Science, Culture and Integral Yoga :: Roots: The origin of words in the works Sri Aurobindo and Michel Foucault

The chapter on the philological method of the Vedas in The Secret of the Vedas is a fascinating one in which Sri Aurobindo traces the genealogy of Sanskrit back to its origins in onomatopoeia. If correct words at the dawn of language acquisition were not simply arbitrary signifiers chosen conventionally to represent things but directly corresponded to the signified as a natural (human) sound articulation of the phenomena itself. That is there is an actual resemblance between the sound vibration of the word and the phenomena itself. From these ur-utterances are derived a small number of roots in which the subsequent nominative conventions and evolution of vocabularies can be located.

In The Order of Things, Michel Foucault arrives as a similar conclusion which he derives from the work of some of the French philosophers of the Enlightenment. Foucault's ascribes the power of attribution and the propositional function of language to verbs which trace their origins back to the most basic verb “to be”At the root of all attributions is the verb “to be” way without at the same time saying that it is. The verb to he is found in all propositions, because we cannot say that a thing is in such and such a way without at the same time saying that it is “.

For its part the nominative function of language is implicit in the designating power of adjectives and nouns. As such Foucault locates the primitive origins of language through its role as pure designation. In tracing back its earliest designative function Foucault ascribes to the originating process of naming things a very similar role between the non-arbitrary articulation of sound and the actual phenomena itself as does Sri Aurobindo. Additionally, in tracing language back to its function of pure designation Foucault also concludes that our vocabularies can be traced back to a small number of originating roots.

The following post is a comparative exploration of the origins of language as described by Sri Aurobindo and Michel Foucault.

The Order of Things: Michel Foucault:

To bring the origin of language back into the light of day means also to rediscover the primitive moment in which it was pure designation. And one ought, by this means, to provide at the same time an explanation for its arbitrariness (since that which designates can be as different from that which it indicates as a gesture from the object towards which it is directed), and for its profound relation with that which it names (since a particular syllable or word has always been chosen to designate a particular thing). The first of these requirements is fulfilled by the analysis of the language of action, the second by the study of roots. But these two things are not in opposition to one another in the same way as, in the Cratylus, are explanation in terms of 'nature' and explanation in terms of 'law'; on the contrary, they are absolutely indispensable to one another, since the first gives an account of the substitution of the sign for the thing designated and the second justifies the permanent power of designation possessed by that sign.

The language of action is spoken by the body; and yet, it is not something given from the very first. All that nature permits is that man, in the various situations in which he finds himself, should be able to make gestures; his face is agitated by movements; he emits inarticulate cries - in other words, cries that are 'coined neither by the tongue nor by the lips'[65]. All this is not yet either language or even sign, but the effect and consequence of our animality. This manifest agitation nevertheless has the virtue of being universal, since it depends solely upon the conformation of our organs. Hence the possibility for man to observe that it is identical in himself and his companions. He is therefore able to associate the cry he hears from another's mouth, the grimace he sees upon that other's face, with the same representations that have, on several occasions, accompanied his own cries and movements. He is able to accept this mimesis as the mark and substitute of the other's thought. As a sign. Comprehension is beginning. He can also, in return, employ this mimesis that has become a sign in order to excite in his companions the idea that he himself is experiencing, the sensations, the needs, the difficulties that are ordinarily associated with certain gestures and certain sounds: a cry expressly directed in another's presence and towards an object, a pure interjection [66]. With this concerted use of the sign (which is already expression), something like a language is in the process of being born.

It is evident, from these analyses common to Condillac and Destutt, that the language of action does indeed link language to nature by means of a genesis - but in order to detach it from nature rather than to give it roots there, to emphasize its indelible difference from the cry and to provide a basis for that which constitutes its artifice. As long as it is a simple extension of the body, action has no power to speak: it is not language. It becomes language, but only at the end of definite and complex operations: the notation of an analogy of relations (the other's cry is to what he is experiencing - that which is unknown - what my cry is to my appetite or my fear); inversion of time and voluntary use of the sign before the representation it designates (before experiencing a sensation of hunger strong enough to make me cry out, I emit the cry that is associated with it); lastly, the purpose of arousing in the other the representation corresponding to the cry or gesture (but with this particularity, that, by emitting a cry, I do not arouse, and do not intend to arouse, the sensation of hunger, but the representation of the relation between this sign and my own desire to eat). Language is possible only upon the basis of this entanglement. It rests not upon a natural movement of comprehension or expression, but upon the reversible and analysable relations of signs and representations. Language does not come into being when representation is exteriorized, but only when, in a concerted fashion, it detaches a sign from itself and causes itself to be represented by that sign. It is not, therefore, because he functions as a speaking subject, or from within a language already made, that man discovers, all around him, signs that might be taken as so many mute words to be deciphered and rendered audible again; it is because representation provides itself with signs that words can come into being, and with them a whole language that is no more than the ulterior organization of vocal signs. Despite its name, the 'language of action' calls into existence the irreducible network of signs that separates language from action.

