Occularcentrism, the Imaginary, and a return to the sign.
June 30, 2010
I have been claiming, or at least thinking, that there is something "imaginary" (term swiped from Lacan) about Japan. My understanding of these terms are from a very simple reading of Lacan, and James Mead, and indeed my own experience.
Taking these in reverse order, it seems to me that in my head, as it were (where?!), I represent things in words and imaginings. I rarely call to mind smells, or feels, or even noises, and even when I do, it is even more rarely to represent something. But I call to mind words all the time (I talk to myself), and I imagine images (less so now than when I was a child) to represent, to signify, to make a story/cinematography, to work through a problem.
James Mead talks about visual gestures (a frown or body posture perhaps) and says that when we make them it is difficult for them to have meaning to the person that is making them. They are thrown out there for others. It is difficult to see what they mean without a mirror he says. But when we speak, we automatically hear our own words and thus understand our communication as others understand them. Critique: It seems to me that there are sevearal things going on. The physics of the situation: sound bounces back but without a mirror, while I can if I look down see my hand gestures, I can not see my frown or my body posture. Attention: one may care about ones words but not ones gestures. Interpretation: one may interpret ones words and not ones gestures. Affect and perhaps in the same breath identification: One may care about ones words but not ones gestures, one may identify with ones words, and not ones gestures.
Lacan says that people identify with language (I?) and with self-image as reflected in a mirror. Critique: I wonder about what it is that I identify with. Do I think that I am the sound or called to mind sound "I," or do I think that I am that which the sounded or thought "I" signifies? Do I think that I am my reflection, or that which my reflection reflects? symbolises? or contains? Or alternatively, am I the entity that makes the sound/thought I, or that which hears it? Am I the entity which makes(?) the image of me, or the person that sees it?
I have fluffed, made vague, all these distinctions when I think about the Japanese, or Westeners. The extent of my observation is perhaps that, Westerners create, use and care about language more, Japanese create, use and care more about images.
Now then...Even if this fluffy, vague distinction were any good at all...Lately I am lead to semiotics! Now that I have children, particularly now my son, who is mainly Japanese, I see that he is very interested in visual signs.
I used to be interested in semiotics before I got into social psychology.
Social psychologist can be more fluffy. I was a bad and social psychologist, but even if I had been a good one, I think I would have been allowed to paint these distinctions with a broad brush. To "operationalise" at whatever level I could find data to support my assertions. E.g. I claimed I found that Westerners cared more about their self-representations in language, while Japanese cared more about their self-representations in images, then I was not required to go into the nitty gritty of what aspect of self-representation is important.
Now that I have children, or rather now that I have my first born son, Ray, I see that Ray is wildly interested in visual signs. When I was more philosophical I was interested in people like Levi-Strauss, Barthes, and Saussure. Looking at Ray, it seems to me that I need to return to that interest. Something semiotic (in the broadest sense) is going on.
Before I was reminded by Ray, I felt a temptation to say that the Japanese are into the visual but not the significant. But, Ray is interesting in visual signs/symbols/indexes/icons. I find myself being called back to Levi-Strauss and Barthes and other semioticians, because they talk about types of signification.
Cutting to the chase.
Looking at Ray I am reminded of Levi-Strauss' "Savage Mind" or "Totemism Today" and Barthes "Mythologies."
In Levi-Strauss's work there was the assertion that the "savage" used, bricoleured, things in the world to mean things. I did not find a place where he contrasted the savage with what we, non-savage Westerners, are doing. If I use Takemoto to refer to my family, then in what way is that different to someone that represents their family by an eagle?
In Barthes' Myth Today however, there is a heirarchy. Mythologists use things and images to communicate, but they do so resting on the shoulders of that which produced those distinctions in the first place. Savage Mythologists are derivative, secondary.
To be continued
The visual as supplment
March 20, 2010
The "logic of the supplement" is a really bad name for how some things can have an important role as a foil, scapegoat, sacrificee, or supplement, and be both of lesser and central importance at the same time.
Consider a supplement to a book. It is the bit on the end, extraneous to the main part of the book (and thus of lesser importance) but at the same time may complete the book and by completing the book, be of prime importance. Or again, a vitamin "supplement" is something that is an addition to ones normal diet, that may at the same time contain vitamins, and minerals and the most important thing that the makers of the "supplement" say we should eat. Or again, there are things that are sacrificed, or made into scapegoats that are at once of lesser importance/value and of prime value. Consider the Jews in Nazi Germany. They were treated as animals, far beneath the "Aryans" but at the same time, by making a scapegoat of the Jews, the Nazis were able to rally the Germans together in the face of the common "enemy within." It coule be argued that the Jews, as victims and scapegoats, were the impurity that made the pure Aryan race possible.
