The Imagination of Reference II: Perceiving, Indicating, Naming

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The Imagination of Reference II : Perceiving, Indicating, Naming Morot-Sir, Edouard. University Press of Florida 0813014069 9780813014067 9780813020068 English Reference (Linguistics) , Reference (Philosophy) , Language and languages--Philosophy, Grammar, Comparative and general--Deixis, Onomasiology. 1995 P325.5.R44M67 1995eb 149/.94 Reference (Linguistics) , Reference (Philosophy) , Language and languages--Philosophy, Grammar, Comparative and general--Deixis, Onomasiology.

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The Imagination of Reference II Perceiving, Indicating, Naming Edouard Morot-Sir University Press of Florida GAINESVILLETALLAHASSEETAMPABOCA RATON PENSACOLAORLANDOMIAMIJACKSONVILLE

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Copyright 1995 by the Board of Regents of the State of Florida Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper All rights reserved 00 99 98 97 96 95 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Morot-Sir, Edouard. The imagination of reference II: perceiving, indicating, naming/Edouard Morot-Sir. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-8130-1406-9 (alk. paper) 1. Reference (Linguistics) 2. Reference (Philosophy) 3. Language and languagesPhilosophy. 4. Grammar, Comparative and generalDeixis. 5. Onomasiology. I. Title. P325.5.R44M67 1995 149'.94dc20 95-19635 The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State University System of Florida, comprised of Florida A & M University, Florida Atlantic University, Florida International University, Florida State University, University of Central Florida, University of Florida, University of North Florida, University of South Florida, and University of West Florida. University Press of Florida 15 Northwest 15th Street Gainesville, FL 32611

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Page v Contents Foreword, by Raymond Gay-Crosier

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Meditation One On Reference to Reference, On Reference to Perception 2 1. Understanding Reference 12 2. Lexico-Conceptual Analysis 19 3. Preliminary Exercises on the Problematic Experience of Perception and Reference Meditation Two Perception and Indication 27 1. Preferring, Indicating, Designating, or Any Other Equivalent 28 2. Indicating and Verb Tenses 29 3. Indicating and Example 30 4. Indicating and Meaning 32 5. Indicating and Desire 33 6. Indicating, Identifying, Seeing 36 7. Indicating Absence 38 8. Indicating Indicating 40 9. The Language of Indicating or Deixis 49 10. Summing Up 51 11. Indicating, Painting, and Literature Meditation Three The Art of Naming 55 1. Word Propriety and the Art of Naming 58 2. Marking and Naming 63 3. The Art of Naming: A Preliminary Lexical Tour 64 4. A Fregean Incursion

74 5. From Marking to Naming, from Naming to Marking 75 6. The Primacy of Naming

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Page vi Meditation Four Identity and Title, Description and Definition 87 1. Identifying as Absolute Naming and Singular Valuation 93 2. The Principle of Identity 94 3. The Principle of Individuation 96 4. Naming as Titling 98 5. Social Nominations 100 6. Scientific Nominations 105 7. The Incompleteness of Reference 108 8. Describing, Defining 119 9. The Paradox of Defining 122 10. The Russellian Theory of Description and Its Critics Meditation Five Naming, Grammatical Distinctions, and Perception 129 1. Exploring Grammatical Definitions 132 2. Verbs and Nouns 136 3. Proper Names, Common Names 143 4. Concrete Names, Abstract Names 149 5. Grammar as the Oldest Servant of Reference 152 6. Naming, Religion, and Literature 171 7. Depicting-Seeing, Voicing-Hearing 187 8. Summing Up Notes

193

Bibliography

207

Index

211

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Foreword Raymond Gay-Crosier A few months before he passed away, Edouard Morot-Sir put the finishing touches on the manuscript that would become the second volume of his Imagination of Reference sequence. During the 1993 fall semester, I had the honor and the pleasure to carry out the customary revisions, none of them of a substantive nature, of course. Apart from stylistic revisions, my editing task consisted mainly in double-checking the sources quoted and/or translated and the accuracy of bibliographic references and compiling the bibliography proper. In this I was ably assisted by Danièle Bro, who also prepared the index. Her contributions have been significant. In this dense and exquisitely erudite essay, the author returns to the philosophical starting point of his professional career, as expressed in his thèse d'état on La Pensée négative (1947). This second series of reflective analyses expands and refines the vast synthesis on the referential act, the parameters of which he presented in five tightly woven meditations in volume 1 of The Imagination of Reference (UPF; 1993). In volume 2, the author rigorously pursues his rejection of the realist and idealist temptations and paradigms proffered in positions, propositions, and conclusions by legions of philosophers. Systematically shunning the conceptual escape into what he calls the Psy-referent, the F-function, and the R-postulate, he engages in a comprehensive dialogue in the form of productive disagreements with recent key thinkers. These include philosophers, linguists, semioticians, psychologists, and cognitive scientists who have dealt, or are still dealing, with the subject of referencefrom Bergson, Saussure, Husserl, Peirce, Wittgenstein, Frege, Heidegger, Bataille, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty to Benveniste, Ricoeur, Gadamer, Greimas, R. Chisholm, A. Church, G. Evans, N. Goodman, S. Kripke, D. Marr, H. Putnam, and J. Searle. Starting from the tenets of logical calculus, Morot-Sir discusses at length the engendering power and omnipresence of negation, which he places "at the heart of language" (p. 8). Time and again, he stresses the importance of looking at language's

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referential function, not as a project to understand being, but in order to understand language "as being language" (p. 8). Without oversimplifying his approach, one could qualify it as a kind of vector analysis of referential practices. The main vectors of his examination enable him to switch from "the language of psychology to the language of language" (p. 11). Throughout, his attention is strictly focused on the linguistic modalities of these vectors as they operate on the axes of perception, conception, memory, and judgment via intuition, subjectivation, reflection, objectivation. As his summarizing scheme indicates (p. 11), these vectors function as variations of the act of reference. His conclusion is that to be is to perceive, to refer, to describe, to name, and to know, all of which are also to be seen as variations of each other. In his attempt to avoid the pitfalls of conceptual reductionism, Morot-Sir uses the same approach as in his first volume, scrutinizing the main issues pertaining to the act of reference in a string of five meditations whose amplitude progresses steadily. Central to his thought is the paradox that reference (and with it, language) can but refer to itself. Equally central is his "willif wavering at timesto remain a coherent and stubborn prisoner of language" (p. 196), that is, systematically to explore the full range of linguistic experience, the dynamics of the act of naming.

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Meditation One On Reference to Reference, on Reference to Perception At the outset of this new collection of meditations, since I am conscious of the caveats exposed through my exploration of the linguistic narthex, I intend to experience the experience of reference. Expressions such as "the nature of reference," "the essence of reference," and "the varieties of reference" should be avoided as already loaded with ontological implications. I must not forget that I decided to uncap the realist postulate, mainly in order to prohibit the refuge in the Psy-referent and not to take advantage of the facilities of the F-function, even if, or because, it is the instrument of any instrument. Let us recapitulate here the general conclusions of the Imagination of Reference: Meditating the Linguistic Condition. To become fully aware of our referential life, we must learn to think, speak, and write without the support of the three universal postulates that have dominated Western cultures for two thousand years: first, the belief in a real world independent of our mindthe R-postulate; second, the belief in a real mind that is the cause of our emotions, thoughts, and ways of expressionthe Psy-referent; third, the belief that the external world of objects as well as the internal world of subjects exist as functions, the mathematical language being the theoretical model on which all sciences are basedthe F-function. This triple and radical suspension, which pushes the phenomenological epochè to limits Husserl never considered, changes the significance of the relationship between the real and the imaginary within the experience of reference. That explains my general title, The Imagination of Reference: it means that reference by itself is the opposite of the experience of reality as understood by tradition. Reference can be called imagination insofar as it is not a representation of the world, but its valuable experience as promotions and projections. Thus, reference can be considered imaginary, but not as it is understood in the realist language of practical and scientific lives. It is the imitation of the world within the duality of the real and the imagination without which referential life would be impossible.

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In a French presentation of referential criticism (Texte, p. 11), I introduced the opposition "référent/référant" and spoke of the "Psy-référant," which should be converted into the English "Psy-referring." However, I decided to stay with my original spelling "Psy-referent'': it underscores the tendency toward mental realism, be it called idealism or spiritualism, be it conscious of itself as subject-referent contrary to referent-object. 1. Understanding Reference I am aware that during the last twenty years the mainstream of philosophical speculation was the philosophy of language but that today the mood has changed. More and more philosophers affirm that language should be considered as mental state and, subsequently, that the philosophy of language should be a part of the philosophy of mind. Such a shift suggests the passage from modern exterior realism to intellectual realism. There is a new hope of reconciling and overcoming classical realisms and idealisms, with or without the help of a model of Artificial Intelligence. That is normal scientific procedure. After all, the word mind could be used without calling for a Psy-referent! However, whatever "philosophy" can pretend to be, it will never be taken for a science. The expressions "philosophy of language" and "philosophy of mind" are very ambiguous because they presuppose the existence of beings called "language" and "mind" to which philosophy would be applied. Really, philosophy can only be the philosophy of philosophy, its referent being its reference. It is experience experiencing itself, thus referring to itself and ultimately it is reference referring to reference. Any other way of speaking and writing is science, or its pale imitations, or practical language. 1 Philosophy is not permitted to ask the question "What is reference?" Such is the price I have to pay for suspending the realist postulate, and depriving myself of the F-function. I cannot expect to write triumphantly one day "I think that, as my main referent in a meditation on language, reference is . . ." Merleau-Ponty proposed to replace the verb être with the verb ester. But he could not avoid the question: "What is the meaning of ester?" and the inevitable answer "the meaning of 'ester' is . . . ," or such bizarre phrasing as "to be is not 'to be' but 'ester,' and "'ester' is not to be, but . . ." In his fight against ontological language, Heidegger was also forced to write "Dasein is not . . . but is . . ." In spite of their open denials, both were just writing maybe better, but nevertheless post-Kantian ontologies.

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I prefer to declare that "reference" belongs to the category of the "undefinable." My understanding of reference is immediate, and prior to any other word, because all words are by themselves local and specified references, and are conceived as such. The so-called categories of mindspace, time, causality, substance, etc.are the universal specifications of reference; they help to "define" reference in each of its experiences; they are referential powers projected into worlds with qualities. The F-function makes of them functions of reference. Nevertheless, if I say ''Reference is realized through spatial, temporal, causal determinations," I do not define it. I simply show its applications. Once and for all, let us say that the linguistic and logical process of definition belongs to the universe of science. The order of scientific languages requires the relation of undefined and defined words, that is, a development from a decided beginning. A return to the beginning and a redefinition of categories announce new scientific explorations and new acquired referential powers. But let us repeat that philosophy is not science; it does not aim to change experiences into definitions. The question "How is that concept definable?" is not philosophical. Each science attempts to solve it for its own sake. On the contrary, philosophy that always stays in medias res, or, better, media verba, should never look for definitions. This is why Spinoza's Ethics will remain the admirable testimony of a language where definitions call for their negations, and of a powerful exercise in conceptual demystification. There is no need to insist anymore: a philosophy of reference that would locate reference in the domain of the undefinable would turn into a via negativa of mysticism and condemn itself to intellectual paralysis, or, as in the case of Bergson, to writing profusely about the obligation of silencing words. Modern philosophies were aware of that logical difficulty at the heart of philosophical meditations. They hoped to solve it and to overcome the risk of vicious circularity by legitimizing the circle of the defining process. To a science of things they opposed a science of interpretations named hermeneutics: 2 there is no possible meaning without circularity between potential knowledge and actual conceptualization. I understand what is already understood. Meaning could speak to me as does the Pascalian Christ: "Thou would not look for me if thou had not found me." Thus philosophy as hermeneutics would consist in putting in definite order words that are already understood in a virtual manner. In my first meditations,3 I came across the notion of virtuality and its relationship with that of the implicit. It is too easy an escape from the mystery of existential and intellectual intercommunication, and it is changing the question "How is it possible to refer to a virtual thing?"

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into its solution: "It is possible to refer to a virtual thing." Thus a philosophy of benevolent circularity does not differ from the traditional or modern philosophies of original indefinability. It is just another way to introduce indefinables in the disguise of potential meanings and with the help of the antinomy of presence/absence. I know very well that in hermeneutic analysis there is no question of defining things, but of communicating between meanings, or of meaning referring to meaning. Let us postpone the meditation on the distinction between reference and meaning. For the moment, I recognize that the hypothesis of referential circularity presupposes inevitably the postulate of the indefinability of reference. If I describe a progressive movement in referential experience and go up into wordspiraling, maybe I will better understand the life of reference in a given region. But, after piling up many words, I shall not be more advanced in the understanding of reference than I was at the beginnning of my cumulative interpretation. To change a straight line of words into a circle or spiral solves nothing, all the more since speaking about a straight line of definitions or a circle of meanings is not converting language into a straight line or a circle imitating the style of Apollinaire's Calligrammes. Works like Spinoza's Ethics, or Wittgenstein's Tractacus impose on the development of their languages the discipline and disposition of the straight lines; but it is commonly agreed that such a verbal arrangement is artificially superimposed; it is a poor mimicry of arithmetical progression without obtaining, step by step, a similar justification. In A la recherche du temps perdu Marcel Proust gave the twentieth century a perfect model of the circular narrative. Nevertheless, no reader is deceived. Without a doubt we know that the real scriptor who progresses obstinately, painfully, or joyously, from the first sentence to the last, was not living in a state of circular giddiness; his decision to write was not taken after the imaginary Guermantes's party, but much earlier, and in actual life, maybe when he was a teenager. We are also conscious of the fact that the pages forming Le Temps perdu coexist with the pages of Du côté de chez Swann. Circularity is no more than artificial presentation. It maintains together events and thoughts of an expansive universe. It secretly reinforces the formidable game of punctual and global references thanks to which the Proustian masterpiece achieves its fascinating omnipresence. Thus circularity as well as rectilinearity are convenient devices to experience and organize reference, but they cannot help the philosopher who is trying to experience the experience of reference. They do not explain how reference is present and conscious of itself either directly or by proxy. 4

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Am I again pushed into a dead-end? What issue remains open for my writing on reference if I outlaw linguistic rectitude and circularity? It could be worse than suspending the realist postulate or the Psy-referent, because it would prohibit me from putting one word beside another, be it on the right or the left, be it above or below. I would not even be permitted to write "Reference (is) reference." It would be total paralysis, much more radical than the vow of silence taken by the Trappist monks who manage to keep a nonverbal language made up of very telling gestures and looks. At this point of high tension and the threat that my writing might reach a standstill, let us relax by recounting a story in the style of Borges. Our modern university libraries institute a cultural and cosmic circular system within buildings that follow Euclidian geometry and its priority given to the right angle, although a spiraling library in the style of Frank Lloyd Wright is not inconceivable. Libraries store references, which in turn are put at the disposal of all kinds of students and researchers. A book, as a referential totalization, is like the Sleeping Beauty waiting for Prince Charming and indefinite reawakenings. The library, as a repository of books, refers to a university as a whole, which in turn refers itself to the diverse aspects of a society, which in turn refers to other societies and to the world at large and its expansion. Within its walls with closed windows, the library lives, breathes, and functions today only with the support of an analytical and computerized catalogue, in which each entry refers to a book or a group of books, and to a Reference Department with specialized personnel providing references to books and other sources. 5 Obviously in the library there is no reference without reference to reference. Thus there is no book that does not aspire to be accommodated in a library with its triple location and identification through a catalogue entry, a call number, and a place on the shelves. Placement on a library shelf creates the starting point for additional space and initiates a new original life. Every book longs to be mentioned, referred to: first, in a catalogue, a documentation center, or a computer's memory; later, in the memories, the databanks, and the texts of as many readers as possible. Considering this state of affairs one can imagine a diabolic referential condition. An innocent customer comes one day to consult a book and is trapped in the library for the rest of his/her life. He/she passes from one book to another, from one source of reference to another, from referring books to referred books. Little by little, his/her movements are limited to the pure reference to reference. Finally he/she dies as chief bibliographer, worn out and empty, at the unstable top of the pyramidal information

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center, no longer able to refer to anything or anybody other than himself/herself, as the unique referee of the universal game of reference gone berserk. Is this fantastic tale not the tragi-comical story of any individual in a modern society? We become obsessed with reference. We believe that the social and physical environment surrounding us subsists as a complex entanglement of references: objects, even living beings are metamorphosed (or metaphorized) into books referring to other books, or referred to by them; day after day, we experience ourselves as a package of creditreference-cards, a moving mini-library, always ready to submit to and administer tests, to prove its past, present, and future references. . . . This modern tale has no happy ending: on his/her deathbed, the chief bibliographer or referee-inchief realizes that reference always has been an elusive presence; each time he/she would like to say what it is, it speaks about something else; and there is no intellectual comfort to be found in understanding reference as a basic unseizable or spiraling meaning. On the contrary, in his/her last lucid act of language he/she declares in a cryptic manner "Reference is reference when and where reference is not reference," or, in verbal style, "I refer to reference when and where I do not refer to reference." Saying that, he/she stops the definiendum requirement and the cumulative process of interpretation. Thus he/she dies to the world of concepts and things, only to resuscitate in the glory of linguistic existence thanks to the intervention of the power of negation. Is this the legacy of the crazy bibliographer: there is no meditation on reference and on reference to reference without a meditation on negation? Philosophy of philosophy (is) the reflection on the relationship between reference and negation (parentheses are not an easy way to escape the ontological implication; they are just warnings). To introduce these new moments in meditating reference and negation, let us consider the basic particles of the logical propositional calculus. It requires an entity called p or q, and a few operations: negation, conjunction, disjunction, equivalence, implication. Usually the first three operations are accepted as primitive. However, if one insists on further reduction, one can arrive at a final and unique operation called alternative denial p/q, meaning "not both p and q." 6 Thus the only means of building a system based on a fundamental power of connecting words requires the simultaneous negation of the two terms of the opposition between affirmation and negation: I reject simultaneously p and q, and at the simplest level of reference, p and ~p (the symbol for not p). I know that alternative denial is a rather artificial and cumbersome concept. Logicians prefer to start with more convenient

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"primitive" connectives, as Alonzo Church suggests. For the philosopher meditating reference, such behavior reveals a primitive situation: language cannot expand itself and organize distinctive words without the intervention of negation. Then, if, as I am experiencing it now, language and reference are close synonyms, it should be stated that reference is determinated and understood with the help of negation. At first glance, such a statement seems absurd. Reference by negation should come after reference by affirmation; to negate a reference, a reference has to exist previously. Yes, but it is true only when language decides to follow the realist postulate. This decision is the most frequent; it explains all the metaphysical and scientific positivisms of Western thought. Nevertheless, as universal as it may be, it is just a practical decision; it does not imply that language by itself gives priority to affirmation and makes reference the affirmation of being. Let me decide to conduct these meditations by thinking reference without prior referentsbe they named Being, Dasein, Mind. I say, I write that I exist as manifestation of a referential power. I am not a being that refers: I am referring to being, and I make being a part of my referential life; but because I am referring to being, I feel myself as a part of being. Thus I am and I am not at any moment of my language life. I am saying "tree," I am not "tree" and I am not ''I." In its awareness of reference, language experiences itself as being and not being; and as a word, it is all the other words, and none of them. The same can be said of reference: "reference" is all the other words in the sense that any word is an aspect of reference; and it is none of them, because in its own referential power "reference" refers only to reference. Now I understand why the experience of the word reference, or more succinctly, the experience of reference, requires the experience of (the word) negation, not as a means of handling the plurality of being and thus of establishing resemblances and differences in the world, but, within language itself, as the way of being reference and referring. "Reference" is in a unique position. If I understand that 'tree' does not refer to the same thing as 'bush,' what does happen to the concept of 'reference,' which is supposed to cover all references, real or virtual? This raises the question whether the contrary of 'reference'let us call it 'deference'can exist? If indeed 'everything' refers to everything, if reference is universal, what do we make of "I do not refer to something" taken in its absolute meaning? At this point we witness the mystery of the emergence of 'nothingness' in traditional or modern ontologies transposed into the field of language: How can negation be possible in linguistic life? The

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answer may be: because, as logical calculus demonstrates, language cannot develop itself without the help of negation. Unfortunately, such an answer cannot satisfy the meditating philosopher. Negation's function presupposes a fundamental condition belonging to the referential power of language. In the phrasing of the "Cogito," and without calling for the realist postulate, the experience of reference describes itself as follows: I refer to x, therefore x is a being and I am not that being. Indeed, reference implies an ontological position conferred upon x as object of reference, but with the condition that x as object not be I. Consequently (and it is the raison d'être of modern idealisms), 'I' does not exist as being for the very reason that 'I' confers being on x. Such is the paradox of language that is aware of not being its referent, although this referent depends on its reference. Language should exist and not exist at the same time. Negation is thus at the heart of language: not yet the intellectual negation of judgment, not yet the anguish of being without being, but the pure awareness of language positing and negating being in the same dual act. That is why any tongue composes itself in an intermingling of positive and negative referential powers, and language denies itself the honor of being, but recognizes the existence of a being that is not being, of a nonbeing that is being. Under these circumstances, one understands the omnipresence of the realist postulate, not as an imperative and onto-logical obligation, but as a requirement of referential life, and no more. The ontological capital sin was committed, not by the practical and scientific languages, but by philosophy when it decided to push the need for reference to its extreme tension, by hypostasizing the object of reference, putting the word being at the center of every linguistic behavior, God included, and reversing the initial process of language, changing "(I) refer to x, therefore x exists" into "x is, therefore (I) refer to it." 7 "x is" is an act of language imagining a situation from which language is absent or at least suspended. It implies the negation of language, and such a negation is conceivable only by language itself acting as referential power: it is language understanding itself not as being, but as being language. Now I understand why any knowledge built on the realist postulate is unable to avoid the presence of the negative power in its elementary operations and conducts. Furthermore, through the awareness of negation, I am also ready to make sense of the word mind (or any of its equivalents) aside from the word language. Rejecting the seduction of the Psy-referent amounts to rejecting the too easy explanation when I say 'mind' because I refer to a preexisting mind. The real problem should be formulated this way: "Why do I have to say 'mind' when I experience the referential power of

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language?" It is the most precise way to express the critical problem of language. "How is language possible?" means really "How is mind possible in the world of language, and consequently, how did language develop the extraordinary complex vocabulary of the Psy-referent to the point of comprehending language in itself?" It should be clear that the critical problem is not "How can a reality called 'mind' exist and make language exist?'' but "How does a language of mind seem inevitable for any kind of language, and invent such a rich and diversified vocabulary, while remaining at the same time independent of that language but conditioned by it?" Going back to the universal form of reference, I get "y refers to x," with two specifications for y (mind) and x (world): "mind refers to world." Thus the following principles should replace the Parmenidean imperative "To be or not to be": "Language is and is not mind, language is and is not world, mind is and is not world." In practical and scientific languages, such phrasing would be accused of being contradictory, confused, or pathological, although poetry, even science itself, and metaphysics, are sometime led to such extreme limits of reference: "love is hatred, particles and waves are complementary, absence is presence," etc. Let us concentrate on "language is and is not mind," understanding 'mind,' not as indicating an independent Psyreferent, but as qualifying a basic necessity of languagethe necessity of conferring on reference a subject of reference. I can try to imagine a state of reference without subject and object, like the vibration of an exclamation or a sigh, a true practical dream. But the simplest moneme is claimable by a mind and integratable into a world. Language creates and develops its lexemes in the joint effort of qualifying itself as reference-and-mind. It covers all fields of psychology and linguistics (what for centuries we called "grammar"), but with an apparent prevalence of the psychological marking over the grammatical one. I say "apparent" because, if the present meditation is not pure fantasy of my imagination, any psychological expression, most often unconsciously, exposes a referential intent and a linguistic legacy. In that manner we complete the Copernican reversal initiated by Kant and pursued by Husserl. Indeed, the transcendental ego is the semantic structure of natural sciences. However, in itself it finds the source of its meanings and actions in the referential power. Such a state of affairs can be put in a radical phrasing: the referential power had to invent the language of mind in order to expand itself to the extreme limits of a full and quasi autonomous culture. That explains why the psychological complexity of a tongue depends on the cultivation of its referential powers. Thus, any psychological qualifications should be thought in connection with a certain quality

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of reference, and, conversely, any referential qualification should have its psychological correspondent. Conscious of that correspondence, which is expressed by the formula "Lang is-and-is not Psy," my meditative process finds itself in front of the endless task of retranslating any element of the current psy-vocabulary into elements of language. For example, 'jealousy' is not only the rich "feeling" that haunted Marcel Proust; it is a way of living the language of love, and, since there is no love without language and since love is the fixation of a language concerning somebody else, jealousy marks that referential quality which gives to the existence of the loved one the unique attribute of being in a permanent state of reference: What does happen to her/him when I ignore where she/he is, what she/he thinks? Jealousy is the anguish born from the uncertainty of reference. This is one example among many others. I could go on indefinitely in that direction. However, my purpose does not consist in rewriting psychology, its vocabularies, and its theories in terms of psycholinguistics. My aim is restricted to "reference" and its life related to the Psyvocabulary. Although such a vocabulary is dispersed into detailed and very minute markings, it possesses also some leading words around which all others are regrouped. Thus I can correctly suppose that reference experiences the phrasing ''is-and-is-not" with the help of a few psychological terms recognizable by philosophers as dominant Psyfunctions. This experience occurs in such a manner that these Psy-functions become aspects of human referential life. To find out those terms I am guided by past and present psychologies as well as by their insidious presence in traditional and modern philosophies of language. Four terms will serve to categorize my meditation: Perception, Memory, Conception, and Judgment. The reader might be surprised that I do not add the word affect to indicate what seventeenth-century psychology, especially Descartes's, called "passions," or the general term 'sensibility' referring to emotions and feelings. For example, when a stone hits me, is my pain not a referential reaction taking the form of a cry? When I feel happy in the presence of my friend, is it not a way to give to a reference a high value? Consequently, I should not mention reference without implying strong or weak feelings or emotions. However, I prefer to postpone the consideration of the connection "reference-affect" untiltime permittingI have exhausted my understanding of the other four categories. At any rate, the connection will not be ignored when reflection is applied to them: is there a perception without affective reaction? Is there a remembrance without emotion from the past? How could I conceive the meaning of an object or a person if my attention is not

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motivated by some sudden emotion or a durable feeling? It is all the more true for the judgments by which I confer values on the world and myself. To summarize, I have to meditate the following four logogriphs: reference is-and-is-not perception reference is-and-is-not memory reference is-and-is-not conception reference is-and-is-not judgment A superficial and hasty answer would consist in saying: since there is only one subject and four attibutes in this logogriph, it is obvious that reference is each of the four attributes and all of them at once; but it would be too easy a way to escape the difficulty lurking behind these formulas. My meditation's reverse movement is to go from the language of psychology to the language of language. Thus it is essential to understand how perception, memory, conception, and judgment are references or, since they are distinct psychological attributes, how they are aspects of the referential power. In order to become more conscious of the present lexical quandary, I put it in the form of a tentative diagram:

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2. Lexico-Conceptual Analysis I cannot work on the word reference as I would on a chemical element or compound. I cannot apply to it the rules of experimental methodology, studying the effects of its presence, its absence and its variations. For instance, am I able to conceive a language without the word reference? Maybe, but I am unable to prove that there is no hidden equivalent or substitute for 'reference' in this hypothetical language. Let us imagine a dictator who decides that the citizens of the country he/she governs will no longer be permitted to use words like "freedom," "justice," "equality,'' and . . . "reference." He/she is powerful enough to have his/her decision decreed by an Academy, and to make the necessary changes in dictionaries and grammars. Then, how can I prove that among the remaining words there will be none that is taking over the place and role of the censured terms? There arc no acceptable and convincing methods of demonstration, since to prove the absence of a word is de facto expressing the possibility of its presence. Dictators can control bodies as language-receptorsemittors, not language itself; even the language they produce controls them. Generalizing that imaginary venture, I am unable to prove that a historical language cannot produce words that are apparently missing. I am able to say that such and such English word has no corresponding term in French, but it does not mean that I cannot find a French word or phrase to compensate for that gap in the vocabulary. 8 Thus I must accept living within my language, simply trying slowly to improve a knowledge that grew its roots during the first weeks of my life. I cannot say when I first used the term 'reference,' or any of its equivalents, and for what need. Occasionally, I open my dictionaries, although I must confess that lately I do it rarely. Most often I behave as if I know what I am saying or writing. I do not care about control exercised by a dictionary or a grammar. Rather arrogantly I act as if I were reinventing English or French dictionaries and grammars each time I produce or consume language. In the specific case of 'reference,' I am deferring the moment when I should impose strict obedience to a definition in my writing. My postponement is for the following reason: I am no longer sure that 'reference,' or any word for that matter, is definable, and that "defining" functionsthe existence of which I do not intend to denyis no more than a pragmatic decision. Like anyone around me, including the most exacting logician or philosopher, I rely on my linguistic instinct, and my learning habits. But I am increasingly conscious that 'reference,' if it does not really need a definition, calls for a sort of distribution of power in relation to such

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terms as 'perception, conception, memory, judgment,' as I just mentioned. Nevertheless, I should like to make a courtesy call to dictionaries and follow them for a while in their inevitable waltz of pseudo-definitions. An analytical look cuts the word reference into three parts of distinct and even weight, meaning, and value in English. In English the oral accent is put on the first syllable and in French on the second, for phonetic more than semantic reasons. The center of the lexeme is -fer- with an additional prefix and suffix. 'Fer' comes from the Latin 'fero,' which in turn is derived from 'ther' in Indo-European. 9 It has formed separate groups of derivatives that remain present in 'reference': (1) 'fero' as the gesture of carrying; (2) 'fero' as the act of bringing about, involving, entailing; (3) 'fero' as carrying out in reference to seizure of booty; and (4) 'fero' as supporting, taking care of. Immanent in the root are several meanings of physical carrying, including the possible psychological transferalthough to say that the physical sense comes first is mere common physicalist prejudiceof carrying-involving-inferring, of carrying out as performing, realizing, and of taking care of. The suffix '-ence' possesses a dynamic power and meaning; it nominalizes the verb in its maximum state of verbalization (in our time, linguists created the lexeme 'referentialization,' which adds nothing to 'refer' except for placing the emphasis on its dynamism). The prefix 're-,' with its reiterative marking, adds to 'carry' a powerful complement, as if 'carrying' were discovering its completion in the act of carrying again or of repeatingreflecting itself. Without exploring its roots further, let us note that 'reference' belongs to an open and large system of semantic constellation, where 'fer-ence' calls for multiple prefixings such as afference, inference, conference, circumference, deference, difference, indifference, interference, preference, and transference. Verbs connect directly with those nouns, except for 'to confer upon.' In that lexical expansion, should we regret the absence of lexemes like 'synference, ambiference, extraference, introference, metaference, hyperference, hypoference, epiference, diaference, proference,' and many others, which have not even attracted the imaginations of philosophers? Among the derivatives of the ferparadigm, I regret only that 'reference' cannot play with an opposite: there is no noun to designate the absence of reference and, more significantly, no noun that would indicate the negation or the refusal of reference. Yet there is a need for it.10 Not knowing what "use" I will make of it, I have already proposed the term 'deference' to designate an act, a condition, and a situation of language existing in a state of reciprocity with 'reference.' Thus, any negative

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decision would belong to a universe of deference: to say "God does not exist" is to declare that the lexeme 'God' has no right to reference; on the contrary, to say that "God exists" consists in rejecting the threat of deference. Any kind of enunciation would be subordinated to two parallel conditions: to be put into reference, to be put into deference. Perhaps, thanks to this opposition, we will be able to find a solution to the nagging and crucial problem of the existence of negation within a language, however limited such a language may be. 11 Finally, between the most frequent terms of the fer-constellationdifference, preference, referencelanguage establishes a semantic circulation: to make a reference, or to refer to something is to posit a difference between that thing and the rest of the world. All the same: How can one mark a difference without referencing to what is differentiating or differentiated? On the other hand, there is a clear kinship between 'to make a reference' and 'to mark a preference.' All three terms express close nuances of ference. In a less common context 'reference' and 'inference' denote the two universal aspects of ferencecarrying out and carrying inone calling for the other, one reinforcing the other: my reference aspires to become an inference; my inference shows how a reference can be developed, as if each ference was carrying language outside and inside itself. Without going beyond the mildly clarifying effect of a lexical analysis, we have become conscious that, at the bottom of the manifestation of reference and with the cooperation of other derivatives, lies an experience of expansion that such verbs as 'to carry' or 'to bring' continue to suggest throughout modern linguistic discourses. Let us now examine the ref-paradigm. By that term I designate the lexical group formed by all terms in use in contemporary English to express reference, the Oxford English Dictionary being my main source with the cooperation of Roget's Thesaurus. The dominant lexemes are obviously 'reference' and 'to refer to' with a large semantic expansion. Significantly the Supplement giving the OED's additions contains remarkably important entries for 'reference'; and thanks to the examples given one realizes the role played by philosophy of language in the most recent expansion of the ref-paradigm. The verb 'to refer' offers the greatest varieties of meanings, although all revolve around the expression of bringing back, such as, in transitive senses, 'to give back, to restore, to represent, to re-figure (obsolete and rare), to trace (back), to attribute, to bring into relation, to apply to, to commit, to entrust (oneself to), to hand over, to submit (legal), to defer (obsolete), to reserve, to carry forward (obsolete), to direct to, to relate or report'; in intransitive uses we find 'to have

