A Marxist Philosophy of Language: It’s Social, Stupid.

Volosinov spends a large amount of time presenting trends of thought that previous linguists have subscribed to, and successfully examines the limits of both subjective, individualistic philosophies and structuralist, objective philosophies. The former places the creativity of language within the individual psyche, the latter places the system of language outside the individual as an incontestable norm in which to be assimilated into (53). Spatially, language is neither wholly within nor outside the individual;”The organizing center of any other events, of any experience, is not within but outside – in the social milieu surrounding the individual being” (93). The individual, ceaselessly existing in a social environment, language is built not from an overarching structure, nor a stream of inner speech, but through the process of verbal interaction (94).

Within this social environment the individual first encounters ideology, and therefore first acquires any notions of consciousness; “Consciousness becomes consciousness only once it has been filled with ideological (semiotic) content, consequently, only in the process of social interaction” (11). In Volosinov’s “pro-social” philosophy of language, there is no inner speech apart from ideology. Signs are both the material of one’s inner speech and the material of social interaction (14). Consequently, experiences, both inner and outer, are always social; there are no experiences outside of embodiment in signs. Experiences, therefore, are not the organizing force of expression, rather expression organizes experience and “expression is what first gives experience its form and specificity of direction” (85).

Each person’s inner world comprises reasons, motives, and values formed within their social environment. The word performs as a two-sided act, determined equally by whose word it is and for whom it is meant; “a word is a bridge thrown between myself and another” (86). Every verbal expression is socially oriented in its entirety, from conversational anecdotes over the weather between strangers to the cry of a nursing infant toward its mother (87).

The so-called personality of any individual is in fact, a product of social interrelations, his consciousness socially structured just as much as any collective experience (90). Therefore, Volosinov daringly asserts, “Consciousness is a fiction” (90). The material of inner speech, the only essence of inner being individuals possess, is made up of the sign, a purely social material, and therefore any ideas of a private, inner life is a false notion.

Volosinov uses the frameworks of individualistic subjectivism and abstract objectivism to search through what linguists of the past have argues is the “true center of linguistic reality” (63). Through this he finds that:

“The actual reality of language-speech is not the abstract system of linguistic forms, not the isolated monologic utterance, and not the psychophysiological act of its implementation, but the social event of verbal interaction in an utterance or utterances. Thus, verbal interaction is the basic reality of language” (94).

Locating Consciousness in Volosinov’s “Marxism and the Philosophy of Language”

Didn’t think Volosinov would make a good meme, did you?? 

“individual consciousness is not the architect of the ideological superstructure, but only a tenant lodging in the social edifice of ideological signs” (13)

Valentin Volosinov, a member of the Bakhtin circle and Russian linguist, takes on the challenge of viewing the field of linguistics through a Marxist lens in his text, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language.

Volosinov identifies two schools of thought surrounding language that he uses to distinguish his own stance. The first, which he comes to identify as individual subjectivism, gains its footing in the writings of Wilhem Von Humboldt who viewed language as a creative act, which individuals partake in constantly. The source of language in this view is the individual psyche (48).

The second position Volosinov identifies is that which he calls “abstract objectivism”; associated most with Ferdinand Saussure, this position views language as a stable system which the individual conscious finds ready-made and which, in turn, somewhat “boxes in” the consciousness of any individual (57). In this system there is a clear dichotomy between the system of language (langue) and any act of speech/utterance (parole).

Both positions highlight what Volosinov calls the “problem of consciousness” (13); for linguists and psychologists both, the study of consciousness has proved to be both difficult and confusing. Consciousness becomes the recipient of all unresolved problems, the mysterious location where all the unexplained goes to reside.

Both individual subjectivism and abstract objectivism make the mistake, Volosinov asserts, of localizing ideology in consciousness (12). The former sees the formation of ideology as the creative product of individual psyches, while the latter detaches the individual speech act from the system of language itself.

Volosinov asserts that consciousness, the allusive force in both previous positions, can arise and become a viable fact only in the material embodiment of signs (11). Consciousness neither exists wholly within the individual nor outside the individual, but is mediated between the two; “localized somewhere between the organism and the outside world” (25). The “language” of consciousness is the sign; sign both consists of signs and is nurtured by them (13).

