September 30th, 2009 / 11:52 am
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What isn’t ‘human’?
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The one premise I can offer to justify my “whining” is this: In Jones’s book, and a lot of writing I’ve been reading online, there is a lack of engagement with extant-real systems of human organization: economies, households, cultures, societies,... - Matthew Simmons—
See? Now I love you. - Richard - Zine-Scene—
I thought Shelley was really nice when I saw here. She stayed around after the reading and talked with a bunch of people and seemed really laid back… It might have been because she was hosted by the University of Alabama faculty, who are really laid back too. - mimi—
Or maybe someone slipped some MSG into my dipping sauce. - mimi—
Yeah, the Fashion Severe connection is weird; is this borderline ‘exploitation’? Korine is BFFs with Chloe’ Sevigny, is he not? Did you ever see Zoolander? Remember the ‘Derelict’ (pronounced ‘de-re-LEEKT”) collection? - mimi—
I do see individuals (it’s almost always a lone person, not a ‘kid’, and ‘homeless-looking’ , sorry, this is terrible, I feel bad) drinking from a cough syrup bottle on a street corner and acting crazy. I think there are mental health issues. I don’t... - jesusangelgarcia—
Yes II. - jesusangelgarcia—
With the connect to Adam Robinson, I was wondering if this was shot in B-mo. And yeah, how is it that this film appears on the Proenza site? Am I missing something? I clicked around and everything I saw was Fashion Severe. So strange. Needless to say, I’m inspired.
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September 30th, 2009 / 12:13 pmBlake Butler—
i love you
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Maybe my cat.
I’m honestly not sure though.
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Cylons?
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Toast.
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Inauthenticity. Routine. What’s expected.
This is fun!
Stop baiting me!
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Robots?
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all of these things above are very very ‘human’
human conceits
you can’t
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September 30th, 2009 / 2:36 pmMG—
I don’t know how to describe a cat without the word ‘cat’ or any other word/s.
But to my cat, my cat is not human. My cat doesn’t even know what ‘human’ means. Or ‘cat.’ She knows sounds, like the wrenching of an opening cupboard where I keep her food, or the rustling of my bag of potato chips, or other things more or less involving food/feed.
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September 30th, 2009 / 2:39 pmBlake Butler—
the cat itself is not human but the idea and interaction and open window of a cat is very very human
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September 30th, 2009 / 2:58 pmKen Baumann—
The upside-down flipping perception is human; we cannot not be human. Everything is human.
What’s the grievance that is driving the post, Blake? I’d be interested to know. Because if it’s that yet another person is trying to narrow the idea of what literature is in a way that excludes things that bring readers pleasure, my pitchfork and lamp are ready for nightstalking.
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September 30th, 2009 / 2:29 pmBlake Butler—
just tired of people thinking language needs to be connected to some ‘human’ premise in order for it to resound
it’s always the first question on so many tongues: what is human about this? what is this human experience?
what isn’t human about robots? I’ve seen robots.
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September 30th, 2009 / 2:35 pm+!O0o(o)o0O!+—
what’s sometimes meant by “human” is what makes humans “human” compared with anmals – some people would say that’s what serious fiction is all about, too. Something people, for example like DFW, who said something like “all serious fiction is about what it means to a fucking human being” (f-bomb emphasis DFW’s). Some things that differentiate humans from animals is the ability to willingly abstain from procreation and, more importantly, the ability to wonder what someone is thinking about something us, not to mention about a dozen others, including writing.
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September 30th, 2009 / 2:39 pmBlake Butler—
my dog seems more human than a lot of humans i have met
September 30th, 2009 / 2:44 pm+!O0o(o)o0O!+—
Dogs are a human construction. And their humanity is projected on them by humans.
September 30th, 2009 / 2:45 pmBlake Butler—
um, exactly?
September 30th, 2009 / 2:55 pm+!O0o(o)o0O!+—
But your human-created dog doesn’t wonder if someone else influenced someone else to make you not give him a treat . . . that sort of thinking doesn’t exist in animals other than humans.
