Ceci n'est pas un blog

In This is Not a Pipe Michel Foucault uses Rene Magritte’s artwork to explore Saussurian ideas of language in relationship to art. That is, Foucault focuses on the way Magritte unearths ruptures in written and visual language through paintings that seem somehow incongruous in terms of signifier/signified, most famously in his painting Ceci n’est pas une pipe.
In the Translator’s Introduction, James Harkness refers to Foucault’s distinction between Utopias and Heterotopias, as found in Les Mots et les Choses. “… Although [Utopias] have no real locality there is nevertheless a fantastic, untroubled region in which they are able to unfold… Heterotopias are disturbing, probably because they secretly undermine language, because they make it impossible to name this and that… [they] contest the very possibility of language at its source” (Foucault, xvii-xviii).
Harkness calls both Magritte and Foucault “cartographers of Heterotopias” (5), Foucault focusing on “historico-epistemological” critiques of language while Magritte’s paintings toy with visual contradictions. In turn, Foucault finds Ceci n’est pas une pipe to be an unraveled calligram (21), a poem written in the shape of its “topic” (60). The calligram “aspires playfully to efface the oldest oppositions of our alphabetical civilization: to show and to name; to shape and to say; to reproduce and to articulate; to imitate and to signify; to look and to read” (21). This dual-purpose sets a clever trap “as neither discourse alone nor a pure drawing could do… Cleverly arranged on a sheet of paper, signs invoke the very thing of which they speak” (22).
Magritte’s calligram is unraveled because the “common place” between the signs of writing and the lines of the image has been completely effaced. They lie separate and as much as one would like the text and image to relate or refer to each other, “No longer can anything pass between them save the decree of divorce” (29). Here we get our “heterotopia,” the place where we cannot name “this and that.” The image and text lie separate, divorced; yet we have an impulse to grasp at the myriad ways we can interpret them together.

Memory, Imagination, and Hope: The Social and Psychological Effects of the Plague

Beyond the physical manifestation of the disease, the plague profoundly affects the citizens of Oran socially and psychologically. The town's prolonged sequestering severely limits its citizens relationships with outsiders and each other by deteriorating everyone's imagination and memory. Initially, in the first stage of the plague, only the isolated people's imaginations were affected as it was difficult for them to imagine the loved ones they were cut off from, outside of the town. Eventually, after the more prolonged separation during the second stage of the plague, even the townspeople's memory diminishes (163-164). "Thus, too, they came to know the incorrigible sorrow of all prisoners and exiles, which is to live in company with a memory that serves no purpose" (66).

With this useless memory, and a depleted sense of hope, the townspeople become incapable of both friendship and love. That is, "they lived for the moment only. Indeed, the here and now had come to mean everything to them. For there is no denying that the plague had gradually killed off in all of us the faculty not of love only but even of friendship. Naturally enough, since love asks something of the future, and nothing was left us but a series of present moments" (165). Even in these "present moments" nobody was "capable of really thinking about anyone, even in the worst calamity" because there were always little distractions (flies, itches, etc.) and diligent attention is required to really think of someone, especially with a diminished sense of memory and imagination.

The Plague Presents:

Rambert's Classification of Unhelpful Bureaucrats -or-
How to Pass the Buck


Ever have a responsibility, but not want to follow through? Ever feel like people are asking way too much from you? Well my friends, don't let that trouble you any longer. Let's get ready to play PASS THE BUCK!


From The Plague, page 98:

1. Sticklers- refuse create a precedent by showing preference or favoritism
2. Consolers- contend that the present state of things can't possibly last
3. Suggestion Box- ask one to leave a brief note, promising to get to it in due course
4. Triflers (Accommodators)- offer something short of what is asked (ex. if one asks to leave, give them a place to stay)
5. Red Tape Merchants- has forms filled out which are then promptly interred in a file
6. Overworked Officials- raise arms to Heaven (cursing helps here)
7. Much Harassed Officials- simply look away
8. Traditionalists- refer people to another office or offer a different approach

Which one are YOU?

