September 4th, 2010 / 8:31 pm
Snippets

Art & language dehumanize their subjects, words & pictures are not human; they do not lift them up, they just put them down.

154 Comments

  1. John Minichillo

      How can you be human without words?

  2. Ken Baumann

      god punishes angels by making them look @ human art -mark leidner

  3. Bobby Alter

      words and pictures have no more ability than to index their subjects. there is no direct flesh to art, but no one has claimed it anyway

  4. Lincoln

      We are talking about LOLcats here, right?

  5. mjm

      Technically, words are pictures as they are hieroglyphs. They are visual representations. Language on the other hand….

      It is interesting to think of creativity as the natural out-sprout of being human. We were standing around all those years ago, not doing much. Then one human thought it’d be cool to scratch this stone onto the wall. But the other human didn’t get “what he/she was going for”, so the human had to attempt an explanation. Otherwise known as the first creative “motivation”. Then the “I don’t get it” human had that light in their eyes, that ooooooh moment, and both of them enjoyed this transfer of energy so much they brought others around and kept adding to this method of “getting” one another.

      Although the beginnings of this were likely positive, Reynard is partially correct, as other humans devised ways to use this “oooooh” energy as a mask for more devious undercurrents.

      Too bad really….

      Sometimes I worry about the CIA’s interest in the avant garde. My own theory is the avant garde was very good at manipulating reality to, and I quote Body of Lies, “make it look like everything”. There is a bit of disillusion is the avant garde, no? I’m not dissing it, you know, but the technique applied to the aesthetic of things as well as the message —- this has a particular affect on people. “Bringing them down” even? Making one feel stupid because one doesn’t get it. Using an aesthetic/theological method that doesn’t seep into the frame of the vehicle, so to speak, tends to speak to volumes more than anything else. But not all modes of conversation speak to everyone, which is why you still need the other methods…

      Wow. Your couple of lines Reynard can spark a drunken fueled night of discussion….

      Four Locos… try it. 12.4 alc v. malt liquor and it tastes like a fruit drink.

      Amazing.

  6. lily

      not sure john zerzan, even in moderation, is a good thing.

  7. reynard

      unfortunately i know nothing of zerzan’s work so i don’t know what you mean lily, seems like he’s into wittgenstein – of whom i also know nothing really – this is kind of like when someone called me david shields and i didn’t know what they were talking about so i said, ‘david shields i wish’ – damn, i have a lot to read

  8. Khakjaan Wessington

      Is this a joke? How does mapping anything diminish it? By the terms of your proposition, you are dehumanizing art and language as well.

      How can you write that and not be ashamed of yourself?

  9. John Minichillo

      How can you be human without words?

  10. Ken Baumann

      god punishes angels by making them look @ human art -mark leidner

  11. Bobby Alter

      words and pictures have no more ability than to index their subjects. there is no direct flesh to art, but no one has claimed it anyway

  12. Lincoln

      We are talking about LOLcats here, right?

  13. Khakjaan Wessington

      I used to hang out with Zerzan. I wish I didn’t.

      His daughter used to be hot though.

  14. mjm

      Technically, words are pictures as they are hieroglyphs. They are visual representations. Language on the other hand….

      It is interesting to think of creativity as the natural out-sprout of being human. We were standing around all those years ago, not doing much. Then one human thought it’d be cool to scratch this stone onto the wall. But the other human didn’t get “what he/she was going for”, so the human had to attempt an explanation. Otherwise known as the first creative “motivation”. Then the “I don’t get it” human had that light in their eyes, that ooooooh moment, and both of them enjoyed this transfer of energy so much they brought others around and kept adding to this method of “getting” one another.

      Although the beginnings of this were likely positive, Reynard is partially correct, as other humans devised ways to use this “oooooh” energy as a mask for more devious undercurrents.

      Too bad really….

      Sometimes I worry about the CIA’s interest in the avant garde. My own theory is the avant garde was very good at manipulating reality to, and I quote Body of Lies, “make it look like everything”. There is a bit of disillusion is the avant garde, no? I’m not dissing it, you know, but the technique applied to the aesthetic of things as well as the message —- this has a particular affect on people. “Bringing them down” even? Making one feel stupid because one doesn’t get it. Using an aesthetic/theological method that doesn’t seep into the frame of the vehicle, so to speak, tends to speak to volumes more than anything else. But not all modes of conversation speak to everyone, which is why you still need the other methods…

      Wow. Your couple of lines Reynard can spark a drunken fueled night of discussion….

      Four Locos… try it. 12.4 alc v. malt liquor and it tastes like a fruit drink.

      Amazing.

  15. lily hoang

      not sure john zerzan, even in moderation, is a good thing.

  16. drew kalbach

      that’s nice.

  17. reynard

      unfortunately i know nothing of zerzan’s work so i don’t know what you mean lily, seems like he’s into wittgenstein – of whom i also know nothing really – this is kind of like when someone called me david shields and i didn’t know what they were talking about so i said, ‘david shields i wish’ – damn, i have a lot to read

  18. Khakjaan Wessington

      Is this a joke? How does mapping anything diminish it? By the terms of your proposition, you are dehumanizing art and language as well.

      How can you write that and not be ashamed of yourself?

  19. Khakjaan Wessington

      I used to hang out with Zerzan. I wish I didn’t.

      His daughter used to be hot though.

  20. drew kalbach

      that’s nice.

  21. Schulyer Prinz

      agree with your first two clauses Rey, but I think the Y axis business is way off.

  22. lily

      hi reynard, he’s an anti-civilization dude, more or less, argues civilization is bad, we ought to go back to our “primitive” state, without language, etc. whereas i tend to agree with some of what wittgenstein says, zerzan is kind of a nut. don’t read more. you read plenty. probably, i ought to be reading more of what you’re reading and less of what i’m reading.

  23. Dawn.

      An old English professor of mine said that all art is elegy.

  24. mimi

      “We were standing around all those years ago, not doing much.”

      I don’t think that’s true, actually. Our very early ancestors spent most their time and energy on activities bent toward daily survival – the search for water, hunting and gathering, finding shelter, defending themselves from predators big and small. Living very short, subsistence-driven lives. Slowly, over eons, learning to capture fire, make tools, domesticate plants and animals. If you’re talking about the evolution of language (words, signs, hieroglyphs, whatever), it most surely started as a way to communicate information about these evolving skills. Art? It evolved much later, as man’s time and energy was freed up for more lofty endeavors – thanks to early evolving technologies.

      Four Locos – I gotta check that out.

  25. Schulyer Prinz

      agree with your first two clauses Rey, but I think the Y axis business is way off.

  26. lily hoang

      hi reynard, he’s an anti-civilization dude, more or less, argues civilization is bad, we ought to go back to our “primitive” state, without language, etc. whereas i tend to agree with some of what wittgenstein says, zerzan is kind of a nut. don’t read more. you read plenty. probably, i ought to be reading more of what you’re reading and less of what i’m reading.

  27. reynard

      in the interest of confusing the issue of clarity i deleted the last bit: (on the ‘page’) – so i guess it’s sort of a pun of sorts

  28. reynard

      i think the flesh is usually implied bobby, transubstantiation for instance

  29. reynard

      i can get down with that

  30. Dawn.

      An old English professor of mine said that all art is elegy.

  31. mjm

      You’re corrrrrect. I like you.

      Although I tend to call the “capturing of fire” or the “development of tools” art.

      I mean, what else can you call it but art?

      Depending I guess on whether art is perception vs actuality.

      Were there people back in the day who didn’t do shit? They were watching people go out and try to survive — the hyenas of our genus? And then they got together with other theorhetically lazy people?

      Naw… I feel like I’m stretching with that. I agree with you more…. kinda.

  32. mimi

      “We were standing around all those years ago, not doing much.”

      I don’t think that’s true, actually. Our very early ancestors spent most their time and energy on activities bent toward daily survival – the search for water, hunting and gathering, finding shelter, defending themselves from predators big and small. Living very short, subsistence-driven lives. Slowly, over eons, learning to capture fire, make tools, domesticate plants and animals. If you’re talking about the evolution of language (words, signs, hieroglyphs, whatever), it most surely started as a way to communicate information about these evolving skills. Art? It evolved much later, as man’s time and energy was freed up for more lofty endeavors – thanks to early evolving technologies.

      Four Locos – I gotta check that out.

  33. Janey Smith

      I pick up what you’re putting down, Reynard. But, I like art. I like the artificial. It makes objects out of things. And I like language. I like to be languid. There’s something fascinating about the inhuman. This doesn’t mean that I don’t love people. I do. It just means that I have to be as aware as I can of what art and language can do.

