How do we say goodbye to a century in the language of farewell?
Li Ziyuan
Li Ziyuan
Author
Li Ziyuan, humanities and creative PhD candidate Department of Hong Kong Baptist University, research is mathematical French structuralist thought and contemporary philosophy of realism / materialist turn. "Surveying and Mapping Hong Kong's Artistic Terrain-Interviews with 12 Contemporary Art Institutions" (Hong Kong·Outside the Territory Culture 2011). Since 2009, he has been engaged in cultural criticism and contemporary art curation.
The first part of language operation and the exterior of film narrative
1.
Shanglu Gouda's 3D film "Farewell Language (Adieu au Langage, 2014)" is intentionally or unintentionally connected with the problem consciousness of contemporary philosophy: How do we relate to a "century of language" bid farewell?
With the establishment of modern linguistics at the beginning of the 20th century (thanks to Saussure, Ferdinand de Saussure, 1857–1913, and then Jacobson, Roman Jakobson, 1896–1982), it triggered a "linguistic turn" It deeply influenced the development of philosophy in the next century. "Language" has become the core and most obscure philosophical subject of the 20th century, and the development of both European and Anglo-American philosophy is determined by this linguistic turn. So that we can say that the 20th century was a century in which philosophy was subordinate to language, and it was also a century in which philosophical thinking could not escape the language prison. Therefore, if there is a so-called "contemporary philosophy," it must first answer: How can philosophical thinking be freed from the language cage of the 20th century?
So, how does Gundam's "Farewell Language" provide references for contemporary philosophy? Obviously, the aforementioned evolution of the history of thought cannot be cleaned up by a 70-minute movie. However, in "Farewell Language" by questioning the boundaries of language operation, Gundam confirmed the existence of the "excess" beyond language and cannot be spoken. This undoubtedly found the primary basis for breaking away from the cage of language: language has its own characteristics. external. Since language has its exterior, philosophical thinking cannot stop at "philosophy of language." Whether or not to deal with this externality has also become the dividing line between 20th-century philosophy and contemporary philosophy.
The philosophy of language in the 20th century regarded "there is no world outside of language" as its basic belief. And logical positivists even argue that all philosophical issues should be reduced to language issues such as logic, grammar, and semantics. In this regard, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) thought more profoundly. He once summed it up as follows: What can be said will eventually be said clearly, and for those that cannot be said, people should keep silence. In other words, although he does not deny that language does have "fields" that it cannot handle, since he believes that this field can be completely abandoned, it is equivalent to denying the ontological status of this field (that is, not in the world). In this sense, his position is consistent with the basic beliefs of the above-mentioned philosophy of language.
Gundam's "Farewell Language" attempts to attack and even subvert this basic belief. His strategy is to find short circuits in the operation of languages, because only when these languages suddenly realize that they are incompetent can the "excess" and the outside emerge. For this, he must first explain how language works. So he asked a student's question: "How should you distinguish between concepts and metaphors", and the professor (played by Christian Gregori)'s answer: "You can ask the ancient Greeks (Plato) about concepts, and metaphors are like kids throwing dice ", to show that the difference between the two is that the concept is the same but the metaphor is arbitrary. According to Plato's philosophy, the concept of language is the reproduction of the idea. Therefore, even if the concept has its limitations, after all, it corresponds to and is the same as the idea as the ontology. The reason why "metaphor" is like children throwing dice is that the operation of metaphor is arbitrary and non-identical: metaphor operates on a vertical axis, and every similar image on this vertical axis can be randomly replaced to form a structure. Significant reference (the opposite is the "metonymy" operating on the horizontal axis, referring to the body by the relative things of things, and the emphasis is on "relationship" rather than "similarity"). Since the beginning of Western philosophy, philosophers have mostly held the ideal of the identity of the concept and the ontology, no matter how they demonstrated this identity, or which one of the concept and the ontology regarded as the first. Influenced by modern linguistics in the 20th century, philosophers realized that the relationship between concept and ontology, or—to use the technical terms of modern linguistics—signifier and signified, is not determined a priori On the contrary, the relationship is arbitrary. Because of the arbitrariness of the referent function of the meaning of language, that is, a signifier can be referred to by countless signifiers (its operating principle is like the replacement of the vertical axis of metaphor), and a signifier can also point to multiple signifiers (by concrete The verbal activity and context of the language are determined), and even the construction of a signified is dominated by the signifier. As a result, the meaning of the language becomes no longer certain, or can only continue to be postponed.
Based on the uncertainty of the meaning of language, we can further search for inconsistencies, incompleteness, and even impossibility of language operation, that is, the places where language operation has short circuits, cracks and gaps, to reveal the beyond language. The surplus of the outside cannot be spoken, and therefore cannot be thought of through language. The operation of language first short-circuited when trying to conceptually express a "whole" beyond the individual's perceptual ability. The students asked, "Can we create a concept to express Africa?" Since no one can grasp Africa as a whole from an omniscient perspective, there is no innate African idea waiting to be divided as the concept of "representation of representation" Therefore, there is no one-to-one correspondence between Africa and the concept of “Africa”. The relationship between the two parties can only be arbitrary and partial. Concepts cannot fully express the whole, because the whole can only be imagined. Another thing that cannot be conceptually expressed is "residues", such as simple pronunciation, fragments of speech: "AH", "OH" (marks that appear in movies), or excrement. The following question can immediately make Platonists speechless: "If there is an idea of beauty, is there an idea of poop?" If there is, then the original noble idea has fallen into the pit. If not, where does the poop come from? From everywhere? Excreta is something that cannot be expressed and thought about. No matter how hard the language tries to grasp it, it can only turn around it in the end.
