Chapter V

Two Kinslayers

Chapter V

Two Kinslayers

I look out in front of me, and perceive the sea lit up out to the horizon. I look around me: to my left and right, I see the limitless straight line of the beach, and behind it, the dunes -- all in space. With my gaze I make the space my own. The objects are clear and plain. I see the wind bend over to the ground, the reeds that keep the dunes in place.
I am at the center of this universe by means of my gaze, which sweeps across this space and lets me know everything in it. By combining these images of reality, I grasp it as a whole, and become a part of it as a result of my looking.
My sight constructs a universe for me. It reveals to me a directly perceivable reality composed of colorful, simple, harmonious images. But it also furnishes me with more subtle materials. I learn to read my brother’s or my enemy’s face. Transmitted images are superimposed on one another, and as a result, I now know that a given image belongs within a particular context of reality. It conjures up another image; I anticipate what I am going to see, but what is coming will in any case be located in space and will constitute part of reality -- deeper and hidden, in a sense, but still reality.
Such information is precise and pinpointed, and deals only with reality. Nothing else, no other dimension, is ever involved. …Sight has made me the center of the world because it situates me at the point from which I see everything, and causes me to see things relative to this point. My vision makes a circular sweep of space, working from this point: my point of view. But now I am tempted, as the center of the world, to act on this spectacle and transform this setting. What was missing in my vision was someone to act, and I am available.
Sight moves to action at the same time that it serves as the means of action. Again, without it, how could I act, since I wouldn’t even know what my hand was touching or what was within my reach? …I am a subject, not separated from what I look at. Rather, what I see becomes a part of me, as my action involves me in what I see. Images both permit and condition my action; they are always imperative. I lean out the window and look searchingly into the emptiness. Images of distance and depth thrust themselves on my consciousness. I know I mustn’t lean out any further.
The image defines and marks the boundaries of my action. The image does not induce my action, but establishes its conditions and possibilities. Without visual images my action is definitely blind, incoherent, and uncertain. Sight conveys certainties and pieces of information to me, as we have said. Such information is reliable. I perceive a gray ocean and an overcast skyline. This is unquestionable. The reality around me is a certainty in which I can be confident. It is neither incoherent nor deformed. I know, of course, that this is also something learned; there are no data coming directly from the senses, and the shapes and colors and distances I apprehend are perceptible to me because I learned them. My culture has furnished me with the very images I see. But however important this may be (and we must not push this idea too far!), it is still true that I see.
What a dreadful uneasiness takes hold of us when reality is submerged in fog…sight fails to furnish me with clear images and I can no longer act. The world loses its midpoint. It is off center because I cannot see it anymore. The center could be anywhere, but it is no longer located where I am.
In order for my sight to mislead me concerning reality, there must be some unusual phenomenon, like a mirage. The image is not ambiguous. This peach I am looking at is red and weighs heavily on the bending branch. This is absolutely certain. But the image is insignificant. It has no meaning in itself and must be interpreted. In the case of a fruit ripe for picking, the visual image gives me indisputable information, but if I stop there, nothing will happen. It must therefore be interpreted. In order to move from the vision of the fruit to "I should pick it" or "It can be picked," there must be an interpretation: an attribution of meaning to these real images of reality.
Another dimension must be added to sight: interpretation will come through speech. Thus the image contains within itself a deep contradiction. It is not ambiguous: it is coherent, reliable, and inclusive; but it is insignificant. It can have innumerable meanings, depending on culture, learning, or the intervention of some other dimension. For this reason I must learn to see, before looking at the image.
After seeing it, I must learn to interpret it. The image is clear, but this clarity does not imply certainty or comprehension. My certainty is limited to this directly perceived reality that my sight reveals to me. Nothing beyond that.
I call these images "vision" because they are connected with the other images I am accustomed to. I would be tempted to say in this case that the order is reversed. The visual image exists, and then I attribute a meaning to it; but the vision appears only as the illustration of a previously established meaning. No matter how insignificant it may be, the visual image is always rigorous, imperative, and irreversible. I saw what I saw. I cannot change the reality which is conveyed to me in this way, except through my action. There is no ambiguity at this point. Nor is there reversibility.
If I had only one "view" of my universe, I would be a participant in a totality which would be both terribly coherent and yet at the same time composed of fragments without any necessary relationship. The totality would be like a cloud of irrational dots which can form only the framework of an action, a change in the relationships between the points. But the cloud of dots cannot be used for understanding anything, because this pointillism of images is space but not duration. The image is present. It is only a presence. It bears witness to something "already there": the object I see was there before I opened my eyes.
I have a point of view, a location from which I see things, but it is situated within what I see and inseparable from it. Wherever I place myself, however I shift my position, I remain in the field of vision, I remain in the middle of what I see. I can never take my distance, act as if I were not present, or even begin to think independently of what I see.
