seemingly that this unity is part of nature ((derived from the sentence preceding)) and culture and that all such related forms share, individually, in that unity. The presumption in this carries the implication of the quantum theory of the observer affecting the nature because of the very nature of perception). 10). “It is not enough to demonstrate it empirically through the phenomena; we must explain it through the unity of a specific “structural form” of the spirit.” (The initial “it” herein this sentence implies a generic causal condition not immediately related to a particular noun, but to the over-all inquiry as of Cassirer’s philosophical investigation. The second “it” infers the matter of a demonstration of verification, and the third “it” qualifies the issue over all as well. The pronoun usage throughout this sentence is basically generic and implies an understanding of inclusion throughout the concern of the book thus far, i.e., if the following sentence serves us by indicating that the verification of the Hegel comment and Cassirer’s response lies in the ongoing “critical analysis”).
Finally, then: 11). “Here again, as in its approach to knowledge, critical analysis stands between metaphysical deduction and psychological induction.” (The possessive sense of the pronoun reasons with the broader spectrum of critical analysis). 12). “Like the latter, it must always start from the given, from the empirically established facts of the cultural consciousness; but it cannot stop at these mere data.” (The presumption is that “psychological induction” ((the “it”)) as differing from “metaphysical deduction” must start with an object to be rationalized as both empirical and as factual…but, this induction is to be based on the broad spectrum of cultural consciousness, and that the inquiry or critical analysis ((the second “it”)) must grasp that any conclusion is only a beginning of the inquiry at hand). 13). “From the reality of the fact it must inquire back into the conditions of its possibility.” (Critical analysis is inquiry, and once again “psychological induction” based on the objective nature of inquiry, must in effect question the origin of the question for what possibilities are abstractly demonstrated in the object as of “itself”). My sense of this usage of the pronoun is that in translation, at least, connotations tend to be a gathering together of various previous thoughts, but these tend to obscure the basic presumptions and assumptions of whatever is at stake--in this case an inquiry based on a scientific presumption of the verity of the object, at least initially. Throughout this excerpt is the connotation of an implication of inclusiveness through a catch-up and catch-all shortcutting of the abstract nature of the delivery. It is the scapegoat herein and the culprit as so aligned, and perhaps misaligned. An obscurity exists in the passing of the buck to yet earlier abstract possibilities from legitimate defining of nouns to the multiple possibilities inherent via usage of the pronoun (hereof); a rewrite on Hegel’s part (by a translator) may verify clarity as to the implication.
A definite reliance on a reader’s memory is required to keep with both the content as intended depth of connotation and the meaning as to the grammatical process in the unfolding of that content’s premise. This rewrite to follow may provocatively offer the substance without using “it” and alter the effect without a sense of the original author’s searching, seemingly, for meaning every time the various multiplying uses of it are evoked. Hence let us try this appraisal of Cassier’s thoughts, rewritten without the use of the distractive pronoun it:
{Modern critical epistemology, the analysis of the laws and principles of knowledge, has detached more and more resolutely from the assumptions both of metaphysics and of psychologism. The struggle between psychologism and pure logic in this field of epistemology seems to have been finally decided, and we may venture to predict that this struggle will never recur in the same form. But what is true of logic is no less true of all independent forms and all original functions of the human spirit. The determination of their pure content, of what they signify and are, is independent of the question of their empirical genesis and the psychological conditions as to the struggle between such significations. We can and must inquire in a purely objective sense into the substance of science, into the content and principles of truth thereby without reflecting upon the temporal order in which the particular truth and insights are manifested to the empirical consciousness, realizing that the same problem recurs for all forms of cultural life} I inject here, that the advances made by the sciences have stirred up the implications in the meaning of forms which each philosopher, Hegel and Cassirer, in their reflections have to acknowledge; in the exchange of their thinking processes is the realization that this reflecting will alter, must alter, any resolutions sought in each field of intellectual endeavor, and this conflict at that moment in time, in their own inquiries, the given premises to date now face a new form on any such resolution. To continue, then:
{We can never do away with the question of their essence, that of the psychological inferences of the forms of cultural life by transforming that essence into an empirical, genetic question. For art and myth as well as cognition the assumption of such a unity of essence implies the assumption of general laws of consciousness which determine all particular formations. In the critical view we obtain the unity of nature only by injecting the nature of consciousness into the phenomena; we do not deduce the unity of logical form from the particular phenomenon, but rather we represent and create though their unity as given. And the same is true of the unity of culture with each of the original forms. With demonstrating empirically through the phenomena, we must explain the form through the unity of a specific “structural form” of the spirit. {Yet, here again, if we defer to the division of the premises and their variances in our approach to knowledge, critical analysis will stand between metaphysical deduction and psychological induction. Like the former tendency to dualism, however, the mannerisms of the metaphysical and psychologism must, together, always start from the given, from the empirically established facts of the cultural consciousness; our approach, however, cannot stop at these mere data. From the reality of the phenomenological fact our inquiry must see into the possible conditions of the empirical form of that original and subjectively augmented object}.
