Language as Control

[The Unnamable]

Not exactly... language doesn't make us, concept does. The only part of us that language makes is our conscience, without it we would not really be able to use it. All our thoughts begin in our subconscience though which is purely concept.

This makes no sense to me. How can a concept exist without language? Name me just one concept that exists without it. There is no concept that is not involved in an open-ended play of signification, permeated with the traces and fragments of other ideas. It’s just that, out of this play of signifiers, certain meanings are elevated by social ideologies to a privileged position, or made the centres around which other meanings are made to turn. The interesting theorist to read with regard to a psychoanalytical approach is Jacques Lacan.

[The Unnamable]

The fact that it is not irreversible suggests to me that we are not under the contol of language as unnamable states. I'm not arguing that we can't get pursuaded by people and propaganda. This is sort of a short term, individual by individual decision. What I'm arguing against is that society at large, millions of people across time and space are controled by nuances of language and culture. What I claiming is that these nuances are a reflection of society at large. We contol the language; language doesn't control us.

Of course it’s not irreversible. As I have already said, the theories I have mentioned depend on that fact. I think you are equating ideological control with propaganda. That is not what I’ve been saying. I cannot understand how you don’t see that our very identities, our sense of ourselves, are dependent upon the systems of meaning available to us. You seem to assume that society at large exists outside of the realm of language. How can it, unless you believe in an objective reality existing independently of our ability to describe it? We can only ever be what language enables us to be. Even by saying ‘I’ we are making certain assumptions.

Nightshade’s point is a valid one. Again, there is no conspiracy or propaganda involved. The word ‘disability’ carries with it the implicit assumption that ‘learning’ is worthwhile. You might say that it is and I wouldn’t take issue with you over whether or not this is the case. I would take issue though, if you assume that to be a self-evident truth and not a value judgment.

[The Unnamable]

The point here is the definition of power. If power is only the act of force someone to accept anything by means of concrete threat, I should agree with Virgil.

I hope that, if you read my reply to Virgil, you now see I do not mean power as in simple brute physical force. I mentioned ‘Thoughtcrime’, which I take as an example of the way power resides in language. It is a concept that exists in language. It has the power to control behaviour by making the people in Orwell’s novel fearful of what goes on in their own heads. Yes, it is backed up by the threat of physical force but its real power exists in the fact that its influence permeates our sense of ourselves.

However, there are many ways to excercise power, which are more subtle and more effective, because a direct threat often will raise a resistance; therefore indirect means of control would be preferable.

Some more recent cultural theorists argue that the dominant ideology ‘deliberately’ produces its own resistance in order to contain it. In simple terms and to use a real world example, the threat of say, terrorism is exaggerated in order to legitimise draconian measures taken by the state.

With the means of comunication that we have access in this late times, the indirect control is more easy and reachs more people. And if indirect power can suggest us what to desire, so there is no need of forcing by physical means. Lately I see many people are absolutely interested in material things - I have no prejudice against material things. I like cars, computers, music etc. A man whose main care is to buy expensive tennis shoes or movil telephones or new car and so, doesn't reflect much at all and is more controlable.

This is the key, although I wouldn’t express it in a way that suggests simply that some people are stupid and so easier to control. We are all controlled. This is what seems to offend Virgil more than anything else I suggest. Please read the following by British Marxist critic, Terry Eagleton for a more succinct and articulate explanation of the point I am making:

