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Avendale School in Exile
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Sushuri Madonna
 Dec 22, 07 - 2:54 PM |
Happiness, Language and Post-Modernism
I am mirroring this post so that anyone who wishes may discuss it. What do you do when you are happy? Bounce on the bed? Excellent idea provided there are no grown-ups around to moan about the springs. Make up happy songs? Of course, but this shroom finds that songs either come or don't come. No one can harness a butterfly or command a song. Engage in philosophical contemplation? Not everyone's first thought, but when one's mind is turning happy cartwheels it tends to want something good and solid whereon to expend all that energy. So, being rather happy over our beautiful Rosary and a wonderful new sister (see the Diaries) I fell to talking with honoured Fraulein Landgrebe about the Great Vowel Shift. I put forward the idea that the shift in vowels might have linguistically reflected the nascent change from a sattwic to a rajasic culture. She replied that there were many theories about the Vowel Shift and we should probably never know. I replied that modern academics do not understand the metaphysical basis of language. Indeed their very tenure is based on not recognising it. Well, you can drop the Vowel Shift now, because I am not going to talk about it! I just want to clarify that last remark. All modern academic theories of language are ultimately based on the Animal Thesis and the assumption that human language "evolved" from animal squeaks and grunts. Aristasians, in common with the rest of humanity, hold that language evolved "downward" from the Primordial Word, and that each of its vicissitudes in human usage must be based on laws governing the sacred nature of words in their Spiritual (or at least werdic) interactions with human culture. These laws may be too subtle for us fully to understand in all cases, but they must exist. Modern academics, by the very definition of their discipline, cannot consider the metaphysical basis of language, but can only regard it as a natural - ultimately animal - phenomenon. That is why post-modernist linguistics (like the rest of post-modernism) cannot be taken seriously. If post-modernists could reject - or even objectively criticise - the Animal Thesis, one might at least listen to their claims of representing a radical break from the previous System. But when they are harnessed like oxen to the same historically-recent and highly tendentious base-hypothesis as the bourgeois culture which they claim to "reject" and "deconstruct", how can they expect to be regarded with the scantest respect? Except of course, by those hypnotised like rabbits by the provincial dogmatics of the Modern West-Tellurian point of view. But then whom else have they ever addressed? |
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Padraica Yatsenko
Dec 23rd, 2007 - 6:55 PM |
Re: Happiness, Language and Post-Modernism
Considering my academic discipline, I am constantly studying the current West-Tellurian trend of poststructuralist communications and its subsequent birth of individualist postmodern philosophy. You may be interested to know, Madonna-chei, that there is at least one Tellurian feminist thealogist who agrees that the metaphysics of philosophy has been completely erased by the postmodern. It is reassuring to know that at least one Tellurian scholar recognises the metaphysical basis of language, and is disgusted by its demise. She is especially critical of postmodernism's passivity, and what that means for the erosion of the metaphysical and its impact on the structure of language and society. Thealogical ethicist Sharon Welch, the author of "The Feminist Ethic of Risk", states what any student of postmodernism already knows - postmodernism has arisen from the collapse of what West-Telluria calls the "grand narratives", such as Christianity, Enlightenment values, Marxism, etc. She suggests that each of these narratives were driven by the influential metaphysics in the underpinnings of its society of origin or their authors. (I would provide direct quotes, but the book is not at hand - my apologies.) Welch postulates that where metaphysics go afoul in postmodernism is the individualist notion of the "centre" of the subject, or that which makes the maid a maid as recognised by others and her culture. The metaphysical becomes suspect in postmodernism because it is understood to be constructed, not supervised by deity, which naturally is either dead or never did exist apart from cultural constructions thereof. Because academics concerning metaphysics are so defined by the limitations of language, the postmodern seeks to dispose of them out of arrogance regarding the natural "development" of language. Do you remember when we were chatting the one day, and I so unbecomingly whined that I had been reading Lacan all day in preparation for a final and was hubristically spent? Ironically enough, his writing at that point of endless swotting had become less than claptrap and was absolutely nonsensical. If that was his intent, then he has illustrated his point so clearly - that language is comprised of lack. Words are only relative to one another in effective communication, and individually they can only reflect a culturally-imposed semiotic value. Voila - the Great Vowel Shift. The postmodern rides again, and has overridden the subtleties of metaphysics which formerly governed the tenacious grip of linguistic propriety in the west. That which was governed by the unseen is chucked out the window in favour of which is one's so-called instinctive nature for rationality. Very depressing, I may say. Not exactly my typical Sunday morning fare. |
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