The Plague

Albert Camus' novel, The Plague, follows the outbreak of bubonic and pneumonic plague in the "thoroughly negative" town of Oran (3). The town is admittedly ugly and plain, and is ravaged by the unrelenting disease. The plague manifests itself plainly in a physical and clinical sense but it also takes on a larger, symbolic meaning for the residents of Oran. Practically all of the novel's characters have their own personal interpretations of the disease, and the narrator, Dr. Rieux, explores and develops the communal meaning of the disease as the novel progresses.

Early in the book Dr. Rieux considers the mere word "plague," and the way in which words can conjure a "whole series of fantastic possibilities" (37). In some ways, the novel centers around the possibilities and limitations of language. One significant character named Grand is socially limited and is forced to keep a lowly post because he "couldn't find his words" (42). Beyond lacking the words to move up in his profession, he is a man who dreams of writing a novel and laboriously sculpts the first sentence, to little avail. He is obsessed with painting an exact picture with words and finally gives up on any exactitude, improving the quality of his sentence by eliminating all the adjectives.

In many ways, the plague affects the community's ability to communicate with the outside world and within itself. As language is essential to communications, the plague thus has an essential effect on the community's language. For example, the plague requires the town to self-impose a break from the outside world in order to prevent the spread of the disease. In this exile, no one is allowed to leave or enter the town and no letters are allowed to pass in communication. Many people are cut off from their loved ones and are "reduced to hunting for tokens of their past communion within the compass of a ten-word telegram" (62-63).

This is an incredible idea, to hunt for tokens in severely limited language. This implied economic quality of language is seen even in the townspeople's inability to empathize with each other as they share grief. The narrator describes that although people spoke to each other of grief and tried to impart an image, "slowly shaped and proved in the fires of passion and regret, this meant nothing to the man to whom he was speaking, who pictured a conventional emotion, a grief that is traded on the market-place, mass produced" (69).

Language and meaning are not only shaped through interactions or by media, but they are also influenced by individual perspectives, i.e. where someone is coming from. One man, the stranded journalist Rambert, makes many frustrated appeals to many people in order to escape the condemned town to return to his beloved. He speaks to Dr. Rieux and accuses him of using the "language of reason, not of the heart" to justify not helping him escape. In return Rieux looks at the statue of the Republic, then replies he does "not know if he was using the language of reason, but he was using the language of facts as everybody could see them- which wasn't necessarily the same thing" (78-79).

Regardless of exactly what language Rieux used there is a clear rift in the two men's perspectives. Rambert is eventually forced to make a decision of whether to escape or to to stay and fight the plague. Ultimately he remains because of his attachment to the town. This attachment grows out of his involvement with Rieux's squads. Before his work with the squads, Rambert felt like a stranger, uninvolved and unattached but it is through his work that he realizes that "this business is everybody's business" (188). It would seem that the earlier rift was not necessarily between the language of the heart and the language of reason. The rift came from each man's social perspective and personal investment in the community. Although not directly aimed at language per se, this notion of investment would continue the economic metaphor.

Franklin's Gang: The Junto

Franklin observed that, "the affairs of the world... are carried on by parties." That is, he saw groups of people making and shaping the world that they lived in, more so than private individuals might. "Few men act for the good of their country except when they can believe that their country's good is also theirs. Fewer men still act for the good of mankind." From this Franklin suggested the need to organize a large group of "virtuous and good men from all nations into a regular body."