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relation to, to be of consequence to, to make allusion to, to direct attention to, to suggest to, to have recourse to.' 'Reference' offers a parallel expansion: 'the act of submitting to an authority, assignment, relation, respect, allusion, direction, indication, mark or sign, act or state of referring, process of establishing relation in a society.' 'Reference' serves as attribute in 'reference class, reference group, reference property, reference library, reference frame.' It seems that the verb gives more weight to the prefix re than to the noun, which insists on the act of bringing into relation. Needless to say, I am not compelled to follow those trends. If necessary, I have the power to decide to confer on 'reference' the triple power of submitting to an authority, establishing relation and reflecting it. Around the central couple of the verb and noun, there are the following lexemes: a rare but enticing substantive use of 'refer'; 'referable,' 'referability,' 'referee' (as noun and verb), 'reference' (as verb), 'referendial' (rare), 'referendary,' 'referendum,' 'referend,' 'referent,' 'referential,' 'referentially,' 'referently' (rare), 'referism' (rare, obsolete), 'referment' (obsolete), 'referrible,' 'referral.' Pondering this lexical range, one will regret the obsolescence of 'referment,' which could be opposed to 'deferment' and designate that important aspect of the act of referring to the care or decision of another. Another regret could be for the rare and obsolete 'referism' to mean a report by a referee. I would like to give to that term a metaphysical dimension and attribute to it the universality of a philosophical attitude. I would also like to restore 'referendum' in its gerundive implication, in order to have the possibility of designating not a referent per se, but the person, thing, or situation that requests or requires a reference. One will note that the OED does not mention 'referentialization' and 'autoreferentiality,' nor does it give the possible intervention of prefixes marking the field of reference, such as 'surreference,' 'interreference,' 'intra- and extra-reference,' and so on. If those terms and similar ones were needed, there would be no reason not to propose them. But there is also no reason to multiply them, when one can live and manage within the existing vocabulary. To sum up my exposition of the ref-paradigm, I observe that in their pervading semantic field, 'reference' and its associates have three main kinds of application: juridical, sociological, and linguistic. But, as can be easily seen, their center of diffusion is language in its referential power: for example, the referee controls and puts into practice the language that governs a game. Consequently, 'reference' is essentially a term invented by language for its own designation. It participates in what I propose to call L-language, that is, the language of language, a very complex linguistic

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constellation without which no language would exist, which possesses its own vocabulary, enriched by borrowings from all sorts of vocabularies, so that, in a way, L-language is the necessary lining of living languages at all levels and in any of their specializations. L-language is inexhaustible, since any term of any vocabulary, directly or not, is related to it. Without pretending to draw an accurate map of its formations, but with the purpose of becoming more conscious of the infinite interferences of reference, here is a mapping of L-language, given at the present participle (at times forcing some lexemes into that grammatical form) and distributed along the four corners of the referential quadrilateral. Lexemes are listed at random, any search for a specific order being artificial. Many lexemes imply more than one corner of the quadrilateral: PERCEIVING: referencing, exposing, indicating, concretizing, describing, objectifying, subjectifying, expressing, exemplifying, saliencing, intensifying, differencing, dating, localizing, apprehending, manifesting, underlining, experiencing, picturing, conferring upon, designating, assigning, denotating, signaling, pinpointing, notifying, appellating, calling, citing, marking, naming, actualizing, ostensing, baptizing, contacting, showing, presenting, presencing, fixing, narrowing to, declaring, exhibiting, investigating . . . plus the extreme varieties of the sensory languages. . . . MEMORIZING: reflecting, classifying, compiling, reporting, recognizing, representing, tracking, noting, receiving, remembering, retaining, keeping, remaining, recollecting, recurring, recalling, reminding, impressing, haunting, holding, carrying, retracing, bringing back, learning, refreshing, awakening, renewing, reviewing, summoning, memorializing, gathering and . . . referring. . . . CONCEPTUALIZATION: implying, examining, inferring, relating, explicating, interpreting, determining, systematizing, hypothesizing, translating, syntaxing, adjectivating, verbalizing, predicating, attributing, conditioning, demonstrating, defining, derivating, deducing, cognizing, nominating, pronominalizing, symbolizing, formalizing, axiomatizing, figuring, signifying, thinking, writing, reading, commenting, connotating, alluding, involving, conveying, understanding, reasoning, discriminating, and . . . referring. . . . JUDGING: phrasing, enunciating, stating, theting, informing, appointing, saying, testing, texting, titling, validating, appreciating, optating, believing, doubting, negating, interrogating, antithezing, consenting, permitting, ascribing, verifying, ascertaining, assuring, denegating, denying, probabilizing, stipulating, concluding, estimating, assessing, rating,

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deciding, awarding, adjudging, confirming, criticizing, sentencing, ranking, measuring and . . . referring. Looking over those lists one cannot help feeling semantically dizzy. One understands why most philosophies of language work on a limited vocabulary made of terms artificially hardened in a few couples of antinomic groupings. Following the same trend, above I suggested 'deference' as antinomy for 'reference.' The exploration of the L-language amply demonstrates the impossibility of a conceptual reduction and the permanent danger of synonymic quicksand. I just hope that the quadruple confrontation of reference with perception, memory, conception, and judgment will not only help to clarify our understanding of reference and indirectly of language but also lead to the beginning of an order in the mapping of the L-language. At least it will serve as a frame with its four polarizations establishing, not a genealogical order, but a complex circulation of linguistic kinships and differentiations. If 'reference' can be put into relation with any other member of the L-language, a few confrontations are more important than others and, without being artificially systematized, can be used as dominant interrogations for the present meditations. Here is a provisional list of these clusters of concepts, many among which have been recurrent philosophical backgrounds for centuries: reference/relation; reference/belief; reference/description/inscription/ascription/dubbing; reference/information; reference/reflexion; reference/representation/mimesis; reference/ identification/self-identification; reference/indication/signalization/denotation/connotation; reference/expression/introduction/evocation/ invocation; reference/intention/inherence/demonstration; reference/ naming/salience/definition; reference/violence/order; reference/seeing/hearing/voicing. . . . It is clear that those clusters, as enumerated above, are temporary markings, relative intellectual urgencies; they overlap one another, although by some nuances they remain different and nonreducible. In its own empirical mapping, language commits itself and ourselves to a constant synchronic and diachronic reassessment and reevaluation of its own lexicalizations, so that one should never forget that reference always emerges as reference to reference, that is, one of its aspects takes on the form of any other aspect. A Moebius strip links reference, naming, describing, defining, indicating, and, little by little, all the other members of the Llanguage. That semantic unsystematic wrapping and unwrapping extends beyond the L-language to take possession of any territory of the inappropriately called object-languages. Any term contributes to the

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metaphorization of reference, either directly or through the good services of the Psy-referent. To take one significant example, let us meditate the expressive power of 'circulation' or its cognates, as regards 'reference.' 12 The conduit metaphor denotes the transfer of terms from one type of language to another ("Your real feelings are finally getting through to me") or the relationship between interior and exterior domains of language ("If you can't pack more thought into fewer words, you will never pass the conciseness test"; ''The passage conveys a feeling of excitement"; "I got the idea of patience from your statement") or the progression of interior into exterior ("You come over and pour forth your anger and expect me to take it all!") or the reification of the interior ("That concept had been floating for centuries") or the interiorization of the exterior ("Different ideas come to my mind in a situation like this"). Furthermore, the conduit metaphor remains implicit in such statements as "Utter one of your feelings in simple words"; "Notify your readers of this idea immediately in the first paragraph"; "I have had little time to grasp her thought." One could object that, as the above examples demonstrate, the conduit metaphor deals mainly with problems of linguistic communication, not directly with reference to an object, an idea, or a person. For example, if I say to my neighbor, "I am referring to the parasol pine that is at the corner of your estate and mine," I am not using the conduit metaphor in the same manner as I do when I say "I would like to pass you information about that pine." Surely, the conduit metaphor is the best illustration of the way the concept of communication invades the whole universe of language, and I should stay alert to that easy confusion. However, the image implied in the fer- paradigm is close to the image of conduit: "to refer someone to an object" is not far from "to lead someone to an object" and even less distant from "to pass an idea to someone," especially if I understand the world as a potential of references. For the moment, and reserving for later the epistemological problem of metaphor, our exploration shows not only that the ref- paradigm is omnipresent in the L-language but that there is a metaphoric overlapping between language and the world, or to be more specific, between L-language and W-language. To conclude this lexical analysis, I can only say that 'reference' is not a well-delimited concept in our vocabulary; it is not contained within the limits of a concise definition; it implies everyone, everything, everywhere; it is universally implied. Therefore we must accept the following paradoxical state of affairs: The search for a better description, or definition, or grasping, or evaluation, of 'reference'better

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than those achieved by philosophers and linguists as we know themwould be absurd and useless. I need 'reference' to understand 'description,' 'definition,' and so on. After my confrontation with dictionaries, I feel confirmed in my initial awareness of philosophical meditation: writing about language is an experience in writing on writing, an experience that always reaches the point of rupture, of denegating oneself on behalf of an "unnamable beyond." Such is the spirit in which we shall approach the four poles of the quadrilateral referential and heed the contradictory sentences within which I decided to enclose my original temptation for linguistic expansion. Let us repeat them: reference is-and-is-not perception/perception is-and-is-not reference reference is-and-is-not memory/memory is-and-is-not reference reference is-and-is-not conception/conception is-and-is-not reference reference is-and-is-not judgment/judgment is-and-is-not reference I shall refer to that inevitable linguistic simultaneity between basic affirmations and negations as the L-paradox. I am well aware that, in its current sense, 'paradox' 13 supposes that a well-organized 'doxa' implies the elimination of paradoxes and a well-balanced reciprocity of affirmations and negations. In the present case I am introducing the term 'paradox' for want of a better word, with the clear assessment that the L-paradox, imposing itself on my meditation is not a failure to achieve a per-feet doxa; on the contrary, it states a necessary condition of language that, as we shall see, will make possible the ulterior and systematized alternations of affirmations and negations. In the meanwhile, I still have the task of probing the understanding of language by itself, both within the L-paradox and through its different forms. 3. Preliminary Exercises on the Problematic Experience of Perception and Reference In his penetrating study on reference, The Varieties of Reference, G. Evans discusses Strawson's statement according to which "a subject can identify an object demonstratively if he 'can pick out by sight or hearing or touch, or otherwise sensibly discriminate' that object" (The Varieties, p. 143). Then he rightly observes: "When we consider the vagueness of the ordinary concept of perception, we may be unclear what the deliverances

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of Strawson's formulation are (what its content is). But when we bear in mind the complexity and variety of information-links, we may cease to be sure even of its truth" (p. 145). He concludes by raising the following question: "How does perception make a thought possible?" adding this footnote: "I find little in recent work on the theory of reference which can assist us with this question" (p. 145). The question "How does perception make a thought possible?" offers a correct formulation for a philosopher who relics implicitly on the R-postulate and believes in the existence of a Psy-referent; the use of the expression 'make possible' betrays also the intervention of the F-function to give sense to the relation perception/reference. In other words, this simple and basic question reintroduces implications I have banished. However, it is of primordial importance that we understand, for example, the passage between the perception of this tree and the concept of tree. But there is no decidable priority between these two questions: "How does perception make thought possible?" and "How does thought make perception possible?" As, in our present experience, thought is reached through language-writing, the above questions become: "How does language make thought and perception possible?" and ''How do perception and thought make language possible?" Because my meditation focuses on the referential power of language, I reach the following double interrogation: "How does perception make reference possible?" and "How does reference make perception possible?" At this point, I obviously discard the so-called Russell principle: "A subject cannot make a judgment about something unless he knows which object his judgment is about" (The Varieties, p. 89). It exhibits the same presupposition as above, but put in terms of subject, object, and judgment. The concept of knowledge, as condition of judgment, is nicely vague: does it mean 'to conceive,' 'to perceive,' or what? Furthermore, Russell's statement should be read differently by substituting 'reference' for 'judgment': "a subject cannot have a reference to something unless he knows to which object he refers," a statement to be put in balance with "a subject cannot have a perception unless it refers to the object about which its reference is made." Playing with those formulae, I become aware of perception and reference as being in a state of coexistence that remains to be understood, without any sort of prioritylogical or geneticbetween them. Remaining a voluntary prisoner of language, I cannot claim that perception is a former state of noncognitive subsistence or a nonsemiotic behavior. Such a hypothesis would take us back to the old notion of sen-

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sory-data, or to the myth conveniently imagined by classical epistemologies of a sensory data based on which we allegedly build our house of knowledge. Behind these explanations, again and again, reappears the R-postulate, which posits not only that the existence of an independent referent is necessary but also that language is the unique being to refer to and to stand for something other than it is. As I said before, we must put ourselves into the impossible situation of understanding language within language, and reference within the experience of reference; this means that we must remain as obstinate as a realist might be, even to the point of explaining our obstinacy. The sensory-based theory gave birth to the too-famous behaviorist model of the reflex-diagram, which is attacked by contemporary theories of "the language of the mind." The reflex-diagram is based on the opposition of sensibility and action, or less trivially, receptivity and reaction; the brain has a function of coordination between sensory-data and responses. As I have already suggested, that simple schema ( ) proposes a superficial description of a very complex state of affairs. It oversimplifies also the relation of the brain, its reception-organs and its motor-system. The fact of coordination is but one aspect of the cerebral organization of a human being. The relation of a perception and an actionfor example, I hear my doorbell ringing . . . I rush to open the doorimplies the double manifestation of attention and reference as inseparable parts of a cerebral process. From the most simple expression of biological cerebralization, the behavioristic schema is complex; it constitutes a double exterior-interior orientation:

I find what I am looking for, and my 'reaction' is itself 'received.' Its movement toward exteriority is simply interiorized. Phenomenology was aware of this double circuitry, but it interpreted it at the level of the consciousness of the Psyreferent with its shuttle between object (noema) and subject (noesis): noema noesis. It reduced reference to intentionality. Thus, our initial question concerning perception and thought should be changed into the more general question of cerebrality as referential power. Perception, memory, conception, and judgment are its main and indissociable aspects. They overlap constantly. I will never try to eliminate them; they are the best illustrations of the correctness of my general hypothesis. Without further discussion, I admit that the notion of force used in

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the theory of speech acts and their performances infers the existence of a referential power as cerebral energy. It describes reference as the moment of its utterance, be it assertion, command, interrogation, or exhortation. It is also obvious that the 'force' of my utterance is connected with and derived from the vividness of my perception, the intensity of my recollection, the clarity of my conceptions, all of them united in the final expression of a specific referencejudgment and a feeling of pleasure or pain. Now let us face the question of perception and its referential power, with the understanding that I discard any possible psychology of perceptionphenomenology includedand that I cannot escape the linguistic condition. I begin with the confrontation of perception and reference in a few simple exercises: "I see a tree, I refer to a tree"; "Look at this tree, refer yourself to this tree"; "May I see a tree!, May I refer to a tree!"; "I look at a tree you cannot see, I refer to a tree to which you cannot refer''; "We do not smell the same perfume, we do not refer to the same perfume"; "I see myself in this mirror, I refer to myself in this mirror"; "I do not see the stone I put yesterday on the balcony, I do not refer to the stone I put yesterday on the balcony." "I see a tree," as Beckett reminds us; 14 I can write "I see a tree" when looking at the wall of my den, but I cannot write "I refer to a tree" without immediately referring to a tree. Then, when I write "I see a tree," it is not impossible that I see a tree; in simple terms, I see a tree because I see a tree. But this statement is not parallel to "I refer to a tree because I refer to a tree." This little verbal exercise shows how perception and reference can be understood as same and distinct. To write "I see a tree" is not obviously seeing a tree, while writing "to refer to a tree" can mean only referring to a tree. If one uses a realist code, those writings present no difficulties. I am able to understand the difference between those sentences. I see a tree because there is a tree in front of me, or I can imagine a situation where I would see a tree. However, I prohibited the use of the realist code. I have to understand the difference between the two parts of the sentence "I see a tree because I see a tree" within language itself. Here I invoke my early distinction between two kinds of language, that is, the language of objects and the language of language, even if they constantly overlap each other. The first "I see a tree" means "writing about the seeing of a tree"; the second, "actually seeing a tree." Then, "writing about the seeing of a tree" is another way of writing "referring to a tree in writing." The statement "I see a tree because I see a tree" is equivalent to "I refer to a tree because I

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see a tree." Subsequently, in this case, the language of language infers the language of objects. Is it not insidiously restoring the realist priority at the linguistic level? The mystery is not solved: Is the language of objects (Lo) possible without the implied possibility of the language of language (L1)? If so, it would mean that there are two sorts of language, Lo preceding L1 . . . , 15 but in such a way that I can use Lo only with the mediation of L1. Playing with words I can say that the Lo is language without language, a prelanguage, and I would be on the way of restoring the belief in sensory-data. Idealist coding would not be more acceptable. If I say "Lo presupposes L1," of which it is a projection, I identify perception and conception, and I am unable to explain why there is a language of objects added to the language of language. Furthermore, there is no means of finding an intermediary path between the realist and the idealist creeds, without confessing that language is contradictory per se, and without accepting a linguistic condition that would make the following two statements simultaneously inevitable: "I refer to this tree because I see this tree" and "I see this tree because I refer to this tree." I cannot apply the relation of cause and effect, saying that reference is the cause of vision, or vision the effect of reference, nor the relation of end and means, saying that reference is the means for vision, or vision the end of reference, because those two relations infer already that perception and language are possible. More generally, language and vision (as final perception) are the common source of all possible relations. Thus, I have to give up the current realist and idealist codings. I will not speak about reference as movement toward referents or as constitution of referents, but about reference to vision and vision of reference. The perfect expression of reference is vision, and the perfect expression of vision is reference. The two words 'vision' and 'reference' form a reciprocal state of understanding. As mentioned above, Lo and Ll coexist: one does not exist without the other. It means that language refers to itself as another and to another as itself. This kind of existence as perception-and-reference constitutes language. Is not such a statement pure and artificial linguistic fabrication." I decide to call language what before I called perception. The reverse decision is no less possible. To say that the difference between perception and reference is immanent to language or to perception is verbal automatic exercise. In fact, if I stick to the interdiction to imply realist, idealist, and functionalist explanations, I must give priority to defining ther term 'perception' as 'language' and semantic extension of language. Let us come back to our basic experiment: "I see a tree," and the implication "writing

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'I see a tree' implies that I see (or have seen) a tree." My writing 'I see a tree' stands for "my seeing (of) a tree." Realism is not dead. My writing is simply a designation (I show that tree), a nomination (I call it 'tree'), and a description (it has a vertical trunk and branches). Before tackling the questions at the core of contemporary logical and psychological analyses, I experiment on a simpler statement: "I see a red spot on the wall," implying that the red surface I perceive is second in regard to the word red or, at the minimum level, that it is an invitation to find a name for an unknown, unnamed sensory impression? Conducting a Condillac-style experiment, should I ask if the impression of red (with or without realist implication) is an aspect of the impression of the word red? To be more radical, can the impression of red exist without the word red? More generally, is the vividness of sensations part of the vividness of words? If I follow my basic interdictions, not caring about the stubborn denials of my common sense, the only possible answer to that question is "yes, the red color does not exist without the word red, actually or potentially." In Paradise before the fall, Adam does not invent names. God forces them upon him and Eve. Their only choice is between 'red, rot, rouge, rubeus . . .' Then, are we not playing Adam's game every morning when we wake up? I leave my dreams, and suddenly the world is present like a stage when the curtain is raised. Visual forms, sounds, odors, and tactile impressions are besieging me as if swarms of words were swirling around me, soliciting me, inviting me to start my personal show of perceptual references. Thus, that kind of evidence, which I experience when I look at a red spot or at a tree, is of linguistic nature. It is the evidence language is aspiring to when I say "Spring is arriving" or I write "a + b = b + a." At this point of my meditation, the confrontation of phrases about vision of reference and reference to vision has produced its full effect. I am beyond the superficial solution of linguistic complementarity. Reference and vision do not coexist in a relation analogous to that of waves and particles as imagined by Niels Bohr in quantum mechanics. They are not inseparable and opposite languages referring to a unique physical reality. 16 They belong to the experience of language constituting and instituting itself. In our daily learning of language, and with the very indirect intervention of philosophers, we speak conveniently of a universe of perceptions and a universe of words as if they were distinct, the latter standing for the former, when in fact we exercise our referential power in a combination of perceptions and actions, putting the world and ourselves into a simultaneous existence. In other words, I reach perception through reference and thus through its elementary forms of indication, nomination,

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and description. Or, saying it in the more dynamic style of the present participle, reference is indicating, nominating, and describing. Needless to say, those three forms of reference are imposed on us by daily experience, as well as by the present state of the philosophies of language and mind. I reserve for later my exploration of the difficult question of the raison d'être of such a referential trinity. For the moment, I take it as a fact: I refer to Mary, when I introduce her to you, when I call her by her name, when I attempt to describe her. As is well known to specialists, theories of reference were developed along the perspectives of one of those three modes of reference. When necessary, I will allude to them in footnotes. My analysis will be oriented by the following disposition of the problem: How do the powers of indicating, naming, and describing participate in the experience of reference, and how does each of them, and in its interrelation to the others, contribute to our common, scientific, and artistic perception of the world? The triple experience of reference concerns the existential power of language, that is, its power of reference, understood as different from a power that founds an order of causes-and-effects, or an order of means-and-ends, as not reducible to them, and as prior to them.

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The Imagination of Reference II Perceiving, Indicating, Naming Edouard Morot-Sir University Press of Florida GAINESVILLETALLAHASSEETAMPABOCA RATON PENSACOLAORLANDOMIAMIJACKSONVILLE

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Meditation Two Perception and Indication Tant y a qu'en ces memoires, si on y regarde, on trouvera que j'ay tout dict, ou tout désigné. Ce que je ne puis exprimer, je le montre au doigt. (Montaigne, Essais, III, p. 9) 1. Preferring, Indicating, Designating, or Any Other Equivalent At first, and at tile level of strict semantic and lexical decision, why do I prefer 'indicating' to any other possible synonymic terms such as 'designating, denotating, indexing, signaling, 'ostensing,' showing'? 'Designating' and more often, 'designation' are used ill current philosophies of language; both have a strong realist implication: "I designate an object independent of my designation." On the contrary, 'indicating, indication' are experiences by themselves; the object of an indication is an indication, or indicator. One speaks of topographic indications in a sense different from topographic designations (as designated objects). 'Indicating' the direction toward Washington is not 'designating' Washington as the capital of the United States of America. Furthermore, 'designating' supposes a name that designates, that is part of the operation of nominating or naming. We shall see that if 'indicating' cannot be experienced without the accompaniment of 'naming,' it does not imply the naming process: for example, an arrow is 'indicating,' and it only makes a designation possible. I am well aware that my decision is a matter of choice in definitions; I could decide that I prefer 'designating,' being posited that I will refer to 'designating' without the intervention of the R-postulate. However, considering the logical use of 'designation,' the risk of semantic slipping is great. I feel safer when I write 'indicating' throughout the present attempt to understand the cooperation of perception and reference. When I say, "I see this tree," 'this' marks an indication, makes of 'tree' a particular indication, while the present indicative 'see' confers on my indication a specific presence enforced by 'I' indicating myself indicating.

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For similar reasons, I decided to avoid 'denotating.' I was more attracted by 'indexing' and 'signaling.' But I eliminated them nonetheless because of their inevitable reference to Peirce: being so close to the Peircean meditation, I am trying to keep my distance, because of Peirce's attachment to the Psy-referent and the F- function. 1 The term 'ostensive' has tempted many contemporary philosophers, especially those who attacked Russell's theory of definite descriptions.2 But 'ostensive' is a learned word that does not say more than 'showing'; the latter seems to be more honest and less assuming. Finally, why did I not favor 'showing'? For one reason only: 'showing' belongs directly to the language of perception and vision, in the sense of "to make somebody see something": For example, "I would like to show you my stamp collection," or "May I show you the stone I am looking at?" Within my own epistemological limitations, I cannot refer to 'showing' in a realist perspective. On the contrary, 'indicating' is a normal part of language about language. Finally, my problem is how to explain the relation of 'indicating' to 'perceiving' within the experience of reference. Both words share a common background. Both are aware of the presence-and-absence paradigm, so that perception as well as language help to make subjects and objects present to or absent from the world, and, at the same time, make the world present or absent to ourselves. In each case, one should speak of presence/absence, because total or absolute presence or absence do not exist. A total presence would mean total annihilation, that is, to perceive without being conscious of perceiving, or to write without being conscious of writing: both situations are inconceivable. 2. Indicating and Verb Tenses Bearing in mind that any indication, as experience of presence, is relative and implies the feeling of absence, knowing also that one calls perception the transfer of indicating to a hypothetical psychological state of affairs, I am able to explore the process of indication without falling into the three pitfalls of Western education. The different verb tenses suggest how the indicative power manifests itself through language. Indicating proper refers to the possibility of three kinds of presence, present, past, futureeach one expressing a double temporal absence: "Present to myself, I am what I am, but neither what I was nor what I will be"; the same formula applies to my past and to my future presences. Nevertheless, and at the same time, the indicative passage from one tense to another

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makes sense thanks to the very play of presence and absence: "I shall be what I was," or "I am what I shall become." The other verb moodsimperative, subjunctive, conditionalare not diverse grammatical categories parallel to the indicative, but indicatives with a special orientation. The imperative is a command to indicate: "See that tree" means "I show you that tree and require your attention." "May I see that tree" expresses indicative in the form of an option or a possibility.'' If the curtains were transparent, you would see the tree in the backyard" adds a condition(al) to an indicative. One could even go so far as to say that any indicative form presupposes the other verb forms. "If my visual system is not impaired, I hope to see the tree, which I know is in my backyard, and therefore I see that tree." Interrogative and exclamative forms are also auxiliary to the indicative. An exclamation exalts an indicative; an interrogative prepares or prolongs it: "I see that tree"; See that tree" (with no implied command); "Is it that tree?" Philosophers enjoy playing with those variations around the indicative. One can imagine an exclamative awareness of existence, or see in every indication of my perceptive life a temporary stasis in a universal interrogative disposition. My presence to and absence from the world, my ideas, and myself result from the indicative work of perception between the two extremes of exclamation and interrogation. An exclamation is a linguistic way to suggest that an indication aspires to go beyond itself and become pure perceptionwhich is impossible, as we well know. An interrogation is a permanent tension that makes of the indicative process an unsatisfactory and unacceptable solution, constantly squeezed between the impossibilities of total presence or total absence. 3. Indicating and Example Indicating invites exhibiting, which organizes perception or, more exactly, makes of perception a display of exhibited things. "This meadow is an exhibition of colors"; "Yesterday New York's Fifth Avenue was an exhibition of all the people of the world." Thus results the intimate relationship of indicating and example. "The tree I see is an example of a certain kind of tropical luxuriance." As I am now doing, my meditation goes from one example to another, from one suggested perception to another; my examples are indications of possible perceptions. However, can I say that my actual perception is made of examples and that in the omnipresence of the world I perceive, I proceed by selecting examples so that the

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tree I see at the very time I am saying or writing 'tree' is perceived as an example of tree? Can I reduce one to another the three phrases 'perception of a tree,' 'indication of a tree,' and 'example of a tree'? Not entirely, but I cannot separate the three implied processes, and I must consider them three aspects of the same experience of the referential power. 3 When I write "I see this tree," I am making an example of my reference to a specific perception, and I insert my statement in the general discourse of this meditation. In the realist usage of language, it apparently means that perception should precede exemplification: "I see something and use it as example for a demonstration." Should I say that 'tree' belongs to Lo, and 'example' to Ll? No, because, as already noted, there is no way to establish priority between Lo and Ll. To be able to say "I see this tree" I connect a particular to a universal: 'this tree' both exemplifies and denotes the thing called 'tree.' In other words, to be present to the world and to make the world present to me are the same perceptive experience. I understand this perception as a spatio-temporal unit that I can refer to or indicate as an example. When I am speaking in terms of F-function, my example is changed into instrument: ''I indicate this tree for its instrumental potential." Such a transfer is realizedand in daily life it is frequently donewhen I use my perception as preparation to action: "This tree bears ripe fruit I intend to pick." Nevertheless, if I decide to probe my indicative power in itself and not in its practical consequences, 'indicating' is comprehended as example. At the lowest level of comprehension a tree perceived is . . . the example of a tree; and my experience of this tree is an example of my perception in general. It is my only way of being present in the world and to organize presences and absences around me. As I said above, there is no absolute presence; any indication of presence is done by the mediation of examples. 4. Indicating and Meaning Now let us explore the relation of indicating to attention. Is there a difference between the following sentences: "I see this tree"; "I indicate this tree to you"; and "I pay attention to this tree"? After refraining from putting priorities between these three states of language, I am led toward a new and crucial aspect of the recurrent problem imposed by the elimination of the Psy-referent: Is there any attention that is not attention to language? All the theories of attention occupy a central place in the psychology of mind. Should we reinterpret them in a linguistic perspective,

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saying that "paying attention" is just another way of saying "inviting to a specific reference"? At the entrance to an estate I read a sign saying "Beware of the dog," or ''Chien méchant"two equivalent invitations to caution, or, indirectly, not to trespass. In their exclamative or indicative forms, the two formulae arc owner's language addressed to thieves or anyone wishing to trespass. Attention paid to a dog is an aspect of general attention to private property in reference to a certain criminal code: a dog, in its role of watching or protecting, is part of the code, just as a red light at a crossroad belongs to a refential system in a given society. Language builds up a state of reference in the form of protection, safety, warning. A scientific experiment, simple or complex, always accompanied by measurements, polarizes attention toward a specified observation, which itself will refer to scientific concepts or hypothetical beings (energy, acceleration, electron, neutron, etc.). The development of an experiment, which is felt as a succession of attentions, belongs to a linguistic organization of instruments that are themselves true means of expression and perceptive extensions. When Bergson interprets the vital impulse of all living beings as "attention à la vie," does he mean more than "attention to language"? Yes, if one accepts Bergson's philosophy of the "ineffable." In my meditations on the linguistic condition, I exposed the weaknesses of that theoretical systematization. Actually, Bergson makes of "attention à la vie" the source of the organic and technical inventions conceived by instinct and intelligence. When one does not enjoy the facilities of the Psy-referent, only one issue remains open: attention to life is the universal way to be present to the world and to oneself, and that kind of presence diversifies my power of reference and changes my comprehension of the world and myself into an indicative omnipresence. then, it seems that words like 'indicating, referring to, attention to' help one another to become aware of themselves. 'Attention' is called for every time I attempt to interpret language with the help of psychological entities, and again to explain language by some other being or mode of being. I can easily imagine a language where the word attention would find no placefor example, a language where all Psy-referents are replaced by intra-linguistic referentsand nothing in human experience would be missed. However, in that hypothetical case, I could not avoid recognizing the existence of an "attention to reference" with variable intensities between the two unattainable extremes of referential zero and absolute indicating. Inattention, with its numerous synonyms, such as heedlessness, inconsiderateness, inadvertence, nonobservance, vagueness,

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indifference, and so on, is the counterforce behind what I proposed to call 'deference.' The conclusion one can draw from those brief experiments on the word attention is clear. The psychological language of attention is transferable and translatable into the language of reference and, more strictly, into that of indicating. Even if one imagines cases of attention with the double support of the R-postulate and the Psy-referent, the exercise of attention requires a linguisitc expression. Even when reduced to the world of reference, attention remains at the central place; it hides itself behind the words power; force, energy. 4 5. Indicating and Desire Attention leads to tension, and tension to desire, violence, excess. With these words we enter another world of the Psyreferent . . . and come upon a host of other problems. Does 'indicating' have its source in 'desire'? Is 'indication' a fixed violence? Is an indication a sudden point-of-excess in a world of neutral perception? My recurrent example "I see this tree" could be submitted to the testing power of those questions, not to mention the possibility of a psychoanalytical investigation. I can understand indicating an indication (my own example) as the covered expression of the desire to penetrate and take possession of the world. Since about 1930, that is, for more than sixty years, writers of French literature, especially in the various forms of the essay, the novel and, to a lesser degree, the theater, have aimed at transposing desire, violence and penetration into a display of referential failures, as if the transfer of desire into language changed the original violence of penetration into the relative relaxation of linguistic indication, into the acumen of referential apprehension. Then we are facing the realist seduction: to write 'desire' is not desiring; to write 'violence' is not necessarily a violent gesture; but to write 'indicating' or 'reference' is referring indication and reference to themselves. In other words, is 'desire' not present when I write 'desire'? Or can I desire without writing 'desire' or any equivalent? The same observation applies to 'violence.' However, a realist reading puts forth a state of language that contributes by preparing or interpreting an action, for example, in male perspective, a sexual penetration. A realist expression of desire could be understood as a mythical transposition of reference. The chronological priority of desire as regards reference, or of violence as regards indicating, is pure fantasy. It is apparently true in realist language

