Some online research after coming across this nice and unexpected Wittgenstein quote
“In the actual use of expressions we make detours, we go by side-roads. We see the straight highway before us, but of course we cannot use it, because it is permanently closed.”
(Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 1953)
lead me to another interesting piece dealing with expression, images, and in a way the limited possibility of communication or shall we look at it from the other side: the manifold, but as well unique interpretations evolving according to education, experience. memory, ….. while we think we see and speak about the same, according to Wittgenstein we only can come together through a public language, – language as a social convention. The shifting nuances build around a personal experience, are impossible to be translated. Translatable are only the ‘public’ references of language, which immediately become meshed into another’s fantasy ….
As Marina Roy wrote in Fillip on the piece John Massey‘s piece ‘As the Hammer Strikes‘ from 1982
John Massey, ‘As the Hammer Strikes’ (1982)
The title of John Massey’s three-part film As the Hammer Strikes is puzzling. It has something of an historical avant-garde ring to it. But upon viewing the film a couple of times, one begins to decipher the metaphorical use of the tool as it relates to the building of a common language, and to the way events, things, and words leave their stamp on memory. Stylistically and narratively, the film seems to operate through a theory of language laid out by Ludwig Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations. According to Wittgenstein, language is always practical. It is intended to do something. Language is a social convention and the meaning of words are determined by their use in language, hence the constantly shifting nature of the meaning of words as such. For Wittgenstein language is like a box full of tools: language is the use; it is something that we share in common; it is what we use to convey information as it relates to public life and the external world. According to Wittgenstein, there is not much sense in the idea of a “private language.†Anything that is to be known as a language must be applicable to the external world and to individual experiences as it relates to a life in common: “An ‘inner process’ stands in need of outward criteria.†Language originates and exists in a social context. Memory and past experience may be particular to each individual but we are able to communicate in the way we do, despite cultural and physical differences, because of our common capacity for memory, feeling, and linguistic acquisition, and our inherently social nature.
According to Wittgenstein we simply cannot get inside another person’s mind, and thus we can never demonstrate that person’s intent. The important thing to consider is not the ability to see into someone, but rather the capacity to see what is public. Both seeing into someone as well as seeing what is public is a fantasy that John Massey realizes visually in As the Hammer Strikes. In attempting to represent what might be going on in another’s mind, Massey’s film comes close to some of Wittgenstein’s ideas about language as something inherently public. …..
