User:Ssstephen/Reading/the interpretation of culture

The title alone has some pretty heavy words that I will perform some exegesis on.

interpretation

According to Clifford Geertz, "[b]elieving, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning".[1] In theory, symbolic anthropology assumes that culture lies within the basis of the individuals’ interpretation of their surrounding environment, and that it does not in fact exist beyond the individuals themselves.

What does interpret mean? Also who puts a square bracket around a single letter that's insane. Loosen up papi.

I'm not sure if the individual needs to be taken fundamentally as the unit or level of interpretation. This should also make space for both subcultures (supercultures?) as thinking acting meaning-making entities as well as cognitive dissonance and vague confused or itrational concepts and opinions within supposedly in-dividuals.

can you sing to this harmony?
Can you let a quartet set you free?

This tonality doesn't disagree
Ought to be chromatically pleasing me

Skiptracing, mild high club

Maybe symbolic anthropology at the level of individual instance of a symbol. Its position within a word. It's rendering as a glyph or letterform, it's other material properties such as media involved. Is it on a page. Is it a dancemove. Why not. Who said that? What the? What the fuck? What the fuck is going on?

Interpreting is a translational activity in which one produces a first and final target-language output on the basis of a one-time exposure to an expression in a source language.

The most common two modes of interpreting are simultaneous interpreting, which is done at the time of the exposure to the source language, and consecutive interpreting, which is done at breaks to this exposure.

Interpreting is an ancient human activity which predates the invention of writing.[1] However, the origins of the profession of interpreting date back to less than a century ago.[when?][2]

How simultaneous can interpreting get? How consecutive? In the context of interpreting symbols that are being thrown around right now.

What do you mean writing malakas? Writing was given to us by Thoth. The messenger. A message is always an interpretation, there is no distinction. Readwriteinterprettranslate.

An interpretation is an assignment of meaning to the symbols of a formal language.

But in most languages the symbols are so full of meaning already, this is why I want to de-sign. Assign other meanings, take some meanings away, generally fuck with them a little and see what happens. Consign. Resign. Co-sign. @. Ok sign.

from inter "between" (see inter-) + second element probably from PIE *per- (5) "to traffic in, sell." Related: Interpreted; interpreting.

Again with the commercial roots. The proto-indo-europeans really had a society much more deeply embedded in capitalism than we do now, it must have been very difficult for them to imagine other realities.

*per- (5)
Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to traffic in, to sell," an extended sense from root *per- (1) "forward, through" via the notion of "to hand over" or "distribute."

It forms all or part of: appraise; appreciate; depreciate; interpret; praise; precious; price; pornography.

It is the hypothetical source of/evidence for its existence is provided by: Sanskrit aprata "without recompense, gratuitously;" Greek porne "prostitute," originally "bought, purchased," pernanai "to sell;" Latin pretium "reward, prize, value, worth;" Lithuanian perku "I buy."

What are you selling? Or aprata what are you giving?

How to get beyond translation? Do I want to? How to break objects beyond the ability to translate, acknowledge what is lost? Some things can never be sold, some things are beyond capital and they are safe there. We are safe here. Is there also something between but outside our interpretations, something public that is also outside language?

The per- as in hand over or distribute meaning seems to fit much better with the modern sense of interpret, how do we know it doesn't come from this sense? Oh yeah because economy defines life I keep forgetting, getting distracted by my feelings silly me.

Related words: appraise; appreciate; praise; precious; price; pornography.

culture

Culture is about giving and taking, if you believe in capital. If you believe in value. If you have any values. Luckily in this cult we don't believe in good and evil. We worship the christmother. Chrisma. How can we trade if we are one. What can you ever owe to to the uni-verse, the whole idea is nonsense. And yet we have to acknowledge the existence of both oil and water. As well as wine.

Culture as in yogurt. Culture as in low. Culture as in agar or broth. Bacterial, yeasty, fungal. I want to ferment inside of you. I want you to turn me from water into wine. Growing, evolving, organoleptically it's all getting a bit better. More sensual, more sensuous. And hopefully at the same time more sensitive, yes I think so, it's part of acknowledging bodies and organs and tissues, acknowledging lifeforms and forms of living. Together.

Contents

There are two prefaces I probably won't read them. There are five other parts, the first one has just one chapter which is the thick description bit I'm looking for. Deep play is the last chapter in the book which is nice I've already read it. Sometimes contents pages are calming, they reveal the structure of the book. There is a rational approach that through its clarity, simplification and order gives me less work to do as a reader. It is a story that guides me through the narrative.

Preface to the 2000 edition

This is the first of two prefaces in my version of this book. It explains that most the chapters on the contents page are specific or cases. This is great because now I don't have to read them.

first you write and then you figure out what you are writing about.

taste but time love me soul coffee space aah fear work meaning party passion care waste sex musick the sky fire bread with cheese windburn eye contact itching yawn butterflies spaceblanket conspiracy surf text betweenness.

we do not start of with well formed ideas... We in fact look into [some general notions] and after doing so we return to sort through our notes and memories, both of them defective, to see what we might have uncovered that clarifies anything or leads on to useful revisions of received ideas... The writing this produces is accordingly exploratory, self-questioning, and shaped more by the occasions of its production than its post hoc organisation into chaptered books and thematic monographs might suggest.

What is the benefit of fighting to keep it amorphous? Honesty and transparency about the source material. Skipping the step where the ideas are formed post hoc, leaving it to the reader to carry out this step. Without a chapter outline where is your idea, where is the thesis?

without it we are left with an assortment of vignettes and aperçus, fragments in search of a whole

Sounds ideal.

So my initial reaction to the contents page and this preface was that they drove me away from the thick content of the book. Would the book be better served without them, with a flatter or less organised hierarchy? But in that case I don't think I would have gotten this overview and the experience of zooming in that has happened from the title to here. In the end it is up to the reader to find meaning, and not totally dependant on the authors/editors/designers.

despite my initial uncertainties, the book is a book, the chapters are chapters, and the whole has a certain informing rhythm.

Structure as informing rhythm. In what way is rhythm informative, how does it tell us things? Through a feeling and a movement, through sound and repetition. Information is novelty, what is the relationship of novelty to repetition? Laminar and turbulent rhythms as ways of informing through movement.

Preface

to try to find the figure in the carpet of one's writings can be as filling as trying to find out in one's life; to weave, post facto, a figure in—"this is what I meant to say"—is an intense temptation.

I like the quote within em dashes. Like the authors voice comes through so clearly and honestly, full of intention and clarity: "this is what I meant to say". It doesn't matter why he couldn't say it before, it doesn't matter about the other things he said or says, listen—"this is what I meant to say"—and we can communicate with eachother.

an attempt...to say what I have been saying

Apart from the quote between the dashes or is hard to see beneath the surface of these few pages. They seem a little afraid, unconfident compared to the 2000 prefix. There is some confusion or self doubt. Even the quote between the dashes is so self reflexive as a sentence, the author seems aware of his intentions but unable to summarise them the way he feels he is obliged to in this situation. The cultural structure of the book, the contents page, the preface(s), the introductory chapter, they are not the work, they are not what he meant to say and they are not what he said. He tries to excuse his revisions and explain why he would rather not have said them, he is wishing for a confidence in what was done.