At night, when I cannot see, a certain distance is established. This explains why the day’s events become so painful at night: the distance between me and the world around me allows for reflection and meditation. A flood of images overwhelms me, beckons me, and carries me along: an image I have seen follows immediately after the one I have just dismissed from my mind. I can never stop this movement of reality in space. I can never consider a given image like a diamond or a painting from which I can take my distance in order to be "myself," instead of being overwhelmed by the images composed of dots.
The image prevents me from taking my distance. And if I cannot establish a certain distance, I can neither judge nor criticize. Of course, I also feel pleasure or displeasure in what I see. I can find it beautiful or ugly. But this is not a critical process. No judgment is involved. Furthermore, what possible criticism or judgment can we make with respect to space and reality? In spite of the frailty we have all observed in a person’s testimony about what he has seen, everyone has the same certainty about anything he has seen. He has seen reality.
Sight involves a relationship with reality as established in space. It is an artificial construction. Medusa’s head transfixes whoever gazes at her. Whoever looks at the scenes on the shields of the Iliad is terror stricken. Sight introduces us to an unbearable shock. Reality when seen inspires horror. Terror is always visual. Horror stories play only on our visual sense and suggest representation.
In contrast, the spoken word can involve us in mystery or drama. It places us in situations of conflict and makes us conscious of tragedy. But it is never on its own terrifying or stupefying. We are dazed by sight -- by an image or a vision. The word takes us to the edge of terror only when descriptive and painting extremely precise images. Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories are an example. All the descriptions we have heard of Nazi death camps move us to revulsion and to a judgment that may be based more on strong feelings than anything else. The image of bulldozers pushing along mounds of skeletal corpses, which shortly before had been living beings, faces teetering from the machine’s pushing -- this image drawn from ‘Night and Fog’ moves us to abject horror. It terrifies us, because we see. Such terror results from the horror of reality.
Reality apprehended by sight is always unbearable, even when that reality is beauty. We have a horror of reality, perhaps because we depend on it so. Language, even when it is realistic, allows us to escape from this terrible reality. Sight locks us up with it and obliges us to look at it. There is no way out -- except by controlling and mastering the reality.
Images fall into a pattern with respect to each other, but sounds do not. Instead, sounds contradict each other and cancel each other out. I am listening to a Mozart concerto, and suddenly near me someone speaks. Or a visitor knocks at my door. Or someone starts noisily putting away dishes and silverware. Sounds produce incoherence. The noises I hear form no panorama of the world.
Alone among all other sounds there is one that is particularly important for us: the spoken word. It ushers us into another dimension: relationship with other living beings, with persons. The Word is the particularly human sound which differentiates us from everything else. In this connection a fundamental difference between seeing and hearing is immediately apparent. In seeing, the living being is one form among many. A human being has a special shape and color, but he is included with all the rest as part of the landscape: a discrete, moving speck. When I hear speech, however, the human being becomes qualitatively different from everything else.
The spoken word, even if it involves an essential proclamation or the thought of a genius, falls into the void, passes, and disappears, if it is not heard and recovered by someone. The ocean over there, even if no one contemplates it, remains what it is and what it was. I see it, and it produces a flurry of emotions in me. I leave. I go away, but it does not. The spoken sentence has sunk into nothingness; time has gone by, and there are no "frozen words" which can make themselves heard again later.
Thus speech is basically presence. It is something alive and is never an object. It cannot be thrown before me and remain there. Once spoken, the word ceases to exist, unless I have recovered it. Before it is spoken, the word places me in an expectant situation, in a future I await eagerly. The word does not exist on its own. It continues to exist only in its effect on the one who spoke it and on the one who recovered it. The word is never an object you can turn this way and that, grasp, and preserve for tomorrow or some distant day when you may have time to deal with it. The word exists now. It is something immediate and can never be manipulated. Either it exists or it doesn’t. It makes me what I am, establishes the speaking me and the listening me, so that my role is determined by the word itself rather than by its content. For the word to become an object, someone must transform it into writing. But then it is no longer speech. Yet even in that form, it requires time.
The word is, of necessity, spoken to someone. If no one is present, it is spoken to oneself or to God. It presupposes an ear; the Great Ear, if necessary. It calls for a response. Every word, even a swearword, an insult, an exclamation, or a soliloquy, begins a dialogue. The monologue is a dialogue in the future or the past, or else it is a dialogue incorporated into a monologue. Here again, time is involved. Dialogue develops according to a variable timetable, but dialogue cannot exist unless those engaging in it are inserted into time. Language is a call, an exchange. I avoid using the threadbare term "communication." It is not true that language exists only to communicate information.
Language never belongs to the order of evident things. It is a continuous movement between hiding and revealing. It makes of the play in human relationships something even more fine and complex than it would be without language. Language exists only for, in, and by virtue of this relationship.
Dialogue involves a certain distance. We must be separated as well as different. I do not speak to a person identical to me. I must have something to say which the other lacks, but he must also be different from me. Yet similarity is required as well. When Adam sees Eve he bursts into speech. He speaks because of her and for her. She was flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone; and yet different: a dissimilar similar person. Speech fills the infinite gap that separates us. But the difference is never removed.
