The Urdoxa of Personal Pronouns
Grammar has always been the fearful guardian against the chaos of language, the general commanding the unruly troops. A system of indoctrination, created by meticulous bureaucrats in the service of the State (clergy, literati, linguistic accountants, and pedants). Grammar is not to be believed, but to be obeyed. In education when a teacher explains the rules, no information is communicated, instead orders are given. If language is water, grammar is ice.The personal pronouns as graphic entities came relatively late in Indo-European languages, but have since reigned supreme. And along with it the subject became the Cartesian king. And the object the ambitious prince, always trying to usurp the power of the throne. However, when the first homo sapiens spied a member of a different tribe, he cried out and defined the fatal creation of The Other.
The dualism between, the attraction and enmity of the two have since bedeviled thinking, always creating destructive dichotomies. Squeezed in in the space, left open, the verb insisted on its rightful place as the doer. It meant action.
The verb also came in Harlequin clothing with many patchworks of colors. One of them threatened the subject: the infinitive. Verbs in the infinitive have the courage to challenge the hierarchical power structure. True revolutionaries! No longer is “the subject” the dictator, and no more can “the object” claim its right as heir apparent.
In fact, verbs in the infinitive are limitless becomings, blissfully ignoring the personal pronoun of the subject. Infinite-becomings have no “fathers”, only referring to an “it” of the event = it is raining - or thinking. Infinitives are too busy becoming, too action-orientated, too much process, too few (if any) products. Becomings which both await the missing subject and precede it.
Thinking in the infinitive means transcending personal pronouns. To die, to live, to love, to ponder, to do. Never-ending flux and flows.
Personal pronouns breed opposition, the dreaded cul-de-sacs of discussion which never finds its way, always losing direction and purpose. Personal pronouns demand numbers: three of them. Singular and plural. What about a fourth or more?
Grammar is Stalinistic and tolerates no insurgents or dissidents, yet this is what it needs to survive outside of the Gulag. Where Urdoxa provides “stable entities” out in the world that corresponds to distinct faculties, paradox points to the unstable character of the relationship of language and world.
Representation is exactly this: a second version: a RE of what is presented, and consequently a fraud of a fraud.
Language is always more than language. Or better, language is always more than representation. It spills over into the world, woven, as it is, into the world in order to be able to function as representation. This quilt requires paradoxes of sense and nonsense that escape the grasp of language. But personal pronouns don’t care, having secured their place in human communication. There is no escape. And so, dualisms fester like virus when they could thrive as rhizomes.
It is language which fixes the limits (the moment, for example, at which the excess begins), but it is language as well which transcends the limits and restores them to the infinite equivalence of an unlimited becoming. (Deleuze: The Logic of Sense, pps. 2-3)
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PS: Take note: Nowhere in this post have personal pronouns been used. So it can be done.
PPS: Painting by Annie Lin, emerging Taiwanese artist (regrettably titled “Entre nous” = damned French personal pronouns)
posted by Orla Schantz at 7:05 PM
7 Comments:
If one renounces personal pronouns and verbs in tenses other than the infinitival, wonderful benefits will be received?
--Yusef
If one renounces personal pronouns and verbs in tenses other than the infinitival, wonderful benefits will be received?
Depends. Thinking in the infinitive can transgress the tyranny of the personal pronouns and in the best of cases enrich conversations, by avoiding fruitless demarcations and identity politics. Opinions, based as they are on the personal pronoun, seldom further thinking, instead atrophying positions and locking participants into martial configurations of attack and defense, without any possibility of intellectual movement or daring. Experimentation is often the victim.
Etymologically, conversation points to congenial meetings, convergings, productions, unions, fusions, helping members enjoy creative reciprocity.
Personal pronouns-based discussions rarely do, instead erecting blocks of dualisms, often insurmountable.
Thinking in the infinitive allows openings, nourishing growth, or, at the very least, modest insistence on the process, where ever it may lead - focusing on the message rather than accusing the messenger.
Orla
Could this post be mistaken for a joke?
