Rambling and shit.

I really dislike a lot of words, they leave a bad taste in my mouth, or mind, or whatever.

God Feminist Postmodern Modernity Woman Man Poem Lover Friend Addiction Love Sex

All the big ones, really. I would like to throw out language so that I can create new words or sounds for these things, and maybe redeem them.

Wittgenstein talks about logical propositions, or assumptions, that underlie discourses. These logical propositions are constructions of language, if we start to doubt them, we would be undermining rationality, and undermining language. These foundations are like the river bed, discourse flows on top of this foundation, and the river bed slowly changes over time. The riverbed - language and the way it constructs meaning - changes over time due to the pressure of the water, but it is a slow process. And as the river bed changes, the direction and nature of our thought changes.

For Lacan, language is the only way we become social subjects, language enables the transition from the imaginary into the symbolic. The articulation of the 'I' is a social movement, and hence a linguistic movement. So if we throw out language, which is social because of its universability, then we can never really become a true 'Subject.' And the fucked up shit is that language is the only way to live with others and articulate the self as subject but it is also what alienates us from others and our own desires.

Dismissing language altogether is solipsistic. But restructuring it is daunting. In the words of my favourite prof, we can try to restructure language but we're really just moving around the same furniture in the same room. Does the meaning really change? I guess I would say yes, that the shift in emphasis from content to form results in new meaning. But...not really? I'm not sure. And how does language, its subjectivity or lack thereof, relate to intersubjectivity between individuals, and on a grander scale, between cultures that use different languages? Translation is hard enough between two people speaking the same language, never mind different languages.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that language is so necessary and lovely at times but it also turns around and fucks you in the ass when you least expect it. He's my prison guard and I give him free blow jobs all the time. Because language is definitely a man.

All of this is motivated by my reading of Luce Irigaray. She brings gender into the equation. Interesting shit. I still need to wrap my mind around it.

On a lighter note, things that have made my day a happy one:

great sex
little italy and college street on a sunny weekday morning
marvelous italian bakery full of bitter, dignified old women
strawberry custard tarts and fresh chocolate croissants
shooting zombies (left 4 dead...video game splendour)
margaret christakos (top 5 poets)
of montreal (sunlandic twins)

quote of the day:
"we made love like a pair of black wizards, you freed me from the past, you fucked the suburbs out of me"
-Kevin Barnes