1
Lendl Barcelos
30 April 2014
The Utter Limits: Labyrinths of Xenop(h)o(n)etics
As with any (post-)structuralist of sufficient complexity, one must be careful when
invoking particular aspects of their labyrinth in order to avoid having to present the entire
system. This is especially the case when, throughout the course of their writing, structures
have been rebuilt. Avoiding the millions of words written by the followers of Lacan (from
Althusser to Zupančič) that result in varied substructures, extensions and renovations, I
will focus on a single paper from his Écrits: “The Function and Field of Speech and
Language in Psychoanalysis.” An even further circumscription is necessary so as to avoid
dead-ends and self-similar pathways. For if, while navigating the Lacanian concept-space
of his essay, one were to travel deep into his labyrinth it would become necessary to represent what came before—again and again and… Without any thread to guide, we must
be cautious; a well-constructed labyrinth affords no escape. Without resorting to too much
redundancy, let us follow and trace several seemingly disparate threads. All extrapolation
requires re-tracing, and all I can commit to is an attempt to do so non-trivially.
Other Speech
“Ce que je cherche dans la parole, c'est la réponse de l'autre.”
[“What I seek in speech is the response of the other.”]
—Lacan (Fr.299 | 247)1
For Jacques Lacan speech [la parole] functions within language [le langage],
although it is not always the case that the field of language is primed for speech to take
place. For him, the distinguishing feature between a language that affords speech and one
that does not is “the fixed correlation between its [a language’s] signs and the reality they
1
Citations from original French sources will follow the following format: Fr.<page number(s)>.
2
signify” (246). When there is a one-to-one correlation within a language between a sign
and its referent it is not capable of providing a field for speech to operate on. To illustrate
this point, Lacan uses an example of the communication of bees. A bee returning to their
hive, after successfully gathering nectar, is able to transmit detailed information about the
location of the source of nectar via a ‘wagging dance.’ The bee’s dance is a precise code or
system of signalling that scientists were able to decode after years of observation. It was
realized that the frequency of the bee’s gyration could be directly linked to the direction of
the location of the nectar and its distance from the hive (Lacan 245-246).
For Lacan, the rigidity of this apian communication makes it unable to attain the
status of a ‘proper’ language, a language affording speech. In order for the latter to occur,
it would be necessary for language to become flexible so that a subject may begin to
operate on language itself—or be operated on by it—and in this process modify it. At the
limit of this modification—a creation of a singular use of language—it is possible that the
subject’s language ceases to work. Lacan formulates this as “the antinomy immanent in the
relations between speech and language … The more functional language becomes, the less
suited it is to speech, and when it becomes overly characteristic of me alone, it loses its
function as language” (246).
Speech can then, for Lacan, be situated on a continuum between two poles. When
navigating towards one limit we ultimately arrive at communication, where speech
becomes impossible as it turns into an inflexible one-to-one system or code. Moving
toward the other limit results in nonsense as speech becomes so completely idiosyncratic—
a pure flexibility—that it launches out of language and loses all meaning, at least to
everyone but the speaker.2 In order for speech to operate on language—i.e. in order for
speech to occur at all—a balance must be struck between flexibility and rigidity. So, for
2
See Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations for an in-depth argument against the possibility of
such a ‘private language’ (§243–315).
3
Lacan, speech occurs like a pendulum swinging between the poles of a purely rigid
exteriority and a purely flexible interiority. Without a subject, such as in the example of
apian communication, no speech can occur and, inversely, with a solipsistic ‘subject’ that
has no other, speech becomes de-coupled from language and ceases to make sense. Yet
speech without language is hardly speech because it is an operation without a field to
operate on. To reiterate: at the limits of speech are communication and nonsense, both of
which foreclose the possibility of speech.
Speech necessitates the other; it is necessarily intersubjective. Lacan makes explicit
reference to this: “the speech value of a language is gauged by the intersubjectivity of the
‘we’ it takes on” (247). In speech, we are faced with an intersubjective relation: an I
attempting to exceed—or supersede—itself in order to evoke a response by an other to
form a ‘we.’ In a certain sense, both poles of the linguistic continuum—subjectless &
solipsistic—have no speech value. In order for a language to have a speech value it must
invoke an other. This is precisely why it is necessary, for Lacan, that the subject seeks an
other in speech. It is with this that the epigraph above begins to evoke sense.