Franklin was always interested in organizing groups of men to get things done. He joined the Masons and had his own civic group called the Junto, "his benevolent lobby for the benefit of Philadelphia" (75). The Junto met regularly and managed to get many things done for the city. The meetings revolved around the following twenty-four questions:

1. Have you met with any thing in the author you last read, remarkable, or suitable to be communicated to the Junto? particularly in history, morality, poetry, physics, travels, mechanic arts, or other parts of knowledge?
2. What new story have you lately heard agreeable for telling in conversation?
3. Hath any citizen in your knowledge failed in his business lately, and what have you heard of the cause?
4. Have you lately heard of any citizen’s thriving well, and by what means?
5. Have you lately heard how any present rich man, here or elsewhere, got his estate?
6. Do you know of any fellow citizen, who has lately done a worthy action, deserving praise and imitation? or who has committed an error proper for us to be warned against and avoid?
7. What unhappy effects of intemperance have you lately observed or heard? of imprudence? of passion? or of any other vice or folly?
8. What happy effects of temperance? of prudence? of moderation? or of any other virtue?
9. Have you or any of your acquaintance been lately sick or wounded? If so, what remedies were used, and what were their effects?
10. Who do you know that are shortly going [on] voyages or journeys, if one should have occasion to send by them?
11. Do you think of any thing at present, in which the Junto may be serviceable to mankind? to their country, to their friends, or to themselves?
12. Hath any deserving stranger arrived in town since last meeting, that you heard of? and what have you heard or observed of his character or merits? and whether think you, it lies in the power of the Junto to oblige him, or encourage him as he deserves?
13. Do you know of any deserving young beginner lately set up, whom it lies in the power of the Junto any way to encourage?
14. Have you lately observed any defect in the laws, of which it would be proper to move the legislature an amendment? Or do you know of any beneficial law that is wanting?
15. Have you lately observed any encroachment on the just liberties of the people?
16. Hath any body attacked your reputation lately? and what can the Junto do towards securing it?
17. Is there any man whose friendship you want, and which the Junto, or any of them, can procure for you?
18. Have you lately heard any member’s character attacked, and how have you defended it?
19. Hath any man injured you, from whom it is in the power of the Junto to procure redress?
20. In what manner can the Junto, or any of them, assist you in any of your honourable designs?
21. Have you any weighty affair in hand, in which you think the advice of the Junto may be of service?
22. What benefits have you lately received from any man not present?
23. Is there any difficulty in matters of opinion, of justice, and injustice, which you would gladly have discussed at this time?
24. Do you see any thing amiss in the present customs or proceedings of the Junto, which might be amended?

It would seem that the goddess Gossip seemed to be a real motivating force in this "benevolent lobby." I am intrigued by the idea of a group of people getting together to better themselves and the world around them. Party on, Ben!

Mrs. Dogood's Dream

As a young man Franklin wrote under the pseudonym of "Mrs. Dogood" in order to get published in his brother's newspaper, the Courant (Van Doren, 20-23). Mrs. Dogood wrote to the paper concerning a recent dream in which the gates of Harvard College were kept by Riches and Poverty. "Poverty rejected those whom Riches did not recommend," and inside the gates sat a Temple of Learning, "where, for want of a suitable genius, [students] learn little more than how to carry themselves handsomely and enter a room genteelly... and from whence they return, after abundance of trouble and charge, as great blockheads as ever, only more proud and self-conceited."

Thankfully, I go to Columbia where something like this would never happen! One of Benjamin Franklin's most interesting qualities is that of his self-education. I think this is one reason why he was chosen to be the co-Narrator of Epcot's American Animatronic Extravaganza (along with Mark Twain). Franklin fully embodies the American myth of the self-made man, and throughout Van Doren's biography I found myself admiring this idea more and more. Fops beware!

Benjamin Franklin & Socrates

I just read Carl Van Doren's biography of Benjamin Franklin, one of the first incredible Americans. In the beginning the book discusses Franklin's self-education. Quite early Benny discovers the value of Socratic thought:

"Out of admiration for Socrates he gave up the disputatious habits he had formed, 'and put on the humble inquirer and doubter... I found this method safest for myself and very embarrassing to those against whom I used it; therefore I took a delight in it, practised it continually, and grew very expert in drawing people, even of superior knowledge, into concessions the consequences out of which they could not extricate themselves, and so obtaining victories that neither myself nor my cause always deserved.'" (16)

Socrates probably was forced to poison himself because of something like this! At any rate, my wife thinks I am a bit too "disputatious," so perhaps I should take a cue from my friend Ben Franklin and study up on this here Socratic method.