The WORD processor

The true WORD processor is history. Just look at this table from a site about how words change over time.

The historical influence of various languages in names of places and their derivations for the British Isles.
     

Source	Language	Meaning	Modern Forms
ac	Anglo-Saxon	oak	Ac-, Oak-, -ock
baile	Gaelic	farm, village	Bally-, Bal-
bearu	Anglo-Saxon	grove, wood	Barrow-, -ber
beorg	Anglo-Saxon	burial mound	Bar-, -borough
brycg	Anglo-Saxon	bridge	Brig-, -bridge
burh	Anglo-Saxon	fortified place	Bur-, -bury
burna	Anglo-Saxon	stream, spring	Bourn-, -burn(e)
by	Old Norse	farm, village	-by
caer	Welsh	fortified place	Car-
ceaster	Latin	fort, Roman town	Chester-, -caster
cot	Anglo-Saxon	shelter, cottage	-cot(e)
cwm	Welsh	deep valley	-combe
daire	Gaelic	oak wood	-dare, -derry
dalr	Old Norse	valley	Dal-, -dale
denn	Anglo-Saxon	swine pasture	-dean, -den
dun	Anglo-Saxon	hill, down	Dun-, -down, -ton
ea	Anglo-Saxon	water, river	Ya-, Ea-, -ey
eg	Anglo-Saxon	island	Ey-
ey	Old Norse	island	-ey, -ay
gleann	Gaelic	narrow valley	Glen-
graf	Anglo-Saxon	grove	-grave, -grove
ham	Anglo-Saxon	homestead, village	Ham-, -ham
hyrst	Anglo-Saxon	wooded hill	Hurst-, -hirst
-ing	Anglo-Saxon	place of ...	-ing
leah	Anglo-Saxon	glade, clearing	Leigh-, Lee-, -ley
loch	Gaelic	lake	Loch-, -loch
mere	Anglo-Saxon	lake, pool	Mer-, Mar-, -mere, more
nes	Old Norse	cape	-ness
pwll	Welsh	anchorage, pool	-pool
rhos	Welsh	moorland	Ros(s)-, -rose
stan	Anglo-Saxon	stone	Stan-, -stone
stede	Anglo-Saxon	place, site	-ste(a)d
stoc	Anglo-Saxon	meeting place	Stoke-, -stock
stow	Anglo-Saxon	meeting place	Stow-, -stow(e)
straet	Latin	Roman road	Strat-, Stret-, -street
tun	Anglo-Saxon	enclosure, village	Ton-, -town, -ton
thorp	Old Norse	farm, village	Thorp-, -thorp(e)
thveit	Old Norse	glade, clearing	-thwaite
wic	Anglo-Saxon	dwelling, farm	-wick, -wich

                                      Source: http://www.krysstal.com/wordname.html

Now this is really WORD PROCESSING, not just writing through the means of a software application, but adding instant history to the form and sound of the word, moving it backward or forward, or even sideways in an unknown turn or direction: a real turn of expression. Whether historically accurate or not, the point is that it shows not only how a language carries resources from other languages, but also how very common words and names have evolved from unfamiliar forms whose significance we wouldn't have guessed automatically. The items "brycg" or "pwll"  or "cwm" would appear senseless now, but had some meaning before. Meanings are as relative and temporary as the forms that are used to point to them. One example mentioned among many is the word silly.

“The word silly has over many centuries taken a fascinating journey through a range of evolving meanings. Silly did not originally refer to the absurd or ridiculous – in fact quite the opposite. The word derives from the old English word seely, meaning happy, blissful, lucky or blessed. From there it came to mean innocent, or deserving of compassion, only later mutating this sense of naive childishness into a more critical, mocking term, signifying ignorance, feeble-mindedness, and foolish behaviour - the meaning we know today” (http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/dic/oed/silly/silly.html).