[ Followed Threads; or, Walking a Détourned Line ]
“Who enters, into the text … through the door of quotation?”
—Cixous (103)
Hélène Cixous enters. Let us take a stroll with her and trace a path out of step
with the rest. Bracketed interludes will be used to follow threads she has laid: lines of
thought, plot lines, plot holes, Stigmata.3 Having carefully entered the Lacanian labyrinth
above, Cixous offers words of caution: “one must enter the labyrinth of a text with a
thread” (87). So, I call on Hélène Cixous to lend me her thread, but also to help me
thread through “sentences whose trace I will be following, a trace which is familiar and
3
Stigmata is the title of Hélène Cixous’ book from which all of the citations to her in this paper are from.
4
yet foreign” (84). Even I becomes4 equivocal—familiar and foreign. To be sure the I
cited differs from the I that calls on Cixous, although when seamlessly interwoven via
citation the distinction begins to blur and ambiguity becomes a tactic. Identification finds
polyvalent sense, depending on the contexts it appears. To navigate the labyrinth that is
the Lacanian concept-space of speech—as outlined in the structure above—I turn to
Cixous for communion, who offers her poetic text.
She offers me a way to move through this space. She is intimately familiar with
moving through the labyrinthine contours of a text. “All it takes is not letting go of the
thread” (Cixous, 87). Hearing her words5, I won’t let go. But her thread, as presented
here, appears somewhat frayed and seemingly to be coming undone. For I do not re-cite
her text in all its integrity, only portions, out of order, out of their original context and
mixed with my own. I am re-presenting her text at my discretion and, in this, I risk
making an imposition. I must be cautious not to stray too far away from the lines
running through her text, or I might lose her thread and also myself. Here she speaks: “I
do not want my soul to be clothed in a borrowed appearance which will phantomize me”
(94). She is not a phantom, nor a ghost; here, she is my guide. A guide whose voice
speaks more than is re-presented here. Still this selection process is needed to enter into
contact with her text, in order to move with her. Being in a textual labyrinth, I will walk
this course, interweaving my words with hers, threading her words through mine.
Tracing her sentences, I am led. Her speech and mine moving alongside each other;
“who speaks here is already the stranger, who comes from the other world. And he is not
the only one to speak. It’s a concert” (92). I am not the only one to speak, for we speak
in concert. Am I the ‘stranger’ she evokes? Do I come from the ‘other world’? Perhaps.
Although her words and my words may at times be the same—for language is
not ours to own and we can both operate on it—our words may point to different things.
4
To risk an excessive clarity, the verb form ‘becomes’ rather than ‘become’ is intentional as will become clear
in the section below.
5
In fact, ‘her words’ are actually those of her translator, but we will leave this as an incidental re-mark for
now.
5
I will mainly be focusing on the text, “‘Mamãe, disse ele,’ or Joyce’s second Hand,’”
which appears as chapter 7 in Stigmata. There, the sentences whose trace she follows
differ from the ones I now follow—she moves from Ovid to Joyce, Lispector to
Rimbaud. The latter is our shared reference. Ambiguities abound affording unforeseen,
resonant mixtures. I walk along the lines of her thought, she already having laid her
trace.
It is somewhat ambiguous whether or not I am here entering into dialogue with
Cixous, but if ‘we’ can be used to describe our proximity then this can perhaps be
described as speech; or, this text can be said to have a speech-value. In fact, this mixing
of voices performs the necessary Lacanian requirement that constitutes speech; it folds
language, without producing solipsism.6 Cixous’ thread keeps me and my text company:
This text … is thick with a company of quotations. Citation is the voice of
the other, and it highlights the double playing of the narrative authority. We
constantly hear the footsteps of the other, the footsteps of others in
language (Cixous 85).
Her words thicken. The presence of her cited voice becomes the voice of the other. But
in it we can hear her footsteps, the patterns she t(h)reads through language. I can follow
her by perking my ears toward the echoes of her steps. Recontextualizing her voice as I
do, I perform a détournement but we also a dérive.7 Her text helps to sound as-yetunheard(/unknown) sympathies, where “all of this resonates in the labyrinth of the inner
ear” (92). Perhaps her words sound out of place; “I do not want to belong, they repeat” (94).
Quotation marks a difference. Its marks betray the equivocal nature of I.
