Re: do we need to speak clearly?

--------------FA002298A799E05474EB9F54
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Dear Dan,

LOL!

chris, i'm not kidding you here, but i really didn't understand this!!
from this point on i can't follow what you're saying. however if i take
your sentence " I think I am writing clearly at the
moment" as an example, my only point here is how is it that i understand

you? every word is ambiguous and indeterminate if i choose to make it so

- (what is signified by "i", when is "the moment" what is "clear" etc
etc to infinity...) - but obviously i "know what you mean".

[...] every word is ambiguous and indeterminate if i choose to make it
so [...] it's not a matter of choice, only trivially a matter of certain
bloodymindedness, the kind of appraoch that should be taught in Failing
to Hear 101

which is my point. language often appears as that final barrier we
cannot pass beyond, because when we speak "clearly" we are plugged back
into the dominant significations, back into the social. hence - the
unconscious cannot be represented by or through language, it cannot be
in language, it cannot be made with language: it doesn't have a
language, language cannot navigate it. but the unconscious is not
unobtainable because language is not so important after all.... because
you have a body that language cannot talk about... as well as one that
it can.

I want to come back to this! This (alaquid) will not be answered, but
maybe there will be a meditation on the subject.

could you explain to me the rest of this email, or at least what you
were getting at?

I will try.

> Take the gift.

What I am trying to remind us of here is the notion of the lingusitic
exchange (i.e. negotiation) as exchange, a model for which, might be the
social practice of gift exchanges. There is much to say on such a topic,
about the nonidentity of gift and hire, anout the freedom of giving and
the obligation it paradoxically creates (i.e. the obligation to give
freely in return). This paradox is the effect of the exchange being a
coded practice. What this means is that negotiation is itself a coded
practice as well as a coding practice. Negoatiation is a way that the
code modifies itself, expands, collapses, becomes flexible or brittle,
etc. The satire below -

> Other kings give a horse for a fine poem
> He gives a cow [sic]

displays this. One should, according to the coded practice give an x - y
only becomes part of the (suitable gifts) paradigm with x by way of a
different paradigm (livestock). The cow's coding is imported into the
gift code and imbues the chaepskate king whith its bovine [& female]
attributes according to the gift-code (a king should not be a
cheapskate)......

We could go on. Is it becoming clear? LOL

Now this code that enables negotiation is itself the product of past
negotiations (I won't say it encodes a destiny for future negotiations,
though that is implicit in this claim: it s virtuality[?]) But I'
slipping out of my project here which is to think structurally in the
wake of Levi-Strauss and his avowed progenitors in Anthropology
inflected by a kind of Searl'ishness (a homophone for churlishness that
might suggest a deranged synonym). This should clarify, help us
negotiate:
>
> There is a formula at work in the gift, in the exchange. This *code*
> is itself a process of negoatiation that began before we were born and

> will contunue long after we are buried.

By which I mean it is a gambit designed to close in on meaning, make us
share *it* (alaquid). But isn't alaquid, the pronoun "I", "you", the
sign of subjectivity and deferral (it defers always to a former/later
term). And this is Derrida's terrain, the zone of his ruputuring of that
*closing in*, that phatic/sharing imulse within the exchange, the
negotiation. In my last post, up to this point, I was only articulating
that closure, that limiting, that determining aspect of negotiation, so
I attempted to set up counter resonations through the pronoun J.D., a
signature that suggests another project:
>
> And everything I have said here is from the most conventional and
> Limited Inc. discourses I know, those most interested in the
> determination of meaning..
>
And I presumed that these resonations, wrongly presumed, gambled
wrongly, but perhaps properly (considering the project of J.D.), I
guessed strategically that the *clang* of "Limited Inc." would gesture
towards a countervista, away from meaning determination and coding
towards the flexure of code, its nonrepeatability, its itara (a
reiterability that is also a non-reiterability). A text, an utterance,
is always and never readable in the same way - what does this say about
the requirement to negotiate, the improbability of coming to a final
settlement of meaning, a *limitation* of meaning. What does it say about
the determining power of code and coding? for coding is always undoing
code, the future is undoing the past of which it is also the product.
This meditation informs this *remark*:

> So even from the most clarifying position, clarity looks most
> uncertain, even from the most deterministic position, meaning seems
> quite underdetermined.