September 30th, 2009 / 2:57 pmBlake Butler—
now look at some of the works DFW labeled ’serious fiction’ and see if you think sometimes gibberish language and objects/actions/modes typically considered ‘inhuman’ are just as human (I’d say more so) than a story about a couple’s troubled relationship, or whatever else ‘humanoids’ are supposedly liking to read about
September 30th, 2009 / 2:59 pmKen Baumann—
‘willingly abstain from procreation’
Animals have been known to abstain while mourning.
September 30th, 2009 / 3:00 pmKen Baumann—
‘the ability to wonder what someone is thinking about something us’
Animals can do that, too.
September 30th, 2009 / 4:39 pm+!O0o(o)o0O!+—
Animals can’t wonder if you’re behaving like a dick to them because you had a tough day at work and there was a lot of traffic on the way home and five years ago your dad stuck his head in the microwave and you’re still a little upset that when you stepped inside the house, moments before you discovered him, your first thought was “something smells delicious!” Only people do that.
September 30th, 2009 / 6:05 pmKen Baumann—
God that book is good.
October 5th, 2009 / 5:46 amDerek—
wait, Blake, you have a dog?
September 30th, 2009 / 3:05 pm+!O0o(o)o0O!+—
Your concern is that your so-called acoustically concerned language etc doesn’t connect with other human people. You tend to condescend to people on this board and in your work in a lot of ways, and that’s cool with you, right? You don’t care about connecting with people, because you aren’t a goober. You dream and write and say that what you write is more valiable than than the stuff written by other human writers who intelligibly write about relationships and engage human readers and try to connect with readers instead of just make them appreciate the writer’s deft ability to combine aural qualities of mostly silently read language.
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September 30th, 2009 / 3:09 pmKen Baumann—
‘and in your work in a lot of ways’: ???
No tone: I’m curious about what work from Blake that has condescended to you. Please show examples.
September 30th, 2009 / 3:10 pmBlake Butler—
aw come on now, surely things i say don’t have to be in defense of my own writing. i don’t think about my own writing. as a reader, i condescend because i care. i also am a goober. it’s why i reflect goober on to you.
daily you prove to me that donkeys are humans too.
i eat candy.
September 30th, 2009 / 3:23 pmRyan Call—
‘mostly silently read language.’
that is what delights/confuses me. that ’sound’ in my head when i read is like no other sound ever
September 30th, 2009 / 4:42 pm+!O0o(o)o0O!+—
Eat my candy ass, pretentious ephebe. (Insert black shriveled heart emoticon.)
September 30th, 2009 / 3:08 pmJoseph Young—
most people want writing they read to pertain to them. it’s like a movie set in africa has to have white people in it to be popualr. and most people are human.
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September 30th, 2009 / 4:06 pmNathan Tyree—
So sand mutants then? I’m with you, I think
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September 30th, 2009 / 10:30 pmSamuel Amato—
If this question is about things ‘resounding’, then isn’t it just about how much one can alienate/try to alienate a reader without them being turned off by the text/unable to read it/something to do with reader relation? Certainly there are varying levels of ‘resound’ for every person based on age/sex/anything you can list, but if the question isn’t about this, then what are you asking?
About robots…yeah, you may have seen robots. What if I haven’t? What if I don’t know ‘robot’? But you’ve already asked yourself that, so I don’t know what to say.
I was about to write something about it being anything that falls outside of language, but since humans are able to grasp non-signified (as in, things without a sign) concepts, I suppose that is not a valid statement.
I guess I’m not really sure. Answering the question means taking into consideration everything you know/understand/feel ‘resounds’ with you, everything that doesn’t, and then everything that everyone else does/doesn’t know, etc.
This is a good question.
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September 30th, 2009 / 2:23 pmKen Baumann—
That was supposed to be a space.
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September 30th, 2009 / 2:23 pmKen Baumann—
Nothing!
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The originally unnamed things signified by the following human words are not human: dolphins, algae, starfish, cat claws, dirt currently underground, ocean floor, sky, dark matter, the planet saturn, all scorpians currently hiding in the shoes of misbehaving latin american teens, ice, antartica, ants trapped in amber, Bill Belichek (undead), Dick Cheney (undead), publishers of derivative vampire books (capitalist scum).