Discourse begins again and again because the distance between us remains. I find I must repeatedly begin speaking again to restate what I have said. The result is an inevitable, yet rich and blessed, redundancy. The word is resumed and repeated because it is never fully explicit or an exact translation of what I have to say. It is never precisely received, never precisely understood.
The word reduced to the value of an algebraic formula with only one possible meaning would be useful for us in carrying out an identical superficial activity. But such language could never create meaning, and would never produce agreement and communication with another person. "Algebraic" language could never produce -- or suggest a story. Bees communicate pieces of information to each other, but do not produce anything like history.
The word can also obstruct and impede history, when mythical language immerses us in an ahistorical time that is repetitive and continually reduced to myth. Language is either historical or ahistorical, either a discourse on action to be undertaken or of a myth to listen to. According to the sort of language used, human history either arises and becomes a significant aspect of humanity’s existence, or else it remains on the level of everyday incoherence.
With insight, meaning becomes perfectly transparent. The other person’s words become mine; I receive them in my own mind. I experience utter intellectual delight, but a delight in my whole being as well, when I understand and am understood. The Word ushers us into time.
When I say that language normally deals with Truth rather than Reality, I only mean that there are two orders of knowledge, two kinds of references we use as human beings. There are references to the concrete, experienced reality around us, and others that come from the spoken universe. The spoken universe is our invention -- something we establish and originate by our words. We derive meaning and understanding from language, and it permits us to go beyond the reality of our lives to enter another universe, which we may call phantasmic, schizophrenic, imaginary, or any other name we choose.
I am certain that since the beginning, human beings have felt a pressing need to frame for themselves something different from the verifiable universe, and we have formed it through language. This universe is what we call truth.
The important thing is that the unique value of language lies in truth. Language is not bound to reality, but to its capacity to create this different universe, which you can call surreal, meta-real, or metaphysical. For the sake of convenience we will call it the order of truth. The word is the creator, founder, and producer of truth.
When it uses a loudspeaker and crushes others with its powerful equipment, when the television set speaks, the word is no longer involved, since no dialogue is possible. What we have in these cases is machines that use language as a way of asserting themselves. Their power is magnified, but language is reduced to a useless series of sounds which inspire only reflexes and animal instincts.
How often we have come up against a blank wall instead of a face, when the other person did not want to understand! How can we make him understand as long as he persists in that attitude? In reality, language is an extraordinary occurrence in which each person’s liberty is respected. I can oppose my word to the other person’s. Or I can turn a deaf ear. I remain free as I face someone who tries to define me, encircle me, or convince me.
In other words, of necessity I give my listener a choice to make. A situation where there is choice is a situation where there is freedom. But at the same time, I invite him to use the gift of liberty inherent in language, just as I have. He must speak in turn, consciously making use of his freedom. I invite him to start down the difficult road of self-knowledge and self-expression, of choice, self-exposure, and unveiling.
Language always involves the exercise of freedom. It is never mechanical, just as it is not an object! Subtle structural linguistic analyses are of course limited to texts; that is, to finite, fixed words rather than open-ended ones. Such analyses seem to account for everything…But they overlook one thing. Once the languages and lexicons, rhetorics, discourses, and narratives have been stripped of their mystery, one thing is left: language itself. It remains because it is history, and such linguistic analysis excludes history.
This is its second characteristic. The paradox, let us remember, is something situated beside or outside the doxa (opinion). The paradox is free of all doxa, but at the same time calls the doxa into question. Roland Barthes is right in showing that "the real instrument of censorship is the endoxa rather than the police."
Our civilization’s major temptation (a problem that comes from technique’s preponderant influence) is to confuse reality with truth. We are made to believe that reality is truth: the only truth. At the time of the controversy over universals, the realists believed that only truth is real. We have inverted the terms, believing that everything is limited to reality. We think that truth is contained within reality and expressed by it. Nothing more. Moreover, there is nothing left beyond reality any more. Nothing is Other; the Wholly Other no longer exists. Everything is reduced to this verifiable reality which is scientifically measurable and pragmatically modifiable. Praxis becomes the measure of all truth. Truth becomes limited to something that falls short of real truth. It is something that can be acted upon. The Word is related only to Truth. The image is related only to reality.
Of course, the word can also refer to reality! It can be perfectly pragmatic, used to command an action or to describe a factual situation. The word enters the world of concrete objects and refers to experiences of reality. It is the means of communication in everyday life, and as a result it fits precisely with all of reality. It conveys information about reality and takes part in the understanding of it. It can even create reality, producing effects that will become part of reality. Thus the word is ambivalent. But its specificity lies in the domain of truth, since this domain is not shared with anything else.
On the contrary, the image cannot leave the domain of reality. It is not ambivalent. At this point I can hear someone tempted to ask: "What is Truth?" I will carefully avoid answering by suggesting some specific content for the word. Such an answer would be challenged immediately, involving us in a long digression which would exceed my capacity. Without attempting this sort of definition, I can show what the object of truth can be, and this will serve to distinguish it clearly from reality. The very questions asked about truth can indicate its nature, replacing the answer that cannot be given. We can grant, then, that anything concerned with the ultimate destination of a human being belongs to the domain of Truth.