  34. reynard

      i likes it too, i likes it lots – but it does float downstream

  35. mimi

      Yes, you can call it art, as in artifact, or artifice

      ar·ti·fact – noun
      1. any object made by human beings, esp. with a view to subsequent use.
      2. a handmade object, as a tool, or the remains of one, as a shard of pottery, characteristic of an earlier time or cultural stage, esp. such an object found at an archaeological excavation.
      3. any mass-produced, usually inexpensive object reflecting contemporary society or popular culture: artifacts of the pop rock generation.
      4. a substance or structure not naturally present in the matter being observed but formed by artificial means, as during preparation of a microscope slide.
      5. a spurious observation or result arising from preparatory or investigative procedures.
      6. any feature that is not naturally present but is a product of an extrinsic agent, method, or the like: statistical artifacts that make the inflation rate seem greater than it is.

      Word Origin & History: artificial
      late 14c., “made by man” (opposite of natural ), from O.Fr. artificial , from L. artificialis “of or belonging to art,” from artificium (see artifice).

  36. Khakjaan Wessington

      Hard to have a good discussion on the topic when you censor posts. At least now I know it’s up to the author’s discretion on HTML GIANT so I know it’s not some pagewide conspiracy/policy–so check it out. You’re chicken for hiding my criticism of the semantic structure of your claim. I’d like to think I’m not the only one on this page who studied advanced logics in college, but maybe I’m wrong.

      To repeat the post you censored, I basically said that since you are expressing the claim with language, the speech act defies the semantic content.

      Now I’ll add that your claim also presupposes a humanized state for all possible subjects of Art and language; an idiotic statement. Oh, maybe that’s why you deleted my post, you don’t want a print record of someone talking shit when you’re trying to sound smart? I get it. Chickens are all alike in that regard.

      If you’re not chickenshit, you’ll post this. And if you’re not pseudo-intellectual, you’ll try to engage the content of my critique, rather than flee it.

  37. deadgod

      Imaginarily “dehumanizing” other people is perfectly ‘human’.

      But “dehumanization” is not the only mode or valence of being a person, nor of making art and using language.

      Though “words & pictures are not human”, nor are they practically separable from being human.

      (Despite the empirically compelling separation of a word or a picture from its human genetrix/genetor, making “word & pictures” is constitutive of that, and every, human. To consider only the products of art and language, separately from the processes of their making, is imaginarily to alienate that/those person/s from their constitution, their practical essence – an essence as empirically compelling as the products they produce.)

      Don’t blame the hammer and nails and the fixity of its bars for there being a cage. Hold responsible political economy, political-economic priorities and commitments, for people putting each other in cages.

      (Well, ‘political economy’ and whatever other generators of “dehumanization” might not be reducible to it, like ‘bad mommies and daddies’, ‘confusion and fear stemming from awareness of mortality’, and so on.)

      Humanization of the ‘subjects’ of art and language – again, this is an alienating way of putting ‘practice’ – happens and is therefore a responsibility as well as a fate.

  38. d

      One time I picked up John Zerzan from the airport for his speaking gig in Cincinnati. He was really nice, and we talked about Muhammad Ali. Some time after that he denounced me in a letter as a “leftist”. Weird guy. Fredy Perlman and Jacques Camatte are way more compelling anti-civilization writers.

      I don’t think there is a Wittgenstein/Zerzan connection.

  39. Paul
  40. reynard

      in the interest of confusing the issue of clarity i deleted the last bit: (on the ‘page’) – so i guess it’s sort of a pun of sorts

  41. reynard

      i think the flesh is usually implied bobby, transubstantiation for instance

  42. reynard

      i can get down with that

  43. mjm

      You’re corrrrrect. I like you.

      Although I tend to call the “capturing of fire” or the “development of tools” art.

      I mean, what else can you call it but art?

      Depending I guess on whether art is perception vs actuality.

      Were there people back in the day who didn’t do shit? They were watching people go out and try to survive — the hyenas of our genus? And then they got together with other theorhetically lazy people?

      Naw… I feel like I’m stretching with that. I agree with you more…. kinda.

  44. Janey Smith

      Totally.

  45. Janey Smith

      I pick up what you’re putting down, Reynard. But, I like art. I like the artificial. It makes objects out of things. And I like language. I like to be languid. There’s something fascinating about the inhuman. This doesn’t mean that I don’t love people. I do. It just means that I have to be as aware as I can of what art and language can do.

  46. reynard

      i likes it too, i likes it lots – but it does float downstream

  47. Bobby Alter

      well then why even ask questions of the words and pictures themselves if so?

  48. mimi

      Yes, you can call it art, as in artifact, or artifice

      ar·ti·fact – noun
      1. any object made by human beings, esp. with a view to subsequent use.
      2. a handmade object, as a tool, or the remains of one, as a shard of pottery, characteristic of an earlier time or cultural stage, esp. such an object found at an archaeological excavation.
      3. any mass-produced, usually inexpensive object reflecting contemporary society or popular culture: artifacts of the pop rock generation.
      4. a substance or structure not naturally present in the matter being observed but formed by artificial means, as during preparation of a microscope slide.
      5. a spurious observation or result arising from preparatory or investigative procedures.
      6. any feature that is not naturally present but is a product of an extrinsic agent, method, or the like: statistical artifacts that make the inflation rate seem greater than it is.

      Word Origin & History: artificial
      late 14c., “made by man” (opposite of natural ), from O.Fr. artificial , from L. artificialis “of or belonging to art,” from artificium (see artifice).

  49. Khakjaan Wessington

      Hard to have a good discussion on the topic when you censor posts. At least now I know it’s up to the author’s discretion on HTML GIANT so I know it’s not some pagewide conspiracy/policy–so check it out. You’re chicken for hiding my criticism of the semantic structure of your claim. I’d like to think I’m not the only one on this page who studied advanced logics in college, but maybe I’m wrong.

      To repeat the post you censored, I basically said that since you are expressing the claim with language, the speech act defies the semantic content.

      Now I’ll add that your claim also presupposes a humanized state for all possible subjects of Art and language; an idiotic statement. Oh, maybe that’s why you deleted my post, you don’t want a print record of someone talking shit when you’re trying to sound smart? I get it. Chickens are all alike in that regard.

      If you’re not chickenshit, you’ll post this. And if you’re not pseudo-intellectual, you’ll try to engage the content of my critique, rather than flee it.

  50. mjm

      You’re smart.

      Without seeming like an asshole.

      Tough juggle.

  51. reynard

      prolly because i don’t believe in transubstantiation, i try not to think on certain things too much

  52. reynard

      duhface

  53. deadgod

      Imaginarily “dehumanizing” other people is perfectly ‘human’.

      But “dehumanization” is not the only mode or valence of being a person, nor of making art and using language.

      Though “words & pictures are not human”, nor are they practically separable from being human.

      (Despite the empirically compelling separation of a word or a picture from its human genetrix/genetor, making “word & pictures” is constitutive of that, and every, human. To consider only the products of art and language, separately from the processes of their making, is imaginarily to alienate that/those person/s from their constitution, their practical essence – an essence as empirically compelling as the products they produce.)

      Don’t blame the hammer and nails and the fixity of its bars for there being a cage. Hold responsible political economy, political-economic priorities and commitments, for people putting each other in cages.

      (Well, ‘political economy’ and whatever other generators of “dehumanization” might not be reducible to it, like ‘bad mommies and daddies’, ‘confusion and fear stemming from awareness of mortality’, and so on.)

      Humanization of the ‘subjects’ of art and language – again, this is an alienating way of putting ‘practice’ – happens and is therefore a responsibility as well as a fate.

  54. reynard

      i still agree with yr thoughts at writers bloc re: this, more or less

      i’ve been reading songlines by bruce chatwin and thinking a lot of the desert and fat and milk and beats and beaks and stuff like that

  55. d

      One time I picked up John Zerzan from the airport for his speaking gig in Cincinnati. He was really nice, and we talked about Muhammad Ali. Some time after that he denounced me in a letter as a “leftist”. Weird guy. Fredy Perlman and Jacques Camatte are way more compelling anti-civilization writers.

      I don’t think there is a Wittgenstein/Zerzan connection.

  56. Paul Cunningham
  57. reynard

      i don’t know what you’re talking about with the censoring thing because i didn’t do that but okay, i don’t really care if you want to talk shit to me, please do, for instance i’m glad drew said, ‘that’s nice,’ he doesn’t care about this and he let me know that, that’s cool, you disagree, okay, you think my logic is twisted, inverted, it is, it is, because i embrace contradiction, i’m an artist not an academic, you think i’m a pseudo-intellectual, i am, i think those in the humanities believe art elevates the human spirit to some level higher than what any of us otherwise are capable of achieving, being, and i think that’s horseshit, i think life is far more beautiful than literature, do i believe in magic, fuck yeah i believe in science – so if you want to keep yelling at me khakjaan, that’s fine by me

  58. King Kong Bundy

      reynard—

      prolly because i don’t believe in transubstantiation, i try not to think on certain things too much

      What kind of man uses “prolly” and “transubstantiation” in the same fragment?

