gary@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (gary w buchholz) (08/14/85)
"A language... does not construct its formations of words by
reference to the patterns of 'reality' but on the basis of its
own internal and self-sufficient rules. The word 'dog' exists,
and functions within the structures of the English language
without reference to any four-legged barking creature's real
existence. The word's behavior derives from its inherent
structural status as a noun rather than its referent's actual
status as animal."
-- Structuralism and Semiotics / T. Hawkes
"In itself a language is not true or false; it is or is not valid
i.e., constitutes a coherent system of signs. The rules of literary
language do not concern the conformity of that language to reality
but only to its submission to the system of signs the author has
established."
-- Critical Essays / Roland Barthes.
(the referential fallacy)
"...the representation of reality is a verbal construct in which
meaning is achieved by reference from words to words not things...
...the verbal process whereby significance is actually perceived...
can best be understood as an awareness of verbal structure rather
than in terms of referentiality."
-- Interpretation and Descriptive Poetry
in New Literary History Vol IV 1973
/ Riffaterre
I put these questions to Charles Wingate. What is language without
reference ? How does language about the Trinity become mimetic ? Is
there immutable connection between signifier (language) and signified
(the external world) or can signifiers be divorced from the world "out
there" to inhabit the linguistic realm only ? Is reference only the
ruse of language and the intransitive jump from signifier to signifier
without end ?
I don't think I can let all this discussion of the Trinity pass without
articulating the criticism set forth by the latest fad in contemporary
theology - Deconstruction.
Sometimes, the best way to answer any (theological) question is to make
the question "go away". "Do you still beat your wife ?" is the same
genre of question as that of the "Trinity" or "Messiah". The right
answer is the subversion of the question itself.
Deconstruction "subverts" theological questions by getting behind them
and showing that they reside on false presuppositions about language and its
mimetic functions. Discussions of the "Trinity" can only take place
where the functioning of language and mimesis is unquestioned.
What has the logic of the grammar of language have to do with the logic
of Reality. Just because we can move elements of the system of
language according to machine-like rules of grammar does this also
imply that Reality conforms to our semantic ways of speaking about
it ?
Can language form an autonomous system of symbols that can exist
independently of any extra-linguistic referent ? Deconstructive
Theology thinks so and here is the center of its criticism as regards
such discussions of "Trinity" and "Messiah" as are engaged in in these
newsgroups.
Some comments by Carl Raschke from an essay entitled "The
Deconstruction of God" in a collection "Deconstruction and Theology"
are to the point.
"Disciplined thought is begotten of language through the midwivery
of writing. In that connection what Derrida terms grammatology-
the science of writing-must supplant the encrusted routines of
philosophy. If philosophy, and theology for that matter, is 'about'
anything, it is about things in their modes of representation. But
the mode of representation is abstracted from the grammatological
context. Thus both philosophy and theology through an inquiry
into the forms of writing and their semantic peculiarities can
uncover their own agenda and aim. But if the 'subject matter' of an
intellectual regimen such as theology is alloyed, and can be seen in
some sense as consubstantial, with writing as an autonomous agency,
then that about which the discipline 'speaks' is language in its rude
exteriority. And beneath this exteriority is buried the 'secret' of
all traditions of structured discourse - that they signify nothing."
"...If theology, instead of examining the nature and attributes of
God, or even exploring the meaning and discursive function of the
holy name, becomes preoccupied in contrast with pondering the
purpose for which it is 'done', then it must come to understand
itself strictu sensu as a meditation within discourse upon
discourse. The divine word, the sacra verba, is truely made flesh;
it reaches its kenotic consummation, its radical otherness, in a
theology which is nought but a writing about theology."
To argue about the Trinity is to be seduced by language and to take for
granted the unjustified assertion of the mimetic quality of language
and discourse.
There is a "fantastic world" opened up by this mirage of reference and
here is the site of the labor of traditional theology. "The sign as
such produces extravagant effects of referential aberration approaching
the limits of vertigo." - Paul de Man
What about talk of the Messiah ? Is "Messiah" anything other than an
inter-symbolic reference ? "Messiah" as symbol and not "thing" -
intra-textual/inter-textual and not extra-linguistic ? Is "Messiah" an
exemplar of referential aberration and linguistic/semantic dazzlment -
the "conjuring act" of language of a fantastic world of no/things ?
Gary