poetry as performative revelation

Wrote this earlier today for a feature on a friend's website. I think it sounds kind of pompous, but it really is what I think . . .

I came to poetry as a frustrated philosopher, creatively paralyzed by both the lack of outlets for philosophical discussion outside of academia as well as the hypercritical self-doubt that the discipline can inspire. Poetry struck me as a way of accomplishing, in the real world, more or less the same thing as philosophy: the revelation of either being (philosophy) or truth (poetry) by means of language. The latter, poetry, accomplishes this by literally enacting and embodying what philosophy demonstrates through rational argument, description, and critique.

The performative nature of poetry (that is, the fact that, as the old saying goes, it “shows” rather than “tells”) liberates it from the obligation of making discursive or narrative “sense”. The poem need not represent anything at all, any more than an abstract painting or a piece of “pure” non-programmatic music (e.g., most jazz improvisation or classical music prior to and after the romantic era). Like these other art forms, poetry is essentially mute; it does not speak, but rather uses the raw material of language to accomplish or demonstrate, to embody -- and it does so silently: a pantomime in language. It tells us nothing. But if we let it carry us along, suspending our need for sense and narrative just like we suspend our disbelief when reading a work of fiction or watching a narrative film, it reveals the world by enacting it – and not the world that we know, but the world as it really is, which, to us, is always something foreign, alien, uncanny, wholly Other.

kojeve, hegel's master/slave dialectic, signs, faith

For about six years it's been a ritual of mine upon entering a used bookstore to immediately browse the philosophy section for a copy of Alexander Kojeve's Introduction to the Reading of Hegel. I don't know why I initially refused to purchase a new copy, but over the years the ritual became an act of faith -- when it was Time, the Book would appear. After stepping into the San Francisco Mission District's Adobe Books for the first time about three years ago, I knew I'd found the place of the book's eventual arrival. It finally happened this last weekend.

The book was first given to me by a philosophy professor who knew I was struggling with Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. She warned me that Kojeve's interpretations were often accused of playing up the importance of points supporting his views while glossing over others -- and, moreover, that Kojeve's "cliff's notes" approach would have certainly enraged Hegel, who felt his students would only truly learn to navigate his labyrinth if they entered without a map. Undoubtedly, there is truth to such claims, yet (in my understanding at least) Kojeve was something of a St. Paul to Hegel's Christ (which would make Marx St. Augustine? Er, no, wrong chronology - Judas?) -- his take on Hegel's Phenomenology, even if it gets some things wrong, became the dominant interpretation of the mighty generations (the existentialists, structuralists, etc) which directly followed. So much so, in fact, that an understanding of Kojeve's view is essential to understanding what Hegel means to us. Besides, anyone advocating even the possiblity of a purist reading of Hegel should keep in mind Hegel's last words: "Only one man ever understood me, and even he didn't understand me."

That said, the clarity that Kojeve brings to those parts of the Phenomenology he considers most important (namely, the Master/Slave dialectic, and his exposition of Self-Consciousness as Desire) is breathtaking. I've read no other commentary that does such an effective job of cutting through the surface ornamentation to reveal the fundamental mechanics of the Hegelian "thought-machine".

What you'll get now is my gloss-over of Kojeve's gloss-over. Consider yourself forewarned.

Consciousness is desire.
Animal desire (consciousness) is directed toward the biological "realm". E.g., an animal desires to eat and this eating sustains the animal's biological life, nothing more.
Human consciousness is self-consciousness. In other words, desire directed toward desire. That is, inasmuch as I am a human being and not (merely) an animal, I desire that other human beings desire me (or my desire). Simply put, I desire recognition.
But recognition of what? On the most primordial, existential, fundamental level, I desire recognition, acknowledgement, that I am a human self-consciousness and not merely an animal.
To obtain this recognition from the other, I must prove that I have human and not merely animal desire.
The only way to do this is to show, beyond doubt, that I am willing to lose my animal life for the sake of fulfilling my human desire. This is precisely what a merely animal being would never do.
The other is in exactly the same position, thinking exactly the same thoughts.
How should we prove this to one another -- indeed, force this recognition upon one another -- beyond any doubt whatsoever?
By engaging in a fight to the death. By doing so, each one of us proves that she or he is willing to lose her or his life for the sake of recognition.
Whoever surrenders first (assuming one of us does) becomes a slave of the other, and the other becomes a master.
This is the beginning of history. Kojeve remarks:

