Här är en text jag skrev efter att jag hade läst Embassytown av China Miéville, och som jag nu lägger upp i ett separat inlägg för att den var för lång för att refereras till i det inlägg som jag ursprungligen ville referera det till. länk alltings mått. Jag tänker att man ska läsa den här texten som man skulle berätta historien om hur våra äldsta gudar slogs och på så sätt fick vår värld att uppstå, gärna med en ficklampa riktad upp mot sitt ansikte, framför en camp fire, surrounded by a bunch of kids, och man ska berätta den här historien så inlevelsefullt och med sådan pondus att det inte spelar någon roll att barnen inte kommer förstå ett skit, för när du är färdig så kommer dom åtminstone ha förstått att dom nyss har fått ta del av något viktigt, fantastiskt, och större än dom själva (lite som latin i kyrkan, liksom - om man bara skriker tillräckligt mycket på folk så förstår dom till slut att dom borde vara tacksamma som får ta del av det dom inte förstår). Yeah my children are gonna become weird.
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The birth of a
medium requires the step from ultimate truth/integrity, Law, to the
possibility for partials/incompleteness, or law. The birth of
a medium requires a move from Construct, to Dekonstruktion. From
Language, to language. The birth of a medium requires the original sin, rebellion, and the utterance that signals the mark of a revolution - the Lie.
§
Scile asked me
about religion, and I told him that so far as I knew the Hosts had
none. I mentioned the Festivals of Lies. Scile was not the only one
who wanted to pursue that. "But I thought they couldn't,"
someone said. "That's sort of the point, " I said. "To
strive for the impossible."
– China Mieville,
Embassytown
Where to us (humans)
words usually mean/signify something, to the Hosts of China Mieville's
Embassytown, each word is an opening, a door through which the thought of
that referent, the thought itself that reached for that word, can be
seen. The Hosts don't have polysemy, and words don't signify insofar as
they are their referents. There is no "that" - no
thatness. For the Hosts, meaning doesn't live merely or
primarily (as in being transmitted through) the symbols, but hatches
from a mind and thus requires a "conscious" entity for it
being birthed, intercepted and understood by another conscious
entity. The Hosts – or Ariekei, as they are also referred to –
hear the soul in each voice, and to voice something in (their)
Language is to speak both "The Truth", and "truth". This is why similes are important to
them, and they literally “make” them, in a sense. For in
(Ariekei) Language, “what-ifs” are at best pre-ghosts, something
not articulated and thus barely thought or imagined at all, and so
the Ariekei need similes to compare things to, to make true the
things that are not yet quite there – things that need to be said,
yet need to be borne out of truth and existence to be uttered. They need similes in
the form of actual beings in the world to clearly think and utter
them. Need to make them appear in the world, so as to be able to make
certain comparisons to them. Or rather, they did. But then came the
Festival of Lies, and everything changed.
"What the colony
needed, someone had joked, were single people split in two. And to
put it like that was to suggest a solution."
"Before the
humans came we didn't speak so much of certain things. Before the
humans came we didn't speak so much. Before the humans came we didn't
speak." Through a dissembling made of omitted clauses the
Host laid out its manifesto. Before the humans came we didn't speak,
so we will, can, must, speak through them. The Host made that falsity
a true aspiration. The Host surl_tesh echer, by insisting on a certain might-be,
changed what was. It had learnt to lie (in order) to insist on a truth. "This
is how it will be". An unqualified future tense, rare in
Language. This was more than an aspiration, though - the Hosts could only envisage
that this was how it would be. At least those who became addicted to
lies following the festivities envisioned it to be so. To the others, The Absurd, those who didn't become addicts because they had torn off
their giftwings (with which Ariekei speak and listen and are
enveloped in the Pre-Symbolic Order of Language) in order to rid
themselves of the "Drug Gods of Lies", the solipsism seemed
unbearable and impenetrable now that they no longer had access to Language and the cognizance and truisms of others. They had become monads of murder,
paving the way for confusion, frustration, and aggression. But with the loss of
Language, a new form of Absurd communication had spontaneously arisen
– pointing. And with that pointing and loss of the realism of
Language, a "that" had been conceived – a thatness invented.
They'd given the jag of the body, the out-thrust limb, power to
refer, and with their lack of Language, had conceived of a thatness
which faced every way – flexible because it was empty, a universal
equivalent signifying itself, yes, but with the capacity to signify
not only itself, but virtually anything. From it had followed other soundless
referents, playing off of thatness, such as negation. From that tiny
and primal vocabulary, the motor of this antithesis of untruth spun out other
concepts – me, you, others. It turned out that the Absurd weren't
so lonely as one had imagined, and in their solitary, silent way, the
Absurd had made a semiotic revolution, and a new language to boot. They
had thought they had no language, yet the absurd comrades had been
communicating, never knowing they did, mostly the very hopelessness
that made them believe they were incommunicado to begin with.
At the same time, those who still had Language were slowly deconstructing it, looking for a rupture, a move from before to after, using similes in contradictory ways, using similes as a "thatness" with which universal pointing could be made possible. And it were.
§
There are three modes of distancing from "ordinary reality" in Embassytown: one submits this reality to anamorphic distortion; one introduces an object that has no place in it; and one subtracts or erases all content (objects) of reality, so that all that remains is the very empty place these objects were filling in. These three modes can be understood as 1) The Real as pure semblance that "subjectivizes" objective reality (for example through the usage/creation of similes), 2) The Real as a form that can only retroactivly be constructed and thus has to be presupposed as such (the insistence on a certain might-be changing what was/is), and 3) The Real as "not real", as something which erases all content (objects) of reality so that all that remains is the very empty place these objects were filling in (pointing/symbolic language/lying).
