Daimys – Response to Felt Sense

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#709

While I have a million things running through my mind for this response, I want to focus on the impasses that postmodernism presents.

For postmodernism, I don’t think any of the things that are mentioned present a problem for felt sense. If anything, I feel like it makes the argument for felt sense stronger. On page 57 it states “Rather than our speaking language, postmodern theorists tell us that language speaks us, or in other words, that we are constructed by language, history, and culture”. And that this becomes a trap for us, but I see it as the opposite. It is not that we are trapped in it, it is that we don’t ever have full control over it. If we could fully control it, there would be no need for felt sense, to study our body and ourself for meaning to come, because it would be there. If we could fully manipulate it, it would simply be a tool that is able to transfer meaning 100%. It is because language works us that we are able to play in it. And I don’t think it means that everything has been said, but that what has been said can always be reconfigured – even exactly the same way in a different context to mean a different thing. The fact that we wait for the right word, for me, means that language speaks us, and not the other way around. The word is there, on the edge of consciousness, waiting to be brought forth.
I don’t think postmoderns deny newness, I think that’s all it is, always. It’s not that things mean nothing, it is that things mean no-thing.

[Anonymous]

#710

Daimys,

You write:

“It is not that we are trapped in it, it is that we don’t ever have full control over it. If we could fully control it, there would be no need for felt sense, to study our body and ourself for meaning to come, because it would be there.”

I find this a very interesting way of looking at it, and find myself agreeing with the idea that we never have full control of it–and that if we could control it, there would be no need for this concept of felt sense. I think humans naturally feel the control over their body, and their thoughts, that they forget the processes that they are actually guided by. You’re right, we aren’t trapped in it. Instead, I think it is trapped in us–but without our control. Trapped in us with no language, which is why it is so powerful when it finds a way to show itself.

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