language, being human language, is necessarily bound by linguistics and logic, by the dialectic and syllogism. In other words, as long as we talk about ourselves in language familiar only to ourselves, we will never reach outside ourselves into an-other’s world. And no machination of description or appropriation of terminology will change such. We will be, as Lennon revealed in the above mentioned verse, dupes to a game in which language suggests we know something other than we do.27 Think this is not the case? Listen, for example, to Richard Rorty, considered by some to be “the philosopher of hypertextuality”:
To see keeping a conversation going as a sufficient aim of philosophy, to see wisdom as consisting in the ability to sustain a conversation, is to see human beings as the generators of new descriptions rather than beings one hopes to be able to describe accurately. To see the aim of philosophy as truth – namely, the truth about the terms which provide ultimate commensuration for all human inquiries and activities – is to see human beings as objects rather than as subjects, as existing en-soi rather than as both pour-soi and en-soi, as both described objects and describing subjects.28
This is the modern existential human condition: wishing emotional attachment to other humans and other things but finding none.
So when people talk about the necessity of language, they must necessarily con-text-ualize
language itself. They must recognize that language, by its very nature, is of the text, of the script, of verbs and verbiage. For scholars and other students of disciplines that rely heavily on textual analysis and criticism, this is critically important. We all need to know what Aristotle or Kant, or Boas or Vine Deloria, Jr., meant by this or that word, even if the word itself has been appropriated. But equally, they and we need to recognize that when a new “critique” or “paradigm” or “problematic” is placed before us, more often than not, it is inherently a limited perspective, framed by the language that initially defined it: “critiques” can all be traced to Kant, “paradigms” to Kuhn, “problematics” to Althusser. Contrived through the conversations and arguments with dead men, they are nothing more than linguistic appropriations with a new spin.29
Thus we find again the limits of language. Abstracted from the world of the living, language itself, in isolation, must always be re- presentational. It is new talk about old talk, talk that’s talking at some one or some thing, rather than talk involving an equal in respect, with dignity being given its due. It is, in a very vile sense, his-story, with all the ramifications suggested therein. This is why the presentation of history as a subject matter for museums is always so difficult. Thus the only way to ensure that language and logic do not become over-determined, become our dominant present, is to return to a posture where pots are truly subjects in-and-of- themselves.
Con-figuring the Pot
The first thing we must do to understand an alternative testament is to con-figure the pot, to place the pot itself, as a subject in-and-of itself, in a space within which the pot might reside in an environment of respect where it is accorded the dignity due. This requires that we “see” the pot as a living being, present before us in the here and now, as spirit em-bodied, with all that has come before it re-presented in this time and place. It is not just the “Other”, but an-other, one more member of our community, en-spirited with the individual breath of life from its creator and community, deserving of acknowledgement and respect.
It is inappropriate, therefore, that museum exhibits and people treat pots as objects to be gazed upon as “pretty little things”, as nothing more than appetizers of and for a human mind that will not be satiated until its has consumed what tiny tidbits of information can be gleaned through idle curiosity, a simple and unproductive cousin of wonder, at a distance. Pots need to be acknowledged: people should approach the pot as a truly independent being and recognize its existence through a greeting
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