Idiom and the differend

I have worked with the notion of “idiom” rather than “theory” or “knowledge” because I want to defer the possibility of any metalanguage that is not convertible into the language it describes along with the scenes upon which that form of language is enacted. Center study could be seen as a kind of metalanguage, converting all discourses into mimesis and deferral just psychoanalysis converts all discourse into desire and repression or historical materialism converts all discourse into base and superstructure. “Idiom,” for that matter, could be seen as a metalinguistic labeling of all forms of discourse. This would mean work within center study would be a kind of deconstruction, always dismantling metalanguages while always producing new ones to be dismantled as well. This dynamic is what kept deconstruction in business, because if metaphysics could be dismantled once and for all, deconstruction would become obsolete. There’s a kind of narrative problem here, because in either case (metalanguage or deconstruction) we all know how things turn out in the end. For center study, metaphysics or metalanguage is, more specifically, the metalanguage of literacy studied by David Olson, which means our engagement with metalanguage is scenic: the metalanguage of literacy creates an apparent non-scene that is really a disciplinary scene engaged in inquiry into language, that is, how to package or compress other scenes into speech on a particular scene. All the metalinguistic concepts, of which I have always focused most on the mental verbs (assume, suppose, indicate, suggest, etc.) are means of replacing the mimetic reproduction of reported speech with judgments about the stance with which that speech on the other scene was accompanied. The scene upon which this compression takes place is reflected in the idiom of “classic prose,” as studied by Francis-Noel Thomas and Mark Turner, which is predicated on the appearance of writer and reader being situated on the same scene and being able to point to what will be affirmed to be the same thing on that scene. I call this scene an apparent non-scene because it is not acknowledged as a scene, reliant upon scenic design aimed at bringing certain objects into view (or within hearing, or touch, etc.) but, rather, presented as a transparent view of the thing. It’s possible to be clear, as classic prose insists upon, but one always obscures at the same time. “Idiom” marks this oscillation of clarity and opacity, which is always pedagogical, enabling someone to see what you see, while indicating what one is attending from in order to attend to. Classic prose involves a forgetting of learning (try and capture those moments where “not understanding” became “understanding” and hold them in memory—I’m not sure it is possible) which the idiom, by twisting our discourse in some way, makes us remember. The originary scene or, even more, the originary hypothesizing on the originary scene, is the entrance into the idiom, which is re-enacted whenever we use language. Center study assumes that any tracing of any idiom to its possibility and emergence will lead us back to the originary hypothesis, while anthropomorphics assumes that the originary hypothesis can only find its proof of work and concept in the jarring of an idiom. Anthropomorphics, then, is not so interested in reducing or explaining, metalanguage like, any discourse to the abstract concepts developed in the center study factory as in infiltrating other discourses and having them approximate or become successor discourses to the originary sign. If we were all deliberately replicating the originary event in every utterance we’d all be speaking in constantly novel ways that would need to be apprehended in the stream of things, and this is what the concept of anthropomorphics is indicating. The more elaborate conceptual architectures I have worked on and promised (originary grammar) are really just technological means of bridging such approximations—creating a little eddy within the current to get a view and chart a course.

I am indebted for my use of “idiom” to Jean-Francois Lyotard, who began speaking that way, I believe, in his The Differend, which also introduces the concept given in the title. A differend is a case, a dispute, wherein the two sides enact idioms that have no common measure and so any judgment will necessarily be an injustice because it will fail to account for one of the idioms at stake. Lyotard framed this, not surprisingly in the 1970s, in terms of the Holocaust, on the one hand, and disputes of native land claims, on the other—prototypical victimary problems (and Lyotard’s responses are fairly standard victimary ones, regarding acknowledging the other, etc.). But with a concept like the differend it’s better to untether it from such inspirations or instigations and apply it across the board—what if every case involves a differend? Judgment becomes, not impossible, but always problematic. There is a very powerful stream of the Axial Age working its way through the differend, as its prototypical cases, like the crucifixion and the trial of Socrates, involved some kind of differend, where we have an injustice unintelligible on the terms of the existing justice system (without which, though, “injustice” would be meaningless). But differends remain an anomaly for Axial Age institutions—maybe, then, Ve/ortexicality is predicated upon institutionalization of the differend itself, as a way of keeping in mind the way the juridical is bounded by the disciplinary on one side and the nomos on the other. The differend enables rather than paralyzing judgment insofar as the contending idioms and not only the judgment are ledgerized, that is, recorded and made available as a so far unactivated precedent. Maybe the native understanding of land use, incommensurate with modern notions of property rights, gets factored or priced in to some later question of land rights that only fits troublingly into the established legal order. We would be looking for ways to balance the earlier injustice without simply repudiating the case (in which, we can assume, a kind of justice was also done) or for that matter making any kind of reparation to the party in that case (the parties to the case may no longer exist and the balancing may be incommensurate with any kind of recognizable reparation)—the victim in that case will have made a donation of his resentment to the center insofar as we record it as such, and if that original party would not quite have volunteered or been satisfied with this, well, that becomes part of the record as well. Every balancing leaves some things unbalanced.

