From: gvcarter-AT-purdue.edu
Date: Fri,  5 Dec 2003 09:34:06 -0500
Subject: RE: Zizek Deleuze



Lydia,

In anticipation of anything you might say w/ regard to 'tongues of the cities' 
across DeLillo--a wonderful author whose White Noise i incidently keep a copy 
of in my freezer on the suggestion of Kenneth Maue, a composer of Cage-
like 'happenings' and other events--I thought I might mention chap 4 in 
Deleuze's 1000 that contains some thoughts on linguistics that I find 
positively intriguing.

D&G write, for example, that "New York is virtually a city without a language" 
(103).

They trace, as you may know, a conception of a minor language within a major 
language such that "becomes a foreigner in one's own tongue."  Through a 
process of "creative subtraction" and "making language stammer," one comes to 
make language "secret" and yet--and this is the part that is so interesting--
it "has nothing to hide as opposed to when one carves out a secret subsystem 
within language" (98).  Instead, it's language conceived across "ascetic lines, 
a touch of herb and pure water" (99).  

Reading this in time with Merleau-Ponty's ruminations on Cezanne and painting 
makes an interesting leap insofar that M-P is trying to articulate not how one 
make something visible but to make the visible visible.  Or, to use another 
example from the artificial category of 'art' (art-offical) there's Duchamp's 
fascinating ruminations on the infra-thin that I think shares something with 
the asceticism that D&G are pointing to in their movement beyond the 
measurement units of "bilingualism" or "multilingualism."  (They say w/ 
dis/respect to these terms that they use them for the sake of conveinance, and 
though they will not go so far to call language "musical," they do ask that 
THAT question be "left open.")

Anyway, I just thought I'd throw this out. particularly the part about New York 
as perhaps such a sentiment could be weaved into the fabric of what I was 
trying to suggest w/ Derrida/Voltaire and Babel and what you have in mind w/ 
DeLillo's Cosmopolis.  Or, maybe something else entirely! =)

Best,

geof    


Quoting Lydia Perovich <fauxprophete-AT-hotmail.com>:

> Trouble is, I can't  get hold of the book unless I order it through a 
> bookstore (and it'll take time to get it), so for now I'll be digesting 
> these wonderful in-depth emails and occasionally digressing into other 
> books.  I still plan on writing something a propos Geof's comments on 
> 'tongues of the cities'  through DeLillo's Cosmopolis...
> 
> Re. Zizek and the Third Way...  I share that apprehension with Steve (that 
> Zizek seems to be occasionally flirting with the 3rd Way) but based on his 
> "daily political" allegiances -- which some might say are 'trivial' and 
> irrelevant to understanding of his philosophy.  For instance, he seems to 
> have supported NATO bombardments in Yugoslavia (which is the type of 
> imperial humanitarian intervention that Badiou despises), seems to be in 
> favour of keeping the death penalty, and I believe the party in Slovenia 
> that he is active in is a centre-right party.  All of this for some might be
> 
> irrelevant unless there is a 'source' of it in his philosophy and it seems 
> that Steve is onto something here.  I'll be reading this debate closely.
> 
> BTW there's nothing more (inadvertently?) accurate than a sentence in one of
> 
> your posts Eric that says "in this book Zizek covers Zizek pretty well". :)
> 
> Since I am at work I have to go now and pretend that I am working for a 
> while,
> 
> L
> 
> _________________________________________________________________
> MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*.  
> http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus&pgmarket=en-ca&RU=http%3a%2f%
2fjoin.msn.com%2f%3fpage%3dmisc%2fspecialoffers%26pgmarket%3den-ca
> 
>