Which returns again to the notion of code as the product of negotiation,
of these negotiations as the products of past negotiations, of the
future products to be negotiated, destined but not determined (such a
paradox!):
>
> And the longer the duration of this negotiation the further it gets
> from the event, the longer I have been dead, the less likely it is
> that I will be understood. And I was dead for a long time before I was

> born.
>
For the context is critical to the negotiation of code. This is the main
argument of Limited Inc., that the context is always particular,
strange, perverse. It may have an abstract model, but in practice (and
according to the very logic of code itself), negotiation is always open
in a way that code cannot *properly* determine? The idea then, that only
here can negotiation take place, that the models that produced this
scene (that were themselves the productions of earlier scenes) the
models that destined this scene (and which will be produced in the
destiny inscibed here, in this *present context*), are distant
relatives, already dead, asserting their ghostly voices here......

Code is an epitaph?

"The a of differance, thus is not heard; it remains silent, secret and
discreet as a tomb: oikesis. And thereby let us anticipate the
delineation of a site, the familial residence and tomb of the proper in
which is produced, by differance, the economy of death. This stone -
provided that one knows how to decipher its inscription - is not far
from announcing the death of the tyrant." - Derrida

Now, I would very much like to return to some of your earlier
suggestions. I hope I can do them *justice*, submit them to your
*judgement*, to the *jurisprudence* of this context which sometimes, as
I write, seems like a Pauline{?} theater - or a panopticon where every
clear movement of the sign can be interpreted, so that this movement
must be made, if we are to succeeed, in secret, with a sleight of hand,
a *whisper*.

which is my point. language often appears as that final barrier we
cannot pass beyond, because when we speak "clearly" we are plugged back
into the dominant significations, back into the social. hence - the
unconscious cannot be represented by or through language, it cannot be
in language, it cannot be made with language: it doesn't have a
language, language cannot navigate it. but the unconscious is not
unobtainable because language is not so important after all.... because
you have a body that language cannot talk about... as well as one that
it can.

I repaste this in a new context, doubling it, making it reiterate
itself, letting its whispers alter. Earlier I promised to meditate on
this passage, which is yet to be negotiated, already a negotiation,
already the product of past settlements. But this meditation has already
taken place. I have already been whispering to you, writing to you
between the lines, in the unsaid of the saying. I did not promise to
answer it (the promise being the most excellent (performative) Speech
Act that enables Searle and Sons, if we ignore J.D.'s perverse
mystifications, to derive an ought from an is - {and what a wonderful
take D&G give this in ATP! To lose the thrust of Searl'ishness entirely,
to miss the point, to stand back and witness the process of this
suspicious determination}. [....] language often appears as that final
barrier we cannot pass beyond [...]. Language recoups. From a certain
perspective language seems to defer any residue, to stamp out residue
(and what is this residue if not the affects and percepts language would
charge itself with the duty to communicate: my subjective history, my
truth, my becoming). Language seems to be the interiority of code,
always interiorising, ever recuperating, never allowing that which it
(re)captures (or represses?) to be itself, let alone speak itself. It
never leaves this residue alone (you will call this residue, that which
is preserved from the question of death or slavery, almost by way of a
tautology, as an analytical truth, the "unconscious"). Language is a
tyrant. It never sets "us" (our becoming) free (as Heidegger sources the
term - to let dwell, to leave alone, in its native state, to let it be
as it was when we found it, to spare it, not to subject it to the
question of death or slavery.....).

