Wednesday, December 25, 2019
Tuesday, December 24, 2019
Sunday, December 22, 2019
Saturday, December 21, 2019
Friday, December 20, 2019
Thursday, December 19, 2019
What is Absurdity ?
It is worthwhile to ask this question again, since Forgetting is an insatiable beast:
What is Absurdity?
It is easy to oppose it to Law and think that, like following the Law, nothing is easier to do. Yet, to be absurd is both the hardest and the easiest to do. Hardest because we always see our actions as following some universal principle, and easiest because Absurdity, like the Law we feel we do without effort, is also what we cannot but do with the smallest effort. The difference is tiny, and it lies in our belief in whether what we do or not do is founded on our ability to know the nature and meaning of the action that we choose to do.
Hence, if we say to ourselves, ''I'm going to commit an absurd act'' and think it is equal to saying ''I'm going to do a lawful act,'' or an act that we assume, under the banner of the rational, follows a rule like grammar or an ethic or a positive system: then that intention cannot be absurd. In short, you don't wake up one day and say I will be absurd. It's not something you intend, the same way that you cannot say, ''Today I will make time flow.'' But equally you can't say I will follow this or that Law, not because you can't follow a rule or law, but because, like time, law is what the universe follows whether we like it or not.
That's why absurdity is hard: we follow a rule inevitably, whether we are aware or not, whether we intend it or not. To be absurd is hard because you need to be outside the universe to do it intentionally, and yet at the same time the easiest exactly when you want to do it intentionally. Everything we do, therefore, is the instantiation of Law. And this is the very basis of Absurdity, not its opposite, that law is inescapable, so that to try to enact it is what absurdity really is. It is not the opposite of Law or Meaning. What is absurd is to affirm that this act or that sentence follows this law or has this meaning. It is not the affirmation of the Meaningless, but the assertion that the act we do or words we say follow a rule or meaning we say they do. In short, absurdity is actually affirming this or that rule or meaning, because we never know which rule or meaning we act out, and eventually we act out one or the other, without the need to follow, like the lack of need to follow Time.
This affirmation is what is absurd because there is no need to say or think it, and yet, we inevitably say or think it. What is absurd is that exactly and to say ''that exactly.'' And this is the reason that, like in Beckett or Ionesco, reason is itself what is absurd. The very fact of the inevitability of thinking this or that, sensing this or that, the very fact that I can't avoid a meaning or a rule in thought and action, makes my presence in the universe redundant because my thought or meaning is a superfluity, especially when I think that what I think is a mirror of the universe or reality. Why does the universe or reality need a mirror? And yet we are bound to make or be one, simply by being here and having thoughts or using language.
This superfluity, this excess, this unavoidable doubling, and the awareness of it, is the beginning of the notion of the Absurd. Or you may also equally say: the beginning of Thought. Thus, if we get into the habit of thinking, and feel that this mirroring is smooth and without paradoxical status, is to avoid or evade vainly what must be, and absurdly be, a problematic ethic of our attempt at rationality, especially when that rationality does not see its limits or limitation, an absolute reason that we feel or we presume we exercise every day with every word or action, as a matter of course. To be absurd, then, is not to be irrational, but to be aware both of the superfluity and of the inevitability of rationality.
(January 2018)
What is Absurdity?
It is easy to oppose it to Law and think that, like following the Law, nothing is easier to do. Yet, to be absurd is both the hardest and the easiest to do. Hardest because we always see our actions as following some universal principle, and easiest because Absurdity, like the Law we feel we do without effort, is also what we cannot but do with the smallest effort. The difference is tiny, and it lies in our belief in whether what we do or not do is founded on our ability to know the nature and meaning of the action that we choose to do.
Hence, if we say to ourselves, ''I'm going to commit an absurd act'' and think it is equal to saying ''I'm going to do a lawful act,'' or an act that we assume, under the banner of the rational, follows a rule like grammar or an ethic or a positive system: then that intention cannot be absurd. In short, you don't wake up one day and say I will be absurd. It's not something you intend, the same way that you cannot say, ''Today I will make time flow.'' But equally you can't say I will follow this or that Law, not because you can't follow a rule or law, but because, like time, law is what the universe follows whether we like it or not.
That's why absurdity is hard: we follow a rule inevitably, whether we are aware or not, whether we intend it or not. To be absurd is hard because you need to be outside the universe to do it intentionally, and yet at the same time the easiest exactly when you want to do it intentionally. Everything we do, therefore, is the instantiation of Law. And this is the very basis of Absurdity, not its opposite, that law is inescapable, so that to try to enact it is what absurdity really is. It is not the opposite of Law or Meaning. What is absurd is to affirm that this act or that sentence follows this law or has this meaning. It is not the affirmation of the Meaningless, but the assertion that the act we do or words we say follow a rule or meaning we say they do. In short, absurdity is actually affirming this or that rule or meaning, because we never know which rule or meaning we act out, and eventually we act out one or the other, without the need to follow, like the lack of need to follow Time.
