Decomposing Matter: From literary critique to language creation (original) (raw)

Textualized Body, Embodied Text: Derrida’s Linguistic Materialism

Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research, 2017

This paper argues that in Derrida's writings twentieth-century philosophy of language takes a materialistic turn, whereby meaning is understood as sensible and material in its origin and not as ideas pre-given in the mind. The work of metaphysics, however, is one of erasing the originary material/metaphorical meaning of signifiers and turns it into abstract idealistic meaning. Derrida is often accused of linguistic idealism on the basis of a misrepresentation of his anthemic catchphrase ''there is nothing outside the text,'' which seems to imply that he denies the existence of the real-world outside language. This distortion fails to understand the notion of the text and its materialistic underpinnings in the whole project of Derrida. His linguistic materialism is more realistic than idealistic, though he disavows such binary oppositions, and it is an improvement over all other forms of materialism on account of the notion of différance and his strategy of deconstructive reading. Derrida's materialism is non-dialectical and non-predictive; it is centered on the notion of messianicity without a Messiah. The erasure of the permanent presence of the materiality of matter is as much important to this materialism as the subversion of the immutable solidity of the metaphysical conception of meaning. Post-metaphysical materialism understands body itself as text and text itself as embodied.

Language as embodiment

Phenomenology and Mind, 2011

The paper traces the particular quality of human existence as linguistic embodied existence. In asking whether language is like body, it spells out what linguistic experience entails and what kind of picture results from this analysis as grounding the “person” (following Gallagher & Zahavi’s definition) in space/time/body and language. Understanding linguistic existence as embodied existence also facilitates an argument against a representationalist view of language. Nietzsche’s concern is taken up and analyzed: Does the self-reflexivity resulting from linguistic experience threaten individuality? Against his pessimistic conclusion, the article suggests to see language as enabling the individual agent-self.

The Word as Object: Concrete Poetry, Ideogram, and the Materialization of Language

Luso-Brazilian Review, 2012

O artigo discute a relação entre discurso verbal e discurso visual a partir do legado da poesia concreta e neoconcreta dos anos 1950 e de sua teorização pelos poetas Haroldo de Campos, Ferreira Gullar e Kitasono Katsue. A presença da palavra escrita nas artes visuais dos anos 1960 foi frequentemente interpretada em termos da noção de "desmaterialização do objeto de arte," elaborada pelos críticos de arte Lucy Lippard e John Chandler. No entanto, ao passo que a ideia de desmaterialização descreve bem o processo que se observa na obra de artistas conceituais como o norte-americano Joseph Kosuth, este artigo argumenta que a mesma noção não dá conta do uso da palavra escrita na obra de artistas neoconcretos, tais como Hélio Oiticica. No neoconcretismo, e em grande parte da produção artística dos anos 1960, está em jogo antes o processo inverso, de materialização da linguagem no objeto de arte. No cerne desta discussão, o artigo aponta e explora a idealização da escrita ideogramática sino-japonesa por Haroldo de Campos, sua elaboração em método de composição poética e a contrapartida do concretismo na obra do poeta japonês Kitasono Katsue. O leitor -se é que ainda podemos designá-lo por este nome -desceria por uma escada, abriria a porta do poema e entraria nele. Ao centro da sala, iluminada com luz fl uorescente, encontraria um cubo vermelho de 50 cm de lado, que ergueria para encontrar, sob ele, um cubo verde de 30 cm de lado; sob este cubo, descobriria, ao erguê-lo, outro cubo, bem menor, de 10 cm de lado. Na face deste cubo que estaria voltada para o chão, ele leria, ao levantá-lo, a palavra rejuvenesça. 

The body of the language 1

2017

The rising interest for corporeity demonstrated by some recent psychotherapeutic approaches seems to accompany a reduced importance attributed to verbal language and conversation in the therapeutic process, to such a degree as to make body language the privileged tool for the understanding of the client’s system of personal meanings. Personal construct psychotherapy – and hermeneutic constructivist psychotherapy which represents a development enhancing its affinity with phenomenology and the theory of autopoiesis – espouses a constructivist view of knowledge which allows to transcend the many dualisms characterizing many psychologies and psychotherapies and, among these, also the dualism between an explicit and an implicit channel of communication. The present contribution is aimed at supporting the thesis of the ontological role of language in the creation of personal worlds, and showing, also by means of the synthesis of a psychotherapeutic conversation, the work accomplished with...

(Im)material Language: Revealing the Body through Metaphor

Linguistic Frontiers, 2024

When Roman Jakobson, based on his exploration of the problem of aphasia, distinguishes two aspects that characterize language – metaphoricity and metonymy – he touches on an important issue that will become a central theme for some of his followers. This question is the materiality of language. From the point of view of the aphatic himself, metaphoricity and metonymy express two extreme ways of relating to the material of language. A productive elaboration of this thesis in the history of semiotics has been provided by Julia Kristeva, who radicalizes Jakobson’s conclusions by working with the fundamental concepts of Freudian psychoanalysis. In the paper, I will compare Kristeva’s approach to that of Jacques Lacan and attempt to reconstruct the theoretical assumptions that allow Kristeva to ascribe to metaphor a privileged role that consists of the constant opening of the sphere of the sign towards the body of the subject. To illustrate some important aspects, I will turn to Vítězslav Nezval’s novella Sexual Nocturne (1931), where the connection between language and body plays a central role.

Word as Object: A View of Language at Hand

Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2014

Here we develop a view of language as a form of material engagement, one that fore grounds its embodied and ecological character. Achieving such a view, however, requires disabusing ourselves of certain received and deeply entrenched notions. We present a thought experiment meant to illuminate the materiality of language, as a technological activity on par with the construction and manipulation of artifacts. We explore its impli cations, justifying the comparison with actual languages while emphasizing revealing differences. Ultimately, we hope to expose the embodied and enactive nature of lan guage, offering a view of language as continuous with our engagement with the environ ment, as opposed to a picture of language as an essentially symbolic system or code.

‘Matter’ and language: An Examination and Application of Bergsonian and Deleuzean Methodology

This paper explores how the de-intellectualisation of language can lead to a voiceless actualisation of lived and living experience. As many research studies have focused on psychological and structuralist linguistic approaches to determine the ‘thing’ through a phonic utterance, they have sequestered themselves to asking: what is language? By reconditioning our approach to language as being inextricably linked to our interaction with the extended world, we can, instead, ask the question: what does language do? This paper addresses the following question: How can Bergson’s distinction between ‘matter’ and time as ‘duration’ alter our approach to conventional uses of language? In so doing, I challenge the Bergsonian supposition that language inhibits our pre-intellectual and voiceless actualisation of immediate lived experience. By employing a specific methodology as suggested by Bergson and developed by Deleuze, I examine how the combined reading of philosophical and so-called ‘literary’ texts can lead to a clearer understanding of ‘inexpressibility’. To do this, I will place key Bergsonian and Deleuzean conceptual instruments within the literary paradigm of Italo Calvino’s Time and the Hunter. Seen as a ‘process’ rather than an ‘achievement’, I outline an approach to language as an experiment of intellectual effort which seeks to ‘exhaust’ the ‘spatiality’ of language in order to return both myself and the reader to the simplicity of lived experience.