Who Says, thus undecided
Created | Updated Jul 31, 2006
[4.121] “What expresses itself in language, we cannot express by means of language.”
[4. 1212] “What can be shown, cannot be said.”
– Wittgenstein (1918)
0. Introduction
Conscious being manifests language as a room within which it seeks truth. Transcendental truth. As if and only if the truth is an inadequate phenomenon, transcendence and meta-narratives of ‘real’, the conscious being ambles upon. One may try to remove the skins of onion, but at the end gets nothing. Language is the space of amalgamation of the meta-narratives of ‘real’ events. It may be said that the relation between the conscious being and language is mutually causal, i.e., each determines other, x = f (y) and y = f (x).
This paper certainly deals with the problems centering a metaphysical space, i.e., language.(1) How does the real linguistic space contain real language, though no one knows ‘what is language’? To what extent one should look into to reveal the real-ity of language? Does one go to the boxes of analysis of the speaking subject or look into the social facts from which the conscious being appeared.
1. Problems of (Creative) Speaking Subject
Now I shall go to my first confusion regarding the recognition of speaking subject.
‘I’ exists at the virtue of the speaking subject who speaks infinite. The grammatical category of ‘I’ is first person singular pronoun. The ‘I’ also means to be conceived ‘We’ the first person plural category, resembling the all possibility of construction of a subject. The formulation of 'I' as the ‘speaking subject’ seems to have the propinquity and simplicity with the social appearances. Such formulas express the subject's particular attitude and encompass the exclusive significance for its events. (a) Therefore, a close correlation appears to subsist between the praxis of 'I' and the first person perspective, as of consciousness. (b) It also is relevant to appeared thoughts with practical reasoning.
The grammatical ‘personal pronouns’ are to be said firstly very essential and secondarily anaphoric. This grammatical device is generally used in the space of designating the conquest of a creative speaking subject. It is true that the sense of a pronoun is constant. But it can be used factually too, to refer to different individuals. The actual praxis of a virtual role in determining “I” is the referent of a pronoun. Certainly, the reference of a ‘personal pronoun’ is constant and only relative to a specific context of speech. Sovereignty of an exact praxis a ‘personal pronoun’ has no point of referent.
So that the personal pronoun 'I' occupies a special location within the organization of “we”. But its meaning is determined. The meaning of 'I' consists in a law, is a function of the praxis of speech. An extent of 'I' stands for the praxis produces it. It is important that the creative speaking subject is using the endeavor of 'I' as a fact about the praxis of speech. These facts depend on the others(2) through which I can recognize the orientation of its own in a given praxis.
“You address yourself to me so that I may read you, but I am nothing to you except this address; in your eyes, I am the substitute for nothing, for no figure (hardly that of the mother); for you I am neither a body nor even an object (and I couldn’t care less: I am not the one whose soul demands recognition), but merely a field, a vessel for expansion.” (3)
But if the focus in respect of creativity is shifted from the universal ‘I’ to the some phenomenal ‘I’, the problem of understanding will be more difficult. Who acts and who not? As Austin(4) recognized that every speech act depends on its peripheral circumstances (1962: 52). Similar ideas are shared by the Gestalt psychologists.
1.2. Creative (Speaking) Subject
In the very well known hypothesis of creativity, Chomsky (1972) defined every human being as a creative speaking subject who can produce infinite sets of sentences out of finite sets of words. After that the term creativity has become more complex because this lexical unit as per popular use is known to all as something special capacity through which some people can create arts.