Admittedly I present these paragraphs with theoretically based assumptions garnered from reading the original in the context of the larger discussion that Hegel and Cassirer have presented. My approach thereby is to be inclusive of what is not herein presented, and attempt to do justice to the coherence of the larger thought. From this point, we will examine a similar usage and over-usage of the pronoun it in the writing of phenomenologist Michel Foucault.
***
IT:
PART ONE:
Foucault’s Pronoun: The Expressed Word.
A reflection on Michel Foucault’s introduction, “I Lie, I Speak” in the first half of the book entitled, “Maurice Blanchot: The Thought From Outside,” from Foucault/Blanchot; Ruminations on Language, Metaphor, Consciousness, and Mystical Consciousness. Foucault/Blanchot. Zone Books, NY. 1987. ISBN 0-942299-02-7. “Maurice Blanchot: The Thought from Outside” by Michel Foucault, translated by Brian Massumi; “Michel Foucault as I Imagine Him” by Maurice Blanchot,” translated by Jeffrey Mehlman.
(Note: This essay is not a comparative study of Foucault and Blanchot; the premise is solely on Foucault’s use of the pronoun, it, as presented in the above translation, that the premise leads to other earlier implications, like those of Hegel and of Cassirer, and as presented in certain religious treatises, especially as appearing in The Zohar as an examination of secrets of The Torah, i.e., The Old Testament of The Holy Bible).
“It depends on what the definition of is is.” President Bill Clinton.
“One sustains and nourishes the higher world, including itself… Binah nourishes the higher world, including Herself, along with the sefirot from Hesed to Yesod.“ The phrase ‘including itself’ renders (Hebrew) (de-ihu beih), literally, ‘in which it is’ or ‘which is in it.’ The second alternative would refer to the configuration of Hesed through Yesod, originating within Binah.” (p. 407. Footnote 717. The Zohar. Pritzker Edition. Volume Two. 2005: Stanford University Press. Daniel C. Matt, translator). (Note regarding the above quote: The terms, Binah (meaning Understanding, Feminine Spirituality), Hesed (Mercy, Love), Yesod (Foundation, Phallus. Masculine Spirituality) are but three stages in the grid for God’s Consciousness as portrayed in the ancient Hebrew mystical treatise, The Zohar. Much more on this subject will appear later in this manuscript).
Consciousness: Emergence From The Void.
