Sent to me by an interested observer, here is David Post, writing at Volokh, in a debate with Caroline Alexander over the propriety of using an inscription from Virgil for a planned 911 memorial. Objecting to Alexander’s argument that Virgil’s line has a specific meaning, and that said meaning doesn’t quite jibe with the purposes of the memorial inscription, Post writes:
Sorry, but Caroline Alexander does not get to decide for the rest of us what those words on the inscription “mean.” Neither, actually, does Virgil (though he’s got a helluva better claim on it than she does). The words mean what we decide they mean. This notion that they’re somehow frozen forever in time, attached to Virgil’s tale, is ridiculous and the worst form of elitism. “No day shall erase you from the memory of time” strikes me as a perfectly appropriate sentiment for this memorial. That Virgil used these words for a different purpose is interesting and entirely irrelevant to whether they are appropriate.
[And by the way: don’t construe my sentiments above as an argument against originalism in Constitutional interpretation. The argument that the meaning of the Constitutional words is frozen in time rests on an entirely different foundation: that a constitution retains its original meaning by virtue of having been enacted into law, at a specific moment, by a specific “People.” Virgil’s Aeneid, of course, comes with no such baggage.]
Several different arguments converge here, and Mr Post — who claims to remain an originalist despite having an idea of language that is very curious in its pragmatism — seems to have trouble negotiating the various threads of his own thought.
First, there is no necessary tension, structurally speaking, between the idea that Virgil meant what he meant — whether or not Post believes Alexander’s interpretation is accurate or not doesn’t change the simple fact that Virgil clearly intended something, else we wouldn’t be dealing with language at all — and the secondary observation that his words can be removed from context and used in ways other than the words were used in their original context (eg., as a memorial inscription). What happens in such a case is that the words, given new signification, become a new text entirely: the signifiers remain the same but the signs, because they are attached to new signifieds, are different, and so mean something different. And in fact, this kind of thing is done all the time with, eg., irony, parody, etc.
Yes we can!
In this case, though, a new wrinkle is added: because the words being proffered to mean something new with respect to the memorial mean something else in their original context when attached to their original signifieds (as intended into being by Virgil, or “Virgil,” depending on what you believe) — and the original text they are drawn from has been widely studied — what we have are competing texts, both of which are being attributed to Virgil,* but only one of which seems at all concerned with the meaning Virgil imbued his text with.
Suggesting that, of the two uses of Virgil’s signifier string under discussion, only Alexander’s is at all interested in what Virgil means. Post, alternately, is interested in how he might use Virgil’s signifiers — and is conflating his use with Virgil’s and then justifying it by making the claim that Virgil doesn’t own his own signification, that in fact Virgil can be made to mean what Post himself desires him to mean.
But of course, Virgil does get to decide what his words mean . What makes language language is the intent to signify, to mean. Post has every right to use the same collection of signifiers as Virgil — ordered in exactly the same way — but what he can’t do is claim that Virgil didn’t have a meaning that was his own (and that we, as interpreters, are tasked with uncovering, if what we wish to do is understand what Virgil was trying to say), or that, because such is the way language functions, Alexander is engaging in “elitism” for pointing it out.
Meaning that is sold as “democratic” is meaning by consensus, or by mob decision. Advancing that idea is at the very heart of the leftist project, as I’ve shown repeatedly over the years here.
Instead, and as I’ve long argued, meaning is of necessity authoritarian — the product of the individual, the person who wishes to signify, to voice his will, to mean what he means — and this is not a bad thing, despite the unseemliness of the label. If interpretation is to be interpretation, the first precondition is that we agree upon what it is we are interpreting. If it is language, it was produced by some agency — and is imbued with some intent (be that intent conscious or unconscious; it matters not, as each proceeds from an individual with a desire to mean). The attempt to “democratize” interpretation is an attempt to grant the power to determine what something means to those most committed to insisting upon a given meaning — often at the expense of the author or utterer (cf., Bill Bennett or Rush Limbaugh or Tony Snow, eg.). It is to replace the author’s intent with the intent of the receivers of the message.