Let us not lose our initial thread. Such long (bracketed) detours risk ramifying
concept-spaces into labyrinths of their own. I do not wish to lose you. No, what I seek is
to commune with Hélène Cixous, to give her space to puncture holes into the text. I
continue to call out to her. She is “summoned by the call, so as to return at least to his
6
The process of seeking the response of the other via textual invocation will be addressed from a different
angle in another section of this paper below.
7
The Situationist dérive is “an instructive pleasure, the dérive, or drift, was defined … as the ‘technique of
locomotion without a goal,’” where for a certain moment usual reasons for movement are paused and one lets
“’themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there.’” (Plant 58)
6
ears” (102); at least to my ears, but also perhaps to yours. Several threads have been laid,
so let us end this dérive and return. I have not let go of the initial thread, and Cixous—as
the voice of the other via citation—can still lead me back: “When one has no thread and
cannot go by land, one goes by air. This is what poets do” (87).
***
Other Self
“Je est un autre.”
[I is an other.]
—Rimbaud (Fr.252 | 100)
Leave it to a 17-year-old poet, Arthur Rimbaud, to chronoportatively add an
interesting twist to Lacan’s labyrinth. If for Lacan speech is a relation between I and an
other, what would happen if it were possible to identify I with this other? It must be made
clear that this is not the same gesture as with the solipsistic ‘subjectivity’ that is released
from language. With a solipsistic ‘subject,’ the other is erased by being assimilated. The
identification, in this case, of I and other is such that all that remains is I(diosyncracy). In
no way does Rimbaud wish to do away with the other in writing “I is an other;” (100) on
the contrary, he wishes to other himself. His process of becoming-other proceeds “through
a long, boundless, and systematized disorganization of all the senses. All forms of love, of
suffering, of madness” (102). This “[i]neffable torture” (100, translation modified) is an
operation “to attain the unknown” (100). If the ‘speech’ of the solipsistic ‘subject’ produces
nonsense, it is because they are using a private language of their own that is intelligible to
no one but them. In contrast, the I of Rimbaud—an alien I—is a becoming-other, arriving
at sense [sens] radically outside its own. In order to reach this unknown, what is required
is for all organized sense to be disorganized.
Whether or not such a process could ever be completed, whether or not a subject
could ever fully be identified as other, is beside the point. What is critical is that through a
7
systematic disorganization, speech begins to contort language into forms-as-yet-unknown
to the subject. That is to say, the disorganization of the senses [sens] applies not only to a
disorientation of the physical senses, but also—since we must be attentive to the polyvalent
aspects of the word—to a reconfiguration of meaning: an unruly sense. It is for this reason
that Rimbaud stresses that it is “the poet” that undergoes this process (102). Could this not
serve as a definition of a poet: to be one that contorts language in such a way so as to
arrive at forms-as-yet-unknown, to reach sense that even the poet has not experienced
before, or even to create novel ways of sensing the same language?
Yet, does not poetry still require an other? Of course, otherwise we arrive back at
the solipsistic ‘subject.’ Even though I is an other, this does not rule out that there are still
others. The I is an other, but not the other. The xeno-poet (other-poet) creates aberrant
speech that is not quite nonsensical and thus calls on others to respond. It may even be
possible to assert that poetry constructs new operations of speech on language that extend
the horizons of the field of speech, to which others establish the speech value of the
extension—the extent to which the new horizon can be shared or taken up by others. In
order for the latter to be the case, the xeno-poet’s speech must not depart from language;
this speech must not reach the limit state of pure disorganization.
A pure disorganization8 is nothing but the death of the subject (and) of speech. But
even in death, so long as the poet has extended the horizons of the field of speech within
language, others can continue where the poet has ceased.
He [The poet] attains the unknown, and if, demented, he finally loses the
understanding of his visions, he will at least have seen them! So what if he
is destroyed in his ecstatic flight through things unheard of, unnameable:
other horrible workers will come; they will begin at the horizons where the
first one has fallen! (Rimbaud 102-103)
8
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, following Antonin Artaud, name this the Body-without-Organs. See
Logic of Sense and the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
8
[ Daedalus; or, The Cunning of Language ]
“With the call of his name, Daedalus leads monsters, mutants, chimeras. His
story is an entanglement of prison and freedom.”