Furthermore, the operation of language cannot do anything about the relationship between the sexes: there is always a surplus of the relationship between men and women remaining outside the language. Before and after the film, two pairs of men and women are presented: Gédéon (played by Kamel Abdeli) and Josette (played by Héloïse Godet), Marcus (played by Richard Chevallier) and Ivitch (played by Zoé Bruneau). The two groups of images have a place where they correspond to each other and the issues discussed are different. For example, there are scenes where the woman complains that the man occupies the toilet, while in Josette and Gédéon, the discussion is about the incomprehensibility between men and women, and in Ivitch and Marcus. It shows the excess of language in the relationship between men and women: the body, lust, strength, and the way out for the relationship between men and women is outside the language. Josette suggested that Gédéon was not caring enough for her by pointing out "gender inequality", while Gédéon refuted it by saying "defecation is a posture that embodies equality." From Gédéon likes to talk about mathematics, claiming that "zero and infinity" are two The greatest invention was denied by Josette: “No, it’s sex and death.” From the perspective that Josette often conveys his attitude towards this relationship in a metaphorical language while Gédéon appears indifferent, it can be seen that the interaction between men and women occurs despite the fact that Within the same symbolic order, they cannot communicate because their respective languages have completely different configurations. The relationship between the sexes is not within the language. It is impossible for men and women to achieve mutual understanding through language, but all the interactions between men and women revolve around this "impossibility" as if by fate. Later, Josette said, "Convince me that you can hear what I said." Gédéon replied, "I hardly say a word. I'm looking for the impoverishment of language."
By finding the short circuit in the operation of language, Gundam presents the surplus before us, affirming that there is always something that cannot be expressed by the language, and there must be an unspeakable outside outside the language, thus refuting the language. The basic belief of language philosophy that there is no world outside of language since the turn of learning. In turn, we can understand that eliminating excess and externality is precisely the prerequisite for language operation. And when this "excluded" becomes the basis and condition of operation, then the outside is not external to operation, on the contrary, it is the most secret core of operation, thus forming a topological structure. And this topological structure can also be found in the film narrative.
2.
In the 20th century, not only philosophy was deeply influenced by modern linguistics, but even film theory was regulated by linguistics: from Russian formalism ("Cinema Poetics" in 1927), semiotics (Christian Matz, Christian Matz, 1913–1993), to narratology (using literary narratology as a model). In the meantime, the structuralism spawned by the linguistic turn provides a theoretical basis and analytical framework. Today, we still understand film as a kind of "language". We discuss how "author films" update the language of films with personalized film grammar experiments, discuss how the mavericks in narrative films enrich the semantic expression techniques of films by constructing alternative and complex narrative structures (that is, storytelling). Technique). Then, has our understanding of the film ontology reached its extreme in the process of physico-chemical systems conditioned on language? What alternative imagination can we have for movies?
Our imagination of film is also monopolized by the current film industry system dominated by narrative film. After the 20th century, popular narrative films have developed a highly mature set of film narrative grammar, and the audience is immersed in the entertainment experience of watching movies, and they are also familiar with, accustomed to, and identified with this grammar through long-term and subtle training and training. . It's like listening to a popular song, we get a harmonious and pleasant experience from the identity of melody and perception. Each new song is nothing more than the rearrangement of the elements and the special emphasis on different parts, which have never exceeded the boundaries of popular music. Similarly, when popular narrative films absorb many original alternative and experimental narrative structures into their own system-it seems that all emerging or heterogeneous production methods can be absorbed by the capitalist system, and the system is restructured. Coding, as the driving force supporting its sustainable development, will not bring about change as a result, but will only make the system's dominant position more stable. So that "experimental" has become insignificant in this era.
As a modern daydream, film plays a special role in shaping the spiritual structure of modern people-this is no longer a new topic, at least it can be traced back to the study of Hugo Munsterberg (1863-1916). However, the highly mature narrative grammar enables today's narrative films to construct "reality" in the audience's mind with film language technology that cannot be matched at any time in the past: like a process of compiling a target program from a source program. Whether it's those works that create a sense of "realism" and provide the audience with a standard of reality, or those works that render "surreal" and make the audience mistakenly believe that the opposite is reality, they are all based on the same symbolic order. This symbolic order excludes all primitive contingency, inconsistency, instability, incompleteness, and irreconcilability that cannot be expressed by language, and replaces it with artificial, false, or contingency, crisis, and others that do not exceed a certain upper limit. Conflicts and conflicts, so as to maintain a state of equilibrium: in the eyes of the audience, encountering true love on the street corner is an accidental event. The broken-up relationship creates eternal trauma. Bloody fighting, murder and arson will not harm your life. The collapse of the earth and the asteroid hitting the earth are just spectacles . As long as we understand popular narrative films as films that ultimately aim at semantic expression (storytelling, constituting meaning), and understand how symbolic order and its operation are the foundation of narrative films, then these films are inevitable no matter how different or extreme they are In this equilibrium: inside the film narrative. This equilibrium state is isomorphic with the spiritual structure of modern people, and the "reality" constructed by narrative films is undoubtedly the epitome of modern "daily life". If the "things" that have been denied, suppressed, and repelled are returned to the present, it will be too "real" to bear. Language: symbolic order, law, narrative, and constitute the framework of reality. We can hardly imagine the "world" beyond this.
Gundam satirized in the opening chapter of the movie: "Those who lack imagination, take refuge in reality."
The subversive nature of "Farewell Language" is that it tries to let us see the outside of the film's narrative. In this sense, it is an anti-narrative film, an anti-language operation film. Anti-narrative, anti-language, that is, against "reality." First, it exposes the "exclusion mechanism" of narrative movies, that is, in order to achieve the purpose of semantic expression, "superfluous" and "irrelevant" things must be excluded from the "text", thereby forming the semantic chain of the narrative (it can be a single One-dimensional or multi-dimensional, individual or interlaced). In other words, the establishment and operation of the semantic chain is based on the excluded things, and the latter is actually the basis and precondition for the former to be invisible. And "Farewell Language" precisely excludes these excluded, redundant things, incomplete or unclear pictures and sounds (for example, we suspect that it is a few scattered passages of Mafia murders), and does not constitute a waste of semantic expression. Films and empty mirrors (such as plants and rivers, which may be the pictures taken after forgetting to turn off the camera), are summoned back again, and these remnants and excesses form a movie. In this way, the semantic chain of the narrative film is torn off, the grammar becomes invalid, and there is no way to construct the narrative meaning. On the contrary, what the movie presents is a pure variety: those that are occasional, disorderly, inconsistent and inconsistent, and cannot constitute a complete symbolic order-the "outside" that cannot be expressed in words is directly carried by Gundam. The big screen. "Farewell Language" uses farewell and negation of the film's narrative language, and uses large-scale "non-semantic" and "non-ideological" images and sounds to bring the audience back to the perception of the state of things. And this return to things itself seems to allow the film to return to its original, simpler function: as a visual device. Here, 3D technology seems to have found the necessary reason for its debut.
