Ways of writing

If you agree that concept is part of the sign, you already know that concept could be written. This is something, this is something that I’ve already asked me about; I discussed with you the issue of an ideogram (the figure) and ideogram (ritual). Today I want to quickly complete the analysis I’ve proposed, beginning by telling you a word of what is called the “symbol”.

I have returned from Egypt where I could admire the beautiful “paintings” that decorate the pharaonic parietal tombs. I am talking about “painting” murals, which, in my opinion is the most complete nonsense that we can make to these amazing human productions. It is not about painting (and therefore it is no “art,” with or without capitals), but rather a form of writing.

In other words, what they want to represent was not the “object” seen (thing or person,) but the idea of the thing, the concept. If you do not involve this fundamental distinction between the perceived object and the designed purpose (between the thing and the idea of the thing), for example the difference between percept and concept, you certainly can not achieve to understand the line of difference between painting (representation of percept) and pictographs (representation of concept).

Search now what is impossible to find!

To be clear, I will give you an example, even if it is trivial (I hope you will forgive me), at least the situation merit, I think, to talk to everyone. Take the well-known symbols in certain public places, reported as the toilet for ladies and gentlemen. While technically, these icons have a good relationship with some paint. In both cases, we have to do the same type of signal: this is a symbol that may be identical (wood, paper, rock, wall, etc.) Even with the same instruments, the same pigments, etc. But there is an absolutely huge difference: the painting is a direct object signal; the icon is signaling an idea on the object.

You will object me about that in the type of icon I just mentioned, we do not, however, confuse the silhouette of a man with the one of a woman. And you are absolutely right. I can answer this objection by saying that in any concept, there is a percept and in every percept there is a concept. But dealing with this issue tonight, we would go really too far! Just imagine that in a restaurant, you are a woman, sitting not far from the portrait hanging somewhere in the “Comtesse du Barry” represented “by nature,” you will say to yourself “is there the ladies bathroom?” No. You could not read the information. In other words, the painting is illegible. Why? Well, precisely because it is represented in three dimensions. However, the third dimension parasitic information to the extent that it creates, to use the vocabulary of telecommunications; it is the “noise.” It’s never the case of a pictogram, it is intended to be read (even if it participates by interposed concept, of course, be perceived), that is to say it is good writing.

That is what we have great difficulty to understand because, for us, writing is reduced to the logography, this means what we put in writing, that the technical nature of sound and meaning associated with the sign (that’s why we say that our writing is phonosemiographic). However, it is a huge mistake to reduce writing to the appearance it presents when we, in Europe, draw what are called letters. This reduction prevents us from seeing that, long before the Egyptians, that is to say, from the Paleolithic, man was already writing. It is absolutely certain that the alleged cave “paintings” of Lascaux were already writing a concept! “We have not done better!” Picasso said. He completely misunderstood the nature of what he contemplated. It is sure that, the Paleolithic man knew any more than Egyptians or Picasso, the third dimension. And downstream of Egyptians, take the icons (either Coptic or Byzantine) is still writing! The iconography does not care whether their representations are “lifelike”. Of course, since this is for him to write, and not to draw the portrait of the Virgin Mary! Would you ask if the figure of King David on some window in the cathedral of Charters is a good likeness?

The portrait is from the painting, that this means that it is the direct representation of anyone, without the mediation of the sign. Talking about this, the portrait is that, what, from the Renaissance to the early twentieth century, we have called the “Fine Arts,” insofar as the aesthetic concerns prevailed to the resemblance. But this does not mean that, technically, the aesthetic concern is necessarily absent from writing. This is called calligraphy (that is, by etymological Greek, a word for “beautiful writing,”) provided, of course, does not reduce the term to the application that we put ourselves a form our letters on the school benches, with full and loose! The symbol of ancient Egypt, is also the calligraphy, as well as bison of Lascaux, the icon, the pattern made by the master glassmaker, etc. But you realize that in all cases I just mentioned, the aesthetic concern is certainly present, but it is secondary.

That allows us to sweep the idea that there would be people without writing. Whenever there is a man there is writing, of course but only, I repeat, if we do not reduce it to writing, in other words, if we are no longer ethno centrists. Going further, the fact that we can go back in time, we find the trace, for example, of ritual dances, no one can distinguish, it is true, if they are religious or secular (or funeral, for example.) Nevertheless, dance is body writing, writing without using any tool, it uses the natural instrument which is the body. But what does that change? Still, the dancers do not dance like we say the bees “dance”! What does this mean?

Simply that our body is able to express concepts -and concepts of sequences- an extreme abstraction and with a subtlety that presumes the dancer an absolutely amazing virtuosity. See the dance Hindu, for example, that creates, or rather recreates the world in dances; every attitude, every gesture, every pose (which controls not only the arms, hands and legs, but the neck, lips, eyes, eyebrows and forehead) manages to express the gods, the stars and all the creation (if this is not a narrative of the Ramayana). It is indeed an extremely complex writing, which should leave stunned the occidentals that we are, who, through laziness or ignorance, are, in general, never deigned to learn to read the script here. We could also mention the dance forms of writing that we meet in Bali, Cambodia and Japan, where the script reaches the extreme refinement of nô! It is true that, since these dances, we can speak again, of calligraphy, but this does not count here either: if this is written.