Man was born and History began with the first Fight that ended in the appearance of a Master and a Slave . . . And universal history, the history of the interaction between men and of their interaction with Nature, is the history of the interaction between warlike Masters and working Slaves. Consequently, History stops at the moment when the difference, the opposition, between Master and Slave disappears . . . Now, according to Hegel, it is in and by the wars of Napolean, and in particular, the Battle of Jena, that this completion of History is realized through the dialectical overcoming (Aufheben) of both the Master and the Slave. (pp. 43-44)

My professor claimed that while she doesn't disagree that history has in fact been "the history of the interaction between warlike Masters and working Slaves" she doesn't agree with Hegel's portrayal of this unfortunate state of affairs as absolutely inevitable. I tentatively agreed with her, but was unable to articulate an alternative scenario that satisfied Hegel's definition of human self-consciousness as desire for recognition (which seemed, and still does, basically right to me).

It occurs to me now, however, that what the warring self-consciousnesses seek is first and foremost a sign (proving that you a) are a human being and b) acknowledge my humanity). For Hegel, the only satisfactory sign is the demonstration of a willingness to fight to the death. But can we imagine another kind of sign that would accomplish the same ends?

Let's try restating Hegel's definition of human self-consciousness in terms of signs. To seek recognition is to seek the production of a certain kind of sign from the other (again, one that proves you are a human being who acknowledges my humanity). Human beings, then, can additionally be defined -- without abandoning Hegel's definition -- as seekers and producers of signs, as beings which communicate via signs (as opposed to mere codes, which characterize animal communication and which do not incorporate desire directed toward the desire of others).

Instead of initiating a fight to the death, let's say that one of us draws something (perhaps with our finger on dirt or sand): an image, such as a crude representation of something in our immediate surroundings, or even a simple circle or square. Once I see you draw this (and assuming you clearly direct my attention to it) I realize that you, like me, are capable of intentionally creating something that has no immediately practical purpose (unlike, say, a bird's creation of a nest). This alone makes you more than an animal (or at least a very peculiar one). Moreover, because you direct my attention to your creation, I realize that you intend it for me. In other words, I realize that you've created a sign for me to interpret. While this doesn't acknowledge my humanity, it does ask: "are you, like me, the kind of being to whom this gesture, this drawing, can have a meaning?" Because only a human being could ask that question, you've proven your humanity; all that's left is for me to make a sign in response to prove mine.

What then? A universal history of friendship, history as the unfolding of the implications of that mythological First Conversation? Maybe the brutes would have taken over anyway, but I don't think I can ever resign myself to the notion that all the misery and horror of history was necessary. Which constitutes the closest thing to any real faith that I have.

black holes, information, stephen hawking

In a NY Times article on Stephen Hawking's concession that, in the long run, information is not destroyed by black holes, Dr. Hawking states

If you jump into a black hole, your mass energy will be returned to our universe, but in a mangled form, which contains the information about what you were like, but in an unrecognizable state.

I find myself stumbling over the use of the word "unrecognizable." If he means this in a strong sense - that the information cannot be considered at least potentially recognizable - then on what grounds can the "information" be considered actual information? It seems to me that just as currency must have some kind of potential exchange value in order to be worth anything (otherwise it would just be an ugly piece of paper or chunk of metal), so must information be theoretically "translatable" into meaningful terms in order to be considered information. Otherwise, wouldn't it be impossible to distinguish the so-called information from mere noise?