The second part of the film as a visual installation and the real world of film images
3.
When watching the 3D movie "Farewell Language" in the theater, when a cruise ship filled with bustling passengers slowly passed by the audience, the three-dimensional ripples on the water surface poured into the eyes, which reminded people of that. How the scene of the "train entering the station" symbolizing the birth of the movie brought a shocking experience to the audience at that time as if a train was approaching on their own. It seems that it is difficult to find other related movie scenes between these two besides shooting the driving pictures of vehicles-between the two, since the first batch of movies made by the Louis Lumiere brothers in 1895 to today (2015) One hundred and twenty years have passed-but together it embodies the technovisuality provided by the movie as a visual device for modern people, and this unique visibility reshapes the human viewing activity . It is precisely the original function of the movie to bring a novel viewing experience to the audience by providing this visibility, and the current development of 3D movies seems to show a return to this function.
3D movies are based on stereoscopic 3D photography. This kind of photography technology appeared as early as around 1840, and the first three-dimensional feature film was released in 1922. And it was not until the maturity of digital technology that under the new technical conditions did it support the renaissance of 3D movies in the 21st century. The principle of stereo photography is to use two cameras (or a camera equipped with two lenses) to simulate the human visual system: humans see things through two eyes and form three-dimensional images in the brain. Because there is a distance of 2.5 inches between the pupils of human eyes, there is a slight visual difference between the two eyes when viewing things. When we focus on an object, the different images obtained by the eyes are merged into a three-dimensional image by the brain. And this kind of three-dimensional image is only located in the middle part of the human visual field, and the left and right sides of the visual field become more and more flat. Stereo photography technology uses two cameras to shoot the same thing from slightly different viewpoints to obtain a pair of images, and then through post-production to produce a movie image that audiences must wear special glasses to obtain a stereoscopic visual effect.
Different from 2D movies, 3D technology establishes its own visual regimes, adding at least three variables to film production: First, it adds a Z axis that expresses depth in addition to the horizontal X axis and the vertical Y axis. , On this new axis, you can adjust the distance of the subject by controlling the convergence of the focus of the two cameras; second, the distance between the two camera lenses that simulates the distance between the pupils of the human eyes (interaxial distance) , By adjusting this distance, you can control the amount of stereoscopic effect, the size of the displayed things, and the overall depth of the screen; third, the dynamic floating window located at the edge of the 3D movie screen, this is the difference between the audience space and the movie space The boundary and the frame of the frame that can move back and forth or tilt and bend can help adjust the distance and angle relationship between the audience and the three-dimensional image, correct the defects of the picture and avoid the discomfort of the audience in watching the movie. In the production process, the filmmaker controls the values of these three variables to form the stereoscopic effect of a 3D movie. The design of a 3D movie must consider whether it matches the size of the theater screen when the movie is being shown, otherwise the stereoscopic effect of the image may not be ideal. And if the production process strictly follows certain specific values of these three variables, for example, the distance between the camera lenses is maintained at 2.5 inches, the camera field of view and the human field of view match each other, etc., an "orthogonal three-dimensional image ( orthographic stereoscopic image)", restoring a sense of realism that is highly similar to human vision.
Orthogonal stereoscopic images provide novel visibility based on 3D technology, which greatly changes the viewing experience that viewers are used to when watching 2D movies in the past, allowing them to use movies as visual devices to be very similar to the human visual system Way to grasp the state of things. Like the above-mentioned scenes of cruise ships, "Farewell Language" presents a lot of orthogonal three-dimensional images. Gundam uses these images to test the extent to which 3D technology can present things themselves. On the one hand, this is an exploration of the main body of 3D movies, and on the other hand, it also fits with his attempt to put the outside of the film narrative directly on the big screen. As the semantic chain of narrative movies is broken, a segment of isolated images is presented in front of the audience with a three-dimensional effect, which forces the audience to face and watch the state of things presented in these images. There are many narrative 3D movies that hope to attract the audience’s attention with stereoscopic images and try to maintain the audience’s attention to the storyline. The actual effect is often counterproductive: either the stereoscopic effect becomes irrelevant, or the narrative process depends on the audience’s Attention was instantly shifted to the viewing of the three-dimensional effect and was interrupted. In "Farewell Language", unlike the above-mentioned narrative 3D movies, the three-dimensional effect of the image is no longer attached to the narrative function of the movie, but has become the focus of the audience's attention. Stereoscopic images bring the audience back to the scrutiny of the state of things and trigger them to actively participate in the viewing of the details of the image. This is undoubtedly a promotion of the characteristics of 3D technology and a return to the original function of the film.
However, Gundam’s exploration and speculation on the subject of 3D movies are simultaneously unfolding in another direction, and this direction continues his usual Brecht-style artistic stance of advocating alienation effects: he aims to debunk three-dimensional images as a kind of The essence of visual tricks. Gundam uses the eye-catching logo "3D" at the beginning and end of the movie to indicate to the audience that this movie is only a product of the film industry. He even made the shadows of photographic equipment appear on the film screen, emphasizing the "presence" of the visual installation. Although many three-dimensional images in the movie restore a sense of reality that is highly similar to human vision, they are ultimately nothing but "reproduction" or even "reconstruction" of things produced by visual installations. Intentionally deviating from the normative method of obtaining orthogonal stereoscopic images, Gundam used a wrong operation to obtain undesirable stereoscopic images to expose this fact: He merged the different images taken by two 3D cameras to form an interlaced, lethal image. A failed three-dimensional effect that people cannot look directly at for a long time, or a distorted three-dimensional image with a problematic color saturation is presented to the audience. Gundam then asked where the "realism" of the image created by the movie came from: he adjusted the distance between the two camera lenses, using a chair placed closer to the camera and the movement of characters from far to near. , Creating an extremely exaggerated sense of spatial depth that is very different from the depth of field in the 2D movie familiar to the audience.
