My earlier post on the real-world implications of linguistic notions of interpretation raised some interesting questions, which I’ll attempt to address in short order as a way to move the conversation to a more manageable thread.
Quickly: The Piss Christ, which some of you have offered as an example of a hypothetical wherein the piece is offensive regardless of the artist’s intent to offend, is an inapt example, I think—first, because it begs the question (not everyone was offended by it, though it’s doubtful they didn’t find it provocative); second, the likelihood that the artist placed the cross into the urine without knowing it would upset a good portion of Christians seems to be what made this “art” to begin with, and so the intent is implied by the context; and finally, if it wasn’t intentional, which means that by linguistic standards it is an accident ( imagine somebody inadvertantly dropping the cross into a urinal, say. We wouldn’t have the same outraged reaction, I don’t think—or at least, we wouldn’t ascribe the same sort of responsibility to someone who creates the same type of iconic situation, but who does so through carelessness and not intent), then the responsibility for the outrage is situational and is the result of our own urge to signify.
Another example someone raised was shouting “fire” in a crowded movie theater—an example where, regardless of intent, if a stampede occurs as a result of the utterers scream, s/he could conceivably be prosecuted.
This is true, but it is also the case that this represents the legal triumph of a particular idea of language over the way language actually works. Which is why at trial, were the offender able to exhibit an absense of intent to cause the stampede, such an explanation would likely serve as a mitigating factor. Linguistically speaking, he meant whatever it is he meant. That others misunderstood his intent—and because physical harm was the result, we choose, as a society, to punish him—the is an extralinguistic choice that we make based on agreed upon ideas of the public good.
But keep in mind that these same ideas—say, instead of shouting fire, the man utters what society has decided is “hate speech” and proceeds to punish him for those signifiers irrespective of their intent (intent to signify being what turns a signifier into a sign)—problematize satire, irony, humor, etc., and can, potentially at least, use legal means to rob language of at least part of its valence.
With regard to the Flight 93 Memorial, there are many factors that conspire to complicate the issue, from public funding to the title of the installation. Clearly, though, the crescent or arc is architecturally ubiquitous and not in and of itself offensive—so, without the title or the intentions people have ascribed to the architect, such an architecturally useful geometric shape would not be imbued with the kind of emotion we’re seeing with respect to Murdoch’s design. Which is not to say that those who are protesting it aren’t entitled to raise a fuss—after all, it’s the tax payers’ dime that’s paying for this thing—only to suggest that without the original intent that turns the monument from an accidental configuration into a pre-signified affront, we need to be aware that what we are protesting is our own ability to see in something the meaning we have decided to give it. In short, we are protesting ourselves—and so, from a linguistic perspective, we may as well be protesting the crescent moon.
Of course, there are going to be accidental instances where a large group of people recognize in the signifier a common signified—this is the case with devout Muslims and the ice cream packaging, I suspect—but just because they can protest the accident and insist on its change doesn’t magically turn the ice cream cone soft-serve graphic into an instance of Burger King denigrating Allah. Similarly, an arc, divorced of the proper intent, signifies Islam only when the the people viewing it choose to see it that way.
And so the protest becomes about what we’re afraid others like us will see in the design, which we imagine is the same thing that we see.
You may have mentioned this before, Jeff, but what’s your academic background? Because it takes training to talk like this. (Training that frightens me, to be frank.)
‘Cos I keep looking at this and thinking, “I read crap like this back in college in that stupid lit crit course.” Then I take a second look (because it’s you) and think, “Well, now, this might be making some sense.” Then it slips away from me again. Then something comes into focus. Then it goes away again.
Then I curse your mad genius, Goldberg, because I’ve wasted ten minutes trying to figure out whether you’re saying that the Flight 93 memorial really does contain a particularly significant element or that our expectations have caused us to see that element whether intended or not. Or maybe it’s something else entirely.
I need a drink. Unfortunately, I don’t drink, so I’m up a creek. Curse you, Goldstein. Curse you and your mad genius.
Ice cream is not related to Allah or jihad in any way that is accepted by rational society. The crescent is related to the events of flight 93 in that it is a symbol recognized by the perpetrators of the act who used what the symbol represents as a motivating force to commit the act.
Or is that just wrong? If Islam is identified with Ice Cream, I may consider converting. You know, once they get over the whole hatred of the Jews thing.
Using allegorical references, however, can innundate any particular phraseology to inherit meanings not originally intended by the author. It is in instances such as these that the actual intended terminiology not be circumvented simply in order to produce a more productive end result.
Hence, why I do not support the 6 foot rule for strippers in Tampa.
[end AutoGoldsteinGeneratorV1.2]
The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth–it is the truth which conceals that there is none.
TW=FORWARD. why? and where the hell are my clove cigarettes?
BECAUSE OF THE JIMMIES!!!
You call them Jimmies, but they are really sprinkles, named after Annie Sprinkles, a porn star (and a damn good one). It offends me that you would use the word “Jimmies” (slang for COCK) to describe “Sprinkles” (a lovely young woman).
Sexist.
I agree with slarrow, mostly about the drink. And I like Jeff’s posts cause they have a nice beat you can dance to.
I won’t pretend that I followed Jeff’s argument here. But it seems the two scenarios are vastly different. One involves a highly emotional incident of historic proportions, which is to be memorialized by a symbol that at first glance seems to be associated (however loosely) with the incidents villains. A reasonable person in the preliminary design stage would take pause, I would think, and start over. For the same reason there are no orginizations named Foundation for Urban Cultural Knowledge – back to the drawing board.
The other scenario involves a tasty treat, which will melt if we don’t stop jawboning and get down to eating.
Jeff IS brilliant! But some of us didn’t endure years of architecture school to not know designer BS when they see it. This team designed a crescent, and not an arc, because they call it “The Crescent” and refused to change the name to “arc” when the jury suggested they do so. They purposefully designed a super-scaled Crescent that turns red in Sept/Oct (maybe just another coincidence and they’re too dumb to get it?), and show it as a red Crescent on their topo model. Not much imagination required to see a Crescent there. Not an Islamic reference? Even their Tower of Voices is a stylized minaret and later I’ll post the shared features. Architectural designers love to imbue their work with layers of meaning, references, and conceptual play, and memorial designers especially do this. Personally, I’m less angry about this Islamic scheme of Murdoch’s than unimpressed with its lack of subtlety, just as I don’t get upset by PBS, anymore, only bored with their PC schtick.
It (whatever it is) is in the eye (or the mind, if you will) of the beholder.
I once designed a retail store for a Korean man. The design had black trim around the cased openings of doors and windows. NO! NO! he said. Black to a Korean, around the doors, connoted Death. He was offended by my design and upset at my ignorance of its meaning. I gladly changed it because he was paying the freight.
Whatever happened to a sincere, “No offense intended” and a sincere “No offense taken”? The “Oops!” defense certainly does not work. I hope that I am not the only one confused. It appears to me that if one is offended by some such item as the “swirly cone” or the “Crest toothpase Logo” or whatever, then one has the moral authority to declare war on the offender – even though the offender denies any intent to offend.
I think the difference in the Memorial “Crescent” is the same analogy that I drew with the Korean store owner. He was paying. If the taxpayers, who are paying, are offended by the design, then a new design should be incorporated. If the designer (artist) refuses to capitulate, then perhaps a new designer should be chosen.
By the same token, I do not think BK should capitulate to, basically, extortion to accomadate a small minority of their customer base. Especially when no intent to offend is there.
I think there is a vast difference between the two incidents. Or…..I could just be plain wrong. Damn…that would be devastating.
tw: needs, as in “I needs more explaining to me”
Yes, but not all taxpayers are complaining. Some, in fact, want to keep the Memorial design as is.
The Korean, as the owner of the store, has every right to take ownership over his own resignification of your work; he is, after all, paying for it. But what he hasn’t done has changed your meaning (presumably, the trim was meant simply to accentuate the trim); instead, he has decided that his meaning is more important, and that, having paid for it, he has the right to make that determination.
The Memorial dustup proceeds from one of two premises: first, as C notes, the architect intended the Islamic subtext, in which case the complaint is legitimate from a linguistic standpoint; or second, he didn’t, and the complaint is located with a community of receivers who have decided, like the Korean store owner, that how they’ve chosen to resignify the structure (based on their belief, I contend, that the artist intended to provide that level of meaning, even if they insist that’s not the case—see my example of the cross dropped accidentally into the urinal) is more important than the original intent.
But again, what they haven’t done is extended the original meaning. They’ve changed the text entirely—exerted their will and attempted to seize control over the signification.
My problem has always been that when we give in to such things on the basis of unintended (accidental) pretexts, you are ceding control over language to interest groups who scream the loudest or apply the most pressure. And when that maneuver becomes conventional and starts to insinuate its way into the law, then you’ve legalized the very kind of relativism that undermines personal responsibility and any non-consensual ground of truth.
Here’s an idea that hit me while reading your post, Jeff:
The view of the memorial is the result of models that would be roughly equivalent to being one to two thousand feet above the completed memorial. Would this whole kerfluffle be happening if the architect provided only a computer simulation of a ground level walk through instead of the relief map model? And which of those two presentations would be more accurate of the experience of visiting the memorial?