Point of Contradiction:
a. Creativity1 as a rare talent
b. Creativity2 as an innate capacity of human being
Mystery of talent, i.e., creativity pointed in a. will be discussed later. Firstly the important task is to make a clear idea of Chomskian concept of creativity and the overlapping of the two. Chomsky, imagines a context-free space of interaction and the ideal or normal speaker-hearer model, embodied without any social or political consciousness. Chomsky said about the “physical organ”, called Language Acquisition Device (LAD), which is responsible for creativity as well as the construction of “natural language”. So that Chomsky projects a metaphysical narrative of “thinking self” of human being. He sated that "...the far-reaching studies of language that were carried out under the influence of Cartesian rationalism suffered from a failure to appreciate either the abstractness of those structures that are 'present to the mind' when an utterance is produced or understood, or the length and complexity of the chain of operations that relate the mental structures expressing the semantic content of the utterance to the physical realization." (1968: 25) But Chomskyan thesis also goes to a space of absolute truth which leads to such dichotomies like “natural and non-natural” or “normal and abnormal” or “order and disorder” “creativity and madness/insanity”.
According to Chomsky there is the fundamental norm which perfectly able to create or generate the universal grammaticality within socially acceptable performances. Thus, the sentence like, “colorless green ideas sleep furiously”, being grammatically correct, is un-acceptable because this sentence deviates the fundamental norm of social acceptability. Then, what is un-acceptable in the society is not a natural or normal language. An ideal being acquires the norms of its pre-history and its fundamental positions in variant social spaces. Chomsky showed;
"In the sciences, at least, disciplines are regarded as conveniences, not as ways of cutting nature at its joints or as the elaboration of certain fixed concepts; and their boundaries shift or disappear as knowledge and understanding advance. In this respect, the study of language as understood in the discussion above is like chemistry, biology, solar physics, or the theory of human vision." (1986: 33-35)
Chomsky used the term ‘creativity’ as a natural scientist that is more concerned with VIBGIOR than the cultural or popular use of that term (as we say ‘he/she is a creative genius). It is very strange that in the domain of creative art and literature, there are the tendencies of creations to deviate from “normal standard”, whereas Chomskyan ‘creativity’ seeks to habitat with the norms.
It is very motivating to notice that the certain similarities between Chomsky’ s (1972:114) departure from behaviorism. Explaining bio-power, Foucault referred to the institutions like workshops, schools, prisons and hospitals, which manipulate and control the body-object in the form of disciplinary technology by conjoining power and knowledge. Bandyopadhyay (1996) is the first who shifted from imaginary construction of speaking subject to the genres of social oppression within “Crippled Creativity”. According to him the speaking subject as Chomsky objectifies exists in an “approximate vacuum”. Thus, the laboratory state works but ‘the constraints are in oblivion’. But within the parameter of empirical analysis ‘the variables’ are made with inductive generalizations. It may be seen from the instances of Medical Science. According to Foucault (1988) an unquestioned sovereignty of reason determines the structure of “normal” space in which speaking subject subjected at per. This unquestioned reason subjugated non-reason, too. Modern psychopathology is one of the dominant enterprises, which historicizes the genres of the “pure” reasons.
Then it is clear that Creativity1 should be viewed from the arts and on the other hand Creativity2 from the natural scientific view. But the theme question of this paper is: is creative subject speaks language or the social facts determine the speaking subject? In addition to that, is there any scale for the measurement of poetry-hood of such a phrase or sentence?
On any table discussing about the mystery of making poetry, there must be the faces of highly confused in summing up such unpredictable issue and that will never be concluded. There is an adage, said by a genius of post-Rabindranath era of Bangla poetry. All are not, but a few are poets. This is very simple and crucial phrase, which was made by Jibanananda Dash. This phrase makes us committed to the thinking of poetry and its mystery. The question, which will be focused in this paper, derived from the phrase of Dash, is why all cannot not be poets? Let this question be deferred. And the problems regarding the mystery of poetry must be articulated in the next step of progress.
Poetic function is one of the functions of how does a language acts. This function divides the speaking subjects into two categories, poet and non-poet. The normal functions of a certain language do or do not contradict to the poetic function. In case of Creativity2 there is no problem with the holistic understanding of speaking subject. But in case of Creativity1, how would the mystery be solved? Behind the poetic creativity who does play the mysterious role of language? (5) There are several attempts of research on creativity and the mysterious power of innovation has been done on the basis of creative individuals. But in case of the death of author, the creative individuals go under erasure. The facts of the readers’ response unlock the foreclosed happenings of texts. Then the question is; whom we call genius?