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and culture, but not in any other language and culture, especially when language experience makes of reference the first and last human power. 5 6. Indicating, Identifying, Seeing If reference cannot be subordinated to desire according to the formula "I refer to because I desire," if the formula should be reversed, and if we should state that "I desire because I have the power of reference," this reversal implies that the dream of identification, which is the driving force behind any expression of desire, should not be transferred to the realm of language. Indicating should not be understood as a desire for identification: ''standing for" is not equivalent to "identifying one's self with. . . ." Surely an identification is the beginning of an operation that establishes an identity card for something; but it does not claim that the perceptive identification of something consists in identifying it with my perceiving, and thus in saying that the world is my representation in a state of double reference and presence. It does not mean that a poet will never identify himself/herself with a tree: to refer for a possible identification of myself to a tree implies the selection of a metaphor: not to indicate a tree, but to indicate myself as a tree. The word tree contributes by increasing my own identification. Feeling like a tree reinforces my reference to myself: I see this tree; I identify it with a double and vertical force going down and going up, a force of rooting and rising; I refer it to my personal experience, and I say, "I am like the tree I see." In that poetic identification, where I reinforce my identification in identifying myself with something else, I presuppose that indicating is made possible by seeing: "I indicate the tree I am seeing." Here is the crucial difficulty of the investigation on indicating. Again the question of the priority of perception on language and reference arises: "I refer because I can see." For example: "I look through my window, I see immediately my backyard in its whole and its parts, I indicate this tree as my favored example in the present meditation." We know already that the reverse phrase is no less permissible: "I see this tree because I wish to refer to it." We have even agreed that these two phrasings balance each other; neither can supersede the otherboth express two possible linguistic experiences. However, when writing those lines, I behave as if I were seeing 'seeing' in transparency. A first 'to see' exists in my vocabulary, and it specifies a certain expression of reference through the visual system of my brain, which itself is part of the general system of cerebrality. Consequently, my basic

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questions are not "What do I see? How can I see?," which are questions for the psychophysicist, but "how can 'to see' exist in my vocabulary and how can I experience it?" Is it possible to imagine lexicons without those words? Recall that I have prohibited the use of the R-postulate that is normally accepted in psychophysics. 6 I am ready to write this morning, pen in hand ("ready-to-hand," Heidegger would say); "through the transparency of my window I look at my backyard, I see grass, trees, hedges, the neighboring houses." It is my daily landscape apprehended as soon as my eyes and attention are focused toward the outside; it is immediate seeing, from which I am able to observe more or less important details. Furthermore, words between quotation marks are distinct parts of a writing, mixture of narration and description, but for me, inseparable from the immediate apprehension of a part of the world, what I call perception. Can I declare that I am able to see something without the intervention of the word seeing or any other equivalent term? Yes, my own language use invites me to accept that belief. But can I prove it' Obviously not, since I will have to request words to speak against themselves and about what happens when they are hypothetically absent or nonexistent. Then, I say, "Perception is invitation to, preparation for language and reference," thus maintaining the primitiveness of perception. This primitiveness to which I return time and again is already an aspect of language. What difference can one put between 'invitation to language' and 'indication' as categories of reference' Consequently, what difference can I put between 'seeing' as sensory experience and 'seeing' as word experience? I am aware that a sensory experience is not limited to its sensory apparatus; vaguely I refer to a part of my brain where the visual center is supposed to be located, or to a mysterious 'substance' I call 'mind'. . . . Let us try another hypothesis: I bow to the experimental inseparability of sense-vision and word-vision, but I express it in the following manner: there are two kinds of referential processes and representations (to follow David Marr's choice of words in Vision), one without and one with words, that is, a prelinguistic and a linguistic state of existence.7 Thus, 'indicating' should be the prelinguistic referential moment to be followed by the other moments qualified as naming and meaninga paradoxical moment, never directly accessible to experience, only through the other aspects of the referential power. It could be argued that this is not an unusual epistemological situation: after all, is there a physicist who sees an elementary particle? However, the analogy between metaphysical meditation and the writing of physics is very superficial. Physicists have always in

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mind the limited power of their instruments, while the main purpose of metaphysics should consist in questioning the concept of limitation and its realist solution. I often refer to a person or a thing by gesture, not by articulated sounds. Is this not the proof that indicating is not naming? Obviously! But it does not mean that 'indicating' is an independent way of reference by itself. It means only that reference requires the two coordinated powers of indicating and naming to satisfy the full referential exigency. We will see later that reference actually calls for other modes of language, such as describing, meaning, judging. Subsequently, I can experience seeing without explicit naming, but not without indicating. My daily feeling of seeing through colors, forms, and movement is an essential part of the experience of reference. Indicating starts a process of which the second moment is a search for names: the world of indicators aspires to be changed into a world of nomenclature. Then, let us not be shy about saying: When I see through my window and write about it, I am working at building up my world of reference. For example, when I perceive the thick and immaculate whiteness of a magnolia flower, the intense pleasure I feel amounts to an experience that is more than my unique presence to the world and the miraculous presence of the world to me; it gives me a sense of the ultimate reference that metaphysical poets and philosophers like Berkeley or Bergson attempted to translate into a last verbal renunciation of language: the language of indicating is then absorbed into the language of seeing. Maybe it is why sight is most often considered the final form of perception, even if one could think that the touchreference is stronger and more powerful, or that the deepest faith in and reference to God is connected with audition. One recalls Saint Paul's preference for the audible language: Faith comes to those who listen and heed (fides ex auditu), as opposed to Thomas, the disciple who demanded to "see" The Risen from the dead. Seeing is surely the negation of the Invisible; it points to Being. It is indication at its summit, although all other senses possess their own untransferable quality and presence. The problem of the unity and diversity of senses has rarely been faced by philosophers or psychologists. 8 The striking metaphoric intervention of every sense in the universe of the mind and its language testifies that all human senses share with sight the capacity to indicate and are referential powers, every one in its own way. To recognize the universality of sense-indicating with the accepted supremacy of vision should satisfy us for the moment and convince us that the so-called sense-indications are elements of our referential existence as awareness of presence, as first aspects of the linguistic order of things and beings.

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7. Indicating Absence Earlier I briefly addressed yet another question: If "indicating" is closely linked to presence, how is it possible to indicate absence? One may remember the joke about the sergeant inspecting his platoon and saying, "I see two absentees." Such a statement could be understood as an abbreviation for "I see that X and Y are absent today," which would imply, "Today I do not see X and Y,'' so that "indicating an absence" would mean "observing the impossibility to indicate a certain presence" and to say "I see that Z and Y are present today." Since Parmenides, metaphysicians and logicians have discussed this problem with a strong tendency to subordinate the negation of Being to its prior affirmation. 9 In contemporary logic, which posits negation as one of the elementary operators, the problem of negative thought has found two interesting formulations: "How is reference possible in cases such as the word unicorn, which designates an imaginary animal?" and "What is reference in counterfactuals, that is, in conditionals when the antecedents are contrary to fact?" Needless to say, almost all logicians presuppose the R-postulate: explicitly or not, they identify reference with the operation of naming or describing. Thus they make of negative reference a true mystery: "How is the perception of an absence possible in a world made of present referents?" Furthermore, I should try to pursue my own meditation at the level of the process of indicating, although I am well aware that I am able to reach indication in my present writing only through naming and describing. Let us come back to the sergeant's case ("How can he/she indicate an absence?") and reconsider the question that everybody seems to believe is easy to answer: "How can I indicate a presence?" The realist answer seems evident and inevitable: "I indicate a presence because there is something present in front of me." Since the R-postulate is excluded from the present meditation (even while I am writing this phrase), can I take refuge in the idealist answer: "I construct an object and project it in front of me"? But that statement implies the Psy-referent, which I have also excluded. The only remaining and admissible problem should take the following form: "What is 'indicating' within the limits of language?" or "How can reference exist if there is no preexisting referent to be referred to?" If I 'indicate' a person to you, I am not necessarily right; I may show the wrong person or be deceived by a mirage, and then refer to no presence at all. For the same reason that there are no sense-data, there are no indicative data. Surely I have means to prove that my indications are real or imaginary, and, consequently, that

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a given reference is correct or not. If I tell you, "Come with me, I shall show you a unicorn hidden in my backyard," maybe you will accompany me just to see what will happen. I may be a victim of hallucinations, or live in a mythological world and believe in the ancient tradition that trees are prisons for heroes. In short, my linguistic power of indicating is subject to successes and failures; it varies also with systems of references. It is in the very experience of indicating that I confer on myself and my language the possibility of real or imaginary presences, of perception and hallucination. It is not because there are real objects to be indicated that I imagine unreal objects of indication. My power of indicating generates itself in an alternative game of presences and absences that are not preexisting, but are discovered in the awareness of indicating. However, if I am conscious of positing right and wrong indications, real and imaginary ones, it does not mean that I have the power of indicating absences. If an absolute presence is impossible, does not the same apply to nothingness as absolute absence? Then comes the inescapable question: What does God, as the word for an infinite being, indicate? and what does 'nothingness' indicate? One could answer that such words do not indicate; they could be supposed to belong to a special category of terms that have meanings, with no references. Then, one must understand how and why a word does not refer by itself. I can say, "I will not discuss and examine the reference of this or that word," implying that I cannot find a convenient solution to its indicative powers. I could even add that the words God, nothingness were invented to indicate the opposite limits of my experience of indicating, and thus, of my perception. I do not show God and nothingness, only their verbal images. Furthermore, I am aware that I just referred to the word invent in a very vague sense and that it will be necessary later to meditate on the "invention" or ''imagination" of words. For the moment, I recognize the presence of two words in charge of indicating presence and absence in an absolute way and conferring on all other words a relative power of presence and absence. They are reciprocal indications, and they are experienced as such. Thus to indicate an absence is no more mysterious than to indicate a presence. "The presence of God surrounds me, the absence of God makes of our world an empty shell, Nothingness surrounds me." I am conscious that "the absence of God" and "the presence of nothingness" are equivalent phrasings, with emotional nuances. All of them express the limits of perception and the frontiers of our indicative power. So we conclude that "indicating God" and "indicating nothingness" are experiences made possible by the linguistic condition of our existence.

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It is by and in our language that 'God' and 'nothinghness' take on a referential power for our lives. Nevertheless, I cannot think that 'indicating' is an effect of language among a few other universal linguistic modes. It is language in its permanent manifestation, as being-of-language-and-language-of-being. 10 I indicate something to someone who in his turn, indicates . . . I understand my linguistic condition as the vocation of indicating, a vocation that is more or less accomplished so that any realized indication requires its justification. Logicians who like to construct and surround themselves with artificial (I do not say useless) difficulties are surprised by sentences describing the nature and qualities of unicorns. I think that the simple existential statement positing the existence of a certain being ("I see the tree at the center of my backyard") is much more mysterious than the pure unfolding of a reverie. I do not understand how traditional onto-logical or epistemological theories can claim their right to existential judgments except by a brutal intellectual coup de force. The Kantian criticism of the ontological argument that attempts to prove the existence of God is the best evidence of this type of millenary philosophical embarrassment. 8. Indicating Indicating In a temporary effort to concentrate my meditation on this point, let me repeat that indicating does not consist in referring to preexisting things or beings, to preexisting persons; it consists in experimenting with the power of indicating: "I see a tree in my backyard, I see a unicorn in my backyard"; everyone of these statements possesses an indicative power. To try to prove that one is more indicative than the other would require all the resources of modern science, or poetry, a battle between Isaac Newton and William Blake. Logical paradoxes are poetic clarities. Both of them belong to the multifarious life of indicating. I will never be able to escape that condition. Thus my interdiction to comply with the R-postulate, the Psy-referent, or the F-function is more than temporary and methodological caution; it is the recognition of the necessary condition of indicating, and the awareness of a curious situation: indicating is the word that summarizes all possible ways of indication and at the same time indicates indicating. Subsequently, indicating does not exist without the possibility of indicating indicating, that is, without its own naming. Saying so, is it not introducing the R-postulate in its last possible refuge? 'Indicating' indicates indicating, in the same way that 'tree' indicates a tree, but with no requirement of preexistence for the indicated. Then, how can I write

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"'indicating' indicates indicating"? To that question there is only one answer: "because I perceive indicating." "To perceive indicating" is not strictly equivalent to "to perceive 'indicating.'" In the first case, for example, I see myself showing a tree to my visitor; in the second case, I look at the written word 'indicating.' If the word indicating or any similar expression did not exist, could I say "I see myself showing . . ."? Obviously not, since 'showing' is a synonym of 'indicating.' The following conclusion seems inevitable: there is no indication without a language of indicating. One could go as far as saying that language, in the infinite variety of its lexical and grammatical forms, is language of indication' in its own manner, any noun, verb, adjective, and so on, is an indicator at our service, serviceable, present-at-hand (as Heidegger would say), intentional (as Husserl would say), indefinably ostensive (as Wittgenstein would say). Every statement could be voiced or written: "Indicating! see this tree!,'' "Indicated, there is a tree." The quantifiers of logical calculus should always be preceded by "Indicating!" or by its psychological translation "Beware!" or "Behold!" Moreover, although any lexeme in any language appears to be a potential indicator, the very existence of the word indicating indicates that language offers its own indicative markings: the specific language of indication accompanying any linguistic occurrence. Since the time of the Sophists, Plato and Aristotle, the grammatical distinction between noun and verb has been connected with the effort to organize the ontological language of substance and their movements. In the Middle Ages, philosophers and grammarians opposed the modus habitus of the noun to the modus flexus of the verb, in a sort of linguistic transposition of the distinction between permanence and change, which has puzzled Western thought from its beginnings. For centuries, that traditional interpretation of the basic grammatical duality has been associated with ontological substantialism, to the point that one discusses periodically whether grammar is responsible for metaphysics or the reverse. Furthermore, discussion around the priority of logical relations over chronological ones are vain, and loaded with philosophical prejudices. As regards the power of indicating, it is present in nouns, verbs, and other grammatical expressions. Compare the following formulae: "I see the tree, Seeing the tree, The sight of the tree, See the tree, Oh the tree!, there is a tree, etc." they play different roles in my discourse but possess and express a certain unique quality of indication; one way or another, all of them contribute to a unique experience of reference. Consequently; I cannot state that a noun, a verb or any other grammatical form, is more 'indicating'

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than others. In the totality of its forms, be it concentrated or expanded, discourse is indicating. Thus, grammatical diversity should be understood through the growth of omnipresent indicating, through implicit and explicit markings, so that marking is indicating, and indicating is never captured directly; its existence is never directly perceived; it is perceived through language perceiving, and, since meditating is becoming language-consciousness, through language perceived. Indicating is recaptured in the operation of naming and describing, which I shall examine later: I name, I describe in order to indicate, and it is true even when naming consists in interjecting. 9. the Language of Indicating Or Deixis If our lexicons and grammars in their entirety should be understood as formations and elaborations of an indicative style of existence, a part of them marks the indication of indicating in the discourse. For many years, linguists and, more recently, philosophers have been attracted to and puzzled by the pervading presence of those marks. Today the most frequent naming to cover and designate the indication of indicating is the power of deixis expressed in a variety of deictics. Greek etymology speaks for itself. Other identifications or baptismal commitments with the support of respected godfathers were also tried: 'indexical symbol' (Peirce), 'egocentric particular' (B. Russell), 'token-reflective word' (Reichenbach), 'shifter' (Jakobson), 'indicator' (N. Goodman), 'indicateur' (Benveniste), 'embrayeur' (Greimas), and so on. By itself such lexical diversity suggests that the linguistic reality we are trying to apprehend is very slippery, and its domain is not well delineated. My own analysis inclines toward Peirce's or Benveniste's labeling choice, but any other decision is also revealing: Russell and Reichenbach insist on the reflective character of indicating; Jakobson and Greimas, on its dynamic and subjective power. Indicating refers to enunciation itself; a deictic makes reference to the instance of enunciation and to its spatio-temporal frame: for example, when I say, "Here (I) see this tree." 11 Deictics mark the language of perception along its double reference to a world and to a language-subject; it refers to, it indicates enunciations in themselves, by showing-and-reflecting. Linguists underline the difference between the deictic, the anaphoric use of adverb, and the pure temporal or spatial adverbs. Notice the difference of indication in "Here is a tree," "There is a tree," "I will go to Paris in July and stay there about one

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month." Does it mean that deictics, as defined by some linguists, indicate simply the enunciation of speech and the content of speech, when nondeictic adverbs and anaphoric terms indicate only the content and the implied referent? This state of affairs is not clear, and the statement I just wrote is not clear either: Does "this" (in "this state of affairs") possess a deictic, or a pure temporal, or an anaphoric value? Surely it refers to the enunciation I am now making, but also to the enunciation I just made, and finally to a state of affairs that transcends the present moment of my writing and deals with the general problem of indicating and its markings. Furthermore, the fact that I am able to vary my mode of indication does not entail that deictics, as references to speech enunciations, form a very distinct category of indexmarking. We should pay more attention to the sentence "'indicating' indicates indicating," as long as it is understood that I must not presuppose a subject and an object of indication. On the contrary, subject and object of indication should be understood as consequences of indicating. In a parallel but different way of speaking, if indicating is realizing perception, then there is no perception without reference to the act of perception, or, in Berkeley's terms, there is no percipi without percipere. This means that terms like 'this, here, now' are immediately ambivalent. They can but indicate world and language in simultaneous existential comprehension. Let us consider the often-quoted statement: ''No, I am not lost, I am here now," which is always useful as a joke in an academic lecture. It does not mean that I am exclusively referring to my enunciation. I can intend to mean, Cartesian style: "Even if I am lost in this wood, at least I am at that clearing, and from there I hope to find a way out." 'There' indicates a point of departure from an unknown spot to a known place. In any case 'now,' 'I,' 'there' arc not exclusively concerned with my enunciation. If it were so, that modest joke would not be funny at all. I can only conclude that, as linguistic condition, the experience of indicating requires a double markingobjective and subjective, spontaneous and reflective. Can I imagine an indication that does not indicate itself as indication? I am driving; on the right side of the road I see a black cross on a yellow square; I know that in the United States it indicates an intersection and as such it is a road 'sign' or indicator. If I consider the totality of the roads in a country, I expect it to be a complex language of indications that I will use to perceive and drive through its roads. There is no need to imagine a double faculty of perception and reflection to explain the experience of indicating. I have just to understand indicating, that is, to be indicating and to be able to write 'indicating.' Above, I arrived at the

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conclusion that any lexeme in any language has an indicative dimension so that every word is a deictic of some sort. Now I can add that, in order to be indicative, any experience of indicating is double, both monstrative and reflective. Since certain terms specify aspects of indicating and serve as basic markings for indicating, they distribute themselves necessarily between the two species of monstratives and reflectives. They support our perception of ourselves-in-theworld and of the world-around-ourselves. They are elementary spatio-temporal and personal indicators without which no perception and expression of perception would be conceivable. The monstrative indicators appear as adverbs, demonstrative articles, or pronouns. They are like referential coefficients implicitly or explicitly present alongside a noun or a verb. In principle, all nouns and verbs call for such coefficients. The main spatial indicators are 'here' and 'there'; the main temporal adverbs are 'now,' 'yesterday,' 'tomorrow? There are also verbal expressions such as 'here is,' 'there is, was, will be,' and verbal modes of present, past, future indicatives, with their infinite nuances played out again and again by novelists. In relation to nouns, there is 'this,' 'that,' and their plurals 'these,' 'those': they could accompany the occurrence of any noun and be like a warning addition to a specific indication. All of them concur with the establishment of our existential mapping. They lead to the progressive elaboration of our geometrical and historical vision as well as language, in a sort of see-saw motion between nearness and distance, spatial and temporal presence and absence, contact and interval, adherence and looseness. Their primitive character is often recognized, as if any linguistic formulation was a derivation from an original exclamativeinterrogative-indicative 'this-there' (what is called in French 'voici,' that is, 'vois ici' ('See here'). 12 Writers are those language producers who by vocation attempt to give to language its extreme power of reference and thus of indication, when they write lyrics or narratives. Often they play with the absence of indicators as if the absence was reinforcing and magnifying the feeling and prestige of presence. Maybe, for historians of language, 'the' or 'a' are degenerations or weak interpretations of the primitive 'this-here'; but for the writer they can become an indirect and powerful manner of indicating, for instance in the title: French novelists, when they do not indulge in the striking mystery of a proper name, like to call for the definite article L'Etranger, La Condition humaine, Les FauxMonnayeursor even combine definite articles and proper namesLes Rougon-Macquart, La Princesse de Clèves, La Nouvelle Héloïse. In those cases and many others, indicating is hidden, although strongly present, in the implied essence and

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universality that is the aspiration of language' this man is every man, this woman is the Woman. On the contrary, the return to the original indicating power is rare and then it tends to take a parodic or comic form. One may recall the witty answer of Polonius in Hamlet (Act II, scene 2): "Take this from this if this be otherwise." The first 'this' indicates his head, the second his shoulders and the third the present situation. Thus it is not surprising that the dream of pure indicating appears in poetry. Mallarmé's obsession with "the absolute Work" (l'uvre absolue) is nothing less than the utopia of absolute indication-meaning, the paradoxical control of words recaptured in a supposedly primitive emergence. An enigmatic remark made by Emily Dickinson reveals the secret and sacred awe of the poet interrogating language: "Tis a dangerous moment for anyone when the meaning goes out of things and life stands straightand punctualand yet no signal comes." 13 Even for the one who is not possessed by the demonic expectation of the poet, there are moments when emptiness is felt within and outsideemptiness of meaning, emptiness of indicating, and yet things are present, "punctual,'' as Dickinson says; it is indicating without signal, without the possibility of naming them and oneself. It is not a prelinguistic state of mind, it is not perception in its perceptive simplicity, without memory and meaning. It is language itself in a torturing need for indicating, when some mysterious impotence prevents things from becoming signals, actually when signals do not know how to name themselves except as things. However, the reverse feeling exists also as a constant fear: things and persons signal too much. Such is the Proustian unleashing of metaphoric indications; then the punctuality of 'this' bursts out into infinite meanings that finally indicate nothing but hallucinogenic signals. The Proustian jealous person offers the perfect example of that neurotic relation to language: Swann or the Narrator's jealousies in A la recherche du temps perdu are sexual projections of the writer's destiny, that is, the obsessive reading and translation of too many signals, and consequently, the risk of diluting and perverting the referential power. One can understand why today American poets are haunted by the return to the pure indication of 'here-there.' Charles Olson, for example, defends a poetics of "petrism"a revealing term suggesting, not the return to the Stone Age, but the return to the birth of language through a via negativa, thanks to which language is denuded, stripped of its grammatical and rhetorical apparatus. It is the search for a poetic minimal expression, aspiring to a maximal indicative power. Olson writes about

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"these things/which don't carry their end any further than/their reality/in themselves." He refers to 'portulans' as method of mapping by tracing the course followed by ships. 14 More generally speaking, there is no literary achievement at any time and in any culture that does not dream of a concentrated language, hard and sparkling formulae like diamonds, enigmatic oracles that indicate the paths of the future, aphorisms and maxims that sum up in a few easily remembered words the totality of a philosophy or a culture and often occur in clichés for common languages. All those literary inventions betray the deep desire of indicating in its extreme strength and perceptive delimitation. From there also derives the need for aphorism and definition.15 The relation between definition and aphorism will be meditated on later. Here I have merely to recognize that aspect of literature which goes back to the origin of indicating and to express it with a minimum of semantic expansion. The Oxford Book of Aphorisms, edited by John Gross, carefully marks differences between aphorism, epigram, maxim, and proverb; but it does not raise the problem of their common spirit, which John Gross, probably referring to the text quoted above, calls the "spirit of Polonius." I see only one answer: Language becomes acutely aware of its own restraint when it tries to realize its presence through indications and thus to condense words into that intense consciousness of indicating called 'perception.' The aphoristic exigency reaches its perfect expression in haiku. Here is a remarkable example selected by Gross: "The world of dew is / A world of dew . . . and yet, / And yet . . ." One could add that 'dew' by itself is too distracting (in all the senses of the verb 'to distract'). I would like to reduce the poem to "Here there is . . . And yet . . ." In prosaic terms it suggests that there is no 'this' without 'yet'; there is no indication without hesitation, a final suspension of reference, the final defeat of language by language, the recognition that there is no absolute indicating. Polonius's style of indicating reminds me that the world of indicating (dew) is a stage. Then, the least indicative gesture is theatrical; it restores perception to its original domain of referential order. At the beginning was the triplet, affirmed and negated, ''here-this-now . . . and yet." Such is language mapping its referential power through indicating and its monstrative indicators. The restrictive and corrective 'yet' invites many translations. There is one that predominates any attempt to exhaust its negative infinity: "Yet I am writing 'here,' 'this,' 'now,' 'the world of dew."' I cannot indicate "this dew here and now" without indicating my writing, without showing something other than dew, so that the monstrative triplet "here-thisnow"

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is actually the doublet "this-I," since 'here' and 'now' experience their referential power in relation to an 'I' center of references: 'here' indicates "here where I am" and "now for me." Modern idealism had a presentiment of this linguistic condition when it claimed that any consciousness is always consciousness of something else and someone else, but still, remaining under the spell of centuries of ontological belief, it transferred the need for being into the need for mind and built up the marvellous and fantastic world of the Psy-referent. There is no indication without the indication of indication. Any indicating indicates itself Such is my hypothesis concerning the specificity of the reflective indicators. They indicate indicating in the form of the personalization of language. Now I have to understand the necessity of the occurrence of 'I, you . . . ,' without implying the existence of the Psy-referent. Let us begin with this elementary question: Why are 'I, you' needed to indicate indication? Why not simply say that any indicator implies, "This is an indication, this is not a pure geological accident"? But how can I understand "this is an indication" without referring that signal, for instance, to my future driving behavior' A signal indicates "this is an indication for you." "I am reading Hamlet": for me and for you it is a title indication, the indication of a play referring to Shakespeare. ''I, Shakespeare, wrote a play and decided to name it 'Hamlet' after its principal hero." Reserving for later the problem of the occurrence of a proper name connected with 'I,' I have to understand the necessary occurrence of 'I, you' when language indicates, and (to repeat) without the belief in the existence of a Psyreferent. As mentioned previously, linguists explain language by its function of communication. In the present case I could say "Indicating is made for somebody; an indication establishes a relationship between persons, and persons are marked by pronominal lexemes." But I have already put a warning signal on the word communication: there is no way to prove that language is the effect of communication, or the reverse; especially, indicating indicating is not communicating an indication. 16 Another hypothesis would consist in invoking a principle of linguistic subjectivity: indicating would require a subject as source of indication or recognition of a need for indicating: "We, the police of this state, warn you that the speed limit is 20 miles [an hour on] this street."17 One could object that the reading of a street signal could be done without the help of a reflective indicator. "The police of North Carolina warn that . . ." But the change of style from the first and second persons to the third does not mean that 'indicating' dispenses with personalization. Indeed, the play

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within three persons, singular and plural, is a complex one that has not been fully explored by modern philosophers. "Indicating indicating" can be developed into "language that indicates, indicates itself," and ''in order to indicate itself, language refers to persons." Thus, before considering the distinction of persons, I should examine the double experience of reflection and persons within indicating. Reflection is not a mysterious operation by which my consciousness, as hypothetical psychological being, divides itself into subject and object. It is part of the necessity of indicating; more than the capacity of repeating itself in the form of "I think that I think," it is the obligation of marking indicating as indication. A writer knows that he/she has to find a title as a way of indicating his new book, along the traditional and fashionable usage of entitling, and as a sort of unique verbal condensation. It can happen that his choice is not agreeable to the editor, who suggests other phrasings. Nonetheless, the title indication is connected directly with a proper name, which is the marking of a person. I will return later to that property of proper names. For the time being, I insist only on the fact that indicating implies the presence of a person. The situation is the same for the multiplicity of social warnings, for publicity, for advertisements, for indicators and experimental instruments, and so forth. Any indicator reflects itself in a person who takes the responsibility of indicating. If it did not, there would be no indication, and ultimately, no language at all. Consequently, language invents itself as reflective indicator(s) in order to give its full power to the expression of indicating. Should I say that a "person" is the indicator of an indication? Is "personalizing" the linguistic process by which indicating completes itself into the linguistic presence and absence of a person? "Hello, it is me, is it you? is she in? . . . Yes, it is she. . . ." Surely it is difficult, if not impossible, as Beckett demonstrated, to strip off the many cultural covers of any reflective indicator, all the more so since one already knows that indicators, like the elementary particles of atomism, do not exist by themselves. I understand that they are grasped through the intermediary processes of naming, describing, and defining, even if I am not yet clear about the true significance of those operations. Nevertheless, naming, describing, or defining indicating and indicating indicating do not exhaust the awareness of it. There is something else that is not naming or the capacity of describing. Our most important discovery is to become aware of the fact that indicating implies and requires indicating indicatingin other words, aware of the fact that language, being language, not only has to indicate itself but can indicate itself only in the double form of an objectsubject of indication. It does not mean that indicating indicating is second in regard to indi-

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cating. Far from it. Any indication is simultaneously indicating and indicating indicating. To be more specific, "this, here, now . . ." on one side and "I, you, he/she . . ." on the other are all forcefully present when indicating is indicating. To simplify this example, let us consider the emergence "this/I." I explain this doublet in the following way: "I show this and show me showing this at the same time." In a vocabulary frequently used by philosophers of language, one should say that "ostension'' is always reflection, and reflection is always ostention, so that 'this' and 'I' cannot be confused, although they are forming a circle, looking for each other. 'I' assumes the responsibility for 'this' and 'this' for 'I.' Maybe it was the ultimate warning of Rimbaud's aphorism: "Je est un autre," meaning that 'I' indicates the other than 'this,' although 'I' is another 'this.' In short, in its original power, the reflective indicator is the indicative person, and the person, as elementary part of language, is the power of indicating. 18 Because of the relativity of indicating, there is no absolute demonstrative, no autarchic 'this,' no 'this' without 'that' (even if the user of the English language is embarrassed in perceiving their semantic difference) and without its spatial and temporal exponentials. For the same reason, there is no absolute reflective or personal pronoun. In spite of Western modern egocentrism there is no absolute 'I' from which other persons would derive: 'I, you, he/she' and their plurals possess equal, if different, powers of indicating. If 'you' is an 'I' different from me, the reverse is no less significant. 'I' is a 'you' different from you. The third personal or person-indicating seems to have a status different from the other two. It is often noted that if 'I' and 'you' refer directly to an enunciation in process and get their meaning through that enunciation, such a linguistic property does not belong to the third person, who should not be received as a kind of indicator; it is a simple pronoun, a substitute for a noun, as when I say "Ronald Reagan was elected president of the United States in November 1984; he belongs to the Republican Party." In such cases 'he' refers to a proper name, not to the enunciation in process. Then I can say: "Edouard Motor-Sir was appointed professor at the University of North Carolina in August 1972. Later, 'I' was asked to be director of French graduate studies." Indeed it is awkward prose, but not an impossible statement. The famous use of the third-person "Charles de Gaulle" or "de Gaulle," in the general's memoirs, is close to that double way of indicating; it suggests that in certain conditions of speaking or writing the power expressed by the third person is deemed superior to that of the first or the second person. At any rate, it does not mean that 'he, she, they' seen in their

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anaphoric function do not contain a direct indicative value. Even when they play the role of a substitute to a proper name and have an abbreviative value, they do not act without person indication. But arc they reflective as 'I' or 'you'? In one of the above examples 'he' does not refer apparently to the enunciation, but to the enunciated "Ronald Reagan." It is well known that, in pure narrative, first and second personalizations are dispensed with. The distinction between enunciation and enunciated, which recalls the Saussurian opposition of the signifier and the signified, is an easy way to escape a delicate intellectual state of affairs. Insistence on the anaphoric property of a term in the discourse does not mean that this term loses its original property. In the case of the third person it does not lose its reflective personalization. For instance, let us transcribe in the third person the aphorism Pascal put in the first and second person ("Tune me chercherais pas si tune m'avais trouvé"): "You would not be looking for me if you had not found me." The two persons are Blaise Pascal and Jesus Christ; but the pronouns are open to infinite possibilities; for example, "Swann would not be looking for Odette if he had not found her." Indicating in the third person does not mean evasion from the first and second persons' jails into the anonymous world of objects. Reference at the third level is still to a person, and it keeps the power of indicating indicating: 'he, she, they' remain in the same camp as 'I, you' against the neutralizer, 'it.' French does not mark the difference between 'if' person/subject and 'il' thing. One can imagine all sorts of explanationslinguistic, psychological, sociologicalfor that grammatical decision. The French language recognizes that the third person expresses a double indicative power. However, there is no possible confusion between person and thing in the current usage of the same pronoun. One can imagine a Platonic poet applying Pascal's aphorism to a mountain or a flower. By itself the indicative power is independent of its objective or subjective implications. 19 I cannot claim that the pronominal persons were suggested by my perception of beings understood as living beings and nonliving things, and then, as human beings and others for which I will not use 'I, you' but only 'it, they,' except for poetic transfiguration. Thus, the notion of nonperson, as convenient as it might be in practical life or for scientific experimentation, remains puzzling for philosophers. It seems simpler to accept the three persons in their fundamental indicating diversity. 'I' has no special privilege as regards the two other persons, no more than 'one' is a privileged number; but it has its specificity, which was emphasized and amplified by Modern Thought. A basic fact remains: for reflective indicators, their personalizing power is not and cannot be marked by a unique marking. The

