Comments on: Some Debts

By: Alicia (AE)

Alicia (AE) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 11:57:06 +0000

I have really enjoyed thinking about “things”, thanks to this post. In Greek, the word for thing is “pragma”–an action–from prasso, to bring about, accomplish. I was thinking about the Latin “res” also, which is such an all-purpose word. I am intrigued to learn that its roots have to do with “assembly” or assemblage–and likewise with joining and numbering. It is cognate, evidently, with the English “rime” (rhyme), which also originally had to do with counting, numbering rather than the chime of endings. Nifty!

By: Emily Warn

Emily Warn — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 23:30:53 +0000

Ange, Your post, interesting as usual, made me break my vow to steer clear of the Internet until New Year's. We hope that after your Internet hiatus you'll often chime in on Harriet. We're going to miss you! Did you know there's a thing called "Thing Theory" invented by Bill Brown, a cultural theorist at U. of Chicago? He edited a special issue of Critical Inquiry about it. Unlike your thinking, his is focused on the relation between thing, object, and sign, and not on the etymology of "thing." Below is a bit from his "Thing Theory" essay from the Critical Inquiry issue: "For even the most coarse and commonsensical things, mere things, perpetually pose a problem because of the specific unspecificity that 'things' denotes. Mind you, for Ponge, objects may seem substitutable for things, and by 'siding with things' (le parti pris des choses) he meant to take the part of specified objects-doorknobs, figs, crates, blackberries, stoves, water. But the very semantic reducibility of things to objects,coupled with the semantic irreducibility of things to objects, would seem to mark one way of recognizing how, although objects typically arrest a poet's attention, and although the object was what was asked to join the dance in philosophy, things may still lurk in the shadows of the ballroom and continue to lurk there after the subject and object have done their thing, long after the party is over. When it comes to Ponge, in fact, the matter isn't so simple as it seems. Michael Riffaterre has argued that the poems, growing solely out of a 'word-kernel' (mot-noyau), defy referentiality. Derrida has argued that, throughout the poet's effort 'to make the thing sign,' the 'thing is not an object [and] cannot become one.' Taking the side of things hardly puts a stop to that thing called theory." Emily

By: Ange

Ange — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 02:59:39 +0000

“…(”thyng”) where it means a deed for a piece of land?…”
Totally! Middleton doesn’t make the point outright, but it’s implied in his account of property and individual consciousness. Just hours after I posted that, I came across the word “bolshy” twice — in British media — and wish I had had that word to throw around when I talked about Middleton, Pickard, et al. — what a great word! Can’t believe I never noticed it before — counterpart to “bougie,” of course.
Bachelardette — we shall see. I think I need a little vacation from the internet! xo to all

By: john

john — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 00:37:16 +0000

And what does it say about over-commodification that love is a “thing” in countless popular songs?
Thanks Ange — sorry they’re not taking you on permanent around here.

By: Laura Carter

Laura Carter — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 21:40:08 +0000

Ange,
I have enjoyed your posts! I hope you will consider reviving Bachelardette? Just a thought….
Happy New Year!
Laura

By: jane

jane — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 19:39:12 +0000

I haven’t read the Middleton, so perhaps he touches upon this, but — isn’t it of some interest that the word “thing” (which I always thought came down from Old Norse; is that wrong?) passes through an intermediate phase (”thyng”) where it means a deed for a piece of land? This usage appears in Chaucer. It mediates rather clearly between the village assembly (which devotes much of its haggling to matters we’ll later call real estate) and generalized objecthood, and is a usefully explanatory moment in the word’s history, I think.

By: Aaron Fagan

Aaron Fagan — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 16:39:46 +0000

Ange, your posts are wonderful and always inspire further investigation. I highly recommend The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language by Christine Kenneally.

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 12:44:18 +0000

And thank you, Ange, for all your posts, which have been wonderful and thoughtful, and, most of all, have brought poets and writers I want to know better to light. Sigizmund Krzhizhanosky (along with Daniil Kharms) were stocking stuffers thanks to your posts.
Etymology: always catnip for poets, since they obsess over words and such anyway. Business comes from anxiety, dwell comes from to mislead, etc. Middleton’s speculation may be compelling given that language is a social game and the game changes over time.
Walter Ong: …a poet can serve up his words in a medium where very many meanings, or even every common meaning which the words may have in the language he is using can be taken out of his words, and any meaning seems to make sense, or to keep our thoughts moving in the direction he desires. We are driven to the question whether words can be used in this way, and to further question whether it is necessary for a poet to have always one definite meaning (“denotation”) in what he says. The answer based on much of what is best must be a simple No. Even in ordinary conversational usages, which, it is true, are often more poetic in function than scientific, the denotations and connotations of words shift with varying contexts, and there can be no good reason assigned why I cannot use words even in conversation which may be assigned with equal validity to any of various meanings, simply serving them up to see what you can do with them. All the more is this true of poetry. If I thereby fail to attain scientific accuracy, this is far from de-intellectualizing poetry. Rather it is demanding a greater intellectual exertion, calling on your mind, as it does, to work actively about in shifting meanings and giving it occasion to take pleasure in this very activity itself.
Once again, thank you, Ange. And tante bella cosi.