PetalswiththeWind 08/29
Remember this line, “There are no pre-existing ideas and nothing is distinct before the appearance of language” (5). Oh! So that’s what “they” were talking about with that age old question, “What came first, the chicken or the egg?”; as one of our collegueas proposed in class on Tuesday. Whew! Talk about digging to figure that one out! I did not feel like I was scuba diving in water, it was more like shoveling through lime rock with a spoon! However, it is kind of cool and refreshing to make some leeway.
Before “the appearance of language” did cave people operate purely on instinct without conscious thought? The “pre-existing ideas” are the conventional opinionated thoughts that government, religion, family, friends, society as a whole push into our consciousness, bringing us outside ourselves, our subconsciousness, our natural instincts. Conscious conventional thought or language is when a person starts thinking outside his/herself. For the clause in the contract of language is, “by himself, the individual, is incapable of fixing a single value” (6). This is why the people of society are half alive, due to the hegemony of conscious thought we are overloaded with.
Ironically, as Macherey suggested, I’m not going to try and reconcile these thoughts; because meaning is never complete, there is no end to it. It is an ongoing process to let our subconscious always question conscious thought. On that note, I’ll now leave you with some song lyrics from Le Tigre’s “Viz”:
“They call it climbing.
We call it disability.
They call it coolness.
We call it disability.
They call it way too rowdy.
We call it finally free!”
Please don’t let language disable you.
posted by blogsquatch @ 11:18 AM
4 Comments:
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Interesting points! Just thought I'd correct your song lyrics though, "We/I call it visibility." It's a term many people in the gay community use to convey their pride. And in that part she is singing about her feelings of pride and freedom in the dance club (even though other people tell her it's "too rowdy" or too open she calls it "visibility" because she is finally able to be seen and heard). Good song. :)
cc
PetalswiththeWind is a postmodern thinker! According to Pierre Macherey, "To know the work, we must move outside it...we question the work in its alleged plentitude; not from a different point of view a different side- by translating it into a different language or by applying a different standard-but not entirely from within, from what it
says and asserts that it says". The most important thing she gave credit to the artist, and no one knows what the artist means, unless you ask her directly then. Either way Petals interpreted the song, from what she got from it, there is no end to meaning. So the statement she is making is intentional which can not be measured by linear conventional rights or wrongs, opionated thoughts, the entire reason she wrote her blog.
An old friend of mine, told me just this past summer of 06, "You are who you are, not by what surrounds you!"
RMH
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