Out of Context

Context is a fun word to play with, especially for me, a person who has been infected with a need to define all terms, someone who has become obsessed with categories. Context: a compound word: you can break it in half and analyze the parts. Con, according to dictionary.com, as a noun is the argument, position, arguer, or voter against something. As an adverb, it means to be against a proposition, opinion, etc. (arguments pro and con). In its verb form, it means to learn; study; peruse or examine carefully or to commit to memory. The third is the nautical context, to direct the steering of a ship. It's not until the fourth definition that you get to the con, as a trickster, a con artist, but there I'm adding my own connotation. 4. con: adjective - involving abuse of confidence, verb - to swindle; trick, to persuade by deception, and nouns - a confidence game or swindle, and a lie, exaggeration or glib self-serving talk. I have no choice but to look up glib: readily fluent, often thoughtlessly, superficially, or insincerely. There it is, the con artist, the first connotation of the word that pops into my head when I think of the word con, but it is hidden in other perhaps outdated meanings. Context, the front half has been fun to play with (feel free to have fun with taking that one "out of context")! Reletively speaking, text is a fairly boring word to define, until you trace back to the Latin roots from the 1300's, textus, pattern of weaving, texture (of cloth), or tex(ere) to weave. And as may be obvious, when you combine the two words together, you get what we generally understand to be context: parts of a written or spoken statement that precedes or follows a specific word or passage influencing its meaning or effect, and a set of circumstances or facts that surround a particular event or situation. But, what is the most fasciniating to me, out of all this perhaps boring rhetoric I'm subjecting my readers to is that the Latin roots of context (contextus): joining together, scheme or structure, has basically the same meaning as textus: pattern of weaving, texture. It's as if the con aspect has always been a part of the text.

Recently, I got to see an old friend from my old college, and we were catching up a bit about life. I told that that one of my classes is bumming me out about technology again. He knows that I've always struggled with this and he would make fun of the old 35 mm Pentax I used to drag around with me everywhere, and get into arguments about digital vs. film all the time. He said he's happy to be my friend on facebook and see my context. Context, I thought, and I tripped out about it for a second. My context. He could see my pictures, my profile, what circumstances I've been surrounding myself in these days. I said, yeah, so I got a digital camera, aren't you proud of me? He can add one baby step of technology to my context. I realized then that I appreciate different people in different contexts, that I too fit better in some contexts more than others. Walking, second to dancing, is my favorite context. Walking home, I was contemplating taking something or someone out of context. What boundaries are being crossed? It makes people feel uncomfortable; it is considered rude. It is an interruption of a comfort zone. For my thought experiment, I think I will try to take myself out of context. I will attempt to make the claim for technology, bring on the digital era. Hail the post-cyberpunk generation. Go for it, cyborgs! Maybe it will be satire. I'm not quite sure yet.

I've been trying to digest Austin and Derrida into my mind, to little to no avail. I've read and re-read several times over in the quietest focused circumstances and still don't really "get it." What I notice, is a reoccuring theme with both of them of stating how obvious it all must be, nevertheless a need to dissect it into bits, starting from the very origin of writing itself. It seems to me that the distinction has already been made by linguistics between communication and language, and between oral and written communication. Language is communication that is specific to humans over the age of three, that involves using words to convey meaning. Supposedly, all animals communicate, but only humans over three years old have the capacity for language (the apes can succeed, after much training, in simple language akin to a toddler, but not beyond). The distinction between oral and written communication is even more obvious, included in the name. "A writing that is not structurally readable-iterable-beyond the death of the addressee would not be writing"(Derrida, pg 7). He then of course, apologizes for stating something that may seem obvious and goes on to tell his readers to "imagine a writing whose code could be so idiomatic as to be established and known, as secret cipher, by only two "subjects." I would think he would attempt to classify this as an example of non-writing, but no. The question of whether we will be able to understand it after they are dead and gone he answers yes, because there is no such thing as a code. "The perhaps paradoxical consequence of my here having recourse to iteration and to code: the disruption, in the last analysis, of the authority of the code as a finite system of rules; at the same time, the radical destruction of any context as the protocol of code." What does that mean? Isn't that a contradiction? Can I get an example of this hypothetical non-writing? Oh, I get it. No, because it didn't live on in history. Yet the writings of Austin and Derrida live on in history.

In Austin, How to do things with Words, lecture II, he lists the six conditions for a performative utterance to be "happy" that describe, in detail, the context that the performative must be uttered. But prior to, of course he must include the premise of, "I fear, but at the same time of course hope, that these necessary conditions to be satisfied will strike you as obvious"(Austin, pg 14). And afterward, states that if we "sin" against these herby rules then our performative utternace will be "unhappy," and then proeeds to break down all the various means of unhappiness. All I can think of is how unhappy these weary scholars must have been, becoming so obsessed with words as to personify them with feelings. When you break language down into small enough pieces, it ceases to make sense anymore. Like a koan, “A paradoxical anecdote or a riddle that has no solution; used in Zen Buddhism to show the inadequacy of logical reasoning.” Or another definition, “A koan is a fundamental part of the history and lore of Zen Buddhism. It consists of a story, dialogue, question, or statement whose meaning cannot be accessed by rational thinking, yet it may be accessible by intuition.”

Fits and Starts

question and answer
beginning and end
post and comment
fits and starts

these all dissolve
beautifully into one
(a one with no parts)
when we let go
of our heads
and enter our hearts

(http://www.short-zen-poems.com/search/label/Koans)