And in this way it bases its artifice in nature. For the elements of which this language of action is composed (sounds, gestures, grimaces) are suggested successively by nature, and yet they have no identity of content -for the most part - with what they designate, but above all relations of simultaneity or succession. The cry does not resemble fear, nor the outstretched hand the sensation of hunger. Once they have become concerted, these signs will remain without 'fantasy and without caprice'[67], since they have been established once and for all by nature; but they will not express the nature of what they designate, for they are in no way its image. And from this starting-point men will be able to establish a language of convention: they now have at their disposal enough signs as marks for things to enable them to invent further signs that will analyse and combine the primary ones. In his Discours sur I'origine de I'indgalite[68], Rousseau made the point that no language can have an agreement between men as its basis, since such an agreement presupposes that some established, recognized, and practised language already exists; we would therefore have to imagine it as having been received by men, not built by them. In fact, the language of action confirms this necessity and renders this hypothesis futile. Man receives from nature the material to make signs, and those signs serve him first of all as a means of reaching agreement with other men as to the choice of those that shall be retained, the values that they shall be recognized as possessing, and the rules for employing them; after that, they serve him as a means of forming new signs on the model of the primary ones. The first form of agreement consists in selecting the vocal signs (which are easier to recognize from a distance and the only ones that can be used when it is dark), the second in composing, in order to designate representations still left without signs, sounds close to those indicating neighbouring representations. It is in this way that language, properly speaking, is constituted, by a series of analogies that are a lateral extension of the language of action or at least of its vocal element: language resembles this vocal element, and 'it is this resemblance that facilitates the understanding of it. We term it analogy . . . You observe that analogy, which gives us law, does not permit us to choose signs at random or arbitrarily.'[69]

The genesis of language in the language of action entirely avoids the alternatives of natural imitation and arbitrary convention. In that which is natural - in the signs that arise spontaneously through the medium of our bodies - there is no resemblance; and where there is employment of resemblances it is after a voluntary agreement has been reached between men. Nature juxtaposes the differences and binds them together by force; reflection discovers the resemblances, and analyses and develops them. The first phase makes artifice possible, but with material imposed upon all men in identical fashion; the second excludes arbitrary choice but opens up channels for analysis that will not be exactly superimposable in the case of all men and all peoples. The law of nature is constituted by the difference between words and things - the vertical division between language and that lying beneath it which it is the task of language to designate; the rule prescribed by conventions is the resemblance that exists between words, the great horizontal network that forms words from other words and propagates them ad infinitum.

It now becomes comprehensible why the theory of roots in no way contradicts the analysis of the language of action, but is to be found within it. Roots are those rudimentary words that are to be found, always identical, in a great number of languages - perhaps in all; they have been imposed upon language by nature in the form of involuntary cries spontaneously employed by the language of action. It was there that men sought them out in order to give them a place in their conventional languages. And if all peoples, in all climates, chose these same elementary sounds from among the raw material of the language of action, that is because they discerned in them, though in a secondary and reflective manner, a resemblance with the object they designated, or the possibility of applying it to an analogous object. The resemblance of the root to what it names assumes its value as a verbal sign only through the agency of the convention that brought men together and regulated their language of action so as to create a language. In this way, from within representation, signs are united with the very nature of what they designate, and the primitive treasury of vocables is imposed, in identical fashion, on all languages.

Roots may be formed in several ways. By onomatopoeia, of course, which is not a spontaneous expression, but the deliberate articulation of a sign that is also a resemblance: 'to make the same sound with one's voice as the object that one wishes to name'[70]. By employing a resemblance experienced in one's sensations: 'the impression made by the colour red, which is vivid, rapid, harsh to the eye, will be very well rendered by the sound R, which makes an analogous impression upon the ear'[71]. By imposing movements upon the organs of the voice analogous to those one wishes to signify: 'so that the sound resulting from the form and natural movement of the organ when placed in this state becomes the name of the object'; the throat rasps to designate the rubbing of one body against another, it hollows itself inside to indicate a concave surface [72]. Finally, by employing the sounds an organ naturally produces to designate that organ: the glottal stop determined the name of the throat in which it occurs, and the dentals (d and t) are used to designate the teeth [73]. Using these conventional articulations of resemblance, every language is able to provide itself with its pack of primitive roots. The pack is a small one, since the roots are almost all monosyllabic and exist only in very small numbers - two hundred for Hebrew, according to Bergier's estimate [74]; and even smaller when one remembers that (because of the relations of resemblance that they establish) they are common to almost all of our languages: de Brosses thinks that all of them together, from all the dialects of Europe and the Orient, would not fill 'a single sheet of writing paper'. But it is on the basis of them that each language develops its own particularity: "their development is prodigious. Just as one elm seed produces a great tree, which by growing new shoots from each root produces in the end an entire forest'[75].

Language can now reveal its genealogy, the genealogy that de Brosses attempted to display in a dimension of continuous filiation that he called the 'Universal Archaeologist'[76]. At the top of this space, one would write the roots - very few in number - employed in all European and Oriental languages; below each root one could place the more complicated words derived from it, but taking care to place first those that are nearest to the roots, and to follow them in a sequence sufficiently tight for there to be as small a distance as possible-between each word in the series. In this way one would be able to constitute a number of perfect and exhaustive series, of absolutely continuous chains in which the breaks, if there were any, would indicate the place of a word, a dialect, or a language no longer in existence[77]. Once this vast, seamless expanse had been constituted, one would have a two-dimensional space that one could cross either on abscissae or on ordinates: vertically, one would have the complete filiation of each root; horizontally, one would have the words employed in any given language; the further away one moved from the primitive roots, the more complicated - and no doubt more recent would the languages defined by any transversal line become, but, at the same time, the more subtle and efficacious would the words be as instruments for the analysis of representations. And thus superimposed, the historical space and the grid of thought would be exactly coincidental.

