Date: Tue, 11 Nov 1997 12:23:12 +1000 (EST)
From: Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan-AT-qut.edu.au>
Subject: Re: BHA: An Interpretive Problem
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU


At 02:35 PM 11/10/97 +0200, you wrote:
>Gary--
>
>Your proposed strategy for analyzing Nash's poem via the different senses of
>non-being is quite interesting.  But on the whole I tend to view the poem
>from another direction--rather than treat it as an expression of the
>speaker's mental disorder, I think it is better to understand it as
>concerning a *real* problem that lies *outside* the speaker; a reading which
>I think renders the poem both funnier and more serious at the same time.
>But your argument goes some distance for me in clarifying why I think that.



Tobin you will forgive me for breaking up ypour post like this.  I hate it
when it is doen ot one of mine, but sometimes it is so much easier.   Now
the questionof what is internal and what is external is an intriguing one
indeed.  If I give you a drug to block your NAMDA receptor you would
probably experience exactly what the voice in the poem experiences.  Would
this be *outside* you?  Whatever the case and this I think is the answer to
our conundrum the problem would be very *real* but at a different level
from that of the actual i.e. on the stair.  We are stratified beings as
Bhaskar is wont to say and here the answer lies in going down a level or two.


>You suggest that the sense of non-being employed in the poem is "that of an
>entity which has never existed."  On one level, perhaps so, but I don't
>think this captures the complexity of the man's (non)presence.  I think the
>reference here is more on a par with Gertrude Stein's comment, "There's no
>'there' there."  Taken by itself, the comment is basically just odd, but
>actually in that instance there *is* a real referent: Stein was speaking of
>Oakland, California.  (The comment's humor, not to mention mordant critique,
>should be much sharper now.)  Now, to my knowledge Nash did not have someone
>particular in mind, though then again, he might have.  In either case,
>however, the man on the stair is depicted as a contradiction, or perhaps
>more accurately, a paradox.  (Compare "a red green," "military
>intelligence," and perhaps more tendentiously, "Stalinist marxism": in any
>case, sometimes contradictions and paradoxes do occur in reality, and so I
>tentatively suggest this form of a present absence is not adequately covered
>by Bhaskar's three senses of non-being.)
>



I cannot honestly see the "man on the stair" as a pardox of the same kind
as the examples you cite.  But I have had enough of Stalinism on M-I to
pursue this!

>In short, the man on the stair is a *problem*--a problem the speaker wishes
>would go away, but evidently can do little about.  A problem not in the
>speaker, but for the speaker.  It's the sort of problem which makes one
>think, wishfully, "Ignore it and maybe it'll go away by itself!"  But as I
>think about it, maybe that's exactly the point.  On the one hand, the fact
>is, some problems when ignored long enough *do* go away by themselves (not
>many, to be sure!).  On the other hand, this is a *nonsense* poem, and for
>most people, the best response when someone blathers nonsense or behaves
>irrationally (and the awkward and annoying man on the stair might be taken
>as *enacted* nonsense) is to laugh, shake one's head, and walk away.  (Well,
>at least that's what I generally do: "Don't kick against the pricks," as
>they say.)  By this reading, Nash's poem is *logically* un-true (incapable
>of validity), but *performatively* quite pointed.
>
>I suppose in making this interpretation I am just rehearsing my own bad
>habits, namely attempting a performative analysis, taking humor seriously,
>and probably laughing at the all-too-serious.  (Such utter nonsense!  Maybe
>if I ignore myself, I'll go awa
>


Again you make a distinction between a problem *in* and a problem *for*.  I
cannot see this.  If one is hallucinating, the problem may be internal but
it is certainly also a problem *for* you.

The issue between is I suspect is that you want to retyain some notion that
there is someone on the stair.  Perhaps you say my reading as materialistic
and reductive.  However I think that the resonances created by my reading
are grantedly less humourous, but then they hint as I say at an definite
absence.

regards

Gary



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