Re: Re: VMs: postmodern cryptography: Foucault, Panopticon, and Voynich MS

[Jacques Guy <jguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

10/10/2004 4:06:01 PM, <russell.sadd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>For example, when reading a sentence, you are reading your own meaning
>into it.

Talk for yourself. 

"In a first-class carriage of a train speeding
Balkanward across the flat, green Hungarian plain,
two Britons sat in friendly, fitful converse."

Read that and instill your own meaning into it.

> It is hard to claim that you can know
>exactly what went on in the author's head

In Saki's head? The picture of two Britons sitting
in friendly, fitful converse in a first-class 
carriage of a train speeding Balkanward across the
flat, green Hungarian plain.

>(an interesting philosophical
>question: we might agree that an apple is red, but how do I know that
>what you see as red is not what I see as green?).

An interesting piece of humbuggery, that. The confusion of
"signifié" and "signifiant". The interesting question is:
is it deliberate, and thus the result of intellectual
dishonesty, or is it a mere effect of ignorance?


>Whilst we are doing this, a post-structuralist in the style of Foucault
>and Derrida would be asking some difficult questions: 

Questions difficiles, mon cul. Bogus questions, yes

>- *What* is the text saying?

And what, pretty please, do you think we've been doing?

> (meanings we can explore)

You can't "explore" meanings until you've rounded them
up and for that, you need to have deciphered and translated
the text. Until then "exploring" is nothing but vacuous
intellectual masturbation.
 
>- *How* is this being said?
It is not being said. It was _written_ a long time ago.
You know what the present progressive means in English?
So much for "how is this being...". You know what "say"
means in English? So much for "said".

You appear to be incapable of wording a relevant question.
What business have you then of asking questions?

>- *Who* is saying this? 
No-one is saying anything. It was _written_ by persons
unknown. Stop asking stupid questions without any
relevance whatsoever to the topic. When did you stop
beating your grandmother?

Just imagine if Champollion had asked himself such
questions instead of rolling up his sleeves and 
getting down to work.


>- What is *not* being said?

What is *not* being said is that yesterday I
bought the Monty Python "The Meaning of Life"
DVD. And wow, that is also what is *not* 
being said on the Rosetta Stone! And double
wow, that is also what is *not* being said
on the Tuxtla Statuette. Now you have prime material
for a landmark paper that will fatten up your
publication list. A qui c'est-y qu'il dit merci
le petit bonhomme?

[rest of Derridaesque seminal communication
deleted]


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