what does it all mean?
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December 29, 2009, 15:54
Filed under: street art, thoughts | Tags: graffiti, meaning, sign, street art, thought
Filed under: street art, thoughts | Tags: graffiti, meaning, sign, street art, thought
Meanings are simply signs. The spectrum of meanings attached to an entity, between the processes of production and consumption, can be of an infinite size.
Instead of trying to define what is 1 / 0, maybe one should accept that signification is subjective.
(thought initiated / graffiti found in Ghent, Belgium)
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THE GREY ZONE. 
Nice first post!
Comment by Linda December 29, 2009 @ 23:33This reminds me of the concept of transsubjectivity (which I read about first in Poetics of Space) – think you’d find it interesting! this is what google throws up first: “A judgment can be objective if it is undertaken on the basis of a transsubjective validity claim that has the same meaning for observers and nonparticipants as it has for the acting subject himself.” Habmermas.
Thanks for your comment! Interesting.. in very simple terms, does this mean that one can think objectively if they accept that multiple subjective – ‘transsubjective’ – opinions exist?
“Bachelard marveled at the mystery that the image can be both unique to the originating conciousness and yet common to different subjects. … the image was revealed as a world of dialogue between intentional subjects.”
Kearney, Richard. Poetics of Imagining: Modern and Post-modern. Fordham University Press, 1998
The Habermas quote, however, throws up a number of other questions: What constitutes a ‘validity claim’? How can it possibly mean the same thing to multiple persons? And what is ‘meaning’ in the first place?
This also relates to Deleuze and Guattari’s idea of Nomad Thought (though I haven’t read enough to discuss it fully):
“Nomad thought … is a vector. … the concept has no subject or object other than itself. … Nomad thought replaces the closed equation of representation, x = x = not y with an open equation: … + y + z + a + … . Rather than analysing the world into discrete components, reducing their manyness to the One of identity… it sums up a set of disparate circumstances… It synthesises a multiplicity of elements without effacing their heterogeneity or hindering their potential for future rearranging…”
Deleuze and Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus. London: Continuum, 2004
Comment by grey December 30, 2009 @ 10:42I think the D&G quote illustrates a move that has been/ is being made from Modern-Postmodern-contemporary society; from linear to complex, top down to bottom up, black and white to GREY.
The idea of a single knowable reality seems outdated – and that opens up a whole mountain of questions! ( most interestingly (for me) regarding the rise of the individual and the role of technology.)
But i think the notion of a ‘model of complexity’ that d&g seem to be proposing is oxymoronic in the full sense of the word; contradictory and self defeating.
Comment by Linda December 31, 2009 @ 19:12