I can offer a slight bit of forgiveness for the architect if he was designing from the ground so to speak. That would leave him, once the elevated perspective of his symbols was brought to the fore, to smack himself on the forehead and head back to the drawing board per the bosses’s request.
The fascinating thing to me here is the potential light shed on past aspects of American law: both the “fighting words” doctrine I mentioned in the thread below, and the accompanying concept of “no duty to retreat. That a court would now treat provocative forms of expression in such a way as Jeff indicates in his post I have no doubt; that it would have done so in the past I’m not so certain. I do not claim to be a lawyer, but even so there seems to have been an interesting change in the way that provocative speech is addressed by the judicial system.
I watched the presentation on C-Span, and noticed some of the things that C mentions above–and found it all quite strange and out of place.
He had all these “things” that were to signify or represent some soft-focused sentimentality, all these “places” for contemplation and reflection–you’d think he was designing a place of worship.
But the site is the terminus of a hijacking and terrorist attack. Instead of shouting “fire,” some of the passengers said “Let’s Roll!,” thereby defeating the terrorists’ attempt to bring even more carnage to this nation on that fateful day.
The passengers’ actions were a sparkling example of the American spirit–a combination of a can-do attitude, ingenuity, and decisiveness.
Why doesn’t this memorial reflect the heroic tragedy of that day, rather than as some manufactured zone of tranquility?
Jeff, your post has brought it home for me. The memorial, as it is proposed, is an entirely corrupted resignifying of the events of that place.
As if Lexington and Concord were to be placidly and reverently contemplated, rather than remembered as a celebration of heroic sacrafice.
Gamer —
That’s a good point, and would be a perfect example of an iconic accident (like, perhaps, the ice cream wrapper); and recognizing how that signifier might be perceived by others as something very different than what he intended (and so what his design actually means), the architect could decide that, though he never intended offense, he should make the change.
Forbes —
That could very well be. Which is why perhaps more attention should have been given to selecting the design.
And it’s perfectly fine to suggest that what it means to us sends the wrong impression, and so we reject the design for the same reasons our Korean store owner above did; just so long as we recognize what it is we are rejecting.
For all these reasons, understanding how language functions is crucial to how we go about setting legal precedent, etc. I keep hammering on my dustup with Ilyka not because I’m making some sort of weak equivalency argument, but rather because what she did—pull a signifier from its context and dislodge it from its intent in order to resignify it and turn it back on me as a “sexist” remark—is precisely the kind of dangerous linguistic maneuver that, once accepted as valid, will take languistic control away from the originary subject (the utterer) and place it with the receiver, who can then claim that the utterer is responsible for any interpretation the receiver chooses to make.
This all hinges on Unintended meaning. However, my interpretation of the artiste’s comments is that the crescent is exactly INTENDED to represent the Islamic symbol.
The architect is getting all wobbly in the knees from daring to embrace the Islamofascists that he feels are just misunderstood. Look, the arc is even aligned within a degree or two of the line to Mecca (Quibla). Ask the architect what the quibla to Mecca is from that area, and he’d likely get an ashen look on his face, like he’s been found out. Designers love to throw in these little references, it makes them seem all smart and crap.
I think he’s congratulating himself on embracing Islam’s symbol here, figuring it will go a long way to getting Muslims to forgive the US for driving them to terrorism.
Sadly, that’s what I think is going on in Murdoch’s fevered brain.
Where am I going wrong here? Is the design bad? And who decides if it is bad? I certainly do not have a problem with art out in the marketplace of ideas. The consuming public will certainly determine which art is “good” and which art is “bad”. I certainly know, to me, what is good and what is bad. I know what I’ll pay for and what I wouldn’t give a nickle for.
My question basically is, “Does the court of public opinion (the consuming public) have any say over the design of the Memorial?” Since public dollars are being used, should not the public have a say in the design? And does their clamor for having a say send us down that slippery slope you are talking about.
My next question, “Am I so fudking dense that I cannot discern the difference?”
tw: deep, as in, “This is some deep shit”
It’s both, rls: the public has a right to clamor (they are paying for it) and agitate for change, but they need to recognize that the same kind of clamoring might, in the future, be used against them (is “In God We Trust”) a stable, de minimis legend, or, because it offends atheists, should we remove it from our currency?
I think I get it. I do not have a problem with speech at all, and art is a type of sppech. But I do believe that we must “own” our words and we have to realize that, while we are free to speak, there are consequences for what we say.
I take from you that the consequences we suffer should be for our words, not some other inference that a listener decides those words mean. We can’t and shouldn’t be responsible for what others think we mean; the words, as well as the art, should stand on their own.
Jeff, your last sentence comes close to pointing up the salient issues when discussing “intent,” although it’s not what we fear others will see, but in fact, what we do believe they will see. Intent, when referenced to the public sphere, leaves the Derridean inchoate framework wherein the subjective understanding of the artist is all that counts and the signifier is simply the meaning given it by the experience, contextual position and mindset of the other confronted with the text, and, necessarily, into one that can be applied wherein the public good or protection is warranted.
Intent for this purpose can, naturally, never be ascertained from solely the subjective notions of the artist, so a definition of “willful, desirous or purposefully” does not suffice. Instead, use “an actor knew with substantial certainty” that a particular result would occur, see, e.g., Garratt v. Daily, 279 P.2d 1091 (Wash. 1955). Clearly, concerning the public good, a different standard must apply, e.g., what would a reasonable person in the place of one party be lead to believe by the words and actions of the other party? Kabil Dev. Corp. v. Mignot, 566 P.2d 505 (Or. 1977).
If, in a crowded theater, an actor knew, or should have known, his words were substantially certain to cause the result they did, he acted, and the resulting damage ensued, he is then liable, primie facie. Similarly, was the artist “substantially certain”, given the fact that he is an artist, and thus a professional, who would actually be held to a higher standard of duty, and who would certainly be aware of the power of symbols and their manipulation, that his design would produce the effect is did?
Would a reasonable person be offended? It is not relevant whether “everyone” need be offended, just that it would be offensive to a reasonable person.
I’m totally in agreement with you that it is maleficent for the Left to coerce the public into hate speech or “free-speech zone” poicies, but, again, this is primarily coming from a small, angry, disillusionary quarter and most of their claims would not pass the reasonable person or objective test.
Jeff, I completely agree with the argument you’ve made here regarding language, and intent, etc.
It wasn’t until I read this post that it struck me what is wrong with the proposed memorial. The earlier commentary, here and elsewhere, didn’t connect with my reaction to the presentation I watched on the tube. I knew it was more than just a dust-up over word choice–though it’s become kinda clear to me that that’s a tip-off.
The design elements are wrong. In fact, I’d say that there’s a major effort (intent) to merge Muslim symbolism and into the design of the memorial that places the Islamofascist hijacker/terrorists on a par with their passenger victims. As if the crash in the field was merely an innocent confluence of events that led to a tragic accident; something about which we can draw no conclusions, therefore the overwhelming theme of contemplative mirth.
I’m now getting disgusted as I think all this through. I thought the International Freedom Center crap is New York was bad enough. This may take the cake.
TW: left
How do you do it?
Jeff, I would then ask how we could know what the designer’s intent was? There seem to be nearly even feelings of ‘basic tatseful design’ and ‘obvious Islamic icon’.
Without bringing in ”Miss Cleo” to do a psychic reading, how can we be sure?
Or does the fact that the memorial design has been so widely ‘resignified’ via the media now render the point moot?
Sorry, I don’t mean mirth, just contemplation. Had something else in mind and just screwed the pooch when editing.
3 points:
1) The problem with the Memorial is not so much that they used a ubiquitous shape we find offensive, such that we should also boycott the moon. It is that they chose the word “Crescent” to include in the title of the “Crescent of Embrace” memorial, thus drawing attention to what meaning that shape might be intended to convey. Why is the shape of consequence? Why that choice of words to convey that shape? Why not semi-circle or curve or arc?
The choice of words suggests an actual intent we find offensive. It is not that the memorial is offensive without intent, rather it is that the denial of such an intent is not credible. If they named a Cold War monument the “Sickle of Embrace” we’d be within our rights to be suspicious. It is possible, but unlikely, that an artist gave no thought to the significance and symbolism of the words used in his three-word title for a proposed national memorial.
To be clear, I don’t think the artist intended to simply stamp the field with the mark of the enemy. But I do think that he intended inclusion of an Islamic symbol–which could cleverly double as a nice warm huggy Embrace–as a good “healing” gesture that would make the PC point that Islam is a “religion of peace,” not a force for evil–immediate evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.
2) As for the Burger King swirly cone, it’s relevant that the symbol did bear an uncanny resemblance to an actual (and loaded) word in a foreign language, which would seem grounds enough to withdraw it from circulation. No doubt Burger King would similarly recall the symbol if someone discovered that it almost said “nipple” or “shit-balls” in arabic or french when turned sideways–moreso if the word was heavy with meaning. I mean, the swirly cone looked a lot more like the “Allah” symbol in arabic than the spider web looked like “lunch” in the recent news story.
