Empty Forms
Tired, so this again and for the hundredth time....
The word 'I' is not a concept, that would grasp this particular tree in terms of a universal. Nor does it refer to that particular in its singularity, since the 'I' is wholly taken over by anyone who speaks. But here, it is not as if there first exists a subject who then expresses himself using language. The 'I' is a position afforded by language that gives birth to the subject.
Benveniste (via): 'In some way language puts forth "empty" forms which each speaker, in the exercise of their discourse, appropriates to himself and which he relates to his "person"'. But note the capacity of the speaker to relate such forms to himself depends upon his birth as a speaker. He does not take up the empty form of the 'I', since he, as a subject, does not pre-exist the personal pronoun. Then language is not first of all personal, but the condition of the subject who can then use pronouns. Somehow - strange miracle - the subject takes up a position with respect to the impersonal streaming, the 'empty forms' of language. It appears as a subject. But what appears?
The subject does not pre-exist language. And yet now there is a self that can speak. 'Can speak' - but from where does this power come? Is the self (is it yet a self?) fated to language? Can it not not speak? Either way, as subject, it has the power to speak: the ability, with respect to language (and not just over language), to be able. Somehow, it is given that power. The power comes from that movement that catches up the not-yet-self, the pre-subject, and makes of it a subject.
Fated to speak, then, and to have power over speech. But only by taking over and animating the empty forms of language. Forms, concepts, that pre-exist the subject and will outlive him. Language that streams with him - without you or I - but to which we owe what we can be. The murmuring of language that streams behind us like the tail of a comet, and streams after us, the tail of other comets, speakers, who come to themselves as you came, and so did I.
Lean Into the Wind
You speak; you've made a dent in the streaming of language. Speak - and you've made a stand in speech, although it is by means of speech that you've made this stand. But what kind of stand is this? To let the wind pass over the aeolian harp you are. To let current seize the vessel of your life. Not a stand then, but a granting. A being granted with respect to which you are not the origin and that is not within your power. Lean into the wind, like little Bernhard on his grandfather's bike. Lean into the streaming of language and let it catch you. And be gathered to the position of subject as the wind carries up the clocks of dandelions and disperses them.
We know Heidegger looks beyond idle chatter and aimless curiosity. That what matters is to speak in your own name (even if the power to speak belongs to the ability to be that being also grants; being is mine, says Heidegger - remember that), and as only you can speak. A stand must be taken; no - it has already been taken, insofar as being always gives itself in individuated Dasein. There is a stand to be taken, the position 'I' that must be reconquered. What else but authenticity is this? No longer the marshes and valleys of curiosity. No longer the fields over which rumour and idle talk pass like the wind. Speak as being-there allows you to speak. Speak from the mountaintop from which everything can be surveyed.
But those same winds - gossip, rumour - are ways in which the impersonality of language gives itself to be experienced. Notions belong to no one. Gossip never substantiated, that floats free of any particular event. And idle talk - where we speak of what happens to others and never to ourselves; where language fails to attach itself to the stability and self-presence of an 'I'. But stability? Self-presence? Does being really give itself as what is mine?
Perhaps we could say being is never mine; that it trails after me from the impersonal field of language an experience that belongs to no one in particular. Being is not mine, then; it is the impersonality of language, empty forms and concepts in their perpetual streaming. An impersonality that remains impersonal, and returns as such, dissolving the opposition authenticity-inauthenticity.
Then a different account of the genesis of the speaking subject than Heidegger. Prepersonal syntheses of various kinds (Deleuze, Simondon) and then the coming to itself of the 'I' through language (Hegel, Blanchot). (My version of what Sinthome said, one time or another).
Black Meat
Think of Bernhard instead, at his farm or away from it, in hotels in Italy or Spain, where he did most of his writing. Bernhard showing his manuscripts to his lifeperson, who pronounces upon them, tells him to publish or discard. Showing her beginnings of manuscripts, and asking, shall I go on? And in between writing - you can't write all the time -, overseeing the renovation of his farmhouse, or of the other farmhouses he buys.
Think of him as he first begins to write, as he finds the strength to continue. Narrators much like the narrators in all his books. Each pretty similar to the other. But the strength to begin again, to see through a book! The strength to hold it together, to write through the days and nights! To let himself be caught and borne up the rhythms of language. And in the breaks of that rhythm, like the hard carapace of a lobster cracked open: the meat of language in its density, its thickness. Language in its black, glistening darkness, there before any story, before anyone could say 'I'.
There are no autobiographies. Or none that can reach back into the black blood that surges before the beginning. Impersonal language, like a sea of oil. Language whose waves must part before anyone can say 'I'. No autobiographies. For how might you write of your birth into language?
What did Bernhard discover when he wrote Frost (or when his first story was published, or his first poem)? Language open to enclose him. As though he had struggled back up the stream; he found his way to the head of the waters, to the rivers rising on the mountains where there were no speakers yet. To write - isn't to come under the spell of the origin? To travel back through language until there was no speaker yet. Or is it to travel forward, when language breaks like black oil upon no shore?
And once you have begun to write there is no end, just as there is no end to speech. One book, another. One and then another, all the way up to the end. Newfoundland: wasn't that to be the last book, the last feast, when language breaks open its carapace? When it reveals itself as only black oil, black blood, black meat?
Speech Adrift
And now I think of the voiceovers in Malick's films. That drift across the scenes, almost despite them. Voices speaking, but saying what. It is as if, with Malick, what they say is the Same. A voice belonging to a man or a woman. Belonging to them, but also somehow, not of them. A voice that is not quite their voice, that stretches what they say into a membrane through which something else shines. The glow of speech behind speech. Of the 'that there is' that speaks speech. Isn't that the Same that is always said, the saying of the said?
Speech drifts across Malick's films. It is allowed to drift, until you're unsure who's speaking. As you listen, you know you're close to something. But to what? Not to the presence of the speaker who speaks with speech. But to the presence of speech, just that, the 'that there is' of speech, of language that sings neutral-voiced, neutralising, with all that is said.
Speech drifts in Malick's films. Until it seems to speak as speak the continuity shots - the chameleon half hidden against the bark, the vermillion parrot that turns its head - as part of a whole order of which the human being is part. Part of an order, but that is not that of nature, the natural. It is not that speech speaks like the parrots squawk.
I admit I distrust the visual, the splendours of the visual. Films seem a kind of pornography to me, that is, except for a very few. They're too visible, and so rarely have room for speech. But Malick is different, who sets speech adrift like a log that slips along a jungle stream. Malick stays close to the origin of the world, of subjects, of speakers. Not to nature, understand, in its simple immensity, but to that leap that lets speech lift itself from what is natural and makes it gratuitous, wayward. As though it had torn apart the immanence of what is. With Malick, speech rides the origin like the log its water ...
Why does Malick refuse interviews and to be photographed? There are no autobiographies. But perhaps, with Malick, everything is autobiography, whole films, as they let voices hover close to where they are brought to birth. Everything - as Malick diffuses his existence across the existences of those who are brought to life in his films. Everything is autobiography, but only as it is the entry into language that is allowed to express itself - that and the comet's tail it cannot help but trail behind.