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September 30th, 2009 / 3:34 pmKen Baumann—
Lee: Your username in this conversation is apt and funny.
<3
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Perhaps the non-human in literary terms would be that text which contained material with which no human could relate. It could be divine or it could be gibberish, but if it were either of those things, then we’d be able to relate to it as such and therefore the text is again, even in the smallest sense, rendered human.
So, the non-human text is a text that can’t be understood nor comprehended. It’ll also likely be published at an Internet journal.
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September 30th, 2009 / 2:46 pmBlake Butler—
i relate to gibberish more than i relate to a lot of people i have met on airplanes
a lot of people speak gibberish
when i am asleep what comes out of me sounds inhuman. am i not human then?
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September 30th, 2009 / 2:51 pm+!O0o(o)o0O!+—
Rolling eyes and closing them and drifting off to ZZZ where such talk of sleep-talking gibberish isn’t such a soporific . . .
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September 30th, 2009 / 2:52 pmBlake Butler—
my human construction of you is that you are a goober
September 30th, 2009 / 2:56 pmBrad Green—
Well, hearing such things come from a person is different than reading gibberish on paper or screen. One can connect to a voice alone. Consider opera. Who the fuck understands that? Yet, even without understanding the voice moves us and we relate.
It’s much harder to do with random letters typed on a page.
I suppose with such a text one might relate through visual structure, juxtapositions…etc, but I wonder just how far one has to stretch to make the connection.
I had typed a sentence about meaning, but backspaced it. Such discussions devolve into matters of faith.
I’d be interested in hearing more from you on how you relate to “gibberish.” If you relate it wouldn’t be gibberish, I think.
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September 30th, 2009 / 3:04 pmBlake Butler—
in a way i am writing a book about this right now.
everything is gibberish
September 30th, 2009 / 3:17 pmBrad Green—
Just as easy to proclaim that everything has/is meaning.
All paths end up at the same place eventually, I think.
In the end, we choose and through such choosing we castigate and elevate. That is human, so perhaps another possible answer to the question prompting this thread would be that, in literary terms, non-human text would be that which refuses to choose.
September 30th, 2009 / 3:22 pmKen Baumann—
Refusal to choose is a choice.
September 30th, 2009 / 3:26 pmBrad Green—
Indeed.
So the non-human is that which doesn’t exist. Which, for me, makes the non-human an acceptance from Smokelong or Night Train.
September 30th, 2009 / 2:56 pm+!O0o(o)o0O!+—
OUCH!
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September 30th, 2009 / 3:20 pmdavid erlewine—
uh yeah, OUCH indeed. wow.
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September 30th, 2009 / 3:22 pmBlake Butler—
oh, exclamation zeros man knows i love him
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September 30th, 2009 / 4:43 pm+!O0o(o)o0O!+—
. . . . it’s a tough love.
October 1st, 2009 / 12:41 pmdavid erlewine—
i got screwed up on the replies. i meant brad green’s line about publishing in an internet journal. my bad.
but i know from tough love. i saw scared straight as a kid.
October 1st, 2009 / 12:46 pmBrad Green—
Nothing wrong with an Internet journal. It is, however, the most likely place a “non-human” text would show up. Much more cutting-edge or experimental work is published on the Internet, I think. That’s all I meant. It wasn’t meant in a negative way.
Abjective might be the leading candidate for putting out this sort of text. Darby is always looking to blow the seals out on the envelope.
October 1st, 2009 / 12:47 pmBrad Green—
Damn, why can’t one reply to a reply? Makes it hard to follow a thread at times.
everything is human and everything is not human. what is ‘human’? a classification of arbitrary manifestation.
we all die and then nothing is human and everything is human.
or is there some definition of ‘human’ i don’t know to base my answer upon?
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September 30th, 2009 / 2:58 pmBlake Butler—
that jereme is most often sounding like the voice of reason in these forums lately is a sign that we got some bonkos on our hands
love
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September 30th, 2009 / 3:01 pmBrad Green—
I always imagine Jereme wearing a Viking helmet while typing out these things and then wagging his ferocious beard at his screen yelling “Take that!”