“As far as society is concerned, I as an individual am utterly dispensable. No doubt someone has to fulfill the functions I carry out (writing, teaching, lecturing and so on), since education has a crucial role to play in the reproduction of this kind of social system, but there is no particular reason why this individual should be myself. One reason why this thought does not lead me to join a circus or take an overdose is that this is not usually the way I experience my own identity, not the way I actually ‘live out’ my life. I do not feel myself to be a mere function of a social structure which could get along without me, true though this appears to be when I analyze the situation, but as somebody with a significant relation to society and the world at large, a relation which gives me enough sense of meaning and value to enable me to act purposefully. It is as though society were not just an impersonal structure to me, but a ‘subject’ which ‘addresses’ me personally – which recognises me, tells me that I am valued, and so makes me by that very act of recognition into a free, autonomous subject. I come to feel, not exactly as though the world exists for me alone, but as though it is significantly ‘centred’ on me, and I in turn am significantly ‘centred’ on it. Ideology, for Althusser, is the set of beliefs and practices which does the centring. It is far more subtle, pervasive and unconscious than a set of explicit doctrines: it is the very medium in which I ‘live out’ my relation to society, the realm of signs and social practices which binds me to the social structure and lends me a sense of coherent purpose and identity. Ideology in this sense may include the act of going to church, of casting a vote, of letting women pass first through doors; it may encompass not only such conscious predilections as my deep devotion to the monarchy but the way I dress and the kind of car I drive, my deeply unconscious images of others and of myself.”

[The Unnamable]

All our thoughts begin in our subconscience though which is purely concept.

I won’t even pretend to understand much of what French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan explores in his most famous work, Écrits, but from what I can make out he has reread Freud in the light of structuralist and post-structuralist theories of discourse. I said earlier that “Even by saying ‘I’ we are making certain assumptions.” I was thinking here of Lacan’s theory of the ‘mirror stage’. In the pre-Oedipal stage, a baby has no sense of self, is not able to distinguish between subject and object. It depends on its mother for its very existence. So the boundary between its own and its mother’s body is blurred. Lacan calls this state of being the ‘imaginary’ realm. However, when it looks at itself in a mirror and first sees reflected back an image of itself, we see the development of an ego. For the first time, it sees a unified image of itself. But it is still an image – so both ‘real’ and ‘not real’. It is both us and not us. Because it is recognised as somehow ‘us’, a part of ourselves, we identify with it. But it is also alien because it is not ‘us’ and certainly not how we feel ourselves to be from inside our own body. So for Lacan, the act of identifying oneself in the mirror image is an act of misrecognition. As we grow up, we continue to make imaginary identifications with objects. This in turn builds up the ego. This means that the development of a sense of self is dependent on creating a ‘fictional’ image of self by finding something external to us with which we can identify.

To become a subject therefore, the child must come to ‘understand’ that it is made up of its similarities to and differences from all that surrounds it. This is when, according to Lacan, it moves from the ‘imaginary’ to the ‘symbolic’ realm. And by entering into that realm it is entering a pre-existing structure of social and sexual roles and relations. This is why Lacan sees the unconscious as structured like a language. The fact that every society known to man carries the assumption that female is inferior to male shows that this assumption is deep rooted in our early development. This in turn explains why Lacan’s work has been so significant for feminists. Whatever you make of Lacan’s theories, they certainly challenge profoundly the simplistic notion that we are all autonomous, free-thinking individuals.

[blp]

Phew. Finally at the end. Got to admit, I skim read some, so forgive me if I repeat anything.

I see a Lacanian analyst, which I suppose gives me some direct insight into all this. I also went through art school feeling fairly starry-eyed about Derrida, Deleuze, Kristeva et al. without really having any of it properly explained. When I came out I realised I knew virtually nothing about politics and the French theorists weren't helping, so turned to Chomsky (as political theorist rather than linguist) and various others to learn all about the nasty things the American govt had been up to etc. Also learned a little about economics so as to be able to have opinions on things like taxation (mostly in favour), privatisation (almost always opposed) and globalisation (depends what you mean). A lot of this concrete reality seemed beyond the reach of the Post Structuralists and there was a wide acceptance in the nineties among many of their former acolytes that their focus on language and identity was rather impotent in the face of iniquity and exploitation in, say, third world factory sweatshops (c.f. Melanie Klein, No Logo). I tended to buy this and I also balk a little when my Lacanian analyst gets into punning and free association as if language is some magic bullet cure-all.
But actually, it is (and, after all, balking occasionally seems to be part of the psychoanalytic process) and in the end, whether you're seeing a Lacanian, a Freudian, an existential analyst or one of any number of other varieties, it's all about a talking cure. You'll have to take my word for it, shrink sceptics, but if you get lucky enough to get a good one, it works.