The table above are instances of what has been called metaplasm, or "a change in the orthography (and hence phonology) of a word" (Wikipedia). The Greek origin is metaplasso or “to mold differently, remodel,” referring to formal changes that include processes of addition, omission, inversion, and substitution. This is a whole set of rhetorical figures!

Concerning phonetic changes, we can just mention one famous case in the history of English called "The Great Vowel Shift."

The Great Vowel Shift was a major change in the pronunciation of the English language that took place in England between 1350 and 1700. The Great Vowel Shift was first studied by Otto Jespersen (1860–1943), a Danish linguist and Anglicist, who coined the term....

This means that the vowel in the English word same was in Middle English pronounced [aː] (similar to modern psalm); the vowel in feet was [eː] (similar to modern fate); the vowel in wipe was [iː] (similar to modern weep); the vowel in boot was [oː] (similar to modern boat); and the vowel in mouse was [uː] (similar to modern moose).

 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift)

These metaplasmic processes are well recognized.

"Sound change is unstoppable: All languages vary from place to place and time to time, and neither writing nor media prevent this change."

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_change)

Another way languages change is through the addition of new "content" like neologisms. There are a number of well-known ways a new word is created in a language (nonces, portmanteau, acronyms), but the important question I want to raise is if it is possible for language to reproduce all the sounds in the universe, or all the possible meanings in the universe. It is probably a "silly" question to ask, but we know that "nonverbal" arts like music or dance or painting or other media have always been used to speak about domains which language may not have the capacity to reproduce.

If any verbal attempt is done in this direction, many things can happen, including the risk of falling into senseless and even asemic forms. That is, language fantasies that we can all lump into a neologism or metaplasm of some sort. I am thinking of elements of Finnegan's Wake or Carroll's "Jabberwocky," or Hugo Ball and Schwitters' sound poetry, or even some pieces by Artaud. Definitely it will be a toss between metaplasm and neologism in many cases, and it will become harder and harder to separate them, except for the fact that neologisms can attain a "legitimate" current status, which current metaplasms may never get. Metaplasms usually appear in the dictionary only as historical or literary curiosities and not as currently spoken words. Not all metaplasms are created equal.

While we can say that language is incomplete in relation to what the whole of existence could offer, we may well be content with pointing out the evidence for this discrepancy by the use of neologisms (quarks, leptons, laser, etc.) or metaplasm. And whereas the former obtains lexical legitimacy by some kind of epistemic or realistic or poetic status, the latter may remain either as an echo of a search of lost meanings or as bastard forms and meanings that may or may not come. In addition, metaplasms present processes, accidental or not, that are not just formal but also material in nature. From the Buddhist AUM to the proto-languages to languages and on to sub-languages down to individual speakers and "accidents," metaplasms enact the shifts from form to form and sound to sound, laying out a whole spectrum of legitimate and intermediate, legible and illegible, or meaningful and meaningless linguistic artifacts.

The case of onomatopoeia is interesting also in this regard. I look at onomatopoeia as a kind of multimedia in lexical format. If mimicry or imitation is the absolute goal of onomatopoeia, then we can consider whole books or volumes of books to be onomatopoeic in the way they all try to represent something, even the whole world, in all its aspect. In a fictional scenario, this would mean that the best copy of the world is another world, only smaller and accessible, or manipulable, or portable, and holding no secrets. This reminds me of the "Aleph" in one of Borges' stories.

At any rate, I like the idea that in Greek, onomatopoeia actually means "making or creating names." That is WORD PROCESSING in a nutshell.

Writing with no truth serum

Writing with no truth serum.

Letters looking for a word, like that hacker tool trying to crack a code by getting the right letters and numbers in the right slot.

If in the beginning was the word, then probably this is before the beginning.

If you try to hear all the speech in the world each second happening at the same time, what would you hear? is the world coherent? and yet it exists!

Existing is more primary than understanding. incoherence is the primary state of the world.

But "incoherence" cannot be captured in one line or one breath. at any rate, anything we do is part of it. i am always incoherent anyway to someone else. coherence and understanding are relative, a pocket, regional, narrow circle.