In his commentary on Plato's Pharmacon, Derrida claims that writing, or visual symbols are a supplement in that sense in the West and that Western philosophers often make use of writing (or perhaps the visually meaningful) as a scapegoat. I find Derrida's writing very opaque but I do feel that the visually significant, and the visual, or corporeal is used as the "supplement" to the symbolic in the Western tradition. Western philosophers since plato, point to some visual/corporeal istance and say well it is lucky that we have language, and the meaning that we can trust. The the visually symbolic acts as a scapegoat, victim that purifies the symbolic, linguistic. Some examples...Austin claims that some linguistic statements are "speech acts." Such as "I promise," or "I bet" is not only speech, it is also an act. The speech act is a piece of dirty speech, that involves itself in the world of things. And after going on about these "speech acts" for a while, Austin then claims, but of course, there is some speech which is not an act, is simply referential. Thus he purifies language and its ability to refer to things without acting upon them in any way, by using example of speech which is also an act, caught up in the phenominal world. Similarly, Plato, speaks of writing as a supplement to phonetic language which is imperfect in being caught up in the visual world, less so phonemes, and even less so speech in the mind which is pure, not written, purely linguistic and not like that dirty corporeal writing stuff. In my view, all statements are acts in a sense. All symbols contain a little corporeality. But by setting up an example of an extremely corporeal example Western philosophers can return to their veneration of language. Derrida likewise, goes on about how easy it would be for all of "res extensio" (that which is extended, that which can be seen) to be a dream and after going on and on about how all this visual stuff could be an illusion, he returns to langauge and his cogito as if it is purified from being a mirage, despite the fact that he may be dreaming in gibberish. I think herefore I am, may be "flutch brenden under cellophone."
In Lacan too, the mirror image of the self, acts as a supplement, and essential lesser part to the self narrative of the linguistic self proper. The image of self, is essential, and it is only at the intersection of linguistic and visual self reference that we have a self at all. But it is the lesser part, the part of self which which one should not identify, which language saves us from. The image is like the twist in the mobius strip. It allows language to return upon itself, refer to something that is the sorce of the language, refer almost to itself. The self image is the veneer that proves that the truth is going on inside.
Evidence for God
September 27, 2009
I was looking at Ayn Rand on YouTube and rather enjoying her personality. And saw her refutation of God and liked that too. She said, that while it is impossible to prove a negative - to prove the non-existence of fairies, say - she does not and we should not believe in God since there is no proof of his existence. If there were no evidence for the existence of God then I would agree. Donahue, the interviewer, then pointed out the order in the world. She countered by saying that it makes no sense to postulate a ordering mind, an order outside the order. We see the order, and the chance, and try and understand the order, but there is no reason to assume that there must be a something outside the order that we see that creates that order. This seemed fair enough to me too.
I would not say that I believe in God exactly. But I do think that there is some evidence for the belief in God, these are:
1) Testimony of others, over wide time frames and geographical locations
2) Behaviour of others that seems to suggest the existence of non-self-cantered motivations (altruism, "good")
3.1) Ones own adherence, and the adherence of atheists, to being honest non-contradictory and reasonable. All atheists should be self-interested, and therefore part-time, at least death-bed, theists.
3.2) The very existence of my own reason, or its nub-come-nexus: self-speech. Why am I, we, you doing it?
First Airplane Ride
September 14, 2009
For context see here. The following is fiction. The first person is female.
Some people get very nervous when they get on airplanes, but most people don't appear to be. A big chunk of metal the size of a block of flats revs up, gains speed and then TAKES OFF. And all the while the majority of the people on the plane are behaving as if this is the most normal thing in the world, chatting, checking their watch, taking out their copy of the inflight magazine. Nearly million pounds of metal and passenger meat goes up into the air, and almost nobody screams "Let me out of here!"
That is how I felt when I started going out with John. He was the first guy I had ever dated. People were telling me that he liked me, that he wanted to take me out on a date, that he was a good kisser, that he would be sure to want to make out, and all that and a lot more like it was all the most normal thing in the world. People make out, start relationships all the time, and get on jumbo jets all the time, millions of them every day. But when I thought about the the possible consequences, ranging from death from AIDS to finding my partner for life, I felt inside that I wanted to scream "Let me out of here!"
Another thing I have heard about riding an airplane is that the flight attendants do a sort of mime where one of them (or perhaps a tape) narrates the procedure to be followed in the event of the accident, while the other mimes it out. I saw a comedian make a joke about it. The fact that they are miming what would, should be a really scary event with a calm smile on theif face is pretty creepy. More so is the way the smiling stewardess who is fastening her seat belt, putting on the oxygen mask, and demonstrating the brace position, is doing it all to words that are not her own.
That was the way I felt the next morning talking to my friends in the diner after my first date. I was like I just said, cruising at a thirty five thousand feet in a block of flats. I felt that the diner was up in the air. But my friends were all asking me things like "where did he take you," and "did he make a move," and "was he a good kisser," and making jokes and smiling and laughing. And I responded in the same kind of way, with a smile, and using words that weren't my own. I felt like a puppet acting out the part of the high school girl on the day after her first date as if it had not been by far the most traumatic experience of my life, smiling and miming and pretending, being forced to pretend, there is no difference between life threating disaster and ballet class.
