No one disturbs the eternal silence of the universe
Long time, no blog. It's been a while...but more about that later.
First, I'd like to tell you (all four of you) about Mikhail Bakhtin, Russian literary critic and seminal language theorist. Bakhtin sees language exclusively as the product of its social context. Words and sentences, the basic building blocks of language, manifest themselves in the form of "utterances" (written or spoken). Words have no meaning in and of themselves; they achieve meaning only through the context of the utterance. Each utterance, Bakhtin asserts, is part of a greater whole, a larger, ongoing dialogue. All our utterances occur in response to previous utterances, and in anticipation of utterances that may follow. Utterances are simultaneously reactive and proactive, never exclusively the latter.
My point? Everything I write has dialogic overtones. I haven't blogged in a long time, probably because I had nothing to which I could react. I simply had no reason to engage in what Bakhtin would call "the chain of speech communion." The chain is infinite. No one (not even me) speaks as the Biblical Adam, the first speaker to "disturb the eternal silence of the universe."
I'm not so much "creating" on this blog as I am responding and addressing. Some bloggers (and self-proclaimed "creative" writers) would have you believe that they have a "gift" for spontaneous creation, that cohesive, beautifully eloquent prose simply emanate from their brains at will. But even freewriting (journals, diaries, poetry, etc.) carries with it certain constraints, demands and expectations. These constraints - however tacit - are generally based on the the inherent reponsiveness and addressivity of the utterance. My love for Kerouac notwithstanding, I tend to wonder how "free" writing can realistically be. Some people, undeniably, have a greater aptitude for it, but good writing is not created in a vacuum. Sure, it's more romantic to think of it as such. But to some degree, every piece of writing is predicated upon utterances that preceded it.
So...call it writer's block if you must, but I'm just waiting to be inspired or provoked by an utterance. Until then, who am I to disturb the eternal silence of the universe?
First, I'd like to tell you (all four of you) about Mikhail Bakhtin, Russian literary critic and seminal language theorist. Bakhtin sees language exclusively as the product of its social context. Words and sentences, the basic building blocks of language, manifest themselves in the form of "utterances" (written or spoken). Words have no meaning in and of themselves; they achieve meaning only through the context of the utterance. Each utterance, Bakhtin asserts, is part of a greater whole, a larger, ongoing dialogue. All our utterances occur in response to previous utterances, and in anticipation of utterances that may follow. Utterances are simultaneously reactive and proactive, never exclusively the latter.
My point? Everything I write has dialogic overtones. I haven't blogged in a long time, probably because I had nothing to which I could react. I simply had no reason to engage in what Bakhtin would call "the chain of speech communion." The chain is infinite. No one (not even me) speaks as the Biblical Adam, the first speaker to "disturb the eternal silence of the universe."
I'm not so much "creating" on this blog as I am responding and addressing. Some bloggers (and self-proclaimed "creative" writers) would have you believe that they have a "gift" for spontaneous creation, that cohesive, beautifully eloquent prose simply emanate from their brains at will. But even freewriting (journals, diaries, poetry, etc.) carries with it certain constraints, demands and expectations. These constraints - however tacit - are generally based on the the inherent reponsiveness and addressivity of the utterance. My love for Kerouac notwithstanding, I tend to wonder how "free" writing can realistically be. Some people, undeniably, have a greater aptitude for it, but good writing is not created in a vacuum. Sure, it's more romantic to think of it as such. But to some degree, every piece of writing is predicated upon utterances that preceded it.
So...call it writer's block if you must, but I'm just waiting to be inspired or provoked by an utterance. Until then, who am I to disturb the eternal silence of the universe?
posted by Pj at 2:04 AM
4 Comments:
More on Bakhtin:
He was also a chain smoker. Banished from Soviet Russia and desperate for a fix during the dark days of the German invasion, Bakhtin was alleged to have smoked all 2000 pages of one of his manuscripts, effectively destroying the only remaining copy.
The lore surrounding Bakhtin seems almost apocryphal, but this supposed incident still raises some interesting questions. Is it more important to write than for your writing to exist? I mean, I stress process over product, but that's just insane.
Also...
If life were hopeless and death imminent, what do you choose... a book or a smoke?
you ARE a grad student.....
Kerouac would probably be the first to admit that his writing was born not from a roll of paper, too much coffee and copious amounts of speed but rather a collection of experiences. Of course, Capote - crafter of crafters - criticized his writing as merely "typing". Yet, given these two writers, Capote would have ended up the more obscure of the two had it not been for Blake Edward's film adaptation of "Breakfast at Tiffanys" - or maybe more apt - Audrey Hepburn. Kerouac's so-called typing, on the other hand - which luckily has never made it to the screen (although rumor has it that Coppola owns the rights) maintains it's status as one of the best travel narratives (if not THE best). Thus, process has nothing to do with the longevity of either writer in this case.
A side note: there is a contemporary writer - the name escapes me - who uses this process: she writes a chapter, destroys it, and attempts to re-write it again from scratch, because she doesn't want to be "tied" to her original inspiration. She speaks at length at how painful a process this is for her. How utterly indulgent. Why does a display of suffering give the creative process more credence?
Bakhtin sounds like an anti-existentialist linguist, which is cool. Anthropologist Clifford Geertz found a commonality across all cultures, specifically "the extreme dependence...and attainment of concepts, the apprehension and application of specific systems of symbolic meaning". That is, put simply, even when something new is introduced into a culture, humans name it and catagorize it immediately. We immediately assign a symbolic value, even if it's value seems plucked directly from the void, having no other cultural frame of reference.
The eternal silence of the universe, it seems, was meant to be disturbed.
>>Bakhtin sounds like an anti-existentialist linguist<<
I don't know that existentialism and Bakhtin are so mutually opposed. I know what you meant; existentialism focuses on the individual, on truth from within, and Bakhtin describes an external, social process.
But the idea that life exists without objective meaning is integral to both Bakhtin and existentialism. Existentialists generally believe that truth is subjective, and I'm sure that Bakhtin would agree. Meaning, for an existentialist, is not provided by natural order; we are forced to create meaning for ourselves, through actions and interpretations. Again, Bakhtin would agree. Sartre was a big existentialist, and his dictum was (more or less) "Existence precedes and rules essence," meaning that there is no pre-defined essence to humanity, except that which people make for themselves. I think the notion of constructing meaning is key to both existentialism and Bakhtin.
Of course, one of the tenets of existentialism (as I understand it) is that human beings can only be understood from the inside. Bakhtin was looking outward, not inward. So, how about:
Bakhtin = social constructionism
Existentialism = individual constructionism
However, I wouldn't call Bakhtin an "anti-existentialist," partly because I identify with both existentialism AND Bakhtin, and partly because he shares some of their ideas, namely lack of an objective reality and the notion of "making meaning."
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