The BANG in onomatopoeia, or the eternal salience of transgression

                                 

Part of the series known as The Great Red Dragon paintings, by William Blake. They depict the Great Red Dragon as written in the Book of Revelation.

“We learn to use words because we belong to a culture. A form of life. A practical way of doing things. 

In the end, we speak as we do, because of what we do. 

And all this is a properly public affair.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein, in his eponymously named biographical film, Wittgenstein (1993), produces an important discussion about the inherent cultural dependence of language, using the term ‘language games’ to argue how philosophical differences arise from, and not before, differences in linguistic adaptation and thinking. Subjective understandings of philosophical concepts result in duels of discourse that Wittgenstein would consider inappropriate, producing not vivid productivity but shallower and more inconsiderate (or unconscious) ways of viewing the nature of things. 

Wittgenstein employs the discourse surrounding the idea of the soul as an example of this phenomenon:

“For example, people puzzle over the nature of something they call the “soul”. But this may just be because they’re thinking of the soul along the lines of a physical object. They’re confusing one way of talking with another.”

Nietzsche confronts this phenomenon via a similar argument- that the greatness in the practice of ‘valuing’ arises precisely through its subjective irreconcilability as opposed to grounding in objective truth or fact. What this means is that there exists no problem to occur in this perspectivist or subjectivist worldview that can be completely solved by  a mere see-saw approach in orientation. You cannot deduce meaning out of a philosophy that functions in models that simply assume objective reality, because there is no objective reality: a fact sceptics and proto-existentialists alike such as Kant and David Hume understood in their observations on the unreliability of the perceptive mind, and yet refrained from realising it when filling in the gaps with their spiritual and moral ethics nonetheless.

What is to be found in relation to subjective pursuit of meaning in art and theory then, when essentially all subjectivity can be reduced to meaninglessness once posed with the coherence of the much-pleasing standardized objectivity all-too-common in philosophy? 

Strength and beauty par excellence, Nietzsche would suggest, following the prescriptions in his works. But Nietzsche himself is no kind a descriptive philosopher, in the sense that others would be considered in their way of writing. He produces aphorisms, oftentimes poetic, and can be seen to opine in matters in cases of fictional scenario to reject flat moral calculation altogether. Apart from works like Genealogy, Human, and Daybreak, the majority of Nietzsche’s corpus is still dominated by lyrical prose the likes of which would confront the standard philosophy professor with unbounded terror, and a sense of playful enjoyment to the enthusiastic reader. It seems to me that, in the experience of reading Nietzsche’s work, one finds its true meaning (and enjoyment) by almost assuming the concepts and assumptions underlying in its intent beforehand- and subsequently engaging with the work by seeing it as the self-admitted poetic exercise that it is. 

And aside from philosophy, it is art where such a priori values find catharsis. Lord Tennyson, notes for instance - “Words like nature half-reveal and half-conceal the soul within”- in his elegy In Memoriam A. H. H. The point of the lyric is to make the argument of the superiority of intuition: a restriction that is a product of the very nature of language as previously explained by Wittgenstein- predisposing us to explain things after they are momentarily perceived in our truer senses. Instinctual, felt, perceptive differences in the nature of reality are therefore superior forms of uncovering disagreement over discourse, due to the superiority of their ideational essence. 

Considering the fact that perceptive differences must be real in themselves, owing to their material realization as differing understandings (Hegelian readers will find much comfort in the small concurrence of Wirklichkeit), we can safely move on to ask a question that is perhaps as visibly a lie as its direction of objectivity. Is there a permanence in the inquiries of art, that suffices for most of its existence, and is valuable in most of its productivity? 

Better yet, is there a phenomenon so constant that there exists no metaphor to rationalize its permanence, a kind of unitarian God, in the perceptive sense?

I argue that such permanence is to be found in the principle of transgression. Conflict, disregard, antipathy for no purpose other than itself, so far as its ideational meaning is in concern. In linguistics itself, the act of transgression may mean nothing as it is, it could be nothing but sheer unfounded faith, opposing the other in contemporaneous form. 

Artistically, however, it finds great value in its inherent perpetuity, one can find. Transgression is found, on principle, in every laugh of the playful and the wicked, in every act of conflict in bitter war and its consequent resistance, by definition in every form of idea and theory that proposes an argument against the already existing. 

I find that the act of transgression itself, in any materialization, is perhaps the most permanent of all principles underlying the practice of art. The act of making meaning cannot be understood in vacuum to its subsequent predisposition to un-making- and any act of definition cannot be made without a necessary argument against its favour existing on principle. However surreptitiously malignant this idea might sound, I posit that even being or doing in any form, cannot exist without a necessary (and valid) contradiction arising as a result of its very existence. Even if it is most observable and true to anyone or anything, because contradiction exists not just as a theoretical principle, but as an innate or natural principle. Art, as in nature, values and demands it out of every outcome, all creative power challenged through (even the unnecessary) resentment, every singular critical thought, indeed any thought at all which arises after the simple cry an infant would make with great intensity and no meaning. Even the holiest of terms with the most sanctity. an existence of a basic right and wrong, and of indeed truth itself, cannot be capable of existing independent of the simultaneous counter-question of why not?

Thus, one can see the artistic expression of transgression in every religion and spiritual tradition from the earliest times of mankind, too. 

Franz Von Stuck’s Lucifer (1890), a sharp contrast to the usual depictions of the devil archetype as horn-pronged and fire-laden, sometimes in misery.

For example: for every benevolent God to exist, there must be a denunciatively depicted Devil necessary as a counter-God, accompanied usually with his or her own set of demons, and an array of rules in their kingdom which make little sense. For every unitarian philosophy, such as the likes of the non-dualist Advaita belief, there exist antagonistic metaphors in their system of moral explanation for existence. The only examples that seem to stand out at first are the more evenly distributed Pagan religions that define a relationship between deities without resorting to downward moral structures. 