The reproduction technology of 2D movies has been developed and improved for more than a century, so that the audience once recognized the realism of the images it created as "realism." Based on its own visual mechanism, a 3D movie establishes a sense of realism that is different from that of a 2D movie. As the realism of this three-dimensional image is gradually familiar to the audience, it is regarded as more "realistic" than two-dimensional images. With this new technical visibility, 3D movies are bound to reshape human viewing activities—— It's like the visual impact of the movie scenes of the train entering the station for audiences accustomed to the realism of paintings and photos is bound to change their viewing activities. The exaggerated sense of spatial depth that Gundam deliberately displays further reveals that the space in a 3D movie is only the result of the filmmaker operating the numerical values of several variables. Based on digital technology, the operability of 3D movies is obviously much richer than that of 2D movies, so the performance of space can be more exaggerated and extreme. In other words, there is no ideal paradigm for a certain space in movies. A space considered to be realistic is just a judgment based on the audience’s generally accepted belief in space under certain historical and material conditions. As for this belief It is inevitably constantly being reshaped by new technological visibility. The ideal paradigm of no space does not necessarily lead to a kind of relativism or even nihilism. On the contrary, it requires us to return to the study of the "materiality" of the visual installation of film, and to the technology, technology, Media archeology study of media and production. The revival of 3D movies under the current new technological conditions provides us with an excellent opportunity to restart the above-mentioned research, and the object of this research is precisely the material basis of movies that was excluded by the linguistic norms of film theory in the 20th century. , The body of the visual device.
As early as the creative stage of shooting 2D movies, Gundam was already willing to expose the essence of movie images as a visual trick. And from his three-dimensional video experiments, we once again confirmed the following facts: a movie is a visual device. In the 120 years from the birth of the film to today, do we have a thorough understanding of the visual device itself? Have the possibilities of film images themselves been exhausted? And can the continuously evolving 3D technology propose new issues to broaden the boundaries of the "modern daydream" of movies? To answer these questions, we need to construct a film ontology and image ontology that goes beyond the norms of modern linguistics.
4.
With the help of Jacques Lacan (1901–1981)'s "real world/real (the Real)" concept (readers can refer to Tom Eyers' Lacan and the Concept of the'Real', 2012), we are here to try to put the Gundam directly The complex of images on the big screen and outside the film narrative is named "the real world of movie images" (the real world of movie images is not the same as the real).
As mentioned above, excluding the multiplicity of images from the symbolic order of film narration is precisely the prerequisite for the operation of the symbolic order. In "Farewell Language", Gundam in turn uses these remnants and excesses excluded by the symbolic order to form a movie. By breaking the semantic chain of narrative films used to construct narrative meaning, he directly puts the sporadic, disorderly, inconsistent and inconsistent images that cannot constitute a complete meaning on the big screen. The above is the "foreclosure" of the symbolic order that is the foundation of narrative films, and declares its power to process images to be invalid. As a result, it constitutes a segment of "isolated images" that are outside the relationship of meaning and have no narrative function. . These isolated images are the substantive (or "material") support of the entire image system of the narrative film. At the same time, they are the exception to the symbolic order. They are "singularities ( singular point)": They support the symbolic order from the "inside", and threaten it from the "outside" all the time-they are the "real world" of film images. In "Farewell Language", even if the language (voice-over) has been trying to establish a connection with the real world of the image, even trying to persuade the image to return to its command, but after all, it cannot penetrate this absolute field that belongs only to the image.
The real world of film images is like the abyss of images, and those images rejected by the symbolic order will surely reappear in the real world of images (see Lacan’s formula: "'What is refused in the symbolic order re-emerges in the real'" ."): For example, incomplete or unclear images, scrap films or empty mirrors that do not constitute semantic expression, or fragments extracted from a certain film that have lost meaning due to separation from the original image system. However, once the symbolic order is abolished, these originally rejected images spew out from the abyss spontaneously and randomly, forming a torrent of pure and multitude of images. This torrent is very similar to the world of psychosis (see Lacan Seminar III): because the symbolic order in the mental structure of the patient has collapsed (achieved by abolishing the "name of the father"), there is no screening, suppression, and exclusion. The mechanism, so that for him, what he sees in his mind (various fragments, confounding, illusion) is "real". When the patient’s entire field of imagination and the original signifier (similar to images) are directly connected with the real world (outside) without any intermediary (symbolic order), in this sense, the patient’s spiritual world is almost It can be equated with the real world. Using the example of mental patients, we can try to understand that a movie that abolished symbolic order has become a movie that presents a torrent of pure and multiple images, and a movie that presents the real world of film images.
When watching "Farewell Language", the audience meets the real world of film images and a world similar to mental patients. At that time, Gundam used the technique of "jumping" to criticize the daydream of classic montage with too smooth editing to construct images. Now, under new technical conditions, he also blocks the continuity of three-dimensional images to prevent viewers from being unconsciously immersed in the illusion created by movie images that mimics the "reality" and creates a "realistic" feeling during the viewing process. middle. If three-dimensional images bring the audience's attention back to the state of things, and thus have the function of blocking narration to a certain extent, then the flow of irregular images composed of a segment of isolated three-dimensional images is constantly Switching between connection and interruption is bound to further strengthen this blocking function. When the audience is trying to watch a three-dimensional image, grasp the details of the image, and understand the meaning relationship between it and the previous image, it seems that the wanton screen jump interrupts the audience's viewing activities. With such repeated blockades flooding the entire movie, the audience’s viewing experience cannot be harmonious and pleasant, nor can they be thrown into the daydream of the image. The balanced and consistent subjectivity established by identifying with narrative grammar when they usually watch popular narrative movies cannot be established due to countless interruptions and interferences when watching "Farewell Language". On the contrary, the audience has to bring a broken, inconsistent, and self-contradictory "larval subjectivity" to directly encounter the real world of film images. This undoubtedly exposes the audience, the neurotic subjects who are accustomed to stable real life, into the world of mental patients suddenly, exposing the contingency, inconsistency, instability, incompleteness, and irreconcilability of the "reality" In front of them.