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September 30th, 2009 / 3:09 pmjereme—
sort of. usually i am thinking “wtf?!??” or “lol, wtf?” and then type out a response.
September 30th, 2009 / 3:08 pmjereme—
no shit dude, no shit.
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The photosynthesis of sunlight hitting a bear’s kale shit on piece of tree.
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September 30th, 2009 / 3:19 pmSabra—
Anything we cannot perceive is not human. Without perspective everything we don’t encounter is invisible. Or something. Is this serious? I can’t tell.
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September 30th, 2009 / 3:21 pmBlake Butler—
i disagree with this very greatly. the greatest sensation in life for me have been things i could not perceive, or could perceive only in glimpsing, and having no idea
i would write more but i have to leave the house, dang
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September 30th, 2009 / 3:31 pmjereme—
yeah i was thinking the same thing. plus what einstein perceives and i perceive are different so which is more human?
September 30th, 2009 / 5:11 pmSabra—
But how can you have sensations for things you can’t see that have nothing to do with you? If you cannot perceive them then they exist without you. Right? They thrive independently aside in nature and wondering. They are not there.
I brought up the classic bear pooping in woods riddle to say there are things that happen and have been happening without human involvement, and photosynthesis is a force that extends beyond humanity.
But with all due respect…this is hurting my head.
I don’t mean to kick dirt either. I just think about these things and felt like it was a good time to talk about it. I’ll go now too.
September 30th, 2009 / 5:24 pmjereme—
your entire theory my dear sabra is a construct of your humanity.
September 30th, 2009 / 3:21 pmdavid erlewine—
I like that image.
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September 30th, 2009 / 4:13 pmSabra—
I like the way you’re very nice.
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5.6 The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
-Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractacus Logico-Philosophicus
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September 30th, 2009 / 3:56 pmAdam Robinson—
a movement of the same toward the Other which never returns to the same
-Emanuel Levinas
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September 30th, 2009 / 5:51 pmKen Baumann—
Dig it.
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September 30th, 2009 / 5:55 pmjereme—
the first time i read this i thought the quote was from “emanual lewis”
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October 1st, 2009 / 12:40 pmdavid erlewine—
that little dude could act. made karras look like eucker.
September 30th, 2009 / 4:11 pmKMH—
Oh shit I knew it was only a matter of time before someone dropped LW into this conversation. If there’s one thing this place is good for it’s non-apposite references to & poorly chosen quotes from Wittgenstein.
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September 30th, 2009 / 4:29 pmAdam Robinson—
KMH, my Levinas namecheck doesn’t seem specious to you at all?
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September 30th, 2009 / 5:51 pmKen Baumann—
KMH: Please enlighten me, O Anonymous One, to an apt (easier to type than apposite; then again, I’m not trying to impress) and well chosen quote from LW.
Are we not talking about the limit/definition of human experience, and language?
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September 30th, 2009 / 7:53 pmalec niedenthal—
conversation b/w maurice blanchot and emmanuel levinas (documented):
MB: If there is, among all words, one that is inauthentic, then surely it is the word “authentic.”
EL: Nice.
MB: Whoever writes is exiled from writing, which is the country–his own–where he is not a prophet.
EL: Dude, pass that shit.
MB: Mortal, immortal: does this reversal have any meaning?
EL: The Other.
October 1st, 2009 / 12:17 amKMH—
I thought the discussion was about what isn’t ‘human,’ not “the limits of human experience and language.” It seems careless and sloppy to just drop a numbered proposition from the Tractatus (a work which–does anyone ever bother to mention this?–the man himself practically disowned) without any context into a discussion that features the memorable assertion “everything is gibberish,” especially since one of the main ideas in the Tractatus is the picture theory of meaning and the (strict!) truth criteria that go with that–ideas that Wittgenstein used to show that there are logically representable true sentences (non-gibberish) and sentences whose pointed-to facts obtain nowhere, ever (gibberish)( and if there is any single thing that’s non-gibberish, then there’s no way everything can be gibberish). Quoting Wittgenstein in the manner that you did seems pretty inappropriate because you’re ignoring the complexities of the whole work in order to pluck out a nice little fortune-cookie-esque line that can be bent to your own uses (I can see how tempting it is though, since those numbered propositions are so authoritative).