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three persons are linguistic properties of the personalizing indicating as complementaries of the demonstratives. Descartes ignored the triple value of the cogitans: I, you, he/she, think(s), therefore I, you, he/she exist(s). Indeed I have the ability to write: "I think that you think, therefore you are"; and also to write: "You, he/she think(s) that I think, therefore you, he/she, think(s) that I am." Those formulae do not derive from the formula that Descartes declared subjectively primordial. Not only are they simultaneous possibilities, but they are in a state of reciprocal conditions. "I think" exists only because "you think, they think" also exist, and together they permit many verbal plays: ''I think, therefore you exist; you think, therefore he/she, it exist(s); he thinks, therefore I and you exist," and so on. Actually, that triple ability of reflective indicating makes of each person an echo of the others. The 'I' indicating is accompanied by a 'he/she' indicating. If I say "I am tired today," I recognize the possibility of your saying "he is tired today," or "you are tired today." What is an autobiography if not a piece of writing in which the first person indicates himself/herself as third person? In the particular case of Sartre's Les Mots, the writer attempts to fight the facilities and complacencies of the first person; he looks for the control of the empirical 'I' (in the Kantian sense) by the transcendental 'I' and speaks of himself as several past 'he' supervised by a present 'he,' himself controlled by a writing 'I'all keeping the indicating force of reference. However, would Sartre be inclined to say that the writer of Les Mots is an 'I' able to say 'he'? Yes indeed, but it shows only that Sartre was not immune to the Psy-referent and its Cartesian commitments. Who writes when I write? Beckett's The Unnamable demonstrates that there is no clear answer to that question. As he justly states, "it is the fault of the pronouns." Let me add: it is our pronominal fatality to indicate two other persons when we indicate one. 10. Summing Up It is time to try to concentrate the highlights of this meditation on reference as indicating into a few sentences. A philosophical theory of perception is acceptable only if it is integrated into a general theory of language, and directly, into a theory of reference. Thus, to experience perceiving returns to experience organizing a world of reference. The two expressions "world of references" and "world of sensory data" are equivalent if one understands that sensory data do not

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exist as such (be they called 'impressions' or 'sensations'). They are designated referents apprehended within a referential process. Nevertheless, the exercise of reference, grasped at the perceptive level of reference, should not be confused with reference in its full linguistic completion. In a way, one could speak of language-before-language: that would denote language before it names itself as language and becomes conscious of itself as power of naming. Thus, I shall pass from the experience of indicatives to the experience of naming. Let us never forget that between the two experiences of indicating and naming I am not establishing a historic or dialectic order. For instance, there is no reference at the most complex levels of mathematical or epistemological vocabularies that does not keep up gestures of indication. Likewise, there is no minimal indication without the promise of thorough and well saturated worlds of reference. However, although indicating and naming are closely correlated, it would be naive to consider naming as the consequence or extension of indicating or as the effort of reinforcing it. My next problem will be to push and reach the understanding of naming to the top of the uniqueness and fullness of naming and naming naming, when the world of reference institutes itself into the empire of names. The need for such a state of existence-as-indicating has been felt by several modern philosophers. They presuppose an absolute empty beginning (Hegel), a prereflective cogito (Husserl), an "immediate given of consciousness" (Bergson), a consciousness as anguish of nothingness (Heidegger), and so on. All of them try to catch and translate a moment when language is language before its organization by naming and describing. Here also was born the belief in the Psyreferent and the modern illusion of a nonlinguistic world designated by linguistic tricks. That explains the metaphysical nostalgia since Descartes and Locke for a modern return to the source. The maternal womb has served as an emotional symbol for that journey to the beginning of language. Actually, it is a journey to the beginning of the indicative energy fostering up the first cries. The word before has no chronological or logical value because "language-before-language" designates an insurpassable state of experience, and because it contributes to the founding of logical and chronological relations: it is "that without which," and that I propose to call it 'indi-eating.' Thus, the following elementary implication: perception implies reference, which implies indicating. The famous Aristotelian aphorism "Nothing is in the intellect that has not first been in perception'' should be completed by another aphorism: "Nothing is perception that has not first

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been indication." In that perspective, indicating expresses the universal power of reference-and-language in all its practical and cultural aspects. In any grammatical particle or molecule lies a coefficient of indication It is the aim of literature to give it its full energetic power, while in daily life language is reduced to its minimal charges. Furthermore, indicating possesses its own markings that have always been felt as original manifestations of language. The demonstrative and reflective indicatives, as much as they can, maintain the indicative pulsion. A final remark: 'perceiving' is not just a superfluous way of talking about indicating. It deserves a preferential place in language about language: if language did not make us perceiving, there would be no language at all; and without language there is no perceiving. The present meditation on indicating helped us to confer upon the traditional and contemporary theories of perception their right places in a new awareness of language. 11. Indicating, Painting, and Literature the discussion above concentrated on maintaining the difficult imagination of a world of indicatives suggested by a whirlwind of words. I granted myself the right to conceive a sort of anterior life of language, accessible only through organized language and implying that the language of indicatives was essentially visual. Showing or indicating are just the same operation realized with the concurrence of the visual system: I see a tree as a particular indication within my perceptual field. My practical, "interested," and selfish perception is my search for useful indicators in view of coming actions. Is there a disinterested perception that consequently would be dispensed with indicating? I mutter ironically Baudelaire's line: "Le soleil a noirci la flamme des bougies" (The sun has blackened the flame of the candles), and I remember Gaston Bachelard's last book, La Flamme d'une chandelle. It seems that my perception, impregnated with remembrances, no longer indicates something. The so-called real world has become part of my reverie; then my perception is the horizon of my memory. My thought catches another remembrance: suddenly I see in my imagination Georges de La Tour's La Femme et la puce as a sort of pictorial, anachronical challenge to Baudelaire's line, as if I should write: "La flamme de la bougie a noirci le soleil" (The flame of the candle has blackened the sun). My

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reverie is pure intellectual monologue with perceptive margins, and it ends in front of a painting, as if de La Tour's colors and forms gave the true answer to Baudelaire's poem "L'Aube spirituelle." Have I not found what I was longing for since the first moment of these meditations, that is, an authentic off-language experience? Should I say that the art of painting issues a permanent invitation to transcend our linguistic nature and to return to the sensorial birth of reality? With the help of brushes the painter put oil colors on a canvas; ultimately, I see a woman lost in contemplation. The nagging question reappears: I assume the existence of a perception about which I write that it is a perception the perception of that painting. Should I infer that the world of visual arts is outside the world of words? When I am in front of a painting (a de La Tour, for instance), I stay silent for a while, but I know that that silence is full of words that, even before being expressed, seem to me inadequate. If I decide to remain mute, it is just to avoid one of those poor, if not stupid, remarks one hears at museum parties. Secretly I feel defeated, I limit my oral utterances to a few indications like "Look at this . . . ," underscored by some gestures, until the art critic, the specialist in language-about-painting, comes and feeds my linguistic appetite more or less appropriately. The art critic describes and interpretsnot the painting itself as an object in the sensorial world, but the work of the painter on the canvas, and the effects of that work on human imagination. She puts into full articulated language the indications given by the painter. Painting is the art limited to the universe of indicatives and this limitation makes its greatness. That situation explains the permanent oscillation between natural perception and artificial perception, and why one is the metaphor of the other. That explains also why the passages from painting to literature and the reverse are at the center of human cultures. Painting and fine arts, in general, satisfy the need for indicating, whereas literature answers the exigency of naming. Artists invent indicators; writers invent names. The first ones make of vision the indicative power par excellence. the others change the oral indicators into autonomous beings: the indicators are converted into names and later reconverted into visual forms. Then the power of naming supersedes the power of indicating, although the writer will always resent his inferiority in front of the painter who does not need the apparatus of words in order to indicate. 'Bonjour Monsieur Courbet' as a phonematic grouping, will never replace the actual Courbet painting. To the contrary, Courbet's painting, in its taro-dimensional vision, challenges the oral salute: your naming will never have the power to substitute for my indication; it will remain a pallid proxy for that intense life in the world of

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indicators. The absolute and powerful silence of painting will never be covered up by the hullabaloo of articulate sounds in their style of naming. Nevertheless, Courbet confesses the secret weakness of the art of indicating when he makes of the large canvas a salute to himself, Gustave Courbet. He implies also that a painting, in its immobile state, is more than a skillful gathering of indicators (the experiment with dynamic indicators will come a century later). His painting asserts the power of indicating, and it reveals reference as a full linguistic property. "Bonjour Monsieur Courbet" is ultimately an act of faith in reference by vision, with a group of silent marks made of lines and colors. But its title claims that indicating is part of naming, or, more exactly, it is naming at its minimal, but extreme tension. Finally, I am delighted to read Henri Matisse commenting on my favored reference object: "I shan't get free of my emotions by copying the tree faithfully, or by drawing its leaves one by one in the common language, but only after identifying myself with it. I have to create an object which resembles the tree. The sign for the tree, not the sign that other artists may have found for the tree; those painters, for instance, who learned to represent foliage by drawing 33, 33, 33. . . . The truly original artist invents his own signs. . . . The importance of an artist is to be measured by the number of new signs he has introduced into the language of art" (quoted by Elderfield, Henri Matisse, p. 27). Indeed, Matisse's comments have idealistic overtones; but, behind them, one can feel his understanding of painting as basic language or, as I just wrote, "naming at its minimal but extreme tension."

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The Imagination of Reference II Perceiving, Indicating, Naming Edouard Morot-Sir University Press of Florida GAINESVILLETALLAHASSEETAMPABOCA RATON PENSACOLAORLANDOMIAMIJACKSONVILLE

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Meditation Three The Art of Naming 1. Word Property and the Art of Naming The classical ideal of proper terms and of word propriety was based on the Psy-referent: the clarity of mind was supposed to generate the propriety of language. As Boileau said, "Et les mots pour le dire arrivent aisé-ment" ("And the words to express it come easily"). Subjacent was the belief in the universality of rational principles, be they innate or acquired. Today, with the progress of scientific formalizations of language, we cannot expect to find such a linguistic propriety, except in artificial languages controlled by formal systems of primitive terms and operational axioms. Obviously, such a systematization is prohibited in a meditation on language, which aims at another type of clarity obtained directly by language rediscovering its own power. My new problem can be formulated as follows: Is the linguistic requirement of propriety possible without the philosophical implications of classical or modern epistemologies? Or, to apply that question to the case of naming, is naming a decisive aspect of giving propriety to reference? Our precedent steps have demonstrated the uselessness of preliminary definitions and the danger of lexical proliferation growing on a very confused soil, where the dominant forces are those of indication and appellation, as if, in the "minds" of ordinary or literary consumers, these two functions were one and the same. The choice between them seems to be a matter of emphasis or of convenient lexical substitution (here I imply that 'appellation' is the closest synonym to 'naming'). However, my second meditation has made me aware of the neat difference between indication and appellation, although the former cannot be apprehended directly, but only through the process of naming. I also arrived at the conclusion that, when isolated in an imaginary effort, the language of indicating is interchangeable with the language of perception, or at least, that one implies the other, when they are intuited in themselves and without the help of

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the R-postulate and the Psy-referent. Thus, my next meditative move should undertake a search for the dependentindependent language of naming in its relation to the perceptive state understood as the cluster of the indicatives before they are transposed into the convenience of a disposable dictionary and with the help of the notion I just introduced without preparationthat of proper marking, which should carry us to the mysterious and powerful realm of proper naming. Let us return to my favored example: I write "I see a tree," when through my den's window, I am also looking at an oak tree in the backyard. First, I interpreted my statement as the declaration of an indication (I indicate a tree) and confessed that such an indication, made of the grouping of sensations within the frame of a spatial orientation, cannot exist without its own marking, which means, without its own understanding as marking, and, since I cannot refer to an absolute first marking, as remarking (unashamedly I am playing on the double meaning 'remarking' and 're-marking'). Let us add: the tree I see is located on the south corner of my estate. It is one of the distinctive marks that limit the lot on which my house was built. Other trees grown within those limits; other kinds of markings help to fill in an empty space in a more or less permanent fashion, such as rocks, small bushes, a birdfeeder, flowerpots, and so on. Moreover, this tree is more than a relative mark for me. Even if I do not think seriously about it, I admit that it can be another type of mark for somebody else, or if there is nobody, it is a marking by itselfthe special marking of the species 'tree.' Thus, I give to my perceptive referential habits a new force, that of marking and remarking the space where I live. So-called objects of my perception are actually indicators, which become alive when the quality of marker is conferred on them. What is a marker, or, to give to that question a more sophisticated turn, what is that state of referential power I call 'marking'? What is a linguistic experience between indicating and naming, which is also a vital aspect of the search for language propriety and tends to elaborate and perceive a world of proper markers? More or less attached to the R-postulate and the Psy-referent, all theories of perception (the phenomenological one included) posit that our mind has the power to change a primitive sensation into a marker. We have already seen that a sensation is by itself a way of indicating; if not, it is a pure intellectual construction. It must be added that it is also a way of marking. The world as indicator is immediately understood as the world as marker. It is as if the semantic system in its complex function of indicating was finding its unity in the awareness of the markings conferring to the

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indicators a power and value of fixation and stabilization: markers compose my territory. Feelings of pleasure and pain, smells, qualities of touch and taste, and sounds are strong indicators, but weak markers, because I cannot keep them under my control. The), assail me, but I cannot maintain them as organizers of my world, except if I make a very special effort of marking by tactile, olfactive, auditive means. Such is the meaning of the famous example of Proust's madeleine dipped in a cup of tea and placed in the narrator's mouth. Its taste becomes the beginning of a full remarking of lost memories. Choosing a gustatory experience, Proust insisted on the preliminary power of indication in the process of building up a chain of referential moments; but it is clear that, even in the instant of the unique explosion of involuntary memory, the world of sensations aspires to the visual expression of brilliant markers. In the same spirit, human societies use sounds as markers of presences, obstacles, and guidances. However, no one, I suppose, will contest the universality of visual indicators as marking materials. From that observation I can turn to the intelligence of vision as search for markers and the easiest way to convert indicators into markers in their infinite specificity: the color gray in front of me, standing out against a background of green and yellow spots, indicates a tree and marks the limits of its trunk; it is relatively stable, and I am on my way to being able to write "I see a tree," in order to lead my referential condition to the full achievement of one of its expressions. I am becoming more and more accustomed to the idea that perception is part of our referential lives and, thus, part of what is called 'language,' not only through the present writing, but also at any moment of my daily life. My telephone rings. How can I isolate hearing, indicating, or marking if not because all three are artificial distinctions in a global enterprise of reference controlled by my brain' I could not say that I am conscious of them if I did not understand them immediately as qualities of the referential power condensed into a word, the word tree, for instance. In my meditative quest I live a sort of genesis in reverse, giving me the illusion of reverting to the sources of reference. Actually, with the help of dictionaries I invent words that will translate the aspects of the referential experience: indicator, marker, word. Any attempt to place them in chronological order is illusory. Both express simultaneous qualities of the referential propriety. Consequently I confer on all the words I am using a marking-quality. Whatever their grammatical function may be, all words are markers. Without the power of marking the), would stand without referential power, and I would lose the sense of my own existence. It is no

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less true that all markers are words. I cannot imagine a pure world of markers without implying the existence of a world of words thanks to which I could describe a world of markers without words. Against that principle of universal marking, an objection can be raised: Deictics are already considered indicators, but are the), not also special markers within language? For example, what is the difference between 'tree' and 'this tree'? Let us compare the three following phrasings: "I see a tree in my backyard; The tree I see in my backyard is an oak; This tree is an oak." Seen as real sentences, not as artificial examples for linguists or logicians, they are all called indicators and markings within the frame of my present perception; they even achieve an effort at showing a specific vision with its complete linguistic manifestation and formulation: "I see a tree; It is the tree I see; It is this tree." Even if the grammatical difference between a, the, and this are clear, it is nonetheless obvious that they emerge from a common will to refer. I cannot think tree by itself. If I refer to its essence, I shall write "The tree is . . . "If I refer to 'tree' as a word, I shall say "'Tree' is a word that I use . . . ''In each case my sentence is also marked by a personal deictic. Thus, I double-mark my perception and my discourse. There is no expression of reference without these types of marking, which are immanent to a given word or distinct from it. Deictics, either demonstrative or personal, are marker emphases in our own individual world-and-person-building. When I say or write "this, I," I am doing more than incarnating into words a physical gesture, that is, indicating, I give to my indication a marking power; even before I become conscious of an indicating linguistic being, or, in other words, even before naming (giving a name to) my indications and markings. Subsequently, the propriety of my language requires proper indicating and proper marking. Anticipating the moment I shall meditate directly on the power of naming, I can immediately state that there is no proper naming without proper indicating and marking, although it should not be forgotten that the propriety in naming cannot be reduced to that of indicating and marking: in my referential life the name 'tree' does more than permit a specific indication and mark. 2. Marking and Naming Before exploring the mystery of naming, I would like to return to the idea of naming as maximum state of marking: to see is to understand-and-experience my world as a referential grouping of markers I finally call

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"objects of my perceptive field." I have envisaged the possibility of a pure language of indicator-markers and rejected it because any of those linguistic elements are accessible through names only, even when I look at the signpost along a road in a country whose language I do not understand. However, this problem deserves more consideration. Painting is the visual art par excellence. Is not an impressionist landscape a special way of marking, for instance, a garden or a meadow with a footpath leading to a village entrance? I see it as I see any aspect of my daily surroundings. It happens more than once that I say, "This garden is a true Renoir, this river and its shores with birch trees a true Sisley!" Painters help to mark one's own environment. Roughly speaking, what is a painter doing' He/she is selecting varied pigments; with a brush or any other tool, he/she is putting them on a canvas. The secret of his/her art relies mainly in the choice of pigments, occasionally their mixtures, and the way he/she is placing them in correspondence or in contrast. Each touch on a canvas is a marker. The impressionist painter hopes that her art of marking will be correctly interpreted by my personal vision. Through the intermediary of the canvas a painter makes me see. The specificity of vision depends on the choice and composition of pigments on a limited surface. A certain shade of yellow is the result of a chemical mixture based on elementary colors; it produces an effect on any visual nervous system for which it is a specific mark. One says often that such a mark possesses a sensorial quality that is untransferable to words; it is an absolute marking and I feel it, as Proust's dying hero, Bergotte, repeats ''petit pan de mur jaune" (small section of yellow wall). Connecting death and vision in Bergotte's last moment of consciousness, Proust meant to say that life is an extreme and ultimate tension of vision expressed by language, because Bergotte does not actually see, but he says he is seeing in a sort of muted exclamatory way by naming a small part of a yellow wallthis succession of full French syllables echoing, so to speak, yellow strokes on a Vermeer painting. This Proustian text returns, again and again, to the confrontation of language and painting, as if they were irreducible yet complementary powers of reference, as if painting were a language in its own waythe art of reference by marking and, independently, of naming except for the extrapictorial title. Furthermore, the evolution of painting toward abstract expressions, for example, from Cézanne's post-impressionism to recent minimalism, magnifies an attempt to give the visual power of marking its ultimate limits. It is a search for pure marking, delivered from realist habits and representations, from any mimetic trick; it is just a trace refusing to be more than an indication, and to be perverted by the viewer into names.

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However, Proust's lesson is correct. Painting cannot exist by itself. The art of marking, achieved and perfect as it can be, calls for its place in a linguistic culture: the Proustian painter Elstir is an imaginary hero in the universe of a writer remembering lost times and arranging them in his own way. Malraux's "Imaginary Museum" is indeed independent of any kind of Imaginary Library, but not of our individual referential lives. It is only with my own words and the help of grammars that I am able to imagine a world made of markers. The radical enterprise of perceptive decomposition conducted by modern painters takes its full significance when it is referred to our common perception. Possibly benefiting indirectly, without realizing it, from the Copernican revolution in the modes of perception launched by Descartes and Kant, modern painters decided to clean our perceptive life and rid it from our language-representation and its pseudo-transparency. For modern cultures, painting has become the teaching of how to see without the screen of words, how to make of our world an atoll of marks. Actually the so-called and badly named abstractness in painting corresponds to a universal need for concreteness in human cultures, which is best achieved through visual reference, that is, of feeling my existence and feeling myself existing through vision, seeing myself marking and remarking. Here I am, back to my own writing and my presence in my den with a backyard before me. Is my perception of books, papers, windows, trees, birds, flowers, and so forth more concrete than my consciousness of writing' Is my reference to the "external world" more concrete than my reference to my written thinking? Surely not, although it is not clear why. When I am writing, I am tempted to say "I am so immersed in my thoughts that I forget the world around me", but I know that this is not true. I cannot escape and ignore that perceptual omnipresence. What do I mean by "perceptual omnipresence"' When I become conscious of perceiving, I immediately introduce my language apparatus: words arc attached to indicators, and I emphasize some markingsthat plant with its pale green and white leaves, a brilliant red cardinal flying toward a bird-feeder, my favored tree: my "perception" itself is surrounded by a vaguely sketched interior monologue. Then, what happens when I cease to be conscious of the ongoing process although it remains present for me? In what manner' In the same manner as my body is also present, but with a lesser quality and force of presence. What does 'presence' mean for me? A set of indications that I can change into a selection of marks. After three centuries of epistemological investigations, have we

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gone further than Leibniz's theory of "small perceptions"? Obeying my basic interdictions, I may translate "small perceptions" into "survival of preliminary language," by which I mean those instances in which language exists in its indicating and marking powers and waits for its transference into an autonomous linguistic world with its own beings. To sum up my meditation at this point, in my perceptive life I found out a second way of expressing its referential power: perceiving is marking. I indicate and mark my indications. I use the word perceiving to cover those two qualities of reference; but I understand that perception is not a preliminary state of experience that would permit building up a world of indicators and markings. Far from it. 'Perception' is a composite name for those two kinds of reference, which do not exist in themselves, but are hypothetically conceived as linguistic elements, or, to use physical terms, elementary particles of language, even if the word particle, which I borrow from contemporary atomism, remains obscure. Subsequently; I sustain two coexisting propositions in order not to fall into the R-postulate:(1) Marking subsists within language. There is a group of words designating marking. I use them as spatial markings in relation to my body and its movements, as temporal markings, and as purely linguistic markings: a milestone, a national holiday, a bookmark. Is it just a metaphorical way of speaking to say with Malraux "I'll leave a scar on my time"? I doubt it. It is really understanding any action as a form of language and language as wound-inflicting-inflicted; it expresses also the hope of giving to reference the power of laceration in its healing and final state. It is not simply returning from wording to marking. It is translating language into a superior process of marks: words acquire the intensity of marking while remaining words. If I write "Stalin left a deep mark on our generation," I refer to his role as head of Russia during World War II and to "Stalinism" as a political doctrine and conduct, that is, to a political language in its dreadful applications. There is no political language without the temptation of a Stalinist conversion, which is possible only because our political language in its potential offerings has been marked by Stalinism. (2) Marking precedes wording; it belongs to the world of perceptive language, although it should not be confused with indicating. There is a word 'marking,' which refers to something that is not a word and is called 'mark.' Thus I am back to the situation of the one who refuses the comfort of realist belief, but in the most challenging manner: my consciousness of otherness does not concern a thing I oppose to my mind, nor an act originated in my body (indicating); distance between language and

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nonlanguage has diminished, it has even been reduced to its semantic minimumthe difference between word and mark. As I said before, I cannot allow myself to fall back into the realist belief under the guise of a genetic explanation. I admit that it would be very enticing to be able to say "perception invites indication, which invites marking, which invites naming," even if the passage from one term to the other remains mysterious. Then, if I do not allow myself to be caught in that attractive scheme, I must state that the difference between word and mark belongs to language itself and that there is no possibility of marking without the presence of the word 'mark. ' It is obvious that I cannot afford to speak of the "presence of the idea of marking," since I am aware that the Psy-referent is the worst epistemological sin of modern times. I am invited to imagine a situation where the hypothetical vision-cry of a human being is understood in its unique referential force, as a global perception-indication-mark-name. The genetic problematic I condemned is not completely eliminated. It has been transferred into a problem of differentiation: Why and how has the so-called hypothetical vision-cry been differentiated into interrelated linguistic powers and functions? At present, such a question concerning linguistic evolution cannot receive a satisfactory answer, either scientific or metaphysical. To apply Darwinist principles would lead to vague generalities about the survival of the most gifted in changing environments. To follow Bergson's hypothesis of creative evolution would mean adopting the mathematical technique based on the starting point "Let us suppose that the problem has been solved" and then, positing an arbitrary development from the most simple to the most complex. Naming is not more complex than indicating or marking. All of them evolve in a parallel movement from simplicity to complexity, but also from dispersion to integration. As we have observed about Proust's description of Bergotte's death, perception beyond indication can become the most intense way of speaking, the absolute "mot de la fin," and also the word of beginning. For the moment, let us be modest. I do not pretend to explain language in the details that are part of the progressive formation of human biological cerebralization. I should be happy if, aware of those linguistic internal differentiations, I am able to emphasize their ways of affirming their differences and accepting their cooperations. The discussion above was devoted to the understanding of reference at the level of perception-language as indicating and marking. We now have to meditate the operation of naming while observing the usual interdictions related to the realist and spiritualist hypotheses and never forgetting that naming is de facto naming naming.

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3. the Art of Naming: a Preliminary Lexical Tour The convenient introduction to a lexeme is made through dictionaries that sum up its semantic variations and thus mark the field of its referential power. Its expansion follows the general divisions of elaborated tongues and obviously focuses on the nominal and verbal forms (name, to name; nora, nommer). In the case of 'name,' dictionaries reserve their most important analysis to the noun 'name,' its definitions and semantic expansions. The Oxford English Dictionary's definitions are as follows: (1) "the particular combination of sounds employed as the individual designation of a single person, animal, place, or thing"; and (2) "the particular word or words to denote an object of thought not considered independent, or not of a purely individual character" (my italics). The French Encyclopédie Larousse starts from the general definition "mot qui sert à désigner un être, une chose, ou un ensemble d'êtres, de choses" (word that is used to designate a living being, a thing, or a group of beings, things). Except for grouping into one phrase the two meanings separated by the OED, both dictionaries seem to obey the same pattern of definition: 'name, nom' is determined by the verbal substitute "to designate, to denote, désigner," and two distinctions arc underscored: naming is individual or collective. Naming then concerns human and more generally living beings (one may wonder why the OED does not mention vegetables), and things, a distinction deriving from the old one between animate and inanimate beings. The French Encyclopédie quotes Racine's well-known statement ''C'est toi qui l'as nommé!" (Phèdre, act I, scene 3; You arc the one who named him), La Fontaine's line "Puisqu'il faut l'appeler par son nom" (Fables, "Les animaux malades de la peste" [Since one must call it by its name]), Victor Hugo's declaration "J'appelai le cochon par son nom" (Contemplations, "Réponse à un acte d'accusation" [I called the pig by its name]). Among the many quotations of the OED, let us mention Carlyle's statement "Poetry itself is no other, if thou consider, than a right Naming" (Sart. Pres. II, i), and Carnap's "The method of the name-relation is an alternative method of semantical analysis, more customary than the method of extension and intension" (Carnap, Meaning and Necessity, p. 96). Definitions proposed by linguists and logicians do not differ from dictionary descriptions and play also the game of verbal substitutions. For example, to write that "a name is a term whose semantic function is to introduce an object about which something is said" 1 is just paraphrasing naming. It supposes that a phrase like "to introduce an object about which" is made of terms more directly understood than the operation of naming. Then

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naming is considered as a subspecies of saying. Such conceptual classifications arc arbitrary; they simply hide the general synonymical game that seems to be common usage in the human linguistic condition. Roget's Thesaurus is also very instructive. In the index 'name' sends us back to indication: feature, characteristic, diagnostic, earmark, sign, symbol, index, indice, indicator, painter, marker, exponent, note, token, symptom, type, figure, emblem, cipher, device, representation, gesture, wink, glance, hint, clue, key, signal, mark, stroke, dash, score, underlining, annotation, exclamation, badge, criterion, duplicate, label, ticket, billet, card, check, stamp, signature, address, passport, attestation, seal, autograph, signet, title, heading, insignia, banner, warning, omen, notification, advertisement, call, exposition, evidence, pattern, prototype. In the verb section one finds: to denote, connote, represent, stand for, symbolize, signalize, attest, give notice . . . Under the section "Nomenclature, Appellation": nomination, baptism, designation, title, denomination, style, proper name, compellation, description, synonym, antonym, term, expression, noun . . . Indeed an English speaker of average culture will know how to use those different terms appropriately and will be trained not to confuse one with the other; but more often than not, he/she will slide from one term to another without noticing it, as if words were calling one another in a sort of automatic flow and easy-going complicity. 4. A Fregean Incursion Three weeks have passed since I wrote the previous paragraph. It is not that I was floating from word to word, unable to control that synonymical tide. On the contrary, I felt rather comfortable in front of that display of samples and nuances of naming. I was convinced that I had reached a crucial moment in my will to live within language and to become a more and more proper linguistic animal. Then I decided to scour the philosophical field in search of some intellectual guidance. I read and reread the most recognized books on the matter of naming: new notes were added to those piled up for ten years. A very disheartening feeling paralyzed any attempt to push further my meditation on perception and naming. I was no longer sure that I was able to understand what philosophers were doing, especially when they were discussing the case of proper and common names. Either they were denying the existence of a serious problem, or they were fighting one another from points of view I was unable to locate. With no apparent trouble, they were playing with syn-

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onymy and accepted unexposed presuppositions, especially those presuppositions I deem deadly for philosophy, and they stayed unruffled when the}, fell into the most obvious circles and traps they denounced forcefully in their colleagues' writings. Finally I realized that that impressive demonstration of scholarship ended in a very simple antinomy: naming is either denoting or describing. For them, the battlefield is no longer 'naming,' but 'denoting' as a manner of thinking, and the main problem is: is denoting something other than describing? What confused me most was not the uncertainty of definitions concerning the words involved, but the uncertainty of the problem itself. How can I qualify it? Does it belong to logic, epistemology, or metaphysics? For about a century "philosophers of language" have traveled unconsciously from one place to the other. In an effort to avoid those vague and general considerations, I decided to scrutinize only one text in the hope of detecting the linguistic operations naturally active when a renowned thinker confronts the problem of naming. I hesitated between Frege's article "Sense and Reference" and Bertrand Russell's essay "On Denoting." I finally preferred the first one because its historical import is greater and its problematic, as obscure it may be, is more revealing for my present experience. 2 Frege begins by raising the problem of equality (Gleichheit). A footnote informs us that "I use this word in the sense of identity and understand 'a = b' to have the sense of 'a is the same as b, or a and b coincide'" (p. 56, italics added). Then a question immediately arises: Between what is equality a relation? The answer is between objects, or between "names or signs of objects" (Namen oder Zeichen für Gegenstäinde, emphasis added). I interpret 'or' as meaning equivalence between 'name' and 'sign of object.' So, at the outset, Frege underlines that, for him, the relation of equality is applied to objects as well as to names as signs of objects. He could have more simply said 'sign.' He insists on the propriety, of sign as standing for something else called 'object' and not as standing for itself. Here I detect no realist or idealist implication. Frege means that it is of the nature of sign to be sign-of-object(s). He calls 'name' the sign as sign-ofobject. He does not suppose that an object or the thought of an object exists before a sign. Naming is thus a primitive fact instinctively apprehended; language consists in putting equalities between names, or, as he says a few lines below, in identification through recognition (Wiedererkennung). Now, is there a difference between a = a and a = b, supposing that a = b is true? Obviously not, from the point of view of the object designated, but yes, if one considers only the way of designation. Such is the Fregean

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distinction between Sinn and Bedeutung: Because of the arbitrariness of signs, two signs or more can designate the same object. "The reference of 'evening star' would be the same as that of 'morning star,' but not the sense." Frege gives also another example taken from geometry: "let a, b, c be the lines connecting the vertices of a triangle with the midpoints of the opposite sides. The point of intersection of a and b is then the same as the point of intersection of b and c. So we have different designations for the same point." These two examples are very different. One belongs to the domain of perception, the other to that of geometrical construction; but Frege seems not to care. Both examples help to emphasize simultaneously the arbitrariness of the process of designation and the identity of objects called a, b, or something else. Subsequently, equality, as the most rigorous and universal expression of language, requires the identity of an object identified by language in different possible manners. With such a background in mind, Frege introduces the expression 'proper name' (Eigenname), which is one of the possible designations (be it name, combination of words, letter) of a single object. He admits that when he was speaking of 'name' or 'sign,' he was referring to a proper name as a reference to a definite object, and not reference to a concept or relation. Do we have to conclude that, in Frege's mind, any name should be a proper name, in the sense that its propriety should be referred to a single object although, because of the nature of language, that single object can have more than one proper name' For Frege such a situation is due to the imperfection of our languages, what he calls, in "On Concept and Object," "a certain inappropriateness of linguistic expressions" (eine gewisse Unangemessenheit des sprachlichen Ausdrucks); for language, it means the natural difficult' of establishing identities through the necessity of naming. Thus, the search for proper names and their single references represent the linguistic ideal par excellence; a proper name is the appropriate name for an object, the cognitive ideal being to get one proper name for one definite object, or, when that is not possible, to realize it and to identify the various designations for a single object. In the next paragraph and the note that accompanies it, Frege remarks that we have to learn to live with the contrast between the singleness of reference and the varieties of meaning: it may be tolerated "although [those variations of sense] are to be avoided in the theoretical structure of a demonstrative science and ought not to occur in a perfect language." A totally adequate sense in relation to reference is unattainable. If I may say so, Frege tells us that our linguistic condition is as imperfect as our body and its organs can be. We learn to live with them. In the case of language, it is learning to live

