Brief notes on: Kinser, Samuel.
"Saussure's Anagrams: Ideological Work." MLN
94, no. 5 (1979): 1105-138. Accessed June 8,
2020. doi:10.2307/2906568.
Dave Harris
Language has its own internal system of
correspondences, but those uses are ideology
whilst, providing a definable system based on
'needs, uses, and desires' (1105). Saussure was
trying to see how ideology is imposed on language
in his work on anagrams, which apparently covered
'early Indo-European poems, songs, prophecies and
hymns'.
One example included trying to detect the Greek
name of Venus, Aphrodite, in Virgil's Aeniad.
It is 'phonically mimed' in a particular passage
where the goddess reveals herself to Aeneas.
Apparently there is an outline of the name in a
'mannequin or "little box"' {and there is a box
literally drawn around the relevant words] -- 'One
word or phrase in the anagrammatical passge begins
and ends with the same sounds as the latent "word
theme". The mannequin "A[phrodit]E is given
here in two ways, either by [the word
A[mbriosqua]E" [in the first sentence, meaning
'ambrosial' ] or by [a more extended passage of
several words]'.
There is a more complicated form of mining
involving reproduction of the sounds of the
imitated name involving diphones. [Weird
stuff arguing that the initial A of the
significant phrase is somehow necessarily followed
by an F sound. In the actual case, we have
only a 'defective' anagram, because the F sound is
found in another word further along in the
passage. Nevertheless, the overall
conclusion is that '"Polyphones visibly
reproduce… The syllables of a work or a name
of importance in the text and there by become
anagrammatical polyphones"' (1106).
Apparently most the work turned on looking for
divine or semi divine names, or particular
heroes. The analysis is given some force
because the passage is concerned are of central
importance to myths, so '"God was, in a manner of
speaking, riveted to the text"'.
The article then goes on to compare Saussure with
other linguists, and to try and see how the two
projects of Saussure might be linked. Lotringer is
seen as the best-known study, arguing for the
repression of one approach by the other. The
other one persist ssufficiently to acquit Saussure
of uncritical logocentrism, although Kinser says
the whole thing began with logocentrism, and the
openness and 'disseminative character' of language
emerged despite the main effort to systematise.
Saussure never fully explored linguistic excess or
polysemy.
The anagrams only appear with a particular model
of reading. The indecision in the work even
on things like the number and location of phonemes
raises a general question: 'A "close
interpretation" of texts is the most, not the
least metaphysical' (1108). The analytic
attempt has really sidelined the energy involved
in reading, and how personal and historical
situations prompt it.
A residue of the problem appears in what Saussure
says about semiology, the link between signs and
social life. Saussure was actually after a
logic of signification which could be rendered as
science although poetry was an obvious problem—and
so are any attempts to reduce modern examples of
ideology to a particular logic or science.
Turning to Marxist theory of ideology, work is
central, and so it is with Saussure, in terms of
how linguistic mechanisms work to centre abstract
and repeat signs. There are clearly
political economic and social implications—the
linguistic mechanism reinforces these, and this is
what he meant by ideological work. Anagrams
were one mechanism to perform this work, even
though it is by anyone's standards
fragmentary. Introducing coherence requires
something supplementary [to the actual text],
identifying underpinning assumptions, sometimes
incompatible ones.
For Saussure, everything is based on 'mnemonic
ritual', the organization of memory, and the role
of phonic rhymes, found best in the naming
processes in language. He does not use the
word ideology because it has a certain baggage in
France [associated with the ideologues and high
culture], so he relies on psychological rather
than social analysis—ideology therefore becomes a
kind of '"superstitious idea"' (1110), so there is
no consistent attempt to link language with social
power [Kinser notices a possible connection with
the way in which Marx criticises the German
ideologists].
Saussure wanted to isolate a pure psychology and
language from those features produced by
contingent or material change, and this makes it
characteristically ideological with the material
conditions of human existence outside and
projected inwards but upside down. It is
inverted in Marxist terms. However, there
are critical implications for Marxist theory here
too: 'inversion'only inverts the binary between
mind and matter, because these can only be fully
overcome in a very unusual perfect state of
knowledge and social development [post
capitalism]. Until then, there is no absolute way
to distinguish true and false consciousness.
A common figure of ideology is to declare that
science has liberated itself from it. There
is a linguistic dimension in arguing that the
terms of language are themselves logical,
systematic and independent. This leaves
reality or the world outside. Saussure
famously argued that the relation between sign and
referents is arbitrary, but this does not
necessarily mean unsystematic. Reference is
actually achieved by phrases not single words, and
not in a simple correspondence. Language is
still logically comparable to material studies of
reference, and it can still be true or
false. This is a dimension that should be
added to Marxist work [something like the relative
autonomy of language and culture?].
The stuff on anagrams does do some ideological
work, because it describes linguistic processes
which put human signifying apparatus at the centre
of important operations like naming.
There were other kinds of anagrams also suggested
by Saussure—'"monophonic" types (on 1113).
We have to find an even number of vowels and
consonants used in lines of poetry. This
appears in a particular verse form—'the
"Saturnian"'found in early Latin texts. The
system actually broke down when Saussure found a
more important process at work—'a technique of
naming' found in other ancient texts as well as
Latin. In some examples, it is easy to see
names being alluded to by a series of syllables in
different words. Saussure use the other
mechanisms including the mannequin to check.
But why should names be the main themes of these
literary passages—there is a logocentrism here for
Kinser, one which appeared also in the later
work. This says that concepts or signifieds
are associated with sound images or
signifiers. In the system stuff, nouns are
chosen, like names of animals or plants, as a
convenient summary of concepts. This
tendency to see 'the paradigm of verbal
sign' as a noun also extensively echos
['parallels'] the interest in names.
Overall, there is a tendency to favour synchrony
over diachrony, interest in language states rather
than the movements in language. The
coherence of a text consists in a coherent set of
sound images and concepts,, where signs are self
sufficient increments. The other words such
as conjunctions then have to be seen as part of a
signifying chain. Meaning emerges from the
movement of the text or with the emergence of the
concept—and this is logocentrism. These
assumptions were found in the early work.
[And there is much more gripping stuff to follow,
which I will read one day].
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