One of the wonderful gifts from blogging comes when your friends offer you the benefit of their wisdom (sometimes under the guise of saying what they thought you already knew). Tom, for instance, called into question “the part about ‘we’ being somehow distinct from the realm of signification, the way we are distinct from wildfires and other natural forces.”Tom goes on to wonder to what extent we’re distinct from “signification” on one hand and “forces of nature” on the other. Great, great! There are (of course) rough-hewn ways to make those distinctions work, just as there are rough-hewn (and finely-polished) ways to make “intention” work as a criterion, and so on. But Tom’s on the right path, the one that leads to trouble: the rhetoric of obvious distinction represses all the problematic complications that might arise if we looked to closely at the supposed dividing lines.
So, after learning this from Tom, what should I say? Perhaps best to say that when we broach the topic of signifying, we enter a discourse where the recursive character of our expressions and their topics play havoc with the rules. It marks a space where brutal discursive exploitation and radical semiotic trust and intimacy come into play — one reason poets seem to know this terrain so much better than most philosophers.
David nudges me relative to my suggesting (in David’s words) “that there’s no ‘real’ signification that we can authoritatively unearth. Our simple model of communication (inner thought expressed in outer signs) misrepresents the actual situation.” Then, he wonders, should we not be held accountable for the effects of our deliberate significations? (Let’s talk about defining “signifies” as “projects meaning,” but not tonight, okay?)
Sure thing — I am, as Si would have said last year and I don’t know what he’s saying this year instead, all about accountability. Indeed, absent a durable principle of intentionality as the criterion for “real” meaning, I think accountability is all we have left — not only for our deliberate sginficiations, but our inadvertent ones, too. That feels intuitively unfair; the “I didn’t mean to” defense has a long and deeply-embedded history in our social fabric. I’ll venture to suggest, though, that once we admit that intention doesn’t serve us reliably in most such respects, that it’s a necessary placeholder for an unspecifiable factor (and yes, I read Anscombe, which is partly what made me this way), then invoking the unreliable placeholder to exculpate or incriminate runs the risk of compounding the imprecise with the undeterminable. At the end of all our conversations (verbal or gestural or digital), we come to accountability: do we step up and acknowledge that we’re implicated in the various networks of ramifications that flow from our signifying practice, or do we retreat, cover our hinder parts, and endeavor to immunize ourselves from our infiliation in webs we did not make or choose. (I vote for accountability, then, rather than self-justification.) So then, the radical fluidity of signification doesn’t excuse us from responsibility; rather, it radicalizes our responsibility, requiring that we acknowledge the full extent of our participation in the economy of signs, and asking whether we then stand by the meanings we’ve participated in constructing and affirming, or whether we deny our selves.
Chris (in an email) asks, “How does what you're saying differ from what I imagine to be the First Step of a 12-step program for New Age Nihilists: ‘Came to believe I was powerless over the fact that shit happens’ ”?
I suppose that my point converges with this Twelve-Step program — but the myth of control so pervades the discourses within which I spend most of my time and energy working, that it’s worth reminding myself (and innocent bystanders) how tenuous that myth turns out to be. Indeed, often enough it’s tremendously destructive, as people cling to a dysfunctional “control” for fear of a chaos that they posit as the alternative. All the while they wreak havoc for which they don’t feel accountable, since they’re doing it in the name of fending off chaos. But that chaos may not be the only alternative, or may be only a phase thourgh which a different order is passing, or some other possibility that the fear-driven controller can’t see. Let it go, let it go. (Here I hear resonances of Eric’s shower-inspired ruminations that I want to take up tomorrow, after a night’s sleep, ’cause his post makes me want to think in a different direction. He’s way off base about that “brilliant” stuff, though.)
Chris doesn’t ask about the correlation between “signification” and the Higher Power about which twelve-step programs speak (and the God about whom theologians speak). Short answer: it’s far from being adventitious, but I want vigorously to avoid equating the two (three) or suggesting that one is a less-refined version of another. Maybe I’ll have something sensible to add to that tomorrow, in between grading final exams and other errands. In the meantime, thanks for making me think more, and harder.
Posted by AKMA at March 15, 2004 10:33 PM | TrackBackIt's so early in the morning, and I'd really like to make oblique references to pop culture, or perhaps draw a picture instead, but this will have to do.
Perhaps we need to revisit the notions of reponsibility, authority and accountability. I find the notion of accountability too broadly smeared across the ideas of our relationships to one another, and I don't think it's often correct.