It does not matter if one can answer or not, nor does it matter whether the answer is personal or is objectified as philosophy or revelation. But when a person asks about his own life (consciously or unconsciously), then the real question of truth has been asked. And when anyone claims to have resolved it, he is lying.
When he tries to answer this question within the framework of reality alone, he has no answer to offer.
An individual can ask the question of truth and attempt to answer it only through language. The image, on the other hand, belongs to the domain of reality. It can in no way convey anything at all about the order of truth. It never grasps anything but an appearance or outward behavior. It is unable to convey a spiritual experience, a requirement of justice, a testimony to the deepest feelings of a person, or to bear witness to the truth. In all these areas the image will rely on a form. Images can convey a rite, and thus people have a tendency to confuse religious truth with religious rites.
An image can catch a psychological expression on someone’s face: ecstasy, for example. People will believe that they are seeing authentic faith, whereas all they have is a psychological state that can be utterly unrelated to faith. Such a state can be induced by a drug, for example. Faced with such a problem, those who identify reality with truth are so monumentally confused that they deny faith because a psychological state can be artificially induced! An image can show a body’s position, as in a photograph of clasped hands and bowed head, seeming to say that this is prayer. But in reality, no prayer is involved in this image; it could be only a joke. Even when no one is joking, an image is incapable of expressing the seriousness of truth.
…An image can report miracles, but only recorded miracles -- after they have taken place and grace has departed. The image can never penetrate as far as the holy place where the Word proclaims that an individual has become a new creation. The miracle is an expression of this new creation. No image is able to convey any truth at all. This explains in partly why all "spiritual" films are failures. When we insist on expressing spiritual matters this way through images, something other than truth is always perceived. Even more serious and alarming, truth tends to disappear behind all the lighting and makeup. It tends to vanish when squelched by images.
Our generation is characterized by the exclusive preeminence of reality, both at the factual level and in our preoccupations. We are moved in this direction by the marvels of technique, the prevailing tone of our time, the great concern about economic matters, etc. Our era is further characterized by an absolute identification of reality with truth. Marxism has prevailed absolutely in this matter, and science has finally convinced people that the only possible truth consists in knowing reality, and that the proof of truth is success relative to reality. Thus in the thinking of modern individuals the image is the means par excellence which communicates reality and truth at the same time.
This attitude concerning images can be held only if one confuses reality and truth to begin with, believing that a scientific hypothesis is true when it is confirmed by experiments. Such a hypothesis has nothing to do with truth, and is merely accurate. Of course, this preeminence of reality and this confusion coincide with the universal belief in the "fact," taken to be of ultimate value.
The image is an admirable tool for understanding reality. A documentary film of a riot enables us to penetrate the world of anger better than any speech could. But an image is explosive only if the spectator knows what it represents and if it is taken for what it is: a faithful representation of reality. An image becomes falsehood and illusion as soon as a person tries to see truth in it. At that moment, by means of an amazing reversal, the image loses all its explosive power.
When the image is understood to speak only of reality, however, it is explosive and terrible. At this point we discover a new problem. images in our society are always the product of a mechanical technique. Technique is truly an intermediary, since the universe of images is established for us by technique. But this is the equivalent of saying that we find ourselves in the presence of an artificial world, made by an outside force with artificial means. Therefore it is important to realize that stark reality is never conveyed to us in this universe of images. Instead we find a more or less arbitrary construction or reconstruction, with the result that we must constantly remind ourselves of the ambiguity behind the apparent objectivity of the image: it expresses a reality, but of necessity it presents us with an artifice. In this sense the image is deceptive: it passes itself off as reality when it is artifice; it pretends to be unilateral truth when it is a reflection of something that cannot be truth.

FOR WINDOWS & MACOS BROWSERS:

I look out in front of me, and perceive the sea lit up out to the horizon. I look around me: to my left and right, I see the limitless straight line of the beach, and behind it, the dunes -- all in space. With my gaze I make the space my own. The objects are clear and plain. I see the wind bend over to the ground, the reeds that keep the dunes in place.
I am at the center of this universe by means of my gaze, which sweeps across this space and lets me know everything in it. By combining these images of reality, I grasp it as a whole, and become a part of it as a result of my looking.
My sight constructs a universe for me. It reveals to me a directly perceivable reality composed of colorful, simple, harmonious images. But it also furnishes me with more subtle materials. I learn to read my brother’s or my enemy’s face. Transmitted images are superimposed on one another, and as a result, I now know that a given image belongs within a particular context of reality. It conjures up another image; I anticipate what I am going to see, but what is coming will in any case be located in space and will constitute part of reality -- deeper and hidden, in a sense, but still reality.
Such information is precise and pinpointed, and deals only with reality. Nothing else, no other dimension, is ever involved. …Sight has made me the center of the world because it situates me at the point from which I see everything, and causes me to see things relative to this point. My vision makes a circular sweep of space, working from this point: my point of view. But now I am tempted, as the center of the world, to act on this spectacle and transform this setting. What was missing in my vision was someone to act, and I am available.
