Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.51.0302081937320.264@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>,
"WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines" <WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: My Composition in Language
Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2003 19:37:43 -0500 (EST)
My Composition in Language It is entirely irrelevant to the world whether we exist or not. Nothing is relevant to the world. Existential statements serve an evolutionary purpose, the reification of the self. What occurs in language in relation to the copula or self-reflexivity, has no effect whatsoever on the world. Nothing has any effect whatsoever on the world. Self-reflexive recognition is a form of pointing-out or gesture, in the guise of naming (by virtue of nominalism). Consciousness, self-consciousness, is a defense mechanism. There is nothing to 'it' beyond this. It is a mistake to assume that consciousness exists outside of language. It resides in language; it is a tool which occupies or declares nothing. Declaration occurs only in language. Physical gesture cleaves the air. Inscriptions transform the imminent world of the substrate. An effect already exhausts. Culture is built on the predication that language means, and therefore acts and creates. Words are nothing and do nothing. The performative is a contextual myth. Alarum is spread by language, just as identity precedes language. "In its early stages the ballet also yielded ornaments which moved kaleid- oscopically, But even after they had discarded their ritual meaning, they remained still the plastic formation of the erotic life which gave rise to them and determined their traits." (Kracauer) We speak to ourselves. We speak for ourselves. We never speak. Language has never been 'employed.' The self-reflexivity of language is the routing of resonance; all objects and cultures are resonant holdfasts for our existence. Neither objects nor cultures exist. "The cornered vessel (ku) has no longer corners. What a 'cornered' vessel! What a 'cornered' vessel!" (Confucius) The ku has never existed. Language infiltrates speaker, spoken, and spoken-to with its semantic skein. Likewise, the skein does not exist. Speaking, spoken, and spoken-to, are correlated actions in the world. They have no relevance. The correlation is nearly decomposable. Every speaking is a composition. Every composition is an appearance. Every appearance is an illusion. Illusions are subject to entropy and dissolution. Neither the appearance nor the illusion exists. What does not exist, disseminates, dissembles, dissimulates. Our existence is an illusion. The world is neither an illusion nor a copula. The world is all that is neither an illusion nor a copula. Nothing is relevant to the world. The world is nothing. ===