My understanding is that I am only accountable to those who exercise some authority over me, by whom I am levied some responsibility for something. I am accountable to the IRS to pay my taxes, even though by not paying my taxes I may burden or otherwise transgress against my fellow law-abiding, tax-paying citizens. One can perhaps draw a relationship between the IRS, the federal government and then "the people" and make the claim that I am ultimately accountable to "the people," but that just obscures the reality. Some agency has to be erected by "the people" for real authority to exist, otherwise perhaps this group of "the people" thinks I should be fined and my property seized, while this other group of "the people" thinks I should be stoned. Which group am I subject to? All of them? I don't think that's a meaningful use of the term "authority."
If I am accountable for my communication, then presumably some legitimate authority has imposed upon me some responsibility attendant to my efforts at communication. I don't believe any such authority exists, except in certain circumstances. In a courtroom, an officer of the court orders me to tell the truth (oddly enough, by swearing to God), and I have a responsibility to do so and I may be held accountable if I lie (unless I'm a Microsoft executive). In general, it can only be said that I am responsible only to myself for my efforts at communication, inasmuch as I have only authority over myself as the speaker, not you as the listener. We could just as easily reverse the situation as you seem to have framed it and suggest that all listeners are accountable to all speakers for "getting" the message. Why not?
Now, I thought you were getting at this with the previous post. While I may not be specifically "accountable" to the larger group, there is no such thing as "consequence-free" communication. It's a free country, and presumably I have the right to say anything I wish. But if I choose to say something offensive, I have no reason, under the right of free speech, to expect that people won't be offended. If I say something untrue, I have no reason, under the right of free speech, to expect that I won't be contradicted or demonstrated to be wrong. That's not being "accountable" other than perhaps to a larger "authority" like that of gravity, to which you referred yesterday - perhaps "the law of unintended consequences."
I think the idea of accountability, too broadly applied, becomes meaningless, signifies nothing.
I go back to "Inconceivable!"
Do you know the "serenity prayer?, If so, I offer you this version.
Senility Prayer
Grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked, The good fortune to run into the people I do like, and the eyesight to know the difference! Cheers, NTA
I have o idea if this will be useful or not, but something has come to me that I want to share.
The difficulty that I perceive is in how one defines "relationship." Whether that be "a discourse related to time and space between two or more individual entities" or "an ontological reality established by [divine muckity muck]" this definition will play into signification and any ethic at all.
Now, relating this to the somewhat tangential conversation about 12-step programs, there is indeed a relationship with a Higher Power and a community to be nurtured. They are inescapably related. Though the program starts off as an idividual response, it has been my experience that the goals of the program (ex. sobriety, happiess, healthy relationships, reconciliation) are 1. only supportable within relationships and 2. based on shared resposibility. Though there is the idea of "working your own program," really the successful members, ones who achieve the above examples, engage the program at the level of responsibility and accountability to relatioships within the community...and the other communities in which they engage. There is no authority, per se, that makes this happen, unless goals can be an authority. No one can kick someone out. You can show up to meetings drunk and stoned if you want. The only repercussions are that you are drunk and stoned and your life is shitte. So, there are is no authority though there are definite structures in which members engage.
Does this description cloud the waters or actually clarify something? You be the judge.
Posted by: AngloBaptist at March 16, 2004 07:11 AMAs I read this discussion, I couldn't help but remember our chanting The Great Litany on the First Sunday in (of) Lent here in Christ Church Cathedral in Houston, especially my favorite part where we ask forgiveness for "our sins, negligences, and IGNORANCES."
Posted by: Morris Taggart at March 16, 2004 03:17 PMThere's still something missing in this discussion, although Tom did a lot in suggesting our greater intimacy with meaning than the forces of nature. Certainly we can never fully account for what an act of communication signifies, or even what the boundaries are for what is an is not significant. I sense that some find this frustrating, but really it is the tip of a great and wonderful mystery.
Great art transcends all of this because there is no limit to what it signifies. Is the artist accountable for this? This is where I will grant AKMA that we don't have control of our signifying, it is beyond our grasp.
What we are accountable for is our intentions, which is not a simple matter of always being aware of our significance, but rather a self-referential process where we create meaning in a dance of speaking and listening. Here's a clue, you get the results you intend, and if you don't either you're not paying attention to significant feedback, or your intentions are conflicted or incomplete.
Posted by: Gerry at March 18, 2004 12:10 AMIt's damn hard being aware of and pure in one's own intentions, but if you can look at yourself without illusions then you needn't worry about other's interpretations. The voice rings with embedded harmonics of the heart, and the body of the listener responds almost involuntarily by opening up and being more receptive.
Conveying that in text is a bit more difficult. :)
Posted by: Lucas at March 19, 2004 03:32 AM