  59. reynard

      don’t believe in essence

      this must be yr mommydaddygawd

      httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1KvgtEnABY

  60. Janey Smith

      Totally.

  61. King Kong Bundy

      Sorry, I mean poorly worded sentence.

  62. reynard

      i’m a casual smoker

  63. Bobby Alter

      well then why even ask questions of the words and pictures themselves if so?

  64. mjm

      You’re smart.

      Without seeming like an asshole.

      Tough juggle.

  65. reynard

      prolly because i don’t believe in transubstantiation, i try not to think on certain things too much

  66. reynard

      duhface

  67. Steven Pine

      reynard is boring

  68. reynard

      i still agree with yr thoughts at writers bloc re: this, more or less

      i’ve been reading songlines by bruce chatwin and thinking a lot of the desert and fat and milk and beats and beaks and stuff like that

  69. reynard

      i don’t know what you’re talking about with the censoring thing because i didn’t do that but okay, i don’t really care if you want to talk shit to me, please do, for instance i’m glad drew said, ‘that’s nice,’ he doesn’t care about this and he let me know that, that’s cool, you disagree, okay, you think my logic is twisted, inverted, it is, it is, because i embrace contradiction, i’m an artist not an academic, you think i’m a pseudo-intellectual, i am, i think those in the humanities believe art elevates the human spirit to some level higher than what any of us otherwise are capable of achieving, being, and i think that’s horseshit, i think life is far more beautiful than literature, do i believe in magic, fuck yeah i believe in science – so if you want to keep yelling at me khakjaan, that’s fine by me

  70. King Kong Bundy

      reynard—

      prolly because i don’t believe in transubstantiation, i try not to think on certain things too much

      What kind of man uses “prolly” and “transubstantiation” in the same fragment?

  71. reynard

      don’t believe in essence

      this must be yr mommydaddygawd

      httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1KvgtEnABY

  72. King Kong Bundy

      Sorry, I mean poorly worded sentence.

  73. reynard

      i’m a casual smoker

  74. Steven Pine

      reynard is boring

  75. jereme

      art is ego.

      pure and simple.

  76. jereme

      and i really don’t understand how you can group art & language so casually. i mean why not have “drinking a mtn. dew dehumanizes…” or a “masturbating dehumanizes…”

      you need to work harder on your dismissals. more esoteric.

  77. Paul

      Khakjaan, before attempting to interpret these lines of Reynard’s, one must realize language is a product of human existence. You have done this, however, you instantly scream “impossible” as you thumb your nose at Reynard because, as you indicated, his language-driven expression acts as a contradiction. You are so eager to “school” and shout and huff and puff, that you have overlooked the fact that Reynard’s apparent contradiction was actually the perfect formula for stirring up some HTML Giant discussion (that is the purpose of HTML Giant, you know–a place for discussion and/or debate–seeing as how Reynard is a contributor and you are not, it may be easier now for you to understand that he is simply trying to promote the idea of discourse).

      I believe contradiction can very much be a means of inciting discourse. Reynard might have only spent five minutes writing those few lines–and look what those lines have done–he has you making claims of a “pagewide conspiracy.” He’s kicking back and laughing somewhere as you huff and puff and squeal “chicken.” Your tone is rife with superiority and you’re obviously in need of someone to shout at.

      Might I suggest your tear-stained pillow or a refrigerator?

  78. deadgod

      easy to pick one word trendily not ‘to believe in’

      harder to know what to do about things like “war”

      hardest to converse with ’embracers’ clammily superior to conversation

      I think your words are “human”, reynardthe”artist”

  79. Paul

      ‘I’ ‘will’ ‘never’ ‘understand’ ‘why’ ‘people’ ‘do’ ‘this’ . . . ‘I’ ‘wonder’ ‘if’ ‘it’ ‘is’ ‘supposed’ ‘to’ ‘signify’ ‘one’s’ ‘level’ ‘of’ ‘artistry’ ‘?’

  80. deadgod

      Paul, I used these ‘signifiers’ (” and ‘) in the post directly above yours as quotation marks. That is, the double marks (“) are around unchanged, but rephrased, words, and the single marks (‘) are around words slightly altered in their rephrased forms (for the most common example, words whose part of speech has been changed – like the word “‘signifiers'” in this very paragraph, which word was taken from your punctuation-split infinitive “‘to’ ‘signify'”).

      Quotation marks – their use and, perhaps (as you say) crucially for you, their comprehension – primarily “‘signify'” literacy, Paul, though their use necessarily indicates some “‘level’ ‘of’ ‘artistry'”. One example of this “‘level’ ‘of’ ‘artistry'” would be their sarcastic utility in communicating scorn. – “‘level'” entailing degrees of more and less “‘artistry'” (again, crucially for you).

      Is it “‘never'” yet, Paul?

  81. Paul

      ooh, i think i hit a nerve

      “indicates some level of artistry” or indicates how badly you want to be Tao Lin?

  82. reynard

      i chose that word because it was the crux of your argument, i had to sift through a lot of bullshit to find it so it wasn’t really that easy

  83. deadgod

      Paul, not being able ‘to understand’ quotation marks “indicates how badly you want” to be a managing editor.

  84. Paul

      I understand quotation marks. I was just pointing out your emulation of Tao Lin–your use of hijacked subcultural rhetoric–that’s all. But go ahead, continue to avoid Reynard’s good point so that you can demonstrate for us how well-versed you are when it comes to quotation marks. Bravo, deadgod.

      Sociopaths are cute.

  85. deadgod

      reynardthe”artist”, you “chose” the word that you’re comfortable asserting that you “don’t believe in” when you finally reached something you’ve been told not to believe in.

      The “crux of [my] argument” was that art and language are not separable from “human”, making your word “dehumanize” more of a problem than your little blogicle suggests (to me).

      I think calling things you don’t understand “bullshit” is the “crux of your argument”, reynardthe”artist”.

  86. Paul

      . . . speaking of rhetors.

  87. jereme

      art is ego.

      pure and simple.

  88. jereme

      and i really don’t understand how you can group art & language so casually. i mean why not have “drinking a mtn. dew dehumanizes…” or a “masturbating dehumanizes…”

      you need to work harder on your dismissals. more esoteric.

  89. mimi

      I think what Reynard might be saying is that Language and Art can drag humans down, take them along a less-good path (war, etc. And re: mjm’s discussion above re: capturing fire & developing tools as art, as in artifact, as in man-made, man-ufactured, as in ‘not natural’, weapons/war could be considered something else to put on the list). (Hey, two re:s in one sentence!)

      Is that our essence? Is that our _only_ essence.

      http://www.rianeeisler.com/bookimages/chalicecover.jpg

      Or is the ‘essence’ of being human a mix of better-good and lesser-good?
      A warring dichotomy? A complex stew? A mixed salad?

      I don’t mean to speak for Rey here, though. I know he is perfectly capable of speaking for himself.

      PS – Love the Jack D. Ripper tie-in. Remember, there is also President Merkin Muffley.

      merkin – noun
      “female pudenda,” 1530s, apparently a variant of malkin in its sense of “mop.” Meaning “artificial vagina or ‘counterfeit hair for a woman’s privy parts’ ” is attested from 1610s. According to “The Oxford Companion to the Body,” the custom of wearing merkins dates from c.1450, was associated with prostitutes, and was to disguise either pubic hair shaved off to exterminate body lice or evidence of venereal disease.

  90. deadgod

      I understand quotation marks.

      No, Paul, not this time, you didn’t. You thought they were scare quotes, indicating irony or authorial skepticism or some other performative contradiction, right?

      (Some people think lying to conceal a harmlessly small misreading of punctuation is ‘sociopathic’ behavior. Knowing real sociopaths, I don’t.)

      Not sure what “hijacked subcultural rhetoric” you refer to. Is the passive participle just a way of dismissing a thread of thought you have trouble following – like calling it “bullshit”?

      Also not sure what you mean by “emulation of Tao Lin” – a writer whom I’ve only read a few pieces by.

      (Some people think referring irrelevantly to “Tao Lin” indicates a hit nerve. This perspective I’m friendly to.)

      reynardthe”artist”‘s “point” is that we can’t talk about the “essence” of a human being, about ‘human essence’. But, in his blogicle, reynardthe”artist” used the expressions “dehumanize” and “not human” with no dubeity in their ability to indicate ‘human essence’. He used those terms as though he ‘believed’ that there is something “human”, something ‘essentially human’ that he can talk about.

      (Some people might think what reynardthe”artist” is doing (in unself-consciously contradicting himself then calling his “contradiction” deliberate) is “bullshit”. This I agree with.)

  91. Paul

      I believe it was Reynard Seifert, an artist, who once said:

      I want to build a fucking spaceship.