The word, it, with variations--its and itself is a great signifier for Michel Foucault in his small essay, “I Lie, I Speak,” an introductory chapter within his section entitled “Maurice Blanchot: The Thought From Outside” in Foucault/Blanchot. Foucault’s thought and use of the generality--it is a paradoxical transference away from any probable specific, as in an initial naming of such, to a consistent use of generality. In his expository introduction, the word, it, for instance, is written fifty-three times in slightly over four pages. The word, it, is reflective of Foucault’s title and is an indication of implications about abstraction and distraction in language in keeping with Foucault’s exposition and, comparatively, of the manner in which Foucault uses language. An initial statement, in consideration of the thought of Epimenides, is similarly relative to the “foundations of Greek truth: ‘I lie’” (p. 9, Foucault/Blanchot. Michel Foucault) which is distinct from but implying “I speak.” Foucault, challenging, incautiously refers to fiction in the modern sense (implied is the fiction of Blanchot and a reference via Foucault’s appropriation) as lying based on Foucault’s reading of the Cretan, Epimenides, proceeding historically from the distinctions and relationships implicit in these two phrases or propositions: “I lie” and “I speak.” If the only site for language is indeed the solitary sovereignty of ‘I speak’ then in principle nothing can limit it -- not the one to whom it is addressed, not the truth of what it says, not the values or systems of representation it utilizes. In short, it is no longer discourse and the communication of meaning, but a spreading forth of language in its raw state, an unfolding of pure exteriority. And the subject that speaks is less the responsible agent of a discourse (what holds it, what uses it to assert and judge, what sometimes represents itself in it, by means of a grammatical form designed to have that effect) than a non-existence in whose emptiness the unending outpouring of language uninterruptedly continues. (p. 11. Ibid)(I emphasize the pronoun it by use of italics where appropriate).
Such “a spreading forth of language in its raw state, an unfolding of pure exteriority” incurs a subjective speaker whose very speech holds by grammatical recourse against meaning, communication, and discourse as representation, assertion, and judgment. A static intensity presumes imagery and inflection appearing as such, e.g., much in the manner of a sonogram in which one discovers an infant, and as an MRI in which the internal organs are depicted, e.g., like the heart waves flow in and out, and a sun in a provocative background chatter of stars, historical debris, and black space. Note examples of Foucault’s “subject”: “...the speaking subject is also the subject about which it speaks” (p. 10, Ibid.), and “The ‘subject’ of literature (what speaks in it, and what it speaks about) is less language in its positivity than the void language takes as its space when it articulates itself in the nakedness of “I speak.” (p. 12. Ibid.), and “Neither in the words in question nor in the subject that pronounces them is there an obstacle or insinuation to come between the object proposition and the proposition that states it.” (p. 10, Ibid.). Nonetheless, such special interest represents, whether in the initial statement quoted or others following, and what is represented is a non-existence and emptiness from which language continues.
Herein are the demarcations of space and the void that Foucault engenders rendering to each a reality implicit by way of Foucault’s pronunciation. Of significance is the regard inherent to positing words, besides articulating, stating, and proposing are the processes of those demarcations in the manner of “spreading forth” and “an unfolding” of physicality and objectivity through language expressing consciousness. Although such utterances are objective in stance a speaker as subject is acknowledged, but acts as a divide in the realm of meaning. At question is that very matter of meaning ultimately and the significance of meaning in any judgment (inclusive of representation and assertion) or the manner of such, as communication and as discourse.
Yet such naked utterance represents, whether in the initial statement quoted or others following, and what is represented is a non-existence and emptiness from which language continues. Although seemingly contradictory, equating the grammatical structure of words with an objective truth, words being objects of discourse and communication, and the subject of the speaker in an initial essence being an emptiness, the thought infers a mystical bearing upon language, the freedom of language which is at a physical level and most sensual base, consciousness. A rendering of physicality is at the root of objectivity in Foucault’s reference, and offers clues to Foucault’s expediting of thought and body in conjunction.
Consciousness is the silence that divides non-being from being, by implication. One might further infer that consciousness bears upon language regardless of the idiom words represent, whether truth or the distortions that bear remarkably in poetry, literature, and other fine arts. From cosmic static is an uninterrupted outpouring of language, of utterances that emerge into a subjective state to be shaped into an objective discourse. “It” is hereditary. Pulsating. Such inferences connote the mystical experience of the void that parlays metaphor as the qualitative multiplicities in the source – consciousness – permeating all being. Thereby breath, and thereupon, breathless.