Does anyone really believe that grammar is ".. A system of indoctrination, created by meticulous bureaucrats in the service of the State"?
Or that it ".. has always been the fearful guardian against the chaos of language, the general commanding the unruly troops".
Oh I get it. This is not a joke, it is simply another example of Mr. Schantz cliche: "living" language good, grammar bad! And then slap on a cheap artwork image and it's done.
There is not even a hint of a moment of genuine critique.
That you could complete one post (which is after all a very specific form of communication) without utilizing a personal pronoun doesn't provide much in the way of proving personal pronouns are dispensible.
Have you considered that your suggestions to liberate thought and expression involve censorship?
--Yusef
Yusef comments,
That you could complete one post (which is after all a very specific form of communication) without utilizing a personal pronoun doesn't provide much in the way of proving personal pronouns are dispensible.
The post was an essayistic attempt at imagining an intellectual utopia without personal pronouns, and of trying to point to the potential of thinking in the infinitive. Naturally, personal pronouns are based exactly on the mentioned Urdoxa of grammar = the distance between and dualism of One and The Other that is imprinted into the human DNA
Of course, if personal pronouns are abolished in modern languages all communication would break down and the world come to an end.
That doesn’t mean that it might not free thinking (about the world) to experiment with the infinitive which doesn’t recognize a subject or an object but instead empowers the space between the two to the point where subjects and objects become irrelevant.
Much of western philosophy has indeed been done without personal pronouns, relying on denotative language to erect impersonal systems of thought in an attempt to turn reflection and metaphysics into objective “science”. Syllogisms don’t need personal pronouns. Neither do Kant’s critiques.
Producing a post on a blog (or this comment!) without using personal pronouns is a simple matter: always write sentences with verbs only in passive constructions.
Thinking in the infinitive – and always using the conjunction of “AND” - is harder, since it is a refutation of causality, and THAT is another vital part of the human DNA. In fact, Nietzsche even talks about a human “instinct for causality”.
Liberating thought involves struggle, as all emancipation does, always it will invariably contain remnants of the old in the search for the new, like discarding the dreaded placenta which not only nourished, but eventually also left indelible traces.
So, it’s another round of rattling the cage.
Yusef asks,
Have you considered that your suggestions to liberate thought and expression involve censorship?
Of course. The flippant answer would be that language itself is the ultimate censor.
The respectful comment is that “internal” censorship is always effective, just as the binary machine is working overtime noiselessly in the background, hammering away, never letting go.
Orla
PS: A (blogging) post (which is after all a very specific form of communication). That is interesting.
Is there an aesthetics of blogging with an established hierarchy of genres? What is this pecificity? Most blogging seems to be orgies of personal pronouns. Or not?
"Opinions, based as they are on the personal pronoun, seldom further thinking, instead atrophying positions and locking participants into martial configurations of attack and defense, without any possibility of intellectual movement or daring. Experimentation is often the victim."
Are opinions based on a personal pronoun?
Someone says, "I think e=mc*2.." Observing the use of the personal pronoun, and knowing opinions are based on personal pronouns, we therefore know e=mc*2 is an opinion.
Someone else says, "Data indicates Adolph Hitler was the greatest man ever to have lived." Observing no personal pronouns, and knowing opinions are based on personal pronouns, we therefore know it is no mere opinion to say Adolph Hitle was the greatest man to have ever lived.
-Y
Point taken.
However, the aim of the post was to observe that ...opinions, based as they are on the personal pronoun, seldom further thinking..., but instead ...lock participants into martial configurations of attack and defense, without any possibility of intellectual movement, thus often making experimentation the victim...
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Are opinions based on a personal pronoun?
In the context and format of discussions, yes. And in this case, opinions (with personal pronouns behind them) unfortunately have a tendency to block thinking just as it hardens positions into immovable "gotcha" dichotomies: "I'm right!" - "You're wrong!" - "I'm smart!" - "You're stupid!".
The intention of the post was simply to introduce "thinking in the infinitive" and to see where it might lead.
Orla
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