What Post derides as “elitism” is simply a truism of language: namely, that meaning belongs to the intender; and though others can draw some other and different meaning from a faulty (although seemingly quite plausible: and herein lies the trap of textualism) interpretation, all this shows us is that, in a linguistic system wherein we rely on symbols, convention, and code, the interpretive chain, when deciphering or decoding (and subsequently re-encoding) a speech act, is imperfect, and that the intent of the interpreter is oftentimes substituted for the intention of the utterer / author. Leaving us with a new text entirely. By semiotic definition.
So when Post writes that neither Alexander nor Virgil get to decide for him what a certain arrangement of signifiers mean, he’s correct: he can signify them how he wishes and create an entirely new text as a function of his desire to mean. But what he can’t do is turn around and attribute his meaning to Virgil. And the fact that Virgil once placed the same signifiers in the same order and meant something different by them makes Alexander’s critique — while perhaps pedantic — quite on point, from the perspective of hermeneutics.
Words mean what you decide they mean, sure. When you are creating your own texts. But when you claim to be interpreting another’s text, the words — signs — aren’t yours to decide upon. In fact, that they are words to begin with means they have already been signified. Meaning, you can’t say that words mean what you decide they mean, then turn around and say Virgil hasn’t that same claim to them.
To use Virgil’s words as an inscription — to use them in a new way — is to recontextualize Virgil. Which of course can be done — and perhaps even to wonderful effect.
Just so long as you know what it is you’re doing, and don’t use faulty linguistic ideas to justify your own usurpation of Virgil’s intent. Because therein lies the arrogance, if you ask me.
How entirely self-serving. One only gets to own the meaning of one’s own words if you’ve hired a lawyer to make sure it is enacted to law at a specific moment.
How convenient.
“No day shall erase you from the memory of time”
by David Post
Who says Lewis Carroll gets to decide what Humpty Dumpty’s words mean?
My first thought was: oh, no, not again. Just exactly like the last thought of the bowl of petunias, but that’s not important.
But this is different: Post has a point. If the inscription were ascribed to Virgil, of course his intent would rule. But (I’m assuming, anyway) it wasn’t. Therefore, it’s just some phrase, written in English, that once meant something else when expressed in Latin, but now, to us, means this.
Whatever this is. I’m guessing it means something like: never forget. I suppose that “Never Forget” is too terse for memorials, though.
Maybe this is why civilization periodically eradicates itself: they run out of things to say that haven’t been previously said in another context. The only way out is the Valentine Michael Smith exit.
Slart —
I have a feeling they’ll attribute the quote to Virgil on the inscription.
How we see it in its new context — appending it to a 911 memorial is an intentional act — is almost beside the point. The question is not, “can we re-use this?” Clearly we can. The question is, what is it we’re doing?
How you get there matters.
If they do attribute it to Virgil, then that’s an error. What he meant by that is clearly different than what would be meant by the plaque. You could as accurately portray Hamlet as saying he is a very, very tiny guy by virtue of being able to be contained in a nutshell.
Petunias, in case anyone was baffled.
Somewhere, Georges Santayana laughs…
No, “meaning” is like tectonic plates: it drifts. And when the Pacific Plate goes all subduction-ish under the North American plate, Japan gets it in the teeth.
There IS an analogy in there somewhere, I reckon.
Giant radioactive lizards fighting giant moths and your rush to downplay such apocalyptic activity, is the answer, dicentra.
Just how much of your daily requirement of fiber does one of Jeff’s posts on language and intent actually have? Can I skip the leafy greens with dinner after having read this?
When I first started reading here, posts like this made my eyes swim. I found myself reading and rereading sentences trying to make sure I understood it. I mean, I went to college (okay, okay, it was an engineering school, but still…).