—Cixous (87)
Another name invoked to lead. Hélène Cixous calls out to Daedalus. Let it be clear
that he is not being invoked here with explicit reference to his son, the fallen Icarus. Yet,
it is perhaps by misdirecting the words of Rimbaud above that we, instead of hearing a
call to Icarus, begin to hear a second call to Daedalus, the crafty father. Rimbaud evokes
Icarus when he writes, “destroyed in his ecstatic flight” and “the horizons where the first
one has fallen” (102-103). As is well known, Icarus as the first to fly, is also the first to
fall from his flight, having flown too high and destroying his wings. But, for Cixous, one
cannot call out to Icarus without also calling out to his father. “Let us speak of Icarus,
that is to say of Daedalus, that is to say of death and of the name,” she writes. To speak
of Icarus is already to speak of Daedalus, so a call to one will be a call to the other. One
name becomes a cypher for the other, so let us part with the name of Icarus and focus on
his father, the labyrinth’s designer. It is after all, Daedalus who knows its contours.
Yet, “he connotes no more than losing one’s way. Poor Daedalus. Daedalus has
become the synonym of his work: the labyrinth and vice versa” (Cixous 86). He loses his
way, but still he leads. He “leads monsters, mutants, chimeras” (Cixous 87). He is a
leader who goes astray or, better, a leader of those who have gone astray. Cixous
provides text that gives sense to the patterns of this leader:
Through Daedalus, who steers from one extreme to the other, we thus have
access to the passage, to the trans, to the crossing of borders, to the delimitation of genuses-genders-genres and species, to construction and to
deconstruction, to metamorphosis. (87)
Daedalus then is one who leads to transgression, ‘the crossing of borders.’ He only
appears to go astray to those circumscribed within predefined limits, but this is only what
appears to be the case. As a craftsman, Daedalus understands material limits and
9
mètically9 (cunningly) mutates them, developing strange hybrids. Being hybrids, his
creativity operates via reorganization. The labyrinth is composed of materials that were
already there, only now they are recontoured into paths, spirals, dead-ends.
When transposed to a sonic register, we can say that Daedalus mètically opens his
ears and listens to language’s inherent polyvalence and equivocality. “If only we listen, a
language always speaks several languages at once, and runs with a single word in
opposite directions” (Cixous x). Forms-as-yet-unknown are hidden in plain sight, hidden
in plain audition. As will become more and more clear—throughout this paper and
beyond—the field of language itself is primed with self-similarities that afford linguistic
short-circuits. “We have much to learn from these differences between resemblances”
(Cixous 97). Homophones are an exemplary case. As before, Cixous provides us with
some guidance: “Only words in love sow [Seul les mots qui s’aiment sèment]” (121). In the
French—which is the reason for its appearance in the text—the final words ‘s’aiment’ (to
be in love) and ‘sèment’ (sow) are homophonically equivalent, although typographically
dissimilar. The translator leaves the original, because the English does not convey the
same aural connection. English ears fall deaf to the connections made between love and
sow in French. It is as if the French language itself reifies their relation.
Aural ambiguity, of course, may also lead to mishearing. In some sense, speech—as
an acoustic intersubjective operation—is illusive. When I listen to the call of the other,
their intention can be elusive. “[F]or whoever has poeticizing ears there is the call”
(Cixous 92). ‘Poeticizing ears’ (ears that create). These ears, by exploiting the sonic selfsimilarity of words, can hear unintended senses. This is how a listener can engage in
xeno-phonetics: an illusive/elusive gesture. It is illusive because it relies on the occult
potential of the sound of a word that might deceive the listener and elusive, because a
word’s equivocality enables multiple meanings to slide into each other. With ears perked
9
Two French historians specializing in Ancient Greece, Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant, revived
this notion, noticing most scholars of Ancient Greece had neglected the concept. Mètis is an Ancient Greek
form of (cunning) intelligence. It is opposed to Logos and can be intuitively grasped as a way of ‘crafting’ a
situation so as to achieve the maximum gain with the minimum effort. See in particular their book-length
study Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society.
