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stiegler on simondon and derrida - logos and dialogos, phatic and phasic

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Logos is always a dia-logos within which those who enter the dialogue co-individuate themselves -- trans-form themselves, learn something -- by dia-loguing.  This co-individuation can result in discord, in which case each participant is individuated with the other, but against the other -- as occurs, for example, in a game of tennis or chess.  But co-individuation can also result in accord or agreement, in which case it enables the production of a concept that is shared by the interlocutors, who thus together produce a new locution through which they agree on a meaning -- which, in Platonic dialogue, must be produced in the form of a definition corresponding to the question ‘ti esti? ’ -- "What Makes Life Worth Living", p. 18
A bit later on, on page 19, he continues: "It was Jacques Derrida who opened up the question of pharmacology -- within which the hypomnesic appears as that which constitutes the condition of the anamnesic."

The longer quote above seems like it could readily be given a phatic interpretation.  The dia-logos is not just "speech" but "through-speech".  As a turn of phrase this seems to emphasize the idea of speech as both diachronic (unfolding over time) and diaphoric (difference carrying).  It predisposes us to think of communication as a journey or as a passage -- something that gets the interlocutors somewhere.  In other words, thinking of logos as dia-logos gives rise to a "channel".

The idea in the shorter quote suggests that externalized thought and memory (even if just in the form of speech and not writing per se) is required for "actual" thought and memory to take form.

It seems that the "dia" is the precondition of the "phatic" that I was casting about for in yesterday's post.  In the same way that a pressure difference -- as in the hydrolic analogy for electrical dynamics -- is what causes water to flow, a similar "difference" on the social or psychic plane will cause words to flow.

The speculative idea I've been arguing for (based so far only on etymology and a somewhat superficial look at Simondon's ideas...) is that phatic does not just mean speech, but actually means phasic speech -- that it is possible for the participants in the dialogue to "constructively" or "destructively" interfere with each other (for example), and that in the most destructive cases this eliminates the channel, whereas in the most constructive cases this gives rise to a new channel.


Comments

  1. aridedFebruary 22, 2016 at 6:24 PM

    «To compensate the constructed loss of presence as a result of adopting the supplement,
    Rousseau subjects the supplement to functioning as an “adjunct” (1976, p. 145) parasitical
    to the presence.», in Detour, Deferral, and Différance: Epistolarity in The Post Card (Chapter 3, Epistolary Writing: Paradox of the Supplement), by HUANG Hui-yu, http://nccuir.lib.nccu.edu.tw/handle/140.119/33321?locale=en-US

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