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September 15, 2005
What I understand
Reading does not seem to teach me very much. Part of the problem lies with how passively I read. It feels as though I do not do the necessary work to create a sort of dialog with the text. Should I write in the margins? Shouldn't I run out of space that way?
I have books on the shelf and on my night table where the possible margin markup could go on for a long time indeed. One on my desk right now, La Société du Spectacle, by situationist Guy Debord, has me stumped line after line. What the heck is Guy writing about? Nathalie had a look and told me the difficulty I am having does not stem from weakness in my knowledge of French.
When you have a discussion with someone, it becomes difficult to carry on when she cannot pick up on what you are putting down. Your interlocutor will hint or even state outright that you have gone beyond the limits of communication into monologue. Schooling at some point managed to get around this institutionally by permitting the teacher to blather on beyond the limit, then even assign homework to students in order to check how far they followed, which could explain why children have such a difficult time adapting to the classroom.
In writing I find it easy, even natural, to continue after I have lost the thread or no longer understand what I'm on about. If you have read the unrevised writings of others, you know what I mean. You also know what I mean if you're tried to read Guy Debord. In any case, writing may allow you to figure out exactly what you wanted to say, but it doesn't force you to do so.
Lately realizations appear independent of language. First I understand, then I may try to write down what I understand. Often I find I get lost communicating what intuitively seems fully understood. For instance, I know my way around, but have difficulty explaining how to get from one place to another. In terms of knowing my way around in fact, when I have to explain how to get somewhere, then certainly I do not know the way.
At some level the same holds true for concepts. I cannot recall understanding something in words. Yet everyone I meet with few exceptions (people who have disabilities) can translate their inner thinking into some sort of words at some level. I wonder if Chomsky had the right idea when he wrote about Universal Grammar. Would such an entity be too complicated to work with in practice?
Posted by Mark at September 15, 2005 06:41 AM