[eDebate] objective reality vs textuality

[Deacon Xavier]

 I know there are some philosophy buffs out there! One
of my ex-debate kids (who is now a freshman in
college) Asked this question yesterday:

>>>what does it mean for objective reality to be
displaced by "textuality".  Specifically, what is
meant here by textuality.>>>

 I would appreciate any and all corrections or
clarifications regarding my reply. But here's how I
responded:

>>>This is my intuitive understanding of textuality,
not from a book, as I no longer have any. So make sure
you check my interp against literature.  Textuality,
as I understand it, is very closely related to
hermeneutics, or method of interpretation. its a
realization (not really a theory or argument at all)
that there is no objective reality, or rather that if
there is one, we can never really know it. All that we
experience, all that we know, is textualized through
our interpretation of them and the impact upon
ourselve of that which is interpreted. When I say
chair, we don't form identical pictures in our
respective minds. if we did, it could only be a
coincidence. But even if it wasn't a coincidence and
we always imagined identical chairs, colors, etc., it
would only be a signifier, an agreed upon
respesentation of a thing, based solely on its
usefulness. A chair, from our vantage point then, is
only what it does for us. This is the heart of
objectification as we are use to thinking about it.
But objectification goes beyond identifying things in
accordence with what they do or can't do for us. Our
way of interacting in the world is a constant act of
objectifying, in that we subjectively experience, we
interpret that experience, and then we abstract that
interpreted experience outward from ourselsves,
creating a duality. We do this over and over again in
very intricate, complex, multilayered, multifaceted
manners, until it's as fine as a web, a web not unlike
the synapses of the brain.  So Morpheus was right:
reality is nothing more than electrical signals
interpreted by your brain!   This is pretty much the
very soul of PoMo.

Textuality, then, is little more than a recognition of
this process. It's seldom acknowleged to deconstruct
so far that it reveals the Matrix, but if objective
reality is being replaced by textuality, I would take
it this far. Chair only has meaning because we agree
it does. In truth, an objective chair does not exist.
We have agreed on most of our rules of interpretation,
and so we almost instinctively correlate the
similarities. But you and I have had very different
experiences of chair. each time we encounter one such
(agreed upon) object, it can influence our idea of
chair (and indeed should, as each experience has the
quality of uniqueness, and each "chair" is unique) as
much as our idea of chair influences the (agreed upon)
thing itself. On a simpler level, chair in the summer
time is not the same chair in the winter.  Chair a
second ago is not the now chair. Objective reality
extinguishes uniqueness and ambiguity by the robbing
of agency from all that we experience, interpret, and
abstract outwardly from ourselves.

So to put in a nutshell: I would consider the
displacement of objective reality by textuality
nothing short of a Post Modern Revolution of
Consciousness.>>>

Any Thoughts?









	
		
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