In an unsmooth and uncomfortable viewing experience, the audience naturally cannot obtain the kind of pleasure that follows the principle of equilibrium. However, as normal people, we will not be able to get the experience of a deep mental patient in our encounter with the real world, a kind of "happiness" that goes straight to the real world after abolishing the symbolic order (Lacan calls it "the jouissance of the jouissance of the Other/God”), rather than just staying in confusion and anxiety after the movie ends. This anxiety may stem from our unwillingness to face up to the questions that Gundam raised to us by blocking the daydreams created by images. And if we follow Gundam’s question and try to return to the fundamental question of "image and reality" and devote ourselves to conceiving a film image ontology that goes beyond the norms of modern linguistics, then we must first break away from the 20th century image Its representational object/symbolism is simply understood as a signifier and signified structure, and then expands the film image theory of image hermeneutics. On the contrary, the new image ontology should be able to deal with the topological structure between the above-mentioned symbolic operation (meaning production) and the real world, so as to achieve through the analysis and disclosure of the film image and its entire set of symbolic/material operations. Criticism of "reality". When this film ontology is established, conversely, the related exploration of using film images to process the real world in film creation will also be expected to be theorized.
Gundam stands on the boundary between two centuries. Perhaps from the very beginning, "Farewell Language" was destined to contain imperfections, incompleteness and incompleteness.
The third part is the boundaries of Gundam, and how do we say goodbye to language?
5.
The two titles "1. Nature (la nature)" and "2. Metaphor (métaphore)" appearing in "Farewell Language" reveal to us Gundam's position: He tries to mutually operate nature (things) and language. Oppose. With the help of this film, Gundam traces the exit of nature and the rise of transcendental language structures on the one hand, and on the other hand, he seeks a way out of language and retreat to nature. And is the way out that Gundam envisions really taking us to a "land without language"?
The "Langage" in the French name of the film Adieu au Langage refers to the most universal language structure extracted from various individual language systems, namely "langue" (such as French, English, Chinese). If we say "langue" and "parole" in modern linguistics, they are individual "language systems" (symbol systems with rules and conventions followed by everyday speech) and "speech" (speaking by individual people in daily life) Outcoming speech) is a set of relative concepts, so this most universal language structure as a kind of "language" is even more the opposite of speech. It is above all a transcendent field, because it is a condition for the operation of all individual language systems. It is also a field of law, because it relates to the laws governing all things that can be called "culture" and their interrelationships. Langage, not langue, is precisely the main object to be studied in the early stages of Lacan's psychoanalytic theory. At the level of Language, language expands the dimension of the symbolic world. "Farewell Language" declares to say goodbye to this language structure with the highest universality and legal nature as a specific language operating condition. The scene in the early part of the film where the professor and the students hold a reading party shows the above attitude. In this scene, the film explains the background of the time that "farewell language" has become a problem: the decline of text and books, the rise of mobile smart terminals and user interfaces, and it also points out what really needs to be criticized from the standpoint of movies. Object: Transcendental language structure that has completely surpassed nature under current historical and material conditions.
The scene of this reading gathering shows the incompatibility between the two generations (that is, the professor and the student) divided by the difference in technology and material conditions, from thinking to information gathering and communication methods. In the eyes of the last generation, the current is undoubtedly an inhuman era in which people cannot communicate, an era of anti-intellect that makes young people stupid and monotonous (for readers of the "dilemma" of French higher education, please refer to Bernard Stiegler is close, States of Shock: Stupidity and Knowledge in the 21st Century, 2014. Obviously, this embarrassing situation is by no means limited to France). The desk was full of books, and the students picked up one of them, looked at the cover, flipped through a few pages, and then dropped it. The professor talked about The Gulag Archipelago Abridged: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (I-III, 1973-76) by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008). He did not forget to warn students that the books are at hand, and there is no need to search on Google. When he flipped through the book with his thumb, he asked sarcastically, "What can the thumb do?" The lady sitting behind him some distance away from him was operating the phone with her thumb, staring at the screen intently, and answering the professor's question in a charming manner. , Apparently did not realize what he was asking about. At this moment, she checked the picture of Sozanesyn through the Google search engine. "Where is the ogre?" the professor asked again. Then the screen captured a series of hand movements of the other two people exchanging information through their respective mobile phones, during which they did not speak a word. With the popularization of smart devices and the rise of terminals and interfaces, the language that has been used as a medium for information recording, dissemination and interpersonal communication in the long history of mankind is bound to be impacted, reshaped (or even eliminated?) by this new medium-in operating intelligence On the contrary, the status of the thumb, which plays the main function during installation, has become increasingly prominent. On the one hand, the everyday language (speech) in interpersonal communication has become concise, plain, and superficial. On the other hand, the highly abstract, systematic, and technical "language" that ordinary people cannot grasp is completely dominated. Human life: The specific operations that occur at all levels of human society are conditioned by this transcendent language structure. "The ogre is holding us in the palm of his hand." A voice-over, as if unintentionally, pointed out the essence of this era.