Sight moves to action at the same time that it serves as the means of action. Again, without it, how could I act, since I wouldn’t even know what my hand was touching or what was within my reach? …I am a subject, not separated from what I look at. Rather, what I see becomes a part of me, as my action involves me in what I see. Images both permit and condition my action; they are always imperative. I lean out the window and look searchingly into the emptiness. Images of distance and depth thrust themselves on my consciousness. I know I mustn’t lean out any further.
The image defines and marks the boundaries of my action. The image does not induce my action, but establishes its conditions and possibilities. Without visual images my action is definitely blind, incoherent, and uncertain. Sight conveys certainties and pieces of information to me, as we have said. Such information is reliable. I perceive a gray ocean and an overcast skyline. This is unquestionable. The reality around me is a certainty in which I can be confident. It is neither incoherent nor deformed. I know, of course, that this is also something learned; there are no data coming directly from the senses, and the shapes and colors and distances I apprehend are perceptible to me because I learned them. My culture has furnished me with the very images I see. But however important this may be (and we must not push this idea too far!), it is still true that I see.
What a dreadful uneasiness takes hold of us when reality is submerged in fog…sight fails to furnish me with clear images and I can no longer act. The world loses its midpoint. It is off center because I cannot see it anymore. The center could be anywhere, but it is no longer located where I am.
In order for my sight to mislead me concerning reality, there must be some unusual phenomenon, like a mirage. The image is not ambiguous. This peach I am looking at is red and weighs heavily on the bending branch. This is absolutely certain. But the image is insignificant. It has no meaning in itself and must be interpreted. In the case of a fruit ripe for picking, the visual image gives me indisputable information, but if I stop there, nothing will happen. It must therefore be interpreted. In order to move from the vision of the fruit to "I should pick it" or "It can be picked," there must be an interpretation: an attribution of meaning to these real images of reality.
Another dimension must be added to sight: interpretation will come through speech. Thus the image contains within itself a deep contradiction. It is not ambiguous: it is coherent, reliable, and inclusive; but it is insignificant. It can have innumerable meanings, depending on culture, learning, or the intervention of some other dimension. For this reason I must learn to see, before looking at the image.
After seeing it, I must learn to interpret it. The image is clear, but this clarity does not imply certainty or comprehension. My certainty is limited to this directly perceived reality that my sight reveals to me. Nothing beyond that.
I call these images "vision" because they are connected with the other images I am accustomed to. I would be tempted to say in this case that the order is reversed. The visual image exists, and then I attribute a meaning to it; but the vision appears only as the illustration of a previously established meaning. No matter how insignificant it may be, the visual image is always rigorous, imperative, and irreversible. I saw what I saw. I cannot change the reality which is conveyed to me in this way, except through my action. There is no ambiguity at this point. Nor is there reversibility.
If I had only one "view" of my universe, I would be a participant in a totality which would be both terribly coherent and yet at the same time composed of fragments without any necessary relationship. The totality would be like a cloud of irrational dots which can form only the framework of an action, a change in the relationships between the points. But the cloud of dots cannot be used for understanding anything, because this pointillism of images is space but not duration. The image is present. It is only a presence. It bears witness to something "already there": the object I see was there before I opened my eyes.
I have a point of view, a location from which I see things, but it is situated within what I see and inseparable from it. Wherever I place myself, however I shift my position, I remain in the field of vision, I remain in the middle of what I see. I can never take my distance, act as if I were not present, or even begin to think independently of what I see.
At night, when I cannot see, a certain distance is established. This explains why the day’s events become so painful at night: the distance between me and the world around me allows for reflection and meditation. A flood of images overwhelms me, beckons me, and carries me along: an image I have seen follows immediately after the one I have just dismissed from my mind. I can never stop this movement of reality in space. I can never consider a given image like a diamond or a painting from which I can take my distance in order to be "myself," instead of being overwhelmed by the images composed of dots.
The image prevents me from taking my distance. And if I cannot establish a certain distance, I can neither judge nor criticize. Of course, I also feel pleasure or displeasure in what I see. I can find it beautiful or ugly. But this is not a critical process. No judgment is involved. Furthermore, what possible criticism or judgment can we make with respect to space and reality? In spite of the frailty we have all observed in a person’s testimony about what he has seen, everyone has the same certainty about anything he has seen. He has seen reality.
Sight involves a relationship with reality as established in space. It is an artificial construction. Medusa’s head transfixes whoever gazes at her. Whoever looks at the scenes on the shields of the Iliad is terror stricken. Sight introduces us to an unbearable shock. Reality when seen inspires horror. Terror is always visual. Horror stories play only on our visual sense and suggest representation.
