Deep Thunder 8/29

“The conceptual side of value is made up solely of relations and differences with respect to the other terms of language, and the same can be said of its material side” –de Saussure

It is an interesting concept, indeed, that an object has the signifier (or name) that we have failed to assign to any other object. In that case, by default, I am only myself because I am no one else. In class, Dr. R.O.G used a chair to demonstrate this concept. For me, this was reminiscent of a similar lesson I learned in a religion class. According to the Hebrew concept of God (who’s name I will not write because it is not appropriate when respecting Judaic tradition) He/She is not everywhere around us as the Christian concept implicates, but removed and in a different space, yet very much a part of this one. The analogy used by my prof. was that of…you guessed it…a chair. You see, since God is not of this world, He/She cannot be made of matter. Therefore, one hypothesis is that God is Antimatter, in which case, God cannot meet with matter in a real physical presence because when matter meets anti-matter, we “go boom,” and if God is around us then certainly there is a hole in his/her presence in the shape of all matter around us. For example, there is a chair shaped hole in God in the example that R.O.G. used in the last class. Similarly, there is a chair-sized hole in our language that allows us to use the signifier of chair. As with matter and anti-matter, if the sign chair were to mean both what we know as a chair and another object(s), chaos would ensue. I feel that both of these concepts support the theory of the other.