Heidegger

The rhetorical dimension of language is “of language,” we being only
partially at cause and not clearly able to understand. What I’m trying to say here
is that in some, or large part we are subject to language and can act only
through it. I don’t think even Spinoza’s artful attempt to contain language
within a geometric frame outsmarts the determination of language to force its
will upon us.

I think the best we can do under the circumstances is to think language as
such, language as it wants to be thought, observing our capacity to be affected
even as it is being affected.

Jud:
Language has no *rhetorical dimension* nor does it have a *will* or the
capacity to *want* anything. Such things are in keeping with the fantasies of
the painted savage cavorting before a baobab tree in an effort to influence the
spirit which resides within its gnarled trunk to cast or remove a spell from
some smelly, shit-encrusted fellow anthropophagite.

No sign has any feelings. A traffic-light doesn’t give a flying fig whether
the car drivers that allow it to control them, suddenly decide to ignore the
rules of the road which they themselves have invested in its shiny pole and
flashing circuitry and smash themselves to bits in the sequel of such a stupid
semiotic snub.

To start off the seventh year of the twenty-first century with the
suggestion that being human entails being concerned with either subjectively accepting
and acting passively in response to the agenda of a personified language, or
attempting to outsmart *the determination* of a personated language to force
*its will* upon us. is utterly bizarre and evokes an image of a hairy,
unkempt creature with pronounced eyebrow ridges and a jaw which cries out for the
attentions of a maxillofacial surgeon and orthognathic surgery, sitting
before a modern computer in a centrally-heated modern room banging his calloused
hairy hands up and down incomprehensibly on the mud-bespattered keyboard.

It is HUMAN BEINGS who produce, generate, and agree the meaning of the signs
we call *words* and *traffic-lights* and they have no agenda, will or
determination of their own. We can make such signs effective for communication, or
alter the combinations and with it the effective outcomes as Heidegger did,
with the resultant communicational obfuscation, and the ratcheting-up of
anti-Semitism and with it the rhetorical road-deaths of the camps.

Tympan has a far better grasp of this rhetorical process, as can be seen in
his passage below, for he rightly identifies the *you* and the *your* and the
*yourself* and the *children, friends or wife and lover* and the *women* and
the *men* and *Deleuze* that rocks and is rocked by the bark of language and
NOT a *willful* *language itself* intent on allowing either intelligent
communication or semantic bedlam as the whim of the moment takes it.

But the personification of langauge apart…The Season’s Greetings to all!

Tympan:
Well yes this is what the study of rhetoric is all about,– fine feelings
that we get from polishing this surface so that it becomes more smooth and
graceful and all that jazz. No matter what, you are selling yourself whether it
is to your children, friends or wife and lover. The tropes are similar but the
actual words are different and with the latter I think the body is affacted
in a more erotic fashion. Drowning can be a scary thing or not… listen to
how women discuss and spin the sort of ideas men like Deleuze and us express in
our own way:

regards,

Jud Evans.
Personal Website: http://evans-experientialism.freewebspac…

Posted on Friday, December 29th, 2006 at 2:35 pm
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