In contrast, the spoken word can involve us in mystery or drama. It places us in situations of conflict and makes us conscious of tragedy. But it is never on its own terrifying or stupefying. We are dazed by sight -- by an image or a vision. The word takes us to the edge of terror only when descriptive and painting extremely precise images. Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories are an example. All the descriptions we have heard of Nazi death camps move us to revulsion and to a judgment that may be based more on strong feelings than anything else. The image of bulldozers pushing along mounds of skeletal corpses, which shortly before had been living beings, faces teetering from the machine’s pushing -- this image drawn from ‘Night and Fog’ moves us to abject horror. It terrifies us, because we see. Such terror results from the horror of reality.
Reality apprehended by sight is always unbearable, even when that reality is beauty. We have a horror of reality, perhaps because we depend on it so. Language, even when it is realistic, allows us to escape from this terrible reality. Sight locks us up with it and obliges us to look at it. There is no way out -- except by controlling and mastering the reality.
Images fall into a pattern with respect to each other, but sounds do not. Instead, sounds contradict each other and cancel each other out. I am listening to a Mozart concerto, and suddenly near me someone speaks. Or a visitor knocks at my door. Or someone starts noisily putting away dishes and silverware. Sounds produce incoherence. The noises I hear form no panorama of the world.
Alone among all other sounds there is one that is particularly important for us: the spoken word. It ushers us into another dimension: relationship with other living beings, with persons. The Word is the particularly human sound which differentiates us from everything else. In this connection a fundamental difference between seeing and hearing is immediately apparent. In seeing, the living being is one form among many. A human being has a special shape and color, but he is included with all the rest as part of the landscape: a discrete, moving speck. When I hear speech, however, the human being becomes qualitatively different from everything else.
The spoken word, even if it involves an essential proclamation or the thought of a genius, falls into the void, passes, and disappears, if it is not heard and recovered by someone. The ocean over there, even if no one contemplates it, remains what it is and what it was. I see it, and it produces a flurry of emotions in me. I leave. I go away, but it does not. The spoken sentence has sunk into nothingness; time has gone by, and there are no "frozen words" which can make themselves heard again later.
Thus speech is basically presence. It is something alive and is never an object. It cannot be thrown before me and remain there. Once spoken, the word ceases to exist, unless I have recovered it. Before it is spoken, the word places me in an expectant situation, in a future I await eagerly. The word does not exist on its own. It continues to exist only in its effect on the one who spoke it and on the one who recovered it. The word is never an object you can turn this way and that, grasp, and preserve for tomorrow or some distant day when you may have time to deal with it. The word exists now. It is something immediate and can never be manipulated. Either it exists or it doesn’t. It makes me what I am, establishes the speaking me and the listening me, so that my role is determined by the word itself rather than by its content. For the word to become an object, someone must transform it into writing. But then it is no longer speech. Yet even in that form, it requires time.
The word is, of necessity, spoken to someone. If no one is present, it is spoken to oneself or to God. It presupposes an ear; the Great Ear, if necessary. It calls for a response. Every word, even a swearword, an insult, an exclamation, or a soliloquy, begins a dialogue. The monologue is a dialogue in the future or the past, or else it is a dialogue incorporated into a monologue. Here again, time is involved. Dialogue develops according to a variable timetable, but dialogue cannot exist unless those engaging in it are inserted into time. Language is a call, an exchange. I avoid using the threadbare term "communication." It is not true that language exists only to communicate information.
Language never belongs to the order of evident things. It is a continuous movement between hiding and revealing. It makes of the play in human relationships something even more fine and complex than it would be without language. Language exists only for, in, and by virtue of this relationship.
Dialogue involves a certain distance. We must be separated as well as different. I do not speak to a person identical to me. I must have something to say which the other lacks, but he must also be different from me. Yet similarity is required as well. When Adam sees Eve he bursts into speech. He speaks because of her and for her. She was flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone; and yet different: a dissimilar similar person. Speech fills the infinite gap that separates us. But the difference is never removed.
Discourse begins again and again because the distance between us remains. I find I must repeatedly begin speaking again to restate what I have said. The result is an inevitable, yet rich and blessed, redundancy. The word is resumed and repeated because it is never fully explicit or an exact translation of what I have to say. It is never precisely received, never precisely understood.
The word reduced to the value of an algebraic formula with only one possible meaning would be useful for us in carrying out an identical superficial activity. But such language could never create meaning, and would never produce agreement and communication with another person. "Algebraic" language could never produce -- or suggest a story. Bees communicate pieces of information to each other, but do not produce anything like history.
The word can also obstruct and impede history, when mythical language immerses us in an ahistorical time that is repetitive and continually reduced to myth. Language is either historical or ahistorical, either a discourse on action to be undertaken or of a myth to listen to. According to the sort of language used, human history either arises and becomes a significant aspect of humanity’s existence, or else it remains on the level of everyday incoherence.
With insight, meaning becomes perfectly transparent. The other person’s words become mine; I receive them in my own mind. I experience utter intellectual delight, but a delight in my whole being as well, when I understand and am understood. The Word ushers us into time.
