[-empyre-] SECOND WEEK GRAB EM BY THE PUISSANCE empyre Digest, Vol 143, Issue 8

[Alan Sondheim]

But I wonder if there are games, in fact, in the first place. Yes, W's 
language games - but there's also Paul Goodman's writings for example on 
the sloppiness of these. And language games aren't games - W's sloppy here 
himself. The point of my own writing is that language games aren't games 
at all; they're semiotic splatter, temporary autonomous communalities that 
always tend to fray, fall apart; I remember - I think it was Maturano - 
talking about language as the mutual orienting of cognitive domains - 
which doesn't mean that the domains are commensurate, only that a certain 
amount of agreement has been reached. The problem also with multiplicity 
which we all love and embrace - is that on another level Trump does 
exactly the same - changing the rules constantly, avoiding any kind of 
pinning down - ask about his taxes and he talks about rigged elections; 
pin him down on those and he talks about the media; pin him on the media 
and he talks about purges and the 'devastating' emails; talk about the 
emails and he talks about throwing her in jail. Gamespace can be a 
disaster; look at Hitler's programs, the interiors and exteriors of his 
discourses, etc. etc.

In other for me - when you say "If rules of language are analogous to the 
rules of games; ie if saying something in language is analogous to making 
a move in a game, (each with its own codes, grammar, relations, contexts), 
and though we never fully know the rules of the game, we are always 
learning, internalizing, and becoming intimate with a massive, multipart, 
global algorithm, discovering is ALLEGO?RHYTHMS; simultaneously learning 
and unlearning the systems, the codes." - I say this "If" contains serious 
problems, the potential for play, yes, on one hand, but also for 
absolutism on the other. And for me, for that matter, the codes are never 
fixed, you can't learn them, you can't become intimate with the global 
algorithm - if we could, one of the first things I'd want to do is learn 
about database hardening against Assange and company's release of emails - 
ever so slowly, over a period of months, ultimate bringing HRC down (with 
the aid of the FBI's shell game).

In other words - suppose language isn't play, but might be the most 
serious thing in the world, a matter of life and death, as well. And in 
that sense perhaps not a game at all, but a proto-language, ruleless, 
desperate, uncomfortable tied to existence itself?

(I love your writing btw; I've been moving more in an other direction - 
for a lot of reasons having to do with disaster.)

- Alan


On Thu, 10 Nov 2016, Adeena Karasick wrote:

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