Dialogue as Exclusion of the Third via Noise Introduction

Serres Hermes I

See Serres, Hermes 66-67: [doCtored with typographiC noise]

Following scientific tradition, let us Call noise the set of these phenomena of interferenCe that become obstaCles to CommuniCation. Thus, CaCography is the noise of graphiC form or, rather, the latter Comprises an essential form and a noise that is either essential or oCCasional. To write badly is to plunge the graphiC message into this noise which interferes with reading, which transforms the reader into an epigraphist. In other words, simply to write is to risk jumbling a form. In the same way, to CommuniCate orally is to risk losing meaning in noise. . . .[C]ommuniCation is a sort of game played by two interloCutors Considered as united against the phenomena of interferenCe and Confusion, or against individuals with some stake in interrupting [67] CommuniCation. These interloCutors . . . battle together against noise. The CaCographer and the epigraphist, the CaCophonous speaker and the auditor, exChange their reCiprocal roles in dialogue, where the sourCe becomes reCeption, and the reCeption sourCe (aCCording to a given rhythm). . . . To hold a dialogue is to suppose a third man and to seek to exClude him; a suCCessful CommuniCation is the exClusion of the third man. The most profound dialeCtical problem is not the problem of the Other, who is only a variety — or a variation — of the Same, it is the problem of the third man. We might Call this third man the demon, the prosopopoeia of noise.

Okay

And so for day 2041
15.07.2012

Lief To Be Alive

Charles Bernstein in the introduction to Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed Word in a description come injunction invites the reader to enter into a site of openness.

The most resonant possibilities for poetry as a medium can be realized only when the performance of language moves from human speech to animate, but transhuman, sound: that is, when we stop listening and begin to hear; which is to say, stop decoding and begin to get a nose of the sheer noise of language.

This getting of a nose for noise leads me to quote three lines from Barbara Carey ("flawed by belief" in Undressing the Dark) where the task of pronouncing "live" with long or short vowel almost causes the reader to stumble and in turn tumble in a new-found appreciation for the folds of the semantic field.

because to believe
is to be live

is to out live

This yoking of faith to being alive through minute shifts in sounds can be imagined as a constant refreshment. See "Pips in a Watermelon" The Jupiter Collisions Lachlan Mackinnon.

[...] But if faith is a way
it's a perpetual beginning, a setting forth
like that of words into the unknown
minutes and years in which they will disclose
their meaning [...]

"A nose for noise" involves being sensitive to the gap between the "unknown" and the "unknown minutes and years". Dilution. Evolution. Concentration.

And so for day 1129
15.01.2010

Noise Forms Poetry

poetry is born in noise

That is not quite what she said/wrote. In the Afterword to The Crisp Day Closing on My Mind which is itself given a title: "Those Mysteries of Which We Cannot Plainly Speak".

Poetry always involves play, getting pleasure out of noise one produces; poetry also usually involves a belief in the power of these noises. Perhaps not in the power of these noises to produce food, but perhaps in their power to uplift the spirit, enlarge perception, influence opinion. And perhaps sometimes in their power to evoke complexities and mysteries of which we cannot plainly speak. But poetry begins as noise.

M. Travis Lane (Laurier Poetry Series, 2007). And from Form. A Series (Book Thug, 2011) by Mark Truscott I hereby quote and invert two paragraph/stanzas.

Truth is impossible without an acknowledgement of noise.

FORMAL DISTORTION is characterized by noise. Noise is a hint toward the mechanisms of form. Noise is in fact form's ground and necessary condition.

And so for day 831
23.03.2009

Generated Degenerating

In reading the mass of notes and musings that make up The Anti-Oedipus Papers by Félix Guattari, I come to a clearing where it begins to make sense (which is of course in Guattari's world a way station and not a final destination). I think it is the comparative framework that gives this paragraph its coherence and cogency. He is contrasting two great linguists.

For Hjelmslev, there is no interpreted system, only interpretable systems. So there is always a possible opening, a passage from non-sense to meaning [sens]. There is never any closure back onto semantic or grammatical "normality." And then there is Chomsky: the inherency, the realism of the state of a given language, the mechanism of engenderment, etc. What counts for Chomsky is for deep structures to rejoin real performances. And not for deep machines to produce non-sense, breaks and history.

In this translation by Kélina Gotman, I am particular taken by the implied syntagm: non-sense, breaks, history. It becomes almost possible to introduce a program: generate noise, cause disruption, alter history.

And so for day 712
24.11.2008