When I say that language normally deals with Truth rather than Reality, I only mean that there are two orders of knowledge, two kinds of references we use as human beings. There are references to the concrete, experienced reality around us, and others that come from the spoken universe. The spoken universe is our invention -- something we establish and originate by our words. We derive meaning and understanding from language, and it permits us to go beyond the reality of our lives to enter another universe, which we may call phantasmic, schizophrenic, imaginary, or any other name we choose.
I am certain that since the beginning, human beings have felt a pressing need to frame for themselves something different from the verifiable universe, and we have formed it through language. This universe is what we call truth.
The important thing is that the unique value of language lies in truth. Language is not bound to reality, but to its capacity to create this different universe, which you can call surreal, meta-real, or metaphysical. For the sake of convenience we will call it the order of truth. The word is the creator, founder, and producer of truth.
When it uses a loudspeaker and crushes others with its powerful equipment, when the television set speaks, the word is no longer involved, since no dialogue is possible. What we have in these cases is machines that use language as a way of asserting themselves. Their power is magnified, but language is reduced to a useless series of sounds which inspire only reflexes and animal instincts.
How often we have come up against a blank wall instead of a face, when the other person did not want to understand! How can we make him understand as long as he persists in that attitude? In reality, language is an extraordinary occurrence in which each person’s liberty is respected. I can oppose my word to the other person’s. Or I can turn a deaf ear. I remain free as I face someone who tries to define me, encircle me, or convince me.
In other words, of necessity I give my listener a choice to make. A situation where there is choice is a situation where there is freedom. But at the same time, I invite him to use the gift of liberty inherent in language, just as I have. He must speak in turn, consciously making use of his freedom. I invite him to start down the difficult road of self-knowledge and self-expression, of choice, self-exposure, and unveiling.
Language always involves the exercise of freedom. It is never mechanical, just as it is not an object! Subtle structural linguistic analyses are of course limited to texts; that is, to finite, fixed words rather than open-ended ones. Such analyses seem to account for everything…But they overlook one thing. Once the languages and lexicons, rhetorics, discourses, and narratives have been stripped of their mystery, one thing is left: language itself. It remains because it is history, and such linguistic analysis excludes history.
This is its second characteristic. The paradox, let us remember, is something situated beside or outside the doxa (opinion). The paradox is free of all doxa, but at the same time calls the doxa into question. Roland Barthes is right in showing that "the real instrument of censorship is the endoxa rather than the police."
Our civilization’s major temptation (a problem that comes from technique’s preponderant influence) is to confuse reality with truth. We are made to believe that reality is truth: the only truth. At the time of the controversy over universals, the realists believed that only truth is real. We have inverted the terms, believing that everything is limited to reality. We think that truth is contained within reality and expressed by it. Nothing more. Moreover, there is nothing left beyond reality any more. Nothing is Other; the Wholly Other no longer exists. Everything is reduced to this verifiable reality which is scientifically measurable and pragmatically modifiable. Praxis becomes the measure of all truth. Truth becomes limited to something that falls short of real truth. It is something that can be acted upon. The Word is related only to Truth. The image is related only to reality.
Of course, the word can also refer to reality! It can be perfectly pragmatic, used to command an action or to describe a factual situation. The word enters the world of concrete objects and refers to experiences of reality. It is the means of communication in everyday life, and as a result it fits precisely with all of reality. It conveys information about reality and takes part in the understanding of it. It can even create reality, producing effects that will become part of reality. Thus the word is ambivalent. But its specificity lies in the domain of truth, since this domain is not shared with anything else.
On the contrary, the image cannot leave the domain of reality. It is not ambivalent. At this point I can hear someone tempted to ask: "What is Truth?" I will carefully avoid answering by suggesting some specific content for the word. Such an answer would be challenged immediately, involving us in a long digression which would exceed my capacity. Without attempting this sort of definition, I can show what the object of truth can be, and this will serve to distinguish it clearly from reality. The very questions asked about truth can indicate its nature, replacing the answer that cannot be given. We can grant, then, that anything concerned with the ultimate destination of a human being belongs to the domain of Truth.
It does not matter if one can answer or not, nor does it matter whether the answer is personal or is objectified as philosophy or revelation. But when a person asks about his own life (consciously or unconsciously), then the real question of truth has been asked. And when anyone claims to have resolved it, he is lying.
When he tries to answer this question within the framework of reality alone, he has no answer to offer.
An individual can ask the question of truth and attempt to answer it only through language. The image, on the other hand, belongs to the domain of reality. It can in no way convey anything at all about the order of truth. It never grasps anything but an appearance or outward behavior. It is unable to convey a spiritual experience, a requirement of justice, a testimony to the deepest feelings of a person, or to bear witness to the truth. In all these areas the image will rely on a form. Images can convey a rite, and thus people have a tendency to confuse religious truth with religious rites.
An image can catch a psychological expression on someone’s face: ecstasy, for example. People will believe that they are seeing authentic faith, whereas all they have is a psychological state that can be utterly unrelated to faith. Such a state can be induced by a drug, for example. Faced with such a problem, those who identify reality with truth are so monumentally confused that they deny faith because a psychological state can be artificially induced! An image can show a body’s position, as in a photograph of clasped hands and bowed head, seeming to say that this is prayer. But in reality, no prayer is involved in this image; it could be only a joke. Even when no one is joking, an image is incapable of expressing the seriousness of truth.