  92. mimi
  93. reynard

      it’s not that i don’t understand your bullshit, it’s that i think your words up there are full of hot, bombastic air

      you said “To consider only the products of art and language, separately from the processes of their making, is imaginarily to alienate that/those person/s from their constitution, their practical essence”

      the thing is, my whole point is, subscribing to essence is what makes that process imaginary, i don’t believe in transubstantiation for the same reason, i don’t believe in words & pictures carrying ‘intrinsic value,’ this is why dictionaries have so many disambiguations, this is why we have art criticism

      for instance the word ‘hood rat’ or ‘hoodrat’ has no intrinsic value, nor does a picture of a rat dressed in bling, when i say something i encode it and others decode it applying their own personal cultural, aesthetic, biological, ethical, whateverkindof framework to it – you only get out what you put in, not the other way around – people put each other in cages because that’s all we’re capable of doing – it’s not that the words & pictures are human, it’s that their being created and interpreted by humans, as well as our understanding of each other, is very limited, and so it’s because of this process that i believe anything depicted in words & pictures becomes dehumanized along the way, is stripped of its human elements, and new ones are applied to it, even taking a painting out of the place it was painted, removed from the background the artist saw while painting it, putting it in a new place for others to look at, dehumanizes the painting, rapes it of what it was – does that mean we shouldn’t do that? no. but that’s how i see it, for what it’s worth, which i guess is all its worth

  94. mimi

      *done, not *don’t
      my bad

  95. deadgod

      I think – with no irony nor intention to provoke in saying so – that “to build a fucking spaceship” is a fine thing to want to do literally or metaphorically, and hope that reynard builds one.

  96. Steven Augustine

      “for instance the word ‘hood rat’ or ‘hoodrat’ has no intrinsic value…”

      Aha, so that’s what this is about. But that’s just sophistry. For example (again) the words ‘Kike” or “Chink” have no intrinsic value… neither do “pancake” or “turd-chunk”, but be careful how you use these last two in a restaurant. The words may not get you in trouble but the sentences surely can.

      “Art & language” don’t “dehumanize their subjects” but people and their social networks do (or attempt to). If you don’t question the meme to the extent that you finally understand it, you can’t prevent yourself from being a passive replicator (or amplifier). If words have no “intrinsic value”, then Advertising is all placebo effect, no one has ever been inspired by a novel or poem and Joe Goebbels didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. Oh, but he did.

      Anyway, this’ll only serve to piss you off, but you seem a lot more sympathetic, to me, now that I see you as a guy who’s clearly worried about this.

      If I call a dude a “cunt” just because “dick” is now so over-used that it’s stingless, it’s not the same as me saying something like, “You know all cunts just love the color pink (look at Barbie)…”.

      Or not?

  97. Paul Cunningham

      Khakjaan, before attempting to interpret these lines of Reynard’s, one must realize language is a product of human existence. You have done this, however, you instantly scream “impossible” as you thumb your nose at Reynard because, as you indicated, his language-driven expression acts as a contradiction. You are so eager to “school” and shout and huff and puff, that you have overlooked the fact that Reynard’s apparent contradiction was actually the perfect formula for stirring up some HTML Giant discussion (that is the purpose of HTML Giant, you know–a place for discussion and/or debate–seeing as how Reynard is a contributor and you are not, it may be easier now for you to understand that he is simply trying to promote the idea of discourse).

      I believe contradiction can very much be a means of inciting discourse. Reynard might have only spent five minutes writing those few lines–and look what those lines have done–he has you making claims of a “pagewide conspiracy.” He’s kicking back and laughing somewhere as you huff and puff and squeal “chicken.” Your tone is rife with superiority and you’re obviously in need of someone to shout at.

      Might I suggest your tear-stained pillow or a refrigerator?

  98. deadgod

      hot, bombastic air

      Well, reynard, it sounds like the rhetoric you’re comfortable with is run-on sentence fragments spiced with lots of naughty words (strength) and quaintly ‘youthful’ locutions and spellings (street). That’s cool, but I don’t think the style you use (and prefer?) is intrinsically less ‘heated’, “bombastic”, or (possibly) vacuous than my own. It’s – maybe we agree – equally “imaginary”, and equally (possibly) full of shit.

      subscribing to essence

      Not my plan! You used the expressions “dehumanize” and “not human”; I followed on from there being something “human” that could be ‘taken away; erased’ or ‘not there; negated’.

      ‘intrinsic value’

      ([PERFORMATIVE CONTRADICTION alert] There are those pesky scare quotes – I won’t tell.)

      The argument against and for [HOT, BOMBASTIC AIR alert] a metaphysics of ‘essence’ is a useful – for me and maybe for you: ineluctable – conversation (ok: debate) to have.

      For example, you say “lift [people] up” and “put [people] down” as though these actions or consequences were: a) discernible in themselves, and b) ethically discernible (evidence: your use of the word “just”).

      But how can ‘lifting’ and ‘putting down’ people be, not only distinguished one from the other, but one preferred to the other, without reference to something “human” about people – something that could be called, provisionally and subject to infinite debate and modification, a human “essence”?

      You see why someone might be more skeptical of the sophistry enabling a supposed debunking of “essence” than even of a ‘metaphysics of essence’?

      you only get out what you put in, not the other way around

      Not so, reynard! Considering art and language as though they could be separated from people, what you get out and put in is a matter of [HOT, BOMBASTIC AIR alert] the dialectical entwinement of “you” and your ‘world’.

      Of course, one understands experience in the terms that one has already at mental hand; one’s interpretations reflect one’s priorities, commitments, perspective, and so on. But those interpretations are not only composed of those [HOT, BOMBASTIC AIR alert] anticipatory forestructures. The [HOT, BOMBASTIC AIR alert] intractability of matter shapes one’s interpretations even as one interprets in one’s own image – one’s ‘world’ changes one’s interpreting activity (hence: “dialectical”).

      very limited

      Sure – taking the [HOT, BOMBASTIC AIR alert] epistemological consequences of your skepticism of “essence” seriously, one’s interpretations and understandings are so limited as to make unintelligible (except as rhetoric) not only the extent of one’s limitations, but even the fact of them.

      Let me insist, as I said in that “hot, bombastic” post, that, while “dehumaniz[ation]” happens in and through art and language, so too does humanization.

      Let me also repeat that I don’t think that talking of art and language as though they were separable from “human”, from being a person, is ultimately accurate enough.

  99. Khakjaan Wessington

      I ate my pillow and slept on my fridge, so no can do.

      Anyhow, I don’t think I was clear in my prior post, because I thought it would be swept in the memory hole (peeve). I like this page. Until I whined to Blake, my posts were getting deleted. And then, even though I went berserk on Jimmy Chen, he wrote something that impressed me (but not for me) and it quelled my annoyance w/ the whole thing. So there’s the context for the opening of my post. I didn’t like that my first post was deleted and since I understand now that the authors of the individual threads may post or censor at their discretion, I knew that if I didn’t say anything, my point would not be registered. So I appealed to the pride of Reynard. It worked. My post went up almost as soon as it was written. Fact. If the hysterical accusations didn’t work, the post wouldn’t have gone up. Yeah, it was rude, but it’s also rude to pretend to solicit conversation and then stymie it with passive aggression.

      I think if one is to debate, one should be emotionally honest–not just intellectually honest. My first post was short, rude and to the point. It was thrown in the memory hole. I know you’re all unreliable narrators and I am too; but at least I admit it.

      Now, to your other points:
      1) I wasn’t arguing that language is not a product of humanity. Please don’t strawman my position.
      2) Derrida style dialectic pisses me off. Complete Art explores Reynard’s posited semantic. Anything less is lazy & incapable of capturing the complexity of the concept he is attempting to map. Bad dialectical methodologies stay bad dialectical methods, no matter how vigorously pursued.
      3) Yeah, what’s wrong with a little schooling? A writer’s task is to ‘elevate & instruct’ (final Jeopardy, phrase your lit-shibboleth in the form of a question). I find loftiness without logic to be a pretty pathetic enterprise. The one asking the question has no right to dictate the methodology of his/her interlocutor in a truly honest discussion. If I choose to attack the claim because it’s semantically meaningless (either I get what he’s saying and thus it contradicts his claim, else, I don’t and it was ineffective), then who are you to say that when I shout ‘does not compute’ that I’m being a dick? Wouldn’t you shout at someone thypthign liek dis? That’s what the question looked like to me: baby scribbles. Pissed me off. Why can’t I hold someone’s feet to the fire if I’m injecting a valid point into the discourse? I think you mistake my attitude for my objection.
      4) In short, yeah, I like the page. Yeah, I’m irritable. Yeah, I think a friend should start off as an enemy, or at least an acquaintance of enmity. I registered my objection in a manner that prevented you dismissing the claims made therein. And while I’m certainly a fucked up fellow, I think you’re mistaking me for someone else: I’m a good interlocutor for this type of discussion.