But if you have been listening to these whispers you will know that this
is not the case. The relation between code and its Other is rhizomic, a
matter of many mirrors (for why else did Perseus behold the reflection
of the monster [monsterous feminine? eternal woman?] in his shield
(problema)? In his project, in his language, in his thought, he saw the
Other reflected and had to in order to kill it. You ask this Other now
to stand forth in her full Reality. Have you no respect for the gods!
[...] hence - the unconscious cannot be represented by or through
language, it cannot be in language, it cannot be made with language: it
doesn't have a language, language cannot navigate it [...]. To
understand this question that is phrased as a claim would we not have to
cast aside it's frame, its clarity? Would we not have to cast aside that
definition of the uncoscious as the nonrepresentable, the un{pass}able,
and alongside it the definition of cosciousness as language (thought as
speaking)? We would have to listen to this whisper, long destined,
attend to the riddle that it encodes, seeks to negotiate, seeks to share
- like a patient etherized upon a table. We would have to be careful,
like prisoners in a panopticon who, against policy, have been placed,
impossibly enough, in the same cell. The very scene of this passing
gestures to its own undoing, to its own answer. And so I pass to your
meditation - [....] but the unconscious is not unobtainable because
language is not so important after all.... because you have a body that
language cannot talk about... as well as one that it can. That the
unconscious - this body that cannot speak - is already speaking, leaving
its traces, its deletions, its non-presence, in every present utterance,
every enunciation. The nonspeaking dwells in the speaking, but not in
primal liberty, yet as it is, has become, was destined to be, is
becoming, as it remains, in its residue. For those that have ears......

It is with a certain reluctance that I am about to press the Send key. I
remain uncertain as to whether I have made myself clear, whether meaning
has properly been determined in this up-to-now last transaction of the
negotiation we have begun, that was begun for us already. For would
there not have to be, if meaning could be negotiated, a last word? a
phrasing that speaks the meaning shared. I find this unlikely.
negotiation is an ongoing process. Let us hope it leads us, like the
inhabitants of the Sahara, to dwell elsewhere.

- Chris

I think I am writing clearly now.

LOL

--------------FA002298A799E05474EB9F54
Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

<HTML>
Dear Dan,

LOL!

chris, i'm not kidding you here, but i really didn't understand this!!
from this point on i can't follow what you're saying. however if i take
your sentence " I think I am writing clearly at the
 moment" as an example, my only point here is how is it that i understand
 you? every word is ambiguous and indeterminate if i choose to make
it so
 - (what is signified by "i", when is "the moment" what is "clear"  
etc
 etc to infinity...) - but obviously i "know what you mean".

[...] every word is ambiguous and indeterminate if i choose to make
it so [...] it's not a matter of choice, only trivially a matter of
certain bloodymindedness, the kind of appraoch that should be taught in
Failing to Hear 101

which is my point.  language often appears as that final barrier
we
 cannot pass beyond, because when we speak "clearly" we are plugged
back
 into the dominant significations, back into the social.  hence
- the
 unconscious cannot be represented by or through language, it cannot
be
 in language, it cannot be made with language: it doesn't have a
 language, language cannot navigate it.  but the unconscious
is not
 unobtainable because language is not so important after all....
because
 you have a body that language cannot talk about... as well as one
that
 it can.

I want to come back to this! This (alaquid) will not be answered, but
maybe there will be a meditation on the subject.

could you explain to me the rest of this email, or at least what
you
 were getting at?

I will try.

> Take the gift.

What I am trying to remind us of here is the notion of the lingusitic
exchange (i.e. negotiation) as exchange, a model for which, might be the
social practice of gift exchanges. There is much to say on such a topic,
about the nonidentity of gift and hire, anout the freedom of giving and
the obligation it paradoxically creates (i.e. the obligation to
give freely in return). This paradox is the effect of the exchange
being a coded practice. What this means is that negotiation is itself a
coded practice as well as a coding practice. Negoatiation is a way that
the code modifies itself, expands, collapses, becomes flexible or brittle,
etc. The satire below -

> Other kings give a horse for a fine poem
 > He gives a cow [sic]

displays this. One should, according to the coded practice give an x
- y only becomes part of the (suitable gifts) paradigm with x by way of
a different paradigm (livestock). The cow's coding is imported into the
gift code and imbues the chaepskate king whith its bovine [& female]
attributes according to the gift-code (a king should not be a cheapskate)......

