on+++on

__Living On:__ “This translation, like any other, leaves something out, an untranslated remnant. It arrests movement” (118). “The dream of translation without remnants, a metalanguage that would guarantee orderly flow between ‘entry language’ and ‘exit language’ (e.g. of a translating computer), between semantic radicals properly bordered...” (bottom bar, 119) An imagined “ideal translation” could prevent translators from attending to what gets left out. A better type of negotiation with a text can proceed once we realize that something is //always// left out. Whether it’s selection sources from an archive, choosing what to take notes on in ethnographic research, or selecting from the “data” what (and how) will end up in the written account, political decisions of exclusion (i.e. translation) will need to be made. Translation occurs at every step of the process of social research and continual reflexivity/reevaluation of goals and audience is essential. In the translation of genotype to phenotype, (ribotype?) what’s “missed?” Mutations? Mutations can be fun. We get pleasure both from getting our point across and, perhaps more so, from the half-missed, spontaneous interactions that occur all the time. Isn’t this what a joke often relies on? Inconsistency, asymmetry, surprise, delay.

“No meaning can be determined out of context, but no context permits saturation” (81). Thus saturation of context is “impossible.” Or maybe there’s a “…but barely,” but if we did reach a saturable context, we wouldn’t recognize it as such? Regardless, it is useful to realize that communication with an “other” can never proceed with the “writer” and “reader” sharing the same context. Perhaps this is part of the reason that JD writes in his “impenetrable style.” Yes, you might not remember the beginning of the sentence by the end of it, but using nine words in a row with very close meanings might help him get “closer to the limit” of precise translation (communication). On a methods note: grounded theory involves the idea that you know when you can stop taking notes when all of your developed categories are “saturated.” Here too, saturation is impossible. But perhaps sharing your categories with those you are “categorizing” can be one useful way to move closer to getting the story “right.”

The “double affirmation,” the “oui, oui.” “//There is// the //re-cit// of double affirmation… the “yes, yes” that must be cited, must recite itself to bring about the alliance… of affirmation with itself, to bring about its ring. It remains to be seen whether the double affirmation is //triumphant//, whether the triumph is affirmative or a paradoxical phase in the work of mourning” (85). OK, can’t be successful because part of its use is to move past, or get over the ‘event’ that set it in motion. Yet, this would show a sort of disrespect to this event. But what does this have to do with “yes, yes?” Hint?: it’s related to the //triumph-de// (triumph //of// ßà triumph //over//.

“[The pedagogical institution] can bear more readily the most apparently revolutionary ideological sorts of ‘content,’ if only that content does not touch the borders of language [//la langue//] and all the juridico-political contracts that it guarantees” (95). The threat to traditional literature departments is clear. How can deconstructing the concept of translation relate to broader social justice issues, or even everyday life?

__Doyle__

“…hospitality to an inhuman form, an integration of an alien entity into one’s very habitat (6). Some (many?) people (obviously the Catholic ethicist for one) would have a really hard time (to the point of terror and repulsion) being hospitable to a human/other chimera. Octavia Butler (in //Dawn//?) does a great job grappling with the tendency to cling to human “purity.” Are there echoes of racial purity discourse running through these sentiments?

Developmental biologists (from my veeery limited understanding) pay attention to what geneticists have largely ignored: time, futurity, emergence, ribotype. Life’s a process and a relationship, not a thing.

Doyle’s “generalizing” of life seems close to JD’s generalizing (of just about everything) in order to see more about the previously quite limited terms.

“…the evolution of such spectacularly useless ornaments speaks to the operation not of decision but of emergence” (33). Choice as an inadequate model for thinking. Alternative = experimentation?

Regarding the call to “slow down.” Opening towards the future, abductive reasoning, whathaveyou, seems to me a bit like flooring the gas ½ mile before the exit even if no opening to get over the required 3 lanes seems to exist at the time of that decision. This usually works (especially if you go fast enough), and it’s more fun than slowing down to drop in behind the line of cars. But it is admittedly a gamble. Then again, if the brakes don’t work anyway…

“Our challenge, as readers, writers, and players and not witnesses, is to hack this spell of transcendence with techniques of ecstasy” (60). Sounds fun! But you lost me…