10
up to what Cixous names “[c]landestine semantics” (121), language begins to play itself
out in a different manner and “defamiliarization” becomes the angle at which speech is
heard (92). Homophonically, a word and its sonic twin interchange. “The one translates
itself into the other” (Cixous 94). ‘Poeticizing ears’ expose this creativity in the audition
of sound, of speech. In attending to a sound, the listener—even the one who simply
hears—is never just passively receiving. They are constantly forming and reforming the
sounds they are steeped within. Xeno-phonetics is not foreign to Cixous—one of the
reasons for her being selected as a guiding thread. She even describes it as a common
sensation. “We all have the impression of having already heard it, but otherwise, and in
another language” (Cixous 101). We will return to this below, outside of this aside. “The
repetition almost inverts the meaning of the remark. It has passed, and it returns”
(Cixous 122).
Daedalus’ labyrinth entangles prison and freedom. The labyrinth of speech—of
aural and of textual intercourse—offers us a flexible intersubjective freedom, but, at its
limits, also holds us captive. “Certain texts are on the one hand labyrinths, on the other
forges where one performs operations: one melts, like wax, one makes alloys, one
resolvers and rewelds” (Cixous 116). Texts become double-edged. On the side of the
forge, we are beckoned to play, to modify, to cite, to re-cite. The state of play becomes a
question that can be posed. On the side of the labyrinth, material is contoured into
pathways that never lead to escape. We are stuck, unless Daedalus offers us his
guidance. But, until then, let us return to Rimbaud as Cixous offers him a maxim:
“Language’s tricks are the allies of the artist who goes into resistance or exile” (x).
***
11
Rimbaud in Africa
“Poetry is fluent silence.”
—Land (“Fanged Noumena” 222)
Eventually, Rimbaud, frustrated by intersubjective speech and its incapacity to
move beyond language, ceases to write poetry. He decides to travel through Europe, Asia,
and Africa, and finally to live in Ethiopia. His time is no longer spent in constant
debauchery; rather, it is devoted to hard labour and the trading of merchandise. All this
can be read as his attempt to escape language. Already of somewhat renown by the time he
stops writing poetry—even though he is only twenty years of age—Rimbaud goes to great
lengths to flee from the confines of his interpellation as a poet. But the unruly nature of the
time he spent in Paris, only reified his infamy as an enfant terrible and poet. It is said that he
would attend literary salons only to heckle the poets and accuse them of being uninspired.
As mentioned above, a poet for Rimbaud was one who systematically disorganized sense,
so his expectations were quite high. To follow a line of flight outside his title of ‘poet,’ it
was necessary to go elsewhere—somewhere his name could not be identified with poetry.
It was also necessary to go silent.
Rimbaud never remained fully tacit. Throughout his life as an ex-poet, he
continued his correspondence, mostly writing to his family. For a writer wanting to extend
the field of speech, this would not be sufficient means to continue. Yet, instead of returning
to poetry, he steadfastly refused. Is there silence at the limits of speech? Was the ineffable
the only way out of language? Maybe not. “Rimbaud spent a decade trying to dissolve in
the Ethiopian sun, but he still died as a poet who had long been silent, rather than as
someone who had salvaged their humanity from the insanity of words” (Land, “Thirst for
Annihilation” 201). Even his “fluent silence” is poetry, is the act of a poet. It is here that we
return to the Lacanian dynamics of speech. For what happens to Lacan’s formula “What I
seek in speech is the response of the other” (247) when the other remains silent.
12
Through “the summoning characteristic of speech” (Lacan 245) let us place the late,
speechless Rimbaud in the position of the other from which we seek a response. Whatever
I seek in speech addressed to him, will be in the form of an annihilated reply. If I seek to
operate on language with him, can I be sure that it is via the field of speech? Can I be sure
that his silence is a response and not just void that I project into? For Lacan, “all speech
calls for a response,” (206) so it is safe to assume that, for him, if I enter into
intersubjective speech with Rimbaud there is at least an anticipated answer. But Lacan
also writes, “there is no speech without a response, even if speech meets only with silence,
provided it has a listener” (206, translation modified). Unless we are able to call on
Rimbaud to hear, it will not be possible to summon him and enter into speech with him.