Or more strongly: incoherence should mean, we really can't say what "incoherent" can mean without taking away what it should mean.

We can only do something and hope it will be incoherent. we resort to techniques or styles.

For example, the Web as a global intersection of texts. it would be a jumble, actually. but who said only one voice at a time should dominate any language event? we have had "simultaneous" texts before that tried it. i am just pushing the mashed up state further. we have so much volume of language produced nowadays with communication technology speeding everything up so well that everybody now can all talk at the same time. we know it's all about politics who gets heard first. there is a competition for air time. there is a survival of the fittest for discourses. and "truth" or "meaning" don't clinch the deal alone here.

Now if we curl up the Web into a whorl. you can't get more egalitarian than that! "text-sounds" have had its "mixes."***  We just AMP it up! In the end, the only unifying element is rhythm. regular or not? now there's a decision. i myself wouldn't bother. i think everything has its own unknown rhythm. it would be delusional to think that your self-imposed rhythm would be a hymn to some kind of order, or disorder for that matter.

***'In "Counterpoint for Candy Cohen" (1973) Mac Low explores tapetechnique possibilities even further. A single announcement of twodozen words, spoken by a concert emcee named Candy Cohen, is repeated with irregular pauses to make an initial tape which is then transferred continuously, one channel at a time, onto a four-track tape, which thus has four separate channels of non-synchronous repetition of the initial verbal material.... Then, this tape is itself transferred continuously onto each track of a two-track machine, which then has eight different tracks of the same repeated announcement. Then, this tape is transfered onto each track of the initial four-track machine which thus produces a tape with 32 tracks of sound. This fourth-generation is two-tracked into 64 tracks, which is then four-tracked into 256 tracks. As the final piece incorporates all stages in the incremental process, what we hear is the progressive complication of the initial material (two-dozen words and a pause) through several distinct generations into a verbally incomprehensible, but rhythmically pulsing chorus. The experience is extraordinary, and it is perhaps the culmination of Mac Low's interest in non-synchronous repetition' (Richard Kostelanetz, Text Sound Art : A Survey, http://www.ubu.com/papers/kostelanetz.html).

The fantasy of language

"I conclude that there is no such thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed. There is therefore no such thing to be learned, mastered, or born with. We must give up the idea of a clearly defined shared structure which language-users acquire and then apply to cases. And we should try again to say how convention in any important sense is involved in language; or, as I think, we should give up the attempt to illuminate how we communicate by appeal to conventions."  — Donald Davidson, A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs 

What is involved, then, in a discursive setting if we don't have "a clearly defined shared structure"?  According to him, "radical interpretation," "passing theory," "triangulation." Or: "We have discovered no learnable common core of consistent behavior, no shared grammar or rules, no portable interpreting machine set to grind out the meaning of an arbitrary utterance." There are only "strategies" because "there are no rules for arriving at passing theories, no rules in any strict sense, as opposed to rough maxims and methodological generalities." In other words, there is no final arbiter for meaning, no foundational center or framework. Any general framework will "by itself be insufficient for interpreting particular utterances." Again, we note that this is already a widespread notion in literary theory today.

In any interpretative strategy, any presumed formal basis of reading is "insufficient" not only as a means leading to interpretation but also as an arbiter of the "correctness" of interpretation. Since “understanding a language is a matter of continually adjusting interpretative presuppositions” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Davidson), any reading constitutes its own rules "on the fly." By extension, we can probably even say that, perhaps, the grand explanatory frameworks (i.e., theories of language) used to describe how language and meanings work may actually just be formalizations or petrification of interpretative strategies (reading or the generation of meaning). Here, meaning leads to an over-production of language, a surplus of signification. More pointedly: the very fantasy of language itself is a surplus included in the over-production of meaning. Language, instead of serving as the origin of meaning, is the by-product of the surplus of meaning. In short, the act of reading creates its own abstract conceptualization of what language looks like.

