Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0511101052090.17352@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: Writing in the airport, alarm, flashing lights.
Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 10:52:19 -0500 (EST)
Writing in the airport, alarm, flashing lights. What happens in relation to language and codework vis-a-vis glossolalia? mantra? In mantra, language is performative by virtue of repetition; in glossso- lalia, language is excess and testimony. Both are dependent on the aural register; mantra is steered through texts as well. In both, sound is empathetic within and without the imminency of the world. In both, the performance of natural language is negated, 'nonsense' words on the edge of interpretation. The mantra appears unconstructed, present and presencing: 'So much for the believer's explanation of the origin of _mantra_ - its construction as a verbal sound cannot interest him; on the contrary, he must deny the very possibility of its having been "constructed" at any time - for being eternal and only revealed in time, "construction" is precluded.' (Bharati) Glossolalia likewise is unconstructed, albeit susceptible to linguistico- archaeological renderings of ancient or at least ulterior fragmentary texts. If code is the asymptotic well-formed performative language, codework is the deconstruction of that language within or corroding by or corroding natural language. If code is entirely construct, codework is the splay of mantra-glossolalia across its semantics. Codework has an uncanny relation- ship with language and code; its sound is always distanced, almost inaudible. Do not _think_ (of a) mantra; do not _think_ glossolalia. This preclusion of thought is the preclusion of ration, rationality - in other words conventional syntax. When syntax is cleared, the aural field emerges. This tendency towards the uncanny is also found in codework's relation to the semantic or referential field. Codework threatens its own referents _qua_ referents; in this respect it is liminal, although liminal _among_ what? - is part of its (fluid) content. Alarms are going off in the airport. There are flashing lights. In Echolalias, Heller-Roazen describes Trubetskoi's analysis of interjec- tions; Trubetskoi pointed out that the interjective phoneme set contains numerous sounds not found within the standardized language. In English for example, grrr, hmmm, brrr, the glottal stop in uh-oh, etc. Might one consider this real world interference, code abandoning normative phonemic structures? Code is related to the _cry of pain,_ the inability to retain meaning in the face of it, Levinasian alterity consumed in the Deleuzian pli short-circuiting the body. For that matter, Levinas' Existence and Existents describes insomnia's relation to decathecting, being, if I'm not mistaken. Code ruptures, loosens meaning; it might be language wounded, language not on its own, returned to the bodies that produced 'it.' Echolalias, On the Forgetting of Language, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Zone, 2005 and The Tantric Tradition, Agehananda Bharati, The Tantric Tradition, Anchor, 1970