It is absurd to speak of “people without writing” and also of “people without history.” This idea of “people without history are linked to the technical nature of Western archives, which, means, the phenomenon of writing in the sense that we, the modern Europeans, understand. But before the invention of this writing, we knew the memory: there was not only the guys who wrote parietal or rock books, but others were dancing. These people obviously could not possibly conceive that there were “companies with history” and “societies without history.” These “societies without history” is a Western invention itself. Is that, insofar as the past seems all the more objective it is technology-in archives, deposited in places where we can maintain our form of how to write, it automatically appears that history is linked to knowledge of past filed. But when I spoke of writing, remember, I showed you that history is also included in the experience of companies, ritually, to commemorate other words, there is another way of writing we have defined as the rite, in other words, writing of a related sign, not because it has a formal way (phonosemiographic our writing), but it has conceptual. In short, we have shown that many companies that they say “no history” in fact wrote, but wrote in what is called the rite. The rite is a script that stores too, but it is not deposited archives: its archives exist only if they are dramatic, whether they are played as festive.

Under these conditions, you quite realize that there is no “societies without history,” there are companies that simply have a different kind of archiving as ours. Therefore, in a commemorative celebration in most societies that we believe they are (because they are not ours) ridiculous, there are always masks. These masks, reduced in number, representing the Veterans, the community founders, why do they use masks? Precisely because there is no creativity in the ceremony which is established you have the commemoration. The ancestors, then you live in the narrow sense that is to say that you are the ancestors from whom you are wearing masks. God knows all the blunders that have been written on the subject, and then we indeed are dealing with a type of writing. Our ancestors we have in our papers. The others, they cover their faces. In one case we have, in other cases they have. It’s no more magic in one case than in the other. In ancient societies which I have spoken, the elders, a ritual we live, just as ours are our sources. The famous “sources” of professional historians, these sources, there will always be sought in the grimoire (historian thinks he ought to be a bookworm), but the historian of the African people, for example the fact of attending the commemorative festivities: they are his “sources.” Actually, this is not really past that this is because it is a commemoration; it is not live past but to live like this, is a total of updating. In short, the purpose of history is not the past but the update of the past (this is still not the same thing!)

Finally, there are always people who say they are professionals and transmit orally story of group archive. Whether these stories are true or false have absolutely no importance, anyway, they all say roughly the same in a given society: consequently, these stories become founders of the group’s origins and, therefore, identity.

The case of all the tales that they have been and are still, in some societies, transmitting orally, they are writing, provided, again here, that we can reduce not writing to the appearance it presents to us. These stories follow a codified ritual of narrative composition, sequences of events nearly frozen, just as they would do in writing. It is impossible, for example, begin to tell (“here was a time …”) if you do not know the end (“… they were married and had many children.”) In other words, the storyteller does not talk like it when does gossip, “He talks like a book”, a term, it reproduces the narrative of memory (in some cases, it dictates.) It must be said that in this perspective, the distinction we make between an “oral literature” and a “written literature,” is absolutely false. All literature, indeed, is oral, but not what we use in our daily conversations.

Now what disgusts to most of our students of literature. Consider an example from music. Between the music and music theory (that is to say, writing the music), there is a world. Now, how many children or adolescents do not like a musical instrument because of the music theory? We say: “French are not musicians” Why? Because they are made to read or write music, almost never listen! But this is terrible! Well, that’s exactly transferable to literature. Let stop to make student worried about the writing (logographic) and let’s teach them to listen and of course to taste music.

That leads to a writing theory which must be completely renewed. To be true to consider a theory of writing is much more complex than we think, and it is why no one risks! In any case, this theory of writing, which have a lot to do, it have to consider all types of writing that instead of Graphing each other they play themselves, they dance together, they please each other, they sing together, etc. Because we must not imagine that the only way to writing is that we have by the Greeks and Latin interposed, we have inherited from the Phoenicians. The logography is a special way of writing that in the end is not an important part of history, it means, in the huge system that is the way man have always make information artificial. We have greatly simplified the problem because we look only for us and we constantly tell to ourselves that we are the humanity paragon.

But today, it is over. With modern technologies we have (radio, television, etc.) Writing is replaced by something else. It is true that the phonosemiographic writing never completely disappear (it complementarily continues to exist between the spelling, for example, and the computer). But it has always been like, but it is true that there were complementarities with ancient Egypt, among the pictogram, hieroglyphic writing and ritual (funeral or religious). As in the pictograms of Lascaux (and around the world) it was noted that, together with representations it contained many graphic or symbols (dots, spirals, grids, etc.) Which are probably the “legends” of these icons, provided to hear the word “legend” in the etymological sense: the verbal adjective legend (from the Latin verb legere) means “what must be read”. The final thing is that our time marks the end of the privilege of spelling.

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