Seen this way, the goal of language is self-reproduction. Whether or not what it produces is something whole or broken, material or immaterial, true or false, shared or not shared, same or different, legible or illegible, it begins there, as a fantasy to which we attach more of language or more of whatever we think of as not language, meaningful or otherwise. Meaning produces language, which produces more meaning to produce more of language: a surplus of many, many theories, or fantasies, of language. Language, therefore, can only exist in language.

Reading nothing

Saisir : traduire. Et tout est traduction à tout niveau, en toute direction. -Henri Michaux

"Everything is translation at every level, in all directions." It seems a well-known quote like this doesn't need more commentary. It belongs currently to what we already assume in practice. It is the same as saying that everything is reading. An organism that orients itself in space already makes use of all its faculty to successfully recognize and navigate. That is obvious enough an idea. Another that is no longer probably worth mentioning is the notion that writing is already reading. These assumptions lead us to another given, that all reading takes place within pre-established frames: all reading is interpretation and perspective. We live in one universe, but we have many competing views about it. Simple enough, nothing new here.

What is more interesting are the elements that a system of reading cannot read or translate, and are indicated by place-holder terms that we can indeed read, but indicate the place where translation or reading fails. The illegible exists as a readable sign in the translating medium, but not as a term with a positive semantic content, but as a "blind spot" within language translated as that point where language cannot say anything about. And we have many words like that, words that tell us nothing even by saying it. "Zero" is probably the archetypal example. Other candidates are: gibberish, indecipherable, glossolalia, babble, cryptic, unreadable, untranslatable, inexplicable, enigma, opaque, unknown, nothing, and unnameable. The term "illegible" itself belongs to this category: it marks the point where translation fails or is absent; but not completely, of course.

The situation is more ambiguous. There is something we can read, the signifier is legible. We cannot say that its semantic content is zero. In fact, this is what it is precisely saying: it is that signifier pointing us to what it cannot really provide. It signifies the category of anything that has no semantic content, or whose semantic content cannot be ascertained. It performs the role of the legible surface of whatever it is that remains illegible. In short, the illegible is not an absolutely unreadable state; it is still within language (since what is outside language cannot be imagined), and translates for us whatever it is that has resisted translation. It is saying nothing beyond saying that nothing further can be said on whatever it was trying to signify. By saying less, by signifying nothing, it is capable of signifying successfully.

Where it succeeds, however, is where it fails absolutely. I cannot read this, but I mark what I cannot read by a sign that we can all read. Thus, we can read the sign, whenever reading or translation is confined to the level of the legible surface of language. It is on this very surface that language warns us where we can no longer go further, and where we can go on indefinitely. Between words that say something to say nothing and those that say something to say another thing, we ask: what is this other thing that language must be able to say something about to avoid saying nothing? If "illegible" is just the opposite of "legible," and has no more value than the legibility that it negates, then what does the legible give us? No doubt, to answer these questions is to relaunch ourselves into the world of so many competing interpretations.

Fissures of speech

Topological Alphabet Chart from Jill Britton

(T)he addition or deletion of a single letter reroutes semantics. -Richard Kostelanetz

Like in Richard Kostelanetz's list of words in "One-Letter Changes,"  the effect of letter substitutions in another work called "Reroutings" complicates the sameness and differences that hold language together.

ITCH PITCH KIT KITE LACK BLACK LACK FLACK LAG SLAG LAIN SLAIN

LAME BLAME LAMP CLAMP LONG ALONG LAP CLAP LAP SLAP LAST BLAST LAW

CLAW LEA FLEA LEEK SLEEK LICK CLICK LIE LIEN LIGHT BLIGHT LIMB

CLIMB LIVE OLIVE LOB LOBE LOCK BLOCK LOCK CLOCK LOG CLOG LOG LOGE

Again, the graphic (and sonic) mechanism by which this mutation is made possible takes precedence over concerns with external meanings. In the end, we are left with the play of forms where word responds to word alone. Indeed, when letters or words change or are missing, everything changes. That is, not just what they refer to or what they mean. What also changes is our relationship to what separates word from another word, to an identity or a difference that we now see as superficial, precarious, or even whimsical.