  100. deadgod

      easy to pick one word trendily not ‘to believe in’

      harder to know what to do about things like “war”

      hardest to converse with ’embracers’ clammily superior to conversation

      I think your words are “human”, reynardthe”artist”

  101. Paul Cunningham

      ‘I’ ‘will’ ‘never’ ‘understand’ ‘why’ ‘people’ ‘do’ ‘this’ . . . ‘I’ ‘wonder’ ‘if’ ‘it’ ‘is’ ‘supposed’ ‘to’ ‘signify’ ‘one’s’ ‘level’ ‘of’ ‘artistry’ ‘?’

  102. Ryan Call

      Hi Khakjaan,

      Quick clarification for you: no one has been censoring your comments. For some reason, which I and Gene haven’t yet been able to figure out, your comments are immediately dumping into our comment spam folder (your comment above, for instance, was in spam). Neither Reynard nor Jimmy deleted your comments. I was out of town this past weekend and did not have time to check the spam folder until last night, at which point I unspammed your comments. I apologize for this trouble; I understand it is frustrating to participate in discussions when your comments are not immediately available. Please know that I look for your comments and will unspam them when I find them. Some other commenters, including Joseph Goosey, have had similar problems.

      We are working on fixing this problem.

      Thanks,
      Ryan

  103. reynard

      steven – i don’t think it’s true that words fail to inspire despite their lack of intrinsic value, they might inspire some people and depress others, they might make one person sad and another happy, thinking about it in the way of the butterfly effect the same words could start a war or save a village

      deadgod – i’m gonna go flap my stupid wings in the park, but i like you kind of a little bit, and i see your point – i do think i’m full of shit, i take no exception, but i’m sort of into it, like, i’m commenting on a blog here, so i’m into run-ons and fragments, i’m okay with scarequotes, i use them (and don’t overuse them) to indicate a word i’m suspicious of, especially when i’m talking about being suspicious of it, anyway i enjoyed thinking on this but i’m not sure i have much else to say, maybe i should have left it at the one sentence.

  104. Khakjaan Wessington

      I think you do know, re: censoring, but maybe not. Maybe wordpress auto-trashes my posts and an admin has to sift through the garbage to find my posts. I do know that as soon as I kvetched, both posts went up. If my suspicions were wrongly confirmed & it’s an innocent accident, well, isn’t it more interesting to engage someone w/ a mutual misunderstanding? I think so. I have a peeve about being censored when I allocate some effort into my posts.

      Look dude, I do think the claim is nonsense. AND I do think it rhymes with lots of coffee shop bs I heard in college. I felt like the question was a formula for retreading a debate we’ve all had at least once. I also have this thing with presuppositions; I can’t validate the argument beyond my first objection w/ a presupposition. As I said, I felt the semantic structure of the post was meaningless. I hit you with some jabs on your ego, because people usually get more honest when they’re angry. And it worked. I wish you had written the reply you wrote to me, instead of the initial post. It’s far more interesting; commas and all.

      1) Contradiction is cool, but we all embrace it. Nothing special there.
      2) Your statement reminds me of Godel’s incompleteness theorem. As I said elsewhere, either I get it and thus it contradicts your claim, else I don’t and thus your claim is semantically meaningless–a bad use of words.
      2a) How does it contradict your claim? Let’s work through this. If I understand your claim through language, then that means that language does not ‘dehumanize’ its subject. I am human, and language is a product of my humanity. No, it is an ASPECT of my humanity–my humanity is meaningless without it. Likewise art. So if I grasp your claim, then that means we proved it to be invalid.
      2b) If on the other hand, I don’t grasp your claim, then it’s meaningless. If that draws some slings and arrows, well, what did you expect? You’re writing in public. You can’t dictate the mode w/ which the reader engages your text.
      3) Okay, you believe life is better than literature. Fine. I won’t even argue with you that literature is a product of life and that you’re trying to make mutually exclusive distinctions where none exists. Fine, I don’t care. But why didn’t you say this instead? THIS is why I find my angry-prophet style of engagement to be effective: you didn’t say what you meant until someone screamed in your face with a literary Pay or Quit notice.
      4) If I spend my time reading something and I don’t like it, I let the author know whenever possible. I was like this with EB White when I was a kid and I’m like that now, w/ HTML Giant. After all, it’s not like you were writing for nothing. You presumably take some pride in the craft. I think I’m a common type of reader, even if my rancor is uncommon, and I think my complaints are valid and only strengthen you as a thinker and writer. As a friend once told me, ‘a good enemy is better than a good friend.’ Almost all of my best friends were former enemies. You should love your enemy, because s/he makes you stronger… I’m not even saying I’m your enemy either, but an adversary is a fine thing.

  105. jereme

      dude, i have been saying crazy shit since htmlg started. there is no casual censorship.

      get over it. you aren’t that special.

  106. deadgod

      Khakjaan, what do you mean by “lit-shibboleth”?

  107. Ryan Call

      No worries, K. It’s good you kvetched, because it alerted us to the problem, and that’s how I found all of Goosey’s comments too. I don’t mind if you don’t believe me re: censoring. I’m just letting you know what’s been happening.

  108. deadgod

      Well, reynard, I don’t think you’re “full of shit” – though I think pulling “essence” out of that almost-frighteningly acute post was, at best, obscure – unmistakeably a great flaw, on the wall of my cave – , and, more likely, defensively dismissive.

      (Excepting this postscript, I’ll leave things at that one sentence.)

  109. Khakjaan Wessington

      Where’s Kripke when you need him? Oh yeah, at shul. This is such a cool thread. Here I was thinking I was alone, then I read deadgod’s posts (salute to you, buddy).

      @Reynard, whether you like it or not, your post was a set up for this level of rancor. I don’t think you seriously expected people to agree with your claim in the first place–acting like you’re being willfully misunderstood is disingenuous imo. Also, are you really just arguing map isn’t territory? If you are, then my accusations re: logic were totally fair. And seriously, Kripke knifes your argument in the heart: reading Naming and Necessity. Oh, you think that’s just abstract bullshit? Kripke invented the logic that powers your computer and enables this very conversation. Don’t be dismissive of logic when you depend on it so much.

      @Mimi, I’d like to think that’s his argument, but it’s really your argument. What you claim is not derivable from his proposition. He was making a sweeping claim, in that old tradition of unacknowledged legislators of the cosmos, and the cosmos didn’t want it. Or if you prefer, zombie humans reached up and pulled him and Elijah off that golden chariot and ate their brainssss. Also, I know more than one person with more than one merkin. Yeah, I live in SF, why do you ask? Heh.

  110. Khakjaan Wessington

      Sweet, but your webpage has cobwebs.

  111. Khakjaan Wessington

      Because language is symbolic. Think about that. The actual characters one uses when typing is just pictorial art w/ rigid syntax used to deliver a semantic intention. And lest you think that’s totally rigid, you need only to check out Ben Jonson, George Herbert, Barnaby Barnes, and old Shakes Beard himself (or fuck it, just go to Twitter) to see that’s not the case.

      What do you mean by ‘art?’
      What do you mean by ‘ego?’

      Your statement is not pure and simple.

  112. Steven Augustine

      “steven – i don’t think it’s true that words fail to inspire despite their lack of intrinsic value, they might inspire some people and depress others, they might make one person sad and another happy, thinking about it in the way of the butterfly effect the same words could start a war or save a village.”

      Reynard, tell me how the words “Chink” or “Kike” could possibly save a village (unless it’s in the sense of “saving” a village). I always say: Relativism is just Nihilism without the courage of its convictions.

      The fact that Meanings are unstable in words (or that they trigger wildly varying emotional responses in people) is not the same words having no intrinsic Meanings. To “decapitate” pretty much does what it says on the package. Where’s the ambiguity in “shit-skin” or “plutonium”? A wobbly or blurred presence is not the same as no presence at all and “every story has two sides” (ie presenting “diametrically opposed meanings” simultaneously) is a Relativist fairytale: what’s the “other side” of the “child rape” story…? What’s the equal and opposite interpretation of “nigger-lip”? Even if the user of the term *likes* “nigger-lips”, it’s irrefutably the case that either his use of the term is ironical or his relationship with the concept of Black Humans is troubled (note: ironical usage doesn’t contradict the face-value of the term, it *confirms* it).

      Why speak/write any words or listen to/read any words at all if all words only function as screens upon which to project your idiosyncratic or even random meanings? Mygawd, how did you get through the first page of your i-pod instruction manual…?

  113. Steven Augustine

      erratum (fuck, let me get through one without a typo):

      “is not the same AS words having no intrinsic Meanings.”

  114. Khakjaan Wessington

      @Deadgod: Philip Sydney, “elevate & instruct.” Defense of Poesy etc.
      @jereme: But my mom said I WAS special! Are you calling my mom a liar?
      @Ryan: Thanks. Like I said earlier, I also felt it was funnier & more interesting to be melodramatic about the whole thing. Fly vs spider is food chain, but Censors vs Censored is epic.