This quest for the roots of language may well appear to be a return to the historical hypothesis and to the theory of mother-languages that Classicism seemed, for a time, to have suspended. In reality, an analysis of its roots does not replace language in a history that is, as it were, the environment into which it was born and in which it developed. Rather, it makes history a journey, accomplished in successive stages, across the simultaneous patterning of representation and words. In the Classical period, language is not a fragment of history authorizing at any given moment a definite mode of thought and reflection; it is an area of analysis upon which time and human knowledge pursue their journey. And the fact that language does not become - or become once again - through the agency of the root theory a historical entity is proved quite easily by the way in which etymologies were sought for in the eighteenth century. The guiding thread used for such investigations was not the material transformations undergone by the word, but the constancy of its significations.

This search had two aspects: definition of the root, and isolation of the inflectional endings and prefixes. To define the root was to discover an etymology. It was an art with codified rules [78]; one had to strip the word of all the subsequent traces that might have been left upon it by combinations and inflections; arrive at a monosyllabic element; follow that element through the entire past of the language, through all the ancient 'charts and glossaries'; then follow it back into other and more primitive languages. And it must also be accepted that at any point along this backward journey the monosyllable may change: all the vowels may replace one another in the history of a root, for the vowels are the voice itself, which knows no discontinuity or rupture; the consonants, on the other hand, are modified according to certain privileged channels: gutturals, linguals, palatals, dentals, labials, and nasals all make up families of homophonous consonants within which changes of pronunciation are made for preference, though without any obligation[79]. The only indelible constant guaranteeing the continuity of the root throughout its history is the unity of meaning: the representative area that persists indefinitely. This is because 'nothing perhaps can limit inductions and everything can serve as a basis for them, from total resemblance to the very slightest of resemblances': the meaning of words is 'the surest source of enlightenment we can consult'[80] (p106-109)

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The Secret of the Veda: Sri Aurobindo

Another feature of the early history of language is that it expresses at first a remarkably small stock of ideas and these are the most general notions possible and generally the most concrete, such as light, motion, touch, substance, extension, force, speed, etc. Afterwards there is a gradual increase in variety of idea and precision of idea. The progression is from the general to the particular, from the vague to the precise, from the physical to the mental, from the concrete to the abstract, from the expression of an abundant variety of sensations about similar things to the expression of precise difference between similar things, feelings and actions. This progression is worked out by processes of association in ideas which are always the same, always recurrent and, although no doubt due to the environments and actual experiences of the men who spoke the language, wear the appearance of fixed natural laws of development. And after all what is a law but a process which has been worked out by the nature of things in response to the necessities of their environment and has become the fixed habit of their action? From this past history of language certain consequences derive which are of considerable importance in Vedic interpretation. In the first place by a knowledge of the laws under which the relations of sound and sense formed themselves in the Sanskrit tongue and by a careful and minute study of its word-families it is possible to a great extent to restore the past history of individual words. It is possible to account for the meanings actually possessed by them, to show how they were worked out through the various stages of language-development, to establish the mutual relations of different significances and to explain how they came to be attached to the same word in spite of the wide difference and sometimes even the direct contrariety of their sense-values. It is possible also to restore lost senses of words on a sure and scientific basis and to justify them by an appeal to the observed laws of association which governed the development of the old Aryan tongues, to the secret evidence of the word itself and to the corroborative evidence of its immediate kindred. Thus instead of having a purely floating and conjectural basis for our dealings with the vocables of the Vedic language, we can work with confidence upon a solid and reliable foundation.

Naturally, it does not follow that because a Vedic word may or must have had at one time a particular significance, that significance can be safely applied to the actual text of the Veda. But we do establish a sound sense and a clear possibility of its being the right sense for the Veda. The rest is a matter of comparative study of the passages in which the word occurs and of constant fitness in the context. I have continually found that a sense thus restored illumines always the context wherever it is applied and on the other hand that a sense demanded always by the context is precisely that to which we are led by the history of the word. This is a sufficient basis for a moral, if not for an absolute certainty.

Secondly, one remarkable feature of language in its inception is the enormous number of different meanings of which a single word was capable and also the enormous number of words which could be used to represent a single idea. Afterwards this tropical luxuriance came to be cut down. The intellect intervened with its growing need of precision, its growing sense of economy. The bearing capacity of words progressively diminished; and it became less and less tolerable to be burdened with a superfluous number of words for the same idea, a redundant variety of ideas for the same word. A considerable, though not too rigid economy in these respects, modified by a demand for a temperate richness of variation, became the final law of language. But the Sanskrit tongue never quite reached the final stages of this development; it dissolved too early into the Prakrit dialects. Even in its latest and most literary form it is lavish of varieties of meanings for the same word; it overflows with a redundant wealth of synonyms. Hence its extraordinary capacity for rhetorical devices which in any other language would be difficult, forced and hopelessly artificial, and especially for the figure of double sense, of slesa.

The Vedic Sanskrit represents a still earlier stratum in the development of language. Even in its outward features it is less fixed than any classical tongue; it abounds in a variety of forms and inflexions; it is fluid and vague, yet richly subtle in its use of cases and tenses. And on its psychological side it has not yet crystallised, is not entirely hardened into the rigid forms of intellectual precision. The word for the Vedic Rishi is still a living thing, a thing of power, creative, formative. It is not yet a conventional symbol for an idea, but itself the parent and former of ideas. It carries within it the memory of its roots, is still conscient of its own history.