Letter (and sound) changes can be a source of a lot of humor, like in many puns, literary or not. (The word  "changes" itself in the title "One-Letter Changes" can either be a noun or a verb.) But just like in many humorous events, the source of laughter is a perceived breakdown in some kind of governing order. In the case of puns where one word morphs into another, what is threatened is the unstable grill of differences required to maintain the order of meaning. The mastery of the graphic and phonic gap between letters and sounds that depends upon many years of linguistic socialization is suddenly shaken, and the instant reaction can either be laughter or anger. In other cases, it can simply lead to confusion and misunderstanding. In brief, we get species of either comedy or tragedy depending on the outcome.

In "Reroutings," the core lexeme or syllable representing the invariant of the process is progressively modified by substitutions or additions of letters on the left, middle, and the right, rendering the designation of an "invariant" core superfluous. First, any core element becomes a part of a different word or context; second, this core item also slowly mutates as if in response to its changing contexts. For example, in the sequential lines,

ONE NONE ONE CONE SCONE ONE ZONE OZONE OR FOR FORE OR ORE MORE ORE

PORE SPORE ORE WORE SWORE OTHER MOTHER SMOTHER OUR SOUR SCOUR OUT

BOUT ABOUT OUT LOUT CLOUT OUT POUT SPOUT OUT ROUT ROUTE OVER LOVER

CLOVER OW LOW BLOW OW NOW SNOW OWN GOWN GROWN PA PAR PARE PA SPA

SPAN PAN PANE PANEL PAP PAPA PAPAL PAR PARK PARKA PEA PEAR PEARL

the core element, which is singled out by an iteration, is slowly modified along the series. From ONE we move to OR, then ORE, O-ER, OUR, and to OUT. Then, O-ER is again picked up briefly until getting "retooled" as an OW sound in a new series. In other words, these substitutions in many series can be seen as the textual dynamics that summarizes the history of language.

The use of letter substitutions is as old as rhetoric, which is saying that it's a trick as old as language itself. But rather than treating this feature as a special case of language, a text such as Kostelanetz's pushes it in the foreground, reminding us of the humor and danger along the fragile fine fences we keep between one word and another, or between one meaning and another. If it is imaginable that "in one word, all words," then it would indeed be a miracle how we are able to see one among the so many, and hear one thing and not another million things.*  The word, after all, is something that is always morphing into many other pieces in each context that you begin using it, thus quickly suspending whatever it meant for meaning or language to be ever the "same" or "different."

 * Here we also touch on the the most basic question of historical linguistics: the origin of languages. Against the claim that the "Root Language of ALL languages is Om, also called the Language of One Sound... and which is realizable only in Deep Silence" (https://sites.google.com/site/ulagansessays/evolutionary-linguistics/root-language), we can cite another view that, "given the time elapsed since the origin of human language, every word from that time would have been replaced or changed beyond recognition in all languages today" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur_language).

Peter Ganick and superfluid texts

Funny to see something like Richard Kostelanetz "One-Letter Changes."  Just a sample from the A portion goes like:

Abject object.

Add and.

Affect effect.

Aim aid air.

Antic attic.

Appeal appear.

At it.

Attach attack.

Auspicious suspicious.

which he does in the same way up to the letter Z.

This could be taken as a word list for an English class to help students with spelling or pronunciation. We can add a little erudition by saying that the list demonstrates how meaning is made possible by differences. Or, we can say that, even with differences, it's just amazing how long words can still manage to keep themselves distinct by such tiny, almost weightless, changes in superficial features.