The professor held up his mobile phone for a long time and turned the screen towards his students (of course towards the movie audience), to say: "Now, I'm telling you in a way you are familiar with." Unable to accept information. The screen shows the cover of a theoretical work involving Jacques Ellul (1912–1994). As a Christian anarchist, this French sociologist has spared no effort to criticize the tyranny of technology over human nature. "Nuclear energy. Genetically modified technology. Advertising industry. Nanotechnology. Terrorism. Tyranny has long been predicted." The film then traces how people who are well versed in the structure of language seize power and dominate the people, during which technology is embodied in devices and systems. How to become the material medium through which transcendental language dominates human life, and how do these mediums conspire with power operators? In 1933, the modern television system finally took shape in the hands of the American Russian scientist Vladimir Zworykin (1888–1982). The establishment of this system went hand in hand with the rapid development of modern political propaganda machines-Hitler (Adolf Hitler, 1889–1945) came to power through democratic elections in the same year, after which he gradually implemented the Nazist platform. Taking this "event" as a turning point, in the subsequent historical process, the credibility of the democratic system was wiped out, and the natural nature of man fell apart. And this historical process continues to the rise of mobile smart terminals and user interfaces today.
The ignorance of transcendental language structure is precisely the blind spot of Yilu's "anti-technical tyranny" theory. If we do not integrate technology, more precisely, the material embodiment of technology (devices, systems) and transcendental language structure, how can we understand how human life is dominated by technology under modern historical and material conditions? How is the subconsciousness of each individual human being configured by language ("The unconscious is structured like a language")? The students began to read: "In the 20th century, the conquered were no longer conquered by the military, but controlled by the political ideological machine." "In modern countries, the law denies its own violence and denies itself as a state machine, which is a kind of cheating; while the law declares its legitimacy by itself, and declares itself as the law is a kind of double cheating." However, how is "cheating" possible, if there is no consent of the majority of the people under the modern democratic system, and they take the initiative to transfer power to authority? How should authority be born out of nothing and established out of thin air, if we do not introduce the imaginary dimension to understand the addition of imagination to symbolic operations? Although from the beginning of human civilization, symbolic operation is the key link that constitutes and determines material operation (symbolic operation is material operation), but the entire cultural building supported by the symbolic world is nothing more than an illusion (fantasy). People's imagination and participation can make up for their inadequate fiction. And what is denied and excluded by this illusion in the symbolic world is the naked "reality" (the real) that cannot be symbolized. People are dominated by being unable to travel through illusions.
If modern people are destined to be trapped in the prison called "reality" restricted by this transcendental language structure, how can we escape from "reality" and how to say goodbye to "language"?
6.
Faced with the problem of "how do we say goodbye to language", Gundam tried to guide us a way out in the movie. From his vision, we see the limit of Gundam.
The first thing that Gundam guides us is an escape to the natural world. When the voice-over talked about the declaration of the protection of animal rights only 200 years after the French Revolution, a dog: Gundam's pet dog Roxy, appeared on the screen of the movie. Roxy can walk between the city and the jungle, like a messenger, leading the audience to escape from social life and return to a kind of "natural" imagination. The movie took a lot of time to shoot the dog, and the audience was invited to watch it—trying to catch the dog's eyes, watching it stop, forage, leave, and play in the snow in the wetlands by the river. Go and clean up... the voice-over claims: "It's not that animals are blind, humans are blinded by moral conscience, so they can't see the world." "What is the outside?", the film quoted Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926): "This can only be known from the gaze of animals." Feng (Comte de Buffon, 1707–1788) pointed out that compared with humans, dogs have higher moral qualities: "Dogs are the only creatures that love you more than themselves." If the social life of human beings is a cage, and just like the two pairs of men and women in the movie, the relationship between the sexes is inevitably caught in a dilemma, can people get enlightenment from the natural endowment and moral qualities of dogs? The film urges us to abandon an anthropocentric perspective, follow Roxy's trail, and escape to the imagination of the "pre-humanistic world". And our ideal life is to live like a dog?
The way out for us by Gundam is also a retreat from science and rationality to mysticism and irrationality, and a retreat from the contemporary era to the beginning of the 19th century (the "post-revolutionary era"). "Farewell Language" has already declared at the beginning of the chapter: "If non-thinking taints the mind, then it is the best time we have ever had." Can we think without the help of language, but think of non-thinking, and then return to The best time we have ever had? For example, thinking like a dog? Roxy stared at the swift river. The voice-over mentioned the truth revealed by the river: "The water told it in a deep and solemn voice. So Roxy began to think: "It's trying to talk to me, just like it's been trying to talk to an older person. When there is no one It talks to itself when it listens. But it tries and keeps trying to communicate its new knowledge with other people". Some of them learn the truth from the river." Then the film quoted Monet (Claude Monet, 1840–) 1926) Impressionist painting theory to talk about the ambiguous connection between the visible and the invisible: "The river is still sleeping in the mist. We see it not more clearly than it sees itself. This is already a river. And that, there is no more Can be seen. All we can see is the abyss. That point on the canvas draws what we see (because we can’t see anything), nor what we can’t see (because we have to draw it) It's nothing more than what we saw), but what we didn't notice." Here, the movie shows the reflection of colorful trees on the water. Gundam seems to try to capture the essence of Impressionist painting with this group of images: vagueness and no outline. For Gundam, saying goodbye is to retreat into an atmosphere of ambiguity, fluidity, and mystery. In the last part of the movie, there are multiple passages about "retreat": looking back at the childhood years of traveling through the fields with childhood sweethearts, relive the curiosity and dissatisfaction of "what is that" after listening to the story as a child. , Remembering the harsh but tangible sound made when writing on thick paper with a quill pen, imagine spending the time vacated after the Great Revolution on a lakeside, and focus on the horror of exploring the nature of human beings. Stories, and witnessing romantic poetry exit silently after reaching its peak.
Towards the end of the movie, the cover of the French version of the science fiction novel "Null-A Three" (the last of the trilogy) published by Vogt (AE van Vogt, 1912–2000) in 1984 appeared on the screen: La fin du A. "Null-A" refers to "non-Aristotelian logic", that is, logical reasoning that uses intuition and telepathy. After throwing out a "nonverbal (non-thought, anti-narrative)" movie that originally didn't need to follow logic, Gundam here seems to intend to provide a logical basis for the entire movie with an "irrational logic". However, what made the audience feel more "ridiculous" should be the last voice-over intermingled with the barking of dogs and the crying of babies. "Ohhhhhhh". At first sound, people mistakenly think that the mother is coaxing the baby. After careful identification, I realized that it was actually a dog's barking. Some people believe that dogs and babies who have not yet learned to speak can "talk". The movie ends with this, as if to prove that farewell language is achievable-as long as we remain in a baby-like pre-language state, as long as we establish a close relationship with the dog since the beginning of life, just as straightforward as a dog Communicate sincerely (love others more than oneself), so as to avoid falling into the cage of language and humanities. Gundam came to the conclusion: understand the dog, fall in love with the dog, become a dog!
