* From: Sandwichman
We're almost on the same track here, but with a paradox about the status of what you call "symbols". The paradox is what came first, producing symbols or comprehending them. I think Benjamin's intuition was correct when he defined mimetic behavior as "To read what was never written. Such reading is the most ancient: before all languages, from the entrails, the stars or dances." That is to say, between imitation and the symbol must lie a transitional form that is at once BOTH imitation and symbol, medium and message, at once. That form is rhythm. ^^^^^ CB: The Benjamin idea sounds like _objects trouves_. Yes, the transitional forms still exist. A representational painting or drawing is both symbolic ( it represents something it is not; the paint is not the thing represented in the painting) _and_ imitational: it looks _like_ the thing it represents or imitates it. Writing is fully symbolic in that , for example, the letters "d-o-g" absolutely do _not_ imitate what they represent. The ancient paintings found on cave walls are both imitational and symbolic. As to rhythm, that makes me think of drums and smoke signals for communication across wide distances. It makes me think of the greater centrality of music to all around life in many fundamental African societies ( taped lecture by Angela Davis). ^^^^^^ In important respects, our notions about "theology" are anachronistic. Theology was a response to scripture, which in turn was a collation and codification of liturgical traditions, that were an institutionalization of rites. "In the beginning," as Goethe has Dr. Faust deduce, was not the word but the deed. In pre-scriptural religious ritual, I would suggest we already have something abstracted from a more primordial concrete behaviour: an undifferentiated rhythmic performance that contained aspects that would only later distill out on the one side as labor and on the other as ecstatic dance ritual (or proto-religion). ^^^^^ CB: Actually, I'm saying that the Bible got it right on "in the beginning was the word,". Human society begins with words and symbols. Some might think that's idealist. I don't think that Engels "materialism vs idealism" is pertinent until we get to class society, way, way after "the beginning". And anyway, symbolling gave humans a big material adapative advantage. ^^^^^^ We need to make a great effort to resist what might be called, cheekily, "anachropomorphism" -- the tendency to talk about evolutionary events and processes as if they started with an idea, proceeded to a plan, which was then implemented by a cadre of trained officials. -- Sandwichman ^^^^^^ CB: Recall that Marx differentiated the labor of the human and the spider and bee , or whatever, by the fact that the human builds in imagination first, i.e. plans. We can add that that "imagination" is socially , not individually, generated. It is not a Robinsonade. It is cultural, socio-historical.