Language is both a way into oppression and a way out. As you indicate, I think, Unnamable, oppression is constructed in language and, as you said not too far back, some governments may actually be pleased to have an opposition. Even if they're not, look at the normal outcome of opposition: in democracy, all parties end up being distrusted and seen as largely the same and in revolutions, the liberators frequently become the oppressors. In each case, the ascendents to power become caught up, ensnared in the rhetoric of their own rightness - a position that requires other positions to be marginalised. This is where Deconstruction comes in - Heidegger's coinage, but primarily Derrida's method. What's fantastic about it as a method of understanding and dismantling the arguments of our oppressors is that, as Derrida puts it, the deconstruction of what they say is always already at work within their own argument or, if you prefer, discours/discourse. Derrida, like a good psychoanalyst, shows that there is almost always more going on in language than the speaker intends. The attempt to construct a single dominant truth is constantly undermined from within by numerous other positions. This is the fallacy of mere opposition - simply saying, no, I disagree - it forces us to construct our own attempt at a single, dominant truth, shutting down other possible readings and thereby participating in our own oppression. In the end, it's far more effective to simply ask questions until an oppressive position collapses. And it's not true to say this has no relevance to politics. Chomsky advises his readers to question everything, including his own writing. Deconstruction is an excellent method for that.

Perhaps a problem for you in this debate, Unnamable, has been an implicit linkage between the idea of oppression and government (with a nod to patriarchy). Perhaps it's this that opens you up to charges of conspiracy theory. In fact, of course, when it comes to government, there simply is a great deal of deliberate dissimulation and evasion going on. The rhetoric surrounding the so-called 'War on Terror' seems quite adequate as an example. Leaked Downing Street memos, a sacked Ambassador to Uzbeckistan, some distinctly linguistic fudging on the nature of torture and an outed CIA agent indicate strongly that the conspiracy is somewhat more than theoretical. In the end, so much of it's about lying and during a lot of it, a lot of the public bought it. But perhaps these examples are too dramatic. How about, instead, the position, widely accepted, but rarely explained, that Socialism is a spent force now 'irrelevant' or that the private sector is 'efficient' or that bolstering the rich of a nation creates a 'trickle down effect'? Politics constantly plays host to the strategy that just by saying something you can make it true. It's almost childish in this respect and a lot of people childishly accept this stuff. But more to the point, oppression doesn't just take place at this level but in all kinds localised situations, particularly the family where, long after children are able to understand rational arguments, they may still be palmed off with insupportable positions such as 'because I'm your mother and I say so'. Unfortunately, in many of these situations, the oppressor is just as conned by the language at work as the victim of oppression.
Is there an effective way to address oppression other than through language? No. We might kill an oppressor with a weapon, but, as I've indicated, we risk simply taking his/her place as oppressor and becoming trapped in a dominant position of alleged rightness. I'd go further - we don't just risk it - unless we use language to unpick what language has done, we remain ensnared.

[Virgil]

I repeat - Surprise-surpise. The people who advocate these theorists look at a text and see their ideology reflected in it. Surprise-surprise. blp, you make my point perfectly.

[The Unnamable]

I repeat - Surprise-surpise. The people who advocate these theorists look at a text and see their ideology reflected in it. Surprise-surprise. blp, you make my point perfectly.

I don’t mean to offend you, Virgil, but in an earlier post on this thread you complained of the theorists’ “shoddy thinking”. This last post of yours is not only shoddy but also insulting to the efforts made by me and the other contributors who have tried to add something to the discussion. Try to open your mind a little.