My questions reflect my cultural understanding of the self. My problem in this paper is, for example, either the self may be analyzed atomistically or it may be justified holistically.(6) If I hold the atomistic look on the self, then creativity in the performance of the groups or in the collaborative facts will be determined to an individual. Ultimately atomistic look leads to the parameter of methodological individualism, and from this facts, "social" creativity is thus a very contradictory projection of identity. Conversely, if I then hold the holistic viewpoint, creativity is by definition social facts, and the genius is nothing but the existence for the social forces, which determine themselves out with or without any particular individual.
Let the contradiction be established with an example. Sachin Tendulkar, my favorite cricketer once scored 140 runs. I was cheered up. I think that Sachin alone can do anything in the creative ground. But there are so many events behind his success I have missed. Suppose these are; a. the performance of whole team India, b. performance of the man who made that pitch comfortable for batting c. even the public support which was enough enthusiastic, etc. My first attitude to think Sachin as a lonely hero was my non-holistic look. And in second time, when I intended to see all the visible and invisible conditions are at the success of that Great man, I was very much holistic.
Methodological Holism: An understanding of a certain kind of complex system is best sought at the level of principles governing the behavior of the whole system, and not at the level of the structure and behavior of its component parts. Methodological Reductionism: An understanding of a complex system is best sought at the level of the structure and behavior of its component parts.
2. Determinism and Unlike
Marx emphasized both. Marx (1852), wrote in “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon”,
“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like an nightmare on the brains of the living. ”
On the contrary in the Preface of “A CONTRIBUTION TO THE CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY” (1859), Marx said,
“The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.”
In the book ‘The Division of Labor in Society’ (1893) Durkheim attested how the social order is maintained in the social differences. He said about the division of labor, and how it differes in the so-called traditional societies and modern societies. In the so-called traditional societies, the collaborative consciousness totally subsumes individual consciousness as the social norms are strongly manifested and social behavior is well-determined. In 1897 he published a work on Suicide, a case study. Durkheim’s argument in this work also insists that the society was more than the its gestult parts. He focused on what forces the actions of individual and on the social facts. These facts are to describe the phenomena. These have not bound to the actions of individuals. Following Durkheim, Saussure, the founder modern linguistics understood the events of language as the ‘social facts’.
2.1. Historical Metaphor and the Death of Subject
A language in a sense of a finite set of signifiers is meant Externalized Language (EL). This EL patronizes the state to build up a nation. Therefore, EL helps to recognize people within the territory of a geo-politics. On the other hand the State needs a type or a modular form through which it has been settled its geography, rather a boundary of authority to the people. A modular form in a State contents the idea of an identity of a group of people. The modular form of a Nation-State can be either language or religion or any kind of mono-type entity which reflects the sense of a community. If language (in the sense of an EL) is to be taken to show the foundation of a Nation-State, then it must be seen there is only one language established by the print capitalism. (A la Benedict Anderson) In the formation of a Nation-State there are no linguistic factors associated with the choice of one language variety (EL) as well as a standard language.
One language-variety takes a big shape, which includes ‘other’ varieties, in turn becomes a standard language. The Standard variety comes to signify a ‘total’ end with its metaphysical existence. First, It is important to show the whole process of language standardization from the philosophical perspective because of its dual nature in the post-industrial economic set-up. Second, it is prior to go through the historical background of utilitarian Nation-State in the colonial situation. Third, in the updated study of linguistics the Language Standardization is a very common field of many references.
