Saussure

     So this is very late but alas, it is here now.  I have been thinking a good deal about Saussure and what we talked about in class on Wednesday.  I do believe that this is important in what we have been talking about, because, after all we are dealing with language right.  Reading this article made me think about several things. 

     One.  That what this essay is telling us seems to go without saying (no pun intended) but on the contrary it makes you think about something you probably otherwise would not.  I think that in order for us to understand what Guattari and Deleuze were trying to say we can look at Saussure to explain it.  In order for Guattari and Deleuze’s theory or idea to work we would have to bare witness to a breaking down of everything that Saussure has to say, a complete revamping of language and its process and in fact a complete revamping of the idea of thought in itself.  For their system to work their would have to be a sort of “hybrid human” raised in complete separation from everything that exists and is tangible, and that human would have to create his own language and thought process and base it on nothing it sees.  In fact that would in itself still be based on some sort of structure, the natural structure of human consciousness.  So in essence what I am trying to say is that Guattari and Deleuze’s theory could not possibly work on this planet because everything is based on something else, even when you look at the make up of the natural world.  Their theory is interesting and the end product would surely be startling, but it would never work.

    Two.  I am thinking Nietzsche.  (I can here the hopeless “hurrays!” from here.)  He pointed out that when someone says a word everyone thinks of that word to what it means for them.  I say “tree” and everyone in their head pictures a different tree shape or form, spruce, oak, white pine, the tree you played in as a child.  However, according to Saussure we can still communicate because we have the basic principle of knowing the same things about trees and what they are.  Isn’t that fabulous.  Now I see why I went into English.

      Three.  I am thinking of the old Buddhist prover - “Do not think of a (place word here).”  You are going to think of what that word represents.

       Four.  I have recently read about cataract surgery which restored seeing to people who have been blind since birth.  They have no concept of depth or form.  And no way to describe distance and shadow.  They described a man as looking like a tree.  And also that they had no way of understanding what moving from place to place was.  A three minute walk or a five hour train ride seemed the same distance to them, because they were not used to being able to judge what was passing them and then translate that into distance and movement.  In other words we have words that label things and those things which we label we can visualize, and in seeing things, or words, pass us as we move we can calculate distance and time.  Isn’t learning fun.