I liked “non-apposite” over “inapt” or “non-apt.” The last two just seem overly clunky. “Apt” is definitely better than “apposite” though.
October 1st, 2009 / 1:37 pmKen Baumann—
Thank you for the thoughtful response.
I inferred that when talking about what is or isn’t human, you have to then define ‘human’, which leads to defining the human experience… we can’t reach a definition by going around experience, we have to act through it.
Yes, LW disowned it, but I think that it is still a seminal work. It certainly continues to inspire, I’d say even more so than Philosophical Investigations. To paraphrase Clancy Martin: I tend to read philosophy as if it’s fiction/story. And, yeah, the enigma and authority that the rigid analytical construct asserts is provocative. Easy; yes, it can be. But, I do understand Tractatus (or at least: I agree with you on what it addresses; what it defines.) :)
Aligning with LW’s mental state at the time, Tractatus then begins to address the mystical, the transcendent… And 5.6 is in that section of the book. Blake, Sabra, and Jereme were talking above about constructed metaphysical/pataphysical ideas, and I thought it would be apt to bring the discussion back around to this conceit: We cannot escape language, especially when trying to breach the mystical, and therefore everything remains a construct of language, thus: Blake’s original question cannot be answered, especially in this forum, or any forum!
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
Thoughts?
i don’t know. i don’t think the question of what is human is important. i think the question is more of a test to see how one perceives their reality.
i’m usually concerned more with “soul”. What is a soul? What has a soul? What doesn’t have a soul? If i transplant a brain does the soul go with the brain or stay in the body?
Does soul really matter when there is a graveyard of cosmos above my head, but my most important thought process is wondering, if, after this particular shit, folded or crumpled toilet paper would be the best plan of action? really maximize the wipe.
it’s all about maximizing the wipe.
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September 30th, 2009 / 3:29 pmKen Baumann—
Do you believe that humans have soul, and if so, then how would you describe ’soul’? (Other than James Brown)
Recommended reading: I Am A Strange Loop
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September 30th, 2009 / 3:36 pmjereme—
i do not know ken. i honestly do not think i will ever know but it is a question i dwell on often.
probably every day. almost.
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September 30th, 2009 / 4:01 pmSabra—
Jereme, I asked Ken a question the other day in message. I’ve decided I really like the question and it stretches my brain in the matter of why we is and what is this all.
What if death confines us to a purgatory of a lucid dream where heaven and hell is determined by memories of good and bad, and the ability to recognize where you are (–with a heightened sense of awareness to become your own god–determined by a free subconscious–free from hangups and junk) makes it easier organize the new habitat and tap into its potential of rewandering great experiences?
It’s like eternal recurrence mixed with the question of to be or not to be. If anything though, I’m looking or new ways to create incentive ideas for people to be nice to each other. We will never know enough. There is too much space.
September 30th, 2009 / 5:32 pmjereme—
i don’t understand the question.
you speak of purgatory as concrete and say it is defined by good/bad abstractions.
how can that be?
i usually dwell on how i would like to be a brain in fluid, free of everything, free of all physical desire, free of external forces, free to roam my brain and unlock everything until i understand everything.
the joke being there is no way i could possibly ever understand everything, or anything really, but the ability to fool myself into believing i do.
September 30th, 2009 / 11:41 pmBen White—
The soul goes with the transplant, if one could transplant a brain (which is not currently possible and won’t be for the forseeable future). Because everything we see, know, feel, be—everything that we connect with humanity—is in the brain.
The soul is a construct of highly variable meaning, so much so that it’s difficult to discuss. Suffice to say that what does or does not have a soul probably depends mostly on how charitable you want to be.