So that ‘I’ has a few signs to communicate with ‘We’. The occupation of these signs is to differentiate the ‘other’ from ‘I’. These signs of ‘I’ and as well as of ‘We’ are elaborated or imposed on the ‘other’. A total concept of these elaborated signs is called a ‘language’. But the term ‘language’ does not contain the same idea of voice of ‘self’, but selving the other. Other’s speeches are divided into a few categories, such as ‘dialect’ folk-language’ tribal language’ etc. These ‘colonialist cultural mythologies’ according to Phillipson (1992) are defeated languages. He describes dominant-dominated (language) in spite of language-dialect dichotomy. Thus the ‘LANGUAGE’ includes or excludes the ‘languages’. As Derrida said,
“I do not doubt either that such “exclusions” come to leave their mark upon this belonging or non-belonging of language, this affiliation to language, this assignation to what is peacefully called a language.” (1998: 16-17)
A colonial subject constructs his own language. But does he really have any voice of his own? ‘I’ does not appear on the endeavor of voice. Language is being constructed when the big ‘OTHER’ wants and ‘I’ desires. ‘I’ cannot speak. The closer of the silence is broken and opened up when ‘I’ starts to tell his story “to remind myself, to myself as myself”, the story of genealogy, which is reflected by the white mirror of ‘OTHER’. The ‘OTHER’ is capable to establish a space of synthesis in which ‘I’ searches his original footprint involved in the self-invention and simultaneously ‘OTHER’ imagines the island of ‘I’. ‘I’ at last finds out his past because of a fair make-up of good-orient-ship, which should be approved by the white (big) ‘OTHER’ and publishes its imagination because it has writing machines. At last ‘I’ synthesizes that language.
This is the case known as ‘hybridization’ of cultural space, i.e., synthesis of two propositions. It is a fusion of more than one culture within a single space, it happens in the arena of a hybrid sphere, between two different consciousnesses yet ‘separated from one another by an epoch, by social differentiation, or by some other factor’. (Bakhtin, 1981: 358) The first is the story of hegemonization in the conquest of ‘I’. The only language variety of ‘I’ takes a big shape of image, which includes or excludes ‘other’ varieties. The narratives of ‘I’ come to signify a ‘total’ end with its metaphysical existence. The ‘other’ of white ‘OTHER’ speaks in "a tongue that is forked” and produces a representation of mimicry which is as well as overdetermined (7), that ".... emerges as one of the most elusive and effective strategies of colonial power and knowledge” (Bhabha, 1994).
The white ‘OTHER’ launches the strategies of control and dominance (with the guarantee of its economic, political and cultural strength) on its Black Agents, through the notion of Nation-State. Macaulay said in his “Minute on Indian Education” (1835), that, the notion "of a class of interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern – a class of persons Indian in blood and colour but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect". As if ‘blood’, ‘colour’ or intellect historically represent two distinct social positions, respectively the colonized and the colonizer. Therefore, ‘I’ synthesizes ‘OTHER’ through the reflection of a good-orient by the mirror of the white ‘OTHER’, as referred by Frantz Fanon in the phrase, "black skin/white masks," or as "mimic men" by V.S.Naipaul. In this occasion the term hybridity is one of the most conceptual practices in the theories of post-colonialism.
The policies and the strategic selves of the colonizer (‘OTHER’) always seek to provide orient with a subordinate space. Macaulay's Indian Agents, as well as the mimic men were the vivid versions of synthesis, part-objects of a metonymy of colonial desire, end up emerging as inappropriate colonial subjects, by managing both of the white man’s space and the ‘colonial subjectivity’. (Ibid) In the event of repetition, the originality (sic) of colonial subject is voiceless (= died), and centrality de-centred. According to Bhabha, rest is the trace, the impure, the artificial. It signifies the various forms of purity covered within the essentialist theories. It has been tried to explore the hypothesis within the Nation-Statist paradigm in Indian postcolonial discourse viewing from the opposite end, the ‘Black-I’s ambivalence to White OTHER’s gaze.