The Rishis' use of language was governed by this ancient psychology of the Word. When in English we use the word "wolf" or "cow", we mean by it simply the animal designated; we are not conscious of any reason why we should use that particular sound for the idea except the immemorial custom of the language; and we cannot use it for any other sense or purpose except by an artificial device of style. But for the Vedic Rishi "vrika" meant the tearer and therefore, among other applications of the sense, a wolf; "dhenu" meant the fosterer, nourisher, and therefore a cow. But the original and general sense predominates, the derived and particular is secondary. Therefore, it was possible for the fashioner of the hymn to use these common words with a great pliability, sometimes putting forward the image of the wolf or the cow, sometimes using it to colour the more general sense, sometimes keeping it merely as a conventional figure for the psychological conception on which his mind was dwelling, sometimes losing sight of the image altogether. It is in the light of this psychology of the old language that we have to understand the peculiar figures of Vedic symbolism as handled by the Rishis, even to the most apparently common and concrete. It is so that words like "ghritam", the clarified butter, "soma", the sacred wine, and a host of others are used.

Moreover, the partitions made by the thought between different senses of the same word were much less separative than in modern speech. In English "fleet" meaning a number of ships and "fleet" meaning swift are two different words; when we use "fleet" in the first sense we do not think of the swiftness of the ship's motion, nor when we use it in the second, do we recall the image of ships gliding rapidly over the ocean. But this was precisely what was apt to occur in the Vedic use of language. "Bhaga", enjoyment, and bhaga, share, were for the Vedic mind not different words, but one word which had developed two different uses. Therefore it was easy for the Rishis to employ it in one of the two senses with the other at the back of the mind colouring its overt connotation or even to use it equally in both senses at a time by a sort of figure of cumulative significance. "Chanas" meant food but also it meant "enjoyment, pleasure"; therefore it could be used by the Rishi to suggest to the profane mind only the food given at the sacrifice to the gods, but for the initiated it meant the Ananda, the joy of the divine bliss entering into the physical consciousness and at the same time suggested the image of the Soma-wine, at once the food of the gods and the Vedic symbol of the Ananda.

We see everywhere this use of language dominating the Word of the Vedic hymns. It was the great device by which the ancient Mystics overcame the difficulty of their task. Agni for the ordinary worshipper may have meant simply the god of the Vedic fire, or it may have meant the principle of Heat and Light in physical Nature, or to the most ignorant it may have meant simply a superhuman personage, one of the many "givers of wealth", satisfiers of human desire. How suggest to those capable of a deeper conception the psychological functions of the God? The word itself fulfilled that service. For Agni meant the Strong, it meant the Bright, or even Force, Brilliance. So it could easily recall to the initiated, wherever it occurred, the idea of the illumined Energy which builds up the worlds and which exalts man to the Highest, the doer of the great work, the Purohit of the human sacrifice.

Or how keep it in the mind of the hearer that all these gods are personalities of the one universal Deva? The names of the gods in their very meaning recall that they are only epithets, significant names, descriptions, not personal appellations. Mitra is the Deva as the Lord of love and harmony, Bhaga as the Lord of enjoyment, Surya as the Lord of illumination, Varuna as the all-pervading Vastness and purity of the Divine supporting and perfecting the world. "The Existent is One," says the Rishi Dirghatamas, "but the sages express It variously; they say Indra, Varuna, Mitra, Agni; they call It Agni, Yama, Matariswan." [Rv. I.164.46.] The initiate in the earlier days of the Vedic knowledge had no need of this express statement. The names of the gods carried to him their own significance and recalled the great fundamental truth which remained with him always.

But in the later ages the very device used by the Rishis turned against the preservation of the knowledge. For language changed its character, rejected its earlier pliability, shed off old familiar senses; the word contracted and shrank into its outer and concrete significance. The ambrosial wine of the Ananda was forgotten in the physical offering; the image of the clarified butter recalled only the gross libation to mythological deities, lords of the fire and the cloud and the storm-blast, godheads void of any but a material energy and an external lustre. The letter lived on when the spirit was forgotten; the symbol, the body of the doctrine, remained, but the soul of knowledge had fled from its coverings.
(Secret of the Veda Chapter 5)

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Re: Roots: The origin of words in the works Sri Aurobindo and Michel Foucault

by Rich on Thu 26 Jun 2008 06:54 PM PDT | Profile | Permanent Link

In an earlier passage in the Order of Things Foucault, through the works of 18th of the esoteric Court de Gebelin, - the grandfather of modern occultism- traces words back through their origins as syllables to the very letters of words themselves:

As Le Bel said, stating it as a fundamental principle of analysis, 'there is no group of which the parts have not existed separately before being grouped together'[60]; this enabled him to reduce all words to syllabic elements in which the old forgotten names at last made their reappearance - the only vocables that possessed the possibility of existing side by side with the verb to be: Romulus, for example[61], comes from Roma and moliri (to build); and Roma comes from ro, which denoted strength (robur) and ma, which denoted magnitude (magnus). In the same way, Thiebault discovers three latent significations in abandonner: a, which 'presents the idea of the tendency or destination of one thing towards another'; ban, which 'gives the idea of the totality of the social body', and do, which indicates 'the act whereby one relinquishes something'[62].

