I worry that, writing as I do from outside the special offices of Acadême, this essay will not be perceived as what it is, what it must be: a bridge across all incidence of negation, built in the space opened up by the solidarity that can be found between and among all events that occur at the very edge of negation.

Perhaps I use the word all too liberally for some people’s tastes. This raises the question of refinement, and of whether refinement is the better of interpretive realms. Whether refinement is equal to the Good. But also, whether refinement can occur in such a way that it reduces meaning beyond a vanishing point and furnishes an empty space with only more emptiness. The word all is a linguistic convention, and it is my position that a bridge across negation must be made entirely of language. It is a linguistic activity I embark upon here, and it is in precisely the context of the question of the sentiment of the word all, and all things that claim its reach and meaning, that I write.

Upon this foundation of linguistic convention, I should like to erect another linguistic undertaking, shaped more specifically, that will serve as an introduction to the edifice of my reasoning about nothingness and the very necessary bridges. The reader may interpret my approach as somewhat evasive, or even comedic, but really it speaks directly to the nature of speech. It is a necessarily derivative act, and yet always original, as it were. It is paradox, and so it has the strength to outreach nothingness.

What is, is. This is irrefutable. What is refutable is what is, exactly. Is it left to us to determine what is by naming it, by spelling its name, but assigning meaning, and then by committing ourselves to an endless repetition of the invented language? Or is it our task to learn what is actual, to discover what sounds convey that actuality, and then to use those sounds as artfully and honestly as possible?

For Confucius, precision in language usage meant virtue, was virtue. He would deride his interlocutors not for failing to know or failing to will, but for failing to articulate with exactitude. Because a cloud-laden landscape is a dangerous one. Because the Truth, the knowing of which yields impossible harmonies, is exact, not cloud-laden, crisp. He was convinced that evil and suffering arose out of error, out of imprecision, and there are many ways in which a misspoken word can provoke undesirable effects.

Perhaps the roots of psychoanalysis can be found in this idiosyncrasy of a sage. Night is night, and night is blue. There is precision here, because although only one formula is apparent, the two statements are able to coexist, and... both are true. But more importantly, the second expresses a more precise actuality, by insinuating a certain line of inquiry: why is the night blue? Because I find it to be blue, because it envelops me in blue, and because I call it blue. There is another level revealed, and the pretensions of realism are jettisoned, in favor of honesty.

But who can be sure that the speaker is being honest? Isn’t it equally possible that her night was scarlet red, haunting and unnerving, and she calls it blue as a means of seeking comfort, or of putting on a brave face? Rhetorically, there is no way around this doubt, this rift in clear, blue meaning, but the real problem has to do with our bridging of negation.

If she speaks precisely, honestly, without a haze, open to the necessary stream of inquiry, then her speech parts the deep tides of negation biblically, and we are saved from doubt. If she modifies the truth of her scarlet obscurity, calling it blue, and speaking of clarity to which she is not privy, then she cuts our bridge with her indiscretion, washing the substance of a useful and necessary bridge into the unforgiving tides.

There are storms of illegibility arranging themselves on the horizons of our discourse. We cannot read the truth of her speech. We cannot gauge the purpose of a language, only its configuration. So we turn to the meaning of these storms, and we delve into the possibility that they, themselves, hold the quintessence of our engineering goal, this bridging.

Any reader who proceeds beyond this point must know that we now face the risk of traveling this circuitous route, passing through dark woods and uncharted immersions, and emerging with nothing new to support any of our positions. In Plato’s Protagoras, we witness the very sharpest minds within the author’s mind, grappling at language, using it to uncover virtue, and in the end, defeated by its consistent illegibility. All the argumentation they can muster brings them to the conclusion that words promote much argumentation, guaranteeing nothing, promising no success whatsoever.

No success, except that words will exist. They will have risen from the intervening cumulus of a life, they will have taken shape and shown themselves, and despite the ravenous tides of negation, looming up on all sides in their ceaseless dark swallow, they will exist. From indecision, from cloud-laden urges and the difference between what is scarlet and what is blue, these words will have come into being and will stand against negation, a barrier of utterance, a spectacle, a community aimed at meaning.

© 2002 Joseph Robertson

 

A BRIDGE ACROSS NEGATION
JOSEPH ROBERTSON

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