Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2003 15:30:35 -0500
From: Don Socha <socha1de-AT-cmich.edu>
Subject: RE: silence


Noise as “counterweight” to simulacrum.  Interesting.  
Wonderful scholarship, Eric and a juicy read.    

I’m glad you bring up Wittgenstein.  We cannot speak of the 
philosophic aspects of silence without mentioning his 
affirmation of the multiple and heterogeneous 
interpenetration of language and other aspects of social 
reality, prior to any questioning of representational 
adequacy.  

An aspect of the problem I'd like to consider, however, is 
that whatever noise is made seemingly inevitably implies 
other social practices and visa versa.  

Or, as Lyotard points out –commenting on Luce Irigaray’s 
rejection of the Lacanian distinction between the phallus as 
Symbolic operator and the penis as actual organ— little 
ground is found for asserting (as both simulacrum and the 
noise of revolution must) the primacy of the signifier, 
because, as I read him here, to do so is to “decide” to and 
for no logical reason, but simply in the name of a brutal 
imposition of power (“One of the Things at Stake in Women’s 
Struggles” _SubStance_ 20 [1978]: 9-17).    

To impose any symbolism onto the unconscious, in other words, 
consequently reconfirms power relations rather than 
suggesting alternatives.    

Therefore, if collective noise is ever to present a 
significant (which to me means transformative) challenge to 
the spectacle, ultimately (or perhaps first) we would also 
have to recognize such outbursts as capable of releasing us 
from the colonization of the unconscious by language, which 
only seems contradictory.  

Actually it's a fight each one of us might benifit from 
having waged more thoroughly against ourselves.  

And from another angle, with Baudrillard, it may be seen that 
assigning expenditure a socially “useful” role reinforces the 
very imperialism of language that stands in the way of that 
within us which is silent, elusive, and ungraspable, or what 
Bataille refers to as “vague inner movements, which depend on 
no object and have no intention” (IE), what might, in other 
words, be dispossessed of language, or those arenas of future 
possibility that language itself does little more than draw 
our attention away from.  

Can silence aid us here?  I think so.  If only because, as 
much as under any spectacle or simulacrum, we live under the 
laws of language itself without really contesting it.

Don   


Eric writes:  

>Steve,
>
>Let me begin by stating if there is anything that gives me 
hope in this
>dark time, it is the political resistance of men and women 
against the
>US invasion of Iraq, in what promises to become a great 
global movement,
>the emergence of a noisy, loud, speaking multitude. Therein 
lies the
>best chance for the emergence of the real democracy-yet-to-
be as a
>counterweight to the US simulacrum.
>
>You asked, however, for something more philosophical about 
silence and I
>tried to oblige.  I recognize what you are analyzing in 
terms of a
>silence politically constructed as a form of terror and the 
silence
>between two people speaking that Hugh invokes is very 
different than the
>silence of which I spoke.  
>
>At the back of my mind was the early Wittgenstein of the 
Tractatus with
>his famous ending that states: "Whereof one cannot speak, 
thereof one
>must be silent."  
>
>Of course, this is not meant as a political statement, but 
it flows from
>what Wittgenstein regarded as the conditions of possibility 
for
>language.  He regarded the world as everything that is the 
case; and
>what is the case are facts contained in logical space.  What 
can be said
>can be stated in logical propositions, pictures of facts 
that reflect
>the world. What cannot be said (without falling into logical 
non-sense)
>are statements that can only regard the world as a limited 
whole, while
>standing beyond it.  Such statements as ethics, metaphysics, 
aesthetics,
>and religion all fall into this latter category.
>
>What is important to realize, however, is that Wittgenstein 
differed in
>important ways from the Logical Positivism of the Vienna 
school. He
>regarded such statements as important - indeed the only 
things that
>mattered - but he felt that, properly speaking, such things 
could not be
>said. They could only be shown.  
>
>Of course, Frege was an influence here, but so was Kant by 
way of
>Schopenhauer and the theory of indirect communication 
and 'truth as
>subjectivity' coming from Kierkegaard. I believe in many 
respects,
>Wittgenstein's epistemology in the Tractatus was actually a 
theory of
>the sublime insofar as he believed there were truths that 
did not
>present themselves as facts within the logical space of the 
world. Yet,
>we must testify to them even if we cannot properly speak of 
them.  
>
>Silence is not merely the pause contained within a dialogue. 
It is the
>very backdrop of language itself.  
>
>This leads me directly to Lyotard who was very influenced by
>Wittgenstein, not so much from a logical point of view 
(which still
>remains the orthodox reception) but who was intrigued by the
>possibilities Wittgenstein offered for regarding political, 
ethical and
>aesthetic issues in new ways.  (Here too I side with the 
recent
>criticism which tends to argue that the differences between 
the early
>and late Wittgenstein are greatly exaggerated.)
>
>One could paraphrase Lyotard's approach to Wittgenstein by 
saying:
>"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be paralogical 
or artistic."
>Lyotard never tires of stating that art attempts to present 
the
>unpresentable and that, according to the conception of 
politics
>discussed in "The Differend" the weak and marginalized are 
often
>rendered voiceless because of the monopoly upon the protocol 
of
>procedures for establishing reality. They must contest both 
the language
>and that 'reality' which denies them their existence.
>
>As an example of this, it would seem ludicrous for the US to 
portray the
>presence of troops and the ongoing missile penetration as 
an 'invasion
>of Iraq'. Instead, it must be portrayed as 'Operation 
Freedom'.
>Similarly, the Iraqis cannot be portrayed as 'freedom 
fighters'
>protecting their homeland.  They must be equated with 
terrorists who are
>not even entitled to the standard conventions of warfare.   
>
>Certainly, this use of language must be contested, just as 
the actions
>themselves must be. What I want to point out, however, is 
that before
>these differences (and the differend) can be articulated, it 
is preceded
>by mute resistance before the words are found and spoken. 
Levinas speaks
>of how the Jews obey the Torah before they understand it.  
In a like
>manner, oppressed people say no before they even understand 
why.
>
>In Lyotard's development of Wittgenstein, the subject is 
seen as a kind
>of centaur, composed of both human and inhuman(animal)
components. Part
>of our politics derives from testifying to this 'mute' 
nature, this
>'voiceless' animality that has never been civilized, which 
remains
>silent and intractable.  
>
>For Lyotard, politics takes place at two levels - that of 
articulated
>resistance and that of the anamnesis of the enfans - that 
beast of
>burden who grounds our humanity in something that resembles 
quick sand. 
>
>What is at stake is not merely the war, but the whole 
process of
>complexification that threatens to undermine our 
human/inhuman nature.
>A system that wants to organize time in the name of freedom 
and
>democracy as system of discounted cash flows, a planetary 
machine of
>exploitation versus an approach to time that remains open to 
the Event
>that emerges from the white noise of quietus.  As Joyce 
pointed out long
>ago, what is required is "silence, exile, and cunning."
>
>My thesis about the philosophy of silence is this. Just as 
Wittgenstein
>distinguished between language as a limited representational 
system and
>the mystical (or silence) as something that stands outside 
it, so
>Lyotard regards humanism as a limited representational 
system and the
>enfans/intractable/inhuman as something that stands outside 
it, in a way
>that is analogous to what Wittgenstein termed the mystical 
(or silence).
>
>
>(Using a different register, that of Lacan and Freud, we 
might also
>speak of this as the unconscious.) 
>
>eric