And if one is forced to descend below the level of individual syllables to the very letters of the words, one can still find the values of a rudimentary form of nomination. A task to which, to his greater - though even more perishable - glory. Court de Gebelin really applied himself: 'the labial contact, the easiest to bring into play, the gentlest, the most gracious, served to designate the first beings man comes to know, those who surround him and to whom he owes everything' (papa, mama). On the other hand, 'the teeth are as firm as the lips are mobile and flexible; the intonations that proceed from them are strong, sonorous, noisy ...' It is by means of dental contact that one expresses the ideas that lie behind such verbs as tonner (to thunder), retentir (to resound), etonner (to astonish); it is by this means too that one denotes tambours (drums), timbales (timpani), and trompettes (trumpets). Vowels, too, in isolation, are able to unfold the secret of the age-old names that usage has buried within them: A for possession (avoir, to have), E for existence, I for puissance (power), O for etonnement (astonishment, eyes opened wide), U for humidite (humidity) and therefore for humeur (mood) [63]. And perhaps, in the very oldest stratum of our history, consonants and vowels, differentiated only as two still vague groups, formed as it were the two sole names upon which human speech is ultimately articulated: the singing vowels speaking our passions; the rough consonants our needs [64]. It is still possible to distinguish the rocky tongues of the North - a forest of gutturals, of hunger and cold - from the Southern tongues that are all vowels, born of early morning encounters between shepherds when 'the first fires of love were bursting from the pure crystal of the springs'. (The Order of Things p101 -102)

Re: Re: Roots: The origin of words in the works Sri Aurobindo and Michel Foucault (sensual language)

by Rich on Fri 27 Jun 2008 08:52 AM PDT | Profile | Permanent Link

The linguist Ferdinand de Saussure defined language in terms of its two aspects “la langue” – syntactic and semantic rules and “la parole” the expressive act of speaking itself. For Saussure la langue was a structural system in which the structure of any language was seen as “thoroughly interdependent matrix a web work wherein each term has meaning by virtue to all other terms in its system . “In English for example the sounded word “red” draws its precise meaning from its situation in a network of like-sounding terms including for instance, “read” “rod”, “reed” “raid” and in a whole complex of color terms such as orange” “yellow” “purple” “brown” as well as from its participation is a still wider nexus of related terms like “blood”, “rose”, “sunset”, “fire” “blush”, “angry” “hot”each of which holds significance only in relation to a constellation of still other words, expanding outward to every other term within the language. By describing any language as a system of differences Saussure indicated that meaning is found not in the words themselves but in intervals, contrasts, the participation between terms (Abram 1997 p84 )

Although Saussure determined that language was arbitrary and relative he still subsumed the rules of language to the creative act of speech (la parole) itself which could invoke the presence of the speaker. In other words he privilege oral speech over written speech as being closer to the true expression of being in the world.

Jacques Derrida however, demonstrated in his ground breaking essay Structure, Sign, and Play that both oral and written language share a commonality in that in the process of naming they both employ signifiers which both defer (in time) and differ (in space) to/from every other signifier in an endless chain of signification which always refer to still another signified (ad infinitium). Since these signifiers are always in the process of becoming signifieds, which are in continuous process of becoming other signifiers, to still other signifieds in a never ending chain, absolute being (e.g. a signifier which only refers to itself) is always by necessity absent. This play of difference is represented by Derrida as the “trace” with no positive existence of its own.

Moreover, “Derrida argues that Western metaphysics has systematically privileged voice over writing, on the presumption that logos, as the a priori, transcendental power of knowledge and signifier of being, is immediately present in speech whereas writing is displaced one degree removed as the representation of speech , Derrida shows that speech itself is subject to the same constraint and must itself be inscribed as the signifier of a still always absent signified”.(p81 Adams/Searle 1992). Derrida privileges writing to speech in that a written text can always be added on to, (a concepts he called the supplement,) and so can be recreated in an endless series of contexts. Derrida also argues that meaning is not imparted by an ontological author or self-existent speaking subject, but that each text is in a never ending dialog with other texts or authors which it evokes or to which it responds.

In contrast to Derrida, David Abram author of the Spell of the Sensuous maintains that to appropriately consider the meaning of language one must explore how language arises from the spontaneities of the earth embedded in its per-human origins. In The Spell of the Sensuous he asserts that initially language did not express itself in a technology of naming in which objects and subject were separate. Rather he argues that “prior to the formulation of an alphabetic language spoken discourse of traditionally oral tribal cultures remains bound to the expressive sounds shapes and gestures of the animate earth In absence of formal writing systems human discourse simply cannot isolate itself from the larger field of expressive meaning in which it participates. Hences linguistic patterns of oral culture remain uniquely responsive, and responsible, to the more than human life world or bio-region in which culture is embedded”. (Abram 1997 p178)

In contrast to Derrida who argues that both oral and written language are the same Abrams argues:

“Derrida does not notice some of the most glaring differences between alphabetic and non-alphabetic modes of thought differences that make themselves evident in our experience to the animate earth. While Derrida assimilates all language to writing (l'ecriture) my approach has been largely the reverse, to show all discourse, even written discourse such as this is implicitly sensorial and bodily, and hence remains bound like a sensing world that is never exclusively human. (Abram 1987 p 289)

Abram claims phenomenologist Merleau Ponty comes closer to the truth of language and phenomena as he explored the mystery between the rules of language la langue and its creative expression la parole. In the following passage he describes and how Merleau Ponty's perspective diverges from Saussure and Derrida.

