Eating your words

[imomus]

1. No knowing is total, no knowing is without its particular perspective, its vested interest, its framing.

2. There is no knowing that will not, at some point, be abandoned, replaced by a better knowing, which will be replaced in its turn. All sciences rise and fall on history's stock exchange.

3. Methods of knowing are like fictions, or like constructions that we assemble playfully, experimentally, and disassemble when they cease to be useful.

4. In order to know, we must be capable of forgetting, abandoning, abjuring.



5. The tragedy of autism is that the sufferer is incapable of excluding things that are not relevant. He cannot, therefore, "know" in the way most of us do. (See "The Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night-Time".) But autism is only a disability because not everybody is autistic.

6. One way to look at a "renaissance man" is to say "He's interested in so many things!" Another way is to say: "He's already passed over and lost interest in so much!"

7. One way to look at a socialite is to say "He knows so many people!" Another is to say "He snubs and is snubbed by an incredibly large crowd!"

8. What are the ethics of forgetting mistakes? Revising, for instance, the archives of the New York Times so that it looks as if the paper never made any mistakes? Ought we now to become the Winston Smiths of our digital archives just because we can be? Would you rather read a "corrected" version of what 1966 thought, or what 1966 actually thought? Is correction of fact falsification of history? If so, which do we choose, fact or history?

9. Might certain decisions look, one decade, correct, the next, incorrect, and the one after correct again? Might there therefore be a case for leaving in everything "wrong" until it becomes right again?



10. Barthes says, in his wonderful Inaugural Lecture at the College de France, 1977, that when science writing is made "wrong" by subsequent science (and it all is, eventually), what remains is writing; pure literature.

11. In that lecture Barthes also says that every language is a system of ranking things, and all ranking is oppressive. Ranking, too, is a way of sifting things in order to forget the less important.

12. Equality of the importance of information sounds "just" in some way -- it's egalitarian -- but it's the enemy of semantics. That's why it's more like autism than communication. Communication relies on ranking and disambiguation (disambiguation: the banishing of the equality of two meanings). Communication depends on binary oppositions in which one element is dominant, the other repressed.



13. The effort to restore the repressed element of a binary ("women are better than men!") does not remove power's asymmetry, it merely shifts it somewhere else. As Barthes said, "we boast of reviving what has been crushed, without seeing that this, in itself, crushes something elsewhere".

14. Roland Barthes quotes Pasolini: “I believe that before action we must never in any case fear annexation by power and its culture. We must behave as if this dangerous eventuality did not exist… But I also believe that afterward we must be able to realize how much we may have been used by power. And then, if our sincerity has been controlled or manipulated, I believe we must have the courage to abjure.”

15. Pasolini thought that his Ragazzi di Vita trilogy had been misappropriated by his political enemies. He abjured the films, but did not regret having made them. Compare Auden's abjuration of his communist didactic poetry in later years.

16. Speak your words without fear. But later, be prepared to eat your words. Their meaning will change. History will see to that.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

If no knowing is total, then neither can any statement about knowing be total. Therefore you cannot be sure that no knowing is total.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's true. For now.

I swear Elvis was here!

[pay-option07.livejournal.com]

Transitional obsolescent holophrastic
apprehension. Oh my God, Whew!

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"no-knowing" is total by its very nature. It makes no assumptions. thats why meditation is such a central part of buddhist metaphysics.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The Blingee (http://blingee.com) action is a bit more maximalist over at Momus_LOLZ (http://community.livejournal.com/momus_lolz/). But here at Click Opera we have Roland Barthes Blingee! We prefer to shake the intellicock at happy hour, n'est ce pas?

[trickseybird.livejournal.com]

I still affirm you stole that blingee 'tache off ziggy's arse.

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

Excuse me sir, your brain is showing.

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

By the way, je m'appelle Michelle. J'aime intellicock.


(It's been a long time since I took French, so excuse me if I get something completely wrong)

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

"13. The effort to restore the repressed element of a binary ("women are better than men!") does not remove power's asymmetry, it merely shifts it somewhere else. As Barthes said, "we boast of reviving what has been crushed, without seeing that this, in itself, crushes something elsewhere"."

If only you´d chosen a different example, I wouldn´t feel like putting an icepick into your brain now.

[masnomas.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you could explain in more detail?.

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

It´s a stupid example, as even if this was a popular opinion, the imbalance of power is such that it would take hundreds of years for it to shift so far as to make men the ones without power, in danger of being "crushed".

And using that instead of a closer, easier example makes it seem like it´s a distinct possibility in the world as it is now, which makes him sound like one of those OMG WHITE MEN ARE SO OPPRESSED whiners, who think that losing some of their extreme privilege is the same as being oppressed.

I should have responded with a cat macro, ffs. I hate srs bsnss.

[fritztegularius.livejournal.com]

Great post! FUNES EL MEMORIOSO, a story by Borges provides a great illustration of how the inability to forget a thing results in the lack of abstract thinking.

[(Anonymous)]

Sybil Fawlty, Basil's wife, knew.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

A monk asked Joshu: "Has a dog Buddha-nature or not?"

Joshu answered: 無

"Has a dog Buddha-nature?
This is the most serious question of all.
If you say yes or no,
You lose your own Buddha-nature."

