Date: Mon, 12 Jul 1999 22:30:49 -0500 From: Mary Murphy&Salstrand <ericandmary-AT-earthlink.net> Subject: Re: Das Capital Lois Shawver wrote: > > Mary, > As tantalizing as the prospect is of experimenting with a Deleuzian project of becoming woman in this group, I must acknowledge that my wife Mary and I share the same address. Eric is the one who posts here. I have had conversations with you, Lois, as well as with others here in the past. I apologize for any confusion I may have caused. I personally agree with you, Lois that the differend between Wittgenstein and Lyotard is a fruitful one and I would am happy to continue to explore it. I also feel that the question of politics we are discussing here is not a programatic one, but rather a kind of ur-politics. The question is what the conditions must be that give rise to politics and the demands for justice. Earlier, Lois, you quoted Wittgenstein quoting Augustine and the latter's definitely pre-structuralist views on language. Here is another quote from PI, section 32: "Someone coming into a strange country will sometimes learn the language of the inhabitants from ostensive definitions that they give him; and he will often have to guess the meanings of these definitions; and will guess sometimes right, sometimes wrong. And now, I think, we can say: Augustine describes the learning of human language as if the child came into a strange countrty and did not understand the language of the coutry: that is, as if it already had a language, only not this one." Without falling into the trap of making a private language argument, I think that quote explains well the basic conditions which make for politics. For each language game is, in effect, a foreign country and parology may be defined, at least in part, as the attempt of someone with a language to understand the language of another. It is a slow and tenuous process where misunderstanding is a commonplace. The foreign lands may be exotic, but they will never be our home. Politics then becomes a matter of translation, while we recognise that there is something which always resists translation, that can never enter the mother tongue. Reality always has something of the uncanny about it. As I write these words, I notice a beetle has landed on its back and is making futile attempts to right itself. It reminds me of Gregor Samsa. I sense its pain and suffering, yet I really don't know what it is feeling. There is something here that will always remain alien to me. With a piece of paper, I gently lift it upright so it can crawl away to find some other death. Those of us who live in the borderlands between foreign countries find that agonistics, war, violence and conflict is commonplace. However, it is not a necessity. A good part of the paralogical consists of making peace while preserving differences, creating a community which is not a tribal herd - what Wittgenstein calls discovering the family resemblances among the elements which have nothing completely in common. Language, not as a city, but as a grand archipelago. PS - I'm not familiar with the book on Wittgenstein and Justice you mention, but I will look for it.
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