Sarah's Response

[Website Services Admin]

#801

“…even the word becomes a thing. More precisely, the word makes present the absence that it names, and thus it denies the concreteness and singularity of existence. But at the same time the word restores this absence through the constitution of meaning. Thus the immediacy of the lived experience is first lost but then fleetingly restored by the indirectness of meaning that is made possible by language. The experience of writing shows us reflexively that the immediacy of the
lived world can never be recaptured in its original form.

Almost every word we write may place a question mark over the meaning of the thing it expresses. In the experience of writing, words tend to be dense and more ambiguous…in writing one develops a special relation to language which disturbs its taken-for-grantedness.”

I think writers, myself especially, take definitions for granted. We assume that words mean the same thing for all of us, but they carry so much weight and variance because of different experiences and understandings. Philosopers (and in the case of this class, Gendlin) do not take words for granted in the way writers do. Gendlin, especially in his videos, is careful to define and redefine what he’s talking about. It’s ironic that this makes him more difficult than easy to understand. Because we live in a world where writers aren’t asked to define their terms, but are allowed such creative license with them, we always assume we understand what someone else is writing about, when in fact, we don’t. We project our own experience with the words used by the writer onto the writer’s projected and perceived consciousness. When words are defined in a more definitive way, it makes them more complicated, because it takes away our perceived definitions. Having a dictionary makes no
difference.

The first time I read van Manen’s piece, I was going to argue that it was easier for me to communicate through writing than through conversation. I think this is only because, in learning how to write persuasively, I’ve learned how to get people to accept my definitions, and am able (for the most part) to effectively craft my own reality on the page. I was going to argue against his point that: ” in the
experience of writing, words tend to be dense and more ambiguous,” now I can’t totally disagree. I guess words really do create a “temporal dwelling space” rather than another ultimate reality.

[Author]

Posts