3) I also find it strange that in your post on language integrity you use the awkward PC non-word, “s/he”. This might be appropriate and useful on legal forms where precision is more important than elegance–like “I/we” or “one (or more) pie(s)”. But even then, less postmodern-jargony in such cases would be “he/she.”
Anyway, “s/he” (or the more elegant but similarly clunky, “he or she” [or its pointless, feel-good alternative, “she or he”]) seems like an example of something you’d be against, i.e., the feminist imposition of gendered and “inclusive” language where no exclusion existed–the imposition of an exclusory significance to a signifier without regard to the intent of the writer. At a time, there really was a generic “he.” The “reasonable man” did not get flustered or confused when a female writer considered herself represented by a hypothetical, generic “man.” The ultimate consequence of our concession to this twisting of significance is the extinction of the fireman, policeman, businessman, chairman, countryman and statesman. Some of these have no satisfactory “inclusive” alternative. I suppose the battle is largely over, and defenders of the generic “he” lost. But “s/he” is just rubbing my face in the ridiculousness of it.
SS: as an aside, while working in SoCal for an electric utility, we were told that ‘manhole’ was taboo and that the proper term was now ‘personnel access chamber’.
That caused a great deal of unintended mirth, you can be sure.
I don’t like the cumbersome he or she, and s/he seems to me a fair compromise when it feels forced to insist on the traditional he singular.
I don’t always do it, mind you, but I tend to employ it sometimes when I’m trying to make absolutely sure I’m being understood. It’s a habit of writing in theory speak.
I strongly agree with your position on the power of language, and the importance of the battle over its appropriation and manipulation; and I’m glad you’re tackling it because so few are. But this is problematic:
Clearly, though, the crescent or arc is architecturally ubiquitous and not in and of itself offensiveâ€â€so, without the title or the intentions people have ascribed to the architect…
I don’t understand why you chose to analyze this “without the title”—i.e., to disregard the bit of evidence we do have about intent—before concluding that the design invokes Islam only to those who deliberately choose to see it that way. It seems to me that the title is precisely the objective evidence of the “original intent” of the creator (as opposed to intent merely ascribed by others to the creator) “that turns the monument from an accidental configuration into a bit of pre-signified affront.” Doesn’t excising that bit from the analysis stack the deck?
BLT —
The point is not that we can ever know with absolute certainty what the designer’s intent was; rather, the point is that we need to appeal to intent—and try to reconstruct it—if what we’re claiming to do is interpret and not simply to be creating a new text of our own by eschewing original intent and adding to the signifier our own signifieds. This destroys the ground of language.
Toby is right to say that we have decided, in certain instances, that the effects of an utterance are potentially dire enough that we have placed legal restrictiosn on those utterances irrespective of intent (though as I pointed out earlier, the fact that intent is still a mitigating factor shows just how important it remains, even in those eventualities where it is superceded by law). But that doesn’t change the meaning of the utterance. It simply says that what the utterance can be taken to mean by others is more socially important in certain instances than is the actual meaning of the utterance. This seems sensible when it comes to shouting “fire”; it seems (to me) dangerous, however, when it comes to things like “hate speech.”
But to answer your question, how do we ever know what anyone intends? Convention, habit, metatextual clues, etc.,—these are the things we rely on every day to divine intent.
My concern is precisely that because we can’t ever know intent absolutely, we decide that we don’t need to appeal to it as a linguistic necessity.
Chris L —
The title is problematic and speaks to the potential intent of the architect. I didn’t ignore that, I was simply addressing a different point raised in the earlier thread. That is, I analyzed the piece without the title to answer the hypothetical in which the crescent is purely accidental. This doesn’t necessarily reflect my personal view. So thanks for reminding me to clear that up.
But you raise another interesting point: would those who are upset with the Memorial be content with a simple title change, even if the actual design remained the same? If so, why? If not, why not?
I can offer a slight bit of forgiveness for the architect if he was designing from the ground so to speak. That would leave him, once the elevated perspective of his symbols was brought to the fore, to smack himself on the forehead and head back to the drawing board per the bosses’s request.
Gamer, good point and very generous of you. But, in my experience, both architectural and landscape designers execute their concepts in plan, for the most part, especially when it comes to large-scale forms. Of course, they also design and render from the POV of a person on the ground, but generally speaking, if the concept and thematic meaning doesn’t work in plan, then they’ve failed. Designers nearly always include overhead perspectives and scaled models of their schema to clients and juries and so are very conscious of their product from on-high views. It would be unlikely that any professional design team would not have considered the meaning and visual impact of the forms and layout of their idea.
In the case of Murdoch’s Crescent, I believe the team thought that they could sell the idea (and they did!) by saying the topography cried out for the crescent shape and by using a lot of PC jargon of Healing and Bonding in their description, and then appeal to a certain audience with its subliminal multi-culti, we’re-all-in-this-together subtext. For some of us, the Islamic symbolism is not so buried; it’s easily accessible and writ large, as in tall maples fashioned into a huge Crescent that goes red in September and a tall, slender white mosaic tile entry tower from which wind chimes/”Voices” emanate/cry and are carried across the landscape.
Too, an interesting aspect to this memorial is that the Flight 93 fight took place in the sky, until all plummeted to earth. And 9-11 was all about terror in the skies using jets as weapons. The aerial perspective of this memorial would not be an aside consideration necessarily, given the nature of the event being remembered and those particular skies above.
My mistake—I didn’t realize that that was the premise you were working with from the start.
To answer the question about a name change, I’d say no; that cat’s already out of the bag. What counts is their belief that it was intended to invoke a comforting image of Islam in a context that makes that image inappropriate. The creator can rename it to something more obscure, but it doesn’t erase the knowledge that that’s what the design was intended to evoke.
Which no doubt is why the panel tried to get him to rename it to begin with.
The crescent and its meanings are pre-existing. The architect did not create, for the very first time, this form. It is not his to label or define.
It is not his to re-define. He may borrow the symbol, but when he does it takes with it all of its meanings.
If I were to burn a cross on Clarence Thomas’s front yard, would it be enough if I intended it to symbolize the blazing warmth of my Christian love for him? That may be what I meant, but he would surely assume a different meaning to my tribute. A meaning that has been previously given to that particular form of artistic expression.
However, if I created a design with no prior meaning- a squiggle or an abstract- I would be the one to assign it’s meaning. Others may see it differently, but it is entirely my own creation and their interpretation is less important than my own.
The burning cross is not my own design. The crescent is not this architect’s own design- he is borrowing it. One who uses those designs does not have the power, linguistically or otherwise, to override all the symbolism they carry.
“Oh please, Mrs. Weisenthal. Don’t be so sensitive. That is a buddhist swastika on your husbands gravestone”
Chris L —
Then your complaint is based on a quarrel over intent, which is where it should be in a discussion over meaning.
MayBee—
You are using the Derridean suggesting that a signifier is haunted by the ghosts of all it’s potential signifieds. Which would mean that you, for instance, cannot say “I need to feed the cat” without being responsible for feeding not only your tabby, but the trombone player at the local jazz club.
Re: your Thomas cross-burning example. Failure to have your intention read correctly does not negate intention. I would say that perhaps you’re naive for not knowing how others, from habit or convention, were likely to interpret your burning cross—but if you honestly meant it as a sign of your Christian warmth, then that’s what it meant. However, it would be a remarkably poor way of expressing it, and would likely cause you all manner of problems trying to explain it—and even more problems trying to get people to believe you.
Those, however, are ancillary considerations to the linguistic problem of what turns a signifier into a sign.
Which is to say, you can clearly mean something other than what interpreters take you to mean—else we’d never have misunderstandings—but a breakdown in communication process is a different animal than a the process of signifying.
To give an example, you flip someone the bird who comes from a country where that gesture is seen as a sign of respect rather than rage. You still intend it to show how pissed off you are, but different habits and conventions prevent the message from getting through correctly. Doesn’t change the meaning of the gesture, though.
Changing the title alone is good, but possibly not good enough. “Arc of Embrace” does not convey the same meaning (or any apparent meaning), and it successfully removes the emphasis from the offending symbol. But does it change the reality of the symbol? It is a satisfactory change if we can be made to believe that the remaining symbol no longer is a crescent, but now is a neutral, inoffensive arc. And what it is still depends on the designer’s intent. Clues to that intent are in the history of the piece, including the fact that it was once overtly a “Crescent of Embrace.” Perhaps this is one of those cases where you can’t unring the bell.
Secondarily, even “Arc of Embrace” conveys a seemingly intentional misunderstanding of the significance of the event that occured there. It is an effort to frame the event as a tragedy that can be heretofore avoided through love and understanding, rather than as an event that required civilian heroes to protect their country, and which should remind us of the need to recognize evil, confront it, and defeat it. Its tone suggests a very political statement that rejects the claim that 9/11 was an act of war.
ss —
Absolutely correct. But the battle now is waged over an appeal to intent.
And your second paragraph appeals to an aesthetic assessment of the design itself.