How do lies and similes intersect? Similes start trangressions because even though everything is literal in Language, it can still be like something, and thus the like with which similes are interwoven between things-words are themselves a sort of empty, universal equivalents not much unlike thatness. And with this moment of clarity, this move from one to two, similes lead to metaphors. The Ariekei were signifying now, and there – elision, slippage between word and referent – with which they could play, create space to think new conceptions, prescribe new worlds, up-heave old ones. Lie in the service of truth-making. When language, thought and world weren't separated, there was no succulence, no titillating impossible, and little room for alienation, or in other words, emergence - where the message was something else than the medium or itself. No mystery. Where each sound had been isomorphic to some "Real", not a conceptual thought, but self-expresssed worldness speaking itself though the Ariekei, always redundant, always the world, there was now only language - signifying sound, a musica universalis to do things with and to. The said was now both “as it is” and “not-as-it-is”, language a metaphysical instrumentation, the logos a medium constantly reinventing itself, presence itself an intermediate which was closed-off and forever unreachable. Being itself was now undeterminate, with no formula that best described a set of points or indeed every finite set of points, no matter how simple or complex their distribution. What the Hosts spoke now weren't things, or moments, but the thoughts of them, pointings-at, meaning no longer a facet of essence, the signs being ripped from what they signed. It took the lie to do that.
With the spiral of assertion-abnegation came quiddities, and the Ariekei came to know themselves, later on understanding the Festival of Lies as the beginning of history itself, the point in time when they became themselves as a people. But their existential freedom was not gained without growing pains - as meanings yawned, they became worldsick. In this oneiric affliction of potentialities, everything perceivable could be conceived of as any-other-thing, and everything that wasn't perceived could in turn be conceived of as conceivable. Everything incommensurable in its universal commensurability, the minds of the Arieki were now sudden merchants, since metaphor, like money, equalized the incommensurable. They were mythologers now. They'd never had monsters, but now all of the world was chimeras, each utterance a nexus of splicings, a forked tongue through which fragmentation made possible a new form of joining together of Arieki with Arieki. No wonder it made them sick. They suddenly found themselves in a new world, cast out and disjointed, confounded and bewildered. Their world had become the world in which you and I live in, a world in which metaphor is not merely metaphor, but as the Ariekei would put it - “lie-that-truths” or “truthing-lies”.
At the same time, those who still had Language were slowly deconstructing it, looking for a rupture, a move from before to after, using similes in contradictory ways, using similes as a "thatness" with which universal pointing could be made possible. And it were.
§
There are three modes of distancing from "ordinary reality" in Embassytown: one submits this reality to anamorphic distortion; one introduces an object that has no place in it; and one subtracts or erases all content (objects) of reality, so that all that remains is the very empty place these objects were filling in. These three modes can be understood as 1) The Real as pure semblance that "subjectivizes" objective reality (for example through the usage/creation of similes), 2) The Real as a form that can only retroactivly be constructed and thus has to be presupposed as such (the insistence on a certain might-be changing what was/is), and 3) The Real as "not real", as something which erases all content (objects) of reality so that all that remains is the very empty place these objects were filling in (pointing/symbolic language/lying).
How do lies and similes intersect? Similes start trangressions because even though everything is literal in Language, it can still be like something, and thus the like with which similes are interwoven between things-words are themselves a sort of empty, universal equivalents not much unlike thatness. And with this moment of clarity, this move from one to two, similes lead to metaphors. The Ariekei were signifying now, and there – elision, slippage between word and referent – with which they could play, create space to think new conceptions, prescribe new worlds, up-heave old ones. Lie in the service of truth-making. When language, thought and world weren't separated, there was no succulence, no titillating impossible, and little room for alienation, or in other words, emergence - where the message was something else than the medium or itself. No mystery. Where each sound had been isomorphic to some "Real", not a conceptual thought, but self-expresssed worldness speaking itself though the Ariekei, always redundant, always the world, there was now only language - signifying sound, a musica universalis to do things with and to. The said was now both “as it is” and “not-as-it-is”, language a metaphysical instrumentation, the logos a medium constantly reinventing itself, presence itself an intermediate which was closed-off and forever unreachable. Being itself was now undeterminate, with no formula that best described a set of points or indeed every finite set of points, no matter how simple or complex their distribution. What the Hosts spoke now weren't things, or moments, but the thoughts of them, pointings-at, meaning no longer a facet of essence, the signs being ripped from what they signed. It took the lie to do that.
With the spiral of assertion-abnegation came quiddities, and the Ariekei came to know themselves, later on understanding the Festival of Lies as the beginning of history itself, the point in time when they became themselves as a people. But their existential freedom was not gained without growing pains - as meanings yawned, they became worldsick. In this oneiric affliction of potentialities, everything perceivable could be conceived of as any-other-thing, and everything that wasn't perceived could in turn be conceived of as conceivable. Everything incommensurable in its universal commensurability, the minds of the Arieki were now sudden merchants, since metaphor, like money, equalized the incommensurable. They were mythologers now. They'd never had monsters, but now all of the world was chimeras, each utterance a nexus of splicings, a forked tongue through which fragmentation made possible a new form of joining together of Arieki with Arieki. No wonder it made them sick. They suddenly found themselves in a new world, cast out and disjointed, confounded and bewildered. Their world had become the world in which you and I live in, a world in which metaphor is not merely metaphor, but as the Ariekei would put it - “lie-that-truths” or “truthing-lies”.
§
Before the humans
came we didn't speak so much of certain things. Language spoke us.
The words that wanted to be city and machines had us speak them so
they could be. We didn't speak, we were mute, we only dropped the
stones we mentioned out of our mouths, opened our mouths and had the
birds we described fly out, we were vectors, we were the birds eating
in mindlessness, we were the girl in darkness, only knowing it when
we weren't anymore.
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