In last week’s class, I believe it was made obvious that the potential to understand the writings of Deleuze are directly related to our ability to decode the meanings of the words he uses. A task that, at first glance, may seem simple due to the fact that the majority of words are commonly known and defined already. But, Deleuze does not use words as they have always been defined. He recreates words as he recreates ideas. The inherent limit of language is made apparent when we realize that the meanings of words are based on lived experience and creative constructions and not on official dictionaries.
A definition of a word is not a concrete thing. It is a concept. And whereas things can exist in the world, ideas can only exist in the mind. Nietzcshe states, “A word becomes a concept insofar as it simultaneously has to fit countless more or less similar cases” and follows with, “every concept arises from the equation of unequal things.1” What a word is can be summed up as an analogy or metaphor that attempts to translate a virtual idea into a physical code that allows a thought to be passed from person to person.
Even clearly defined words hold within them the potential to be many things and not specific things. The word “leaf” can create two very different ideas in the minds of two different people, and all the words in existence follow that same mold. By eliminating the details, we create metaphors and analogies that at best convey a general idea of the thought and at worst convey gross distortions of them, if anything at all.
To demonstrate this, we just have to look at Deleuze’s use of the word Image within his writings. Though the dictionary definition is so obvious I have no need to quote it here, when we attempted to clearly define it in class we where faced with a much greater challenge. The best we could do at the time was Stamatia’s great attempt “Though it can’t exactly tell you what it is, I can tell you what it is not ...”
1. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche’s notebooks of the early 1870’s, Amherst, N.Y: Humanity Books, 1999
2 comments:
Que le sens des mots soit basé sur l'expérience vécue et/ou soit le résultat d'une construction créative ne m'apparaît pas comme une limite du langage, mais me semble au contraire pointer vers les potentialités presque infinies que recèle le langage. Chaque mot porte en lui une histoire et un usage courant qui peuvent être, et ils le sont la plupart du temps, limitatifs; décider de mettre un mot sur un concept, sur une pensée, consiste dans son essence même en une opération qui impose des limites, qui circonscrit, qui referme. Ça ne signifie par pour autant que le langage lui-même soit destiné à rester prisonnier des limites inhérentes aux mots.
Il me semble que Deleuze nous propose justement une façon de penser le langage autrement, autant par les idées qu’il développe que par le langage qu’il crée pour développer ces idées. Je ne peux m’empêcher de revenir sur son idée du ‘tout’ (L’image-mouvement, 19-21), un mot dont la signification même, dont la définition même, se rapporte à une imposition de limites. Deleuze parvient néanmoins, en ayant certes recours à des métaphores, voire à des simplifications, à construire un tout qui n’est plus fermé, mais ouvert, un tout qui contient en lui-même la possibilité de se transformer sans toutefois être un amalgame de matière indéterminée (une idée qui a traditionnellement été opposée au tout).
Sans vouloir faire une analogie simplificatrice, j’ai l’impression que l’on peut penser le langage comme ce ‘tout’ malléable, au sein duquel s’établissent des relations qui ouvrent des systèmes en apparence clos à la transformation, les mots étant au langage ce que ces ensembles clos sont au tout. En ce sens, on pourrait voir le langage comme une force qui 'ouvre' les mots et redéploie leur sens.
I agree with you Genevieve, for the most part. My comment is more about the modes of thought that result due to a type of misunderstanding of the scope of language.
If we would understand that a word is in fact a reification of a thought, then we would make the effort to move away from the word as soon as we could so as to not be chained by its concrete meaning.
I can't remember who said "we must be careful not to mistake the moon for the finger that points to it!" (probably misquoted)
For me a word points to an idea. An idea that is infinite in the mind that thought it, gets limited in the language that transmits it, and then gets re-created and abstracted in the mind that receives it. And, further more, it is within those intervals that things become really creative.
I am not saying that language is useless, just that it is not necessarily the basis for all understanding. It is a tool and nothing more.
Also, I agree, that with Deleuze we get pushed into re-evaluating our understanding of words and concepts. I believe he makes it obvious, but we would do well to remember it even when reading the dictionary.
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