But even this conclusion misses the very nature of such religious Pantheon which function on a permanent state of conflict between the deities, for instance the Greeks with the incessant infighting (for ex- between Poseidon and Zeus). It is necessary for them to act in constant conflict, otherwise they would be nothing other than a permanent set of angelic deity-figures set to sit beside each other and to be understood, by people, perfectly reduced of substantial symbolic meaning.

I argue that the reason transgression is so elusive to dissolution, like many other artistic artefacts, is that its artistic value is self-evident and permanent in structure to the most instinctual and deepest of senses a human being can find. Its existence functions similarly to concept of onomatopoeia- carrying a self-evident value so vivid that even the pronunciation of the very word betrays its meaning. For example, the meaning of BANG! is self-evident because of the phonetic resonance to its description. The innate artistic value in transgression can be found to come in a similar way: evident to the instinctual senses by its very existence and thus can be said to have a value in itself. 

One way this phenomenon exercises itself is in the artistic practice of acting: for an actor to enact a scene where they are expected to act transgressively, they usually do so easier and with lesser hesitation. This happens because to enact something which is so repressed and inhibited for a form of behaviour so intrinsic to human nature will inevitably result in the emotion fighting its way out with its own power and exuberance in finding its latent catharsis.

An example I am reminded of is the confidence exercises that almost every young actor learns during stage practice, tongue-twisters of inordinate length that carry a readily visible aesthetic satisfaction. One can come up with all sorts of such variations with onomatopoeic effect-

CRICKLE CRACKLES CRINKLED, CRICKLED, CRACKERS,

CLIPPLED CLICKS CRACKLE CRUNCHED, CRIPPLED, CLEAN, 

SHARPER SHOCKERS SHATTER SILENCE SQUARELY, SUDDENLY,

BRISK BLOWS BREAK BARRIERS BRIEFLY, BRUTALLY,

RAPID RIPS RIPPING RHYTHMS RIGHTLY, STEADILY, SORRILY.

Or, for those of us more phonetically inclined, we can make up terms which at first seem nonsensical, but rely on subtly inferring meaning via use of rhythm:

KT – KTT – KRR – KRSS - TCH – TCHH – KAP,

TS – TSS - TUSS – KAP – TUSS – KAPP,

SK – SKK – SHHT – SHTUT – SHTUTT - SHTAPP.

(If the reader runs into trouble finding meaning in this, using any constant vowel, like a short “uhh” sound between the missing spaces between the consonants will help. So ‘kt’ may be pronounced like ‘kut’ and ‘ktt’ like ‘kutt’ with a harder emphasis or pause on the ‘t’.)

Why does rhythm make such sense to us so verily and without confusion? No mathematician taught us to deduce the mathematical harmony in musical sounds before we came to know them. I infer that meaning can be deduced on a quiet instinctual level using the very evolutionary principles that have given us appreciation of beauty (found in life of all forms), and which art itself has evolved from. It is very much a hilarious practice to explore artistic value with this effect, but since we know that it is so inherent and instinctual in nature, much like the basal recognition of artefacts and people we are primed to think of since being born, it carries a power so real and resonant to us that it is of no purpose denying ourselves its artistic affect.

The evolved and yet natural characteristic of appreciation that we share, of harmony and resonance, can tells us something new about ourselves. As noted before, it is not terribly far from the value of transgression in art and artistic principle. And if evolution grants these primitive desires to the human condition that art is naturally sought to deliver catharsis to, then why must art not resist, in perpetuity, everything that seeks to deny us its most emphatic and primal forms? Of transgression, of conflict and confrontation?

Eric Newton, in The Meaning Of Beauty, examines this relationship between nature, taste and art that we have incidentally explored quite masterfully and with a much necessary urgent critical attention. 

It is perhaps best to leave to the reader with the following quotes to wonder upon, so one may engage with this idea more fully, and perhaps resonate the argument better once understood in the broader context of the genre:

“..If, then, the word 'beauty' can shift its whole direction in the course of a couple of decades, it is surely worth examining the nature of these man-made phenomena, these works of art, which, without undergoing the slightest change in themselves, are capable of arousing hostility in one generation and admiration in the next. Our main enquiry must be into the strange fluctuations of what is known as 'taste', the power to distinguish between degrees of beauty and between kinds of beauty in art. But before doing so, it will be necessary to find out what art itself is made of.

I am not concerned here with the artist's motive in creating his work of art. I am content to take him for granted, I am willing to ignore him altogether except as a womb in which art is conceived, just as I am willing to ignore God altogether except as an originator of matter and an inventor of the laws that govern the behaviour of matter. The 'why?' and the 'whither?' of God and man, of Nature and art, are questions for the philosopher. My concern is with the what? ...Closer analysis reveals her (art) to be something far more complicated in structure than Nature…Art can no more be thought of in terms of superimposed layers than water can be thought of as a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen, or a musical chord as a series of notes sounded in succession. The layers exist only in theory. In practice they interpenetrate each other so completely that in looking at a given work of art, the beholder is conscious of them all simultaneously, and is therefore not conscious of them at all”.

Paul Laurenzi, Untitled (1990s). In figurative style.

 Author

Atulya M. Singh

"I’m a third-year student of politics at the Jindal School of International Affairs. My academic interests center on foreign policy and international relations. 

An existentialist at heart, I like to engage with art and philosophy as complementary modes of inquiry into meaning, power, and human expression alongside formal academic work. Outside the classroom, I enjoy tennis, house music, classical music, cycling, meditation, and film and literature of all kinds- though not necessarily always in that order ; )."

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