One instigation leading me to examine “idiom” at some length is some reading I’ve been doing regarding the “lashon hara,” or “evil speech,” in Judaism, something I was vaguely aware of previously (Philip Roth has a Mossad officer deliver a long, hilarious and informative speech on lashon hara near the end of his Operation Shylock). Lashon Hara is a very sustained inquiry into forbidden forms of speech, even if the forbidding rarely seems to cross over from moral to legal territory. Essentially anything that might put a person in a bad light, or lead others to see him in a bad light is off limit—even giving someone credit under certain circumstances—say, if you could be taken to imply that you’re giving him credit for one thing so as to imply he deserves blame for something else—is problematic. It’s a very rigorous inquiry which greatly enhances sensitivity to interpersonal relations. The best way I could think of summing it up would be to start with the legal categories dealing with damage done through speech, like defamation, incitement, and fraud, and backing up from legally provable instances of such violations to any speech that might conceivably have ramifications leading to effects analogous to the effects produced by any of the above. I hypothesize that the attention given to this concept in Judaism derives both from the vulnerable status of Jewish communities, leading to a kind of training in being careful what you say, but also the need for solidarity in such a community, so that giving offense unless absolutely necessarily is to be avoided. But most of the internal arguments seem to follow from the imperative to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” This resonates with my interest in academic discourse, with its emphasis on maintaining a space of shared inquiry and demonstrating an awareness that one will never have the final answer, leading to an emphasis on hedging and making concessions to positions you disagree with. These idioms, you might say, depend upon a fairly closed space where open expressions of hostility and confrontational stances can be excluded, but also, perhaps, entail making a bet on the proposition that “a soft answer turneth away wrath.”

But on the other side of the spectrum of idioms there is what I’ve referred to as “originary satire,” which calls for an uncompromising exposure of everyone in their rush to grab the central object or as much of it as they can get a hold of and carry away, with all the side looks and elbowing and self-justifying and self-pitying this stance involves. Originary satire seeks to freeze everyone pre-deferral, both overcome by and oblivious to mimetic contagion. Originary satire is clearly lashon hara, which means I have a differend to work with here. Originary satire (my starting point here was an extended bout of reading Wyndham Lewis, but I don’t think he would share my understanding of satire), though, to be real, must include the satirist himself, and therefore must inform the “style” of the satire. This would differentiate originary satire from other modes, which tend to rely upon a kind of authority that allows the satirist to take a “prosecutorial” stance toward his subjects. Originary satire is rude, uncouth, uninhibited, lacking in “empathy,” while still including a kind of “fairness.” I’ll describe what this would look like while remaining cognizant that I know of no writer who has ever actually done this (Lewis, it seems to me, leaves himself out of the picture, but I may be doing him an injustice insofar as he might fit the criterion I’m about to give). Originary satire is “over the top”—it’s “too much,” showing everyone in the most exposed, compromised, humiliating posture imaginable but this very “style” leaves the satirist in the same condition. Past a certain point showing how ridiculous everyone else is must make you ridiculous as well—your own resentments, your own demands for centrality must come to the fore. (Maybe Melville does something like this in Pierre, or The Confidence Man—or even “Bartleby.”) And at that point originary satire becomes, not so much a gesture of deferral in itself as a prelude and invitation to one.

The lesson in both cases—language as layered, self-labeling deferral; language as occupying the boundary where risk of mimetic melee touches a possible gesture of deferral—is that putting someone else at the center implies the possibility of being placed in the center yourself in turn. The best, or most responsible, utterance, does both simultaneously, or, more precisely, allows for both options. If you’re going to tear someone to shreds know that you’re going to been seen, red in tooth and claw, knives out, and regardless of how justified your attack is your investments which will exceed just doing justice will be on display—so, put them on display in an edifying manner. We could think of this as a kind of arbitrage: you center the other and yourself simultaneously for maximum deferral power. And in this case, the moral architecture of lashon hara is really originary satire inverted because it implicitly acknowledges that the human in its entirely is a gigantic sore spot, or an unlimited number of ways of inflicting humiliation. Someone being extra careful not to offend you just lets you see how obvious all the things you might take offense at are. Such verbal acrobatics are themselves a kind of satire. We could put the kind of arbitrage the post-Axial Age, ve/ortexical idiom should be attempting in “Bayesian” (or pseudo-bayesian, I wouldn’t get into arguments here) terms: let all your utterances (samples) be as close to 50% directing attention to the other and 50% drawing attention to yourself as possible. Neither truth nor morality need be compromised here but this logic does tend to a post-juridical framing as one leaves the prosecutorial or testimonial stance aside to take on a stance of firstness on the scene—remember, whoever issued the sign first on the originary scene didn’t know what he was doing while having some feel for what he wasn’t doing and he has to hold on to that not doing long enough for the chain of counter-mimetic conversion to be able to refer back to and then forget him. To direct attention to the other is to set up a possible scapegoating scene, which includes the possibility that the attention of the participants will circle back to you, but we must talk about each other and the way to do so is therefore so as to instantaneously circle back to yourself, rather than just risk the possibility. If we are to pursue the inquiry into lashon hara further, we could acknowledge that what counts as harmful or humiliating is not only variable and historically transient (in a traditional community implying someone was homosexual would no doubt involve a very high degree of lashon hara) but in the telling itself. Laying out what you think will be seen as another’s flaws in a way that represents him as leaning toward improving in all those things (and how do you know he’s not—you need not lie, even a little whitely, here) as in fact are we all creates a very different picture. But you never eliminate the differend—a slight shift in the scene might peel back the lashon hatov (“good speech”) leaving only the bad. And anyone on the scene, or responsible for further iterations of it on other scenes, might do the peeling. But if you keep approximating that 50/50 mark you model such attempts for others and then can include in your further samplings the respective probabilities, as they seem to you presently, of your sample having taken (having shifted the weights in the latent space of the database), always trying to drive everyone toward that 50/50 mark.