Foucault’s Fiction.
For Foucault fiction is inferred to be lying, therein his theory, a facet of speech emerging from utterance. As speech, thereof, a reality of language is to be found at the foundation of sound becoming explicit, and reinforced in the written word. A psychic space is created in the gap between what Foucault says about the propositions of speaking and lying or fictionalizing as generic idiom. The subject-speaker is given over by a pure exteriority to the subject as predicator, immediately with the utterance, of objectivity, and/or is taken over, despite grammatical structure of representation. The implication of this pure exteriority stems from an “emptiness“ that pours forth language continuously. The mystic would grasp the emptiness as the void, a state or non-state (called Da’at or Daath in Hebraic sefirothic exploring of Divine Consciousness). Foucault’s metaphors in discussing language slide from generality to generality, e.g., from language to other generalities and expositions about language in usage that include argument (when acknowledging Epimenides), assertion, proposition, designates, discourse, articulated, addressed, literature, self-reference, representation, manifestation (a reference to philosophy for Foucault), fiction, truth, thought about thought, and tradition (considered “wider than philosophy”), and ultimately, it – Foucault’s most repeated abstraction and generalization in his essay. In some sense, the pronoun confers an unconscious instability on the theorizing, a suggestive aspect that offers mystery and a kind of poetic volatility to the doctrine being set forth.
To exemplify, when Foucault uses the word, recurs, he implies that in a word as singular structure is an inherent connotation that language is, basically, a recurrence of memory, a memory carried into conception. That the object-proposition recurs in the proposition that designates it, that the Cretan’s sincerity is compromised the instant he speaks by the content of his assertion; that he may indeed be lying about lying—all this is less an insurmountable logical obstacle than the result of a plain and simple fact: the speaking subject is also the subject about which it speaks. (pp. 9-10. Ibid.). Stated in such a conceptual premise, a word is a memory of an event or events distinguishable as subject or object. In so designating, then, the word recurs further suggests that recollection is the basis of language (in this case to Epimenides’ use), therein Foucault’s theory as apposite to the foundation found in Epimenides’ writing and that language as concept, as memory, is circular. All words thereby return to the primal impulse of speech, and in so speaking, all words offer recourse to fictive-emoting which may be further conceived as either an expansion of the implications or further the implication of being a non-truth, dramatically restated by Foucault as lying (circular indeed: ”lying about lying”)
(p. 10. Ibid). Foucault states that any utterance makes fiction by degree of distance from the primal event. Such a range becomes the pulse of utterance, whether spoken or written, and over and again as significant to the impulse forming speech.
Desire For A Primal Language.
An initial utterance of sound is primal, an inherently internal response to an external situation, the result and effect of experience; hearing this or hearing any sound is a related but other matter. However, in evaluating Foucault’s use of written language as an external event (like Foucault’s concept of speech), we learn of a significance for generalities and their extension as either metaphoric and multidimensional in meaning or as a schematic stereotyping, a stop-gap in relationship and the difficulty, even for philosophers and theologians, in overcoming the ease or disease of an abstraction.
The repetition as stereotype is a conceptual abstraction ultimately delimiting: as in a reduction of a subject to the objective it, a counterpoint to the comparison Foucault makes about speaking and lying. Such a comparison relates, at least circumstantially, to those philosophically reappearing distinctions of subject and object. In a later chapter, “The Experience of the Outside,” Foucault will address a desire for a pure It-ness for an objective language, language as akin to science and its methodology including mathematics whose patterns spearhead geometry and sacred geometry explicitly. Foucault makes the following observation: The breakthrough to a language from which the subject is excluded, the bringing to light of a perhaps irremediable incompatibility between the appearing of language in its being and consciousness of the self in its identity, is an experience now being heralded at diverse points in culture: in the simple gesture of writing as in attempts to formalize language; in the study of myths as in psychoanalysis; in the search for a Logos that would be like the birthplace of all of western reason. We are standing on the edge of an abyss that had long been invisible: the being of language only appears for itself with the disappearance of the subject. (p. 15. Ibid.)