…An image can report miracles, but only recorded miracles -- after they have taken place and grace has departed. The image can never penetrate as far as the holy place where the Word proclaims that an individual has become a new creation. The miracle is an expression of this new creation. No image is able to convey any truth at all. This explains in partly why all "spiritual" films are failures. When we insist on expressing spiritual matters this way through images, something other than truth is always perceived. Even more serious and alarming, truth tends to disappear behind all the lighting and makeup. It tends to vanish when squelched by images.
Our generation is characterized by the exclusive preeminence of reality, both at the factual level and in our preoccupations. We are moved in this direction by the marvels of technique, the prevailing tone of our time, the great concern about economic matters, etc. Our era is further characterized by an absolute identification of reality with truth. Marxism has prevailed absolutely in this matter, and science has finally convinced people that the only possible truth consists in knowing reality, and that the proof of truth is success relative to reality. Thus in the thinking of modern individuals the image is the means par excellence which communicates reality and truth at the same time.
This attitude concerning images can be held only if one confuses reality and truth to begin with, believing that a scientific hypothesis is true when it is confirmed by experiments. Such a hypothesis has nothing to do with truth, and is merely accurate. Of course, this preeminence of reality and this confusion coincide with the universal belief in the "fact," taken to be of ultimate value.
The image is an admirable tool for understanding reality. A documentary film of a riot enables us to penetrate the world of anger better than any speech could. But an image is explosive only if the spectator knows what it represents and if it is taken for what it is: a faithful representation of reality. An image becomes falsehood and illusion as soon as a person tries to see truth in it. At that moment, by means of an amazing reversal, the image loses all its explosive power.
When the image is understood to speak only of reality, however, it is explosive and terrible. At this point we discover a new problem. images in our society are always the product of a mechanical technique. Technique is truly an intermediary, since the universe of images is established for us by technique. But this is the equivalent of saying that we find ourselves in the presence of an artificial world, made by an outside force with artificial means. Therefore it is important to realize that stark reality is never conveyed to us in this universe of images. Instead we find a more or less arbitrary construction or reconstruction, with the result that we must constantly remind ourselves of the ambiguity behind the apparent objectivity of the image: it expresses a reality, but of necessity it presents us with an artifice. In this sense the image is deceptive: it passes itself off as reality when it is artifice; it pretends to be unilateral truth when it is a reflection of something that cannot be truth.

1. A concrete sidewalk running around the side and back of the house has dropped ~4", causing the downspouts to dump ONTO the concrete and foundation wall instead of into drains that go under the sidewalk. I need the downspouts extended.
2. The sidewalk also pulled away from the foundation wall as it fell, opening a 1/4" gap. There's a woody plant growing there in at least one spot now ... This needs to be sealed up with caulk of some kind.
3. The garage has lifted 1.5" in some places and dropped 3" in others, has multiple 8-foot 1/2"-wide cracks, and water pools in a "bowl" in the center. This needs to be removed and re-poured with appropriate compacted fill.
4. The sidewalk terminates behind the house where the steps from the back deck go down to the lawn. The furthest end of this sidewalk has a severe slope back toward the foundation supporting the deck, and it's twisting the sidewalk down so it has the wrong slope ~15" back from where it terminates. This either needs concrete lifting for the whole sidewalk, or for the part with negative slope (and accept the tripping hazard where the lifting stops), or removal and re-pour with appropriate compaction.
5. The furthest end of the sidewalk has also dropped an inch or so, which leaves the steps down from the back deck unsupported and slanted downward (a little treacherous for walking on when wet). Lifting the concrete can support the steps, BUT to get the grade on the concrete right I have to cut ~1/2" off the bottom of the steps. So I need a carpenter?
6. There's a leak in the gutter where it reaches a corner, right above the entrance to the house. This creates a 12"-wide ice sheet delivery drivers have to step over to drop packages at my door.
7. My basement sump pump runs more often than any of my neighbors'. It has excavated a 3" deep and 16" diameter hole in my front lawn, and covers the sidewalk with a 6-foot wide patch of water 24/7 (only my house has this problem, among the ~40 I see on my twice-daily walk with the dog).* This needs to be routed into a new underground drain that distributes the water better for absorbtion.
8. What's supposed to be an even grade down to a valley between my house and the neighbor's and then down to the road is now undulating forming little pools of water. This needs the existing surface removed (rocks with some fabric underneath), fill added and compacted, and then the surface rebuilt.

• How would you all prioritize the issues above?
• Is it normal to spend $30-40k dealing with construction issues on a nearly-new house?
• Is there something I can Google ("general contractor"?) to find one person who can do all this stuff, or do I need to hire a separate specialist for each job?
• Do I need to hire an engineer to spec out the fixes and then get quotes to meet that spec, or should I ask the contractor / vendor to both design the fixes and give me quotes?