“Sassure's distinction between the structure of language and the activity of speech is ultimately under mind by Merleau-Ponty who blended the two dimensions (langua, parole) back together into a single ever evolving matrix. While individual speech acts are surely guided by the structural lattice of language, the lattice is nothing other than a sedimented result of previous acts of speech, and will itself be altered by the very activity it now guides. Language is not a fixed or ideal form but an evolving medium we collectively inhabit, a vast topological matrix in which speaking bodies are generative sites, vortices where the matrix itself is continually being spun out of the silence of sensorial experience.

What Merleau Ponty retains from Saussure is his notion of any language as an interdependent, web like system of relations. But since our expressive bodies are for Merleau Ponty necessary parts of this system -since the web of language is for him a carnal medium woven from the depths of our perceptual world that is relational and web like in character, and hence that the organic , interconnected matrix of sensorial reality itself. Ultimately it is not human language that is primary , but rather the sensuous , perceptual life-world, whose wild, participatory logic ramifies itself in language”.. (Abram 1997 p84)

Abram, David (1997) The Spell of the Sensuous, Random House Books, Vintage Books New York

Re: Re: Re: Roots: The origin of words in the works Sri Aurobindo and Michel Foucault (sensual language)

by rakesh on Fri 27 Jun 2008 10:36 PM PDT | Profile | Permanent Link

thanks Rich for posting this article about language origins.

From what I read about Derrida is it not true that he was more concerned about the interpretation of the texts of language? Derrida disagreed to ithe dea of speech being closer to the truth and the being.

Socrates like the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure argued that speech represents the being in time more closer than written word becuase written word can be misinterpreted by the reader but the
listerner of speech is actually hearing the word from the authentic source which is the being in time itself. What Derrida disagrees is that even speech is dependent on memory and memory itself is disjointed in the consciousness and memory is dependent on past memory and experience which is not like a single string of pearls in the consciousness of the being. Derrida was more concerned about the authenticity of the translation of the text and its interpretation in time. From his point of view when the spoken word iswritten then it was less prone to misinterpretation by the reader becuase it now has a concrete shape to the abstract ideas presented in spoken word in the history. So written word is more useful for later generations to arrive at the truth of the authors intentions in his absence.

I see a truth also in Derrida's argument and also in Abrams.
From what can understand from your postings is that Abrams is more concerned about the origination of the word itself which is depended on the anatomy of the mouth and the nature of sound. I cannot agree to him more about the origination of articulation and sound from the physiology.

when Socrates argues that speech is a better medium than writing even that has a partial truth to it. I think what he meant is that the listener is prone to less misinterpretation than the reader becuase the speaker who is present in time can argue with the listener about the right interpretation of his thoughts but the reader has to understand the authors ideas without any help from the author. So he is all left to himself to interpret according to his experience and knowledge which may not correspond to the author's experience.

Our understanding of others ideas can also have another truth to it. As psychologist Jung would argue that the ideas like archetypes are in the subconcious, the author and the reader may be able to understand to a large extent due to commonality of ideas pervading subconcious nature in the culture of the race. But ideas of a higher order of the author which are not in the experience of the reader could be misinterpreted.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Roots: The origin of words in the works Sri Aurobindo and Michel Foucault (sensual language)

by rakesh on Sun 29 Jun 2008 12:07 AM PDT | Profile | Permanent Link

Derrida is concerned aoout the relative nature of the spoken word which I feel corresponds to the experience of the Kshara purusha in nature. Kshara purusha, who does not have the conscious experience of the Eternal silence is caught in the web of nature and for him the spoken word is dependent on memory.
This dependency of spoken word on memory makes is a relative than the absolute.

In constrast with this experience of the kshara purusha, the Askara purusha which is the master of nature and uses spoken word as a revelation of the truths that pertain to a higher order and that makes the spoken word an embodiment of the truth itself. Since kshara purusha cannot envisage such a possibility it thinks that all word is relative. But word can be a body of the truth itself like the riks of the veda.

Rich,
what do you make of this correlation?

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Roots: The origin of words in the works Sri Aurobindo and Michel Foucault (sensual language)

by Rich on Tue 01 Jul 2008 07:41 PM PDT | Profile | Permanent Link

what do you make of this correlation? (askara /kshara).....

One would have to understand the discontinuities, gaps, ruptures between epochs, cultures etc to do justice to any correlations between French deconstruction and Indic Vedantic Culture to hazard a guess here. Perhaps Askara purusha is a transcendental signified, while Kshara = desire, and that may be not far as a post modern similitude, because the kshara is enticed into the world by desire (for its mastery of prakriti),....

I'd also hazard to say that in a deconstructive reading, Askara and Kshara purusha are a binary pair and codependent on one another, and as interesting as either one is in themselves, what is more meaningful for us is the gap of space/time which connects them.

rc

Re: Roots: The origin of words in the works Sri Aurobindo and Michel Foucault

by RY Deshpande on Sun 29 Jun 2008 04:03 AM PDT | Profile | Permanent Link

It will be wonderful if Vladimir can enlighten us on the Vedic ideas of the birth of Speech, Word. Word or Shabda is not just a carrier of contents or meaning; it always conveys a living experience. The Science of the Word or Shabda-Shastra traces the origin to Sphota or the bursting of the utterance which is fourfold. But let Vladimir expound it, please. and thanks

RYD

Re: Re: Roots: The origin of words in the works Sri Aurobindo and Michel Foucault

by Rich on Sun 29 Jun 2008 09:17 AM PDT | Profile | Permanent Link

Deshpande,

Excellent intuition, that was actually my next topic in this series. I will introduce it here by way of response to Rakesh initial astute comments. At the conclusion we will also touch on Sri Aurobindo's conception of mantra

Rakesh ,
You raised some Good Points, and you are correct for Derrida one can not escape the text.
But Derrida is not just referring to the alphabetic text or the inscribed trace but rather of text as arche-writing or originating trace.