‘Image’ as Mediator: Finding the Self in Bakhtinian Writings Through Dmitri Nikulin

‘Image’ as Mediator: Finding the Self in Bakhtinian Writings Through Dmitri Nikulin (Working draft)

“Falsity and lie, which inevitably show up in the relation with oneself. The outer image of thought, of feeling, the outer image of soul. It is not I who is looking from inside with my own eyes at the world, but I am looking at myself with the eyes of the world, with the other’s eyes; I am possessed by the other. Here there is no naïve wholeness of the outer and the inner. To spot one’s own image at one remove. The naïveté of any fusion of oneself with the other in the mirror image. The surplus of the other. I do not have a perspective on myself from outside, I do not have an approach to my own inner image. Gazing out from my eyes are others’ eyes.”

Dmitri Nikulin begins his essay “The Man at the Mirror (Dialogue with Oneself)“ with the above quote and uses this short piece of Mikhail Bakhtin’s writing as the foundation for the essay’s argument. Nikulin unpacks Bahktin’s formation of a dialogical and unfinalizable self through the imagery of a man looking into his reflection in a mirror. This mirrored other is not the man himself, nor is it a separate, independent existence. The reflections mimics the man’s gestures and the man, in turn, cannot seem to unglue his eyes from the fascinating creature who seems to both exist within and outside himself. The man has just met his other.

The relationship between self and other may at first glance to appear direct, but this immediate relation proves to be deceptive. Nikulin writes, “the sense of immediacy with my self as other is mediated by that other’s looking at me through the mirror image” (66). The mirrored self and the self interact positing that each one is independent of the other, however, irrevocably intertwined, the two sides enter into a dependent relationship from conception. An attempt to untangle the two through dialectic rhetoric proves futile, instilling both fear and hope.

Nietzsche’s “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense”

On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (1873) by Friedrich Nietzsche

I’d like to propose some alternative titles that I think Nietzsche could have used for this essay::

• “Deceive Without Harm” – Your Guide to a Free Intellect
• “Rationality”, It’s Definitely Overrated
• Telling the Truth, aka Lying with the Herd
• Human Intellect, It’s Built on Spider Webs
• “Hide and Seek Truth”, The Game of Reason (and Five Year Olds)
• We Could Be Living in Inception, And That’s Probably Okay

Friedrich Nietzsche begins his essay, “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” by disputing the superlative character of human intellect. As though the world’s axis revolved around their very existence, humans move through the world with the same arrogance as the narcissistic gnat, whose world would collapse without his own existence (1). Once upon a time man created the “power of knowing” and with it the pride from which he derives the value of his own existence.

Rather than admiring human intellect (as many philosophers have), Nietzsche casts doubt on its purpose and finds that humans as the “most unfortunate, delicate, and ephemeral beings” (1) possess intellect to hold them in existence (having been denied the opportunity of their animal counterparts to “wage the battle for existence with horns or with the sharp teeth of beasts of prey” (1)). Throughout the essay Nietzsche contrasts human existence with that of animals, locating the dichotomy in man’s ability to conceptualize the world, that is, his formation of truth (4). This intellect unfolds itself principally in dissimulation, where man engages in,

Deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, playing a role for others and for oneself (1).

Immersed in illusions and dream images, man is easily “sustained in the indifference of his own ignorance” (2). Nietzsche thus does not ask the question, “what is truth?” but instead “where does our drive for truth come from?”.

As social beings, humans maintain a balance between self-preservation (achieved through dissimulation) and the desire to exist socially (“with the herd”). Through this social commitment of peace the necessary distinction of “truth” is established. Language institutes the first laws of truth and the dichotomy of truth and lie (2). Existing in society thus becomes the duty of upholding “truth” and in return receiving the “pleasant, life-preserving consequences of truth” (2). Man, therefore, is indifferent toward “pure knowledge” (which has no consequences) and does not hate deception itself, but rather the negative consequences that arise out of certain forms of deception (2). Human drive, then, is not guided by the concept of “pure truth, but by a truth that is,

a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding (4)

When we know something in this sense, we possess only a metaphor for that thing. Language does not mirror reality, rather, it constructs reality through metaphors. Language, a product of man, is inherently anthropomorphic, and thus truths voiced in language will always be “anthropomorphic truths” (5).

 

Source::

Friedrich Nietzsche, On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (1873) http://imrl.usu.edu/6890/OnTruthandLies.pdf