Lost Liminalists: The Incremental Violence of Language & The Monsters of Media (Wandering God 6 + Heidi Kramer)

Two podcasts that got left by the side of the runway during the skin-of-my-teeth launch to Galicia in late 2020, now available for the completionists.

Above is the sixth installment of the exploration of Morris Berman’s Wandering Gd, with Tim K., for which we are joined by Greg Desilet, the focus on Wittgenstein, Derrida, & the language of the transcendental. Some choice insights in here.

Below is a conversation with Heidi Kramer, the author of Media Monsters: Militarism, Violence, And Cruelty In Children’s Culture (available here as a PDF) on 16 Maps of Hell and her own book. Audio quality at Heidi’s end is not optimal but still well worth a listen.

7 thoughts on “Lost Liminalists: The Incremental Violence of Language & The Monsters of Media (Wandering God 6 + Heidi Kramer)”

  1. I have Mac, Linux, and Windows 7, and on each I see a download link below the first podcast player (Tim K and Desilet), but below the Heidi Kramer player there is no link. In Mac, control-click on the play/pause icon in the player does not give a download option for the file, as it does in some instances on other websites. The download link for Tim and Desilet works. Thanks!

    Reply
  2. @Wandering God pod…

    The following is partly intuitive, but I have studied Wittgenstein a wee bit 20 years ago…

    Wittgenstein: “What is your aim in philosophy? To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.”

    @1 hr 1 min…

    Greg asks: “So what counts as the fly-bottle? Is it language? Or is it some way of looking at language?”

    AFAICS, it is a way of seeing that tells the mind there is always a rational explanation for questions produced by the mind, expressible in language (“wanting to reach conclusions”). (The later) Wittgenstein believed that the only thing of value that philosophy can do is to lead us to a different way of seeing/thinking to this…

    His perspective was indeed paradoxical, but more so because it is itself a product of an analytical framework/way of seeing/thinking…
    If we change our way of seeing, having shown the fly the way out of the fly-bottle on Wittgenstein’s terms, the framework that has gotten us to where we are is in some sense dissolved (this again reminds of Martin’s scaffolding analogy). However, the paradox/potential problem with this is that this new way of seeing *arises out* of a way of seeing he is suggesting is in some sense problematic – if it is problematic, is *it* (itself) the best tool for dismantling/undermining itself? Most philosophers that have been influenced by (the later) Wittgenstein have concluded that we have no choice but to use this tool. But Wittgenstein himself had something of a different perspective around this and suspected there had to be a better tool – just that he didn’t have access to it (at least in a way he could express in words…)

    (Recently I have been wondering if that “better” tool, might be language arising out of right-brain, diffuse awareness (and potentially bodily perception, even ESP, who knows) – so metaphor, poetry, myths, fables, etc…)

    In conclusion, I think Wittgenstein was on to something, but the way he went about getting us to see things differently was flawed (although not without value). He tends to keep us in our heads and in our identities (I also suspect in some sense he was brain-washed by Russell or at least never able to escape the philosophical paradigm exemplified by Russell). He showed how analytical philosophy could be used to dissolve analytical philosophy — by incorporating a “horizontal” perspective — but he knew in his heart there had to be a better way… He said:

    “It is not by any means clear to me, that I wish for a continuation of my work by others, more than a change in the way we live, making all these questions superfluous.”

    Enter “project Galicia” and its ilk… (potentially… 😉 )

    Reply

Leave a Comment