Although the Abrams book the spell of the sensuous is an extremely insightful read on the embodied nature of language, here he is misreading Derrida or more precisely ignoring the real issue of why Derrida's subsumes speech to writing. This move by which Derrida privileges writing over speech is the same strategy by which he emphasizes absence over presence and eschews any Platonic notion that there is a transcendental reality of which the things of the words are only copies. (I compare this move favorably to Sri Aurobindo eschewing the transcendental in favor of transformation of the material)

When Derrida refers to writing he is not merely referring to alphabetic writing but arche-writing, l'ecriture is the originating trace or arche-writing, and it refers to the process of differance from which all meaning derives. Derrida also refers to arche-writing as implicit in DNA and underlying the unconscious. It is the original movement which makes language possible. (any exploration of the beginning of language without considering arche-writing would be seriously flawed)

So to dismiss Derrida's characterization of trace as
alphabetic writing is way off base. Although trace, and its necessary binary pair, erasure are most often applied to discourse, Derrida would probably not dismiss Merleau Ponty's claim that language arises from our sensual
apprehension and embodied organization of the world. In this instance arche-writing could be understood as its inscription in our perceptions, in the organization of our senses.

In fact arche-writing has been compared to the 5th century Sanskrit grammarian Bhartṛhari uses the term Śabdatattva or Word-Principle in his analysis of the Vedas. From an article by Harold Coward

"Derrida also establishes the need for the inner trace or arche-writing by a critique of Saussure's linguistic theory. For Saussure, the basis of language is found in the natural bond of the signified (concept or sense) to the spoken word of which the written linage is a contamination. [27] But Saussure suggests that language can be best understood by an analogy to both the form and content of writing. Saussure finds that "difference" is the source of linguistic values. [28] It is precisely this general movement of difference, says Derrida, that is the arche-writing or trace which contains within it the possibility for all oral and written language. Speech and writing are expressions of one and the same language. Arche-writing is nothing but dynamic expressive difference. It does not depend on sound or writing, but is the condition for such sound and writing. Although it does not exist, its possibility is anterior to all expressions (signified/signifier, content/expression, and so forth). This intrinsic diffèrance, concludes Derrida, permits the articulation of speech and writing, and founds the metaphysical opposition between signifier and signified. Diffèrance is therefore the formation of form and the being imprinted of the imprint. [29]

Instead of the term arche-writing or trace, Bhartṛhari uses the term Śabdatattva or Word-Principle. [30] Brahman, the Word-Principle, is without beginning or end. Although proclaimed to be one, it is divided by the function of its inherent powers. In particular it is through the sequencing power of time (kāla) that the Word-Principle manifests itself in the expressive activity of language, which becomes the model for all other activity. [31] This activity is seen as a real manifestation and not as a merely apparent (Śaṅkara's understanding of vivartate) activity. Bhartṛhari states:
Knowers of tradition (the Vedas) have declared that all this is the transformation [pariṇāmaḥ] of the word. It is from the chandas [hymns of the Vedas] that this universe has evolved. [32]
"Here the term pariṇāmaḥ is used to describe the same process which is described in I.1 by vivartate." [33] Writing at the end of the fifth century A.D. Bhartṛhari does not speak in terms of causality such as typify Śaṅkara's later debates, but emphasizes the marvelous activity by which the multiple universe is manifested out of the one Word-Principle or Śabdatattva. [34] For our present purposes the important point is that for Bhartṛhari, Brahman, as the Word-Principle, is an intrinsically dynamic and expressive reality, and that language (and all of the universe) is its manifestation through the process of temporal becoming. [35] Like Derrida, Bhartṛhari also uses the notion of a beginningless trace which is inherent in consciousness. Unlike Derrida, however, Bhartṛhari discusses the trace of speech in relation to previous births.
This residual trace of speech has no beginning and it exists in every one as a seed in the mind. It is not possible that it should be the result of the effort of any person. Movements of the articulatory organs by children are not due to instruction by others but are known through intuition. "[36]

I will next post the full text of Coward's article which is extremely insightful in its very astute comparative analysis of Derrida with the Sanskrit grammarian Bharthari, during the course of this essay the author makes the following observation concerning deconstruction and Sri Aurobindo's writings on Mantra in the Secret of the Veda and a theme he later takes up in The Future Poetry

The aim of the project of deconstruction, says Derrida, agreeing with Aurobindo, is to get back to metaphoric, poetic language, where the power for signification has not yet been used up. ....

Re: Re: Roots: The origin of words in the works Sri Aurobindo and Michel Foucault

by Vladimir on Mon 30 Jun 2008 01:42 AM PDT | Profile | Permanent Link

Thank you, Rich, for your interesting article and observations, and, Deshpande, for inviting me to this discussion. I am afraid to create only more confusion than clarity, for i have another view plus to it.

