{"id":9806,"date":"2012-11-18T14:20:08","date_gmt":"2012-11-18T19:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=9806"},"modified":"2012-11-18T16:46:08","modified_gmt":"2012-11-18T21:46:08","slug":"pluth-lalangue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2012\/11\/18\/pluth-lalangue\/","title":{"rendered":"pluth lalangue 4\/4"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pluth, Ed. An Adventure in the Order of Things: Jean-Claude Milner on lalangue and Lacan’s Incomplete Materialism<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Lalangue<\/span>, Milner argues, is not unstructured and without reason. It is structured and, according to Milner in L\u2019amour de la langue<\/em>, its structure marks the presence of a kind of “knowledge in the real.”<\/span> This is what \u201cdooms\u201d language \u201cto equivocity\u201d (L\u2019amour22). The structure or \u201creason\u201d intrinsic to lalangue<\/span> can even be considered extra-linguistic<\/strong> since it involves things like resemblances among sounds, or, in writing, the physical arrangement of letters.<\/strong> It is \u201cextra-linguistic,\u201d therefore, on the condition that language is thought of along the lines of Saussurean linguistic structure.\u00a0 Milner writes that \u201chomophonies, homosemies, palindromes, anagrams, tropes, and all the imaginable figures of association\u201d are the effects of lalangue<\/span>, and are due to nothing other than the materiality or physicality of languages, and not to that in languages which is involved in the creation of meanings<\/span> \u2014 such as relations and differences among signs (L\u2019amour104). On Milner\u2019s reading, lalangue<\/span> is, therefore, also a term for what it is of language that escapes and exceeds formalization, and it therefore presents a challenge to the science of linguistics.<\/p>\n

The way back to dialectical materialism?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Can a materialism that would not be eliminative or reductionist, but instead dialec-tical (because it posits a real transformation of being by something like thinking), and, in turn, a real influence on thought from being (if not in the domain of the hard sciences then in that of the old \u201chuman\u201d sciences) \u2026 can such a project do anything with the idea of a \u201cknowledge in the real,\u201d as odd as this sounds, and as outr\u00e9<\/em> as such a thing would be for most types of materialism? If Hegelian idealism is to be avoided \u2014 if there is to be no super-subject who knows, no spirit or mind who is driving things\u2014and yet thinking and being are to be aligned in a way that is more vig-orous than what occurs in the natural sciences or in mathematics itself, should this relation be put in such a way that there can be said to be a “knowledge in the real”<\/span>?<\/p>\n

The “knowledge in the real”<\/span> allegedly contained in lalangue<\/span>, according to Milner\u2019s reading in L\u2019amour de la langue, involved an ordered appearance of phonemes; an appearance that is not guided according to the dictates of sense and classical Saussurean differential relations among signs, and thus also not in accordance with a language-user\u2019s intent, or with what a language-user wants to say. This order is guided simply by resemblances among sounds, by homophonies, or by other physical factors. Structuralist linguistics did much to teach us that a speaker says more (or less) than what she wants to say: a linguistic system generates a surplus of meaning. There is, in language use, a production of meaning that occurs in indifference to anything like the conscious intent of a speaker. This perspective affects how the relation between thinking and language should be conceived, and it helps to refute the idea that there is a clearly articulated thought that precedes its expression in language.<\/p>\n

Rather, it is the case that being put into a form of expression gives a thought or an intention a clarity it did not previously have. This is why we continue to work with and alter the form of expression, and is why we feel that our thoughts have sometimes not been adequately expressed: not because the form of expression (language) fails to portray them accurately, but because what is expressed is itself, if not inexhaustible, then at least vague enough and indeterminate enough to allow for repeated and multiple expressions. Here, linguistic form not only forms content (meaning) but indeed makes (much of) it.<\/p>\n

It is no wonder then that structuralist approaches to language were of interest to psychoanalysis. Lalangue<\/span> shows us instead a kind of stupidity proper to language, something that concerns not the relation between thinking and language, and not the generation of unintended meanings, but rather a level of no meaning at all. A zombie-like level of language<\/strong>, the level of language\u2019s materiality itself, the phoneme or grapheme; a level responsible for homophonic insistences (one sound influencing the sounds that appear elsewhere), resemblances, etc., which insist within or alongside what is meant, running parallel to what is said. As we have seen, Milner at one point\u00a0 wanted to call the structure that guides such articulations in lalangue<\/span> a “knowledge in the real”<\/span> (as opposed to the knowledge in\/of the symbolic that classical linguistic structure would be). In L\u2019\u0152uvre clairehe reconsiders this, because what goes on in the real no longer deserves the name of thinking. I will go over his case for this in a moment.<\/p>\n

What Milner overlooks, however, is the fact that the dimension of lalangue<\/span> can, of course, serve as a basis for the development of potential linguistic content, and for thinking. But here it is not a matter of there being, first, a relatively undetermined, vague thought that is the seed for continuing formation, precision, in words, as is the case for the relation between language and thinking.<\/p>\n

In lalangue<\/span> we see how the matter of language itself can inspire further adventures in thought. If Saussure is right about Saturnian poetry, we would have an entire genre based on this dimension. But, as I will explain in a moment, something as simple as punning shows us the same thing. And beyond punning, everyday language use contains aspects of the same thing. What I am getting at, then, is the idea that lalangue<\/span> is a positive factor in, and a genuine contributor to, the creation of thought<\/strong>. Lalangue<\/span> shows us how an adventure at the level of things can feed an adventure at the level of thought\u2014exactly the sort of relation between thinking and being<\/strong> that a dialectical materialism is about.<\/p>\n

What is going on in lalangue<\/span> can be described as a zombie-like non-thinking.<\/strong> But punning is something else, and the punning during the silent seminars is like a folding in of lalangue<\/span> into sense, an exploitation of it for sense, for thinking . . . or a\u00a0 forcing of sense from lalangue<\/span>, such that any purity in the domain of the<\/strong> real<\/span> is not respected at all<\/strong>. (And isn\u2019t this one of the lessons of the knots anyway \u2014 the interweaving of all three orders, the abolition of the distinctness of any one of them from the others?)<\/p>\n

We are back to what was always Lacan\u2019s violation of Wittgenstein\u2019s prohibition. The purity of the ineffable is rejected<\/strong>. Milner might take this assertion to be, in fact, a negative conclusion about theory and language \u2014 because it would seem to sanction saying whatever, presumably. Yet Milner\u2019s interpretation of lalangue<\/span> in Lacanian theory points to just what a philosophical materialism needs.<\/p>\n

Lalangue<\/span> shows us a de-individualized<\/strong> “knowledge in the real,”<\/span> and a link between thinking and being that is more vigorous than what Quentin Meillassoux\u2019s interesting and important project gives us<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

One needs to look outside the hard sciences to find this, to what used to be called the \u201chuman sciences.\u201d Not only linguistics, but economics and, of course, psychoanalysis need to be considered by such a project as well, as cases in which an interaction between thinking and being indeed takes place.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pluth, Ed. An Adventure in the Order of Things: Jean-Claude Milner on lalangue and Lacan’s Incomplete Materialism Lalangue, Milner argues, is not unstructured and without reason. It is structured and, according to Milner in L\u2019amour de la langue, its structure marks the presence of a kind of “knowledge in the real.” This is what \u201cdooms\u201d … Continue reading “pluth lalangue 4\/4”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-badiou","category-dia-mat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9806"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9814,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9806\/revisions\/9814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}