And then
Flying on a jet airplane sounds so classy. I mean they even had a phrase "jet set" meaning people with rich and classy lives. But, I hear that on jet airplanes the the food is not all that good and the toilets are really cramped sometimes messy. Flying on an airplane is on the face of it really high class, but in the detail there are some dirty, cramped and messy parts. Dating for the first time was like that.
Dating is a guy is meant to be all romantic. I had in mind sunsets, roses, whispers, and going to special places and spending a lot of money too. Or okay I hoped that someone would be spending so money on me. I thought that dating was going to be classy. But as it turned out, it was not all as classy as all that. We did go to a fancy, for me, restaurants or two, but we also went to some other places, which were not so classy.
Love is like flying, you get a feeling like your feet are not touching the ground, like you are floating on air, shaky, and ready to right back down to earth at any moment.
Love is so powerful that it can make everything else seem small, like the view from the window of a jumbo jet, where the fields, the size of football pitches, look like the patches in a quilt.
The worst bit is the landing. Again everyone appears calm but there is a tremendous difference in height and speed, so it is not surprising that it is bumpy, there is a lot of noise, and engines spinning in reverse. Splitting up is like that.
After we split up my friend said to me, "Well, that was one hell of a roller coaster ride wasn't it?" And that is when I said I felt that I had been on a jet airplane. The ups and downs, the thrills and the emotion, were like a roller coaster. But the biggest difference was that, when you get on a roller coaster you get off at the same place. But when after only 3 weeks I stopped dating John, I felt that I had got off somewhere else. I was in the same town, going to the same school but it all looked different. It was different, and I did not have a return ticket.
Two Lip Synchs: Blue Velvet's "In Dreams," and Mullholland Dr.'s Club Silencio
September 09, 2009
Two of the best scenes from David Lynch films are lip synch scenes, where someone lip synchs the words to a romantic song. I am thinking of the scene in Blue Velvet where a drug dealer called Ben lip synchs to "In Dreams" by Roy Orbison, and the "Club Silencio" scene in Mullholland Dr. where a female singer lip synchs to another Roy Orbison song in Spanish (?).
As a structuralist the similarity between the scenes turns me on! What are the similarities and differences?
Similarities and Differences.
Two major characters are watching the lip synch being performed. That there are two viewers is more apparent in MD than BV. In Mullholland Dr. The two lead females watch the lip synch from adjacent seats in the theatre. In Blue Velvet, the two male leads, Frank (Dennis Hopper) and Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan) are both watching the lip synch, but it is more a case that Frank is watching the lip synch, while being watched by Jeffrey.
In both there is something stage like about where the lip synch takes places. In MD this is apparent. In BV, the camera pans out to reveal a stage-like opening bounded by curtains.
In both there is a square character (Kyle, Betty) and a full blooded character (Frank, Rita) watching, though in BV the full blooded character is up there on or next to the stage.
The act of lip synching, the act of a visual presence pretending and appearing to the source of sounds which in fact come from elsewhere, is shared between the two scenes. The lip synching is emphasised more in MD. The Emcee in MD really makes it clear that Club Silencio is a "lip synch stage", emphasising that we are hearing a lot of instruments, imagining them to be there, but that the sound is not bound up with the visuals that they are imagining to be on stage, or are seeing on stage, even before the song, with the white haired trumpeter that trumpet-synchs before fully-revealing that he is not the source of the trumpet sounds. In BV we could be forgiven for thinking that the lip synch is not important, that Frank is just moved by the song, but in MD the lip synching is given fuller, central importance. "It is an illusion."
In MD the visuals are even an illusion - the emcee, magician(?), in MD disappears.
The viewers are very moved. Or at least Frank is moved in BV. From memory I thought that Rita was especially moved in BD but it seems that both women were moved.
The song in either case is romantic.
The lip synching is made apparent in both, by the removal of the music in BV and by the feinting of the singer (and stopping the pretence by the trumpeter) in MD.
In BV, there is a double lip synch. Frank, moved, lip synchs the words being lip synched by Ben the suave drug dealer.
Well, my take...
Lacanianly speaking, it is the intersection of the symbolic and imaginary that allows us to think that we exist, to pull ourselves out of, to cut ourselves out of, the real. (The real in Lacan is confusing to me: is it the chaotic nothing fog, or is it the mundane/niave, thing-populated, real?)
Ventriloquism (see my youtube video on ventriloquism) is like this scene. A puppet that seems to speak, with a voice thrown from elsewhere.
When we watch TV, when we watch a movie, we see the sounds coming from the speaker in the screen. That is a given. We delude ourselves when watching films. But I think that we delude ourselves all the time. There is never a situation in which my voice comes from my image. There is always a lip synch.
This realisationi is love almost destroyting. IN MD it is enough to force Rita to disappear forever.
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