Quote:
Originally Posted by AlanY /img/forum/go_quote.gif
I see these abbreviations as what Julia Kristeva speaks of as a "semiotic chora" or "the flow of jouissance into language" ... basically utterances that cannot otherwise be adequately uttered: instinct. In that sense they subvert culture because they permit instinct to infiltrate the symbolic medium of language itself.
Judge, if you will, for yourself Kristeva's notion of the chora:
We borrow the term chora from Plato's Timaeus to denote an essentially mobile and extremely provision articulation constituted by [bioenergetic] movements and their ephemeral stases. We differentiate this uncertain and indeterminate articulation from a disposition that already depends on representation, lends itself to phenomenological, spatial intuition, and gives rise to a geometry.... The chora, as rupture and articulations (rhythm), precedes evidence, versimilitude, and temporality.
In other words, the chora, as the matrix of the drives, is precultural, subsymbolic. Is it then this, this life, that breaks into the civilized space of representation, crashing and destroying its party (when culture is partying) or making a shambles of its solemnity (when culture is being religious)?
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Here's the argument:
1. Abbreviations are semiotic chora.
2. By definition, semiotic chora are precultural, subsymbolic, etc.
3. From 1. and 2., abbreviations are precultural, subsymbolic.
I'm tempted to say that there's a normative premise slipped in (e.g., "Precultural, subsymbolic utterances are bad.), but I'll leave the argument simple. I have two quarrels with this argument:
1. Why should I concede the first premise? I smell some question begging here, but I'll explore this later.
2. Why should I accept the concept of "semiotic chora"?
Here's an analogous argument. I'm going to coin a word: Oogleboogles are human subpopulations whose members are short, have dark hair, and have squinty eyes. Also, oogleboogles are pre-scientific. So, my analogous argument:
1. Chinese people are oogleboogles.
2. Oogleboogles are pre-scientific.
3. From 1. and 2., Chinese people are pre-scientific.
Objection #1: Even assuming that "oogleboogle" is a useful concept, why should Chinese people be oogleboogles? IF part of the definition of an oogleboogle is its prescientificness, then we would have know that Chinese people were pre-scientific prior to classification. And yet that's the conclusion of my argument! So, I had to know my conclusion prior to the end of the argument, and this is classic question-begging. ELSE, Chinese people only fit half the description (squinty eyes, etc.) and I've prematurely classified them.
Objection #2: Why should anyone apply the oogleboogle concept? It doesn't seem to do any epistemic work. It might even be an empty set!
There we go.
PS: I'm Chinese. And not pre-scientific.