The disappearance of subject inculcates the stigma of being, of being language as a subject. Such disappearance, if the extinguishing of subject is possible, reflects and thus deflects the interiorizing that has been a movement into the emptiness, again from whence comes language anew. If the subject must disappear to make the object viable and vital, the matter of language is circular in the creation and reappearing. Science does not make the subject disappear for all its objective stance and being a proponent of evidence per issue, but reissues subject as the object of the inquiry at hand. Translating the evidence into mathematical formula does not negate the subject even while verifying the objective nature of the proposition. Rather, the recreation into a mathematical component presses the range of expression into a wider countenance, augments both the distancing and the intimacy that the subject forbears with an objective connotation.
The subject and the object mirror each other, until both disappear into the utterance of being, of the disclosure in form, inherent physicality, or the renditions of matter covert to the fine arts, as inferred in Foucault’s phrase in his introduction, “discourse having been slyly folded back upon itself,” i.e., thought about thought. Becoming conscious the speaker is being conscious, in a reoccurring proclamation about mindfulness and as if remembering consciousness. The user of language is being conscious; being aware, thus, through language, that language is an objective reference to Consciousness, to transcendental being, and thus the range is extended; the implication in mystical awareness is that human physicality and the mind of physical being blossoms from an emission of Consciousness. Consciousness erupts into physicality. Physicality inserts the biological into the utterance of language and reinforces consciousness as contention. Words are seemingly external to consciousness for Foucault when referring to Epimenides’ argument, because “the object-proposition recurs in the proposition that designates it; that Epimenides’ i.e., the Cretan’s, sincerity is compromised the instant he speaks by the content of his assertion.” (p. 10). Foucault, thus, often seemingly purports the use of words in disclosing the nature of language, as if speaking is performance and that awareness is reductive, the result of putting on or taking off words (in a manner such as wearing costumes or clothing for effect).
Considering the exterior essence from whence all language flows and its source, and from another perspective Foucault’s assertion of his desire further insists that the subject remains unconscious even in the thrust that speaking makes into that very exteriority. Such a thrust posits the unconscious into a format of anonymity. Once penetrated by Foucault’s desire, language must inherit a grammatical objectivity. One wonders, in the fact of it, and the abstract nature to which it points, how this differs from regular consciousness.
Foucault is not a mystic in my reading of him, but as historian-scholar, and phenomenologist-philosopher Foucault offers mystifying, and perhaps even poetic obfuscation because of the great provocative gaps between assertions. This form of abstraction offers a lyrical empowerment to language. Foucault, suggests that language might with uncertainty find its source in mystical thought. (p. 16. Ibid.). Part of this rhythm is the uncompromising continuous use of it, the ambient, repetitive, abstraction leaping headlong into the next reoccurrence of it. By related metaphors, i.e., by assertion and through compromise, are attempts to resolve irresolution of how object delineates. In the immediacy of language emitting, it is as if it sucks Foucault into an external unconsciousness and perhaps the cause of his often beautiful, poetic, and “meta-imagic” language. Subject’s objectivity, perpetuation of “object-ness,” is the core of philosophical subjective awareness of multiple levels of being, being as consciousness. I view this multiplicity of means as purposefully mystifying from a mystical perspective, but, nonetheless, within close encounters acting as an effect of mystical consciousness acting within close encounters as an affect upon or within regular consciousness in the stream of things.
June Segment #3 from “IT”
will follow in the June issue of Alternate Perceptions Magazine.
James Edward Carlos