Now, as I’m reading it, I’m thinking: “Yup…right….well put….etc.”. It’s amazing how much better Jeff’s writing has gotten over the past few years. :-)
Either he’s gotten better at dumbing it down, or I’ve smartened up.
Not sure which, actually.
I know what you mean, agile_dog. At first it took a while to figure out what was going on, but once you understand the terminology (which can almost always be understood from the context) it all makes sense. It was well worth the effort.
Stop looking at Georgia O’keeffe’s flower paintings that way…perverts!
This special pleading really gets my goat. Either the Constitution is language, or it isn’t. It doesn’t get Spidey Powers by enacting it into law. But if you accept the premise that it is language, then you have to appeal to intent, so I can see why he doesn’t want to go there.
“Sometimes an orchid is just a vagina.” — Virgil
Giant radioactive lizards fighting giant moths and your rush to downplay such apocalyptic activity, is the answer, dicentra.
That’s right: I was distracted by the Bronx Zoo’s Cobra Twitterstream: “Disappointed. Just found out the zoo’s red panda does NOT know kung fu. Is it bad that I just assume all pandas know kung fu?” and “So, the vote is in. They want to name me Mia. But in my heart I’ll always know that my true name is Mrs. Justin Bieber.”
Hmm. Even as student of Roman history, Latin, and the Aeneid, I don’t agree with Alexander in essentials, i.e, with her argument that to use this phrase is grotesque because of the context.
The phrase itself, even in context, applies to heroic persons lost in a struggle. They won’t be forgotten. She hates the connection for it’s militaristic win a war by sacrificing, going down together with your mates connotations. I don’t.
I see it a phrase used in ANY situation marking persons whose fate is not forgotten, and in context of persons who really did go down with their mates “fighting” the aftermath of an act of war (first responders of every stripe) or others sacrificing themselves trying to guide others to safety, or even just hanging on for rescue that would never come. I do not see it as any kind of improper allusion. This, I suppose, is a matter of taste, not meaning.
To Post’s linguistic arguments, I see where they can be construed as robbing Virgil of HIS meaning. I stop before then, I don’t think the use of the words does that at all.
However, I am not sure I disagree with him in every point. For words come to mean what they are used to describe, these words CAN have new meaning. Should is a question but CAN is not. I wouldn’t wonder, even if prior memorializations themselves have had an effect on the choice of the latin inscription. For good or ill, and also disputable in taste if not fact, Enya’s use of “Only Time” to mark the loss of all adds poignancy to the borrowed latin. Who can say where the day goes? Only Time. Time knows where you fucking went and it won’t forget.
Again, I differ w Alexander on her essential point that it’s so out of context as to strip the words of any meaningful relationship to Virgil. ( I think her objection is in the very fact of tying it in any way to Virgil’s meaning, actually.) But also any such borrowed quote is reworked in any situation in any new context in which it is employed. It’s always a reworking and re-use and are-application.
Interesting comment over there:
Besides, if it counts that Asimov didn’t intend anything, what the hell are you going to talk about in class?
So who’s this “Virgil” guy, anyway? Sounds like a – well, you know.
NB: It’s a fucking JOKE, people!…
Alexander’s interpretation isn’t important to the argument I’m making. I’m just saying she gets there correctly. Post, on the other hand, justifies his desire to remove Virgil from context by saying that Virgil’s words aren’t really Virgil’s. And they are, if what Post is doing is pretending to interpret them.
If not, he can simply say he’s borrowing the formulation — the collection of sound forms that provide the symbols for language — and doing with them what he pleases, which in this case means pulling them from context, attaching them to a new context, and allowing their dimly remembered referent to combine with their current situation to form a new text that he finds appropriate to the new situatedness.
But it takes some work to get there. And most people don’t like to admit that they’re essentially stealing. So they go through all sort of justifications to argue that someone else’s meaning really doesn’t belong to that person, but is instead a community asset, spread fairly. Because of the social justice.