I'll therefore assume that he means it in a weak sense - that the information escaping from black holes is at least theoretically recognizable . . . say, by God, or someone with total knowledge of the entire history of the universe up to the present (the latter concept, of course, can lead to sticky paradoxes as well . . .)

an early poetry

an early poetry
correct

and littered
with masqerades

left a huge temptation
to boil down to revolution
this sketch

of Wittgenstein, to fully
shape the world, its problems,
its essentially practical religion,

to elevate the rupture

and the way words are governed
together, impossible to detect

indeed, we might meet the surface
someday -- it may, I think, occupy
this continuum of provisional

grammars, an extra-ordinary
failure to meet the minimum
criteria required to break

my job in two

depth and surface grammars

An early poetry teacher of mine insisted that poems are collections of complete, grammatically correct sentences. Poets who failed to apply the basic rules of grammar to their poems did not write poems but rather littered the page with incoherent collections of words and phrases masquerading as poetry.

This view left a huge impression on me. Whenever I’m tempted to use mere words or phrases instead of complete sentences, I feel like a moral and poetic failure. Whether or not I am one or both of these things, however, surely doesn't boil down to whether or not I’ve purged myself of the temptation to occaisionally write in non-sentences.

So I’ve been plotting a revolution against this teacher’s perspective for quite some time. What follows is a back-of-the-envelope sketch of my strategy to date.

I can imagine Wittgenstein saying something like the following:

If we permit the deep grammar of our form of life (language) to fully shape our speech, then we will address only the world, its problems, its states of affairs, etc. our speech will be essentially practical. If and when our speech is not practical, as in religious language or poetry, we will not be saying anything per se, in the sense of direct communication – rather, in these cases, we will use language for an entirely different end: to elevate the spirit, so to speak.

Now I’d go on to say:

Such extra-ordinary uses of language will rupture the deep grammar of our form of life in a profound way. Something about the way the words are gathered together, juxtaposed, and so on, will violate the rules governing how words must, in our language, be combined in order to “make sense”. Moreover, while profound, this violation may be equally subtle and therefore nearly impossible to detect (i.e., we might construct a poem of sentences all of which meet the minimum criteria required to be considered reasonably grammatically correct).

But does a break with deep grammar somehow license a break with “surface” grammar?

It may, I think, only if the two grammars are conceived as occupying opposite ends of a continuum of grammars. My job, then, to complete my revolution, would be to deconstruct the opposition between what I’ve provisionally called grammars of “depth” and grammars of “surface”.

the best poetry . . .

posted today on dbqp: visualizing poetics:

. . . I’m suspicious of poets who understand their work. The best poetry keeps every reader unbalanced, even the one who wrote the poetry.

fear of solipsism (cartesian nightmare)

I put a record on -- don't recall what, though it had a fifties pop aesthetic (which I usually despise, by the way). Yellow label almost the color of a manilla envelope, small logo of a pair of black shoes with wings (kind of like a cutout of the Goodyear logo -- no interior details, all black).

The song caused some deep emotion to wiggle its way up my abdomen toward my throat. I began to sob even though I couldn't explain why. It felt wonderful to sob. Despite the discomfort of a running, stuffy nose, it felt like a breath of clean air off the ocean.

Then the sobs took on a quick, irregular rhythm -- more rapid, jerky, bumpy, as if they were stumbling over one another. I thought they must sound very strange, so I tried to hear them as an external observer would have heard them. From the outside, my sobs sounded just like laughter.

I panicked. What if I appeared to be laughing every time I cried? What if every emotion came across as its opposite? Wouldn't this imply an infinite and unbridgeable abyss between myself and the rest of the world, wouldn't it seal me up inside of my own subjectivity for eternity? Surely God knew about this. Maybe God had even designed me that way. Wasn't this the surest sign that I had, in fact, died and now resided in hell?