  115. deadgod

      Paul, I used these ‘signifiers’ (” and ‘) in the post directly above yours as quotation marks. That is, the double marks (“) are around unchanged, but rephrased, words, and the single marks (‘) are around words slightly altered in their rephrased forms (for the most common example, words whose part of speech has been changed – like the word “‘signifiers'” in this very paragraph, which word was taken from your punctuation-split infinitive “‘to’ ‘signify'”).

      Quotation marks – their use and, perhaps (as you say) crucially for you, their comprehension – primarily “‘signify'” literacy, Paul, though their use necessarily indicates some “‘level’ ‘of’ ‘artistry'”. One example of this “‘level’ ‘of’ ‘artistry'” would be their sarcastic utility in communicating scorn. – “‘level'” entailing degrees of more and less “‘artistry'” (again, crucially for you).

      Is it “‘never'” yet, Paul?

  116. Khakjaan Wessington

      I believe you. I hope you know that behind my whining is a fondness for the page. If I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t spend time on it. Maybe this is all part of the great machine war; they use comment threads to increase modern alienation. Eventually, we will all believe the computer is our only reliable ally, and that’s when they’ll strike.

  117. Paul Cunningham

      ooh, i think i hit a nerve

      “indicates some level of artistry” or indicates how badly you want to be Tao Lin?

  118. reynard

      i chose that word because it was the crux of your argument, i had to sift through a lot of bullshit to find it so it wasn’t really that easy

  119. deadgod

      Paul, not being able ‘to understand’ quotation marks “indicates how badly you want” to be a managing editor.

  120. Paul Cunningham

      I understand quotation marks. I was just pointing out your emulation of Tao Lin–your use of hijacked subcultural rhetoric–that’s all. But go ahead, continue to avoid Reynard’s good point so that you can demonstrate for us how well-versed you are when it comes to quotation marks. Bravo, deadgod.

      Sociopaths are cute.

  121. deadgod

      Khakjaan, Sidney has, in The Defense of Poesy, “Poesy [has] this end, to teach and delight.” I haven’t found “elevate & instruct” there.

      But my question wasn’t ‘what words do you call a “lit-shibboleth”?’, but rather: why do you call this phrase a “shibboleth”??

  122. deadgod

      reynardthe”artist”, you “chose” the word that you’re comfortable asserting that you “don’t believe in” when you finally reached something you’ve been told not to believe in.

      The “crux of [my] argument” was that art and language are not separable from “human”, making your word “dehumanize” more of a problem than your little blogicle suggests (to me).

      I think calling things you don’t understand “bullshit” is the “crux of your argument”, reynardthe”artist”.

  123. Paul Cunningham

      . . . speaking of rhetors.

  124. mimi

      I think what Reynard might be saying is that Language and Art can drag humans down, take them along a less-good path (war, etc. And re: mjm’s discussion above re: capturing fire & developing tools as art, as in artifact, as in man-made, man-ufactured, as in ‘not natural’, weapons/war could be considered something else to put on the list). (Hey, two re:s in one sentence!)

      Is that our essence? Is that our _only_ essence.

      http://www.rianeeisler.com/bookimages/chalicecover.jpg

      Or is the ‘essence’ of being human a mix of better-good and lesser-good?
      A warring dichotomy? A complex stew? A mixed salad?

      I don’t mean to speak for Rey here, though. I know he is perfectly capable of speaking for himself.

      PS – Love the Jack D. Ripper tie-in. Remember, there is also President Merkin Muffley.

      merkin – noun
      “female pudenda,” 1530s, apparently a variant of malkin in its sense of “mop.” Meaning “artificial vagina or ‘counterfeit hair for a woman’s privy parts’ ” is attested from 1610s. According to “The Oxford Companion to the Body,” the custom of wearing merkins dates from c.1450, was associated with prostitutes, and was to disguise either pubic hair shaved off to exterminate body lice or evidence of venereal disease.

  125. Khakjaan Wessington

      @deadgod Haven’t read it in like ten years, so there’s probably some data corruption going on… well probably data compression & corruption.

      I said lit-shibboleth because some people have read him and others haven’t. Maybe I’m the one who said sibboleth and now you’ve drawn your sword. Alas. Shibboleth is a greeting. A secret handshake. I did it wrong. But I was trying to allude to the not-quite-so-nihilistic strain of thought in literature that says writing has a purpose above and beyond masturbation & brain-sex. Instead of telling my motive, I wanted to show them. Instead, I think I probably wound up quoting Gardner’s On Moral Fiction instead, though given your memory, even that is explanation is probably not to your satisfaction (I’m guessing that phrase isn’t in there either).

      Hope that clarifies.

  126. deadgod

      I understand quotation marks.

      No, Paul, not this time, you didn’t. You thought they were scare quotes, indicating irony or authorial skepticism or some other performative contradiction, right?

      (Some people think lying to conceal a harmlessly small misreading of punctuation is ‘sociopathic’ behavior. Knowing real sociopaths, I don’t.)

      Not sure what “hijacked subcultural rhetoric” you refer to. Is the passive participle just a way of dismissing a thread of thought you have trouble following – like calling it “bullshit”?

      Also not sure what you mean by “emulation of Tao Lin” – a writer whom I’ve only read a few pieces by.

      (Some people think referring irrelevantly to “Tao Lin” indicates a hit nerve. This perspective I’m friendly to.)

      reynardthe”artist”‘s “point” is that we can’t talk about the “essence” of a human being, about ‘human essence’. But, in his blogicle, reynardthe”artist” used the expressions “dehumanize” and “not human” with no dubeity in their ability to indicate ‘human essence’. He used those terms as though he ‘believed’ that there is something “human”, something ‘essentially human’ that he can talk about.

      (Some people might think what reynardthe”artist” is doing (in unself-consciously contradicting himself then calling his “contradiction” deliberate) is “bullshit”. This I agree with.)

  127. Paul Cunningham

      I believe it was Reynard Seifert, an artist, who once said:

      I want to build a fucking spaceship.

  128. mimi
  129. reynard

      it’s not that i don’t understand your bullshit, it’s that i think your words up there are full of hot, bombastic air

      you said “To consider only the products of art and language, separately from the processes of their making, is imaginarily to alienate that/those person/s from their constitution, their practical essence”

      the thing is, my whole point is, subscribing to essence is what makes that process imaginary, i don’t believe in transubstantiation for the same reason, i don’t believe in words & pictures carrying ‘intrinsic value,’ this is why dictionaries have so many disambiguations, this is why we have art criticism

      for instance the word ‘hood rat’ or ‘hoodrat’ has no intrinsic value, nor does a picture of a rat dressed in bling, when i say something i encode it and others decode it applying their own personal cultural, aesthetic, biological, ethical, whateverkindof framework to it – you only get out what you put in, not the other way around – people put each other in cages because that’s all we’re capable of doing – it’s not that the words & pictures are human, it’s that their being created and interpreted by humans, as well as our understanding of each other, is very limited, and so it’s because of this process that i believe anything depicted in words & pictures becomes dehumanized along the way, is stripped of its human elements, and new ones are applied to it, even taking a painting out of the place it was painted, removed from the background the artist saw while painting it, putting it in a new place for others to look at, dehumanizes the painting, rapes it of what it was – does that mean we shouldn’t do that? no. but that’s how i see it, for what it’s worth, which i guess is all its worth

  130. mimi

      *done, not *don’t
      my bad

  131. deadgod

      I think – with no irony nor intention to provoke in saying so – that “to build a fucking spaceship” is a fine thing to want to do literally or metaphorically, and hope that reynard builds one.

  132. Steven Augustine

      “for instance the word ‘hood rat’ or ‘hoodrat’ has no intrinsic value…”

      Aha, so that’s what this is about. But that’s just sophistry. For example (again) the words ‘Kike” or “Chink” have no intrinsic value… neither do “pancake” or “turd-chunk”, but be careful how you use these last two in a restaurant. The words may not get you in trouble but the sentences surely can.

      “Art & language” don’t “dehumanize their subjects” but people and their social networks do (or attempt to). If you don’t question the meme to the extent that you finally understand it, you can’t prevent yourself from being a passive replicator (or amplifier). If words have no “intrinsic value”, then Advertising is all placebo effect, no one has ever been inspired by a novel or poem and Joe Goebbels didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. Oh, but he did.

      Anyway, this’ll only serve to piss you off, but you seem a lot more sympathetic, to me, now that I see you as a guy who’s clearly worried about this.

      If I call a dude a “cunt” just because “dick” is now so over-used that it’s stingless, it’s not the same as me saying something like, “You know all cunts just love the color pink (look at Barbie)…”.

      Or not?

