Mary Nohl: Full Size One	Mary Nohl: Full Size Two	Mary Nohl: Full Size Three

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I woke up thinking about Mary Nohl this morning. Thinking about darkness, and dreams, and waking dreams that seem dark from the outside. She lived here, when she was alive. This was her home.

Later, I was thinking about Saussure. Thought and Sound. This figure on the left was his idea. Everything changed because of him. He said that Thought (A) has no meaningful pieces; he said Sound (B) has no meaningful pieces. They are unbroken waves.

What we call words are arbitrary segmentations: marriages between arbitrarily segmented Thought and arbitrarily segmented Sound. Words do not come from inside us. They have meaning through random social use.

Saussure suggests the image of a piece of paper, a front and a back.

Think of a word as a sign. It has two parts: a front and a back. It has a sound that signifies. It makes an assocation that is signified. Together they make a sign which social relations make meaningful.

But they are arbitrary. That is to say: words have NO INSTRINSIC VALUE. They are random constructions that come from outside of you.

Waking and Dreaming, Thought and Sound. Meaning and Value. The way we communicate the most important things has nothing to do with Real. The way is nothing more than a convention based on waves and waves and waves.

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Copyright ©2004-2006, ©2007 Joshua Suchman. All rights reserved.
Taboo Monkey Blue Blog

** POSTSCRIPT: SURROGATE **

Surrogate's Comment, Part I:

"I told her, 'Sure, you're hair looks okay, it's just not as nice as it was before.'

Then spent the next five years trying to use words similar to the quote from your piece to excuse the statement. Even pointing out that what I'd said didn't signifiy what she'd thought it had signified."

Good point, huh? Who was right? Did your comment signify what you thought or what she thought? Neither, it turns out, though it might not seem fair that YOU'RE not signifying what YOU'RE thinking. The sign doesn't have a value unless everyone agrees--and the agreement isn't based on a consensus. It's random. It's an unconscious process.

Surrogate's Comment, Part II:

"Maybe it's more like this: remove the bar between "sign" and the other two words, then treat the thing as a proper equation, cuz I can damn well tell you us "signifiers" get divided by SOMEthing!"

Very perceptive. In my ramblings, I only offered half of the equation (or, the distilled version of the whole equation. Here's the whole shmeer, as seen by Roland Barthes:

If this kind of thing could be divided into pieces of time, then 1-3 would be the first step: the level of language. I-III would be the second step: the level of myth. To use a Barthes' example, here's how it works:

1. Black Pebble = Empty Signifier. Maybe you think it's smooth and shiny; maybe she thinks it's rough and dull. The pebble itself has no meaning.

But suppose society develops a system where every human being must pick a pebble from a bag. If someone picks a diamond, he/she becomes Sovereign; if, however, someone picks a black pebble, he/she is immediately sentenced to death. Then:

2. Death Sentence = Signified. Now the Signifier isn't empty. It is weighted by the definite Signified: Black Pebble signifies Death. So:

3. The Sign is Full (it has a signifier and a signified). But now the Sign itself begins to Signify:

I. Sign is Emptied of Meaning; Becomes new SIGNIFIER. Instead of its color or size or texture that signifies, it is the Sign itself that begins to SIGNIFY. The Sign's meaning, now, is only there to refer to a CONCEPT:

II. The Sign No Longer has Meaning: It SIGNIFIES A CONCEPT. The CONCEPT is a model (like Barthes' model, above). It is a reference to the emptied Meaning of the Sign, rather than to a real object. The reference is to the image of the object rather than the object itself *think Warhol's painting of the can of Campbell's Tomato Soup). The pebble becomes a myth:

III. The pebble becomes a way of referring to its own origins, rather than to itself.

Of course, this can't be broken into pieces of time. Everything that signifies (pebbles, words, you, haircuts) is itself a sign. Everything refers to its origins, while imposing the current social value upon us now. Everything has meaning ONLY BECAUSE OF THE ARBITRARY, MEANINGLESS SPLIT that slices a wave into pieces. A signifier is a full sign being sliced into emptiness; it can only refer to a arbitrary representation of the past.

More art by Mary Nohl