me: “…and of course, when Stanley Fish notes that ‘every decoding is another encoding,’ he’s really only saying that whenever we interpret, we are essentially summarizing or paraphrasing the original signs presented us—hopefully to the point where we are interpreting the intentions of the utterer in a useful way.”
steamed beef dumpling:
me: “…though this is clearly not always the case.”
steamed beef dumpling:
me:
steamed beef dumpling:
me:
steamed beef dumpling:
me: “Anything else? Because De Man said some interesting things about the linguistic sign that I’m happy to discourse on, if you have the time…”
I think the steamed beef dumpling only speaks Chinese. Cantonese dialect.
Chinese food just does not understand deconstruction. I think it’s a Maoist hangover thing.
You really need something braised in a white wine sauce.
I used to think so too Daniel, but then I met my current girlfirend, who not only speaks fluent Cantonese but cooks it as well, and she says steamed dumplings understand English but won’t deign to acknowledge postmodernist arguments. They’re kind of like cats that way.
Yeah, well, he asked.
As Freud was wont to remark, sometimes a good signifier is just a good signifier.
(or just a good cigar)
Speaking of deconstructive arguments and cigars as sexual objects… how is Bill Clinton anyway? It’s gotta put a shine on the wily old centrist’s face that despite impeachment he got lacquered with more patina of statemanship by procuring the post-Papal invite while Nobel laureate Carter fumed over his fistful of snub, esp. considering what a pain in the ass the latter was to the former during his admin.
Steamed beef dumpling…are we talking jiaozi, here?
That reminds me, 23 days until the Earth is destroyed.
I can’t wait.
My 13-year-old daughter literally screams every time she sees one of the trailers. Slartibartfast, she’d probably scream if she saw your name too.
Why am I getting the queasy feeling that all the posts and comments in PW is being used by Jeff in his doctoral thesis?
are
I think I’m going to have to read it again before the Earth gets destroyed… Or maybe I’ll just set up my old Apple IIe and dig out the old… Infocom I think put it out..
’old game’ is what I meant to type..
Steamed Beef Dumpling:
Dude.. Save that deconstructionist crap for the Pressed Duck… Youve got Hunan Beef coming up next.. All I wanna know is how hot you want it.. 3 stars ? 4 stars ? Or 5 stars like a man ?
Turing word: enough
As in: Enough talk with the dumpling ! The fortune cookies will entertain any other questions you may have.
OMG Aplha Baboon, I was SURE I was the only one who ever played that. I loved the way you could put almost anything in the “thing your aunt gave you that you don’t know what it is” and how it would recycle your misstypings and use them to start the intergalactic war that results in a huge fleet of warships being sent to destroy the Earth but instead being eaten by a small dog due to a miscalculation of scale (unless you fed the dog the cheese sandwich from the pub, in which case he ignored the fleet).
A couple years ago, I booted up my ancient IIc and tried to play it again, but something was corrupted and you could no longer get the Babel fish to bounce off the towel over the grate and land in your ear.
It’s a shame, really.
You can play the Infocom Hitchiker’s game here:
http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/infocom.php
or an illustrated version here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/game.shtml
You have no tea.
hahahha I love it ! I liked those Infocom games..They had better graphics (in my head) than anything my P4 & Invidia 128 can produce ..
And I hear you TallDave.. I have the whole Ultima series (for like a 286 or something) but cant get them to play on a modern ‘100% IBM Compatible’ machine..
Dang, I just wanted to show my kid what games looked like back in the Stone Age.. He would have busted up laughing at Infocom games or Wizardry
Sweeeeeeeeeeeet.
Thanks for the link.
Eric, Thanks so much for the link. You have made a gaggle of Douglas Adams besotted eighth grade girls very happy. I’ll post it on my blog with due acknowledgment.
It’s always nice to be admired by young girls, but eighth grade is well below the threshold of illegality in this culture, as I understand it.
Barbarians.
Turing word: sun. As in:
Michael Jackson/Elton John rendition of “Don’t Let Your Sun Go Down On Me”.
Strictly speaking, Hunan Beef doesn’t occur in dim sum. Pork bun, sticky rice, shrimp roll, and broccoli rabe in oyster sauce. Those happen. Yes they do.
spam: woman. As in Eat Drink Man Woman.
Well, it is only true that every decoding is an encoding if you are using a symmetric encryption technique like DES.
An asymmetric technique like one of the RSA based algorithms … just not true. Fish or not.
seems encryption techniques are a real thread killer.
OK.. back to Dim Sum to revive the thread…
Ana, in my example the Steamed Beef Dumpling was served in one of those generic asian food restaurants that have everything from Pork (pronounced poke) Chop Suey Chow Mein to Shu Mei to Sushi & Sashimi to Teriyaki Beef Sticks to Chau Siu Bao to Kimchee to Pad Thai to Pho..
Someplace like Safeway’s Chinese Food Express..
Hey, I’m in Seattle.. what do you expect ?
I’m saddened Gail.
…he’s really only saying that whenever we interpret, we are essentially summarizing or paraphrasing the original signs presented usâ€â€hopefully to the point where we are interpreting the intentions of the utterer in a useful way.
All due respect, this is certainly not what Fish is saying–or, better, it does not recognize the significance of Fish’s “reencoding”.
The point is that language, a code, can only be decrypted into language–another code, another encryption. This turns out to be quite true, and its significance is that all definitions in words–meanings given in dictionaries as in poems–require other definitions in words, which require further definitions. There is no end linguistic fact; there is no truly ostensive reality to which language has access. Not to say that that reality doesn’t exist, only it’s not linguistic.
To paraphrase Rorty: Sure, there are real things ‘out there,’ just no sentences.
The upshot of the Fish quote (see also: Rorty, James, Donaldson, Quine, Putnam, Wittgenstein, et al) is that there are no real analytic definitions, only new syntheses. ‘Summaries,’ as you say, but not significant because in sum, significant because synthetic, linguistic, encrypted, novel and opaque.
All due respect, but that is implicit in my summation. To interpret, we take a set of signs that we see as signifiers and resignify them. In so doing, we turn them into a new text that, if we are indeed hoping to “interpret” the original utterance, should aim to approximate the signs that comprise that utterance. This is precisely what I was suggesting to the dumpling when I said that we are essentially “paraphrasing” or “summaring”—both of which processes require us to reconstruct the original text into a new text that informs—and is informed by—the original. My follow-up comment suggests that the process is not fullproof, because signifiers can be separated from their intended signifieds and then reattached to other signifieds to create entirely new signs.
I don’t need Rorty, James, Donaldson, Quine, Putnam, Wittgenstein, et al. to speak to the dumpling; if anything, I’ll point him straight to Peirce and the idea of unlimited semiosis. But you can look at my notes on interpretation here.
In that set of notes is my critique Derrida, Rorty, Culler, de Man, Gadamer, Ricoeur, Fish, Saussure, and others.
In case the dumpling is interested, here’s a bit on unlimited semiosis (from footnote 3, page 3 of the notes on interpretation linked above):
Also for the dumpling’s benefit, footnote 10, page 7: