Ontology of perception is governed largely by social consciousness

Re: 09: Her Mortal Birth by Rich on Thu 03 May 2007 01:38 PM PDT Profile Permanent Link

Deb, I largely agree with what you write here, but with one caveat in the following passage: "It is culture that inscribes paradox or literalness to the name of Being, not language in or by itself, which is a product of consciousness."

Rich: I think this is the very point Derrida contests. That it is in fact language (and the thought process which language explicates) which is by its nature paradoxical. Because by its nature language arises in the play of binary opposites. This is not a fact of culture but rather of phenomenology and how the world co-dependently arises in consciousness. For example, boy/girl, heaven/earth, in/out are not factors of culture per say but of perception. Although true culture ascribes names and even how the phenomena are conceived, the inherent duality which discloses these differences is articulated in the speech act.

Although the House of Being maybe equally extended in the ontic field of practice, there is I believe one important exception which can be given which does prioritize Being in a single word or name. I will explore this further in my next article posting, which actually posits special cases in which the word in fact precedes differance Rich

by Debashish on Thu 03 May 2007 05:43 PM PDT Profile Permanent Link Rich, of course human language (a product of mental consciousness and one other than which we know not any at present) is "paradoxical" in essence and implies its dualisms in each of its assertions and of course this is a fact of phenomenology or of human perception, but the specific ontology of perception is governed largely and in most cases completely by social consciousness.

For example, to use a word "white" implies its opposite "black" but different social formations will cause the co-existence of these two terms to arise with different priorities of awareness. "White" may imply a property of which the property "black" is a derivative, or it may imply a property which is a derivative of "black" or it may imply a property which co-exists with equal priority as "black." And then there is the question of degree.

These priorities are functions of social consciousness or habitus. No individual can claim direct access to language except through their "thrownness" into a phenomenology of habitus which configures linguistic paradoxicality into literalnesses of various kinds or into possible transcendence as the state of social consciousness. DB I look forward to this exploration.