From: gvcarter-AT-purdue.edu
Date: Thu,  3 Apr 2003 08:36:37 -0500
Subject: RE: silence



Eric, 

As to "fecund silence" becoming a "humable tune," I should like to strike out 
along Levinas (though I realize that to do so in a second post risks my failure 
to answer, perhaps, to the demands of a list that is obliged to the writing of 
another philosopher who begins with an "L" and contains seven letters =)

Keeping thought NOT separate from matter is, it seems to me, at the core of 
Levinas's transcendental materialism that bring the one-for-other to the fore.  
Throughout his work he talks about taking the bread from one's own mouth and 
continously needing to answer the demands of a hungry third party.  Unlike 
Christian doctrine where Christ's body becomes the host, in Levinas's 
conception of Judaism, one's own body becomes that which cannot be substituted 
in responsibility.  His ethics, in this respect, are NOT distinguishable from 
his Body...of going to even the third other with something in hand.  

The "humable tune," you mention Eric, shows up in Levinas in what is perhaps my 
favorite passage from Otherwise than Being.  Though I won't bore readers of 
this list of my current explication of this work across Derrida's work, I will 
quote it:

"This signification in its very signifyingness, outside of every system, before 
any correlation, is an accord or peace between planes which, as soon as they 
are thematized, make an irrreparable cleavage, like vowels in a dieresis, 
maintaining a hiatus without elision.  They then mark two Cartesian orders, the 
body and the soul, which have no common space where they can touch, and no 
logical topos where they can form a whole.  Yet they are in accord prior to 
thematization, in an accord, a chord, which is possible only as an arpeggio.  
Far from negating intelligibility, this kind of accord is they very rationality 
of signification in which the tautological identity, the ego, receives the 
other, and takes on the meaning of an irreplaceable identity by giving to the 
other" (70).  

Eric's "humable tune," I might argue, is Levinas's accord-chord "arpeggio" 
where the silence (and one-for-the-other via the giving of one's material body) 
PRECEDES thematization (i.e. a turning of language into a meta-language/said.)

Thus, the "emergent property," which Eric also mentions, is a for-the-other 
that exceeds even myself.  Singularity is "irreplaceable," in a Levinasian 
sense, because no one can substitute for me my own responsibility--which, 
again, strangely exceeds me--for the other.  

Within the framework of this list's discussion on silence, it seems to me, that 
no stasis has really been achieved on the term.  On the one hand there is the 
silence/speak-up argument, and on the other hand, there is the silence/a prior 
for-the-other framework.  Is the "speak-up" argument equivalent to this "prior-
for-other"?  Or does this through the discussion back into earlier tracks that 
attempt to articulate the viability of a metaphyisical philosophy?  And does 
such a metaphysical philosophy help us "solve" the imperatives of this current 
conflict between Empire and the subaltern?  

Politics and Ethics is, of course, another name for these fields.  Is there a 
symmetry here, or does the radical asymmetry of the latter make finding 
a "common-ground" possible.  Lyotard, Nancy, Ronell all raise skeptical eyes at 
this prospect, and perhaps dissensus is our only common lot here.  

...as a side-bar, I want to inquire about Jung for completely different 
reasons, Eric/All, but I will save those comments for later...must tend to 
breakfast.

Best,

Geof       





Quoting Eric <ericandmary-AT-earthlink.net>:

> Hugh,
> 
> You raise an interesting question.  Are silence and thoughts each
> singularities?
> 
> Even though I appear to be privileging silence somewhat, it seems more
> amorphous than that to me.  Like Levinas' 'il y a' there is something in
> the nature of silence devoid of uniqueness. It remains a flattening out,
> a no-thing, when the earth was void and without form.
> 
> For all its limitations, thought more than silence represents a
> singularity, an event, especially at the moment of its birth.  Every
> thought implicitly answers the question 'is it happening?'
> 
> A fecund silence is a womb through which thought matriculates.  Not
> thought as separate from matter, but an emergent property, a kind of
> DNA, the white noise becoming a humable tune.
> 
> eric
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> [mailto:owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu] On Behalf Of hbone
> Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2003 4:47 AM
> To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> Subject: Re: silence
> 
> Eric,
> 
> Perhaps each silence can be as different as each thought.  A thought is
> not
> a silence to its thinker.
> 
> The meaning of the thought is to be found in the mind of its maker.
> Each
> mind has a different history.  Each person "is" her/his history, and
> accumulation of thoughts, actions, memories.
> 
> So long as silences are  not thoughts unspoken they can be whatever you
> personal history allows you to not hear.
> 
> regards,
> Hugh
> 
> 
>