From: gvcarter-AT-purdue.edu
Date: Wed,  3 Dec 2003 09:50:49 -0500
Subject: RE: Just a slob like one of us



Eric, 

The astrological terraces with which you characterize the cosmic city of 
Babylon reminds of of Tommaso Campanella's Citta del Sole, City of the Sun, 
which was a memory palace of the Renaissance and influential in the work of 
Bruno who said (mis-reading Aristotle):  "To think is to speculate with images."

The serpent-dove-cross-connection-eating is a fascinating swirl that I was 
unfamiliar with.  So far as the tongues of fire are concerned, Levinas has a 
line somewhere about words on the page being a "black fire."  (Andrew Hill, a 
particularly fine jazz pianist, has an excellent album by the same name 
recorded on the Blue Note label.  I note there's a song on the label 
called "Subterfuge," which is a kind of strata-gem.)

Derrida's Des Tours de Babel takes Voltaire as a starting point:  

"I do not know why it is said in Genesis that Babel signifies confusion, for Ba 
signifies father in Oriental tongues, and Bel signifies God; Babel signifies 
the city of God, the holy city.  The Ancients gave this name to all their 
capitals.  But it is incontestable that Babel means confusion, either because 
the architects were confounded after having raised their work up to eight-one 
thousand Jewish fee, or because the tongues were then confounded; and it is 
obviously from that time on that the Germans no longer understand the Chinese; 
for it is clear, according to the scholar Bochart, that the Chinese is 
originally the same high tongue as High German."

Voltaire locates in this the confusion of Babel both in meaning "confusion" and 
in the name of the architecture.  

"Babel means not only confusion in the double sense of the word, but also the 
name of the father, more precisely and more commonly, the name of God as the 
name of father.  The city would bear the name of God the father and of the 
father of the city that is called confusion.  God, the God, would have marked 
with his patronym a communal space, that city where understanding is no longer 
possible.  And understanding is no longer possible when there are only proper 
names, and understanding is no longer possible when there are no longer proper 
names.  In giving his name, a name of his choice, in giving all names, the 
father would be the origin of language, and the power would belong by right to 
God the father.  And the name of God the father would be the name of that 
origin of tongues.  But it is also that God who, in the action of his anger..., 
annuls the gift of tongues, or at least embroils it, sows confusion among his 
sons, and poisons the present.  This is the origin of tongues, of the 
multiplicity of idioms, of what in other words are usually called mother 
tongues."

...I apologize for so lengthy an excerpt, but I am interesting in teasing 
notions out from this, perhaps even along Nietzschean-lines in his letter(s) to 
Burckhardt, and then on through to Deleuze's rather remarkable chapter in A 
Thousand Plateau's, "Postulate of Linguistics."

Where Derrida would posit "more than one language / no more of one language," 
Deleuze calls for making language stammer, of being a foreigner in one's own 
tongue, of making a minor language that is the deterritorialization of the 
major language such that Deleuze will say:  "New York is virtually a city 
without a language" (103).

While this does not seem to point to the issue of "ethics" directly, I am 
interested in "taking the long way around"--most certainly through the 
billboards of Times Square!--in thinking this through.  I like the idea 
of "transformation" that you suggest.  As the once popular Transformer toy 
slogan has it:  "It's more than meets the eye."  

(And that reminds me, Hey Glen, if you're tuned in on this message, I'm curious 
if your work with cars says anything about the Autobots and Decepticons?)

Anyway, this message has me hankering to check out what Zizek sez about "born 
again" in his recent Fragile Absolute.  

Off to that, 

geof  




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

> Geof,
> 
> I've been having computer problems, so this response is be-lated.
> 
> I've read the Babel literally means the gates of god, also confusion,
> hence the punning in the story. Since Babylon was a cosmic city which
> mirrored the heavens, and astrology originated there, some have
> suggested the terraces of the city may have each had a planetary
> significance. By ascending each terrace, the citizen mimicked the ascent
> into heaven, much like Dante in the structure of his Paradiso Cantos.
> Although the usual theological gloss on Babel attributes it to the sin
> of pride, the book of Genesis is actually far more ambiguous:
> 
> "Let us make a name for ourselves: otherwise we shall be scattered all
> over the earth."
> 
> This tender and ethical sense of creating a name and community tends to
> upset God, just as in the Eden story, not because he is a moral judge
> filled with goodness but because he is a petty patriarch who feels
> threatened by humanity's growing power and awareness. This is one of the
> reasons why Zizek claims the fall and salvation are the same. The old
> Gnostic story has it that the serpent was true liberator and the one who
> foreshadowed Christ - Felix culpa - which is also why there is that
> image of the serpent upon the cross found in the old talismans.  
> 
> In many ways the story of Pentecost is the fulfillment of Babel, just as
> the cross is the tree of life in the midst of the garden and Christ is
> the second Adam.  
> 
> What is interesting in this story is that dove (and we now know the
> birds evolved from the reptiles - the eagle eats the serpent in order to
> become it) does not speak Esperanto, one language, rather spirit acts as
> an electronic translation machine, a tongue of fire, on fire:
> 
> "How is it that each of us hears them in his native tongue about the
> marvels God has accomplished."
> 
> And what do the outsiders say about the gathering with a sneer:
> 
> "They have had too much new wine."
> 
> Here is where Paul and Nietzsche meet - in Christ/Dionysus - I am the
> vine and you are the branches - or as Marvin Gaye once put it - I heard
> it through the grapevine.
> 
> What if ethics was not about the rules by means of which we relate to
> the Other, but about transformation - not merely treating the neighbor
> with respect, but also realizing the kingdom of heaven and the
> resurrection of the body; being born again?  
> 
> As Badiou puts it, the animal becomes an immortal in fidelity to the
> event of a truth that itself remains unnameable.  Or as Sartre put it -
> our greatest de-sire is to become god, which is simply good orthodox
> teaching - god became humanity in order that humanity might become god -
> the word becoming flesh as the divine cyborg - Deus Prosthetic. 
> 
> The blind see and the crippled walk...and god took on our weakness.
> 
> eric  
>  
> 
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