In the beginning was not the state

"Language and, presumably, literature are things that are more ancient and inevitable, more durable than any form of social organization. The revulsion, irony, or indifference often expressed by literature towards the state is essentially a reaction of the permanent - better yet, the infinite - against the temporary, against the finite." - Joseph Brodsky

A poet like Joseph Brodsky is a witness that the language is not easy to be domesticated. Brodsky received the Nobel Prize in 1987, umpteen dozen years after he was regarded as a parasite communities' by the Soviet Union government, and he was into psychiatric hospital clinic and then detained in a Leningrad prison, and then sent to forced labor in the Arkhangelsk region, and then in 1972 he was exiled abroad.

He received a high award for literature. It is a proof that literature is language symptoms that can't be framed, and that the language itself is a stream that can't be reached by powers from outside himself, particularly the state power. "Language," Brodsky said, "is more able to mutations."

Every time we talk about the relationship between language and power, we will be caught by the 'mutation'. That's why some of the premise is worth  to reissue, as in this statement:

In regard to language as a social home that creates and process the meaning, language always is inseparable from the question of power. Power is understood not merely as a force (political, military, economic, cultural, or religious) but also as a social regulator. In this sense, power is not only creating the meaning from every sector of life, with language as a place to hold them, but power is also set how the meaning should be developed, shared, and disseminated.

The state is the largest producer of meaning for a modern society because the state replaces the traditional power structures and transforming into many forms, many ways, and a variety of expressions. In relation to the creation of meaning by the state, with language as the functionary of meaning, then the attempts to reveal the full language requires effort to explore the extent to which the power to make the language as home.

There are two implicit assumptions in the paragraph. First: that power is present on the outside of the language, (referred to as a 'force' which may be 'political, military, economic, cultural, or religious'), while the language is a place to receive a passive meaning ('place to accommodate' or 'functionary of meaning' or something formed).

Second: that one of the power form -- which identified as 'State' -- is something coherent, especially in the 'creation of meaning'. There is a 'presumption of coherence' which I consider it is important to be explored.

"People talk because the symbol has made him man". The sentence comes from Lacan. His psychoanalysis gives important contribution in discussions about language and power. In the psychoanalysis, the children grow through the 'mirror stage'. This stage took place when they were aged between 6 and 18 months. They can't talk and can not control their motor skills to be able to recognize themselves in the mirror. They still have to see the faces there as themselves, other than as just a reflected image. But then language guide them to call them as themselves, and their 'I' is formed. 'I' become a coherent and stable identity.

All take place in the socio-political level. But Lacan believed that language was the 'symbolic order'. There is another layer, -- namely the unconscious -- which have another language. The language of 'desire' that wants me back in the state before I caught and rooted in social framework, which wants me to go back to the state in mom's womb before my world governed by daddy's symbolic layout.

Starting from the same premise with Lacan, Julia Kristeva came up with a further study. She suggested that the dynamics in symbolic order has actually been started since being in the physical elements of ourselves. Dynamics was something pre-symbolic. In the language, according to Kristeva, the body was instrumental in building and facilitated the 'symbolic order' - and it was the maternal body, the mother's body. In his psychoanalysis, Lacan tends to talk about 'passion' as something that has been reworded. For him, what can not be reworded is unconscious, an area that can't be known, le Riel. But for Kristeva, Lacan thus has changed the 'desire' which its base is body becomes part of or even the result of verbalization process : desire can be expressed as the meaning. Correcting it, Kristeva restored the meaning and language into the body. She introduced the notion of le sémiotique.

In semiotic articulation, body and emotions energy enter into the language. So language is revealing something extra verbal. Or more precisely, the verbal articulation closely fused with the body in an unconscious impulse, with pent-up desire, turbulent, so that the syntax rule is often breached. Language is not only a marker interactions. Language grows into something changing in tone and rhythm. We will see further in the poem. With and in semiotic articulation, poetry is alive.

Contrary to it is the meaning in a symbolic articulation. The modus of symbolic meaning is in a more stable level, with a transparent reference and with little ambiguity, also with syntax and grammar. This is the language of prose. The main models are the legal texts. Literature is a language world which clearly shows that the language of living in a dialectical moving continuously between semiotic and symbolic articulation. Without the symbolic, what we get is only delirium. Without the semiotic, the language will be flat, even empty, without movement, rhythm, intonation. A language without impulses, whereas every time we talk and write, the hidden impulses and desires always left their mark in the language that we use in socialization. There is always an unstable element in meaning: there is always a mutation. That's why we need to look briefly into the poetry.

Brodsky experience is an example. He was arrested and taken to court the court.

Judge : And what have you done that is valuable to the country?

Brodsky : I write poems. This is my work. I believe... I believe that I have written valuable for the people, not just now, but later.

Judge :  So, you think "what-is-called-poem" that you wrote was a boon for the country?

Brodsky : Why do you call it "what-is-called-poem"?

Judge : ... because we do not have any notion about it.

The judge asked about the "services", another word for "order". He did not immediately accept the notion of "poetry" of Brodsky. Order and meaning is to be a sure thing, and it is not determined by a poet, but by the law as part of a symbolic system. That is the power.

But as it turned out, the language -- especially poetry -- can't be controlled. Brodsky's poems (and others) can't be tamed.
***

I wish you were here, dear,
I wish you were here.

I wish you sat on the sofa

and I sat near.

the handkerchief could be yours,
the tear could be mine, chin-bound.
Though it could be, of course,
the other way around.

I wish you were here, dear,
I wish you were here.
I wish we were in my car,
and you'd shift the gear.
we'd find ourselves elsewhere,
on an unknown shore.
Or else we'd repair
To where we've been before.

I wish you were here, dear,
I wish you were here.
I wish I knew no astronomy
when stars appear,
when the moon skims the water
that sighs and shifts in its slumber.
I wish it were still a quarter
to dial your number.

I wish you were here, dear,
in this hemisphere,
as I sit on the porch
sipping a beer.
It's evening, the sun is setting;
boys shout and gulls are crying.
What's the point of forgetting
If it's followed by dying?
***
Joseph Brodsky - The Song

(CZ-lacalifusa041714)