It’s one thing to guard against intended meaning being subverted and stolen by dangerous and irresponsible elements (who, us??), but how can we ever truly know intent? Even were someone to tell us his intent, he could be lying or mistaken, self-deceived or imprecise in communicating it to us. Intent doesn’t seem to be only about agency and wilfulness, but about perception and how it’s received and believed. Statements of intent are just like any uttered words. They have to be processed through credibility and plausibility filters before being accepted or rejected. People have hidden agendas all of the time, including artists. And sometimes they don’t. Case by case basis and all.
Having said that, words do matter, and when artists and designers assign them to their creations, we have to consider what the words are meant to signify and sometimes also to hide and obscure. To many of us non-Muslims these days and especially wrt to a memorial to those killed in their struggle with jihadists, a very large capital c Crescent rendered in red, no less, and entitled “The Crescent” is going to mean Islam. It does to most Muslims- are we not to know this and also that geometric forms and patterns are even more important and meaningful in Islamic culture than in ours? The professional architects know all of this, surely, if our school kids do. Why would we bend over so painfully backward to give these designers the benefit of the doubt, when what we would actually be saying is that they’re complete imbeciles, if their Crescent of Embrace were only accidentally evocative of Islam and Submission?
The rub, of course, lies in the word “honestly”. It’s all too easy to burn the cross and then say “Oh, no, Justice Thomas, I meant it as a sign of Christian Warmth. Even the clan will tell you that when they burn (or as they would say, “light”) a cross, they mean it to symbolize the burning of the Holy Spirit.
It’s far too easy to believe that a moonbat architect would slip a crescent in there, hoping it wouldn’t be noticed, and then backpedal by saying, “Oh, it’s just an arc. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Sure. But denying the intent doesn’t negate it either.
The point being that we are always appealing to intent—either the original intent or our own intent to signify in a way that doesn’t worry about original intent. It’s my contention that interpretation, in that it purports to reconstruct the original sign (which, by the nature of language, is delivered to us superficially, either as a mark or a sound or a shape), needs to appeal to the function that made it a sign in the first place—the utterer/author/architect’s intent.
Jeff-
I agree with you that one’s intentions are one’s own. However.
If I say, “I need to feed the cat” and I am in my own home and speaking for no one but myself, then my intention to feed only my own cat and only my cat overrides any other meaning.
But if I am standing at the entrance to a tiger preserve that has been plagued by drought and all the antelope have died, and I am speaking to the World Wildlife Foundation and I say “I need to feed the cat”, can I then claim that I only meant I wanted to feed my tabby back home?
Of course, I can claim that and I can mean it. But was my responsibility only to say what I wanted to say, to claim that it was only my intent that was important? I meant ‘cat’ to mean ‘tabby’, everybody knows there are several meanings for ‘cat’. But why would the WWF ask me to speak for them if I only mean to discuss my own cat?
The architect, in this memorial, is not creating something for his private enjoyment or his own personal pleasure. He is creating something meant to be symbolic of a specific incident to the nation. He is not supposed to be creating his own meaning, he is supposed to be representing the event to others. His mission, as the creator of a memorial, is to convey emotion through symbolism. His mission, therefore, is to consider how the receiver will receive.
It is not his event, it is not his symbol, it is not his memorial. As the designer of something with such weight, he has responsibility beyond his own pleasure. His own intent is not the overriding factor.
I’m sorry my own writing skills are lacking. I am a lowly unfrozen caveman thread poster.
True, but at this point we’ve gotten abstract to the point of saying nothing useful. How do you determine if someone is lying about their intent or not? My interpretation is that Burger King did not intend for their graphic to be interpreted as an arabic character, whereas I DO think that the architect meant to create an Islamic crescent.
How do I know this? I don’t, really. I’m going on a gut feeling based on what I know about big corporations vs. what’s been going on with 9-11 memorials (IFC, anyone?)
If it’s really true that the arc is just an arc, I would think that the architect wouldn’t have any objections to modify it so that it does not match the dimensions of an Islamic crescent. The fact that he declines even to alter the name of it leads me to believe that the arc is not just an arc.
Perhaps we should all step back and apply “Kristol’s Razor” to all of this.
Whether intentional or not, the current design of the Shanksville memorial, from the red “crescent”, to the orientation of the arms of the “crescent” toward Mecca, to the quasi-minaret appearance of the “Tower of Voices” representation, are all directly related to the ostensible cause of the reason there is the need for the memorial in the first place – the Glorification Of Islam. There’s just too much there there to convincingly argue otherwise.
So. Were people looking for things in the memorial design? Absolutely. Does that mean that when those people who look for things and find them are to be rejected out of hand because they are one of those sorts who “looks for things?” Not only no, but hell no. Because unintentional or otherwise, those elements are there, and are wholly inappropriate to the reason the National Park Service is paying for the memorial.
As to the BK ice cream cone wrapper issue, I have a question: When my dog takes one of her infamous foot-tall dumps in the park that rather looks like the swirly “Allah” symbol rested on its side just so, does that mean that CAIR and the other Islamonutters are gonna come and go Rushdie on my dog?
Your intent is important insofar as it determines the meaning of the utterance—not how the utterance will be interpreted, necessarily. Misinterpretations happen all the time, and here, you didn’t provide your listeners with any clues to help them reconstruct your meaning—in fact, you’ve gone out of your way, given the context, to confuse things. But none of that changes the fact that you signified your original utterance, so it only means what you signified it to mean. Ideally, you want your listeners to add the same signifieds to your sounds that you intended: this makes for effective communication. But failure to communicate your intent doesn’t negate the intent, and so it doesn’t negate the original meaning.
Well, how do you naturally determine if somebody is lying to your or not? The point is not that relying on intent makes meaning easier to determine, but rather than it grounds it with the point of utterance.
Why do you believe the architect meant to create an Islamic crescent? Why don’t you believe the controversial signifier on the ice cream wrapper was intentional?
In both cases, you are appealing to intent and then making an argument either for or against. But you are still appealing to intent.
True.
However: Even it it could be conclusively determined that the architect did not intend to create an Islamic crescent, I think the design should be changed, because I believe that enough people will interpret it as such to render the design, as the PoMo types would say, problematic.
So my argument about the memorial goes to both the supply and demand sides, as it were.
TW: “expect”. Well, sure.
Fine. Just so you realize you are basing that decision on a PoMo idea of language (one in which the signifier is free to roam, and meaning is located at the point of reception), and that someone else is liable to use that same idea of language against you down the road for something they think should be changed based on their interpretation.
This is ceding language to the interpretive community. And it is the kind of thing that underpins arguments that claim that, because you aren’t a woman, say, you can’t possibly understand what x means, or because you aren’t Muslim you can’t criticize Islam, etc. Because meaning is the province of the interpretive community and has no ground outside it.
This is dangerous, I submit.
Jeff, I agree that allowing any interpretation of a symbol to become it’s true or only valid interpretation does cede important ground on language. (Least common denominator and all that) But given the red crescent design, potential ‘minaret’, Mecca orientation, and its very name, doesn’t that in your mind indict the architect?
I mean, the very first thing that ANYONE thinks of when they hear the words ‘red crescent’ is the aid agency affiliated with the Red Cross, but which operates in Muslim countries due to the offensive nature of a cross symbol in those countries. The very next thing that comes to mind (to my mind anyway) wrt ‘red crescent’ are those very countries that the Red Crescent operates in. The red crescent is a fairly potent and ubiquitous symbol of Islam, in other words.
So how can an architect, supposedly familiar with design styles from around the planet, one who has the wherewithal to design an enormous monument, be unfamiliar with the obvious inferences and implications that would be drawn from this design: a red crescent.
I guess what I’m asking is: are you shitting us? (humor!)
More seriously: aren’t you at least a little suspicious of the architect’s intent?
Jeff and other commentators:
Thanks for the lesson. I learned something today, actually something important.
I was under the impression that the artist originally called it “The Flight 93 Memorial” or something similarly inoffensive. The search committee actually renamed it in order to distinguish between all the different designs they had to choose from.
Doesn’t mean the designer didn’t think of it as a crescent, but it does remove one bit of evidence of his intent if it’s true.
Matt, that’s a good point, and unfortunately one not addressed here.
The Murdochs are offering to make changes to the memorial in response to the criticism here, but the article is three days old.
The Murdochs maintain that any relation to Islamic symbolism is a mistaken interpretation, for their part.
Dunno if this adds anything either…
Joanne Hanley, superintendent of the Flight 93 National Memorial, said the design team led by Paul Murdoch Architects followed what the memorial mission statement requested: It honors the plane’s passengers and crew and touches very lightly on the land.
“Crescent of Embrace” is the name of the design, not the memorial, and can be changed, she said.
“The name is irrelevant, really,” she said. “There’s a lot of misinformation out there and conjecture and hidden meaning that just isn’t there.”
Architect Paul Murdoch was not immediately available for comment Tuesday.
Gordon Felt, whose brother, Edward Felt, died in the crash, invited Tancredo to contact the family members and learn more about the design.