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with the irreducible duality of sense and reference within the necessity of naming. I can manage in controlling the sense of a proper name; but it does not mean that by the same token, I am able to control its reference or even to know if it has one. Such is the well-known example of the unicorn. There are also other problems: by nature a sign designates itself; I speak of the sign 'sign.' Thus, I have the power of reporting others' speeches. It is called "indirect discourse": in that case, reference is made to the discourse, not to the object. "In reported speech, words are used indirectly, or have their indirect reference." Then "the indirect reference of a word is accordingly its customary sense" (p. 59). Frege does not elaborate on his remarks on indirect discourse and reference. But we should do it because quite rightly he connects the distinction between sense and reference with the self-referentiality of the name as sign of objects. He also introduces an old distinction between direct and indirect intentions of language. Finally, we arrive at an interesting relation between reference and sense. If it is correct to say that the indirect reference of a word is its sense, we can conclude that sense is indirect discourse and, thus, reference to the word in itself, or reference when the reference to object is provisionally suspended. Sense is language working on itself as language, when reference is working on itself as object. Frege grants a priority to reference, although it is not clear whether this priority is logical or chronological. Frege's remark infers the acceptance of the realist postulate; but we can get rid of it and consider reference only in its alternate game between reference to object, that is, reference proper, and reference to language, that is, meaning in its isolation from the world of objects. Let us go back to Frege's text to make another effort at differentiation: "the reference and sense of a sign are to be distinguished from the associated idea." Here Frege falls into the trap of the Psy-referent and wonders how he can get out of it. Instinctively he rejects any possible explanation of language by psychology and posits a radical, "essential" difference between "reference," ''sense of a sign," and "internal image." Frege's demonstration is based on a trivial analysis of perception, sense, impression, memories, feelingsall of them forming the idea we can have ()fan object. Such an idea is "subjective." Then comes the example found in any past or present textbook: "a painter, a horseman, and a zoologist will probably connect different ideas with the word 'Bucephalus.'" Subsequently, we should never confuse reference, sense, and idea. What is the criterion for this distinction? The first two terms are "objective," the last one "subjective." The criterion for distinguishing

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objectivity from subjectivity is not clear. If we follow the reference to the sign "Bucephalus," the criterion seems to be sociological: "This constitutes an essential distinction between the idea and the sign's sense, which may be the common propriety of man and therefore is not a part or a mode of the individual mind." Needless to say that Frege is dragging us from one set of problems to another one that is no less ticklish. At least we must concede to him that, if his demonstration is hazardous, the initial fact of his problematic is indisputable: no language would be possible if the "sense of sign" were not recognized as objective and opposed to the subjectivity of our impressions, feelings, memories, and imaginations. Frege is strongly aware of the universal imperative of linguistic necessity. His own writing has implicit and even, at times, explicit normative overtones. But that is all he tells us: As much as I have to differentiate between reference and sense, I also have to distinguish between sense and idea. Sense as indirect reference is not an idea; and it is all the more true for direct reference: the reference of a proper name is the object itself we designate by its means; the idea, on the other hand, is "wholly subjective?' Then comes a very strange statement: "in between lies the sense, which is indeed no longer subjective like the idea, but is yet not the object itself' (emphasis added). Frege hopes "to clarify these relationships," as he says, thanks to an "analogy" (let us be cautious!). He suggests we study the case of an astronomical observation: the moon observed is the reference as "object of observation"; the telescope, as mediation, with its "real image projected by the object glass'' is the sense; the "retinal image of the observer," then, is the idea. If one applies a realist pattern to that analogy, there is the real moon as referent, the telescope as sense in its linguistic mediation, and the retinal image as Psy-image. However, another reading is still possible, which is, I think, closer to the deep Fregean intentions: the moon represents, not an object in itself, but a name as sign of an object; the telescope is then like the sense as indirect reference, that is, the language of reference considered in itself; finally, the optical image is like the idea. One can conclude that Frege does not abandon his analysis of linguistic necessities; he does not commit himself to any kind of philosophical postulations; he even uses the Psy-referent to dispense with it. For him language is not a consciousness phenomenon, any more than it is interpretable within a pure language and world of objects. The definite Fregean antipsychologism is not the opposite of a logical position or even of an epistemological Kantian apriorism; it is, if I may create such a barbarism, a linguisticism, understood as a deliberate will to expose the necessities of language. After promising never to men-

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tion "ideas and experiences," Frege sums up his linguistic classification with the following organization of his basic vocabulary: "A proper name (word, sign, sign combination, expression) expresses its sense, stands for or designates its reference [bedeuted oder bezeichnet seine Bedeutung]. By means of a sign we express its sense and designate its reference?' It is regrettable that the phrase "Eigenname . . . bedeutet . . . seine Bedeutung" is rendered in English by "A proper name . . . stands for . . . its reference." It is difficult to claim that Frege was not conscious of the repetition "bedeutet . . . Bedeutung.'' Why not avoid all the implications of "standing for" and simply maintain the same word as verb and complement, and literally translating "The proper name . . . refers to its reference." In the same spirit, I suggest keeping the literal meaning of 'bezeichnen' in translating it by 'to mark' or 'to assign.' Here is my rendering of the key-paragraph of Frege's meditation: "A proper name (word, sign, sign combination, expression) expresses its sense, refers to or assigns its reference. With a sign we express its sense and with it we assign its reference." Frege's "linguisticist" intention is confirmed by his criticism of the idealist and sceptic attitude: "When we say 'the moon,' . . . we presuppose a reference . . . in order to justify mention of the reference it is enough, at first, to point out our intention in speaking of thinking." Then Frege extends his research from the consideration of the proper name to that of the declarative sentence as objective and having both reference and sense. A sentence can have a sense without reference, for instance, when I refer to an epic poem or, more generally, to literature dealing with imaginary beings and situations. Frege opposes art and science. He concludes, "The question of truth would cause us to abandon aesthetic delight for an attitude of scientific investigation. . . . It is the striving for truth [des Streben nach Wahrheit] that drives us always to advance from the sense to the reference. . . . We are therefore driven into accepting the truth value of a sentence as constituting its reference." Here the Fregean meditation takes a definite positivistic turn: Sense is the only possible access to truth. Art belongs to the subjective life of thinking, that is, to the development of sense in and by itself. A very significant note added by Frege deserves our heed. He suggests that signs with only sense should be given a special term; and he remarks that "if we name them, say, representations [Bilder], the words of the actors on stage would be representations; indeed the actor himself/herself would be a representation [ein Bild]." Maybe the word representation is not the best translation, but we can accept it if we keep in mind the German 'Bild' as image, form, implying a pure creation of language, and

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not as a reference to a world of objects. Surely, the Fregean opposition of art and science is an oversimplification of a very complex situation, and I plan to meditate later on the referential quality of a work of art. For the moment, let us be grateful to Frege for his insistence on the link between name, reference, and truth. Thanks to this link, we can infer that the proper name equals reference to reference, which equals truth-value. In the present analysis truth appears through the expression "striving for truth." It looks like a psychological observation, something like "the human mind has a universal tendency or aspiration [alas Streben] to truth." Does it mean that, unconsciously, Frege falls back into the psychologism he claims to avoid? No, because Frege deals with language and its proprieties as primitive facts. He just means that language cannot exist without reference, that is, without the search for truth. The basic unit of language is the proper name as declaration-admission-assignation of reference. Frege realizes that a proper name is much more than the grammatical unit called 'proper name'; as declarative sentence with two possible truth-values: true and false, it is a "truth claim" with only two possible values. The "linguisticist" perspective is highly reaffirmed when Frege insists on the fact that truth-values are not manifestations of thoughts, but objects, for the same reason that the sun is not a sense, but an object. The word object does not refer to a part of the external world we are perceiving. Frege is not that kind of realist. However, he is exploring the duality objectivity/subjectivity as superposed on that of reference and sense. Subsequently, the linguistic object, as truth-value or sign of reference, is neither a psychological state of the human mind nor a physical object that has no value by itself. On the contrary, the linguistic object can be true or false. I draw this consequence: Language, in the very act of naming, is neither psychological nor physical. Frege has led us beyond Cartesian dualism, but not necessarily beyond the union of mind and body. The introduction of the word object being thus clarified, one can complete the Fregean equalities between proper name, reference, and truth-value: proper name = object, that is, a sign with an objective propriety. Does it mean that Frege, liberating us from a physical or psychological realism, pushes us into a linguistic realism, into an Lreferent? I do not think so. The so-called Fregean Platonism, with an independent and transcendent world of proper names, is a false interpretation of both Plato's philosophy and Frege's philosophy of mathematics. Frege pursues his analysis at the level of grammatical forms, but from a logical point of view: from proper names to declarative sentences, from

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them to subordinate sentences or clauses, such as noun, adjective, or adverbial clauses. In this pursuit he is exhausting, as much as he can, "all the possibilities given by language." After detailed exploration of different cases, Frege concludes that "the reference of the subordinate clause itself [is] indirect, that is, not a truth-value but a thought, a command, a request, a question." As one can see, he opens the road that will lead to the notion of speech-acts and the force of language, but he is not interested in the difference between thought and command, or between sense and force of language, for an obvious reason: he understands language as a movement that goes from sense to reference, from the organization of thought to the world of references and truth-values. There is a complex life of indirect reference that aims at reference, that is, at value-judgments that give linguistic expressions their final form. Such is his vision of ideal language, formulated in a normative way: "A logically perfect language [Begriffsschrift] should satisfy the condition that every expression, grammatically well constructed as proper name, out of signs already introduced should in fact designate an object, and that no new sign should be introduced as a proper name without being secured as reference." The German text is retained in brackets because the translator did not translate this key concept. One may wonder why because there is no excuse for not mentioning it and not underlining its implications. For Frege, the ideal language, controlled by logical rules is thus conceptual writing, and each concept is neither a thought nor an image, but a wellconstructed sign as proper name. Such a statement confirms my previous one, namely, that his theory of proper names is not aiming at the ordinary use of the so-called proper names, but is positing the logical rules for a language more rigorous than mathematics, neither a language of pure forms without content, nor, in Fregean terms, a language of pure thought, but a language where concepts, as proper names, are objects of reference and references of objects. The only criterion given by Frege is the intuitive presence or absence of truth-value. This means that the full expression of language is the sign naming an object of reference; the act of naming is by itself reference to an object; and reference is necessarily truth-value. The word object is not opposed to subject in a modern and idealist way. It means: the being that exists in an objective manner as opposed to the subjective manner of an image; it designates a basic propriety of languagea proper naming with a proper criterion. This is why Frege insists on the difference between object and concept-word. 3 All those analyses are concerned with the act of language-as-reference: the object of reference is not an independent

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object (a referent) to which a sign is referred, but the object born in the very exercise of reference. When Frege begins to consider subordinate sentences and proposes preliminary distinctions, having examined the case of clauses coming after 'say,' 'hear,' 'be of the opinion,' 'be convinced,' 'conclude,' and similar phrases (a short note analyzes the example "A liar saying that . . . "), he is on his way to confronting the paradox of the Liar, but does not seem to realize its importance for his basic distinctions. Then he adds: "There is a different, and indeed somewhat complicated, situation after words like 'perceive,' 'know' 'fancy,' which are to be considered later" (p. 66 of the translation, p. 37 of the original). Let us note that 'perceive' is an ambiguous translation for the German 'erkennen,' which in French would mean only 'reconnaître' and not 'apercevoir" (i.e., wahrnehmen). Unfortunately, the case of clauses with 'perceive' is never discussed directly by Frege. If I am right, it would have been the crucial test for Frege's view on reference. For instance, to return to my standard example, what is the difference between "In my backyard I perceive a tree that is an oak'' and "The tree (I perceive) in my backyard is an oak".,' If I interpret Frege correctly, in the first sentence 'a tree' is a "thought" with a "sense," but not with a "reference" as "truth-value." Truth concerns my perception, not the tree I perceive. Somebody could tell me, "You are wrong, it is not an oak" or even "there is no tree." The situation would be the same with the use of the second or third personal deictic. On the contrary, 'the tree' in the second sentence is a proper name in the Fregean sense. However, it is not as simple as that. Frege is right when, referring to the process of recognition, he says that it is a "complicated situation," but he seems to avoid the problem of perception, or maybe to reject it in the domain of subjective thought. Surely, Descartes would agree with that reduction of perception to sensorial confusion, but he would differentiate between "I know that I perceive . . . " and "I perceive that I know . . . " Frege remains Cartesian in a very subtle way: the body-mind dualism is transposed into the reference-sense duality at the linguistic level. Courageously, he brackets the actual psychological problem of perception. He sees the necessary relationsheip between naming and truth-value and the radical duality between naming and thinking, when thinking consists in provisionally suspending referring-to; the normal progress of language is the passage from sense to reference. In the last paragraph, Frege returns to the initial problem of equality and the confrontation of "a = a" and "a = b"; both a and b have the same reference and truth-value, but different "cognitive values"

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(Erkenntniswert), that is, sense or thought. So the ultimate opposition is between two kinds of values, Erkenntniswert and Wahrheitswert. Frege's first and final object of reflectionthat is, linguistic equalityis thus interpreted from the point of view of value, and, so to speak, the putting up for valueits valuation. Must we imply that equality is the ideal setting for language within the relation of the same and the other? One arrives at the fundamental conclusion: "a = a" and "a = b" have two distinctive cognitive values, but one truth-value. Thus, if I apply that conclusion to Frege's equality of reference, proper name and truth-value, I should say that "a = a" and ''a = b" have one proper name and two thoughtwords. If I use Frege's example, there is no difficulty: 'morningstar' and 'eveningstar' are thought-words (although it is difficult to claim that they are sense without reference), and Venus is their proper name. But if I consider a and b mathematical entities, what can I say? In the first paragraph Frege states that "a = a" and "a = b" do not differ, provided that "a = b" is true. Herein lies the mystery. Is this not a tautology ? "'a = b' is true" is true if and only if "a = b." A difficulty well known by logicians! The truth of the equality of a and b is the admission that they have the same proper name or, in a Platonic perspective, b is the same as a from a certain point of view. Thus a and b would be two proper names with a common background. Things seem more complicated than Frege thought. If I say a and b are not proper names, but thoughts or senses, how can I explain that "a = b" has a truth-value? When I say "I see my neighbor's cat in my backyard," I mean that the cat seen today is the same as the cat that belongs to my neighbor. What can I draw from Frege's distinctions? Whatever the vocabulary may be (I am thinking of those who prefer to translate 'Bedeutung' by 'meaning'), Frege puts his finger on a fundamental property of language, that is, the property of naming as giving signs to objects, and the act of naming can be done only in conferring value on it. For Frege, this value is the truth or falsity of properly naming, or the correct/incorrect attribution of a name to an unnamed object. Consequently, there is no name without the truth of its naming, except in dictionaries, where names are words waiting for their incarnations into names. Furthermore, Frege shows that there is a life of signs independent of naming and considered only as "cognitive values." Unfortunately, he does not elaborate on that notion, especially in its difference with "truth-values." The same situation applies to the notions of 'sense' and 'thought' as opposed to 'reference.' Is there a nonreferential state of language, a state of pure thought without any sort of truth-commitment? Does Frege believe that he can test its

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modes through the grammatical aspects of subordination? More generally, how can I know without referring to an object of knowledge? How can a sense exist in itself': Does it mean that my meditation on Frege ends by a declaration of intellectual impotence? Not entirely. At least I know that reference is closely connected with the power of naming; it has a normative quality although Frege's assimilitation of proper names to truth-values seems to be prompted by intellectualist prejudices; it has an objective intention and is opposed to the subjective reactions of individuals. One must approve Frege's antipsychologist attitude and his effort to get rid of the Psy-referent, or at least minimize its importance in the elaboration of language. However, one may wonder if Frege's way of shaking off the subjectivity of language, in expelling it into the no-man's-land of sensations and feelings, is not too easy an escape from a difficult and intricate problem. He simply dissociates language from perception, signs from the so-called sense-data, and hides himself at the center of a splendid linguistic isolationism, that is, the exact contrary of reference. His stance could justify those who prefer to translate 'Bedeutung' by 'meaning.' I am ready to follow Frege's linguistic radicalism, but not at the price he is paying for it. There should be another way to keep my commitment to stay within the realm of language in order to solve the problem of reference, while understanding that reference is neither meaning, nor sense, nor pure physical property of our human and biological nature, but the normative power of naming. 5. From Marking to Naming, From Naming to Marking Between marking and naming, my linguistic life makes an imaginary shuttle, since marking, as well as indicating, consist in referring by name to a certain process that I qualify as prelinguistic but within my language experience. Actually marking is possible only through language: I can mark marking because I can name it. A mark is a name reduced to its minimal visual expression: for example, the red (I perceive) of the red light at a road intersection. Again, let us repeat that the seduction of the genetico-dialectical explanation should be resisted. Marking is by itself a complete language that asserts its autonomy as language of perception in its final achievements, but its linguistic autonomy is possible only by the naming of marking. My common and daily language of perception theorizes itself

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into a language of elementary geometry, that is, geo-marking with the help of geo-naming. 4 6. The Primacy of Naming The reduction of naming to marking and indicating is probably the most subtle action exerted on our language practice by the R-postulate: to name is understood as the operation of marking a perceptive field in reference to a given world; this is correct, but is limiting language to its pragmatic usage. It is also a convenient degradation of naming on behalf of the F-function: names serve as markers for our daily actions. Waking up this morning, I told myself "I should call Germaine to discuss with her the question raised by the problem of Loraine's dissertation." In my mind, and for the present purpose, 'Germaine' and 'Loraine' play the role of simple markers on the mapping of my future action. But I know that they are more than temporary markings in a world reduced to practical schemes. Does it mean that naming is part of and participation in a more elaborate experience of language? Let us examine the most important aspect of the onomastic participation. First, the social participation: Social life, in all its aspects, requires the institution and administration of names, not only proper names for each individual who is part of a social group, but also names of town, streets, social groups, and so on. All of them are markers and something else, which is precisely what naming is adding to marking, or what it loses when limited to its marking function. I dread to conceive a human society where its components are simple markers in the style of Brave New World or 1984, or to see my name brought down to a Social Security number. However, does that state of naming prove that naming is of a sociological nature? I agree that human societies, as we experience them, could not exist without a certain consciousness of naming, but that does not prove that naming, in its original emergence, is a social necessity or, to be more specific, an effect of the social reality. Here again, one has to reverse the current way of thinking. It would be better to say that social reality is what it is because of the power of naming. Then one could no longer speak of social utilitarian necessity (what would be impossible if not . . . ), but of social ideal, and my initial question should be changed into the following interrogation: What is naming introducing to social life so that it is what it is in connection with diverse religious and political ideologies? This is not the

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proper place to discuss the relationship between a politics of naming and, let us say, a politics of economic relations. Suffice it to observe that the first one is not a consequence of the second one or of an)' theory explaining social life. I should put my critical conversion to its extreme consequence: in its participation in social life, naming is secondarily a social necessity, it is what makes social relations possible. Thus, I can state that there is no society without naming, but not, that there is no naming without society except in a very ambiguous and superficial manner. That would be reverting to the trivial thought that language implies society and vice versa. Let us return to my starting point: What is naming as language-expression' Obviously I cannot ask for help from the Psy-referent and call upon the existence of a psychological need for naming or being named. For example, within an empiric pattern, I could say "I perceive some sense data and I feel the need for attributing them names." One can speak of people having a name-complex: the relationship between an individual and his/her name and to others' names is very important. However, it only shows that the need for names generates a great variety of psychological behaviors, but not that it is of a psychological nature necessitating the reference to a Psy-referent independent of language. Other theoretical participation could be tested, but this time, within language itself. For instance, linguists often infer that the theory of naming is part of semantics and subsequently that the name is participating in the universal process of meaning. My present and limited interest consists in the problem of naming and the possibility of its integration into the fundamental theory of naming. Names belong to a specific category of words. The name 'Jacqueline' is part of a special category of names that in French serves to designate persons of the female sex. 'Mrs. Jacqueline Morot-Sir' designates a certain person about which I know characteristics such as her birthday, her family status, her daily activities, and her address. A name is an open cluster of meanings, and it supposes a minimal meaningthe meaning of 'name,' without which I would be unable to insert 'name' in my diverse language uses. In the preceding example the meaning of 'name' is its use, or more precisely, the knowledge of its use. From that statement I can infer that there is no naming without the meaning of 'name' and that naming is a necessary part of the semantic organization of language. Going further, I will speak of the grammar of naming and introduce the distinction between proper and common names. However, I do not imply that 'name' belongs to a grammatical distinction. I am aware of the difference between 'name' and 'noun.' In

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French, where there is only one lexeme for 'name' and 'noun,' I never confuse a name and its grammatical usages. One will also notice that in my example I am referring almost instinctively to the reductionist 'designation,' but not in the simple gestural function of indicating. On the contrary, 'designation' is understood as the function of meaning: the meaning of a name is its power of designation. Then, should I think that names were created in order to permit language to develop its designative processes, and subsequently, that they are intimate parts of the art of meaning? From what we have just observed, it is undeniable that our semantic life is not conceivable without names, and conversely, that we cannot use a name without implying a more or less complex meaning. But that situation does not mean that naming should be identified with meaning, or that names belong to the attempt of transforming language into a semantic universe. Let us consider other examples. First, let us compare the two sentences "I call him a liar" and "I mean that he is a liar." On one hand, I could say that these statements are two ways of meaning the same thing ''he is a liar," that is, that they mark differences between two psychological intents. In the first case, I insist on the fact that that person deserves the name 'liar'; in the second, I emphasize and clarify the meaning of my discourse. On the other hand, the sentence "he is a liar," in its constative form, could be interpreted as a discourse reduced to its elementary semantic expression. On the contrary, 'I call,' 'I mean' would be two types of performing language, two references to distinctive ways of expressing oneself and somebody else. Then I am back to the sociological interpretation, which has been declared irrelevant and vicious (explaining language by society, but supposing that society is made possible by language). The mystery of naming remains complete. Here is another example: "I call a spade a spade." This time I give the art of naming a rhetorical import. I oppose the art of direct naming to the various arts of paraphrase, metaphor, understatement, attenuation, litote, and the many diverse ways language seeks to avoid direct calling and direct meaning. In this case, reference to naming seems prior to emphasis on meaning. I feel more natural than if I had said "I mean spade when I say 'spade.'" We arc returning to the problem of word propriety and the classical ideal, as it is expressed by Boileau's famous alexandrine "J'appelle un chat un chat et Rolet un fripon" (I call a cat 'cat' and Rolet 'rascal'). We meet again with Frege's identity problem: "a = a" and "a = b" are propositions that do not differ from each other provided "a = b" is true: "cat = cat" and "Rolet = rascal," provided "Rolet is a rascal" is true. However, it

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remains to be seen what "J'appelle" (I call) adds tolet us saythat other alexandrine "Si un chat est un chat, Rolet est un fripon" (If a cat is a cat, then Rolet is a rascal), not considering its lower literary effect. I guess that the aesthetic reaction is but a consequence of a deeper linguistic need. The subordination of the aesthetic value to the cognitive one (''Rien n'est beau que le vrai" [Nothing is beautiful but truth]) unravels a principle that is at the heart of the human understanding of language. For centuries, and because of the Western submission to the R-postulate, the rule of mimesis has dominated interpretation: words should be put in ideal correspondence with realitythe first 'spade' referring to the "real" spade, and the second to its name. In Boileau's example the ad-equation is more subtle since self-identification serves as model for hetero-identification. Then, what is the force behind "to call," which is not "to mean," if I am right in refusing to interpret that force as a psychological or sociological enforcement? I am pushed toward this sole answer: 'to call' expresses the deepest and most universal manifestation to which a language user can commit himself/herself. In other words, the act of naming announces the beginning and the end of language. It is a sort of double sacrement. In Christian terms, it is the baptism and the extreme unction of a language-subject: "His name is Jesus for eternity," and I can replace 'Jesus' by any other vocal articulation. For example "Rolet, his name is 'rascal.'" Nevertheless, it could be objected that when I say "Rolet is a rascal," I am shifting from naming to attributing, adding to Rolet a specific meaning. In a way it is true, but of secondary importance. My first move-merit consists in rebaptizing Rolet: "Rolet = Rolet" and "Rolet = Rascal." Then, if any nominative statement leads to an attributive one, any attributive statement implies a new development in the dynamics of naming. Is it in that perspective that one should understand the wellknown puzzling proposition "The name of Socrates is Socrates" (if one frees it from any realist obedience) as the passage from naming ("I name you Socrates") to attributing ("You are Socrates"): the name 'Socrates' belongs to you forever, even if you die, even if generations to come forget you and your name? I am able to understand why it was right to fight the temptation of reducing naming to indicating and marking, as well as the reverse temptation to transfer it to the realm of meanings. I do not deny the original and enormous activity of indicating and marking, but they are only possible within language, when I can name them for what they are, that is, for sub-names that do not exist by themselves. I have to name indicators and markers. In return, I organize my language as the universe of meanings that have between themselves the complex relations of attribution and dis-

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attribution. Naming is put in parenthesis, provisionally suspended. When I write "Socrates is mortal," I make of 'Socrates' a meaning for more meanings. I am going beyond the naming experience of language, although never definitively. Let me repeat: I can never make the absolute leap out of language, that is, out of naming. I may develop a long discussion about the mortality of Socrates and other human beings, including myself; I may feign for a while that 'Socrates' designates, indicates, marks, signifies, not a name, just a being, but I cannot forget that I substituted 'being' to 'naming,' and that one day I will have to return to the basic act (if naming and to confer on naming the power (if a sort of nominal argument presupposed in the medieval ontological argument. Proof of the existence of God, with its subsequent criticism by Kant, continues to dominate Western thought. It can be condensed in the following statement: "The essence of God implies his existence." Kant condemned the argument on behalf of his referential rule: there is no existential judgment that does not refer to a sensorial experience. Since there is no sensorial experience of God (a debatable assumption), the ontological argument is not valid. As is well known, for Kant the belief in the existence of God is valid, but based on moral experience; it cannot be an existential proposition. Our moral life, our submission to the moral law postulates God, even if I am not permitted to enunciate existential propositions about it. It is obvious that in that Kantian reasoning I have not left the domain of language. I must confront myself with tile sentence "The name of God implies his existence," which should be read this way: "Naming God is asserting his existence . . . for me." Such a statement opens infinite theological perspectives about God's presence and absence, especially about the necessity of bringing back any kind of religious reflection to the meditation on the naming of God. That remark leads me to a decisive test: If, as I just wrote, naming announces the beginning and the end of language, should I say that naming is the beginning and the end of perception? Within the semantic system that sustains my language of perception, can I imagine my perceptive life without naming? More or less stimulated by the first fifty pages of A la recherche du temps perdu, seated at my desk, I am trying to remember my awakening this morning, which was similar to many other awakenings: looking at the alarmclock, thinking about what I have to do today, deciding to get out of bed, putting on my glasses, standing up. . . . In the meanwhile my bedroom with its familiar objects surrounds me, the walls with photographs and paintings, the chair with my clothes. I just wrote "I am trying to remember . . . " It means that I refer to my awakening with

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the help of my memory. I narrate it; and I name it at the same time. Is that naming perception itself or a consequence of it? I see my chair, and I say 'chair.' I already discussed this problem about indicators and markers. I concluded that I cannot imagine perception without indicative and marking processes; and there is no experience capable of separating them. Then I observed that indicating and marking themselves get their actuality only through naming. The conclusion seems obvious: there is no perception without naming, and I cannot conceive a test to show a state of perception without a potential naming. I perceive what I can name, I name what I can perceive. Finally, equally experienced and counterbalanced, those two statements do not recognize a state of coexisting functions, but a state of complementarity between naming and named. My world is made of names in waiting, all being dispersed, sparklingly lighting up the obscure "there is something around me," which is still a way of naming the unnamable. Then, coming back to the hypothesis of a world of perception without names, I can conclude that such a world still belongs to the universe of names. It marks the limits of perception, a sort of zero degree of language, still language, becauseI know it since I thought about the problem of negationlanguage has the marvelous and basic propriety of negating itself (if not, it would not be language, but absolute being), that is, the propriety of naming the unnamable as unnamable. I admit that I have made no progress in the understanding of naming. I knowand it was a decisive stepthat perception and naming exist complementarily within the language experience. But that does not explain the need for naming, the search for names, the call of names, the miraculous presence of a name, its illuminating and calming effect as if I were afraid of losing my capacity for naming, as if my existence depended on my finding of that only name. It is more dreadful than the fear of feeling my memory fading away; it is the true anguish of which Heidegger was conscious when he tried to name the ultimate unnamable Dasein, that is, the anguish of being there without names. Let us imagine the physical reception of a red color on my retina and its subsequent transmission to some cerebral place; suddenly I am unable to name it; the word red escapes me, as the name of a former student unexpectedly visiting me can escape me. It is an experience of beginning and end of language-and-perception . . . beginning, if I am able to name, . . . end, if not. Can I say that I perceive a red color without being able to name it, as I perceive a student when her name escapes me' The analogy between the two cases is superficial, not only because one case is imaginary and the second frequent: if the name of a student is not present in my mind, the possibility of other nam-

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ings remains, even the purest "a former student whose name I do not remember." In the other hypothetical case, the anguish of the missing name does not imply a sensorial, linguistic experience. I wish to name that color that has a name I am unable to produce. I feel lost without any possible reference. It is as if the physiological process, of which I gave a gross description, was not completed until the nameor the confession of my incapacity to nameappears, so that I am not permitted to speak of red impression preceding its naming. When I refer to red independent of 'red,' I separate artificially the name 'red' from the experience of naming. Following the realist ways of speaking, I put the color red on one side, and 'red' on the other, when actually to perceive red requires its naming. Every morning my awakening in the world reactivates my learned capacity to name. Subsequently, the imaginary case of a missing basic name is wrongly conceived. Such an experience is impossible. Perception is part of the art of naming: sense-data are only name-data arbitrarily cut from their final expressions. The confrontation of perception and naming has reinforced my idea that naming is not an epiphenomenon of perception, and that perception per se is an essential part of my linguistic condition. Thus, it is clear that I cannot understand naming by calling for the understanding of perception. One last possibility remains. If naming is not reducible to indicating and marking, if it cannot be assimilated to meaning, if it is much more than a convenient addition to perceptive life, then one door only remains open for my understanding: naming is the active center of my referential life. I name in order to assert my references within the frame of my perception. 'To refer to' is more than a pure denotation, as John Stuart Mill said; it is properly and finally 'naming,' beginning and end of reference. If I scrutinize my reference to the tree-in-the-backyard, I identify its main properties: it plays the role of an indicator (I invite you to look at that tree, be it in an imaginary way), of a marker (I see it as the spatial center around which other things are located), of a meaning (it is that sort of vegetable being which differs from bushes), of a symbol (it is for me the image of living vertically and of strength recognized by poets); it is all that and more, because I am able to name it 'tree.' Not to be trapped by ulterior grammatical definitions, and to avoid realist implications, I should write "to name tree"; for the same reason I should write, not "I name Peter Peter," but "I name Peter," which is a true baptismal vocative (in the grammatical sense of that term). Any statement, pacified by the necessity of the semantic development, hides the explosive force of a vocative from which nomination and

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nominative are derived. Interjections and exclamations are absolute references to names, isolated, magnified in propositional states. "Sois sage, Ô ma douleur, et tiens-toi plus tranquille" (Be wise, O my pain, and be quiet). Baudelaire inserts an interjection (he names his pain) between two imperatives and ends his alexandrine with a period, not an exclamative mark. It is the only thing to which the poet can refer in naming his pain. Without being facetious, one could say that, after naming pain, he invites it to be quiet, in order to develop its meaning, to explore its referential power, thanks to the intermediary of a dialogic discourse, eventually to write a sonnet and, when writing it, to be in pain no more. The last line "Entends, ma chère, entends la douce Nuit qui marche" (hear, my dear, hear the sweet Night walking") echoes the first one with a new reference-naming reinforced by an invitation to another naming, the naming of the night, or better said, the named night entering the human discourse of suffering. In the same perspective, any deictic is much more than an indicator, it acts as an ostensive gesture. It is naming at its elliptic tension. "Come here and now!" This imperative names space and time, in the spirit of the joke "I am not lost, I am here!" That is to say: I am able to name the place where I am, even if it is close to a zero point of reference, although never reaching that zero point of reference. Personal deictics name the different aspects of the subject, insofar as it is naming and name. In Racine's famous "C'est toi qui l'as nommé," Phèdre hides herself behind (Enone (toi) to name the object of her love, Hippolyte. She names her love without naming herself or him. In such an imaginary situation, the power and decision of naming illustrate at its best the ultimate requirement of the referential force and intent of language. Phèdre hopes not to be lost and damned so long as she has not referred to Hippolyte through the fatal enunciation of his name. I can but note in passing the implied relationship between naming and love. A similar presence of naming is also felt in the demonstrative deictics: 'this' marks a specific reference to a name ("the tree, a tree, this tree"); but it is more than an added reinforcement of naming ("this tree, that man, those people"). In itself it expresses a way of naming, not only by showing, as in the case of Polonius, but by naming in an absolute universal manner: "This is it!" Why not say "It is this" or in French "c'est cela,'' instead of "it is so" or "c'est ainsi," making of 'this, ceci, cela,' more than the source of any kind of articles for names, feeling in it the simple act of referring-naming? Not only can I not refer without naming; but reference is naming, naming is reference, and thus, indicating, marking, meaning.