We could go on. Is it becoming clear? LOL

Now this code that enables negotiation is itself the product of past
negotiations (I won't say it encodes a destiny for future negotiations,
though that is implicit in this claim: it s virtuality[?]) But I'
slipping out of my project here which is to think structurally in the wake
of Levi-Strauss and his avowed progenitors in Anthropology inflected by
a kind of Searl'ishness (a homophone for churlishness that might suggest
a deranged synonym). This should clarify, help us negotiate:
 >
 > There is a formula at work in the gift, in the exchange. This *code*
 > is itself a process of negoatiation that began before we were born
and
 > will contunue long after we are buried.

By which I mean it is a gambit designed to close in on meaning, make
us share *it* (alaquid). But isn't alaquid, the pronoun "I", "you",
the sign of subjectivity and deferral (it defers always to a former/later
term). And this is Derrida's terrain, the zone of his ruputuring of that
*closing in*, that phatic/sharing imulse within the exchange, the negotiation.
In my last post, up to this point, I was only articulating that closure,
that limiting, that determining aspect of negotiation, so I attempted to
set up counter resonations through the pronoun J.D., a signature that suggests
another project:
 >
 > And everything I have said here is from the most conventional and
 > Limited Inc. discourses I know, those most interested in the
 > determination of meaning..
 >
 And I presumed that these resonations, wrongly presumed, gambled wrongly,
but perhaps properly (considering the project of J.D.), I guessed strategically
that the *clang* of "Limited Inc." would gesture towards a countervista,
away from meaning determination and coding towards the flexure of code,
its nonrepeatability, its itara (a reiterability that is also a non-reiterability).
A text, an utterance,  is always and never readable in the same way
- what does this say about the requirement to negotiate, the improbability
of coming to a final settlement of meaning, a *limitation* of meaning.
What does it say about the determining power of code and coding? for coding
is always undoing code, the future is undoing the past of which it is also
the product. This meditation informs this *remark*:

> So even from the most clarifying position, clarity looks most
 > uncertain, even from the most deterministic position, meaning seems
 > quite underdetermined.

Which returns again to the notion of code as the product of negotiation,
of these negotiations as the products of past negotiations, of the future
products to be negotiated, destined but not determined (such a paradox!):
 >
 > And the longer the duration of this negotiation the further it gets
 > from the event, the longer I have been dead, the less likely it is
 > that I will be understood. And I was dead for a long time before
I was
 > born.
 >
 For the context is critical to the negotiation of code. This is the
main argument of Limited Inc., that the context is always particular, strange,
perverse. It may have an abstract model, but in practice (and according
to the very logic of code itself), negotiation is always open in a way
that code cannot *properly* determine? The idea then, that only here can
negotiation take place, that the models that produced this scene (that
were themselves the productions of earlier scenes) the models that destined
this scene (and which will be produced in the destiny inscibed here, in
this *present context*), are distant relatives, already dead, asserting
their ghostly voices here......

Code is an epitaph?

"The a of differance, thus is not heard; it remains silent, secret and
discreet as a tomb: oikesis. And thereby let us anticipate the delineation
of a site, the familial residence and tomb of the proper in which is produced,
by differance, the economy of death. This stone - provided that one knows
how to decipher its inscription - is not far from announcing the death
of the tyrant." - Derrida

Now, I would very much like to return to some of your earlier suggestions.
I hope I can do them *justice*, submit them to your *judgement*, to the
*jurisprudence* of this context which sometimes, as I write, seems like
a Pauline{?} theater - or a panopticon where every clear movement of the
sign can be interpreted, so that this movement must be made, if we are
to succeeed, in secret, with a sleight of hand, a *whisper*.

which is my point.  language often appears as that final barrier
we
 cannot pass beyond, because when we speak "clearly" we are plugged
back
 into the dominant significations, back into the social.  hence
- the
 unconscious cannot be represented by or through language, it cannot
be
 in language, it cannot be made with language: it doesn't have a
 language, language cannot navigate it.  but the unconscious
is not
 unobtainable because language is not so important after all....
because
 you have a body that language cannot talk about... as well as one
that
 it can.