“We feel the jury that selected the final design did a good job,” he said. “It was in no way designed to memorialize the hijackers. I cannot even fathom a family member on the jury thinking that they were trying to memorialize the people who murdered our family members.” *
Well, I haven’t committed either way, to be honest, because I haven’t followed the evidence all that closely. For instance, is it true that the committee, and not the architect, used the “crescent” designation? Similarly, are we simply reading tea leaves and finding in certain shapes rough analogues? I don’t know, which is why I’ve argued from a postition of disinterest; I’ve simply tried to explain the assumptions involved in each type of interpretive effort.
The day we get rid of “In G-d we Trust” Is the day we better remove the Goddess (Statue of Liberty) and all other “pagan” influcnes like blind justice, and many other icons that can be construed in a religious fashion.
I think you’re being a bit alarmist here.
What we’re talking about is “language” only in the most abstract and symbolic sense. We’re not talking about words or sentences. We’re talking about a crescent used in a specific context where Islam is very much at issue. Consequently the interpretation is quite reasonable.
A monument, furthermore, is something that is designed to speak to a community, and what the community will take from it is quite properly the concern of the community whose government is footing the bill for this.
Furthermore, I think your desire to fix meaning at the utterer’s or author’s intent alone – while I understand the desire to do so – is just as unreasonable as fixing it only in the mind of the receiver. Imagine if I were to say, “Goldstein is a perfidious Jew who worships the GAY COCK OF LIES!” When pressed, it comes to light that what I actually meant is that Goldstein is a fine fellow who runs a good blog. The reaction to the hearers of my utterance will not be fitting to what I actually meant, because I used common words in a way that only I could possibly have understood.
Meaningful communication can really only occur as a transaction between sender and receiver involving mutually agreed upon terms. If we cannot agree on terms – if I’m not receiving the same thing you’re sending – there is no communication, and in the case of a monument, we have to be very clear about what’s being communicated, both on the sending and on the receiving end.
In the final analysis, does it matter if the architect was malign or merely stupid?
I think what I’m trying to say in my last post is that it is as possible for a speaker to allow a signifier to roam as it is for a hearer.
True. But it is a failure of communication nonetheless. And one who is being asked to communicate- whether at a Tiger Preservation Meeting or as the designer of a memorial- is also being asked to consider the intepretation of his words/symbolism beyond his own intentions.
We hire someone to create a memorial because they are a good communicator. If they stubbornly cling to their own personal intent in defining the meaning of a symbol that is in the public domain, that is an attempt to negate the listener. That isn’t good communication.
I know everyone keeps ignoring my swastika. Maybe that’s because it isn’t really a good point and I am kidding myself. But I live in a Buddhist country and I see swastikas every single day. They are on temples, they are even used to symbolize a temple on a map. To the American eye, it was quite shocking at first.
In my family’s attic I found an old postcard book from the early 1900’s. In it was a postcard with a swastika and a cute little poem describing how the swastika was a symbol of good luck.
Talk about a symbol that has been hijacked. Yet say I grew up away from a country with an emphasis on Western History during WWII. If I came to the US and designed a public memorial with a good luck swastika, do you really think my intent would be more important than the receiver’s interpretation?
You’re misunderstanding me. Meaning can be made in the mind of the receiver just as easily. But in so doing, the receiver is the one who is making the meaning, instead of interpreting what the utterer meant. And what the utterer meant occurs at the point when intention to signify is joined to the signifier.
This is just the way language functions. A squiggle is not language at all unless it is signified by someone. If the tide washer the beach and recedes to reveals something that looks like the word “is,” for instanc, we don’t generally thing the ocean was trying to tell us something. Instead, we recognize that the mark is accidental—and, that while it resembles language, is not language until intent is attached to it (our intent to read it as language, for instance, or maybe we do believe the ocean is speaking to us).
Yes, yes, and yes.
We needn’t ascribe bad intent to the designer, but we can fault him for tone deafness. We needn’t even demand that he change the design—there’s something brutish about forcing the hand of an artist. Instead, we might choose a different designer.
Jeff:
You’ve made a compelling point about intent versus interpretation. But it’s the designer’s responsibility to be comprehensible. Ultimately, his work has to speak for him, and most who object to the proposed memorial do so on its own terms (the only terms that matter in a work of art).
I think this is the germain question: Is the work truly botched, or do the critics miss the point?
Matt Moore,
I’ve read in a number of articles, including this one, that Murdoch’s original term was “Crescent” and that the jury suggested he change it, which we now know he did not, since his design was unveiled and presented to the public as “Crescent of Embrace”:
In fact, the jury that originally pondered design proposals for the permanent memorial urged planners to consider changing the name of the design, if Murdoch’s vision ultimately became the blueprint for the site.
Consider the interpretation and impact of words within the context of this event,†the jury wrote in its report. “The ‘Crescent’ should be referred to as the ‘circle’ or ‘arc’ or other words that are not tied to specific religious iconography.
Henry Cook, president of Somerset Trust Co. and a member of the second-stage jury, said: “We suggested the name be changed. Someone did point out that the crescent had certain religious overtones.
(Last comment’s word was “truth”. This time “red”. Is Allah speaking to me?)
Thanks, c. That puts the final nail in the coffin for me.
Nobody can anticipate all the permutations the signifiers he uses in an utterance might take on, given that there are an infinite number of potential uses they can be put to. Which is precisely why it is important, in communication, to appeal to intent. Anticipating what others might think is important for a professional communicator (which is a good case for concluding that this architect is either a very bad communicator or else intended the meaning to occur on many levels—the latter being perfectly consistent with intent). But being a bad communicator doesn’t mean you didn’t mean what you meant.
<object to the proposed memorial do so on its own terms (the only terms that matter in a work of art).</blockquote>
The flight 93 memorial, like Caesar’s wife, must be above suspicion.
Perhaps the architect and/ or others did not mean to make it rich with reference to Islam. But it is, and the taint is there whether the architect is actualay “innocent” or not.
I don’t worry about his intent because I can stop right there in the logic tree. If there are significant elements that could be construed as such, they should be removed or adjusted to make them go away.
If the architect missed the symbolism while creating his design, that’s unfortunate. At a later stage he was made aware of it. He ignored advice to change the name, so one can only logically assume this was a deliberate action to leave in symbolism others have told him are related to Islam.
Some on the committee wanted to change the name “to avoid any reference to iconography of a specific religion. Which wasn’t really what they meant ( they had to couch it carefully, I don’t) and it’s certainly not what I mean. There should be no reference to THAT religion, in particular.
The hijackers, the bad guys, the murderers, were motivated by religious and political goals that are is impossible to extricate from the religious and political goals of Islam.
Muslims recognize their iconography, it will be unmistakable to them. Those sympathetic with the murderous jihadis will credit the hand of Allah if not the architect, for the imagery there and take comfort and pride in it –
I can’t say those muslims who do not sympathise with the hijackers would not be glad to have the land marked out for Allah anyway, but I think they *should* be horrified to have any connection with the evil committed in Allah’s name.
Any one who thinks it’s a lovely idea to have a symbolic reconciliation with mecca by means of a little outdoor mosque or antyhing that could be construed as one
would have us remain in complacent ignorance of the mainstream Islamic understandingof Jihad.
That said, The MAIN reason I think the monument stinks because it doesn’t concentrate on the heroic fight of the passengers, and their defeat of the primary mission of the Jihadis. (Other’s have said it better on that subject, so I won’t say more.)
But it is completely unacceptable for there to be anything on the spot that could even be construed as “red crescent and star”, or orientation on the angle of the qibla, or a prayer tower, etc. etc.
As far as all this linguistic stuff, I am outgunned and outclassed to say the least. But I have observed that communication is not a one-sided expression. The observer counts. What others are likely to observe counts.
I have never made the claim communication is one-sided. The receiver is responsible for reconstructing the meaning by considering the intent of the utterer, or else making her own meaning by observing the shapes, listening to the sounds, or looking at the graphemes and adding signification.
But it simply not the case that anything within the Memorial exists as a reference to Islam without an intent to see it as such. A crescent is just an curved line until it is a crescent. So either the architect put it there as a crescent (the arc means crescent), or we have decided that it is one (the arc looks to me like a crescent, so I don’t care if the architect just put it their as an arc).
If it’s the former, you are criticizing the monument for what it actually symbolizes; if it is the latter, you are criticizing it for what it could potentially be seen to symbolize.
In that second formulation, you are weakening the process of interpretation by removing it from its mooring, intent. Because interpretation is the reconstructing of intent. Adding your own signifieds to the signifiers another offers you is creating your own new text. You aren’t interpreting so much as you are writing your own text or building your own monument.
True.
But one can anticipate meaning that is
ascribed to a known symbol.
The allah squiggle was an unknown. It was a previously unknown squiggle, meant to convey icecream and someone conveyed upon it the allah symbolism. Unanticipated.
The crescent is a known. It is known to be a symbol of islam- that is not a surprise. It isn’t an obscure symbol of Islam. It isn’t a symbol with a gazillion meanings and the bottommost relevant one is a symbol of Islam. It isn’t that once in a book somewhere someone that was muslim said the word crescent. It isn’t being redefined by the receiver, it is being selectively defined by the designer.