The whole problem, as I see it, lies within the semantics, so if signifier is to signify the signified, which is usually identical with the manifested world of things, feelings and ideas, then the signifier is always secondary to the signified, as Derrida rightly pointed out the signifier is never to reach the signified, for the signified exists before and after the signification, by the way this was the view of Yaska (600 BC) also. What actually happened here is that the semantic level was identified with a thing and not with a meaning of thing, which is quite different from the thing and this is not fully obvious, and from here all the confusion and the endless theories never reaching its goal come into being.
Therefore the whole theory of diachronic linguistics of the development of human tongue is usually understood as the process of imitation of the outer reality (the knock-knock language, as it were), mixed with the formation and approval of different conventional meanings for different signifiers in the group for the sake of communication, which is a very reasonable proposal. But this is only an outer level of language. The inner semantic part was always hidden, for it belongs to higher levels of consciousness, which are not easy to perceive; so at its best the science of language could claim it naturalistically and materialistically as knock-knock language becoming more complex.
Sri Aurobindo, by the way, had two simultaneous views on the origin of language. One is very similar to the scientific view, that the simple language was getting more complex, crystallized and fixed by the mind in the precision of its meanings, which was a natural trend of the development of language in our material instrumentation, which belongs to our animal origin. The other was that of the inner growth of Consciousness; he saw Sanskrit in a more subtle way as the system of etymons revealed from the higher planes of Consciousness to the Rishis, where the relation of the sound and meaning was in a perfect harmony (the Brihaspati’s Word in the Vedic Mythology) which was the divine origin of language, as it were.
These two origins got mixed and constituted our human tongue. Our animal nature was adopting the divine origin of the Word in its own imitative way, trying to recreate it through its own knock-knock-language-ability, sometimes covering it up and degrading it, but at the same time developing the instrumentation for its deeper perception of subtle things: physical mind and brain. All this led us eventually to the manifestation of an animal with the physical mind, able to speak and rationalize, but this is only a small beginning of our transformation. For the Word is yet to reveal its Power of Consciousness, evolving in us the instrumentation of a higher perception.

The two-dimensional-view on language of structure and meaning or of signifier and signified is insufficient. It has to be multiplied by the levels of consciousness at least three or better four times, as it was done in Indian Tradition. (I can supply later the schemes for this vision).

It is interesting to note here that Derrida pointed out in his Of Grammatology to the unnatural character of the concept of the signifier and signified for the Western perception, which he defined as logocentric. This remark is interesting for us because Saussure himself was a Sanskrit professor for 20 years, who can be seen as a product of Sanskrit influence and of the Indian Renaissance which took place in the 19th century in Europe. India always held this view of the divine origin of the Word as different from the manifested speech. The signifier (vacaka) and signified (vacya) were clearly defined by Bhartihari in his Vakyapadiya already before 400 AD. The Word as a signifier, in the Veda was perceived as the action of Consciousness able to create or modify any signified. It was seen to be equal if not superior to the signified. The word was seen as a vehicle for manifestation of Higher Consciousness in the world and not only to indicate the existing reality. It had its own original system of etymons to which it always referred, conscious of its roots, remembering its origins. It was still free from any signified, for it was conscious of its own semantics: the sound and meaning were still one.

Sri Aurobindo speaks on the divine origin of the Word in this way:
“Brahman in the Veda signifies ordinarily the Vedic Word or mantra in its profoundest aspect as the expression of the intuition arising out of the depths of the soul or being. It is a voice of the rhythm which has created the worlds and creates perpetually. All world is expression or manifestation, creation by the Word.
Conscious Being luminously manifesting its contents in itself, of itself, tmanā, is the superconscient; holding its contents obscurely in itself it is the subconscient. The higher, the self-luminous descends into the obscure, into the night, into darkness concealed in darkness, tamas tamasā gūḍham, where all is hidden in formless being owing to fragmentation of consciousness, tucchyenābhvapihitam. It arises again out of the Night by the Word to reconstitute in the conscient its vast unity, tan mahinājāyataikam. This vast Being, this all-containing and all-formulating consciousness is Brahman. It is the Soul that emerges out of the subconscient in Man and rises towards the superconscient. And the word of creative Power welling upward out of the soul is also brahman.”
(The Secret of the Veda, Page: 318)

“By expression then we create and men are even said to create the gods in themselves by the mantra. Again, that which we have created in our consciousness by the Word, we can fix there by the Word to become part of ourselves and effective not only in our inner life but upon the outer physical world. By expression we form, by affirmation we establish.” (The Secret of the Veda, Page: 271)

Re: Re: Re: Roots: The origin of words in the works Sri Aurobindo and Michel Foucault

by RY Deshpande on Mon 30 Jun 2008 04:49 AM PDT | Profile | Permanent Link

That's great Vladimir, and thanks. But please elaborate on the "Indian Tradition", particularly the Tantrick about the origin of the Word. Any idea how the Transcendental Speech, Para Vani, finally becomes our spoken language, Vaikhari?

RYD

Re: Re: Re: Re: Roots: The origin of words in the works Sri Aurobindo and Michel Foucault

by Rich on Mon 30 Jun 2008 08:44 PM PDT | Profile | Permanent Link

Thanks Vladamir, for the critical insights.

Establishing a dialog between ancient texts and modernist or postmodernist discourse which manages to avoid the essentialist stances associated with former and the euro-centricism associated with the later, through tracing back lost continuities and genealogical affinities while navigating abrupt epistemic ruptures requires not only a cross -cultural but also a cross-epochal hermeneutics. nice touch.)

and I thank everyone for their contributions

Re: Roots: The origin of words in the works Sri Aurobindo and Michel Foucault

by RY Deshpande on Tue 01 Jul 2008 05:08 AM PDT | Profile | Permanent Link

Check also at http://www.sciy.org/blog/_archives/2008/7/1/3771065.html

RYD