tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461948747659071092.post6921544591860056794..comments2023-09-29T02:49:02.989-07:00Comments on An Emphatic Umph: Becoming Language Here & NowDaniel Coffeenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03912050391869734890noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461948747659071092.post-56950399646947726002014-06-20T20:15:57.561-07:002014-06-20T20:15:57.561-07:00Yes yes yes yes: this is what I love — the slipper...Yes yes yes yes: this is what I love — the slippery identity and temporality that living in language engenders. This is of course Derrida's whole thing — iteration and his spin on Hamlet's "time is out of joynt." But where he sees the undoing/doing — the double move — I prefer Deleuze's proliferation and folds. Anyway, I find myself returning to Derrida more and more as I get older. Go figure. <br /><br />And I think indexicals cut across other grammatical categories — pronouns and adverbs. They are those things that index the speaker/writer.Daniel Coffeenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03912050391869734890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461948747659071092.post-75949435829876343222014-06-20T14:59:13.801-07:002014-06-20T14:59:13.801-07:00"You are there, and I am here."
That..."You are there, and I am here."<br /><br />That's as true for me when I say it (w/r/t you, Daniel Coffeen) as it is for you when you say it (w/r/t to me, Jim H.). Yet its meaning is, in a sense, turned on its head. We don't mean the same thing when we say the same sentence b/c those damn indexicals point in different directions. Your 'here' is my 'there' and vice versa.<br /><br />And then there's that whole pronoun problem which we (ahem) don't have time to get into just now (ahem, ahem).Jim H.https://www.blogger.com/profile/02088100982761595050noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461948747659071092.post-52987197280770904572014-06-19T18:12:33.055-07:002014-06-19T18:12:33.055-07:00It's funny that you mention these two things. ...It's funny that you mention these two things. I'm always the guy who leaves the voicemail that says, "No, this is not you. I did not reach you." And, well, I used to call myself all the time and leave messages just for the exquisite vertigo of myself splayed through time and space. <br /><br />Your point is precisely Derrida's: all language is always already an iteration. Recording technology amplifies this effect but it will always have been there, even when speaking "in person," as well. Daniel Coffeenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03912050391869734890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7461948747659071092.post-76017836901968355652014-06-19T15:28:07.812-07:002014-06-19T15:28:07.812-07:00Have you ever paid attention to the rhetoric of vo...Have you ever paid attention to the rhetoric of voicemail (or answering machine) greetings?<br /><br />"You have reached ..."<br /><br />"This is ..."<br /><br />Which of course, you haven't, and it isn't. It's a bizarre lifeless simulacrum, a ghost in the machine, a reanimated digital trace impersonating someone who is long since a different person than they were when they recorded it.<br /><br />Have you ever called your own phone for some reason and let it ring through to the voicemail greeting? There's a moment of vertigo, of witnessing the fragments of ourselves that litter our wake as we leave traces on the world.<br /><br />Blog comments are similar, in a way. By time you read this, I will be someone else.Asahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12646553525777966721noreply@blogger.com