This is the part where everyone says "What the [insert word of your choice]? She's talking about that again?" But it happened! In our reading! The Sacred King was totally in Burke's analysis of Mein Kampf. In the bit he quotes from Totem and Taboo, Freud mentions how how "savages... ascribe [their rulers] power over rain and shine, wind and weather, and then dethrone them or kill them because nature has disappointed their expectations of a good hunt or a ripe harvest" (qtd. Burke, 214). The ruler has become a symbol for the land, but to them he is not only a symbol. The secret that King Arthur learned is that the king is the land. He is not just representative of the land, he is connected to it. In using this quotation Burke is demonstrating how Hitler projected an identity onto the Jews, which one could say changed the nature of reality for those who listened to him. Through Hitler's words, the Jews became the enemy. This is an example of Freud's theory of projection, where in the mind of the neurotic the symbol and vessel become intertwined.
Maybe I'm neurotic, but I do believe in the sympathetic affectation of an object through symbols and signs. I think confessional poetry is a good example of this. It tends to be declarative (From Sylvia Plath: "I am your opus,/I am your valuable", "O vase of acid,/It is love you are full of"), naming the speaker and addressee as different things. In this way it changes and defines the nature of reality and creates new truths for naming. I guess whether or not this is true depends on what one thinks of reality, but I think that language is not a series of symbols disparate from their signified objects. I think signs, objects, and concepts are intertwined. The declarative naming of something, as in confessional poetry, changes the reality of that object. I guess this is a really primitive viewpoint, and I know in academic culture realism has been abandoned in favor of nominalism, but maybe I think that it really is a pipe. My explanation would have to be that sign and object share essence and thus may affect each other even over distances of space and time. That really doesn't feel like an ending to anything, but I think for now that's all I have to say about that.
2 comments:
I think that sign and object can affect each other over spacial and temporal distances, but I'm a bit skeptical to say that they share an essence. Rivkin and Ryan state that "Each presence bears the "trace" of its others"and that when you see a pipe, or a cow, it really is "a network of relations between things whose difference from one another allows them to appear to be separate and identifiable".
This may be me splitting hairs, but I think that the difference of "trace" and "essence" is minute yet important. When I read that there's a trace of something left behind, I do not think it's the entire essence of the object, but rather just a bit of it...maybe not even an entire bit of the object--just enough. As you mention, you can "name the speaker and addressee as different things. In this way it changes and defines the nature of reality and creates new truths for naming". However, I'm apt to disagree. "That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." The nature of reality isn't changed, nor is this new truth. We have come to know a rose as a "rose". I can call it a hydrangea all I want, but the network of relations between things Rivkin and Ryan discussed has come to be embedded into society so that a rose will always be a rose, and merely changing the name will be viewed as some sort of literary device or ploy.
The rose called hydrangea will still smell as sweet as a rose and bear resemblance to a rose. Calling it a hydrangea will not change its nature of reality, because when we'd have to describe this flower to someone, we'd automatically resort back to the longer-lasting definition, the definition of description. When a rose was first named, the "rose" came to include all of the differences, likenesses, and characteristics of this flower...all in one word! Calling it a hydrangea deviates from the definition of description...something that we can try and change a nature of reality of, but will fail to.
This post/comment relationship is lovely. It demonstrates something that I point out on a daily basis (which sometimes drives my friends or even random strangers crazy). In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke would also agree with me here "that the greatest part of disputes were more about the signification of words than a real difference in the conception of things" (822). In other words, the difference in opinion between Sarah's post and Marianna's comment lies in the definition of certain words. Sarah already points out that the definition of reality could bring disagreement upon her theory but Marianna seems to find issue with the meaning of 'essence'. It doesn't seem like they view language in two distinct and different ways. The problem is in the discussing where the definition of words create roadblocks to actually get to a similar ending.
And in viewing this as a dispute of definitions, I would agree with Marianna who tactfully views 'trace' and 'essence' with important differences. It's important for words to have this trace to the signified. That trace allows for logical path which would in turn help more people view the word in the same way. If words carried essences, I don't really think they would be words anymore.
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