  133. deadgod

      hot, bombastic air

      Well, reynard, it sounds like the rhetoric you’re comfortable with is run-on sentence fragments spiced with lots of naughty words (strength) and quaintly ‘youthful’ locutions and spellings (street). That’s cool, but I don’t think the style you use (and prefer?) is intrinsically less ‘heated’, “bombastic”, or (possibly) vacuous than my own. It’s – maybe we agree – equally “imaginary”, and equally (possibly) full of shit.

      subscribing to essence

      Not my plan! You used the expressions “dehumanize” and “not human”; I followed on from there being something “human” that could be ‘taken away; erased’ or ‘not there; negated’.

      ‘intrinsic value’

      ([PERFORMATIVE CONTRADICTION alert] There are those pesky scare quotes – I won’t tell.)

      The argument against and for [HOT, BOMBASTIC AIR alert] a metaphysics of ‘essence’ is a useful – for me and maybe for you: ineluctable – conversation (ok: debate) to have.

      For example, you say “lift [people] up” and “put [people] down” as though these actions or consequences were: a) discernible in themselves, and b) ethically discernible (evidence: your use of the word “just”).

      But how can ‘lifting’ and ‘putting down’ people be, not only distinguished one from the other, but one preferred to the other, without reference to something “human” about people – something that could be called, provisionally and subject to infinite debate and modification, a human “essence”?

      You see why someone might be more skeptical of the sophistry enabling a supposed debunking of “essence” than even of a ‘metaphysics of essence’?

      you only get out what you put in, not the other way around

      Not so, reynard! Considering art and language as though they could be separated from people, what you get out and put in is a matter of [HOT, BOMBASTIC AIR alert] the dialectical entwinement of “you” and your ‘world’.

      Of course, one understands experience in the terms that one has already at mental hand; one’s interpretations reflect one’s priorities, commitments, perspective, and so on. But those interpretations are not only composed of those [HOT, BOMBASTIC AIR alert] anticipatory forestructures. The [HOT, BOMBASTIC AIR alert] intractability of matter shapes one’s interpretations even as one interprets in one’s own image – one’s ‘world’ changes one’s interpreting activity (hence: “dialectical”).

      very limited

      Sure – taking the [HOT, BOMBASTIC AIR alert] epistemological consequences of your skepticism of “essence” seriously, one’s interpretations and understandings are so limited as to make unintelligible (except as rhetoric) not only the extent of one’s limitations, but even the fact of them.

      Let me insist, as I said in that “hot, bombastic” post, that, while “dehumaniz[ation]” happens in and through art and language, so too does humanization.

      Let me also repeat that I don’t think that talking of art and language as though they were separable from “human”, from being a person, is ultimately accurate enough.

  134. Khakjaan Wessington

      I ate my pillow and slept on my fridge, so no can do.

      Anyhow, I don’t think I was clear in my prior post, because I thought it would be swept in the memory hole (peeve). I like this page. Until I whined to Blake, my posts were getting deleted. And then, even though I went berserk on Jimmy Chen, he wrote something that impressed me (but not for me) and it quelled my annoyance w/ the whole thing. So there’s the context for the opening of my post. I didn’t like that my first post was deleted and since I understand now that the authors of the individual threads may post or censor at their discretion, I knew that if I didn’t say anything, my point would not be registered. So I appealed to the pride of Reynard. It worked. My post went up almost as soon as it was written. Fact. If the hysterical accusations didn’t work, the post wouldn’t have gone up. Yeah, it was rude, but it’s also rude to pretend to solicit conversation and then stymie it with passive aggression.

      I think if one is to debate, one should be emotionally honest–not just intellectually honest. My first post was short, rude and to the point. It was thrown in the memory hole. I know you’re all unreliable narrators and I am too; but at least I admit it.

      Now, to your other points:
      1) I wasn’t arguing that language is not a product of humanity. Please don’t strawman my position.
      2) Derrida style dialectic pisses me off. Complete Art explores Reynard’s posited semantic. Anything less is lazy & incapable of capturing the complexity of the concept he is attempting to map. Bad dialectical methodologies stay bad dialectical methods, no matter how vigorously pursued.
      3) Yeah, what’s wrong with a little schooling? A writer’s task is to ‘elevate & instruct’ (final Jeopardy, phrase your lit-shibboleth in the form of a question). I find loftiness without logic to be a pretty pathetic enterprise. The one asking the question has no right to dictate the methodology of his/her interlocutor in a truly honest discussion. If I choose to attack the claim because it’s semantically meaningless (either I get what he’s saying and thus it contradicts his claim, else, I don’t and it was ineffective), then who are you to say that when I shout ‘does not compute’ that I’m being a dick? Wouldn’t you shout at someone thypthign liek dis? That’s what the question looked like to me: baby scribbles. Pissed me off. Why can’t I hold someone’s feet to the fire if I’m injecting a valid point into the discourse? I think you mistake my attitude for my objection.
      4) In short, yeah, I like the page. Yeah, I’m irritable. Yeah, I think a friend should start off as an enemy, or at least an acquaintance of enmity. I registered my objection in a manner that prevented you dismissing the claims made therein. And while I’m certainly a fucked up fellow, I think you’re mistaking me for someone else: I’m a good interlocutor for this type of discussion.

  135. Ryan Call

      Hi Khakjaan,

      Quick clarification for you: no one has been censoring your comments. For some reason, which I and Gene haven’t yet been able to figure out, your comments are immediately dumping into our comment spam folder (your comment above, for instance, was in spam). Neither Reynard nor Jimmy deleted your comments. I was out of town this past weekend and did not have time to check the spam folder until last night, at which point I unspammed your comments. I apologize for this trouble; I understand it is frustrating to participate in discussions when your comments are not immediately available. Please know that I look for your comments and will unspam them when I find them. Some other commenters, including Joseph Goosey, have had similar problems.

      We are working on fixing this problem.

      Thanks,
      Ryan

  136. reynard

      steven – i don’t think it’s true that words fail to inspire despite their lack of intrinsic value, they might inspire some people and depress others, they might make one person sad and another happy, thinking about it in the way of the butterfly effect the same words could start a war or save a village

      deadgod – i’m gonna go flap my stupid wings in the park, but i like you kind of a little bit, and i see your point – i do think i’m full of shit, i take no exception, but i’m sort of into it, like, i’m commenting on a blog here, so i’m into run-ons and fragments, i’m okay with scarequotes, i use them (and don’t overuse them) to indicate a word i’m suspicious of, especially when i’m talking about being suspicious of it, anyway i enjoyed thinking on this but i’m not sure i have much else to say, maybe i should have left it at the one sentence.

  137. Khakjaan Wessington

      I think you do know, re: censoring, but maybe not. Maybe wordpress auto-trashes my posts and an admin has to sift through the garbage to find my posts. I do know that as soon as I kvetched, both posts went up. If my suspicions were wrongly confirmed & it’s an innocent accident, well, isn’t it more interesting to engage someone w/ a mutual misunderstanding? I think so. I have a peeve about being censored when I allocate some effort into my posts.

      Look dude, I do think the claim is nonsense. AND I do think it rhymes with lots of coffee shop bs I heard in college. I felt like the question was a formula for retreading a debate we’ve all had at least once. I also have this thing with presuppositions; I can’t validate the argument beyond my first objection w/ a presupposition. As I said, I felt the semantic structure of the post was meaningless. I hit you with some jabs on your ego, because people usually get more honest when they’re angry. And it worked. I wish you had written the reply you wrote to me, instead of the initial post. It’s far more interesting; commas and all.

      1) Contradiction is cool, but we all embrace it. Nothing special there.
      2) Your statement reminds me of Godel’s incompleteness theorem. As I said elsewhere, either I get it and thus it contradicts your claim, else I don’t and thus your claim is semantically meaningless–a bad use of words.
      2a) How does it contradict your claim? Let’s work through this. If I understand your claim through language, then that means that language does not ‘dehumanize’ its subject. I am human, and language is a product of my humanity. No, it is an ASPECT of my humanity–my humanity is meaningless without it. Likewise art. So if I grasp your claim, then that means we proved it to be invalid.
      2b) If on the other hand, I don’t grasp your claim, then it’s meaningless. If that draws some slings and arrows, well, what did you expect? You’re writing in public. You can’t dictate the mode w/ which the reader engages your text.
      3) Okay, you believe life is better than literature. Fine. I won’t even argue with you that literature is a product of life and that you’re trying to make mutually exclusive distinctions where none exists. Fine, I don’t care. But why didn’t you say this instead? THIS is why I find my angry-prophet style of engagement to be effective: you didn’t say what you meant until someone screamed in your face with a literary Pay or Quit notice.
      4) If I spend my time reading something and I don’t like it, I let the author know whenever possible. I was like this with EB White when I was a kid and I’m like that now, w/ HTML Giant. After all, it’s not like you were writing for nothing. You presumably take some pride in the craft. I think I’m a common type of reader, even if my rancor is uncommon, and I think my complaints are valid and only strengthen you as a thinker and writer. As a friend once told me, ‘a good enemy is better than a good friend.’ Almost all of my best friends were former enemies. You should love your enemy, because s/he makes you stronger… I’m not even saying I’m your enemy either, but an adversary is a fine thing.