As mentioned above, this movie will inevitably contain imperfections, incompleteness and incompleteness from the very beginning. And the way out for the farewell language as envisioned by Gundam also revealed his ideological limitations and conservative stance. "Escape to the natural world" was not Gundam's original idea. Let's not examine how the Enlightenment thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) deployed the concept of the "state of nature" to support his discourse on human rights, society, and education. At the beginning of the 19th century, when the film tried to lead us back, the lakeside poets who represented English romantic literature, such as William Wordsworth (1770–1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) In their poetry creation, they used to show their love and admiration for "nature" to escape the social status quo after the Great Revolution and maintain their inner peace. By placing "nature" in a position opposite to the humanistic world, it seems that there is such a field called "nature" for people to escape from the complex, hypocritical, and cruel humanistic world, and return to a simple, authentic and harmonious " The state of nature". However, the "nature" they describe is precisely the imagination and fiction of nature based on the humanistic standpoint and value, and it cannot be nature itself—the filth, violence, and terror of nature, and the contingency contained in nature. , Unstable, and irreconcilable conflicts, in other words, the "reality" of nature is denied by the artificial imagination of nature. Judging from the operation of arranging nature on the opposite of humanity, Gundam’s escape from nature envisioned in this film is no different from the escape from the actual situation in the romantic poetry of lakeside poets. Modern people need "nature" and need a pure, clean, and peaceful place to go back, just as people need to configure a Disneyland in real life that represents innocence and fantasy. As for the capitalist mode of production in the paradise, there is no difference from the outside of the paradise.
As a result, the so-called "tyranny of technology over human nature" has become very suspicious. Obviously, the discourse against the tyranny of science and technology can only first antagonize technology and human nature as humanity and nature, and create a kind of "natural man", or "the true state of man," and then can criticize how the tyranny of science and technology damages, Alienation and dominance of this "natural humanity." In fact, instead of questioning how technology imposes tyranny on human nature, we should think about how technology combined with transcendental language structure determines the operation of the subject under specific historical and material conditions, and how the subject's allocation of "reality" is determined. And similar to the fiction of anti-technological tyranny about the "natural roots" of human beings, those claims that humans should return to the simple and harmonious world of children from the complex and heavy cultural world dominated by language also falsify a "principle of life". Point": the previous language status. It seems that it is an irrational, ambiguous, and innocent atmosphere, a starting point from which people can go back through degradation. It is a pity that this way of escape from the language prison by returning to the previous language state is also not feasible. Because every individual of human beings has been thrown into the net of language long before being born-the naming of the fetus in the womb by the parents has already preset the meaning of the individual, and it is included in the symbolic order that always precedes the existence of the individual. At the same time, every individual cannot escape from the web of language until death, even after death-it is inevitable that the individual will be recorded, managed and described by the symbolic order after the end of his life. Therefore, there is no pre-language state. And language is the other that human beings will never get rid of.
Regardless of presupposing the "natural roots" of human beings or tracing the "origin of life" of individuals, substituting a fictitious origin for the eternally lost origin (das Ding) as our escape route from the actual situation is just an attempt to reverse one. Irreversible process: from entering a state of symbolic order (this is achieved by the normal transcendence of the Oedipal complex), back to the pre-Oedipal stage, and back to the "full bliss" that has not been separated from the mother: the origin of obsession, that is Obsessed with mother. No one knows that the forever lost origin has a horrible and inexplicable face. If it can cross the impossible distance to meet with it again, the individual's spiritual world will not only be unable to enjoy balance and perfection, but will be unable to bear this face. The truth is completely broken. The so-called retreat to the origin is nothing but a misunderstanding, a delusion, a nostalgia of the elderly. The way out of the farewell language that Gundam envisioned for us can only be illusory and feeble in the face of the actual situation faced by modern people. No matter whether it degenerates into a child, or a dog, or other objects, or leads to the chaos of mysticism, it is impossible to escape from the cage of language. The "Languageless Land" has not existed since the beginning, so it cannot be our future home. The inability of this escape route allows us to see the limits of a 20th-century film master. Although Gundam, with his position in film history, was willing to risk failure in the late stage of film creation and continue to carry out experimental explorations of film images under new technical conditions, his stand and thoughts, to be more precise , The method of thinking and the framework of thinking, but failed to transcend the limitations of the last century: Gundam confirmed the existence of the external language, but ultimately could not find an effective way to think and deal with this external. Gundam is still the master of film in the last century, even though he stands on the boundary between the two centuries. And "Farewell Language" was an incomplete experiment from the beginning, highlighting a kind of incomplete radicalization, due to the insufficiency of the unresolved problem.
If Gundam's "escape" and "retrograde" strategies cannot lead us out of the prison of language, what do we mean by "farewell language"? How can we say goodbye to a century with farewell language?
Conclusion: From the philosophy of language to the new materialism
At the beginning of this article we claim to say goodbye to a "century of languages". So the reason why the 20th century is a century in which philosophy is subordinate to language and a century in which philosophical thinking cannot escape the language prison, its true meaning should first be explained more accurately. Since modern times, science has gradually seized the authority position in the human knowledge system, replaced philosophy, and almost monopolized the fundamental task of grasping the basic structure of the world, understanding human activities and social organization. Facing the complete collapse of philosophy in the various fields of knowledge originally controlled by it, philosophers have to choose to retreat to the last "fortress" of language, and focus on the "speculation and analysis of language concepts" that can still be left to philosophers. Territory under legal management. When the negotiation between philosophy and science finalized each other's power, the turn of philosophy into a so-called "philosophy of language" was naturally completed. This is the historical condition for Anglo-American analytic philosophers in the 20th century to claim that "there is no world outside of language" and to abandon research fields other than language. So that in the 20th century, for many philosophers, philosophical thinking is, in the final analysis, thinking about language, and philosophy is the philosophy of language.