I repaste this in a new context, doubling it, making it reiterate itself,
letting its whispers alter. Earlier I promised to meditate on this passage,
which is yet to be negotiated, already a negotiation, already the product
of past settlements. But this meditation has already taken place. I have
already been whispering to you, writing to you between the lines, in the
unsaid of the saying. I did not promise to answer it (the promise being
the most excellent (performative) Speech Act that enables Searle and Sons,
if we ignore J.D.'s perverse mystifications, to derive an ought from
an is - {and what a wonderful take D&G give this in ATP! To
lose the thrust of Searl'ishness entirely, to miss the point, to stand
back and witness the process of this suspicious determination}.  [....]
language often appears as that final barrier we cannot pass beyond [...].
Language recoups. From a certain perspective language seems to defer
any residue, to stamp out residue (and what is this residue if not the
affects and percepts language would charge itself with the duty to communicate:
my subjective history, my truth, my becoming). Language seems to be the
interiority of code, always interiorising, ever recuperating, never allowing
that which it (re)captures (or represses?) to be itself, let alone
speak itself. It never leaves this residue alone (you will call
this residue, that which is preserved from the question of death or slavery,
almost by way of a tautology, as an analytical truth, the "unconscious").
Language is a tyrant. It never sets "us" (our becoming) free (as Heidegger
sources the term - to let dwell, to leave alone, in its native state, to
let it be as it was when we found it, to spare it, not to subject
it to the question of death or slavery.....).

But if you have been listening to these whispers you will know that
this is not the case. The relation between code and its Other is rhizomic,
a matter of many mirrors (for why else did Perseus behold the reflection
of the monster [monsterous feminine? eternal woman?] in his shield (problema)? 
In his project, in his language, in his thought, he saw the Other reflected
and had to in order to kill it. You ask this Other now to stand forth in
her full Reality. Have you no respect for the gods! [...] hence - the
unconscious cannot be represented by or through language, it cannot be
in language, it cannot be made with language: it doesn't have a language,
language cannot navigate it [...]. To understand this question that
is phrased as a claim would we not have to cast aside it's frame, its clarity?
Would we not have to cast aside that definition of the uncoscious as the
nonrepresentable, the un{pass}able, and alongside it the definition
of cosciousness as language (thought as speaking)? We would have to listen
to this whisper, long destined, attend to the riddle that it encodes, seeks
to negotiate, seeks to share - like a patient etherized upon a table.
We would have to be careful, like prisoners in a panopticon who, against
policy, have been placed, impossibly enough, in the same cell. The very
scene of this passing gestures to its own undoing, to its own answer. And
so I pass to your meditation - [....] but the unconscious is not unobtainable
because language is not so important after all.... because you have a body
that language cannot talk about... as well as one that it can. That
the unconscious - this body that cannot speak - is already speaking, leaving
its traces, its deletions, its non-presence, in every present utterance,
every enunciation. The nonspeaking dwells in the speaking, but not in primal
liberty, yet as it is, has become, was destined to be, is becoming, as
it remains, in its residue. For those that have ears......

It is with a certain reluctance that I am about to press the Send key.
I remain uncertain as to whether I have made myself clear, whether meaning
has properly been determined in this up-to-now last transaction of the
negotiation we have begun, that was begun for us already. For would there
not have to be, if meaning could be negotiated, a last word? a phrasing
that speaks the meaning shared. I find this unlikely. negotiation is an
ongoing process. Let us hope it leads us, like the inhabitants of the Sahara,
to dwell elsewhere.

- Chris

I think I am writing clearly now.

LOL</HTML>

--------------FA002298A799E05474EB9F54--