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From: Kyle Arnold
Date: 1/24/99
Thanks for your response. I guess you are suggesting that these difficulties are consequences of trying to articulate a new paradigm through using language entangled in the ontology of the old one. I understand that the issue is too complex for you to explain in one posting, but perhaps you could recommend some readings that would help me? I suggested that much of structuralism is Cartesian because the signifier-signified dichotomy is essentially a Cartesian dichotomy. I think it amounts to little more than a screen behind which is the same old reified subject-object dichotomy, but mutated and dispersed to the point of absurdity. The author has not died, he has simply taken on a new name- the all-powerful Signifier. The signifier-signified dichotomy, like the subject- obj. dichotomy, only comes into being when language is viewed as an object in the world, one that is merely "present" rather than "ready at hand." We then have the subject and object, or signifier and signified, sitting side by side like two territories with an impassible boundary between them. Then as you know it becomes a question of how we can cross the boundary. If we keep holding being-in-the-world or language in mind as composed of two objectively present innerworldly beings -signifier and signified- there is no way to get over the wall. All we can say is that the subject "represents" the object, the signifier "represents" the signified- and what the heck is this "representing?" I think both dichotomies give us essentially the same problem because the epistemological impasse is still there, an impasse which is the direct result of Cartesian-isolationist- objectivist style thinking. Obviously my take on this is phenomenolgical- I'm thinking mainly of Heidegger's critique of the subject-object dichotomy in Being and Time, also his essay "The Way to Language." Although most of the structuralist and po-structuralist thinking that I have read is very intelligent and creative (I especially like Deleuze) it seems like it falls into the trap you refer to in your posting- trying to think about post-Cartesian realities in a Cartesian way.
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