[MD] new old book

[MarshaV]

Hello John,

I can become miffed if told I'm wrong, but I feel absolutely mortified to 
be told I'm right.  I am very , very certain that I've NEVER had an original 
idea.  Besides I am no self, have no essence, there is no core of 'my 
experiences' apart from the flow of ever-changing, interdependent, 
impermanent organic, biological, social and intellectual patterns.
I did like the what Jacques Ellul wrote.

Thank you.

Marsha





On Apr 10, 2010, at 2:17 PM, John Carl wrote:

> I couldn't find my copy of Jacques Ellul's Humiliation of the Word, so Lu
> ordered got me one on e-bay and I started reading it again, in the light of
> recent dialogues on this forum.
> 
> I'm finding gold.
> 
> For Matt:
> 
> "The important thing is that the unique value of language lies in truth.
> Language is not bound to reality, but to its capacity to create this
> different universe, which you can call surreal, meta-real or metaphysical.
> For the sake of convenience we will call it the order of truth.  The word
> is the creator, founder and producer of truth.
> 
> Note carefully that I am not establishing any hierarchy in this connection,
> from a mediocre reality with no value, ascending toward a transcendent
> truth. I merely establish two different orders.  Rather than speaking of
> Truth, at this point I am still dealing just with the order of truth (which
> is also, to be sure, the order of untruth, error and falsehood!).  Nor am I
> saying that language has nothing to do with reality.  We will examine this
> relationship later.  I am, instead, looking for specificity, and in this
> case it resides in the fact that nothing  besides language can reach or
> establish the order of truth."
> 
> Isn't that similar to Rorty's "conversation"?
> 
> 
> For Marsha, a passage in praise of ambiguity and poetry and spiders:
> 
> "Language deals with connotations and overtones.  It takes it place in the
> center of an infinitely delicate spider's web, whose central structure is
> fine, rigorous, and dense.  As you move away from the center, the web
> becomes larger and distended, until it reaches incoherence, at its edge,
> where it sends off threads in every directions.  Some of these threads go a
> great distance, until they arrive at invisible spots where the web is
> anchored.  This complex web is a marvel which is never the same, not for me
> at different points in time, nor for another person.
> 
> The spoken Word puts the web in motion so that waves sweep through it and
> cause lights to flicker.  The waves induce vibrations that are different for
> the other person and for me.  The word is uncertain.  Discourse is ambiguous
> and often ambivalent.  Some foolishly try to reduce language to something
> like algebra, in which each world would have a mathematically precise
> meaning, and only one meaning.  Each would would be put in a straitjacket,
> having only meaning so that we would know with scientific precision what we
> were saying.
> 
> But the blessed uncertainty of language is the source of all its richness.
> I do not know exactly how much of my message the other person hears, how
> they interpret it, or what they will retain of it.  I know that a kind of
> electric current is established between us; words penetrate the other, and I
> have the feeling that they either reacts positively or else reject what I
> have said.  I can interpret their reaction, and then the relationship will
> rebound, accompanied by a rich halo of overtones.  They do no understand,
> and I see that.  So I speak again, weaving another piece of cloth, but this
> time with a different design. I come up with what I think will reach them
> and be perceived by them.  The uncertainty of meaning and the ambiguity of
> language inspire creativity.  It is a matter of poetics, but not just the
> esthetics of poetry.  There is a poetics of language and of relationships
> also.  We must not limit this poetics to language, which must be constantly
> rewoven, but remember that the relationship is *also* involved.
> 
> Language requires that we recommence this relationship, which is always
> uncertain.  I must disavow it over and over again, through sharp
> questioning, explanation, and verbal interchange."
> 
> 
> There.  According to Ellul anyway, she's been doing it right all along.
> 
> 
> JC
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