3. Therefore
Now the points have been appeared in this paper should be re-scrutinized at the thumbnail. The problem started with a question; who is the actor in the ‘real’ space of language? The difference of speaking subject and the social facts are mutually causal in my projection. Then the question super-impose a crucial choice of methodology, whether it is holistic or atomistic. First I analyzed conscious being at the verge of a synthesis called overdetermination. In case of genius mind I again shifted to individualism. But “I am not the one whose soul demands recognition”. Then I have dealt with Chomskyan creativity, which has no falsifiability condition, is an attribute of Cartesian Cgito. I recall then my first thesis of speaking subject metaphorically, metaphor of colonial space, where there was speaking subject altered its Ego with power. Apart from all I could not find my locus in an ideal room. The pendulum of my motive enters into the both rooms of holism and non-holism (reductionism, atomism, individualism, what ever it may). My example of the use of the metaphor in a given space strikes me to go out from the rooms.
So my intension to look out side is as Foucault says, “Whenever one can describe, between a number of statements, such a system of dispersion, whenever, between objects, types of statements, concepts, or thematic choices, one can define a regularity (and order, correlations, positions and functionings, transformations), we will say for the sake of convenience that we are dealing with a discursive formation- thus avoiding words that are already overlapping with conditions and consequences and in any case inadequate to the task of designating such a dispersion such as ‘science’ ‘ideology’ ‘theory’ or ‘domain of objectivity’.” But in time of analyzing a discourse generally linguists exclude consciously or unconsciously several unintended events, which are approximately called the non-discursive formations, though these factors are very decisive indeed for looking into the factual. However, the undecidable decision is an aporia, which violets the law of excluded middle.
Endnotes:
1. “To metaphysics the nature of truth always appears only in the derivative form of the truth of knowledge and the truth of propositions which formulate our knowledge.” - Martin Heidegger (1949) in “Existence and Being”
2. The Other represents "other people," other subjects whom the individual encounters in social life, but for Lacan it also stands for language and the conventions of social life organized under the category of the law. Because language and the codes of human societies pre-exist any individual human being, these systems are "other" to the individual subject. The fact that subjects, themselves internally alienated, must employ the Other of language and the law to interact with other subjects is crucial to Lacan's theory of the psyche as well as to its practical application in therapy.
(Ref: http://www.english.hawaii.edu/criticalink/lacan/terms/other.html)
3. Barthes in “The Pleasure of the Text” (1973/ 1975/ 1990: 5), Basil Blackwell Ltd., UK
4. I used the term ‘act’ as the linguistic acts to be speech acts in J. L. Austin's sense, How to Do Things with Words Oxford 1962.
5. According to Kuntakacharya, the famous ancient Indian Literary theorist, used the term Vakrakti to refer the special power of meaning of words in poetry. Cf. Mukhopadhyay, 2004. “bhaSar boidOgdho o soili: amader OnakOronik biplOber Ek pOrbo” (Expertise of Language and Style: A Chapter of OUR Non-formal Revolution). Janapadprayas, 7: Vol 1. Kolkata
6. “Every quantum entity has both a wavelike and a particlelike aspect. The wavelike aspect is indeterminate, spread out all over space and time and the realm of possibility. The particlelike aspect is determinate, located at one place in space and time and limited to the domain of actuality. The particlelike aspect is fixed, but the wavelike aspect becomes fixed only in dialogue with its surroundings - in dialogue with an experimental context or in relationship to another entity in measurement or observation. It is the indeterminate, wavelike aspect - the set of potentialities associated with the entity - that unites quantum things or systems in a truly emergent, relational holism that cannot be reduced to any previously existing parts or their properties.”
Cited in a link: http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/glossary/holism.html
7. “Overdetermination makes one think of processes that naturally constitute and determine – affect – each other, none of which is the ultimate cause, origin or essence for each other.” … “For instance, individual is a site of location of plural, that is, a site of divergences: the economic (he [sic] works in a factory); the political (he [sic] is a voter); the religious (he [sic] has faith in Jesus); and so on. In short, he occupies many subject positions that work in different directions producing tensions and conflicts in him and in society. What is he, the individual? A worker? A voter? A Christian? A husband? A white man? How could one ever take a position?” Chaudhury, A., D. Das and A. Chakrabarti, in “margin of margin” (2000); Anustup, Kolkata, p. 73.
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(For Marx’s Reference: http://www.marxists.org/)