The almost barren structure or format of "One-Letter Changes" won't certainly make us think of it along the lines of poetry. Of course not. Beyond the alphabetical ordering and the minor figure of letter substitutions, we would say that there's nothing really special about it. It doesn't tax language much beyond this quasi-pedagogical listing to bring us a finer breed of linguistic composition. What we have sounds more like an objective set of samples or items in a basic taxonomy. We certainly don't feel any angst or melancholia in any part. Nothing of pathos or bathos, nothing "subjectified" or stylized.

We can recall some of Gertrude Stein's work as a point of comparison. Sounds unfair if we are going to measure a simple word list to an acknowledged figure of "language-centered" writing. We won't do the comparing to see who is superior, but only to see what elements exist in one or the other. Roughly, we can note how in Stein, although laying out language in a non-linear and metalinguistic procedure, still carried remnants of a discursive flow, a shadow of the speaking origin of language, and the participatory role of a subject in a communicative set-up. No matter how ridiculous she sounded, her texts certainly had more rhetorical structure than the almost bare vocabulary list of "One-Letter Changes."

At least--to award a consolation prize to Kostelantz, we can say that he had more structure to offer than much of what Peter Ganick had been churning out for some time now. With Ganick, however, we don't have something as finite as Kostelantz's list. What we have is something much, much more than just a list of a few words. Kostelantz at least had the decency to give us an obvious reason why those words in "One-Letter Changes" should be together or be beside one another. Peter Ganick, on the other hand, didn't, as we can glean from a sample of his work below:

demiurge alienate premature sine quaff bottles dasein negotiator flamboyant vernissage column nor sans field networked ingredients allies damage stretto migrate sanitize preoccupy noon trousseau cell whitely apportionment vache doodle interest neithered wash coeli nomos einsam predicate nestling vanity shuck erasure pristine calculus realitize stigmata certification motility notion squalor public iterating sledge mitten alligatorese banned elongate neverthelessly acorn epater nib snit parse clorox niacinide maelstrom vanguardism periscope redmont sionara vend alsace tentative lasix funf directive anothers either waits mettle emotion answer caliper according salida vocality zones denizen percentage (Peter Ganick, from SLEEP'S SUSPIRATION)

Having no marked beginnings or endings, the words just roll in in medias res. Furthermore, we notice how any word is not attracted to or by its neighbour through any grammatical, syntactical or rhetorical relationship. You won't find any burgeoning phrase, or clause, and by extension, sentences or paragraphs. The words train along in a zero-gravity environment, where the only "borders" are the (movable) margins that give them some appearance of containment. Together with the lack of conjunctions and punctuation, the absence of any master structure or discourse does not help us sort out even the "function" from the "content" words.

Without local or global syntax, the words remain intact as plain words devoid of any contextual function or identity. The word “erasure” for example is something we know about, but what we don’t have is how it is “fixed” in relation to words around it.  Without this triangulation, the word does not “gain” further useful meaning. The absence of a geo-textual fix makes it difficult to say if it is an act, an object, or a location (The erasure made, an erasure found, this point marks an erasure, etc.). As Ganick himself has said in another place, "One ought to pause on each word to experience its physicality, energy, and therefore its lack of semantic value" (Peter Ganick, text. chalk editions 2010).

With Peter Ganick, we have no big alibi for the massive concatenation of lexical items. These super-free elements comprise a rain of lexicon in zero structure. Voiceless, subject-less, object-less, they populate the page without any restraint, without telos. It is as if language flowed out in all direction, becoming the true free flowing stream of language, unburdened by thought or by the unconscious, anchored nowhere, just moving stylelessly, with no external or internal intervention to coax them into a form, an argument, a point, a theme, a voice, a view, an order. It is a language freed of all its expressive, epistemic and stylistic burdens.