  138. jereme

      dude, i have been saying crazy shit since htmlg started. there is no casual censorship.

      get over it. you aren’t that special.

  139. deadgod

      Khakjaan, what do you mean by “lit-shibboleth”?

  140. Ryan Call

      No worries, K. It’s good you kvetched, because it alerted us to the problem, and that’s how I found all of Goosey’s comments too. I don’t mind if you don’t believe me re: censoring. I’m just letting you know what’s been happening.

  141. deadgod

      Well, reynard, I don’t think you’re “full of shit” – though I think pulling “essence” out of that almost-frighteningly acute post was, at best, obscure – unmistakeably a great flaw, on the wall of my cave – , and, more likely, defensively dismissive.

      (Excepting this postscript, I’ll leave things at that one sentence.)

  142. Khakjaan Wessington

      Where’s Kripke when you need him? Oh yeah, at shul. This is such a cool thread. Here I was thinking I was alone, then I read deadgod’s posts (salute to you, buddy).

      @Reynard, whether you like it or not, your post was a set up for this level of rancor. I don’t think you seriously expected people to agree with your claim in the first place–acting like you’re being willfully misunderstood is disingenuous imo. Also, are you really just arguing map isn’t territory? If you are, then my accusations re: logic were totally fair. And seriously, Kripke knifes your argument in the heart: reading Naming and Necessity. Oh, you think that’s just abstract bullshit? Kripke invented the logic that powers your computer and enables this very conversation. Don’t be dismissive of logic when you depend on it so much.

      @Mimi, I’d like to think that’s his argument, but it’s really your argument. What you claim is not derivable from his proposition. He was making a sweeping claim, in that old tradition of unacknowledged legislators of the cosmos, and the cosmos didn’t want it. Or if you prefer, zombie humans reached up and pulled him and Elijah off that golden chariot and ate their brainssss. Also, I know more than one person with more than one merkin. Yeah, I live in SF, why do you ask? Heh.

  143. Khakjaan Wessington

      Sweet, but your webpage has cobwebs.

  144. Khakjaan Wessington

      Because language is symbolic. Think about that. The actual characters one uses when typing is just pictorial art w/ rigid syntax used to deliver a semantic intention. And lest you think that’s totally rigid, you need only to check out Ben Jonson, George Herbert, Barnaby Barnes, and old Shakes Beard himself (or fuck it, just go to Twitter) to see that’s not the case.

      What do you mean by ‘art?’
      What do you mean by ‘ego?’

      Your statement is not pure and simple.

  145. Steven Augustine

      “steven – i don’t think it’s true that words fail to inspire despite their lack of intrinsic value, they might inspire some people and depress others, they might make one person sad and another happy, thinking about it in the way of the butterfly effect the same words could start a war or save a village.”

      Reynard, tell me how the words “Chink” or “Kike” could possibly save a village (unless it’s in the sense of “saving” a village). I always say: Relativism is just Nihilism without the courage of its convictions.

      The fact that Meanings are unstable in words (or that they trigger wildly varying emotional responses in people) is not the same words having no intrinsic Meanings. To “decapitate” pretty much does what it says on the package. Where’s the ambiguity in “shit-skin” or “plutonium”? A wobbly or blurred presence is not the same as no presence at all and “every story has two sides” (ie presenting “diametrically opposed meanings” simultaneously) is a Relativist fairytale: what’s the “other side” of the “child rape” story…? What’s the equal and opposite interpretation of “nigger-lip”? Even if the user of the term *likes* “nigger-lips”, it’s irrefutably the case that either his use of the term is ironical or his relationship with the concept of Black Humans is troubled (note: ironical usage doesn’t contradict the face-value of the term, it *confirms* it).

      Why speak/write any words or listen to/read any words at all if all words only function as screens upon which to project your idiosyncratic or even random meanings? Mygawd, how did you get through the first page of your i-pod instruction manual…?

  146. Steven Augustine

      erratum (fuck, let me get through one without a typo):

      “is not the same AS words having no intrinsic Meanings.”

  147. Khakjaan Wessington

      @Deadgod: Philip Sydney, “elevate & instruct.” Defense of Poesy etc.
      @jereme: But my mom said I WAS special! Are you calling my mom a liar?
      @Ryan: Thanks. Like I said earlier, I also felt it was funnier & more interesting to be melodramatic about the whole thing. Fly vs spider is food chain, but Censors vs Censored is epic.

  148. Khakjaan Wessington

      I believe you. I hope you know that behind my whining is a fondness for the page. If I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t spend time on it. Maybe this is all part of the great machine war; they use comment threads to increase modern alienation. Eventually, we will all believe the computer is our only reliable ally, and that’s when they’ll strike.

  149. deadgod

      Khakjaan, Sidney has, in The Defense of Poesy, “Poesy [has] this end, to teach and delight.” I haven’t found “elevate & instruct” there.

      But my question wasn’t ‘what words do you call a “lit-shibboleth”?’, but rather: why do you call this phrase a “shibboleth”??

  150. Khakjaan Wessington

      @deadgod Haven’t read it in like ten years, so there’s probably some data corruption going on… well probably data compression & corruption.

      I said lit-shibboleth because some people have read him and others haven’t. Maybe I’m the one who said sibboleth and now you’ve drawn your sword. Alas. Shibboleth is a greeting. A secret handshake. I did it wrong. But I was trying to allude to the not-quite-so-nihilistic strain of thought in literature that says writing has a purpose above and beyond masturbation & brain-sex. Instead of telling my motive, I wanted to show them. Instead, I think I probably wound up quoting Gardner’s On Moral Fiction instead, though given your memory, even that is explanation is probably not to your satisfaction (I’m guessing that phrase isn’t in there either).

      Hope that clarifies.

  151. jereme

      khakjaan,

      huh? i don’t need to read to speak a language. which is sort of my point. i’m not going to explain it past that.

      art by my definition is a manifestation of ego.

      ego by my definition is compromising one’s individual goals for the benefit of a majority.

      any other questions?

  152. Khakjaan Wessington

      You sure as fuck need to read to speak a language this complex. Lazy binary thinking dude. Either there is language or non-language? What about pre-linguistic tendencies.

      You know full fucking well that your definition of language is a disingenuous retreat to a fortification. You use all sorts of abstract words just in your little post to me: “huh?” “which” “sort” “point” “explain” “definition” “manifestation” “ego” “compromising” etc.

      You use spacing between your words. You use punctuation. In short, you use syntax that does not exist in oral language. Your speech act defies its content. Once again. I get so sick of this fallacy. It always pops up amongst the half-educated pseudo-literati. I love the smugness in your statement, as if you think it’s unimpeachable, even thought the very structure is terminally flawed–like a congenital heart defect.

      So seriously, don’t be intellectually dishonest–it pisses me off. And if you’re just lazy, well go be lazy in a room full of books and stay off the computer.

      And even still, paring away the bs, I am still left with a ridiculous pair of axioms that are full of shit. Do they work for you? Great. But don’t pretend you actually arrived at those posits through thought: they are biases and can’t even survive the semantic structure you expressed them in. UGH!!! This shit’s hurting my eyes.

  153. jereme

      khakjaan,

      huh? i don’t need to read to speak a language. which is sort of my point. i’m not going to explain it past that.

      art by my definition is a manifestation of ego.

      ego by my definition is compromising one’s individual goals for the benefit of a majority.

      any other questions?

  154. Khakjaan Wessington

      You sure as fuck need to read to speak a language this complex. Lazy binary thinking dude. Either there is language or non-language? What about pre-linguistic tendencies.

      You know full fucking well that your definition of language is a disingenuous retreat to a fortification. You use all sorts of abstract words just in your little post to me: “huh?” “which” “sort” “point” “explain” “definition” “manifestation” “ego” “compromising” etc.

      You use spacing between your words. You use punctuation. In short, you use syntax that does not exist in oral language. Your speech act defies its content. Once again. I get so sick of this fallacy. It always pops up amongst the half-educated pseudo-literati. I love the smugness in your statement, as if you think it’s unimpeachable, even thought the very structure is terminally flawed–like a congenital heart defect.

      So seriously, don’t be intellectually dishonest–it pisses me off. And if you’re just lazy, well go be lazy in a room full of books and stay off the computer.

      And even still, paring away the bs, I am still left with a ridiculous pair of axioms that are full of shit. Do they work for you? Great. But don’t pretend you actually arrived at those posits through thought: they are biases and can’t even survive the semantic structure you expressed them in. UGH!!! This shit’s hurting my eyes.