How is it possible to open the ears of the deceased Rimbaud in order for him to be able to
listen? The inverse relation seems obvious, we need only read Rimbaud to open our ears to
the call of his speech, but when we attempt to speak to him he remains silent. What are we
to make of this silence? According to Lacan, if we are unaware of how speech functions,
then we “will seek a reality beyond speech to fill the emptiness” (206). Not being able to
resort to his behaviour—for the corpse of Rimbaud has long since decayed—the only
reality available to us ‘beyond speech’ is his writings. We can coerce Rimbaud to respond
to the summons of speech through his writings. Not only would this be a narcissistic,
quasi-solipsistic endeavour—for we would be ‘subjectively’ plundering through his
œuvres—but this would also be the response of a young enfant terrible and not of the late,
silent Rimbaud. So, we are destined either to the impossibility of reading into his bodiless
silence or to read, in vain, his disavowed writings. Despite this, Rimbaud has never
stopped being called: poet. Attempting to escape over the wall of language he is “charred
by the flame of the impossible, Rimbaud treads the edge of the maze” (Land, “Thirst for
Annihilation” 203)—or in our case the labyrinth.
13
Other Words / Outer Worlds
“pour régler le débit de ses oreilles, … des oreilles pour ne point entendre, autrement
dit pour faire la détection de ce qui doit être entendu.”
[“to adjust the receptivity of his or her ears, … having ears in order not to
hear, in other words, in order to detect what is to be understood/heard.”]
—Lacan (Fr.253 | 211 translation modified)
Oiseau, which is contained in contemporary poet Christian Bök’s book Eunoia, is
composed mostly as a set of translations of Arthur Rimbaud’s synaesthetic poem ‘Voyelles.’
One of which is a homophonic translation, ‘Veils.’ Listening to ‘Veils’ with an ear for
French gives access to polyvalent sense(s). Although it generally requires a bit of a stretch,
since the typical pauses and phrasing does not align from one language to the next, it is still
possible to flip back and forth from listening to an English poem and listening to a French
poem. When familiar with the original poem, which in Eunoia is printed six pages before
‘Veils,’ one is to a far greater extent able to hear “what is to be heard” (Lacan 211,
translation modified). In this case, what is to be heard is two-fold: Bök’s English
homophonic translation and Rimbaud’s original. Perhaps, the relation between the two is
also meant to be heard.
Homophonic translation is a process of parsing a text into different lexical units,
while maintaining the phonetic content. A perfect homophonic translation would thus
sound exactly the same as the original but be composed of different words. As a basic
example one could homophonically translate ‘Rimbaud’ as ‘Rambo.’ Given that phonemes
tend to differ from one language to another, most homophonic translations only
approximate the sound of the original; they are near-homophonic translations. The
question of arriving at a perfect homophonic translation is, of course, compounded when
we take into account phrasing, accent, intonation and timbre—these latter three aspects
being identified by Mladen Dolar as constitutive of what he names the object voice (20). If
a text of homophonic translation is read with an accent other than the one that was
14
‘intended,’ it will, of course, create difficulties in hearing the original. But, what is
phenomenal is that speech enables a homophonic listening to occur, with or without taking
the object voice into consideration.
Again we have a case where I is an other. Christian Bök’s ‘Veils’ “preserv[es] the
original voicing of the sounds” (113). Thus, both poems share the same sonic identity. Yet,
the semantic aspects of both poems are radically different. Rimbaud’s ‘Voyelles’ creates a
correspondence between the vowels and colours, which he then uses to animate fantastic
and symbolic descriptions. Bök’s ‘Veils’ conceals all the original references to vowels,
although colours and paint continue to play a major role. When the identity of the poem is
made other, via a homophonic translation, is it up to the listener to decide which “not to
hear” (Lacan 211), to adjust his or her receptivity?
In an essay entitled “Translating the Sound in Poetry: Six Propositions,” Rosmarie
Waldrop points out that “sound in poetry is not a simple phonetic matter,” (60) thus
problematizing the notion of a sonic identity. She goes on to insist that even within the
same language, “different semantic contexts make us hear the same phonemes differently”
(60). Not only is this the case with homophones—sink and sync—where it is generally
possible to differentiate one from the other given the context,10 but Waldrop uses an
example where the same word is heard differently: “We hear the word splice differently in a
statement like ‘the splice after frame 39’ and in the pun ‘the splice of life’” (60). So, a sonic
identity is modified given its context. In some sense, this relates to Rimbaud’s poetic
project of becoming-other since it is due to a continual promiscuity that he vies to open his
body to the unknown; or, perhaps, it is more accurate to say that he is preparing I to be
opened by the unknown.11 In an analogous fashion, a word’s sonic identity is reconfigured
10
The pun “a synching feeling” complicates the matter, as puns usually do. [Courtesy of @xenopraxis.]