Firstly, you have entirely misunderstood the nature of theory if you still believe that a theorist simply applies his or her own overtly political ideology to a text. A Marxist critic does not look for ways of making a text support a politically Marxist view. Structuralism did not attempt to persuade anyone of a political (in the sense of Party Political) reading of texts – rather it attempted to apply the linguistic theory of people like Saussure to objects and activities other than language itself. They looked at myths, wrestling matches, systems of tribal kinship, even restaurant menus as systems of signs in an attempt to identify the underlying set of laws by which such signs are combined into meanings. Their aim was not to politicise texts so that they supported their own political agenda but to show that meaning is neither a private experience nor a divinely ordained occurrence. It is rather the product of certain shared systems of signification. That such an attempt was a blow to the confident bourgeois belief that the individual is the fount and origin of all meaning is apparent from your dogged refusal to accept their work.

Secondly, it has nothing to do with seeing one’s ideology reflected in a text. What ideology are you referring to anyway? Eagleton does not read ‘Macbeth’ in order to find arguments that would persuade us that Marxism is a viable political system! He applies his knowledge and understanding of the ways in which meaning is constructed in order to demonstrate how we have in the past arrived at certain interpretations and to identify the ideological assumptions that have underpinned those interpretations. Yes, their work has political implications but so has the approach to which you subscribe. It’s just that theirs is a great deal more transparent and deliberately so.

Thirdly, although I read, digest and (I hope) understand these theorists, it does not therefore follow that I apply them in my own enjoyment of Literature. There are problems I have with them that have nothing to do with your objections but that I will not go into at the moment simply because this would be even longer than it will be. I feel that, in this case at least, I should make sufficient effort to understand what I am dismissing before doing so.

Fourthly, how on earth does blp make your point? He/She wrote very openly and with, I believe, genuine passion about the issues and in doing so provided further ideas for the consideration of all those interested in the topic. I might not agree with him or her but at least I recognise that my own thoughts were taken seriously enough to warrant a considered response rather than a glib “I’ve won, so there!” You are, in essence, denying the validity of ideas that are now commonly accepted as worthy of serious attention among the academic community. That might account for nothing but your position denies the enormous contribution to human thought and understanding of Barthes, Derrida, Levi-Strauss, Jakobson, Heidegger – need I continue? And to top it all, you fail to see (or admit) that the earliest work of theory was Aristotle’s Poetics. He offers famous definitions of tragedy, insists that literature is about character, and that character is revealed through action, and he tries to identify the required stages in the progress of a plot. He was also the first critic to develop a ‘reader-centred’ approach to literature, since his consideration of drama tried to describe how it affected the audience. Surely this is a clear example of a theorist?

[RobinHood3000]

Unnamable--I'm not going to argue with your grievances with Virgil, but I do feel obligated to clarify that, thus far, he HAS been trying to contribute to the discussion. It'd be nice if you could cut him a little slack on that pont.

[The Unnamable]

And it's not true to say this has no relevance to politics. Chomsky advises his readers to question everything, including his own writing. Deconstruction is an excellent method for that.

Obviously I agree with you. I didn’t mean to imply that such theories are not in any way political but I have had to underplay this in order to avoid (unsuccessfully, it seems ) giving the impression that I see things in terms of conspiracy (as you noticed). I also agree that we should question everything and that Deconstruction is a very effective tool/weapon for doing so. In the end, it probably means that you will be unhappy but at least your life will be real.

By the way, have you read much of Lyotard and Baudrillard? I can’t wait to unleash some of their ideas on the Forum.

[RobinHood3000]

"Unleash?"

...why does this not bode well...?

[Virgil]

I don’t mean to offend you, Virgil, but in an earlier post on this thread you complained of the theorists’ “shoddy thinking”. This last post of yours is not only shoddy but also insulting to the efforts made by me and the other contributors who have tried to add something to the discussion. Try to open your mind a little.

