The Speculative Body

Meaning: The Medium is the Messenger





--Force and vanishing: meaning only comes into being (or Appearance) in the moment of its disappearance. If this process can be considered phenomenologically sound, then the moment of the appearance/disappearance of meaning, if it could be isolated in the process of reading, would then be seen to occur -- i.e., at the moment of comprehension the words themselves would cease to "matter" as material objects. But if the intention is to do away with words altogether, then there is a problem.[NOTE 41] How would one remember (here and now) where and when one thought what one thought? Would "this" really no longer "matter," that particular instant, those circumstances, etc.? Certainly, on one level the words wouldnąt matter because the understanding or comprehension would have jettisoned them as placeholders or markers which were no longer relevant (relève, aufgehoben) to the process of articulating meanings (like booster rockets that have already fulfilled their function of providing the necessary speed, propulsion and impetus to get to the Idea or Concept (Begriff). But wouldnąt there need to be some trace left of that trajectory, if only so that the process could be repeated as a "fact" in "reality"? The emphasis then shifts to the level of interpretation and rereading and the necessity of actually being able to read those words again as a kind of map of how one got to the Idea. If words simply disappeared there would be no accurate way of scientifically repeating the steps (verification of the experimental data) progressing toward certainty and truth, for meanings donąt take place in a vacuum, but must be instantiated in words that provide a description of the meaning event (more inscription than prescription). But the words should not simply be reduced to the materiality of the(ir) letter(s), nor completely assimilated but allow for the possibility of infinite repetition (dissemination). Words are the necessary means of transit: neither transitory, nor supplemental entities, more like recipes which can be repeated rather than the contents of a menu which can only anticipate but not produce the contents to be consumed.[NOTE 42] Language must be "alienated" in order for it to be recuperated by the writer (producer) and reader (interpreter, consumer) and in order for it to actually transform the process of thinking and to allow the transmission of meanings to continue. The idea that the particular instantiation and the qualities of that experience are incidental or contingent should not be dependent on an overarching concept, but rather these instances are tied to the material conditions of their production. This is not to say that the ideas themselves are lashed to words as burdens to burros, but that the particular configurations of words in a given instance produce a certain force field of meanings that only arise from the particularities of that occasion. Could the notion of "force" be used as catalyst, soliciting the animation between words, and animating that space between material inscription and idealist thought? "Force is the other of language without which language would not be what it is."[NOTE 43]





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