AKMA’s Random Thoughts

I think I must be misunderstanding something. Are you suggesting that just because we don't have any choice but to perform signifying acts (since your first premise is that "Everyting signifies.") that we therefore are never in control of certain instances of signification? It seems obvious (from a common-sensical perspective, a non-metaphysical one)that we often do decide what and how to signify in specific concrete instances. Further, we make choices and adopt certain stances towards our existence that determine the various ways that we come to unconsciously signify -- so, my decision to join a certain church organization might lead to the adoption of a particular set of tropes, or whatever. So... why not an ethics of signification?

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I’m not sure whether Inigo Montoya and John Bigbooty prove my point, or undermine it, but they’re great examples of. . . something.

Dan, since signifying isn’t a unilateral matter, you can’t control my apprehension of what you intend to express. We do indeed deliberate and carefully articulate a point that we think we’ve made clear, but another receives our expression in a totally unforeseen way. Do we disclaim any accountability for our provocative expression (on the basis that we meant no harm)?

I don’t suggest that our efforts to communicate clearly are ethically irrelevant, but I do maintain that “signifying” is a broader, more elusive category than “intentionally sending a particular verbal message.” We don’t have the energy or even the capacity to monitor every aspect of our signifying: our accent, our posture, our sphere of attention, the languages in which we speak. How much less do we control others’ relation to even our intentional communication?

The ethics doesn’t derive from signifying, but ethics enters in precisely because signifying can’t generate an ethics on internal principles.

(I think — but I haven’t had any coffee yet this morning.)

Equally murky morning thought: the controversial part here is not the oversaturation of signifying/reading. It's the part about "we" being somehow distinct from the realm of signification, the way we are distinct from wildfires and other natural forces, as per your analogy:

"We have no more control over signifying than we do over wildfires in the West," etc.

The extent to which language can be distinguished from "we" and from "nature" is where more troublesome trouble begins. Your analogies lead us away that trouble - one could speak of repression - making me wonder upon what assurance they rest.

Do the same ideas apply to revelation? I think I hear echoes of Tillich (paraphrasing):

Religion is the reception of revelation; revelation cannot be isolated from situation, it is always directed to a particular person [or to a people?] in a particular time and place. The error of fundamentalism [for example] is that it disregards the receptive side of the revelatory situation and declares one understanding of revelation to be the only one possible.

Or am I extrapolating too much?

Ach! Someone accused me of sounding like Tillich — uh-oh!

Tom, wonderfully right, and I want to steer back to the trouble. Thanks for the lovely point.

I have to say, much of this is too much. I believe such elaborations on the nature of 'signifying' are mildly irrlevant. Interesting to be sure, but I do not personally believe it is such an 'up in the air' force; actually, I mean to say is that signifying is easily divorced from intent. Intent bears strong resilience in meaning as it is a word full of purpose. Signifying is more, in my opinion, a means of analysis; as in, it is a window of recognition.

Most importantly, the elusive nature of signifying is an underlying element of all communication: the whole of the mind is like the roots of a tree, it stretches from the memories of birth to the reality of the present. Any cogniscent symbol *word, idea, reference to photograph, et cetera implies any number of things. One person's rational intent can purposly evoke such memorabilia of the mind, and this is the role of 'signifying.'

As in, it is a useful word for explaining the analogous or convergent tastes people of disparate backgrounds are able to share in this digital age of mass media and overwhelming information. Stuff is signifigant: the understood implications of political economy, for instance, between an undergrad with much enthusiasm and a teacher of such subjects whose been teaching for decades.

Anyways, I am sorry to rant: I see the word signifying as carrying the intellectual burden of intent. That is to say, keeping the concept of 'signifying' in mind, one should, then, attempt to deliver communication in such a way that it is most properly interpreted, but with the intent left "loose" enough to allow for recurrent discovery of appreciation. Like the difference between flirting with someone (the agenda is clear but left in the openly empty space of imagination) versus the facisct demogogery of say the theocratic Bush.

Even more in the proletariat sense, how two people can isometrically appreciate some long-dead (or little known) music artist. Something in that music appeals to both people; and the nucleas of that attraction is probably tightly mirrored in both of their minds. Signifying is beyond our capacity to control, yet it remains something we can pull the reigns of now and then.

A good quote by Gould sums up my point:

"The exotic resides in recognition, not machismo"

The seventies street usage of "signify" certainly was freighted with judgment, hence values, hence ethical construct. One assumes that those who were carving a role for themselves as semioticians back in the day - the guys at the Sorbonne who were fascinated with Bunuel, scalpels, eyeballs and such - were in tune with this street usage since they ripped the locution.

More simply... to signify we need both you and I. Xmit/receive - an open channel carrying meaning... trees/forests, all that bullshit.

Tom, I am not sure if we ever have known the stage of "not meaning" or absence of meaning since that would give some meaning to it right away. It's like a man who was born in the rain, lives in the rain, dies in the rain, and knows not the feeling of a desert sand running through your fingers.

Perhaps "Signifying" or "Meaning Making" is our way of Making Love to the World and sometimes we are just lousy lovers.

What a lovely thought - and oh-how-anxiety making for so many of us.

Why we watch TV, professional sports, hate our work, buy things, eat too much, drink and smoke too much, have see x too much and make love not often enough ?

Making meaning is hard work, and requires that we know our self - or are at least curious about it/we/me - as the heart and soul in making love.

W.S. Merwin's got this prose poem where these birds get born in a nest in an umbrella somebody hung up to dry and abandoned, open, hanging from its handle.
They grow up and leave the nest, doing fine, then the first time it rains they roll over and fly straight into the ground.
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Isn't there a third place of significance, between the intended/unintended and the apprehended? Some place where the meaning rests outside the subjective send/receive state? Or does that mean there has to be a third receiver?
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It's telling how a lot of people can't see the validity of unintentional signifying, or another form still, the inspired.
The dancer's move toward where the music's just about to be.