Date: Wed, 12 Nov 1997 23:25:33 -0500
Subject: MB: Re: Out of the Darkness
From: saks1-AT-juno.com (Samuel J Saks)


First of all I would like to say that I am very glad we are getting a
chance to talk about these issues. I do feel they are important and they
happen to interest me very much. I love talking about them. That being
said I  would like to discuss SOME of the comments you made on my
comments (this is starting to sound weird, no?) particularly the ones I
consider most important. 

Edward said:
" You yourself said that you would try to determine whether or not my
words made sense, or were accurate, which is to say you were attempting
to place them within a 
pragmatic truth-framework.  Your acceptance or denunciation of my words 
would not lessen their truth value for me -- in fact, quite the opposite 
could occur.  You could believe that you have hit upon an accurate 
meaning of my text, but to me it could be all wrong, and completely 
undermine my efforts.  In that case, no communication would have 
occurred. "

I would like to concentrate on your last sentence here.

Firstly let us admit that communication does in fact take place. For
example when your friend says something to you very often you know
exactly (or at least pretty accurately) what he means. Also let us admit
that we actually do understand certain texts. I can read an article in
the newspaper and get understandable information from it. And so it is in
literature. If you do not believe that communication can or (as I
maintain) does take place you have a lot of explaining to do. Not only
that but you will also have to explain how your explanation will not make
sense to me otherwise it is communication. And if we can't communicate
how is it that I understand what you are saying or that you take issue
with me on any point? Let me put this in symbolic terms: to deny
communication is to deny the "there exists" or night (to use Levinas'
term). What I mean to say is that to deny communication is to deny such a
fundamental aspect of life, without which you could not possibly come to
say anything about it. But you are saying something about it. And I will
go further. You raise very good points. But in any case your conclusion
(IF this is your conclusion) that communication can't take place is false
simply based on the fact that in reality it does. Now are there problems
with communication? Certainly. 

In your last sentence of the quotation you said that no communication
takes place when a "message" is misunderstood. But the fact that
communication can be misunderstood is a fundamental aspect of
communication. I DO think poems may be misunderstood (see T.S. Eliot's
lament "that is not what I meant / that is not it at all). But I don't
think you can deny that despite the writer's intentions texts of
literature communicate to us. And they communicate to us in a unique way
(I called this the encounter, posited that the text has "eyes" that we
meet). The author's intentions are irrelevant. 

I think what we are discussing is the very question of language. Is
language a bunch of symbols used for pointing to things outside of us or
inside or both? Well if you say language points to things inside that
surely there can be no communication. But IS this the case? I tend not to
think so. Why is it when I say "I tripped over a rock" you can know just
what I mean? Okay perhaps you could use more information but I think you
get the main idea and can form some picture of it in your mind, relate it
to your experience with tripping on rocks, and draw some reasonable
conclusions (i.e. it was hurt). This things may not be completely
accurate but the fact is they are pretty close to what I said. The
question remains as to how literature accomplishes this. I am not sure. I
do not pretend to have all the answers or even pretend that there are
answers. But I do think that communication is vital to human life, is
perhaps THE defining aspect of humanity, and that literature and art
somehow accomplishes it. (Also do not misunderstand me to be saying that
communication does not take place anywhere else the "real life" face to
face talks are obviously communication in its highest form, perhaps
literature just does a great job of impersonating this).

-Samuel Saks