From: steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk
Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 16:07:24 -0000 (GMT)
Subject: RE: Just a slob like one of us


Geof

did either of you in this exchange discuss Borges or Cortazar ?

steve
>
> 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
>>
>>
>> ---
>> Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
>> Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
>> Version: 6.0.524 / Virus Database: 321 - Release Date: 10/6/2003
>>
>>
>>