For more on the distinction between ‘being open to’ vs ‘being opened by’ see the work of Reza
Negarestani, especially the chapter ‘Good Meal’ from his theory-fiction Cyclonopedia: Complicity with
Anonymous Materials.
11
15
and disfigured by the various contexts it promiscuously enters. A listener further
complicates this matter because of the adaptability of audition. Both the context of the
words being uttered and the manner in which these words are listened to change the way
the words are able (not) to be heard.12
Other’s Throat
“Being would be other to death—either annihilated by it or left
immaculate—were there not scales.”
—Land (“Thirst for Annihilation” 129)
I purples, spat blood, laugh of beautiful lips is a composition for solo voice by American
composer Aaron Cassidy. A poetic spurt by Nick Land seems to provide us an apt
description of the work: “a multiplication of mixed signals … tick-bite tinnitus intercut
with rhythmic pattern virus, a subsemiotic staccato of throat-scratching tick-chatter
stitched into the talk-sickness—calling demons” (“Fanged Noumena” 564). The piece uses
Rimbaud’s ‘Voyelles’ as well as Bök’s homophonic translation and a third “bizarrely poor”
(Cassidy) semantic translation of ‘Voyelles’ into English that Cassidy purloined from the
vast network of anonymous amateurs on the internet. What is quite distinctive about the
composition is that, although written to be performed by a single vocalist, three vocal parts
are printed underneath the rhythmic notation. The performer is directed to sing “any voice
part.” One might assume that a performer would make a prior selection of one of the parts
and sing through it or perhaps leap from one part to another between phrases, but the
vocalist is intended to navigate mid-phoneme. Thus, the aptness of Land’s description of a
“subsemiotic staccato” and “talk-sickness.”13
12
The plethora of YouTube music videos subtitled by misheard lyrics is a testament to this phenomenon. See
Steve Connor’s “Earslips: Of Mishearings and Mondegreens.”
13
This is, of course, a reference to William Burroughs’ inversion of Sigmund Freud’s ‘talking cure.’
16
The opening lines of the libretto, with all parts superimposed, could be written as
follows: “ANaYnWHEREoirNeblEARBLancANK.”14 It consists of passages both by
Rimbaud “A noir, E blanc” and Bök “Anywhere near blank.” Reading the lines in this form,
we can begin to hear the two homophonically adjacent poems grate. Yet, as Cassidy states
in a program note on his website, he makes
an effort towards ensuring that the texts never devolve to the point of mere
sound, mere phonemes—despite the extensive fragmentation (of words, of
text, of meaning), their identity as words and as language remains more or
less in tact [sic].
It is clear that ‘mere sound’ would be equivalent to the nonsense of the solipsist described
above. One operation used to restrict the possibility of perceived nonsense, as is legible in
the libretto phrase above, is the repetition of similar phonetic constructions, such as “AN”
and “aYn” as well as “anc” and “ANK.” This enables the listener to hear language stutter,
while also catching its sense.
To hear the words of all three parts simultaneously requires an extremely attentive
ear, but it is nowhere near impossible. What we have is a “multiplication of mixed signals,”
(Land, “Thirst for Annihilation” 129) or, as Lacan might have put it, ‘mixed speech.’ For
what is occurring is superimposed lines of meaning, all in a somewhat jagged form On a
superficial scale, what we hear is unintelligible—a death of meaning—but on a different
scale, as Cassidy describes himself, the “us[e of] common morphemes and phonemes to
shift between languages and modes of syntax,” (2014) creates a relative instability that can
be frequently stabilized and adumbrated into sense by the listener.15 I purples “destabilize[s]
the intricacies of linguistic codes,” (Cassidy 2014) performing an almost Rimbaudian
14
For clarity, the French original is in lowercase and the English homophonic translation in uppercase.
It is worth mentioning the comedian and phonomagus Reggie Watts, who slips between personas—with
distinct accents, clichés and gestures—mid-sentence during his performances. Of particular relevance here is
his ‘malfunctioning mic’ gag where he grafts partial words onto each other and breaks off into silenced
gestures, all to mimic the effect of a broken microphone. It is possible to read Watts’ gag as confronting the
boundaries of language and sense, while commenting on common technological failures—a psychedelia
which characterizes our 21st century listening experience. See “Reggie Watts: Humor in music.”