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The above statement "Naming is the beginning and end of perception" should also be understood as "Naming is the beginning and end of reference." Only a name can refer. Mankind's destination is naming: human beings are conscious of names as perpetual states of exhilaration and frustration. I am not you, I can but name you, you the dearest person in the world, or the person I hate the most. As already suggested, poetry exposes the wish to return language to the dream of primitive naming in a Paradise where names give birth to other beings. Even in my own case, and if I am not complacent, I must confess that, if I am not you, I am not me either, I can only name me. ''I am Edouard Morot-Sir." What is a curriculum vitae if not a list of names attached to historical circumstances' Is writing it writing me? Introspection itself expresses the desire to go beyond naming through the quasi silent articulation of names whose meaning I explore. In his Journal Maine de Biran names his daily impressions and ideas; first, he dreams to name himself a will that is an 'I' who wants; in the end, he gives up the hope to control himself through a name that would like to incarnate an absolute power of naming-marking and submits himself to the free grace of naming and to the love by which God sustains him and his language. In the case of others, as well as in my own case, naming is truly calling to existence without prior existence. If I say "I am more than a name," that statement alone does not make me something else than a name; it is an invitation to more names to call me this or that, indefinitely. The popular expression "he called me names" (as equivalent to insult) is by itself very revealing: naming is recognized in its destructive power, or more specifically, in the power that names possess in degrading somebody: "he is a jerk" means "he does not deserve to be considered a normal human being." If the word jerk is addressed directly to me, I feel wounded, even if I believe I do not deserve it. My own existence as this or that is at stake; I perceive names attributed to me as matters of life and death. Homeric heroes knew the power of names and that a fight could not be allowed to begin before a new rite of naming had been accomplished: I will try to kill the one who deserves the names I call him. From insulting to swearing, naming pursues its development of the linguistic experience. Now I face the mystery of interjection, that is, actually absolute "jection" by naming. For a while I could feign to believe in the existence of a Psyreferent and devote my analysis to a psycho-sociological field of observation; but my problem is not aiming at the effects of naming in human or other interrelations; it is to catch naming in its interjective manifestation. Obviously not all interjections are swearings. They can be nominative exclamations that prepare or introduce an

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imperative, an optative, or even a simple enunciation. "John, come here," or "John, please do not lie to me," or "John, I am returning your call." Those kinds of naming reach the summit of their expressive power when they become pure invocations (and I give to this word its full etymological value) turning into oaths and blasphemies. Naming intimately partakes of the sacred consciousness of language and, subsequently, expresses our secret desire of desecration and profanation. I listen to a television anchorman distorting as usual vital world or national news, and I say "O God! O Jesus!" Why are the names of God or Jesus proferred in such occasions? It is a fact that I could murmur ''Salaud! Skunk! Bastard!" or many other names. Then, I would remain in the realm of insults and join the company of Homeric warriors. Why do I switch to another style of naming or name calling' Because I return to my language's sacred vocation and to the search for swearing. It is also a sort of quick prayer: "O God, how can you permit such scandalous manipulations of the language you gave us as your supreme gift?" Naming reveals the secret aspiration of language to religious commitments through the intermediary of names taken in their existential condensation. In such experiences, I discover the sadness of naming; I stay virtually speechless: a name is a sort of co, for help. Does it mean that any cry is a way of naming? Yes. If I say "Mayday! Mayday! They are destroying our country without even realizing it!", I do not think of its French origin "m'aider"; I take it as the manifestation and naming of an intense distress. When I say "O God" or "Jesus," I reserve naming for myself, even if somebody is listening. When naming attains its highest intensity, it becomes pure violence, provocation, scandal, an act of liberation, especially when it takes the form of swearing with blasphemic overtones. I hurt my thumb with a hammer. I can limit my vocal reaction to 'Jesus!' or 'O' or 'Aid', but most of the time I will say in French 'merde!' or 'Nom de Dieu de nom de Dieu,' or any other of those numerous swearings that belong to the popular imagination of a tongue. Swearing is counterpraying. Far from calling for God, I defy him, I insult him, I denounce his impotence or indifference. And how do I do that? By crying out his name, not a specific name, just 'nom de Dieu!' Sometimes, in a rather minor violent manner, I say in French "Nora de nom!" That attenuated swearing expresses the ultimate reference to reference, when naming refers to naming on an extreme revolt of language against itselfthe desecration and profanation of the name . . . as name. One could say that the second 'nora' in 'Nom de nom!' is a proxy

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for God: that is right, but simply proves that 'God' or 'Dieu' is literally the name of all names, the absolute name, all other names being pale imitations. Instead of saying "I hurt myself with a hammer" I scream "Nom de Dieu!" or, if my pain is not too strong, "Nom de Nom!" Doing so I hope to give to my language its maximum referential expression, not by articulating the name par excellence, but by insisting on its naming: I name the name! What is at stake is not God as referent, but the name of God or the name of Name as reference in an intense moment. Obviously, as already noted, there are many other ways of swearing; but it is my contention that, in the great variety of its innovative formulations, swearing always returns to that explosion of language, at the same time maximizing and destroying the power of reference, not only by naming 'name,' but by showing that any name, even the name of God, is a variant of the name 'name.' A name is a name! I swear it! Consequentlyand it is the illuminating conclusion of my present meditationany name is the name of . . . , and 'God,' for instance, is a shorthand for 'the name of God is God.' All the same for 'John' or 'tree.' In later developments one can invoke the R-postulate and the Psy-referent and build nice and convenient theological palaces. Still, the fact is that the beginning and end of my referential life are marked by the power of naming naming. Now I understand the connection between perception, reference, and naming. I perceive what I am able to name; I name what I perceive: naming perceiving is naming my consciousness of naming. I use the word perception instead of that of name just to emphasize the presence of the holder of a name. In its entirety my language of perception plays the role of a zero nomenclature. Nevertheless, naming does not exhaust by itself the power of reference, but it marks its unsurpassable limits: I can refer only to what I name, even when I name the Unnamable. The search for reference starts with the search for names. It never stops, except when the researcher dies or is tired of inventing new names or refurbishing old ones. A disciple of Occam could invite us to operate a drastic simplification of vocabulary and of these three namesperception, reference, naming and suggest that we get rid of two. Such a reduction is neither conceivable nor even advisable. I can imagine a full language organized around perception, reference, or meaning, and a human society living a normal life within such a linguistic system. But I would have to find equivalents for the two eliminated words in a new vocabulary. It is more sensible to stay within our natural condition, which is to proliferate naming and to remain aware of the slipper), situation of our semantic world.

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I hope that the above analysis has made us conscious of the interdependent difference between the three words and helped us, if not to simplify our vocabulary; at least to understand their respective originality as well as their deep unity within human experience. Since I am dealing especially with 'naming,' I should ask myself if I am finally able to answer the question "What is naming?" . . . I can write: Naming is and is not perception. Naming is and is not reference. Is there a possibility for more positive qualifications and to say directly, without double talk, "naming is. . . . "I have found only one way out of this dilemma by rephrasing the problem as follows: In relation to perception and reference, what is the dominant property of naming' Naming, as reference to somebody or something, can be complete or incomplete, total or relative exhaustive or partial. Those coupled adjectives arc marking the difference between singular and collective, comprehensive and extensive markings of reference. Furthermore, within my own experiencereference I become aware that my power of naming has two universal qualities, which I will explore in the coming meditation: naming as the assignation of identitynaming as the assignation of title. From now on, I will speak of two basic naming-aspirations: identifying and titling. 5 I must confess my hesitation in using the word titling. At first I preferred labeling, because it openly refers to the immense work of nomenclature, which is an essential part of the development of our body of knowledge. Finally, I decided in favor of titling in order to suggest, in my new awareness of 'naming,' the hope for a normative achievement: a name is an identity and a title. And in that double capacity, a name is a reference at the level of the language of perception as well as the language of language.

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Meditation Four Identity and Title, Description and Definition 1. Identifying As Absolute Naming and Singular Valuation If I introduce the word identity and its components in my present writing, when I am eager to protect my meditation against all sorts of implications, is it not like opening to a cat the door to the aviary? Surely it is increasing the risk of philosophical slidings and intellectual confusion. Let us proceed step by step, returning to the starting point of the Cartesian metaphysical itinerary, and considering the possibility and legitimacy of naming itself. The Cogito is a declaration of identity: "I, René Descartes, exist(s)." The first part of that assignment is actually the recognition of a title: "I think," that is: I have the dignity of thinking, so that the Cogito in its fullness is the conferring of a title to be followed by the reference to an identity, double naming by titling and identifying. For the moment, let us examine only the experience by which I name myself, without forgetting that Descartes reunited the double aspect of naming at the origin of any language, as a double struggle for existence: a title and an identity both challenging the devil as Evil Genius: Dreaming in my "poële," I defy you to convince me that I am not René Descartes thinking, or more exactly, writing that he thinks. You can trick me in leading me to declare "I am God, Jesus-Christ, or the king of France," even to say ''I am René Descartes, born at La Haye in Touraine," but not when I affirm "I am René Descartes thinking and writing that I am thinking?' Naming myself is self-identifying, declaring my identity as a unique human being who is no one else. "I am Edouard Morot-Sir; do not confuse me with my brother, my colleagues, my neighbors, or any other being introduced with the second or third person." "Prove it." "Look at my identity card, my driver's license, my passport." Prove that you have not stolen or forged those documents." "How can I prove it, even to myself!" In an act of superb arrogance, to be reenacted by many philosophers after him, Descartes wrote that it was evident that he was René Descartes

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thinking, and that such a statement was the intuition of a clear and distinct idea. David Hume was probably the only one to believe that the proof of naming oneself was not an intuition but a delicate and inconclusive demonstration. There is always a shadow of doubt when, every morning, I wake up in a silent act of hope mixed with humor: "Good morning, Edouard!" Until now I have pretended not to know the two main meanings of 'identity' as indicated by the OED: (1) the quality of being the same; (2) the sameness of a person or a thing at all times or in all circumstances, implying his, her, or its own sameness, and his, her, or its difference from other persons or things. The synonymous circle around 'identity' and 'sameness' is obvious; it leads to only illusory understanding. The problem of logical or genetic priority between the two meanings is vain, all the more so since dictionaries seem to disregard the relationship between identity and naming. They return the semantic duality to the opposition of sameness to other, and sameness to oneself, with an ontological background that is not acceptable in the universe of names. Let us meditate on the statement "There is no possible identity (in the double meaning of the word) without naming," or, in other words, "If a language without names were imaginable, identity games would be impossible within it." Two interpretations come immediately to mind. First, the search for identity and difference would be the cause for naming; that is, I name in order to be able to identify myself and others (the OED meanings being confused). Then how can I understand the search for identity? I have to call for an ontological language that is possible only within a game of identity and difference. But how is that language possible without a preliminary search for names? That question leads to the second interpretation: naming invites the search for identities and differences. Going beyond Frege, but giving final expression to his thoughts, reference as naming is language-value, that is, language responsible for assuming and assigning names: Do I deserve that name? Does it deserve the name I confer on it? Beware! Does it mean that the tree in my backyard deserves the name tree because it has the qualities usually attributed to a tree? We are again under the spell of the R-postulate. Since I cannot accept that kind of reasoning, I must admit that, by its mere appearance, naming is the source, not the effect, of identifications and differentiations. Below, I discuss at length the experience of reference as value. Here I simply note that naming is assertion or negation of value; as such it posits identities and differences, especially the basic identity of the name to itself and its differentiation from any other name.

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That naming-value was intensely expressed by Pascal in one of his Pensées: "Ne te compare pas aux autres, mais à moi. Si tu ne m'y trouves pas, dans ceux où tu te compares, tu te compares à un abominable. Si tu m'y trouves, compare-t'y. Mais qu'y compareras-tu? sera-ce toi, ou moi dans toi? si c'est toi, c'est un abominable. Si c'est moi, tu compares moi moi. Or, je suis Dieu en tout" (Pascal, Pensées, fragment 737, p. 1315). (Do not compare yourself to others, but to me. If you do not find me in those to whom you compare yourself, you are comparing yourself to an abominable creature. If you find me there, compare yourself to me. But what will you be comparing there? Will it be you or me in you? If it is you, it is an abominable creature. If it is me, you are comparing me to me. For I am God in everything.) That extraordinary text where God as Jesus addresses himself to his creature raises the problem of the contestable right of naming oneself, and thus its value at the level of name-identification and differentiation within a system of intersubjective relations. Man has two options: to assume a human name that is corrupted"abominable" (deserving to be execrated)or to assume the name of Christ, that is, the name of the son of God; but if man compares himself to Jesus Christ, he is no longer a man, no longer Blaise Pascal. The exploratory motor for the search for oneself is not, as, for instance, Descartes would say, intuition as reflection on oneself, but comparison. To find who I am, I have to compare myself to others. The second sentence is the most interesting: Pascal implies that I am looking for myself through other people to whom I compare myself, that is, to whom I refer myself. Translated into the experience of naming, that search for oneself becomes a search for another proper name thanks to which my own name will be valued. Pascal's conclusion leads to a dramatic theological problem: if "I" is neither me nor any other human being to whom 'I' can be compared, then 'I' is Jesus Christ. Are we back to the fool who names himself 'Jesus'? That Pascal is conscious of that risk is clear if one meditates the final sentence and realizes that Jesus Christ is speaking to me and substitutes his 'I' for my 'I': "I am God in everything?' That could only mean: the name of God within the intersubjective, or better, internominal system, is present everywhere. It sustains every other name; it is their secret totality and unity. Does this make naming a pantheistic act ? Far from it. Jesus is saying to man: Do not believe that you are or can become me; but to save you from eternal destruction I can take your place and your name, or speak and act in your place. Here Pascal implies the Jansenist doctrine of grace as the unpredictable and involuntary presence of the divine power and

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value in my language and my life. Those paranoid fools are not so crazy as they seem. They are only too hasty in their desire to name. Pascal has helped me to improve the awareness of the problematic of naming and identifying. First, there is a connection between 'I' and my name in the process of identification. Second, there is no naming-identification without naming-differentiation. The problem of my naming is inseparable from the problem of naming you (I naming me, I naming you, you naming me), and naming them (his, her, its name is . . . ). A name is an immediate invitation to identity and difference: 'Jacques Dupont' marks a distinct individual among many other similar ones. Third, the internomination as infinite dynamic of naming is conceivable only if there is a name that circulates through the opened chain of all namings, sometimes called God, sometimes kept secret and unknown; it is the power of namingnaming itself in its recognition of the primitive and inevitable paradox of naming naming. Let us now investigate successively those three aspects of the problem of naming and identifying. How do I identify myself to 'I' and to my name in the administrative phrase: "'I', Edouard Morot-Sir, the undersigned, certify that . . ."? Between "Motor-Sir" and "the undersigned'' I can insert "titles" such as professor, philosopher, Frenchman, or resident of the United States (the problem of titling is examined below). I am trying to understand the relationship between 'I,' my given name, and my signature. My signature is my personal way to write my name and take the responsibility for what has been written. It is the writing of namingthe way to give a permanent status to the oral naming. Surely, it is an important decision for the pragmatics of naming, but it does not change the power of naming in search of identification. The real problem lies in the relationship between 'I' and 'Edouard Morot-Sir" is it a false problem? 'I' is a personal deictic, not a name; 'Edouard Morot-Sir' is the contrary, a name, not a deictic. No confusion is possible. Nevertheless, what is the relationship between personal deictics and personal namings? It is a specific problem within the general question of naming in connection with deictics. First, hypothesis: I accept the anaphoric theory of pronouns and interpret personal deictics as substitutes for full naming. At any place in the document that I sign, 'I' replaces 'Edouard Morot-Sir.' 'I' (and it is also true for any other personal pronoun) is much more than a convenient proxy for my name in my discourse. It refers to myself as a person in moral language, as a self with a more or less emphasized Psy-

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referent. Thus, it is much more than a referent to prior or future naming. It is another kind of naming: I name myself 'I' and I name you 'you' in an act of absolute identification that does not require the adjunction of my name, except for special emphasis or social demand. Then, where is the difference between these two kinds of naming, even if, in the current discourses, one is taken for the other' We think that 'I,' 'you,' and so on, arc normally connected with a name, even if we do not know it, and that a name in the human world implies the right to be represented by two personal pronouns. In the nonhuman environment, there is the possibility of the neutral third person, except when members or objects in this environment are mixed with the human one: 'he' or 'she' for a pet, for instance. I see only one answer: Personal namings, otherwise called personal deictics, are indicators-markers within discourse. They are auto-referential namings. On the contrary, names attributed to persons and thingswhat we usually call 'name'are hetero-referential. When they are used independently of the first and second persons, they belong to the third person of the verb, be they marked or not: I speak, you speak, he speaks; Edouard Morot-Sir parle, je parle, il parle. Would it not be simpler to follow the present linguistic distinctions and admit the existence of two autonomous functions, that is, deixis and naming? We have already noted the confusion behind the theory of linguistic showing and its lexical instability. Maybe the reason for such a state of affairs lies in the effort to define deixis and its forms as a sort of independent entity, without referring it to naming. This is impossible since I reached the conclusion that language begins and ends by naming. Consequently, there should be two kinds of naming, as I just suggested, one purely referential, what we call 'naming,' and the other auto-referential, what we call 'deixis.' In another turn of phrase, I could say that names are the products of naming when naming asserts itself as name producing and not as showing a gesture. Then, one may understand why, when I compare and confront 'I,' 'Edouard Morot-Sir,' I experience two different qualities of linguistic force and reference. Indeed I know that my name is not 'I,' but 'Edouard Morot-Sir'; even if I lie, I feel entirely committed to the content and the purpose of my sentence, more so than when, on rare occasions (since I do not believe in the Gaullist style of making of a name a transposed and magnified 'I'), I write "Edouard Morot-Sir was professor at Fouad University in Guiza from 1950 to 1952." My reference to my name is equal, not superior to the reference to any other name: "The Mena House is close to the Great Pyramid." It could be said that 'I' names

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a direct, actual presence; it is an immediate reference, while a name refers to the possible presence of a person who will answer 'I' if I ask him or her "Who are you'" It would be tempting to solve our problem by saying: 'I' names the actual presence of a person, when a name is his/her possible presence. At that point I could continue our meditation by introducing the opposition 'presence/absence,' which encloses the exercise of reference. However, in order to accept the solution, I must ask first if I am not playing a semantic game and using 'naming' in two different senses when I write "'I' names . . . " and "the name of Socrates is Socrates": in "'I' names . . . ," is not 'name' a hidden metaphor or metonymy? Grammatically speaking, it is clear that 'I' is not a name, a 'name' is not a deixis; but grammatical qualifications concern the projection of language into an organized discourse, not the immediate expression of reference by way of naming in the simple enunciation of a name (mine or others'), be it a call, an interjection, a signature at the end of a letter, a proper name on the front page of a book, or, on a flagstone, a war memorial. 'I' is a pre- or postgrammatical intent of reference; more than an indicator or a marker, less than a phrase, but what makes them possible: a name. The linguistic explosion can be but a name, the effect of naming. And any word is a way of naming, even without grammatical descriptions: 'prepositions' and 'conjunctions' are words that help to name. Let us examine again the crucial phenomenon of deixis, especially 'I' and 'this.' Every time I wish to refer my language to its origin, I name myself as I, I could even say "I show myself as 'I. . . . . I designate myself as 'I.'" But it would simply mean that I show or indicate by way of naming. For reasons I am repeating ad nauseam, there is no absolute showing or indicating; they exist only through naming: I show myself through my naming. The same reasoning applies to 'this' and 'that.' What does 'this' name when I profer it absolutely, without any name added, One may object that my example is not relevant to historical languages; but why not imagine God, after his creation, looking at it and saying 'that' or in French 'ça'? Is he naming the world 'that' before calling it 'world,' or 'creation,' or any of the names that followed' It is linguistic fiction, indeed, but it suggests that the grammatical description of a demonstrative deictic does not exhaust its power of reference, and that the language of perception under the control of the deictic operators implies the language of naming. A deictic, personal or demonstrative, is a preliminary naming invitating more naming, but condensing the names into a monosyllabic. I must also realize that, in all those analyses, I remain at a very

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typical and intuitive level of understanding: "a name is a name when I name it," and "the general name of a name is 'name?" 'I' and 'this' are the two limit-identifications of naming-asserting and underlining the double universality and unicity of naming. Here appear the principles of identity and individuation that have challenged philosophers for centuries. I must investigate them, not in their ontological or epistemological perspectives, but in their relation to the naming of a being whose life consists exclusively in naming and being named. 2. The Principle of Identity Even within idealist patterns principles seem to imply the R-postulate. They refer to Being; they formulate the universal and complementary constitution of its existence: a given being is identical to itself and, from certain points of view, identical to some other being; a given being is unique and incomparable to any other being. These traditional formulations are done through mathematical equality or inequality: a = a, a = b, . As mentioned above, Frege considered only the first two expressions and thus only one aspect of reference. He came close to exclusive linguistic heed, but shied away before taking the final step, thus making of reference an arbitrary truth-decision and a pure coup de force. Indeed, Frege is in the good company of all philosophers of the Western world, 1 even Nietzsche who did not go beyond the skeptical deadlock: it is true that truth is illusory. Shall I be happier if I force myself to become conscious of the fact that asserting and positing identities are possible only within the realm of naming, and if I make of identity the universal value of naming? In other words, there would be no naming without asserting the identity of what I name: by naming only am I assigning an identity to a name? Let us insist on that phrasing. I am not saying that I am applying the Identity principle to language and its naming operation, as I would for any other kind of being. On the contrary, I say that, by the very act of naming, I create the existence of an identity that is identical to itself. I am conscious that I am playing between the two usual meanings of identity ("show me your identity card," "the identity of a with a"), and that that play expresses in its essence the power of reference by naming. Then I arrive at a primary linguistic formulation of the Identity principle: Naming a is asserting that a is a. The statement, the importance of which has been recognized by logicians, "The name of Socrates is Socrates" should be read correctly "naming Socrates is saying that Socrates is Socrates." Doing so, I am

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introducing surreptitiously the R-postulate (a real Socrates being named or naming himself Socrates). I do not claim that such a way of speaking should be prohibited. I claim that it is possible, only if I presuppose, not a being and its name, but the fundamental unity of being and name in the unique emergence of naming. From there derives the traditional and difficult problem of the identity of the self with the complicity of the Psy-referent. At any rate, loyal to my linguistic commitment, I do not see how I can understand the existence of an ontological language as I practice it every day if I do not anchor it in the prior operation of naming, and subsequently, if I do not posit that being is being naming and named. Current expressions mentioned above like "He/she is a name, has a name; he lives up to his name, she is more Smith than the Smiths; he is worth his name," and so on, encourage me in my decision to associate the problem of identity with the power of naming, understood as basic referential manifestation. Despite possible stylistic slippages, I am not invoking the F-function and making of the Identity principle a practical rule without which naming would be impossible. Such a statement cannot be avoided. It is even acceptable from the point of view of the Census Bureau, or the onomasticist, but that pragmatic way of reasoning presupposes the immediate relationship between naming and identity. In the language of the perceptive brain, the art of naming can be translated this way: the cerebralization of any living being, as it is relatively perfected in human beings, constitutes and institutes a transcendent unity of names, which makes of human bio-cultures indefinite searches for identity, so that at the beginning and in the end, naming is always assigning identities to oneself and to others in many complex manners. In philosophical terms, the Kantian Unknowable or the Beckettian Unnamable are just designating that experience which is invitation to naming. Let me repeat: the logical and ontological principle of identity legislates our lives by and with names; and there is no other possible life for our brains. 3. The Principle of Individuation The relationship between naming and the principle of individuation should be understood in the same manner. At a straight ontological level individuation is only a coup de force offering no evidence. On the contrary, individuation appears in my most common experience of names. If I say "I think that President Bush was right in selling arms to the Saudi government," I individualize my statement by referring it to me and uniquely to

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me. I name myself as the author and warrantor of a linguistic manifestation. Every day I experiment with a practical Cogito: "I think, therefore I name myself." Then, if I say "Peter, would you tell me whether . . . ?", there is no ambiguity in my mind or the minds of those who hear my call: this call concerns Peter exclusively, not John or Mary. If I say: "Who could tell me where . . . ?" I call for one or more names as sources of a possible answer. The answer to my question could be "Jack, Jane, the plumber, God," in the style of the current ''God knows." At a deeper level of linguistic reference, maybe the deepest of all, I evoke Pascal writing the "Mystery of Jesus," which is a sort of reverse prayer in the style of "I, Jesus, addressing myself to you, Blaise." The requirement for individuation by naming is not something that adds up to naming. It is true that, if 'I' is only Jesus Christ, 'thou' designates Blaise, but also, in Jesus's mind and grace, any other man or woman. However, Christian salvation is not a collective set of nomination, like "All of you in front of me, I name you American citizens, .you Rosaldo, you Salomé, you Greta, you Ali, you Fyodor . . . " Even in this case, the collective pronouncement is addressed to individuals. One cannot imagine the Final Judgment without a Resurrection of Names in their full power of individuation. Indeed it is difficult to imagine reborn names fluttering joyously in a resplendent and miraculous dawn, especially if we force ourselves to come back to Pascal's disquieting fragment 929, which ponders the possibility of name exchange and name conversion. It would make the Resurrection of Names an infinite conversion to the name of Jesus. I am not readying myself for theological and eschatological discussions. I simply express my gratitude to Pascal, who warns me that actually, I am not an 'I,' but a 'thou' who aspires to become an 'I,' a Blaise who is prepared to be drawn aside and who deserves another name, the absolute name. In a way, the conversion of name by the grace of God reinforces the exigency of individuation in the experience of naming: a name that is not absolutely individual is not really a name. The quest of the holy grail is the quest of the proper name. Now I am ready, to give a linguistic formulation to the principle of difference as complementary to the principle of identity: Naming a is asserting and assigning to a its irreducible identity. I can transfer it to a language-and-experience of perception. I speak of individuals (persons and objects) as forgetting their names, then forgetting that I cannot perceive without naming and, subsequently, that my sensory organs are originally diversified instruments of referenceas-naming. I can conclude that identity and individuality arc not intrinsic and immanent properties of names; they are values for names, with no warranty

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that they can be always and full}, satisfied. To put it bluntly, I can refer only by naming, and a name will never be an absolute reference. As I said before, naming is but an invitation to naming. This is the reason why the duality between 'I' and 'Edouard Morot-Sir' remains insurmountable: both are required in my daily exercise of naming. 4. Naming as Titling In the above analysis, I explored all the consequences of the phrase "I, Edouard Morot-Sir, certify that . . ." and came to the conclusion that naming, as a permanent condition of reference and governed by the principles of identity and individuation, is realized within the tension between a direct and formal affirmation of identity and an indirect assurance of identity, which is currently called the name of the person or the object. Those two kinds of identification are not reducible to one or the other. They make of naming and thus of reference an always uncertain and risky enterprise. They are also the deepest roots of that permanent and frustrating scepticism which pervades our linguistic condition. It is time to investigate the statements "I am Edouard Morot-Sir; I know that you are François Mitterrand; this tree is a dogwood." If my recent conclusion is correct, such affirmations of identities are just apparent identities. They are exposing a name: they are not saying 'I' is 'Edouard Morot-Sir.' Under the guise of an identity statement they are asserting and recognizing the right to a certain name. For instance, 'I' is entitled to a name that grammarians call 'proper name.' The tree is entitled to a name that is called by grammarians 'common name.' Below; I give serious consideration to that distinction. For the moment I will try to understand what I just called "the right to a name," or the "entitling of a name," or the fact of "being entitled to a name.'' As far as I know, the right to a name is not mentioned by the U.S. Constitution or by any other constitution. Rousseau did not refer to it as a part of the basic social contract. Never did the defenders of freedom of the press consider it in relation to the right to name. They invoke "the right to tell the truth" and thus, to give birth to one of the blatant mystifications of our time; but they blatantly ignore that the right to name entails respect of the name. There is no need to continue the list of those omissions and malpractices. Our cultures, the institution of which depends on the art of naming, have special codes to protect certain groups

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of names, like the Registrar General's administration, the Social Register, and the scientific nomenclatures; but these codes are not consciously rooted in the general right of existing-as-name. Let us return to the apparent identity, 'I am Edouard Morot-Sir.' It is an elliptic way to say: I am the only one who has the right to say that he is Edouard Morot-Sir; but since it is possible that another person bears the same name, or that 'I' is not 'Edouard Morot-Sir,' I am ready to add "yes, this Edouard Morot-Sir who was in Cairo in 1950-52, who occupied certain positions, the very one you met in Paris in 1960, and so on . . . " The name covers and simplifies an infinity of details: "Oh yes, Galileo, the one who said 'Nevertheless it does move!'" Whatever particular ways I use to protect my name, when I say "yes, I am Edouard Morot-Sir," I affirm for myself, and also for any designation of being, the right of being entitled to a name. It is not a logical, ethical, aesthetic right, although there are logics, ethics, and aesthetics of names; it is the linguistic right per excellence: As Boileau said once and for all, it is the right to call a cat a cat, Rolet a rascal, and Boileau Boileau. Thus the name takes the value of a title. Is there a difference between 'The Hills of Chapel Hill' and 'the oak trees of my backyard'? No, as naming is concerned; yes, only if one weighs the importance of the title. Shall I say that a name is the recognition of a title and that naming is titling in the absolute sense of that verb? Is it not referring a totality, to one of its parts? If a title is always a way of naming, it does not entail that any name is a title. Would it not be more appropriate to speak of names as labels and to observe that some labels indicate a title? Am I not playing with different meanings of the same word? Rather I am trying to expose a basic linguistic exigency: in the presence of a name I feel the claim for a title, a certain value of existing-as-name in the process of reference within my linguistic garden. Subsequently, the relationship between naming and being should be written in a new style. Let us avoid the language of the R-postulate and never say: I am a being who, for pragmatico-linguistic reasons, possesses a name that has social identification and recognition. Let us not even say: my name is my most important and precious qualification without which my personal existence would be very meager. I may write: my name names my right to identification; my daily life is responsible for the defense of this fundamental right, which, needless to say, does not go without responsibilities. Furthermore, my name authenticates and consecrates my actions, feelings, and thoughts. Prolonging David Hume's decisive analysis, I may say: I am not a substantial self, not even a history

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between birth and death, but an unceasing reference to a name in the name of which I feel, think, and act. In that perspective my name is my title, even if I am not a Guermantes. Thus, attempting to give a sort of definition to 'title,' I may state that in its general sense, a title is the name of a name. That means that I am conscious of my name as a value I am responsible for at the very moment of my experiences of naming. What about the name 'tree' or 'dogwood'? It would be ridiculous to assert that 'tree, dogwood' are values for trees in general or specifically. Could I say that the dogwood I am looking at through my window feels responsible for its name, except if I join secretly an onomastic Platonism? At any rate, it would not be any stupider than to speak in the usual realist way and declare that my name is a pure arbitrary accident of my being in its intersubjective life. The name 'dogwood' is a title for a botanist who can confront its definition with the perception of my dogwood, and, later, identify it as belonging to a variety of dogwood. But what about the dogwood itself? Indeed a scientist will maintain the realist language of physical sciences, and she will consider 'dogwood' an arbitrary label to designate a certain kind of being. We may remember the medieval philosophers facing this problem and losing themselves in the inextricable quibbles about realism, conceptualism, and nominalism, at least proving that the problem was not so simple as common sense would make it. Looking at more modern metaphysical languages, I could subpoena Bergson, Teilhard de Chardin, among others, just to show that the relationship between being and naming should not be hastily reduced to the linguists' traditional belief in the arbitrariness of sign, even if, for this moment in the becoming of knowledge, such a reduction offers great methodological advantages. 5. Social Nominations Leaving those far-fetched considerations, the purpose of which is only to make us aware of lingering problems, not solvable by present scientific techniques and yet not insignificant in the meditation on language, let us observe the exercise of naming in social life and in the theoretical development of modern sciences. I open the National Social Directory. It begins by saying: "The NSD is the only recognized nationwide social reference in the United States." Implications arc clear: first, any name of people living in the United States belongs to the order of "social reference." Direct relations between name

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and reference are admitted; then, from the outset, the phrase "the only recognized" asserts the axiological spirit of such a selective listing of names: the NSD attributes to itself the right to make that selection, and even declares that its authority is "recognized," that is, accepted by the social world to which it refers. The adjective "social" characterizes a certain kind of name selection that is neither administrative nor professional, but based on social importance: a mysterious and hierarchical concept that historically has governed societies, including probably the most primitive ones. Is there a tribe without its snobs? The criteria that preside over that selection of (it is said) "17,000 names of America's foremost families" are listed as follows: ''social standing," leadership in the arts and sciences, dominant roles in "their philanthropies, their business interests, their hobbies, their traveling, and their way of life in general." One will notice that the social reference is not to individual names, but to family names, even if all the members of a family are not listed. Surely the NSD's criteria have little in common with those of the Almanach de Gotha or Burke's Peeraqe, but the spirit is the same: among names forming a society there arc a few that have more "social importance" than others, for whatever reasons, from birth to personal achievements. In a way one could say: some names are more names than others, names that deserve to be named because of their original or historical power of naming, names implying a system of rights, which qualifies individuals and families . . . "If he were not a Chatellerault he would be nothing!" Thus, we can but concur with NSD's sure instinct when it seeks and finds social reference in family names, that is, names attributed to individuals who are linked b,' blood or marriage. Finally, the NSD's introduction explains how new members can be nominated: they need sponsors, already named, and those sponsors must submit their requests to an "Advisory Committee" that examines the credentials of the proposed names. Such a committee has an absolute power of naming; it governs, not a collectivity of individuals and families, but a society of names, or more exactly, a certain power of naming generating a society. The NSD refers to already existing names, but it gives them a sort of new power by its own naming in the Directory. It is not surprising, then, that, at the same time, naming is identifying and titling: a name contains the double power of an identity and a title; in its evanescent and enduring existence it promotes and defends the rights of an identity and a title: "Civis Romanus sum!" It is the source of social recognitions and ostracisms; it governs regional ontologies, that is, beings that exist by their names. Maybe some serious philosophers will deem frivolous my rapprochement between ontology and snobism and accuse me

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of degrading philosophy to the rank of arbiter for ontological elegance and dilettantism, of confusing Aristotle's Metaphysics with a Social Register. Well, I am not ashamed to plead guilty. Is Aristotle different from any member of the Advisory Committee of the NSD? In his large scheme, he gave beings the right to be named 'beings,' and thus, to be entitled to proper names, individual or collective, thus indulging in a kind of metaphysical snobbery. Is not Aristotelian Logic finally ending in the great medieval vision of hierarchical beings from the Unnamable matter to the perfectly namable form, in a Final Judgment of names receiving their ultimate consecration or desecration? Conversely, the NSD represents a small part of the enormous process of naming that constitutes (in the strongest sense of this word) human societies absorbing themselves into a beehive activity of identification, labeling, and conferring titles. 6. Scientific Nominations Let us proceed from social reference to the equally vital world of scientific references, from the Bottin mondain to the Nomenclatures. It would be naive to believe that the main objectives of the sciences arc limited to the art of correctly naming the beings that are part of the world, or that they attempt to draw the true map of names, which rectifies the superficial reference of perceptive naming. As Positivism stated once and for all, scientific language tends to become a language of prediction, which, in turn, leads to a language of action. However, those languages are themselves possible only if, behind the realist presuppositions of any scientist, his concern in planning future states of the world aims at names. It is as if science, after God, was renaming a Paradise lost and reconquered. The recent history of the physics of elementary particles gives a striking demonstration of the necessity of naming in the world of physical references. However, I must confess my incompetence in following scientific languages and their mathematical abstractions, when they name new particles, new physical entities, inaccessible and fugacious, bordering on the physical Unnamable. This is why I decide to explore the art of chemical naming at a crucial moment in its modern developments, and thus, propose to read the Traité élémentaire de chimie, présenté dans un ordre nouveau et d'après les découvertes modernes, by M. Lavoisier, de l'Académie des sciences, de la Société de médecine, des Sociétés d'agriculture de Paris et d'Orléans, de la Société de Londres, de l'Institut de Bologne, de la Société helvétique de Basle, de celles de Philadelphie, Harlem, Manchester, Padoue, etc. (I consulted the second edition, 1793).

