Wow, I’m stunned by the depth (and quantity!) of responses here. I don’t think I could do justice to everything that’s been said here; that being so, I’ll try to respond in a general way to the questions raised, interspersing and replying to specific comments as I go.
Michael enunciates Wittgenstein’s position on meaning very well when he writes:
I suppose my question would be: so why does this make sense? Even given a nuanced interpretation of this ‘thesis,’ how do account for the fact that ‘sense’ is subtracted from nonsense? And if we can’t explain how meaning and reason arise from delirium and drift… how could we possibly hope to control it?
So while it doesn’t cover all of language-use, the thesis that ‘meaning is use’ is quite strong, possibly because the idea that words map out ways of ‘languaging’ just feels better intuitively than words actually directly denoting objects or experiences. I think clr is close to this when he questions whether it even makes sense to ask the following sort of question:
This question would appear to be absurd; this is my whole problem. If meaning is use, that is, if we understand language (or ‘sense’) to be a sort of constantly evolving, self-constructing collection of machines, which reproduces itself out of its opposite (silence, nonsense)-- then we cannot account for the primary ordering of the prelinguistic field of (absurd) singularities!
Again, if meaning is use, then the singular affect of language is to evoke an impulse to order. We should think this as literally as possible: language is molecular, and words have momentum. So significance is firmly rooted in pre-signifying (or even a-signifying) assemblages of enunciation: we can here think of the analogously complex arrangement of (biological) machines needed to produce a human voice.
So the question is: does the doctrine of the subject make any sense any more? There’s no identity, not even in difference: the observer creates a universe by severing a space in two, by invoking it to order. In fact, Joker, I don’t think we separate these two uses of language, that is, demarcating flows (unfolding the space of an observer) and magical evocation (unfolding the meta-space of observation):
I think one of the things I’m curious about is that language always seems to operate on both these levels at once, telling and acting. There are many, probably too many examples, but sticking with the thesis that meaning is use, let’s consider authority. Authority is a kind of paradox related to language. How? Authority only really exists to the degree it is virtual; that is, it maintains its integrity precisely to the degree it doesn’t actualize itself, that it remains only a possibility, a threat.
What if you don’t go by the accepted meanings? What if you scramble all the codes? Well, if you lose it too much, we’ll probably lock you up. Consensus thus has a direct political and material meaning. But nonsense is also valuable, it is the veritable source of creativity. It is the source of humor. If we’re right that language is use, then meaning is built up from non-meaning, sense built from non-sense. But who does it? There’s not really a good answer, except… all of us and none of us.
This connects us with another issue many of you were raising. Consensus: who actualizes our voice, who speaks for us, who speaks for the group? From which unseen blindspot does the ‘group voice’ emanate? This is probably the best way to approach the idea of a ‘molecular assemblage of enunciation’.
The voice doesn’t emerge from any particular part of the organism, of the group. It is a transversal dimension across all of them. We cannot approach this ‘de-totalized’ meaning except in its pure potential. We cannot set a limit, materially or conceptually, to the potential of a human group, its existence as a meaning, an identity, a process. As such, a meaning (unlike a group) is actualized only to the degree another can interpret it sensibly. But we are not always sensitive to new ways of organizing information, especially if the expressed meaning itself is unfamiliar.
In such cases, it is hard to ascribe ‘use’ to meanings whose time, as it were, has not yet come. Further, it’s difficult to say whether something which appears to be nonsense is actually so: being good subjectivists, we then leave it up to others to interpret its meaning, leaving it ‘safe’ for us to enjoy. But I think this is really irresponsible: it keeps us from having to deal with the traumatic energy contained in all processes which lead to growth and self-development.
So that’s ultimately the kind of problem I see in the ‘meaning is use’ thesis. Basicaly, we may not always see the use or sense in certain kinds of expressions, but this doesn’t mean they lack either-- if we’re concerned legitimately with the origin of linguistic structure, we must ask how it arises from the abyssal depths and joyous heights of nonsense.