We should probably no longer even call it a “language,” with all the systemic burden that this term represents. No, nothing systemic here, no play of associations, no poetic inspiration breaking through, nothing in sentiment or in intellect.  No framework, no mesh, no plot. The view is the same in all directions, no part is special, no region has better clusters or thicker mass. You will find no key words or motifs, semantic fields or refrains. It is only “writing” in the most basic sense of having letters and words. It is only “textual” in the sense of having textual artifacts. Hence, we can speak of Ganick's work as an isotropic text, or a text that looks the same in all directions as far as its flatness of meaning is concerned. We can also call it a superfluid text, a material that has "zero viscosity and zero entropy... that flows without friction past any surface and over obstructions and through pores in containers which hold it, subject only to its own inertia."

Meaning is only resemblance

Meaning is only resemblance, nothing more.

In this case, all words resemble one another.

BLACK resembles something black, and not black itself; WHITE resembles something white, not white itself.

Because of this,  BLACK  resembles  WHITE , and  WHITE  resembles  BLACK  insofar as they mean only by resembling something else.

Or, BLACK can also be WHITE, and WHITE can also be BLACK.

Same with MAN and WOMAN.

MAN resembles any other man, and not man itself ; WOMAN resembles any other woman, not woman itself.

Thus, WOMAN resembles MAN, and MAN resembles WOMAN  insofar as they mean only by resembling something else.

Same with AMERICAN and CHINESE.

AMERICAN resembles anything american, not American itself; CHINESE resembles anything chinese, not Chinese itself.*

Hence, the two words resemble each other because they can resemble anything.

All words are inter-changeable because identities never change.

P.S.

IT IS RAINING. IT IS NOT RAINING. There is no such thing as contradiction on the page. All words are inter-changeable. A word can say anything. A word doesn't say anything. A word is also what it isn't.

(*Let's take an example : AMERICAN or CHINESE CAR. This simplifies the historical origin of the car. It tells us that the car came from the U.S. or China, although it may still be the same kind of car using some similar technology. What if the car was assembled by Chinese-Americans in the U.S.? Or by Indian-Americans, or by German-Americans, or Japanese-Americans? And what if the various technology and science that allowed the fabrication of the car came from all places and history: physics, mathematics, chemistry, engineering, materials science, etc.? What if Chinese cars also used some German technology? Is the Chinese car still CHINESE? 

A sign, a word, or a symbol is a set of heterogeneous elements, an ensemble of items which have multifarious origins and natures. For example, using Norwegian salmon for sushi in Japanese cuisine, or French wine oaks from the Baltic states. Only in a world where trade hasn't taken place, where cultures or nations or states have no contact with each other could we maintain any homogeneous entity. Apart from this pluralistic aside, even our own photos don't represent us. The time and context are different, the emotion, the thought, not just the clothes, can be different. The body has also shed so many cells, we have aged, grown, gained or lost weight, etc. The photo can therefore be anybody. This possibility is not excluded by any biographical consolidation, which is also a form of fiction, with all its convention and pretension to tell all as much as possible. The fact that an actor can play a given biographical personage indicates that we are already in the realm of resemblances. Why not? Your own life already resembles so many others: politicians for politicians, soldiers for soldiers, doctors for doctors, middle class like other middle classes, tall like others, sick like others, unfaithful and faithful, strong or weak, young and old, brave, naked, struggling, and in the end, successful, with few regrets and lost loves. The narrative is ready-made and unoriginal. These are old ideas, and I am just repeating them and myself.)

r

r   u        m         a    g      n      o        s     i      m             e     r        i   z       o t      o         p          i  c            t       o      r        e    n   t      r    e     m               o      d        e       l     i    n            k     a              t   h            a    r        t     e            s    a    n        a   b    b     o    l       i           m       p   l          c             y

o         p    o     s  i         t      u         a   l   i            z           a    r       d  u          a      l    g         a           t     o    r       m     u    l      a          t      i            c     r        o   m   o            s  a          p  e      n          d            u   r            a      n       c           s     h       p              e    n    

e   l        e    c         n  t      r        p    e        l           a    n          t   h    e        r     a        p      i         e    c     d    e        r  e   s           e     l          u   s   o   n      s      c         r      i         b         o         n        p          p    r  

  