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I quoted the title on the front page in extenso to expose its clear orientation toward naming and its rights. "Traité élémentaire" does not mean that Lavoisier intends to write a popular book for a large public. It specifies that the treatise deals with the chemical elements "presented in a new order," which consists in a revised presentation of the names of chemical substances, warranted by ''modern discoveries" or ways of rectifying our common language of perception. Who is writing that treatise? Not an individual named 'Lavoisier,' the first name is omitted; not an individual referred to a family name or to a profession; but an individual whose name appears on the list of numerous scientific societies and so, has been recognized, titled so to speak, honored by specialized groups with referential powers and credentials for a certain kind of language. Such cumulative titling announces more than the content of a book; it affirms an intent and a right to naming in the specific field of chemistry. Lavoisier's Traité is preceded by a "Discours préliminaire," which gives an unexpected and welcome boost to my views on the importance of naming. After noting that his first objectives were to "reform and improve the nomenclature of Chemistry," Lavoisier pays tribute to Condillac's analytical philosophy, for which "the art of reasoning is reduced to a well formed language" ("L'art de raisonner se réduit à une langue bien faire," p. vi). 2 Lavoisier admits that, thanks to the author of L'Essai sur l'origine des connaissances, he suddenly realized "the impossibility of separating Nomenclature from Science, and Science from Nomenclature" ("l'impossibilité d'isoler la Nomenclature de la Science et la Science de la Nomenclature," p. vi). That well-coined phrase indicates that chemistry reaches its scientific maturity at the time when it has mastered its power of naming, in the same way that a society becomes conscious of its unity when a Registrar General's Office is sufficiently organized to establish its lists. Then Lavoisier, on the heels of Condillac, justifies his nomenclature in combining a sensualist epistemology (human thoughts go from sensations to ideas, and then to words) with an art of naming based on the following principles: (1) for all chemical substances, to maintain the names they have already; (2) but not to hesitate to add new names for newly discovered substances; and (3) to change old names when they risk inducing confused ideas (pp. xviii and xix). The "Discours préliminaire" ends with a quotation from Condillac: "After all, the sciences have made progress because philosophers have observed better and because they have invested their language with the kind of precision and accuracy with which they made their observations; they have corrected their language; better reasoning resulted from this."3 Needless to say, "the philosophers" designates Condillac and the Encyclopédistes. How can language be corrected,

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made more precise and accurate? Without any doubt Lavoisier's solution consists in improving the art of naming, in being conscious that in any field, the progress of science is always by itself a progress in nomenclature. Remodeling Condillac's famous saying, let us write that "a science is a well-named language." Lavoisier's Traité consists of three parts, which form the three necessary aspects of the art of naming in chemistry: formation, exposition (or in Lavoisier's terms, 'tableau, table'), and instrumentation. 4 The second phase, "Exposition," and its ten tables (the first table gives the old and new names of the simple substances) "forms a sort of recapitulation of the first fifteen chapters of this book" (Traité, I, p. 191). It is a strict nomenclature, but Lavoisier is aware that those tables show the activity of naming in its final state of a lexical summary. In the same guise, introducing the third part, Lavoisier offers only a pragmatic reason for separating the theory of formation from its necessary instrumentation: ''From my own experience, I have recognized that minute descriptions, procedural details, and explanations of illustrations did not fit well in a work of reasoning; that they interrupted the train of thoughts, and that they made reading such a work wearisome and difficult." (J'ai reconnu, d'après ma propre experience, que des descriptions minutieuses, des détails de procédés et des explications de planches, figuraient mal dans un ouvrage de raisonnement; qu'elles interrompaient la marche des idées, et qu'elles rendaient la lecture de l'ouvrage fastidieuse et difficile) (Traité, II, pp. 1-2). However, Lavoisier underlines the importance of the third part: chemical naming would be impossible without laboratories and instruments. He quotes the sensualist maxim "Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu" and adds: "a great and important truth . . . that the famous Rouelle asked to be drawn in big characters in the most visible part of his laboratory" (Traité, II, p. 3). Indeed this epistemological motto expresses an act of empiricist faith. It shows that naming requires an organized physical activity; by the same token, instrumentation participates in the complex art of naming, which, for Lavoisier, is the conclusion of any complex reasoning. Returning to the first chapter of the first part of the Traité élémen-taire, I realize that descriptions concerning "combinations of the caloric" and "formation of elastic aeriform fluids" aim at justifying the introduction of the word calorique as opposed to 'attraction' already firmly established by Newton. In realist language Lavoisier presents his right to this new naming in charge of replacing the metaphysical 'phlogistic': "It is difficult to conceive those phenomena [solidity, liquidity, elasticity, aero-

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form] without admitting that they are effects of a real and material substance . . . and even supposing that the existence of that fluid were an hypothesis, one will see eventually that it explains natural phenomena in a very felicitous way" (Traité, I, p. 4). Then, after declaring, "Subsequently we have designated the cause of heat, the eminently elastic fluid that produces it, by the name of caloric" (Traité, I, p. 5), he adds: "we are not forced to suppose that the caloric is a real matter (in French: "une matiére réelle"), it is enough, as one will see better by reading the following pages, that it is any repulsive cause that holds apart material molecules, and thus one can contemplate its effects in an abstract and mathematical manner" (Traité, I, pp. 5-6). At this point of contact with Lavoisier's language, it could be tempting to see it shifting from realist to idealist patterns based upon a positivist agnosticism: even if the idea of calorique is not supposed to cur-respond to a real thing, it permits a clear and coherent description of all chemical phenomena. Maybe the admirer of Condillac was passing from the R-postulate to the Psy-referent, one reinforcing the other. The philosophes were still under the spell of Cartesian dualism, although, as is well known, for them there is also a fundamental duality image/word, because an idea is a word applied to a collection of images. At the beginning of the Traité's Part 2, presenting the table of the simple substances (see p. 104), he declares: "Therefore Chemistry walks toward its aim and its achievement, in dividing, subdividing, resubdividing again, and we do not know what the culmination will be of its successes" ("La Chimie marche vers son but et vers sa perfection, en divisant, subdivisant, et resubdivisant encore, et nous ignorons quel sera le terme de ses succès" [Traité, I, p. 194]). Lavoisier unites in the same act of thought (and, I would prefer to say, act of language) chemical analysis and word analysis, observation and nomination, so that the already quoted statement about the impossibility of separating nomenclature and science must be taken very seriously. As an emerging science, chemistry is at once chemical perceiving and chemical naming, actually two intertwined languages, with a final decision concerning the right of naming: Science dreams of an ideal table listing the correct names to be used. Surely Lavoisier does not claim that there is no difference between calorique and the word 'calorique', but he (and Condillac with him) does not understand the act of naming as a simple baptismal pronouncement. Naming is a very complex process, and it ends in the enunciation of a word on which the power of naming is conferred. One objection could be raised: even if my conclusion concerning Lavoisier's identification of science and nomenclature is correct, it does

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Tableau des Substances Simples. not follow that the history of science is only that of a continuous improve-merit in the art of nomination and renomination. Lavoisier's tables were necessary for his time, but they led to other problems dealing with the mechanism of chemical exchanges and to the present physics of elementary particles. The new problems, so the argument might go, consist in the search for principles and laws governing these mechanisms at a level that is infraperceptive, but not infralinguistic. Things are not quite that simple. The layman cannot help being astonished by the proliferation of names for new nomenclatures. Indeed, today there is an entirely new language for which Lavoisier's Traité is a remote ancestor. However, it does not mean that the need for naming has disappeared, or that, for instance, it has been replaced by the exposition of quantitative laws. It means only that naming challenges its own perceptive controls, and that our sensory

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organs are referred to instruments that invite naming beyond ordinary perception. In short, today as well as yesterday the art of naming remains at the core of scientific research; it establishes, so to speak, a Bottin mondain of a new kind, with very different codes, but with the same fundamental exigency: conferring on reference the right of being and thus, the right of naming existence. 7. The Incompleteness of Reference The above meditation on social and scientific namings supports my view that naming is the central condition of reference, its expression and limits. It is a crucial epistemological fact that I can underline in the guise of a principle: There is no reference without the positing of name(s), which forces upon any kind of reference its nontransgressable limit. Subsequently, reference to an object alleged to be beyond language is an arbitrary realist belief. When I say, for example, "I refer to an object," I may believe that I refer to something I see in my perceptive field and to which I attribute the name 'object.' Really, as already noted, I am just passing from one name ('something') to another ('object'). I cannot break the language barrier. There is only one way to identify, be it oneself; it is by reference, that is, by ascertaining an identity, not by identifying oneself to somebody or something else. When Madame de Sevigné. responds to her daughter, who has written to her that she was ill, "J'ai mal à votre poitrine" (I have a pain in my chest as if it were yours), she may feel a real pain in her chest, but by naming it she refers to her daughter's pain: a double reference (her pain, her daughter's pain) becomes a unique reference thanks to a brilliant turn of phrase. The subtle Marquise tells Madame de Grignan, "When I name you, I name me; my love for you protests against the recognition of our double identity, our distinct names." When Baudelaire says that true criticism should be "identification with the artist," he may dream of a mysterious communication between two minds and of an ultimate fusion of his critical mind with that of the creator, in a miraculous apotheosis of the Psy-referent; but in the actuality of his critical texts, he aspires to express the authcnticity and identity of Wagner or Delacroix by naming their musical or pictorial worlds. Identification with persons, living beings, remains inevitably identification with names, because in our linguistic condition, naming is the only expression of identification and thus, of reference. Madame de Sevigné identifies herself to Madame de Grignan . . . in writing, no less, no more. After reading Baudelaire, I may feel that I

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understand Wagner's or Delacroix's works better. It means that I am able to develop a richer system of naming than before, if I try to expose my musical and artistic feelings as aspects of my interior monologue. I know that my feeling is an incomplete reference. Thanks to Baudelaire I can use a more powerful critical vocabulary: I can name much better, but my reference to Wagner or Delacroix, enriched as it may be, never surpasses my capacity of naming. Now I am able to generalize those observations about the different levels of the incompleteness of reference. First, the feeling of incompleteness means that reference cannot go beyond itself, even if it dreams of identification between the referring and the referent. My life is assuming or contesting references to myself and to others. Second, reference is always referring to a name. At the beginning and at the end of language, there is naming, unnaming, and renaming. Third, being aware that a name is just a name, I spend my life running from one name to another, or I repeat indefinitely the same name, like the lover who writes obsessively the name of his loved one, expecting that the repeated presence of a name will convert itself into the miracle of a concrete presence. Why do I speak of naming as the experience of incomplete reference, or in a rather ambiguous manner, of incomplete reference, implying that a complete reference is possible? If I pursue that way of reasoning, I should say that reference feels incomplete because it cannot be realized without naming. In the most extreme but most frequent case of my own experience, "I am Edouard Motor-Sir" does not suppose that 'I' is 'Edouard Morot-Sir,' but that my name is Edouard Morot-Sir, and that 'I' is fastened to a name. In French I would write: "'Je' est assujetti à un nom" ('I' is subjected/subjugated to a name), enjoying the rich connotation of 'assujetti' and experiencing that 'I' shows a subject when it is understood in reference to a name. The proposition "This bird is a cardinal" may be interpreted as an ontological statement enunciated by a zoologist, but it is originally an act of naming: "I name 'cardinal' the bird I am showing to you," or ''Zoologists name 'cardinal' the bird that they identify by certain characteristics." In so far as it is codifying the language of being, propositional logic presupposes a nominative logic, which is any kind of nomenclature, be it social or scientific. Thus we can group all the intellectual consequences of Lavoisier's illuminative insights when he subdued science to the supreme art of naming. Such is the so-called incompleteness of reference; 'being' is subjugated to 'naming.' I refer to names, by names, through names; and 'reference' is another name, the name by which I name naming. While I am making this statement, my common sense grudgingly

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protests: "But reference is obviously more than naming, for the very reason that Socrates is more than 'Socrates,' or that I am more than my name, or that this cardinal is more than . . . " You can guess my answer: "You have not succeeded in getting rid of the R-postulate, and you feel as if reference should be reference to being and intimate identification with being." Does it mean that incompleteness characterizes the exercise of the ontological language for which reference aims at the identity of truth and reality? Indeed reference is felt as ontological incompleteness in Western philosophies. However, if I believe in my own present experience, incompleteness suggests more than the ontological nostalgia of a linguistic being, generated by the antinomy of reality and language. It is a universal linguistic condition: to assume the linguistic condition in the experience of reference, I realize that naming is my existential condition, and my life in its history totalizes the joys and sorrows of naming and being named, and then, of risking, not really to reach the point of unnamability, but to fall into the malpractice of naming, or to be consumed by the bitterness of being badly named. What I have called provisionally and rather vaguely "the power of reference" appears to be the permanent and inexhaustible desire of naming-and-being-named, a desire that will never be fully satisfied. If it were satisfied, reference would disappear into the exaltation of the Parmenidian identity. By invoking the word desire to qualify, the power of reference, am I falling back into the enticing snares of the Psyreferent? Quite the contrary, I am trying to transfer 'desire' into the linguistic experience and to make of 'desire' the force that expresses itself in reference and finds its normal but meager food in the silos of names. Returning to the brain-model, I can write that my brain, your brain, their brains, experience and express the desire of reference as best they can. To quench that thirst they live by attributing and receiving names. I am well aware of the radical consequence of that transfer of 'desire' into the linguistic realm. Specifically it entails metapsychology, Freudian style or any kind. It also implies a metalinguistics and is a provisional language that awaits its translation into "linguistic" language. For example, the psychoanalytical discourse on desire will take its full significance when it is translated into referential consciousness and discourse. As a mild joke, I say to Freud and his Oedipus complex "C'est toi qui l'as nommé" ("It is you who named it"). Let us reserve for other times (or other people) the painstaking work of converting the psychological languages of our cultures into the original but hidden language of reference. At the moment, I am limiting my pleasure to answering the question behind this meditation on the incompleteness of reference: "What is naming?" The conclusive answer is: it is

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(meaning: it is the name of . . . ) the only possibility of referring, and I call it 'naming,' within the irreducible tension of identification and titling. Linguistic analysis may isolate functions such as 'indicating' and 'marking' and consider them more general or primitive than naming. They arc ways of subnaming but they presuppose naming. The same state of affairs applies to more elaborate linguistic expressions such as 'description' and 'signification,' which I examine below. As I said above, all of them are fastened to the necessity of naming: there is no meaningful manifestation of reference without the desire and the limitation of naming. 8. Describing, Defining If the preceding conclusions are correct, if I can only refer to names, and if naming is the basic and permanent anchoring of reference, it does not mean that in civilizations with full, developed languages, reference entertains exclusively a culture of naming. A society restricted to the art of giving and receiving names is not absolutely inconceivable. I can imagine a doorman of the Century Club who knows the names on the list of those who arc enjoying the facilities of this club: he does not even have to know them as "members of the Club." A name is pronounced, and he opens the door or not. In a way, the social pages of The New York Times arc close to that culture: they are made of names connected by birth, death, marriage, and social events; and they signal presences by names. In the salon of Madame de Villeparisis, the young Marcel (Proust) stands in wonder from one name to another. As is well known, a cocktail party is little more than a calling of names: "Hello, Jack, Mary . . . ," the rest is background noise. The greatest pleasure of birdwatching is indeed not to catch a bird, but to catch its name; the rest of that special voyeurism is enjoyment of its reference to names. I tried to look at birds whose names I did not know; my pleasure was near zero until I decided to consult a book of birds in the region and look for names. If I can exclaim, "What a splendid blue Louisiana heron!" what a rare feast for me! The pleasure of naming in its nakedness is almost pure. Alexis Léger, a.k.a. Saint-John Perse, in a letter to his mother (February 2, 1918), tells the following story in a language between narration and meditation: "By now Allan [his Central Asiatic horse] and I arc complete friends. . . . But how sad it is, after all, to find in his look only that eternal subjugation to human magnetism. To me it's the same old story, the same old feeling of loneliness. . . . Another of my friendsdon't laughis a mere mosquito that holes up during the day in

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the little tunnel formed by the backbinding of a Petit Larousse that I never open. He then comes out in the evening to visit me on my desk without at all bothering me. We've been exchanging greetings for a long time already and I have succeeded in putting a red ink-mark on him, like a Chinese actor . . . My Chinese "boys" think it is magic. The little beast is named 'Ulysses'I am not sure why." 5 For Persethe poetgiving names is the deepest poetic act, attached to "human magnetism" and loneliness, as if naming tends to be at the same time contact and separation: common names arc replaced by proper names, with rich connotations. But the barrier of the name is insurmountable: the passage from 'mosquito' to 'Ulysses' underscores, for the poet, the uniqueness, the incommunicability, and the loneliness of naming, and thus of reference. Yet, Alexis Légcr is able to introduce Allan and Ulysses to his mother through the medium of a letter, which, for its part, is a description within a more general reflection on his situation in China. In a similar way Proust narrates, that is, describes for his readers, his first worldly experience in Madame de Villeparisis's salon. Physicists baptize elementary particles after descriptions of experiences. In daily life language, we defuse the magic of naming, and we limit its power to the implications and promises of description. I must now face the problem that has haunted philosophers since the end of the nineteenth century and remains a source of hot debates: the relationship and distinction between describing and naming, description and name.6 Here is the general problem: What is the referential power of describing? It can be reformulated this way: Since there is no reference without naming, what does describing add to or substract from naming? And more radically, how and why can describing appear in the life of refer-once if, as we now know, naming creates an unbreakable linguistic wall? To answer such a question, I must remember not only that the interdictions of the R-postulate and the Psy-referent are more imperative than ever but also that the call for genetic or dialectic processes is strictly prohibited. I cannot hope to understand 'describing' by imagining its genesis from the power of naming or by supposing a dialectical tension between naming and describingfor instance, description coming from the will to negate and surpassing naming. Any dialectical process winds up in a vicious circle. As usual, and to continue my own linguistic anchorage, I shall take a lexical bath, not by trying to prove anything about description, but just by being more involved in the existence of the word description in my present vocabulary. Exploring its Latin origin, I see that 'describere' had the following meanings: to copy, to transcribe, to narrate; then, to define, to fix;

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finally, to assign, to attribute, to distribute, to class, and to divide. The adverb descripte means in order, distinctively. The adjective descriptus insists on the quality of order, thus referring to a certain value to be aimed at in describing. Let us not forget that the descrip-paradigm is attached to scribere with its original meaning of scratching with a sharp object, so that 'descriptio' designates a variety of writing and is closely related to the visual experience of 'letting [someone] see' or, to say it in French, 'faisant voir': 'description,' then, is the writing that permits one to see, that is, that allows one to see and be seen. From there derive other semantic possibilities. As 'letting [one] see,' 'describing' has the power of representing, narrating, distributing; finally it establishes and organizes the visual field. Modern languages offer the same regional orientations. It is quite interesting to observe that the OED reserves more space and gives more detailed analyses to 'describe' and 'description' than does the French Encyclopédie Larousse. The basic introduction of description in OED reads as follows: "the action of setting forth in words by mentioning recognizable features or characteristic marks; verbal representation or portraiture." It is clear that the modern descripparadigm belongs to what I proposed to call L-language, that is, expressions of 'verbal representation, portraiture' adding psychological and visual connotations and providing details on 'the action of setting forth in words.' From this definition I can derive the phrase 'words set forth' and understand 'description' as the consequence of linguistic necessity of development, as the passage from one word to another and, since the fundamental word is name, the passage from name to name. A name is a controlled invitation to other names, an infinite verbal aperture that finds its ultimate challenge in Dada's provocation to set forth, to generate, by juxtaposition and sheer chance, a new word after any preceding word. To which challenge surrealism immediately answered that the arbitrary passage from one word to another may be beyond logical description, but not beyond unconscious communication. As André Breton superbly said, descriptions become "communicating vessels" (Vases communicants), when the writer lets his writing flow by free association, thus transcribing the "magnetic" forces of language he chooses to practice. At that point, 'describing' is put in the same field as 'perceiving,' with the implied difference that, if describing is setting forth in words, perceiving is setting forth in words called 'sensations,' 'images.' Once again I am facing the well-known problem of the relationship between image and word, especially when I reaffirm the suspension of the R-postulate. Let us not linger any longer! The OED invites me to meditate again on percep-

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tion and language, this time with a slight change: Describing is and is not perceiving. Furthermore, in the OED the adverb forth leans on two prepositions 'in' and 'by': 'in' limits the verbal passage to linguistic activities, and 'by' introduces another kind of limitation. Not only are words the mobiles set forth, but these words are 'features' and 'marks' . . . that are 'mentioned.' I came already across 'mark' to conclude that marking does not exist independently of naming. So I have to understand the phrase 'mentioning a name,' not as a name, but as a 'mark,' not forgetting that here my problem is not how I might confuse naming and marking, but how I mention naming as marking. A very mysterious word indeed! Then to describe is to "mention" marks (let us assimilate the OED's "features" and "marks") that are "recognizable" and "characteristic.'' Those adjectives specify the values behind describing and, through them, the art of mentioning as a well-formulated knowledge. Thus "to set forth in words" is to know in a certain manner, which implies memory and distinctiveness. I am pushed into this new confrontation: describing is and is not knowledge. Finally, to be thorough in my examination of the OED's basic enunciation, I must raise an epistemological question: What kind of knowledge is manifested when, after a note on an obsolete use of 'description,' I read "2. The action of setting forth . . . "? I am tempted to answer that such a phrase is a description of a description, because any dictionary is a succession of hidden tautologies lurking behind an immense waltz of synonyms and antonyms. However, I must admit that I would never open a dictionary that would be perfectly honest and print "description is description." If there arc other words, they are required for one reason or another. Tradition calls 'definitions' that sort of grouping of words which are not identical to the word that we are looking up. In daily conversation, "Look for the definition of that word" is a commonly admitted sentence. It is certain that I will never understand 'describing,' if I do not meditate the double affirmation-negation "describing is and is not defining." The crucial question, then, is: What is the difference between a perception and a description? Can I say: one is immediate and nonverbal, the other requires time and verbal expressions." At first glance, such oppositions are acceptable and could be understood within the linguistic experience. To open my eyes, to look through the window of my den, to see my backyard, all that happens at once and without a word enunciated; and what I just wrote is not my perception, but the description of its main characteristics. However, those obvious oppositions arc relative. My perception will take more than an instant if I wish to look at some features

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that are not immediately recognized. More importantly, I cannot prove that my silence is total and that my perception is not accompanied by spontaneous interior language. (I can make that hypothesis without implying the Psy-referent.) Inversely, I can conceive a silent description, following the example of Shakespeare's Polonius. Furthermore, there are very short descriptions. Because of my culture, I read the word Shakespeare, and I am immediately conscious of "the author of Hamlet." A name may be understood as an anchor for a succession of silent and short descriptions. My understanding is thus playing with two reversable phrasings: a perception is a potential description, and a description is a verbalized perception. The only way to go beyond that circle consists in confronting it with my conclusion about naming and reference: there is no reference without naming, and perception is a search for names. One may remember also my conclusion on the inseparability of language and perception. They are not distinct activities, but two complementary languages within the global experience of language. From there I can draw another conclusion: the true opposition is not between perception and description, but between naming and describing within the perceptive experience of language. Let us examine the three possible languages of perception, of naming, and of describing: "I see an oak tree at the center of my backyard, the tree I see at the center of my backyard is an oak, the oak tree I see at the center of my backyard." In spite of what psychologists may say, it is impossible to establish a chronological order between those three sentences. They stand in a state of full reciprocity, so that I cannot think that I begin by perceiving, then naming, then describing, because I perceive what I can name, and I name what I can describe. I describe with the help of names, although a listing of names is not a description. My next point depends on a shift in my perspective. Instead of looking at the simultaneity of languages, I consider the process in which describing comes deliberately. My first example is that of a novelist or a storyteller. I know that an imaginary description often refers to an actual geographical realityan apartment or a house in a city such as Paris, London, Dublin, Shanghai, or Bordeauxor that, when some novelists prefer an imaginary naming (Combray, Balbec) they still refer to a real place, Combray being near Chartres, and Balbec on the Norman coast. Whatever the play between the imaginary and the real may be in the art of naming and telling stories, naming and describing come first for the reader for whom perception is an act of imagination applied to names: names of persons, names of countries and towns, names of houses, furniture, and

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instruments. Succinctly put, reading is a perception of some sort. The imaginary world is seen and understood as possibly real. Great novels or short stories, it could be and has been said, are "more real than reality itself." Obviously, since the time I registered articulated sounds, my daily perception has been improved by my readings in my adolescence; Balzac, Flaubert, Proust, and consorts have more often taught me how to perceive and to describe than how to think. Let me transpose that permanent apprenticeship into a generalized view on learning: I learned to perceive by learning my language. And, to be more specific, perceiving as learning is part of the formation and experience of my language. Consequently, if reading is perceiving, perceiving is reading, not in a metaphoric way, but in a true, literal way; and, since reading follows writing, perceiving is writing, and, when reading is simple hearing, perceiving is telling, that is to say, giving names and describing. Those conclusions should not be surprising and could have been expected since the first time I confronted perception and language in a nonrealist perspective. My new problem consists in the understanding of perception as description after I become conscious that naming is the beginning and the end of language-and-perception: describing is indirectly the art of perceiving a landscape, a house, or an object. At first it is the art of describing names, so that 'is' implies not only 'is called,' but 'is describable as . . . ': Shakespeare is (describable as) the author of Hamlet. Then, what is a description of names? It cannot be assimilated to naming a name. It consists in associating and subordinating names to a chosen name; any name calls for a description and is also part of many others. To describe is to group names around a name in simple or complex manners, in the same way objects are grouped in my perceptive field: backyard, oak tree, bushes, hedges, neighboring houses. Once again let us examine the realist objection to my point of view. Indeed the name 'Shakespeare' is described by other names such as Hamlet or King Lear, but that nominal description is possible only because a real man named Shakespeare wrote real plays to which he gave specific names. If my analysis of naming is correct, the realist way of understanding real descriptions is an attempt to distinguish a zero degree of nominal description from other degrees. I must translate this zero degree of description within the language of description: the name 'man' was singularized into the name 'Shakespeare,' which in turn produces other names in its writing. In that manner, the field of human perception was enriched. Subsequently, describing is more than grouping names around a chosen name: it is generating names with the initial and continuous interference of a name as

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producing the force of reference. The realist description would be an abridged way of speaking about description, but never a true understanding of it. The best biographies are those that go beyond the realist simplification and feel in a name such as Shakespeare, Racine, or Beckett, beyond a genetic power of expansion, an original and infinite search for references through other names. 'To describe' deserves its etymological formation and should be returned to it, after getting rid of the realist illusion: To describe is to continue the scratch of the scriptor on a white sheet or palimpsest, goldleaf, stone; and to perceive is to describe being aware of itself, but in its worn-out use. When I begin to take my perception seriously, that is, when I become more conscious of it, I convert it into a description, and in my modest way, I compete with the literary descriptions that I have already heard or read. I must confess that to help me progress to the present stage of my meditation, I often read Balzac, one of the greatest masters of description, especially my favored Les Illusions perdues, always delighted by its first sentence so suitable to my own meditative travel: "A l'époque où commence cette histoire, la presse de Stanhope et les rouleaux à distribuer l'encre ne fonctionnaient pas encore dans les petites imprimeries." (At the time when this story begins, the Stanhope press did not exist and the ink-rollers were not in use in small printing houses.) The narrative about two poets, David Séchard and Lucien Chardon, is linked to the history of the technology of printing. One is tempted to transpose the phrase 'Its petites imprimeries de province' into 'the small provincial descriptions and perceptions,' which will be extended to the great Parisian descriptions and perceptions, even to the ultimate consciousness of the art of writing and telling stories. Lucien Chardon leaves Angoulème and his friends for Paris to pursue his quest as a writer and become Lucien dc Rubempré. He submits his first manuscript to his new friend Daniel d'Arthez, who works secretly on "une oeuvre d'imagination entreprise uniquement pour étu-dior les ressources de la langue" (a work of imagination undertaken exclusively to study the powers of language) (Balzac, Comédie humaine, vol. IV, p. 649). After a few laudatory remarks, d'Arthez says bluntly to Lucien: "Si vous ne voulez pas être le singe de Walter Scott, il faut vous créer une maniète différente'' (If you do not wish to ape Walter Scott, you must create a different manner). Scott starts with lengthy conversations to introduce his characters; only later does he begin with description and action. D'Arthez gives Lucien this advice: "Renversez-moi les termes du problème" (Reverse the problem's terms) and "Remplacez ces diffuses causeries par des descriptions auxquelles se prête si bien notre langue"

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(Replace those lengthy chats by descriptions to which our tongue is so well suited). Then he immediately adds: "Que chez vous le dialogue soit la conséquence attendue qui couronne vos préparatifs. Entrez tout d'abord dans l'action." (In your work dialogue must be the expected consequence that crowns your preparations. From the very start plunge into action). For d'Arthez-Balzac, action is mainly caused by the disorder that women introduce through passion into society. 7 Then follows another piece of advice: "Peignez donc Its passions, vous aurez les ressources immenses dont s'est privé ce grand génie [Walter Scott] pour être lu dans toutes les families de la prude Angleterre" (Therefore paint passions, you will have at your command the immense resources that this great genius [Walter Scott] denied himself in order to be read by all the families of prudish England) (pp. 649-50). Balzac seems to concentrate and divide the linguistic resources, which are at the disposal of the novelist as painter of his society; into three forces of reference: dialogue, description, and action. For him, description is the preparation of action, so that a description is never so flat a portrait as a backcloth in the theater, but the first aspect of action, its very first moments. Indeed Balzac the novelist speaks about his art in a realist manner. But Balzac the writer feels the mysterious connection between three types of languages: language of dialogue, language of description, and language of action, that is, language referring to Psy-referents, language referring to an external world (the language mainly of towns and cities), and language of passion and action, uniting the other two within the novels' imaginary. D'Arthez's literary advice is clear: Not only do not start with the dialogue as information exchange and exposition, not even with descriptions of the scenery, but start with action. For instance, the first pages of Les Illusions perdues do not describe a provincial printing in a realist manner; they show printing as an action made by men conditioned by it. Thus, following Balzac's theoretical comments and judging his own practice, I can conclude that he did not believe in the possibility of an independent realist description. For him, writing is experience in reference and an invitation to participate in it. And as such writing is an action that describes, even a describing action that accompanies the first action of naming. My methodological suspension does apply to the reference to action although Balzac would refuse to accept it. As a novelist or "secretary" of the human comedy, lie separates his referents from his references. Fascinated with the infinite energy of life, he promotes a realism of action. In d'Arthez's advice to Lucien, the word action is the most important and

