Re: dogs
AntiUtopia@aol.com
Wed, 20 Oct 1999 18:52:19 -0400 (EDT)
It's really very funny that you say what you've used happiness as your
example here...
We were discussing This Very Subject in my Milton class today. Paradise
Lost. Adam says he's happy. A question is asked, How can he know happiness
without knowing sadness?
Some people argued, of course, that he could not. But others said he merely
"named" the emotion he was experiencing when he saw Eve, or spoke to Raphael,
or enjoyed the Garden.
The point was that "happiness" was named without knowing "sadness."
Reading Elizabeth's reply, while it is true that you couldn't experience
something that "couldn't" be named, there's a difference between that and not
being able to experience something without it already being named.
I think the second is more to E.'s point.
Jim
In a message dated 10/20/99 6:03:49 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu writes:
<< Naming may begin at some point after experience, but the advent of
experience and *the possibility of naming* are exactly simultaneous.
Can it be agreed: you can't, and never could, experience something
that couldn't have a name. You can't be aware of something that you
can't also refer to somehow--or that can't be referred to somehow,
even if you aren't the one doing the referring. Even if the name is
inadequate. You can't experience something that isn't differentiated
from other experiences, or that isn't a mix of differentiated
experiences.
Basically, language works (Saussure) via differentiation. Nothing--no
thing--has positive value in and of itself, without recourse to some
other, different thing to give it that value. Not even happiness.
Why? quite simple, actually: happiness has no value whatsoever
*except as it is relevant to--and different from--sadness*...or any
other thing that is not happiness. You can't have one without the
other. Every time you experience an emotion, you simultaneously and
necessarily experience the absence of another emotion. This is the
same principal on which language works. "Phenomena predicated on
instances of difference," I have been calling it. When Lacan says the
unconscious is structured like a language, I insist he's talking about
tropes...tricks of language. The unconscious is a rhetorical
swashbuckler. But Lacan also has in mind this idea of
differentiation.
I do not believe that words are accurate, or even adequate, devices
for communicating feelings and emotions. Feelings and emotions are
infinitely more complex (and infinitely more corny than they are
complex), but they are still a product of differences.
--
Matt Kozusko >>