This is true. An action continues to act after its intentional agent lets it go.
But so what? The fact that something can be used in ways other than it was intended doesn’t mean its author is responsible somehow for its every subsequent use or permutation.
Nietzsche probably didn’t mean to give us Hitler. And I’m not sure nature meant the cucumber to be used as it sometimes is, either. Ahem.
That settles it. The next time somebody offers to publish something I’ve written, I’m going to shoot him dead. In self-defense.
‘Cause just because he made the offer doesn’t mean he knows what he was offering to do.
I’m down with reinterpretation, so long as those doing it are willing to own up to what they’re doing. Divorcing the intent of the author from the text, and imparting your own intent in its place, is often possible. It’s an illustration of the power and flexibility of our language, and of our ability to use language. But it’s also an illustration of the selfishness and the power of the interpreter. Sometimes, these reinterpretations are used to amazing effect, whether poetically or rhetorically, or just as something that works on a different level from the original. Other times, they’re just a corruption of the original intent, used to impart the authority of the original author into an argument that author had no intention of arguing.
Go ahead and use the quote if you want to, but don’t pretend that what Virgil meant is unimportant. It sure as hell wasn’t unimportant to Virgil.
That’s exactly it, Squid. It comes down to what you think it is you’re doing with a text. If you claim to be interpreting it, you are constrained in how to treat the marks before you. If you believe them to be language, they have been imbued with meaning by their producer.
On the other hand, you can take Moby Dick, tear out its pages, and — folding them in an ancient Oriental way — give me some lovely origami cranes. And I’d say, “cool! Moby Dick cranes! How ancient and lovely!”
What it is we think we’re doing — and how we explain and justify it — matters. That is, how you get there matters.
OT: 8 concentration curls with Fat Gripz on the 80lb dumbbell today. Up 2! And 2 3/4 with the left hand, up from nofuckingway!
Progress!
The distinction that Alexander is drawing between warriors dying together and innocents being slaughtered isn’t as bothersome to me as it is to her, though I totally understand her impatience with stripping quotations from their context and repurposing them without somehow signaling what’s been done. It drives me crazy when people misquote scripture, because it’s usually done to borrow authority from the Bible without accepting all of the scriptures’ less-appealing injunctions.
“Judge not” and “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” drive me the craziest, because they are used to say “shut up, judgy h8r” and thereby end the argument, when in fact the Bible is about nothing else but moral judgment. And those phrases aren’t exceptions at all; it’s just that explaining the subtlety takes too long and is usually in vain anyway.
In the case of the 9/11 memorial inscription, the purpose of citing Virgil is partially authoritative (borrowing the gravitas of The Past) and partially aesthetic. So if we borrow the phrase to mean something slightly different from what Virgil meant, is that a bad thing?
And most people don’t like to admit that they’re essentially stealing.
“Good poets borrow; great poets steal.” Provenance indeterminate. O_O
And I’m not sure nature meant the cucumber to be used as it sometimes is, either.
In sweet pickle relish?
I’m pretty much in favor of that.
They could always assign it to Virgil Tibbs. I mean, who’d know any different?
I’m still at nofuckingway with the 8-lb sledge.
I’m going through self-help books at a ferocious rate, but still no luck.
Doing what we the 8lb sledge, Slart?
dicentra: It drives me up the wall when people start quoting Scripture at me like that. It’s like they think it’s a sort of shield that I won’t dare to attack. I’ve found the best way around that is to quote Matthew 18:21-22 while I club him about the head and neck 77 times.
Cucumbers, by the by, are for Pimms Cups. Beyond that, I don’t care to know.
#26
I lost a couple of pounds by not eating so much. It was what I intended to do.
First, we kill all the lawyers.
How’s that for re-contextualizing?