This affirmation is what is absurd because there is no need to say or think it, and yet, we inevitably say or think it. What is absurd is that exactly and to say ''that exactly.'' And this is the reason that, like in Beckett or Ionesco, reason is itself what is absurd. The very fact of the inevitability of thinking this or that, sensing this or that, the very fact that I can't avoid a meaning or a rule in thought and action, makes my presence in the universe redundant because my thought or meaning is a superfluity, especially when I think that what I think is a mirror of the universe or reality. Why does the universe or reality need a mirror? And yet we are bound to make or be one, simply by being here and having thoughts or using language.
This superfluity, this excess, this unavoidable doubling, and the awareness of it, is the beginning of the notion of the Absurd. Or you may also equally say: the beginning of Thought. Thus, if we get into the habit of thinking, and feel that this mirroring is smooth and without paradoxical status, is to avoid or evade vainly what must be, and absurdly be, a problematic ethic of our attempt at rationality, especially when that rationality does not see its limits or limitation, an absolute reason that we feel or we presume we exercise every day with every word or action, as a matter of course. To be absurd, then, is not to be irrational, but to be aware both of the superfluity and of the inevitability of rationality.
(January 2018)
Tuesday, December 17, 2019
Monday, December 16, 2019
Friday, December 13, 2019
Thursday, December 12, 2019
There is no ideal speaker
"There is no ideal speaker-listener, any more than there is a homogeneous linguistic community."
- Deleuze & Guattari, 1980.
-There is no ideal speaker, which is to say that there are only real ones, so that a pronunciation is compared with others, without leading to a big Other as a final referent.
-This means: no ideal speaker equals all are ideal speakers. Another way to say this is that there are just differences, no superintending identity for comparison for pronunciation and articulation. Second, variation in speech still preserves a statistical fuzzy domain for specific sounds which allow us to distinguish one from another. For example, /t/ and /x/ in Texas. No matter how it is said, these two letters are kept distinct, even if the vowels are pronounced in various subtle ways. Individual sounds are averages in relation to their surrounding sounds, which are also averages of other sounds in memory.
-When we listen or speak, there must be a process where we eliminate “noise” and abstract the “ideal” sound image or representation, so that every moment is like a test, a re-evaluation of the rapport in the mapping between phonic and graphic morphemic representation. The notion of high fidelity in sound recording would require a method of reducing noise and distortion in the recording, and what is defined as hi-fi would depend on what frequencies are defined to be within it. The aim is a neutral or flat unbiased recording of the targeted frequencies.
-However, registration does not end with the data, but must be played in various conditions and heard subjectively, so that remediation always results in tiny variations, similar to DNA from one person to another, or like fingerprints. There are many aspects of the voice which cannot be transcribed, such as the difference between masculine and feminine, infantine or gerontological voices. This is how we know the concept of individual discrete sounds is an abstraction.
-For we only happen to cross paths with the infinitely slow. Nothing of its ever unfolding but a tiny fraction registers itself through us.
- Deleuze & Guattari, 1980.
-There is no ideal speaker, which is to say that there are only real ones, so that a pronunciation is compared with others, without leading to a big Other as a final referent.
-This means: no ideal speaker equals all are ideal speakers. Another way to say this is that there are just differences, no superintending identity for comparison for pronunciation and articulation. Second, variation in speech still preserves a statistical fuzzy domain for specific sounds which allow us to distinguish one from another. For example, /t/ and /x/ in Texas. No matter how it is said, these two letters are kept distinct, even if the vowels are pronounced in various subtle ways. Individual sounds are averages in relation to their surrounding sounds, which are also averages of other sounds in memory.
-When we listen or speak, there must be a process where we eliminate “noise” and abstract the “ideal” sound image or representation, so that every moment is like a test, a re-evaluation of the rapport in the mapping between phonic and graphic morphemic representation. The notion of high fidelity in sound recording would require a method of reducing noise and distortion in the recording, and what is defined as hi-fi would depend on what frequencies are defined to be within it. The aim is a neutral or flat unbiased recording of the targeted frequencies.
-However, registration does not end with the data, but must be played in various conditions and heard subjectively, so that remediation always results in tiny variations, similar to DNA from one person to another, or like fingerprints. There are many aspects of the voice which cannot be transcribed, such as the difference between masculine and feminine, infantine or gerontological voices. This is how we know the concept of individual discrete sounds is an abstraction.
-For we only happen to cross paths with the infinitely slow. Nothing of its ever unfolding but a tiny fraction registers itself through us.
Wednesday, December 11, 2019
Wednesday, December 4, 2019
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)