15
17
disorganization of sense, contorting language in such a way that what the listener hears is
able to slip into and out of sense and speech—an effective gesture, if one takes into
consideration the central role Rimbaud takes in the composition.
***
To close, we must complete our circle, our circumscription. Remaining within the
confines of our initial parameters—to secure ourselves from the millions upon millions of
Lacanian words, so as to prevent slipping into his elaborate labyrinth—we will end with
the words of Lacan himself; words of a different tenor than the rest. These words buried
amongst the footnotes of “The Function and Field of Speech and Language in
Psychoanalysis” call out to us. Yet, their message is opaque. These self-same words appear
in both the French and English editions of Écrits without a single letter of difference.
“When we speak it rattles like a jagged stone in our throats,” (Land, “Thirst for
Annihilation” 108) so let us hear, in closing, a sound of Lacan’s own, a sound
untranslatable and perhaps meaningless. Let us hear Lacan’s sound poem. “Hear ye:
‘Parfaupe ouclaspa nannanbryle anaphi ologi psysoscline ixispad anlana—égniakune n'rbiol' ô
blijouter têtumaine ennouconç’” (Fr.299 n.1 | 267 n.35)16
16
This sound poem is, according to Lacan, a ridding of the redundancies contained within the opening
epigraph of his essay.
18
Works Cited
Bök, Christian. Eunoia. Toronto: Coach House, 2010. Print.
Cassidy, Aaron. “Aaron Cassidy :: I purples, spat blood, laugh of beautiful lips - 2006.”
Web. 10 January 2014. <http://aaroncassidy.com/music/purples.htm>.
Cassidy, Aaron. “I purples, spat blood, laugh of beautiful lips (2007).” Online video clip.
YouTube. YouTube, 1 Nov. 2009. Web. 16 Nov. 2013.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B_0EOOEz7s>.
Cixous, Hélène. Stigmata: Escaping Texts. London: Routledge (Classics), 2005. Print.
Connor, Steven. “Earslips: Of Mishearings and Mondegreens.” Columbia University.
2009. Web. 16 Nov. 2013. <http://www.stevenconnor.com/earslips/>.
Couroux, Marc (xenopraxis). “@DeptofBioFlow @FractalOntology It’s a question of
finding wresting places—momentary fissures which afford revalencing of captured
elements.” 24 Feb. 2014, 10:17 p.m. Tweet.
Deleuze, Gilles. The logic of sense. Ed. Constantin V Boundas. Trans. Charles Stivale and
Mark Lester. London: Continuum, 2004. Print.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Vol. 2.
Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. Print.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Vol. 1.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983. Print.
Detienne, Marcel, and Jean-Pierre Vernant. Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society.
Trans. Janet Lloyd. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Print.
Dolar, Mladen. A Voice and Nothing More. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2006. Print.
Lacan, Jacques. “The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis.”
Écrits. Trans. Bruce Fink. New York: Norton, 2006. 196–268. Print. Trans. of
“Fonction et champ de la parole et du langage en psychoanalyse.” Écrits. Paris:
Éditions du Seuil, 1966. 237–322.
Land, Nick. Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007. Ed. Robin Mackay and Ray
Brassier. Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2012. Print.
Land, Nick. The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism: An Essay in
Atheistic Religion. London: Routledge, 1992. Print.
Negarestani, Reza. Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials. Melbourne: Re.press,
2008. Print.
19
Plant, Sadie. The Most Radical Gesture: The Situationist International in a Postmodern Age.
London: Routledge, 1992. Print.
Rimbaud, Arthur. Complete Works. Trans. by Paul Schmidt. New York: Harper Colophon,
1975. Print.
Rimbaud, Arthur. Œuvres complètes. Ed. Rolland de Renéville and Jules Mouquet. Bruges:
Gallimard (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade), 1951. Print.
Waldrop, Rosmarie. “Translating the Sound in Poetry: Six Propositions.” The Sound of
Poetry, the Poetry of Sound. Ed. Marjorie Perloff and Craig Dworkin. Chicago:
University of Chicago, 2009, 60–64. Print.
Watts, Reggie. 2011. “Reggie Watts: Humor in music.” Online video clip. YouTube.
YouTube, 1 June 2011. Web. 16 Nov. 2013.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0RU_Nyr4l4>.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical investigations. Trans. Gertrude E. M Anscombe, Peter
M. S Hacker, and Joachim Schulte. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Print.