I agree, with the caveat that said judgement is in the abstract. I like Ric Locke’s view that attempting to prevent sin is a sin because in so doing you are arrogating unto yourself an ability that is only within the purview of God. I tend to really love most of the Christians (including Mormons) I encounter, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t bristle at the sanctimony that often obtains within Christian circles. It is exactly this cultural predisposition that provides the relish with which one might admonish a Christian to “judge not” I think.
At bottom, it’s the “knowledge problem” to which I am referring. Robert Anton Wilson had a plaque on his desk that summed it up well I think. To wit: “If you think you know what the hell is going on, you’re probably full of shit.”
Sorry for the thread drift.
I would be lying if I said I didn’t bristle at the sanctimony that often obtains within Christian circles.
Always with the additional caveat that anybody can be sanctimonious or haven’t you had a vegan cop an attitude on you yet?
Human societies always identify selected virtues as unassailable, and anyone who transgresses can expect ten flavors of attitude. The subcultures also have their unassailable virtues that differ in various degrees from the mainstream virtues, hence the bristling when someone of one culture hangs out in the other culture.
I got the full impact of this phenomenon after spending six years at Brigham Young University and then spending five at Cornell. At BYU you could always count on “shocked and appalled” letters to the student newspaper, and guess what? Same crap at Cornell, only over different issues. Same sanctimony, though. And every bit as obnoxious.
I like Ric Locke’s view that attempting to prevent sin is a sin because in so doing you are arrogating unto yourself an ability that is only within the purview of God.
Is this like body blocking someone from walking forward into a pit, or merely pointing it out in passing?
Cause I’m of the latter and if some sees the pit and voluntarily walks into it … well, hey, you were warned – don’t whine “I didn’t think it would be like this … ”
Hence I’m a judgey H8tr cuz I won’t kiss the boo-boo and cover it with cash.
Wow. So only lawyers can tell us what words mean what they mean and what words mean whatever the hell the lawyers want them to mean.
Takes all the fun out of everything.
This reminds me of (virtually) every English Lit teacher I ever had telling me that “Get thee to a nunn’ry” was Hamlet calling Ophelia a whore. When what he really says is “Get thee to a nunn’ry, why woulds’t thou be a breeder of sinners?”. Sorta takes the bitch slap right out of it. It’s sad, not nasty. A clever meaning, read into half a sentence, made for a good million or so term papers, and probably got everyone an A. But total crap. Interesting thought. But crap indeed.
“Get thee to a nunn’ry” was Hamlet calling Ophelia a whore.
How do you get to that even without the context?
Oh yeah. Academics.
Never mind.
Supposedly nunnery was Elizabethan slang for whorehouse.
Like Congress is now.
Anything requiring leverage at any distance more than halfway up the shaft.
Stop that, McGehee.
Like those thingies where you hold it out straight-armed and allow the head to descend to your shoulder. Or those thingies where you hold it reversed and kind of curl it backward (upward) with the forearm.
I think with a decent grip I could lose less spectacularly at grappling. I could at least do a bang-up job controlling my opponents wrists.
So, I got a Captains of Crush gripper (T) in the mail today, and I’m loving it. Been squeezing my CoC all night long, though I’ve been having better results with my right hand. Unsurprisingly.
I’m hoping that if I get good at it, I’ll be able to step up to an even bigger CoC — then look out!
Well played.
What the heck is a “911 memorial”? Is someone celebrating the creation of a special 3-digit phone number for emergency services? Is it to honor the Porsche Model 911 as s singularly awesome babe magnet?
Oh, they mean “September 11”, abbreviated as “9/11” or “9-11”, memorial. No one ever talks about a “101”, “214”, “317”, “505”, “704” or “1225” event. What is it about September 11 that causes us to cast away our normal conventions for describing dates. And for the love of God, say “nine eleven” if you must call it by the numbers, not “nine one one”. It’s the eleventh day of the month, not the one-oneth.
AND GET OFF MY LAWN!