Like my reply to blp, this is just an off the cuff reaction, not a coordinated reponse, which I'll get to in a day or so.

Yes I understand the difference between ideology and politics from a couple of messages up. You don't need to reiterate. What I maintain is that the theorists and academia today are ideological and don't suspend their ideology in interpreting texts. They are not being objective. I again maintain (and perhaps we're at logerheads here) that Aristotle and Wordsworth and mostly the crtitics prior to the 1970s were not being ideological and came to a text attempting to derive from it, not project into it. Go ahead and survey your fellow teachers as to their political leanings; if its not 10 to 1 on the left, and mostly on the radical Chomsky left, then I will be shocked.

[The Unnamable]

I do feel obligated to clarify

Given that you chose to describe my disagreement with Virgil as a ‘grievance’, may I be permitted to draw my own conclusions about why you ‘feel obligated’?

"Unleash?"

...why does this not bode well...?

Still picking up breadcrumb sins, eh Robin? Pass the umbrage. Don’t fret (even if you use a mollifying smiley), I am not planning to provoke offence: ‘unleash’ was an indication of the perplexing nature of messrs Baudrillard’s and Lyotard’s work, nothing more.

[The Unnamable]

Yes I understand the difference between ideology and politics from a couple of messages up. You don't need to reiterate. What I maintain is that the theorists and academia today are ideological and don't suspend their ideology in interpreting texts. They are not being objective. I again maintain (and perhaps we're at logerheads here) that Aristotle and Wordsworth and mostly the crtitics prior to the 1970s were not being ideological and came to a text attempting to derive from it, not project into it. Go ahead and survey your fellow teachers as to their political leanings; if its not 10 to 1 on the left, and mostly on the radical Chomsky left, then I will be shocked.

Most of the teachers I’ve ever worked with have been utterly apathetic when it comes to politics. Nor would they have the slightest idea who Chomsky is. I have no idea why this is relevant anyway.

I’m not convinced that you see ideology in the way I take it to mean. You still refer to a text as something one can either derive from or project into, as if texts exist independently of their social and historical context. Your claim that pre-1970 writers (whether critics or those included in the canon) are not ideological is simply untenable. While it might be true to say that before the structuralists appeared most writers were not consciously aware of the ideological basis of their own assumptions, it is certainly not true to say that they were ‘objective’. They are permeated with value judgments. A key figure in the development of English Literature as an academic subject was Matthew Arnold. Arnold feared that the decline of religion in the late nineteenth century would result in an increasingly divided society with no common system of beliefs and values. He saw Literature as a replacement for religion and it was the job of the critic to help the masses recognise and appreciate ‘the best that has been known and thought in the world’. To do this, Arnold believed, it was necessary for criticism to attain pure, disinterested knowledge. He writes about appreciating ‘the object as in itself it really is.’ This, on the surface, would seem to suggest that he was not pursuing any political agenda. But there is no such thing as pure, disinterested knowledge. Arnold’s approach is no less informed by an ideological stance than is the most politically committed of writers.

Perhaps we should change our approach. Please demonstrate to me how/why Aristotle and/or Wordsworth are not ideological. Explain how they can produce work that is not a product of the systems of meaning available at the time.

[rachel]