And whatever his intent, even if he meant what he meant, it is not within his power to strip the other known, common, and powerful meanings from the symbol he chose.
The crescent only becomes a “crescent” (as opposed to, say, an arc) by an act of signification.
If he meant to use an arc, he shouldn’t have to worry that the shape is similar to that of a crescent. I’m not prepared to surrender the curved line to Muslims.
But I’m dealing in hypotheticals; if he himself named it the cresecent, then he shouldn’t be surprised by the outcry. It bespeaks either a bad communicator or a guy trying to slip an intentional nod to Islamism into his design. He can be criticized on either account. But on the first account, you are criticizing him not for what the monument means, but rather for how it can be interpreted. But, because he is a professional communicator, it is far more likely that the inclusion was intentional.
I think the fact that he oriented it physically to Mecca is pretty blatent. Unless you care to believe that was a coincidence.
Do you draw any distinction here between language and art? I am a musician, and most lyricists I have worked with intend their songs to work on different levels and want the listener to interpret them through one’s own life experience. To me, the memorial is functioning as art, and the perception of the audience has to be considered.
Well, it’s either intentional or coincidence. The odds are on intent.
Intending the song to function on many levels is just that, and intention. A simple example is a pun. A more complex example might be a Renaissance allegory. Then of course there are the interesting things receivers can do with signifiers (if you’ve ever read any lit crit that turns Curious George into a post colonialist narrative you’d know what I mean)—but they are simply engaging in the creative process using your raw material as a jumping off point. The are making their own meaning from your marks. Nothing wrong with that unless we confuse that we interpretation.
Going to watch a movie and drink a Guinness. Nice talking to you all. To be continued.
But talk amongst yourselves while I’m gone.
I’m finding this conversation a bit frustrating. Of course a speaker means what he means. Easy cheesy. Similarly, he says what he says, which may not be what he means. When he stands by what he said in the face of criticism regarding what was conveyed, then he ratifies the new meaning. Thus, regardless of whether the designer originally meant what he said (by use of a existant Islamic symbol), he now means it. Hence, the signifier crescent is now the signified Crescent (stop me if I’m making a fool of myself), and will have always been a Crescent, even if it becomes rhetorically an arc.
But, but. . . that don’t even matter ‘cause get a load of this:
More than this, I think a public monument is something that should speak for a community. The public body is the speaker and the artist is the translator–first comprehending the public’s conviction, then reflecting it back in physical form. It is then possible for a tone deaf memorial designer and selection committee to get it objectively “wrong.” (Too bad you can’t find a public artist without the hubris to take every commission as an opportunity to preach to the masses below him.) Now, like I was saying, off to watch a movie and drink a Guiness.
TW: “hell” as in, Hell, make it three.
Ok, that made me laugh.
Jeff:
Probably that is the most likely. But yes, I do criticize him for not allowing for how the monument could be interpreted (it couldn’t have been a surprise to him).
Because:
B Moe:
Perfect.
Your general point though, Jeff, I completely agree with. There is an increasing tendency to assign intent to the speaker’s words, take offense, and demand the speaker should have known not to say that blah blah blah. As if we are all mind readers and wordsmiths and knew the exact right thing to say and simply chose not to.
But this is a memorial to a very specific event. It’s symbolism should be powerful and well communicated. And as you can tell from my babbling posts, I know a thing or two about bad communication skills.
Hmmmm.
1. I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the architect’s intent. I don’t care about the cook’s intent when I order scrambled eggs. I damn sure don’t care about the chicken’s intent when it pops out an egg.
2. The public monument must reflect the event. It does not, therefore it is ass.
3. People can be judged by the quality and value of their work. If someone is a shitty cook, then he’s a shitty cook. If someone cooks shitty food then that person is a shitty cook.
If an architect produces shitty work, then that person is a shitty architect.
4. I see no logical reason to support a shitty monument produced by a shitty architect whose intent is utterly irrelevant.
spamword: “paper”. rather appropriate with all the shit flying around eh?
The receiver is responsible for reconstructing the meaning by considering the intent of the utterer, or else making her own meaning by observing the shapes, listening to the sounds, or looking at the graphemes and adding signification.
Why is this an either/or process? How else is the receiver supposed to reconstruct the meaning by considering the intent of the utterer, other than by observing the shapes, etc.? The utterer is usually not around to answer questions about his intent, so not only does the receiver have to observe and add signification in every case, but often he will never know whether he has correctly divined the intent of the utterer or not. From the perspective of the receiver, the distinction is meaningless.
So either the architect put it there as a crescent (the arc means crescent), or we have decided that it is one (the arc looks to me like a crescent, so I don’t care if the architect just put it their as an arc).
Again, this strict dichotomy works in theory but not in practice. When it comes at least to works of art, I seldom if ever have verifiable proof of the artist’s intent. My own interpretation therefore by necessity stands in place of knowledge of the artists’ intent—not because it is immaterial to me if I’ve correctly guess the intent or not, but because my interpretation is the only evidence I have of his intent. The two seem inseparable to me.
But it simply not the case that anything within the Memorial exists as a reference to Islam without an intent to see it as such. A crescent is just an curved line until it is a crescent.
A curved line is no more (or less) subject to direct, empirical knowledge than a crescent. They are both recognizable geometric shapes, and equally subject to both observation and interpretation. One could as easily say that a moon in its first quarter is just a crescent until it is interpreted as a half moon; or that a curved line is just a series of connected points until it is interpreted as a curved line.
I have no idea why people keep on insisting, however obliquely, that I’m making some argument for or against the meaning of this actual monument. As I’ve said several times now, I haven’t looked into it enough.
Similarly, I’m at a loss to explain how I can be any clearer regarding how language literally works.
Chris L —
Because the utterer is not around to answer questions of intent does not, again, negate intent. Intent is what makes the utterance language to begin with. From the perspective of the receiver, getting the intent wrong by degrees speaks to how completely we understood the intended meaning of the original utterance.
Again, verifiable proof that you’ve correctly reconstructed the intent has no bearing on what that original intent was and remains. That we can make meanings from the set of signifiers that comprise Moby Dick that are different than those Melville intended simply means that, given the set of signifiers arranged just so, we can make them do things that Melville didn’t anticipate. What it doesn’t do, however, is alter Melville’s meaning, which was captured at the time he turned those marks to language by signifying them.
Precisely. I just used “arc” as a point of differntiation from “crescent.” The point being, that these things are in need of signifying. Of course, convention, habit, context, etc., will often determine which of that array of possible descriptors best fits a given situation. Architecturally speaking, I’m not sure crescent is more common than, say, arch.
Ed —
That you don’t care about the architect’s intent is certainly your business. But I’m talking about this from a purely linguistic perspective, because I believe that the way we think interpretation works ends up informing how we write law or adopt public policy or rule in court cases (which set precedents that become ossified).
Nowhere have I said that an architect can’t be judged aesthetically by the quality of his work. You can hate the Monument even if you agreed with every statement it intended to make. I find this happens often to me listening to certain country songs that Sean Hannity shills for.
But in the context of a discussion over meaning and interpretation, saying that the architect’s intent is utterly irrelevant is silly.
ss —
<objectively “wrong.â€Â</blockquote>The representative of the community will, in this process, was the selection committee; the artist only needs reflect the public conviction insofar as he assumes he needs to do so to get his design selected.
In a way, I addressed this very thing once in a conversation with a steam dumpling.
I’m honored to stand in the place of such an eloquent and learned dumpling.
TW: himself. H-I-M-S-E-L-F. himself.
You’re using language to explain language.
I don’t know if that means anything or not. It just seemed like something to point out.
In the spirit of original reportage, here is the original entry by Murdoch to the Flight 93 Memorial Competition.
Flight 93 Memorial Page
Original Entry for ‘Crescent of Embrace’, 43-827
The name of the entry is a pedestrian “Flight 93 Memorial”, but the phrase ‘Crescent of Embrace’ is the name of the design element featured on the submittal. That phrase became the title of the entry presumably during the semi-final stage of the competition.
For conspiracy theorists, if you look at the entry itself, the phrase ‘Crescent of Embrace’ is part of the title for design element 4.
The full title of element 4 is “4: RIDGE(Crescent of Embrace)”
/cue scary music – As we all know, Tom RIDGE was Secretary of Homeland Security at the time this design was developed.
I started to look at the information provided by the Memorial Committee to the entrants to see if ‘ridge’ was used in their description of the landscape or if it was a conscious choice by the designer.
But it’s just easier to think that Murdoch wanted Islam, (in the form of a Crescent) to embrace Sec. Ridge – which must mean kill or convert Ridge. And that Murdoch wanted Islam to “embrace” Secretary Ridge at 4:00 – or on the 4th – or in the 4th year subsequent to the attack – or something. I dunno.
That might be carrying things a bit too far from a ‘receivers’ perspective.
However, Jeff’s point quickly become utterer-ly ridiculous as well. There is a point an arc is just an arc, a crescent is as well. But when that crescent happens to be red, happens to point exactly towards Mecca, and happens to involve a memorial that involves, in a big way, Islamic radicals.