[cerulicante.livejournal.com]

I used to know Joshu. He was a really wise dude, but he sucked at karaoke. He would just stand there and not say anything. Sheeeit.


What is the sound of one dude sucking at karaoke?

[eclectiktronik.livejournal.com]

Here are a few pointers relating to the above, if anyone wants to look some of the matters in more detail they could do worse than read a bit of Nietzsche, who had a lot to say about 'valuing', and notions of 'truth'.

re: Point 1: Nietzsche, in 1886, told us that we pursue knowledge insofar as to support a metaphysical position, an idea of how we want things to be.

Generally an automatic process to us, but problems come when people dress this up as the result of some 'objective ' pure' methodology of 'discovery' of a reality we assume to be existing separately from us. Firstly because he rejects the existence of a 'fact-value distinction'. There can't be any value-free scrutinizing of the world, since valuers derive their values from the culture of which they are members. sometimes these values are so deeply instilled in us, we aren't aware of having them as values! we create them, and place them on things as 'labels' as individuals or more commonly, as societies.

re: Point 2: it seems like there is a 'will to truth' as a human drive, but even truth is subjective. It is enough to mention the idea that if you believe something to be true, then it is, even if it is so for you alone.

re: point 15 (=16!) See 'On the old and new law tables ', Nietzsche, F, 'Also sprach zarathustra'. Here Nietzsche warns us of the dangers of assuming the permanence of value systems and meanings. He gives a nice analogy : in summer the bridge (representing values) is firmly fixed above the river below, seems like it will always be so. seems like a 'permanent natural order'.

When winter comes, the river becomes a torrent and all things thus reach a state of flux; the bridge (metaphor for value/meaning systems) is washed away, it becomes nothing. Hence, who would now cling to the old certainties it represented? only a fool.

....
Ben.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Barthes' lecture very much draws on this part of Nietzsche. In fact, it's amazing how many of his generation were still drawing on N's incredibly rich legacy -- Foucault, Derrida, Lacan. It's also amazing how little Nietzsche has been taken on board in the mainstream of internet debate. Especially this matter of the cultural framing (often unconscious) of valuation.

One thing puzzles me, though. How can subjectivity be meaningfully meaningful when objectivity is generally declared not to exist, even as a possibility? How could we retain a use for the idea of subjectivity when we don't believe its defining binary opposite, objectivity, can exist? Or is it enough that some things could be described (oxymoronically) as "relatively objective"?

This is, in a sense, the same as the question of how the universe might be meaningless if God doesn't exist. Surely if you remove God, you remove the idea that God should be the source of meaning, and therefore you remove that sort of theological meaninglessness too?

But of course Nietzsche didn't say God didn't exist. He said God was dead, which is quite a different thing, and allows all sorts of existentialist nonsense to rush into the god-shaped hole.

[obliterati.livejournal.com]

Wittegenstein: the definition of the word is it's use, maybe the use of the word can change but the definition is still true? if it only refers to the way it's being used? Maybe?

It's like finding the word "Republican" in an old Isak Dinesen story (The Deluge) and wrapping your head around how that refers to a radical liberal. Once upon a time a republic was a pretty radical idea.

Remind Remind Remind Me, Remind Remind Remind Me

[dmlaenker.livejournal.com]

Curious that you'd mention autism. I had no idea it was an interest at all. Will pick up the Curious Incident book, assuming it's a book.

I've noticed it's easiest to describe my field of perception as experiencing my life in ways not unlike this video:



Obviously this would not be from a third-person perspective or pixellated, exactly, but there's a lot of similarity in the general vagueness of interpersonal emotional expression and the boggling field of globalizing tangential information I end up relating to pretty much every experience I ever have. I can't help doing this at all.

And honestly, I don't really mind it. The only time that this has ever made things difficult is with the indigent. None of these people can ever be invisible to me, and I'm amazed how very loud, raucous, needy people are either ignored or don't enter people's consciousness. And then people look at me like I'm stupid when I either give them money or try to justify not giving them money. It's like dealing with a particularly ignorant back-seat driver, constantly.

Re: Remind Remind Remind Me, Remind Remind Remind Me

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I can't know for sure, but the video In My Language (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnylM1hI2jc) gives me the best insight into what I think autism must be like.

[butterflyrobert.livejournal.com]

9. Might certain decisions look, one decade, correct, the next, incorrect, and the one after correct again? Might there therefore be a case for leaving in everything "wrong" until it becomes right again?

I think that anyone who's worth a damn should be in a constant state of personal evolution. Of course, I could completely change my stance in a year or two.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Oh for heaven's sake--time enough for this in November. Go outside and bury your noses in something alive, while the weather permits!

[mandyrose.livejournal.com]

Amen, homeslice.

lol wtf?

[(Anonymous)]

LOL what the hell are you guys trying to prove? why is there a picture of some kid with a crappy haircut and old lady glasses? why is there so many pictures of him? why is there so much bling? holy crap! google sure does have a habit of taking me....places.... well...back to my research on 'the curious incident of the dog in the night-time'. btw, drop the bling.....it's....disturbing.

Re: lol wtf?

[(Anonymous)]

LOL, altermodernism newb!