Having been an investigative reporter I don't know really what to say for what I uncovered may have been an abberation or something. But to my shock and surprise and despair I found so many true, absolute conspiracies that I was dazed. Everything from an Italian woman screaming outside her home each and everyday and the residents telling me she was crazy. I went to her and she begged me to avenge her husband murder. she said the maffioso had murdered him and thrown him into the garbage can outside the Terra Nova because he uncovered something. I was scared to death but I did my sleuthing-she was not crazy and I was devestated. The case of workers being leaded at Cominco in Trail, I and a fellow worker, my photographer pulled some strings and were able to sneak into a niche in the plant where the cameras someonhow didn't watch. We were terrified to see vats and vats of acid with no covers or fences, anything to protect the workers. You couldn't get into that plant unless a relative got you in for any amount of money. All the lies the plant told, it was beyond belief. It took years and years and the deaths of many before things were exposed and cleaned up.
And the home for handicapped in a small b c city where atrocities were beyond belief.And yet how smooth their words, cunning their answers. Why if I didn't know the truth I would have believed those people myself. It all came down to money and power and they used words to anethestize any one who came snooping around.
so I don't know. those of us who uncovered things had to go on a very wide circuitous road to leak info and not lose our lives. One day when we were in Gyro park after work some guys got out of a limo and had guns under their suit jackets. They asked for a certain person and we were all terrified but refused to answer. A couple of days later he just 'happened to have slipped and fallen on something which rendered him unconscious or something like that and then just happened to fall into the river. I never got over that for the longest time. I felt close to a breakdown and the others right along with me.many moved on to safer jobs and eventually so did I because the publisher actually changed my words after a political rally. I couldn't believe it and faced him on it. He told me calmly that that particular party pretty much owned the paper.
perhaps most things are not like that but if in one small city all this could be going on and the average person knew nothing of it, well who is to say that many many conspiracies aren't going on and being done with the power of words.I honestly don't know.

[Anon22]

This makes no sense to me. How can a concept exist without language? Name me just one concept that exists without it. There is no concept that is not involved in an open-ended play of signification, permeated with the traces and fragments of other ideas. It’s just that, out of this play of signifiers, certain meanings are elevated by social ideologies to a privileged position, or made the centres around which other meanings are made to turn. The interesting theorist to read with regard to a psychoanalytical approach is Jacques Lacan.

Language is a way to express concept, when you think of the word "Love" you think of its concept, not the word love, and its what it means that makes the word itself important. When Hitler said "Kill the Jews!" it's not what he said, its what he meant that got people worried.

I won’t even pretend to understand much of what French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan explores in his most famous work, Écrits, but from what I can make out he has reread Freud in the light of structuralist and post-structuralist theories of discourse. I said earlier that “Even by saying ‘I’ we are making certain assumptions.” I was thinking here of Lacan’s theory of the ‘mirror stage’. In the pre-Oedipal stage, a baby has no sense of self, is not able to distinguish between subject and object. It depends on its mother for its very existence. So the boundary between its own and its mother’s body is blurred. Lacan calls this state of being the ‘imaginary’ realm. However, when it looks at itself in a mirror and first sees reflected back an image of itself, we see the development of an ego. For the first time, it sees a unified image of itself. But it is still an image – so both ‘real’ and ‘not real’. It is both us and not us. Because it is recognised as somehow ‘us’, a part of ourselves, we identify with it. But it is also alien because it is not ‘us’ and certainly not how we feel ourselves to be from inside our own body. So for Lacan, the act of identifying oneself in the mirror image is an act of misrecognition. As we grow up, we continue to make imaginary identifications with objects. This in turn builds up the ego. This means that the development of a sense of self is dependent on creating a ‘fictional’ image of self by finding something external to us with which we can identify.

To become a subject therefore, the child must come to ‘understand’ that it is made up of its similarities to and differences from all that surrounds it. This is when, according to Lacan, it moves from the ‘imaginary’ to the ‘symbolic’ realm. And by entering into that realm it is entering a pre-existing structure of social and sexual roles and relations. This is why Lacan sees the unconscious as structured like a language. The fact that every society known to man carries the assumption that female is inferior to male shows that this assumption is deep rooted in our early development. This in turn explains why Lacan’s work has been so significant for feminists. Whatever you make of Lacan’s theories, they certainly challenge profoundly the simplistic notion that we are all autonomous, free-thinking individuals.

Couldn't that also mean that the child is obtaining a conscience? when he(or she) is born, she/he has absolutely no grasp of reality, no logic, he's aware of things that are there(a subconscience), then he starts to obtain a conscience and awareness of his surroundings and how they work.