I haven’t checked the design thoroughly, but there were four hijackers on board. If a check of the design shows some cluster of four objects in a way that can be interpreted as honoring the courage of those that hijacked the plane, would that be ‘convincing’ … or are we stuck in some sort of “well, prove the intent” loop. If a small design edit shows up at the end of the project that includes four items, say on that line that points to Mecca if you do the qibla thing, can we say ‘oopsey’, dig up the trees and put a surface to air missile battery in its place?
and, fwiw, here is an example of unintended ‘receiver-based’ meaning.
Pic – Okay for Work
Come for Shannon Elizabeth’s breasts and Jeff Gannon’s GAY PORN COCK OF LIES!, stay for the eloquent discussions on semiotics.
You’re an excellent teacher, Jeff. Thanks to you and your other commenters for the fascinating, enlightening, and thoroughly enjoyable discussion.
After much reading and reflection of the viewpoints in this thread, I really question this:
What do you mean, a Guinness?
TW: program. As in, get with it, Goldstein.
You had me at Piss Christ. Maybe I’m stuck on stupid.
Only in the most abstract, out of context sense. Iconography exists independently of the architect intent. It has previously established meaning. It’s going to be seen by me and others, no matter what meaning the architect meant to assign it.
That an architect put it there on purpose, or it is there by the hand of a higher power, or by mere unfortunate chance, is incidental.
The architect certainly means for the whole of his design to have meaning trancendant of Just.A.Grove.of. Red. Maple. Trees. We are supposed to find and or guess the meaning in the trees. You aseem to be saying it’s not the architects fault he is misunderstood, and I assert that it is.
I’ve also been saying that we must be on guard to keep out any reference that could result in complacence about Islamism or give succor or encouragement to jihadi sympathizers. For those and many other reasons, pains should be taken to keep anything that could possibly be construedas a hat tip to Islam out of that space.
In reality, I criticize the monument for many things, but as to the Islamic references, imagery and iconography – yes, I think it is perfectly valid to say that my enemy will recognize it, and attribute it to Allah if not the architect. And I don’t want my enemy to get any pride or comfort or religious sign out of it.
And *I myself* see the iconography, and say it is unsettling and inappropriate – In bad taste to put something with that connotation on THAT spot for THOSE people who were trying to stop people motivated by Islam, no matter what the architect meant. It might be accident. (I will point out, I do not EXCLUDE the possibility Murdoch might have been motivated by some dangerously treacly cross-cultural healing or “ Hey, say what you want about those muslims, they have really effective spiritual spaces” message.)
But I don’t have to decide that, I’m stopping before I get there. It’s enough that the easily recognized symbolism incorporated in to the memorial design is *there.*
<blockquote> Adding your own signifieds to the signifiers another offers you is creating your own new text. You aren’t interpreting so much as you are writing your own text or building your own monument.
Someone else already wrote that “text”; Cresent and star, minaret, black slate, what have you. These have associations I didn’t create; the signifier was signified by it’s past use. What’s really going on is, in the light most favorable to the architect, he was ignorant of the innappropriateness of his “text.”
Say “Gutvik bed” at Ikea, in Germany they laugh. Sure they put a spin on it that the hapless bed-namer didn’t mean, but that’s because of the similarity to words they already use signifying something else.
The design must be above suspicion. Just as it wasn’t necessary for Caesar to find out if Pompeiia let a man into the rites of the Bona Dea on purpose or by accident, it is enough that people whisper about it.
We don’t have to get to the architects intent, it isn’t necessary. The symbolism is of such potency and so incompatible with that spaceand that memorial, that it isn’t even necessary to acertain intent in order to judge it should be discarded.
Context makes the difference. A man is ok in some places, not in others. It’s ok to meet a man by accident on the street, but not by accident at the rites of the Bona Dea.
Similarly, keep any signifiers that can be contrued as reference to Islam out of that monument.
Jeff, intent is an element of many crimes and civil remedies. A murder conviction requires, among other elements, proof that the killer intended to kill “with malice aforethought”. Damages are not recoverable for slander unless it is proven that the statement was made with malicious intent.
But under some circumstances, the requisite intent is presumed to exist as a matter of law. If you kill someone during your commission of a robbery, the requisite malicious intent is presumed, and you cannot avoid a murder conviction by claiming (or even proving) that your gun accidently discharged.
Similarly, if you publicly, but falsely accuse someone of child molestation, that is slander per se. Malicious intent is presumed, and you cannot explain yourself out of liability.
While your analysis makes sense from a purely philosophical viewpoint, in practice society quite reasonably concludes that there are some circumstances in which the intent to offend will be presumed – the statement, the artwork, the action, is offensive per se. We will not allow the offender to escape accountability by claiming “I was just joking” or “I didn’t mean to offend” or “You misinterpreted me”.
If you are contending that the Flight 93 Memorial circumstances do not rise to the offensive per se category, that is one thing. But if you contend that nothing can ever be offensive per se – that outrage is never justified unless the intent of the actor is established, that is quite another thing.
SarahW – well said.
http://www.pledgebank.com/BurgerKing
By your standards, a cloud formation or an accidental inkblot can be offensive per se. But my point is that, in the absence of establishing original intent, you must conclude that it is YOUR signification that is making it offensive.
Offense does not exist outside of signification. And as you yourself say, intent in certain circumstances is simply presumed. Those who are doing the presuming (in some cases, this is simply an enshrined legal presumption) are signifying the utterance. They are giving it a meaning that is at odds with the original meaning. They are robbing the utterer of his authorial right to ascribe meaning under the aegis of public good.
In short, they have pre-inscriped certain signifiers with a meaning that may or may not correspond to the actual meaning of the utterance. Which is simply a way of litigating an official, consensus meaning for certain signifiers, one that is the product of intent and agency on the part of the litigators and ratifiers of the law.
What they haven’t done is alter the meaning of the utterance. They’ve simply overruled it. By force.
This is no different than when a particular group seizes control over a signifier (like the ice cream wrapper cone outline) and insists that it means x to them (Allah), and so writes a law that says that it will forever mean x, regardless of what the person responsible for making it language to begin with (the utterer) meant by it.
Not true. Shapes many have meant many things previously, but that just means many different agencies have inscribed them with many different signifieds. This accretion of previous meanings does not change the way signification works. It simply problematizes the way we interpret, as we have more choices to draw from when trying to tease out the author’s meaning.
I answered this above [response to MayBee].
I haven’t claimed that making the argument is not “valid” in any social sense. I’m simply saying that you need to recognize what it is you’re doing: you are arguing that the shapes themselves—the signifiers—are cause for alarm, given the context. I have said that such a linguistic surrender of how language works can lead to problems, particularly when it becomes codified.
Because how it functions is no different, in theory, than when one argues against cloud formations or naturally occuring shapes that can be construed—by those doing the signifying—as intentional constructs, even though the are not, and, in the absense of some signification, are not even “language.”
Here is another object lesson.
Ed Morrisey uses the word “articulate” to describe a Black. Oliver Willis, who has never met a white Republican he wouldn’t accuse of some degree of racism, responds, “Aw lawzy! That Michael Steele is sho nuff one of them “articulate†negroes. One of “the good onesâ€Â, you know?”
Typically Oliver stuff, but not what interests me, exhibit as a jumping off point.
Instead, we get this, in the comments:
That is, no matter how you mean to use it, others can make it mean something else—because, as a signifier, it comes pre-loaded with baggage—so it’s best just to choose another word.
A pragmatic response to a pomo problem that is the direct result of a weakening of language by removing it from its intentional moorings.
This is no different than when a particular group seizes control over a signifier (like the ice cream wrapper cone outline) and insists that it means x to them (Allah), and so writes a law that says that it will forever mean x, regardless of what the person responsible for making it language to begin with (the utterer) meant by it.
This presumes that it’s the utterer that is responsible for making it language to begin with. In other words, it’s conflating meaning with intent, and while in some cases that might be right, I can’t see that you can extend it to every utterance. If someone writes a big “2” on the blackboard, did he create the “langage” of the number 2? If he says he meant by that symbol the concept of “4”, did he just create a new meaning for 2 that we’re all supposed to divine? His intent, and the meaning of “2”, are not congruent.
Otherwise, you give unilateral power to the speaker to do what you (and I, by the way), object to giving the hearer unilateral power to do—weaken the power of language by removing it from its objective moorings—by letting language mean anything the speaker intends it to mean. And so by calling the results of the Katrina disaster a Holocaust, a speaker (mis)appropriates and seizes control over the signifier (the word “holocaust”) for his own political ends.
I still think you’d want to determine the speaker’s intent; but how can you possibly determine intent without determining meaning first? In the above example, I know that the intent is to falsely imbue the Katrina deaths with purposeful action to wipe out a group of people based on their ethnicity; but I only know that because I know what the word “holocaust” actually means when it’s used appropriately. If I accept the speaker’s intent that he only meant simply to describe a lot of deaths, I lose the ability to consider a whole host of possibilities about the speaker’s intent: that he is exaggerating, attempting to mislead, suggesting that the actual Holocaust should be minimized, etc.
