[lit-ideas] Re: The Order of Aurality
- From: Phil Enns <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2012 08:48:46 -0500
In response to:
"There is no music before language."
Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology
Donal wrote:
"The context and meaning of this is not clear, but taken as a bare
statement it seems to belong to that category of self-regarding dogmas
that may have special appeal to students of language: dogmas that
language is 'fundamental', or 'primary' or that language is 'central'
or the 'royal road' to understanding ..."
Derrida is critical of any attempt to uncover something that is
'fundamental', 'primary' or 'central'. So, for example, he criticizes
Heidegger's talk of language as being one more form of onto-theology,
that is, the search for something that is central or fundamental for
understanding what is. Of course, Derrida was not himself immune from
this temptation as can be seen in his use of the term 'differance'.
It seems to me that in the above quote, Derrida is not suggesting that
everything is language, but rather arguing against the standard
understanding of language as the communication of ideas from the mind
of one person to another. To this end, Derrida focuses on the
iterability of signs, the way in which signifiers like words can
maintain meaning while at the same time being used in novel and
unexpected ways. To cross threads, we can read Shakespeare today even
though we may not be certain who Shakespeare was, and we can
appreciate Dante's Inferno even though we are not 14th century
Italians, or Christians, for that matter. In short, while
intentionality is a necessary part of language use, signification is
equally necessary. This, however, would expand our understanding of
what constitutes language use, including even music, with its
intentionality and repetition of notes. Music is possible only if
intentionality and signification are possible.
So, yes, we can consider birds as using language when they sing
insofar as we can discern intentionality and repetition. This would be
in contrast to, for example, the burbling of a brook or the whistling
of the wind through the branches of a tree. These sounds may be
beautiful, but we would call it music only in a metaphorical sense.
Burbling and whistling,
Phil Enns
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