<nettime> language in irc (internet relay chat)

[Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>]

-


language in irc (internet relay chat)

there are three types of languaging:

>>hello
hello - just where you speak and it appears, and this serves in addition
as a declaration of presence; it's speech, nothing more - it may be reply
or affirmation or expostulation, interjection or query - there's always
the expectancy of the other, always something in return
>>/me says hello
Alan says hello - thus a performative, Alan performing in conjunction
with the assignation of the /me - the inclusion of action -
>>/me turns around
Alan turns around - the performative connected with a material action -
thus _in the virtual realm_ all actions are necessarily performatives -
this holding as well with programming - so that semantics are intended as
well - /me turns around always already ikonic - attend to this distinction
- just as the speaking above is also ikonic -
>>/echo it is raining out
it is raining out - here the language is itself the material substrate of
the world - the world constituted by language - if the /me indicates
process, the /echo indicates state - however
>>/echo the world burns
the world burns - and the state may well be a state-description of an
action whose performance is subtexted by the neutrality of the (re)quoted
expression
here in virtuality all expressions are doubly or triply quoted -
in ytalk doubly quoted - i type, transmit, you read
elsewhere triply - i type, i read, transmit, you read - three different
instantiations - resonances - sheaves
>>/echo it is raining out
it is raining out - the description of the world is already the state of
the world - however the /me in
>>/me is taking a walk - there is a separation - as in
me < is taking a walk - the expression is piped; in
>>/echo it is raining out - here the /echo is a modification on
it is raining out - as in e(it is raining out) - or as in
e(x)
x
whereas with /me thinks it is raining out -
m(thinks it is raining out) > $n + thinks it is raining out - or as in
m(x)
$n + x
as if there were the construction or constitution of a number series -
in any case the presence of the other - that is
the name $n
as an adjunct or supplement to the string x.
where does this lead - to three states - that of enunciation, that of
action, that of world-constituting language. if enunciation is declarative
- and one might consider an interpolated enunciation here as a shifter -
then action is performative - and it is echo, world-constituting language,
that becomes deeply problematic, in the sense that it is _separated from
intention, from speaker, from source_ - it is an emission above and within
the _face of the world, its alterity,_ within which it resides.
>>one might think of these languagings as modal; in which case echo
references the foucauldian _divinatio,_ but only as index; in fact, echo
is _in fact,_ the construal of the world as-if (vaihinger, bentham) there
is no presencing, no intentional, no actor, no agency. in another similar
sense, echo is the call of a shell command from a perl script; it is
ulterior, an existential alterity, legible, readable, or not.<<

>>thus i call my book .echo, which acts subtly towards the material
completion of a constituted world, however fragile, however thinned (down
to the width of a pixel), .echo which reflects, not narcissus, but the
very grain of the separated and dismembered voice.<<


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