On the other hand, Western philosophy originated from ontology, and its own development can be seen as a process from ontology to epistemology, and then from epistemology to philosophy of language. In this long ideological movement, philosophers have moved from thinking about ontological issues (in ancient times), to questioning the epistemological conditions of thinking about ontological issues (in modern times), and then confirming that language as the medium of thinking has fundamentally restricted all philosophical activities. (20th century), paved an evolutionary context that must be experienced in the development of the history of Western philosophy: Reflecting along this context, philosophers must realize after all that the "third item" that has been ignored by philosophical thinking is actually in the whole The operation plays a decisive role, and the "autonomy" that was mistaken as the root in the past is only the effect or function of this operation. In the process of rethinking this "third item", with the help of the research results of modern linguistics, the concept of "structure" was proposed, and the French structuralist trend of thought emerged as the times require. "The subject is the effect of structure" Structure)” has become a programmatic philosophical statement of the trend of thought: Obviously, the “structure” here is first of all a linguistic structure. Language, to be more precise, the structure and operation of language become "restrictions" and "conditions." After a more radical development-this stage was called "post-structuralism" by the American academic circle. Until the end of the 20th century, even if the subsequent theorists of the trend of thought had realized the "external" of language, that is, the "surplus" that could not be expressed by language. , But still set the language (discussion) as an insurmountable "limit" and give up the direct processing of this external.
Undoubtedly, the linguistic turn of Western philosophy in the 20th century is a key development in the history of philosophy. However, this progress has also created a linguistic cage for philosophy itself, causing philosophers to exclude the unspeakable excess from philosophical thinking, and give up the formalization of this external work-this work is directly configured by the philosophy of language It's impossible. When language becomes a limitation and condition, words, texts, interpretations, games, differences, etc., which demonstrate construction and uncertainty and deny the concepts of universal truth and philosophical systems, are thriving. Deducing the linguistic determinism of the philosophy of language to the extreme will inevitably come to the conclusion that "philosophy is dead": all words are constructions, and all truths are effects. At the end of the 20th century, the paralysis of philosophy and thinking was coupled with a so-called "postmodern society" ideology, which further formed the illusion that the "end of history" and the impossibility of change were strengthened under the current technological conditions. The illusion of continuous "dematerialization" and historical reality ultimately supports the "reality" that allows modern people to settle in it willingly, that is, an "idealist universe", an illusion that dominates modern people: " The ogre held us in the palm of his hand." And only by knowing this illusion can we understand the true meaning of the "language cage" and understand what kind of predicament modern people are in.
In order to face the mental illness and incompetence of our time, we must bid farewell to a "century of language". As mentioned above, if there is really a so-called "contemporary philosophy", then it must first answer: how philosophical thinking can be freed from the language cage of the 20th century, and its primary task is to break the entire "idealistic world" , Leading modern people through the illusion. Otherwise, there is no such thing as "contemporary philosophy". In this way, we can set the threshold of contemporary philosophy.
Contemporary philosophy must be a new kind of realism, that is, it must effectively deal with the excess excluded by the philosophy of language, deal with the exterior of language, and more precisely, it must deal with the "real" through the formal procedures of philosophy. Perform effective processing. At this point, we can see the fundamental distinction between philosophy of language in the 20th century and contemporary philosophy. At the same time, contemporary philosophy must be a new materialism (materialism). This new materialism must first be dialectical, that is, it must understand the dialectical operation between material entities and linguistic concepts on the basis of fully absorbing the German conceptual heritage (especially Hegelian philosophy), and understand the relationship between matter and ideas. The entanglement of the relationship, so it can criticize all naive materialism, all the metaphysical fascination with "material." Secondly, this new materialism must reconfirm the historical reality, and deal with the "real" problem with appropriate philosophical procedures and effective analytical techniques in every specific situation and "real" encounter. In other words, the new materialistic philosophy resides in various practical processes themselves as concrete operations. Finally, on the basis of effectively dealing with "real" issues, the new materialism affirms the possibility of change and devotes itself to a kind of "new" politics.
In the process of establishing contemporary philosophy, we must also restart the negotiation between philosophy and science. On the one hand, we must re-establish the possibility and necessity of philosophy (whether in a "philosophical" or "non-philosophy" approach). That is to reaffirm the universal truth and philosophical system, and continuously improve philosophical procedures and analysis techniques to deal with those topics that were once excluded by philosophy, and therefore, in turn, have shown the incompetence of philosophy: such as dealing with "more" in the true sense, Problems such as "incidentality" and "irreconciliation". On the other hand, it is to rearrange the relationship between philosophy and science. The model is applied to philosophical thinking for self-continuity. Contemporary philosophy should confirm the conditions for philosophical thinking and the generation of truth in the contemporary development of sciences such as mathematics and physics, while science should return some of its incompetent topics to philosophy-for example, concerning "reality" and the operation of modern society The subject of "truth" or "truth" and ethics.
Finally, we need to explain what we mean by "farewell language"? In the problem domain of contemporary philosophy, language has not become unimportant, nor can it be simply said goodbye or ignored by us. On the contrary, language still occupies a pivotal position, but it must be reconfigured under new conditions. Into the philosophical process. In other words, we are not going to a land without language, bid farewell to language, and get out of the prison of language, but to bid farewell to the entire methodology and thinking framework that set language as the limit of thought. So how do we confirm language as a limitation and condition on the one hand (that is, to absorb the heritage of 20th century philosophy), while on the other hand, we will not be trapped in the language cage and unable to touch material and reality? Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory provides us with examples: analysis techniques based on topology, the basic analysis framework of the real world, the symbolic world, and the imaginary world. Lacan's psychoanalytic theory is not philosophy in the traditional sense, but reading Lacan is the introductory training we must go thr
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