I decided to delay my blog about Pam and Doug’s presentations due to the huge volume of them coming at the same time. Hopefully I can offer some different thoughts on them than have already been stated.
Derrida says that responsibility is linked to religion. Doug expounds upon this in his paper, saying that this is due to the mystery of religion. Thus, responsibility is related to mystery. He links this with Pierson’s claim that the body is an object of mystery and scientific knowledge, which compels criminals to take responsibility for their misdeeds. In this way, both the mystery and physical evidence surrounding the death of Henry VI make him an empty signifier to be filled with whatever meaning people will impose upon him.
This discussion reminds me a bit of Moses Maimonides from way back when. Maimonides is the mystery man. I believe that he would be interested in the contradictions that happen between the various posthumous interpretations of the death of Henry IV.
First, Henry was insane, which meant that the queen often had to rule for him. Eventually ended up imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he died. It was suggested to be either depression or murder. Because the wounds bled in the presence of Gloucester, he was believed to be the murder. So how did that crazy man turn into the guy on the Pilgrimage badges? How did he become remarkable, compassionate, one who drives away evil and heals the bodily and spiritually sick, the twice crowned of kingdoms, freeing the pilgrims.
Maimonides would look at this contradiction as a true speculator. What is the “intended meaning” of Henry VI? Who determines the meaning of a person or a corpse? The existentialists would say that his actions in life define him. Or would they? Maybe it is the way that our actions surrounding his death define him that matter now. The real Henry VI is the one that we construct in our culture today. Maimonides, however, would be wary of pinning down any interpretation of a person. He would distrust it. I think it is fair to look at Henry VI as a parable. Many words have been added to him and not all of them describe the real meaning of his person. As Maimonides says, “In a parable very many words are to be found, not every one of which adds something to the intended meaning. They serve rather to embellish the parable and to render it more coherent or to conceal further the intended meaning; hence the speech proceeds in such a way as to accord with everything required by the parable’s external meaning” (171).
The external meaning of Henry VI is the way that his corpse has been interpreted by the world and the effect that the interpretation has upon people. Based on the assertion made linking death and mystery to responsibility, the external meaning would be responsibility. In order to continue to propagate responsibility, the speech must continue to proceed “in such a way as to accord with everything required to continue the establishment of mystery and knowledge that leads to a reverent people. To a person immersed in a culture used to viewing Henry VI as a saintly figure, it would take the emblematic flash of lightening to awaken them to the truth about the true person of Henry VI.
Interesting thought that Maimonides would analyze people the same way as analyzing text. At first, I felt like this was imposing too much modern thought on Maimonides, but it occurred to me that if he is studying the Bible, he already IS studying real people-- so considering Henry VI as a historical text (as we do today), it actually is a pretty valid (and interesting) comparison.
ReplyDeleteI like this thought--it's an interesting (and valid, I think) interpretation of Maimonides. If we follow this logic, though, then should we consider ourselves as texts? After all, if the people of the Bible and Henry VI and other figures from history are analyzed as text, then all people should be considered historical texts. But is that really applicable to a person who's still living? Technically the text isn't complete yet. But then, is any text really complete?
ReplyDeleteI think you could pretty easily call us texts-- in fact I think Bridger sort of proposed that in his talk about the internet and the way we are all made up of memes. Anyone who argues that we are all made up of a particular type of symbol (like, for instance, this guy: http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1932) is making that kind of argument. If something is constructed, isn't it, in a sense, a text?
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, you could (and I think I probably would) argue that the answer is no, that argument is mostly invalid about living people because the reason the people of history are a text is that they are actually written into a text; we read about them. Therefore, how we know celebrities and other written figures is yes, a text, but maybe not how we know the actual person. (With Facebook, maybe everyone has constructed a text of themselves?) Or, alternatively, the person isn't a text, but we will never know the person herself, only the text of the person, because of the flaws in our perceptive system which cause us always to be interpreting, never fully knowing.
Essentially, I would say there is probably today a text OF everyone-- particularly in what I'll call conventional societies due to legal documentation-- but that doesn't mean that text IS that person.
That does raise the question of whether a dead person is now only a text or if that person still exists in its full form somewhere.
To clarify: the reason that I was using Henry VI as a text, is because Doug's paper was dealing with the body as something that is interpreted. Thus I started with that assumption that the body is a signifier in this case. I guess the people as texts thing is also then implied. I think that people are texts in the sense that they are being interpreted. They have an intended meaning that no one (even the person) can really know. Each person interprets all others around them in relation to themselves. I think that goes beyond what I was getting at, though.
ReplyDeleteCaitlin, you brought up another interesting question/thought: "With Facebook, maybe everyone has constructed a text of themselves?" Again, I think this can go back to Bridger's talk about memes; in a sense, the Internet allows us to textualize ourselves like never before. This isn't to say people weren't textualized while they were still living in the past--I think Pam's discussion about Gaskell and her autograph collection is enough to prove otherwise--but a significant part of our lives are dictated and understood by what we see and how we are viewed on the Internet. (Aubrey and her lack of Facebook might be the exception; then again, she's still blogging here, so it's still applicable.)
ReplyDeleteFor me, it all comes back to Saussure's signified/signifier relationship. In one sense, if everything is arbitrary in that sense, then in a way, we can never know anyone else (as Caitlin suggests) because the ideas and words we use to describe another person are arbitrary. If we continue in that vein, then perhaps we might not ever even really get to know ourselves, either. Even Descartes' basic assumption that Cogito, ergo sum could be considered arbitrary because of the fact that it uses signs to represent a signifier.
On the other hand, that seems (to me) to be counterintuitive to what I sense and know about myself and others. I know that when Pax meows in a certain tone, she's showing annoyance; I know that when my brother offers to share his pizza with me, he's showing affection. The argument I just stated in the last paragraph would argue that I can't know that, even though I would assert that I do.
Perhaps this is getting too philosophical, as it were. But it's something to think about. (Would it be valid if I told a psychologist that my study of literary theory is what lead to an identity crisis?)
Jacqui-- I figured we were extrapolating. :)
ReplyDeleteMorgan-- Maybe you can't know exactnesses but you can know generalities? You know your brother loves you but you don't know the exact essence of that love? Alternatively, there is also sites like the one Sarah mentioned in her post, where many of the wives think they know their husbands (consider the wife who calls her husband "trustworthy") and yet they do not at all. What if your brother is offering to share pizza to hide the sounds of the pet hamster he is hiding in his closet?
Jacqui,
ReplyDeleteYour internal/external differentiation is interesting, but may be an illusion. What makes the reputation of the corpse internal or external? To what? To whom?
@Morgan: "Even Descartes' basic assumption that Cogito, ergo sum could be considered arbitrary because of the fact that it uses signs to represent a signifier."
ReplyDeleteThat's a little different; here, Descartes is proving that for something to reference itself, that thing must exist. With the cogito, Descartes isn't showing that his actual self exists, but merely that there is some essence ("a thinking thing," in his words) to which his statement refers. Descartes does not claim that "cogito ergo sum" alone proves a sustained selfhood; this is why he continues his positive epistemological and metaphysical project throughout the rest of the Meditations. In sum, the arbitrariness of the words themselves is irrelevant; what matters is merely that they refer to something.
Doug, I was struggling with that, which is partly why I ended up writing about it. I am really not sure about that. Perhaps there is no internal meaning to a body, only the meanings that it is invested with.
ReplyDelete