The poetry of the word is no longer compelling

For a long time, the poetry of the word, line, message, and image is no longer compelling. The disenchantment began at least from the time of the Dadaists. Where is the argument, the narrative, the subtle assertion, the fine turns of phrase, the deft ironies and ambiguities? Where is the theme or subject, the stylistic form, the syntax, or even the known and readable language we used to have? What are the essential elements of poetic composition? The answer seems to be: nothing. There is nothing sacred or essential. What is the point of replacing one value system with another? Our art should just be the history of perpetual emptying, ceaseless abandonment. When any element is called back on the table, this citation is merely now a quotation, caricature, or collage. All concepts we pour in come out at the other end. We can't be convinced by an intentional pattern, nor by all-out chaos and chance. We cannot assign absolute semantic values to the elements we put on the table. More and more, we no longer know what they really are, inseparable from pure markings and asemic scripts. We can swim in it, dip our feet in it, drink it, it is all around us, so many things, so many teasing signs, yet whose origins and destinies escape us. It is a close up of something so familiar, and yet without a meaning greater than that of a momentary material contact now appended to a process with endless referrals.

__________

The glue of association is melting (2010)

Finally, the glue of association is melting (metaphor here);

To resist the way things are seduced to rhyme, like the alliteration and the internal echoes in this line;

Because you are expecting a message somewhere, or looking for an object ready to reveal itself, instead of simply accepting a foregrounding of event horizons, a venue of energetic linkages arbitrated by plural forces.

There is--at least in principle--nothing pre-ordained, except the “raw” ingredients, like the flesh you are in;

The event is not drawn ahead, but emerges in the act of looking. Everything is in potential state;

You are face-to-face with the artifacts of your historical insertion. Better: no affect mode of any sort, just an objectified process of inscription;

Every symbol is a supplement to understanding, that is, a surplus, an additive or extraneous element, always excessive, always another item in a larger event;

A different dynamics beyond subject or object, process or material, concept or context, where the message is not anywhere hidden or expressed, where symbolic energies are not the cause nor the effect;

To subtract the symbolic energy from the line: the symbol with the minus sign;

The symbol in itself is not signifying; there are super-signs deployed that circulate to organize other signs: master concepts, idées-forces, key terms, sign-posts…

Two parties in conflict is the beginning of all symbolic energies…

Coherence is a criterion in a specific paradigm of reading or art; Consistency, which does not refer to any logical or semantic content or form, is another;

Any species of the declarative (explanation, illustration, etc.) is suspect as a device of coherence. Any argument moving towards the defense of an idea or process is a declarative;

There is always a question of necessary links between the practice of the idea and the idea of the practice;

We can start a writing without any master discourse or subject taking charge, no thematic conducting the mass, or rhetorical order sculpting the flow of thought and emotion;

Yet, although consistent with an argumentation, it would be too declarative to cement it with a coherent practice, or overload it with the physics of illustration or execution, as if there was a seamless medium between idea and practice, and that it would just take some technique and effort to demonstrate it.

That would just replicate or reinstate a center for the discursive production, overlaying the negative symbol with a positive film of meaning that super-intends all the series…

It would restore the symbolic energies of scripts. This is unavoidable, with the symbolic resurging like an echo or after-effect, without necessarily carrying a bag of truth-functions in its wake.

This is the tension that pushes and pulls us from meaning-effects and their dissolution.

There is an actual management of scripts within an economy of significations.

This scriptural gesture is managed by a host of thematic attractors: subject, topic, argument, key idea, source, destination, etc.

One of the tensions in laying the scripts is the resistance to major associative items and principles: syntax, attribution, description, allusions, imagery, rhyme, other language patterns…

Next, there is a resistance against various thematic attractors: lyricism, humanism, idealism, movements, aesthetics, schools of thought, etc.

Last, there is resistance against various types of coherence or cohesion: literary forms, discursive styles, rhetorical patterns…

Again, there is indeed a limit to the success of such an approach, in the beginning and at the end.