In the end my question is, if the meaning of things (as opposed to the intent to mean) is solely controlled by the speaker, how do I, as hearer, avoid surrendering the language to the speaker in the way that Burger King surrendered its cone image to the Islamists?
Chris —
There is nothing that says language needs to be understood by others to be language. Language is simply a signifier joined to a signified (and, in other formulations, a referent).
Which means that to the person who scrawls 2 on the chalkboard and means by it 4 it means 4—regardless of our ability to guess that. Which is why we use other things to reconstruct intent—habit, convention, context, etc—but the point remains that a failure to make your meaning understood is not a failure to mean.
Because the only thing that makes that 2 your speak of a linguistic sign is the intent of an agency to turn it into a sign. Seen in nature alone, it might simply be a snail track or a scar—neither of which we’d consider a numeral. And if we did, for some reason, see a snail track or a scar shaped like the mark for 2, and decided to say it meant the numeral two, we’d be doing so based on our own signification. We’d be making it into language.
Jeff, in the previous post, I cited “Piss Christ as an example of a communication that is offensive per se. You seemed to acknowledge that point when you said:
But you called “Piss Christ” a bad example of something that is offensive per se, because:
Today, I again made the point that under some circumstances, society justifiably deems a communication offensive per se, regardless of the intent professed by the communicator, and I provided analogies in criminal and civil law. And I again tried to pin you down on whether it is your position that no communication can ever be offensive per se – that outrage is never justified unless the intent of the communicator is established. And you again made the dodge into accidental circumstances:
Your characterization of my argument is precisely the opposite of my argument.
So, let’s return to “Piss Christ”. Must the artist articulate an offensive intent, before societal outrage about that work is justified? Or is the work offensive per se – offensive without further inquiry into the artist’s intent?
First, I’m not dodging anything.
Second, you are conflating several disperate ideas, which is why you might be missing my point.
1) “Must the artist articulate an offensive intent, before societal outrage about that work is justified?”
Two separate components to this question. First societal outrage can proceed from anything, which is why I keep bringing up the idea of accident. So no, the artist need not intend for something to be offensive for others to find it offensive. See my post from today. Second, societal outrage at something not intended by the original “author” is societal outrage at a signification of its own making. It is outraged at its own ability to make a shape or a sound form or a mark into a sign, which it is then offended by.
Are they “justified” in being upset by something of their own design?—which they don’t recognize as such because they are using previous instances and references to suggest that two signifiers that look alike must necessarily carry with them all their past significations? That is up to them. From a linguistic standpoint, justification has nothing to do with it. However, they are responsible for their own signification—however much they wish to foist it off onto the artist by making the claim that their signification is an accurate interpretation of his sign. It is not.
As you pointed out earlier, this decision to dismiss intent in favor of the criminalization of an out of context signifier is something we’ve done legally under certain circumstances. To my knowledge, we haven’t done this with a curved line or any architectural design that contains such.
Okay, I’m beginning to understand. I get that language is language even if no one understands it—me speaking in a room full of people who don’t understand English, for example. And it’s axiomatic that it’s beyond my power to change anyone’s intent; and that 2 means 4 to the person who intends 2 to mean 4. I may even agree, for the purpose of that conversation, to treat 2 as if it meant 4—in which case we have not only language, but also communication.
It’s because language defined this way is (potentially) practically useless that I resist it. Knowing nothing about the theory of linguistics, my view of language is a utilitarian one, and includes notions of context and effect that don’t seem to be part of the definition itself.
Still, I remain curious—just from a practical standpoint—how do we prevent the speaker from weakening the power of language by removing it from its objective moorings? Because I see it all the time.
Jeff, at the risk of completely failing this class, one last try:
Suppose that the main Islamic symbol was not a simple shape like an arc, but a complex shape – a treble clef. And suppose that the design of the Flight 93 Memorial included a strucure that, when viewed from above, was in the exact shape of the treble clef.
Under these circumstances, where the memorial to a murdered group of people includes – intentionally or not – an exact replication of the complex symbol of the religion in whose name the people were murdered, is the design offensive per se? Or is it only offensive if it can be shown that the designer intended to include the main symbol of Islam?
Why is a form that has been called a crescent and entitled “The Crescent” by its designer being called an arc or curved line (terms which don’t evoke any sense of thickness, btw) for the sake of argument? The designer intended the form he purposefully designed to be considered a crescent, so why are we arguing as if he didn’t? Since all of the recent hullabaloo, of course, Murdoch is saying his Crescent of Embrace is just an arc or curved line with no significance and that, in effect, his title and terms from before meant nothing. At which point are we supposed to take at face value an artist’s or anybody’s stated intentions and thematic titles when their words change under public scrutiny (he didn’t relent when two juries asked him to change them), and can people never use words to mislead or lie about their intentions?
From an architectural point of view, I have little doubt that Murdoch and team succumbed to a bad case of multi-culti leftist Islamicitis, but cannot be sure why they did, since I’m not privy to their lives and political opinions. They could be true PC believers or are hoping for lucrative commissions in Qatar, KSA, Malaysia, etc, since there are still riches to be tapped in the Mohammedan market. Then there’s how a strong iconic form and controversy are good for the professional rep among peers and monied liberal clients- certainly worked for Maya Lin on account of her “V” Vietnam memorial.
Anyway, I sought the opinion of my husband who is a think-tanker and not a designer (except of Force Generation models for the Army and such) and who has not had the time to follow on-line news and controversies. But one of his grad degrees is in Middle East studies, and he taught the ME, along with international history and comparative religion for several years at West Point. Back them, he was quite the Arabist and had even lived in Oman for a while, as well. I told him about the memorial design competition for Flight 93 without saying anything about the dust-up over it and showed him the pic of the topo model of the winning entry that was titled “Crescent of Embrace”. He said that’s nice, they’ve done the Embrace of Islam sort of thing, Islam and submission. Why would they do that?
Next, I showed him the architect’s description and rendering of the tall, slender and curved tower covered in white mosaic, labeled “Tower of Voices”. He actually got irritated with me for wasting his time. Said that it was clearly a minaret, that the puzzle was boring, and that if naive fools want to remember our dead by spending millions erecting an obvious paean to Islam and either not realize it or support it because of it, then oh well. (He was busy.)
Can’t say why anyone else was arguing it, but for my part I was arguing it because somebody raised it as a hypothetical.
Jeff,
Your hypotheticals are great and mind-stretching. And I can’t keep up, frankly! I have a question about “arc” which you could answer but may choose to go pfft and ignore because it’s late and because you’ve probably already answered it several times in the thread and it all went over my head.
When it is argued that Murdoch’s design is an arc (describing it as a two dimensional geometric form, when “red rainbow” or “grove of trees arranged in a partial ring” might do just as well), isn’t his Crescent perhaps reduced but certainly recast as something else when it comes to how it is perceived? People more inclined to support Murdoch’s expression or those trying to be neutral are overriding his word “crescent” in favor of calling it an arc or a curved line (he is, too, now!), probably because those terms seem abstract, non-threatening and unfreighted with inconvenient cultural connotations. But isn’t assigning a description of “arc” to Murdoch’s Crescent just as prejudicial in how it could whitewash intent as how calling it an Islamic Crescent could color it? Aren’t those who characterize aspects of the design as “coincidental” and “accidental” interpreting intent as much as those who say they’re not accidental, since nobody but Murdoch and team can truly know their intent? How can there be any default to value-neutral by observers, when all language is freighted, even school geometry terms? When I hear “arc”, I think of a nail and string construction we had on a wall in the sixties, and then I remember a math teacher whose eyebrows were parabolic wonders.
Should the “Tower of Voices” be described as a cylinder to more impartially assess it?
We’re both lucky- word is “done”!
Well, I think the whole thing started because people perceived in Murdoch’s intent a desire to nod to Muslims. Those who don’t see that intent are likely using a less fraught signifier to explain, after the fact.
I hope that all those who are talking about what the artist meant by the design are appealing to his intent. That’s perfectly proper, even if they come to two different conclusions. After all, we can never be sure our intent is being correctly interpreted—we can just try signal that intent (or, perhaps in the case of Murdoch, hide it from public scrutiny by keeping it buried in cryptic symbology—which hasn’t worked to well for him, if that’s indeed what he tried to do).
Not sure if that answers your question. I’m tired and rambling, so forgive me if I misunderstood you.
Time to go have a beer and watch an episode of “Millennium.”
Thanks and that helped! You even saved me from arguing that the Vietnam Memorial is simply an obtuse angle, if we’re going to strip away dimension, scale, massing, materials, color, location, orientation, perspective, function, purpose, cultural associations, architectural articulation and artistic signature of a design or elements within it.
Watch Criminal Intent tomorrow night. My daughter’s boyfriend plays a nerdy computer genius or some such.
It’s Criminal Minds. Ever the clueless mom.
Without doubt, this thread is played out, but just wanted to say thanks – as is typical of this blog, some real solid insights were offered here from which everyone derived considerable benefit – a challenge to really think about what language can, and can’t do. I can’t help it, I dig the lit. crit. theory.
Also, all due respect to C above, but dude, watch Millennium – I still think Frank Black is one of the most interesting characters to emerge from Nineties television.
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