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October 1st, 2009 / 2:01 amSabra—
I think about Hamlet when he was deliberating whether or not to kill himself. To be or not to be–was about life being a nightmare, but then Hamlet wondered if death was like some nightmare you couldn’t wake up from, like some terrible lucid dream nightmare where you didn’t have any control, and decided he’d take the chance of living life out with all the craziness involved. That’s always messed with me.
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October 1st, 2009 / 12:34 pmjereme—
the unknown should fuck with your head. that’s the point.
October 1st, 2009 / 12:33 pmjereme—
i dunno ben. you sure talk like you know shit that is unknown. i mean if something hasn’t been done how could you possibly tell me what will or won’t happen?
i’m just saying. that dude einstein made us rethink some shit and that was what 40-50 years ago?
i’m just saying.
why make assumptions?
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Something doesn’t have to be directly ABOUT God to glorify God. Just doing a thing well glorifies God. Likewise, it’s impossible to communicate something that doesn’t make reference to humanity. I agree with that. But it seems disingenuous not to recognize that Big Sur is more “profoundly human” than Lake Woebegone Days.
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September 30th, 2009 / 5:27 pmjereme—
why so? what makes it more ‘profoundly human’?
because critics say so?
Lake Woebegone Days holds the same meaning..
and we are all temporary gods.
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September 30th, 2009 / 6:31 pmSabra—
Jereme, what meant by “purgatory” was as “the in between space before choosing which way.” Not the conventional idea of purgatory. It’s still abstract.
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September 30th, 2009 / 6:57 pmjereme—
no a space is concrete. a space is a location. location is concrete and not an abstraction at all.
September 30th, 2009 / 8:05 pmSabra—
Then I guess we’re talking about different spaces, love: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_space
September 30th, 2009 / 8:08 pmjereme—
girl you did not just fucking quote wikipedia to try to persuade me to your side?
anyways, i am having a hard time thinking how a location could not be concrete.
i’m sorry.
September 30th, 2009 / 8:18 pmSabra—
Hell, we get it all from somewhere… ;)
September 30th, 2009 / 6:58 pmAdam Robinson—
Well maybe I’m wrong, but I think Big Sur is more human because Kerouac falls apart and , because he chronicles everything that leads up to it, we understand why; his pain seems real in a way that jokes about Minnesota fishermen having problems with their chatty wives doesn’t.
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September 30th, 2009 / 7:53 pmjereme—
woah, (is that the preferred spelling? i forget) who are you to make assumptions that Big Sur is interpreted differently than anything else?
it applies to you only, which is the point, and why both are human.
i don’t think anything is not human, but i do enjoying striving to create something that is not.
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everything is human. the things that exist are human. the things that don’t exist are, too, human because non-existence is still a state of being.
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how could anything not be human to us? we anthropomorphise (i can’t spell it) our hearts out, either in a top-of-the-food-chain kind of hubris, or because it’s necessary to us to be able to order the world in which we live in our terms in order to make sense of it.
or maybe everything within the world is essentially self-centered. i don’t know. i can only speak from my own sphere of reference in the whole being-a-human-being thing.
every time we give something new (to us, or not) in the world a name, we probably humanise it, make it ours. maybe it’s an attempted ownership thing. on some level, that probably covers everything within the world with which we either do, or could, conceivably come into contact.
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‘humans’
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i like how adding an ‘e’ makes human humane and paul auster austere
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September 30th, 2009 / 7:55 pmalec niedenthal—
haha, i did a project on “city of glass” for a class last semester and one observation the professor had was precisely that
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I’m almost certain that the Human League aren’t human.
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If you look up the White Zombie song “More Human Than Human” on Wikipedia, which you should, you will find this sentence:
“The song was played prominently in the opening “teaser” segment of the critically-acclaimed pilot episode of Chris Carter’s landmark television series Millennium. The song is heard playing (presumably in the background) of a racy strip joint in Seattle where girls are seen dancing provocatively in lingerie.”
I just thought everybody here should know that.
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everything that isn’t human isn’t human.
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October 1st, 2009 / 2:18 pmMatthew Simmons—
that is to say: ida know.
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