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mysterious. One would like to know what Balzac meant by 'powers of language' (ressources du langage) in relation to action. I can but draw the consequences along my linguistic restrictions: writing-reading is action for the novelist as well as the reader. And action, since I refuse to make of it a transcendent reality, is writing, that is, a mixture of information, descriptions, and actions that are inseparable in the act of writing. Then, let us play the game of consequences: There is no action without immediate, coexisting description; in its acting an action describes itself by the fact that it is a way of writing about the relationship between names; at its descriptive minimum, describing begins by naming a name, which is actually describing a name. Maybe that is the justification of the formula we explored above: the name of Socrates is Socrates, by writing 'Socrates,' I not only name that name but describe it. Coming back, after a Balzacian detour, to the enigma "describing is and is not perceiving," I can risk the following summary: The statement "a description is the writing of my perception" is not so innocuous as it seems, because it invites its reversal to: "my perception is more than the description of my writing, it is the writing of my description." At this point, I feel confident in challenging anyone (philosophers included) entering the field of nonpostulated experience. Nobody can make a pure experience of acting, of perceiving, of writing, for a very obvious, although usually forgotten, reason: there is no perceiving without naming; and when I name, I name naming, and so I initiate the indefinite process of describing at the moment when I believe I am just perceiving. Let it be said that the present writing is its own illustration and that I remain faithful to the antidialectic rule I discussed above: Never pretend to generate describing from naming or from its by-products, that is, indicating and marking. After too many awkward paragraphs, I am reasonably conscious that, when I look at my backyard, my perception of it is my description of a few names as proper referential terms. The time has come to explore yet another consequence. If the preceding formulations are correct, then all my language, all your language, is made of descriptions of names. And what we commonly call knowledge is actually the act of describing in the fullness of its exercise and reference. As I put it in my teasing game of affirmation and negation, describing is and is not knowing. It is not useless repetition to remind myself (you) that, especially in the present case, I must think knowing, that is, I must write in linear order 'I,' 'think,' 'knowing,' without the facilities of the Psy-referent, or the surreptitious support of the Cartesian mind-body dualism, even in its physicalist reading. At this stage of my meditation I can write

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with confidence that there is no reference without naming and that the description of a name consists in adding a name to or substracting a name from another name: Waverley to Scott, or reiterating a name, that is, naming naming, Scott to Scott, so that describing is naming to the power of two or clustering a group of names around a central name. The passage from naming to describing is thus described as the passage from the minimal dictionary entry to elaborate nomenclatures in the form of chemical tables, tables listing flora, fauna, and so forth. Is that the moment when the word knowing appears, and do I feel justified in writing, by way of description, "naming is describing, is knowing"? To put that question in another form, when I qualify describing by knowing, what am I really adding? In logical terms I have two options: either knowing is a superior part of describing, or describing is an inferior part of knowing. In either case, where is the difference, or is there any? The present state of my meditation triggers the following questions: Where, when, how; and why is a description qualified as knowledge, since I am supposed to 'know' what description is in its relation to naming? But I am not allowed to ask if knowledge is description, since I do not know what knowledge is. However, paying more attention to the many ways of speaking and writing, I realize that the opposition is fictitious, because I was just forced to write "I know what description is, but not what knowledge is." I can try other synonymous phrasings: "I am conscious of . . . ," "I understand that . . . ," "I see that . . . " Liberated from the R-postulate and the Psy-referent, what can those phrasings mean to me? To describe a name implies that I am able to describe description, when I name it. I can say, for instance: ''Here is the description of the tree I see, and it is a description consisting of my visual observations." Subsequently, do I call 'knowledge' the possibility of duplicating description, that is, describing description? Yes, if I do not surreptitiously reintroduce the commodities of a Psy-description of consciousness, and if I speak in terms of language expressing itself: 'to know' would designate the language of language and on language. This is why 'description' belongs to the language of language. Thus, the words knowing, knowledge have been invisible, and are constantly used to designate and experience that situation. I must draw another important consequence for the interrelation description/knowledge. Is the attempt to establish a logical or chronological order between them not in vain? Is their difference not a matter of method or degree? A superficial description is not true knowledge; but a full description, if possible, would be knowledge at its summit. Until now I have avoided the traditional confrontation of describing and knowing

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with being, true to my suspension of the R-postulate. I meditated on their linguistic power, not on their potential to describe something or to know somebody. Furthermore, if the preceding analyses are correct, and if reference to beings can only be at the same time reference to names, then knowing beings is knowing them through names, as far as I am able to describe their names. Knowing is not giving names to beings, as I do in my daily perception and comments; it is naming beings and using the name 'being' for the generality of naming, that is, being naming, being names, being selfnaming and self-named, but also, being describing, being described, being self-describing and self-described. To take only one case: Why do I say 'being naming' and not simply "naming"? The first phrasing insists on the experience of naming, which I describe as "to be naming." Thus 'being' belongs to the language of description as well as to that of naming: at the same moment I differentiate 'being,' 'knowing,' 'naming,' and 'describing.' Why? Is it purely a game of synonymy, linguistic and hypertelic superfluidity? I am reluctant to take that easy escape. I am also reluctant to engage in the psychoanalytical process, making of knowing a sublimated form of describing. It would amount to reintroducing the Psy-referent without foundations. "Deconstruction," Nietzschean style, is psychoanalysis in disguise, dream of a language of being that would supersede the language of knowing, without ever eliminating it, and never explaining how "unknowing" is not a negative form of knowing. Obviously I am turning in circles of tiring repetitions because my way of stating the problem is too restricted. I remain within the formula ''language is not perception," hoping to clarify the experience of reference through my perceptive life. Still, I feel that I have made some progress in exploring the double experience of describing and naming. However, I got into trouble and caught in confusion when I became aware that describing should be considered knowing. In a strange way, I had to confess that I do not know what 'knowing' is designating if I limit my meditation to the triangle perceiving-naming-describing. Is it not time to admit that language within itself is more than perception expressed by names and descriptions, and that knowledge belongs to aspects of language on which I have not yet meditated? Most of my descriptions do not deal with the present and are not perceptions in progress. They are remembrances and imaginings. In that case, I speak of knowledge. For instance, looking out my window; I say "I know this passer-by, his name is Michael and he is a professor in the history department." Naming and describing are parts of a knowledge attached to a perception. I obtained information from someone else and I remember it. It is the same as if I had

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written "I remember Michael's name and profession." Another example: "I know that in Euclidean geometry one can trace only one parallel to a straight line." Such a knowledge is more than learning and remembrance; it is understanding the meaning of a geometrical concept. Language is a source of meanings, and in the last example I referred to a certain type and universe of meaning. Finally, if I say "André Breton's description of the Pont-Neuf in Paris is geographically exact and aesthetically striking," I confer certain values on a literary description in Nadja. Those problems will be faced later. For the moment, I evoke them in order to extricate myself from the present imbroglio. Indeed, a description is a certain type of knowledge, not knowledge by itself, but knowledge by language being conscious of itself as learning, meaning, and evaluating. Language, as pure perception, is naming and describing. But there is no experience of pure naming or pure describing, not even of pure perception. It is why the 'is-is not' paradigm underscores that linguistic necessity of simultaneous identifications and differentiations. Even if one risks creating fictitious entities, the effort of analytical purification is essential in the understanding of language. It is surely the core of any genuine philosophical meditation. I can summarize the present state of affairs by writing that describing is-is not knowing. But I shall have to wait for another meditation to understand how description can be treated as knowledge and how 'knowing' interferes with 'perceiving.' In the meanwhile I have ascertained that any perceptive reference is by itself reference to name and reference to description, even if I can reach them only through the experiences of memory, meaning, and judgment. 9. the Paradox of Defining The third paradox to be explored in the referential field created by 'is-is not' is the connection of describing with defining. In a way it has been implicitly solved by the preceding analysis. It is clear that 'defining' refers to extraperceptive experience and that, if a definition is assimilated to a description, describing has received extended powers in order to play a governing role in an organized epistemological field. However, I cannot postpone the exposition of the perceptive roots of defining and of its possible role in perceptive life: the referential domains of perceiving, describing, and defining are overlapping. The Latin etymons (finire, definire) as well as the Greek terms oros, orismos indicate a semantic circulation between limitation, designation, definition, and determination,

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with, in Latin, the interesting by-products of killing and death. The same problem is caused by circumscription at different levels of experience, mainly the spatial and the epistemological ones. My perception is made of circumscriptions. And such an immediate language finds its completion, not only in verbal or written descriptions, as seen above, but also in definitions. The kinship of description and definition has often been recognized to the point of making of description an approximate form of definition or even an imperfect definition, that is, a definition that achieves its function of conceptual limitation in a loose and arbitrary way. OED gives the following significant quotations: "A description is a sentence which setteth out a thing . . . " (T. Spencer, Logick); "Descriptions are definitions of a more lax and fanciful kind" (Johnson, Rambler, No. 143), "The second kind of imperfect definition, in which the name of a class is defined by attributes which arc not included in its connotations . . . has been termed description" (J. S. Mill, Logic, vol I, chap. 8, p. 5). Conventionally, Mill speaks of the definition and the description of a class, not of an individual. The attempt to subsume description under definition may be legitimate from the point of view of logic that tries, with limited success, to unify language at the level of knowing totalities. The same does not apply to philosophy, which looks for the understanding of language by itself. Note that I am letting myself slide into genetic facilities: there is no way to find out the right kind of priority between the main aspects of language, except for the fundamental experience of naming as insurpassable limit of the referential power. So it would be a useless game to subordinate description to definition, or definition to description. In my search for understanding, I can recognize the complementary tension between description and definition in the development of the L-paradox 'perceiving/naming,' that is, describing names, defining names. I know already that description is basically the passage from one name to another, one calling for the other so that one name disseminates itself into an infinity of names, and that infinity of names aspires to a unique name that should reconcile all of them: the names of the name, the name of all names. Defining is the inverse movement: it stops the linguistic traffic, isolates a name, closes the world of words around it, as opposed to description that keeps that world open. There is always something to be added or substracted to a description, while a definition tends strictly to become pure repetition at its limits: "God is God" by definition; "François Mitterrand is François Mitterrand." Any other suggested definition is imperfect. Consequently, definition as a concentration around a name is the con-

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trary of a description. Whereas, within the frame of the perceptive language, a name wishes to communicate with other names and is understood as the center of a description, there is also a need for fixing, limiting, isolating a name so that it can stand by itself with no possible fusion with any other word. Thus, there is a double reference of naming. In the daily exercise of language, description and definition are mixed and play their complementary roles almost simultaneously. When a description is brief, it is impossible to differentiate it from a definition. Only an extensive analysis could tell whether my naming intends to set forth language or to mark its limits. Indeed, the problem "How to define a name" is very difficult. It seems reserved to the domain of logic. Generally, metaphysics and epistemology ignore it. Descartes's Meditations describe the experience of distinct and obscure ideas; their demonstrative movement is not based on definitions. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason discusses only marginally the right to definition, and his conclusion justifies the general absence of a theory of definition in critical reflection: if a true definition must be constructive, that is, establishes the possible experience of the definiendum, then only mathematics is able to posit definitions of that type. 8 Kant's view deserves serious consideration. It does not prove that definitions are absent from any kind of knowledge except mathematics, but that, if definition is understood as expressing the law of construction of a concept or a being, then it is possible only in mathematics. Thus, if the best possible definition is mathematical, each epistemological domain has its own kind of definition, even practical life, where definition look like abridged descriptions of the form "a is that when . . . ," or "a is that which . . . " ("Justice is just when the judge correctly applies the law, of the land; a hammer is a hammer when it is able to drive a nail into a board"). Whatever its forms may be, defining is never to be confronted with describing, even if their performances are apparently identical. Efficaciously or not, a definition ascertains the independence of a name in the discourse, but it can do so only with the intervention of other names that play the role of linguistic boundaries. If my conclusion is correct, defining assures and warrants the discrete life of words' names. Thus, any sort of definition is literally nominal; it accompanies the act of naming; but at the same time it is essential, because it suggests that a name implies a kind of loyalty to an essence. Let us not hesitate to state that in my linguistic universe Jacques Dupont behaves in order to be a true Dupont, just as a tree behaves in order to be a tree. We now must apply this view on definition to the double experience

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of perception and reference. Any perception that is more than the routine (and thus worn-out) habit of being in contact with our surroundings and that avoids any Psy-implications, is the consciousness of the complementary power of defining and describing. To me, a new species of bird seen at my bird-feeder is like a special effect perceived in an ever more fragmented vocabulary list that intends to name and to ascertain the independence of the new naming; for others, such an entry might sound like a used name, with forgotten definitions and vague descriptions. It is also obvious that defining belongs to the power of reference. I shall not consider my references established as long as I am unable to define my namings. However, at every turn I offer a definition to reinforce my reference (e.g., "the ipomoea congesta I am looking at is a variety of morning glory"), I realize that my referential power is weakened. Although it is inevitable, the intensity of naming decreases when I add to a perceiving-naming a few defining words. This erosion of the referential power is the permanent source of skeptical protests against language, as expressed in modern dramatizations. Reference reaches its maximum of expression when it explodes in my (your) consciousness, at the beginning or the end of discourse. In this spirit, the famous Gospel formula "At the beginning was the Word" could be elaborated: "Before and after discourse as description and definition, there is the reference (to)-perception (of) the Name." 10. the Russellian Theory of Description Anal Its Critics Since I started the meditation on the art of naming, and after a close look at Frege's "Sense and Reference," more than once I felt that I was playing a game with my reader, and even with myself, when I pretended to ignore the tantalizing presence of all those who, after Frege and in the Anglo-Saxon philosophy of language, discussed the problem of reference in relation to that of proper names aiming at a logical formalism of language. As Evans's The Varieties of Reference (1982) demonstrates, Bertrand Russell remains at the center of those philosophical debates, and Samuel Kripke, with Naming and Necessity (1980) can be recognized as his recent challenger. I apologize for my omission of the many others who deserve to be quoted and considered. In its philosophical proliferation language is an evergrowing Leviathan, an always famished monster who begets more and more sons and daughters in order to devour them as fast as it can. Russell is famous for his theory of proper names as descriptions, and his notion of logical quantification that gives logical status to phrases

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of the so-called natural languages such as "a man, some man, any man, every man, all men, the present king of England, the present king of France, the centre of mass of the solar system at the first instant of the twentieth century, the revolution of the earth round the sun, the revolution of the sun round the earth" (Russell, Logic, p. 41). Description is mentioned in the first paragraph of the well-known article "On Denoting" (1905), which is a Russellian interpretation of Frege's "Sense and Reference." In the second paragraph, Russell unravels his epistemological implications. His theory of proper names is based on a distinction, inherited from William James, between two kinds of knowledge, acquaintance and knowledge about: ''The distinction between acquaintance and knowledge about is the distinction between the things we have presentations of, and the things we only reach by means of denoting phrases" (Logic, p. 41). The paragraph concludes: "All thinking has to start from acquaintance; but it succeeds in thinking about many things with which we have no acquaintance" (p. 42). Russell develops the theory "about" denoting, which is another name for reference. He introduces the fundamental notion of variable as a constituent of a proposition: "'C(x)', [ . . . ] where x, the variable, is essentially and wholly undetermined" (p. 42). Then he considers the taro notions 'C(x) is always true' and 'C(x) is sometimes true,' adding in a footnote that the second notion can be defined by means of the first. Everything, nothing, and something, which arc said to be the most primitive of denoting phrases, are to be interpreted as follows: "This is the principle of the theory of denoting I wish to advocate: that denoting phrases never have any meaning in themselves, but that every proposition in whose verbal expression they occur has a meaning" (Logic, pp. 42-43). The rest of the article consists of the "proper analysis" of propositions containing denoting phrases, for example "Scott was the author of Waverley" (p. 47), which is interpreted "One and only one entity, wrote Waverley, and Scott was identical with that one. . . . We may then say that the entity x is the denotation of the phrase 'C.' Thus Scott is the denotation of 'the author of Waverley'" (p. 51). Such is for Bertrand Russell the basic structure of knowledge by description: there are three possible interpretations of 'C(x),' which arc primitive and form the elements for the Russellian theory of quantifiers and proper names. My own analysis of Russell's text shows that his description of description requires the intervention of the notion of True and False with its three modes, which can be expressed as 'everything, nothing, something,' or as 'always, never, sometimes.' It also requires the intervention

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of the notion of identity, which serves to interpret the propositional 'is.' Should we draw the conclusion that 'truth' and 'identity' belong to knowledge by description and that descriptions are truths by identities; or, coming back to the distinction between description and acquaintance, that there are two kinds of truth and identity? If we know what Russell calls 'description' through the examples he analyzes, we remain uncertain as to his understanding of 'acquaintance,' that is, we are simply left with the opposition between 'reaching things by presentation' and 'reaching things by denotation.' The mystery is attributable to the word presentation, and Russell must have been aware of the problem. It is probably why the distinction between acquaintance and description is fully exposed in The Problems of Philosophy (1912) and in the three essays published in Logic and Knowledge (1956) under the general title "On the Nature of Acquaintance." I do not intend to consider them in detail, but I simply wish to scrutinize the summary presented on pages 173-74: "the obvious characteristics of experience seem to show that experiencing is a two-term relation; we call the relation acquaintance, and we give the name subject to anything which has acquaintance with objects." Thus we are just referred to the general notion of experience considered in its power of 'experiencing' as the dynamic of the relationhip between two terms, and as the life of the primitive and linguistic experience requiring the epistemological distinction between subject and object. Is Russell a hidden Cartesian? Let us see: "the subject itself appears to be not acquainted with itself; but this does not prevent our theory from explaining the meaning of the word 'I' by the help of the meaning of the word 'this,' which is the proper name of the object of attention?' (Logic, p. 174; emphasis added). Russell is indeed half-Cartesian, he immediately condemns the subject to be that which is acquainted with objects and gives to the 'I' as proper name of the subject a meaning related to 'this' as proper name of the object. Subsequently, the Russellian theory of acquaintance reveals itself as the theory of deictics, to be implicitly opposed to the theory of description. Russell reaffirms his distance from other philosophies of experience: "In this respect, especially, we found our theory superior to neutral monism, which seems unable to explain the selectiveness of experience" (p. 174). Russell's final remarks express his opposition to two aspects of mentalism: "Finally we considered and rejected the opinion that experience involves mental modifications called 'contents,' having a diversity which reproduces that of objects . . . ; and along with this opinion we rejectedthough partly by arguments which await amplifications on

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another occasionthe doctrine that all immediate knowledge is confined to knowledge of ourselves" (p. 174). In spite of those clarifications, the Russellian theory of acquaintance remains obscure. There is a game of synonymy being played between acquaintance, experience, subject-object relation, and immediate knowledge. What is the immediate relation 'I/this'? How can one express it if one refers to the list of denoting phrases, covering, for Russell, the field of description? If proper names are descriptions, and subsequently, 'I' and 'this' as proper names are descriptions of acquaintances, then is there a language of acquaintance? The Russellian discourse itself is but a description about acquaintance, not its immediate experience. Does it mean that acquaintance, as many empiricist realists imply, is either perception or sensationwhichever name one choosesbefore the occurrence of language, so that, despite his denials, Russell stays secretly attached to the Psy-referent? Furthermore, he seems to believe in an epistemological, genetic, so to speak, priority between 'this' and 'I,' the object and the subject, and finally, in his own words, between the awareness of C and the awareness of 'C,' as if acquaintance is essentially presence of the object, linguistically described as 'this.' Russell did not free himself from the modern nostalgia for a primitive and prelinguistic knowledge, even if he comes very close to the problematic I am trying to clarify without the help of the R-postulate and the Psy-referent. He is clearly conscious that his analysis never leaves the linguistic universe, but he is unable to imagine a prelinguistic language as referential anchor for his descriptions, a sort of necessary and silent warrant. This, then, is Russell's weakest theoretical point: his own epistemology of naming. Naming is simultaneously apprehended at the two distinct levels of C and 'C,' that is, naming and naming the phrase naming the object. Obviously the status of the second naming is that of description as knowledge-about; but what is the status of naming an object before it is described? One falls into the aporia of the prenominal name, of the name existing before descriptions and definitions establish relations with other names. One can imagine a sort of nominal atomism, a world of absolute, irreducible and discontinuous reference, as described above. Following that line of meditation one will not be surprised to come across Kripke's protest: "A proper name is not a description," and his so-called causal theory of reference. Kripke's central argument is well summed up in G. Evans's The Varieties of Reference: One is able to use a proper name in reference to a thing without being able to provide any individuating description of that thing,

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and it is possible to hold belief about it. Facing the basic problem of identification after Frege, Russell, and many others, Kripke seems to believe in the possibility of a prescriptive language of acquaintance, a source of necessities that are neither physical nor mental. The title of his book, Naming and Necessity, (1980), uncovers his main philosophical findings: in a double antiphysicalist and anti-Kantian spirit, he affirms the existence of a necessity that is not found in nature or in the a priori structure of the human mind; rather, it relies on the very act of naming. For this reason, the statement "heat is the motion of molecules" is not contingent truth but necessary truth, not just physical necessity but, as he puts it at the end of his second lecture, "necessity in the highest degreewhatever that means" (Kripke, Naming, p. 99). At the end of the third lecture, he takes up again the same statement but in more general terms: "A good deal of what contemporary philosophy regards as mere physical necessity is actually necessity tout court" (p. 164). Thus, against Russell's metaphysical postulate of an 'acquaintance' of reality, Kripke identifies necessity with a certain property of rigidity without which no identity, that is, no knowledge, would be possible. Kripke speaks of "our natural intuition of rigidity" (p. 15; emphasis added), which is present in our understanding of the truth-conditions of particular sentences (p. 14). The famous Fregean definition is maintained, but in different terms: Do not confuse description and reference fixing, which is a search for rigidity. Then, if I follow Kripke's reasoning correctly, that rigidity is not founded on a natural imitation of reality, as for instance a Humean analysis would suggest. It is my way of interpreting Kripke's statement "Clearly my thesis about names is that they are rigid de jure'' (p. 21, n. 21). However, let us not be confused, a de jure necessity is not, for Kripke, what Kant called a priori necessity. So, what can it be? How can one understand that names are "rigid designators" (Naming, p. 4)? If I am not mistaken, there is no direct answer to that question in Kripke's work. Indeed he writes: "We will use the term 'name' so that it does not include definite descriptions of that sort [i.e., the x such that p, such as "the man who corrupted Hadleyburg"], but only those things which in ordinary language would be called 'proper names'" (p. 24). Again, if I interpret Kripke's statement correctly, he is implying a nominal realism and looks for the necessity of things through the necessity of naming, which is a linguistic de facto generating an epistemological de jure. I must agree with that reference to an "intuition" imposed on us by our experience of language. However, in the second lecture, I catch Kripke using the most slippery term in our modern languages: "standing for." Is

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this a new attempt to describe rigidity? "When I say that a designator is rigid . . ., I recall that, as used in our language, it stands for that thing." (Naming, p. 77). Does that mean that simple realism prevails finally, and that one is taken back to the ancestral belief according to which "language is that which stands for reality"? I found no answer in Kripke's book. Then, in a subtle and almost imperceptible move, Kripke apparently proceeds from his former epistemological perspective to psycho-sociological observations: Reference is connected now with a community in the sense of what other people think (see Naming, p. 95). Elsewhere he writes "An initial 'baptism' takes place" (p. 96) before concluding "I may not have presented a theory, but I think that I have presented a better picture than that given by description theorists" (p. 97; emphasis added). I fully agree with him, but what does 'picture' mean in his metalanguage? Does it mean 'standing for'? The third lecture seems to hesitate between epistemological and psycho-sociological angles. On the same page Kripke notes that "we use names to communicate with other speakers in a common language" (is he implying that the necessity to communicate is the true basis for rigid designators?), and "we must distinguish a present intention to use a name for an object from a mere present belief that the object is the only one having a certain propriety, and clarify this distinction. I leave it for further work" (Naming, p. 163; emphasis added). If I dare to anticipate Kripke's ''further work," I would say: he should realize that at the end of Naming and Necessity he is vascillating between two notions of rigidity, a psycho-sociological and pragmatic one that could indicate an indirect return to physicalism, and a lexical one whose basis has not yet been explored. If I am not too presumptuous, I might add that it is the second notion that I am proposing to investigate in the meditations on the art of naming and its relation to perception. To conclude this critical survey of other texts on reference, description, and naming, I can state that I feel now more comfortable than when I began making a mess of my meditations on "is-is not." I feel better because I have become aware that I was not the only one splashing all over the domain of epistemology and because my meditation had spontaneously followed a parallel road to that of contemporary philosophy of language. It is not surprising that one of the recent restatements of the theory of reference (Evans's Varieties of Reference)to my mind the best onestill favors Russell's theory of definite descriptions because if naming must not be identified with description, description remains the only movement by which language organizes itself logically and grammatically.

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Yes, proper names tend to be converted into definite descriptions, even at the price of unsurpassable paradoxes. However, when Kripke argues that proper names, as rigid designators, are not description, and when he invites philosophers to reconsider the notion of necessity in connection with that of naming, I am overjoyed and feel gratified. Clearly I am not the only one possessed by the will to find answers to language questions by resorting to language itself, and to the consciousness of a necessity that cannot, even must not, be physical, mental, or more generally, natural. Going through the successive phases of this meditation again, I shall try to condense my experience into a few statements. First, reference-as-naming is a search for identity and titling. Second, such an experience is incomplete. The conquest of a title never ends. The assertion of identity is always questioned. This double expression of reference calls for indefinite referential exercises. Third, reference as naming pursues a double and complementary life: naming, as knowledge, constitutes itself within the polarity of description and definition, i.e., description as the passage of words from one to another for extensive nomination, and definition as concentration of a few different names around one name. This tension exposes the ambivalence of referential life. Description as well as definition calls for new descriptions and definitions. The power of reference is inevitably dual and expresses itself in a double stance of concentration and expansion. The current words identity and title, description and definition, help the experience of reference to name itself in a complex life made of intensity and boredom, of vividness and dryness, of perfection and doubt.

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Meditation Five Naming, Grammatical Distinctions, and Perception 1. Exploring Grammatical Definitions Until now, in my meditation on the relationship between perception, naming, description, and definition, I have deliberately put myself in a pregrammatical field, in the hope of unraveling the spontaneity of naming. The time has come to examine the distinctions that complex languages formulate in their respective grammars, and to understand the raison d'être of rules that codify the use of names as grammatical entities. A brief inquiry shows that grammatical languages have universal rules for a given tongue. An example would be the marking of plural in English or French names. For my present purpose, I do not need to enter either the complex domain of grammar's evolution or that of the learning of grammatical rules. In spite of enormous research done by grammarians, historians, or psycho-sociologists, none of them go beyond the empirical level of observation without remaining under the power of unverifiable hypotheses. Therefore, let us look at the definitions of basic terms and explore their spontaneous implications. After a first part devoted to the material aspect of language, La Grammaire de Port-Royal by Arnauld and Lancelot starts its second part devoted to the "meaning of words" with the epistemological distinction between the objects of thought ("les objets de la pensée") and the form and matter of thought ("la forme et la matière de nos pensées"). That leads to two categories of grammatical elements and to the basic opposition of names and verbs. Names are objects of thought; they signify "things" or "manners of things.'' The first ones are called substantive names, the second adjective names. From there Port-Royal's messieurs proceed to a purely grammatical differentiation between names that can subsist by themselves in discourse ("qui subsistent par eux-mêmes dans le discours") and adjectives that must be attached to other names (Arnauld and Lancelot, Grammaire, Part 2, ch. 1 and 2). Compared to my own

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terminology, Port-Royal's distinctions are possible only with the direct cooperation of the R-postulate through the concept of thing, of the Psy-referent through that of thought, and of the F-function through that of discourse as representation of representation. Let us recognize the seventeenth-century grammarians' commendable attempt to reach a strictly linguistic determination and to interpret the distinction between substance and accident at the linguistic level of simple and compound nouns. I only regret that Arnauld and Lancelot did not begin by making epistemological and ontological distinctions instead of invoking psychological realism and relying on an analytical passage from thinking to naming. The most perplexing situation is that of the phrase 'manners of thoughts': first, it occurs as "manners of thought" and as synonym of 'form' to qualify the verb; second, as 'manners of things' with its two modes of substantification and adjectivation. That confusion is due to the superposition of Cartesian dualism on traditional realism and the blending of these two epistemologies as part of their search for a "General Grammar" that would remain independent from ontology and epistemology. About a century later, in 1751, James Harris published Hermès or a Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Language and Universal Grammar. This general or universal grammar is more conscious of its intellectual autonomy than is PortRoyal. Harris proposed a strict grammatical functionalism. It becomes transparent when, adopting Aristotle's distinction between noun, verb, article, and conjunction, he decides to call them "substantive, attributive, definitive, and connective" (Harris, 1975 ed., p. 37). "Substantives arc all those principal Words, which arc significant of Substances, considered as Substances" (p. 37). That definition is developed into a description: substances arc natural (''such as Animal, Vegetal, Man, Oak"), artificial ("such. . . as House, Ship, Watch, Telescope, etc." [p. 37]), abstract ("such as Flight, Whiteness, Temperance"). "All those several Substances have their Genus, their Species, and their Individuals" (p. 38). Then, Harris introduces the property of number in a very revealing way: "From these Principles it is, that Words following the nature and the genius of Things such Substantives admit of Number as denote Genera or Species, while those, which denote Individuals, in strictness admit it not" (p. 40; Harris, Hermès, book I, ch. 3, 4, 5). Consequently, for Harris, grammar implies a sort of elementary ontology that follows the "genius of things": a very interesting expression indeed. The R-postulate takes on a double meaning: things exist in themselves, and grammar is their natural image. This situation becomes even clearer when Harris examines the nature of the verb as principal attributive: the verb

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denotes existence as "universal Genus, to which all things of all kinds arc at all times to be referred" (book I, ch. 6, p. 88). After studying verbal tenses and modes, Harris comes to the conclusion that "All Verbs, that are strictly so called, denote Energies. Now as all Energies are Attributes, they have reference (emphasis added) of course to certain energizing Substances" (p. 173). As one has already guessed, Harris is introducing the distinction between active and passive voices: a substantive is "an Energizer or a passive Subject." Without giving too much power and importance to the word energy, one cannot help thinking that Harris's remarkable and modern endeavor of grammatical analysis and classification 1 implies a sort of grammatical naturalism, as if universal grammar were the replica of Newtonian natural philosophy or, in Spinozist terms, a grammatical attribute parallel to the physical attribute. It appears that, among the general functions recognized at the beginning of Hermès, attribution is the central power around which the other three (substantive, definitive, and connective) are organized, and thus, is implicitly recognized as the true referential power. Having considered two important grammatical enterprises of our modern past, let us observe how, in our time, grammar formulates its own language, not through theories, but through grammatical expositions with simple didactic purpose. The well-known Précis de grammaire française by Maurice Grévisse, a standard contemporary reference tool, differentiates nine parties du discours or word categories. Five are variable, four invariable. Among the "variable words" are the noun (nom, or sub-stantif) and the verb. Then, Grévisse defines the discourse unit as the simple sentence, or proposition, made of three elements: verb, subject, and attribute. Later, in an analysis of the word categories, which is half descriptive, half normative, he proposes the following definition of the noun and the verb: the noun or substantive is a word used to designate beings, things, or ideas ("le nora ou substantif est un mot qui sert à désigner les êtres, Its choses, les idées" [p. 57]). French nouns are grouped under four oppositions: common/proper, concrete/abstract, individual/collective, simple/compound. The verb is the word that expresses either the action done to or sustained by the subject, or the existence or state of the subject, or the union of the attribute with the subject ("le verbe est un mot qui exprime, soit l'action faite ou subie par le sujet, soit l'existence ou l'état du sujet, soit l'union de l'attribut au sujet" [p. 140]). It is obvious that Grévisse is not looking for a general grammar since he limits his definitions to the linguistic use of French grammatical units. As one can easily detect, he implies that a practical grammar with no theoretical pretense has to be based on the R-postulate, the Psy-referent, and

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the F-function. Consequently, none of his definitions can be of any help at the present stage of my meditation. To accept any of those definitions would force me to misconstrue the relationship between grammatical entities and reference, especially the distinction between substantive and attributive. Let us note that in those definitions the reference to reference is implicit in the occurrence of verbs such as 'to designate' for the nouns, and 'to express' for the verbs. Both qualify the referential power. Before leaving Grévisse to his pedagogical efficacy, may I observe that once again I am turning my back to the power of common practice and to the argument that "grammarians, describing and codifying the normal practice of a tongue, are naturally realist and functionalist, if not internalist." Do I have to be impressed by what amounts to an almost universal consent exhibited by practitioners of common sense, science, and most types of philosophy? Do I have to agree with their assumptions and implications? I see no reason for capitulation. My wager remains more alive than ever and can be articulated through the following question: May I understand grammatical concepts only in their connection with reference as limited to the power of naming? 2 Invoking my meditation on Naming, and conscious of the principle that there is no reference without naming, I can only enclose the grammatical problem within the limits of the triangle "perceiving-referring-naming" and anticipate that elementary grammatical distinctions are aspects of the referential power of naming. It follows that grammars, in their empirical and formal functions, should be understood as prime organizations of the art of naming that must remain independent of the order of signification. My short travel through different kinds of grammars of different ages has had another beneficial result. It has demonstrated that grammarians circumnavigate, not without trouble, three permanent and insidious obstacles, each one made of a distinction-relation that detains the power and attraction of a universal, necessary and mysterious evidence: the distinction and the affiliation/union of the verb and the name, subsequently called noun, the distinction and affiliation/union of common names and proper names, finally, the distinction and affiliation/union of concrete names and abstract names. 2. Verbs and Nouns At the risk of being a bore, let me review my self-imposed limitations: I am not permitted to state that names or nouns refer to beings or things,

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or that verbs express the temporal actions related to them. So what shall I say? Simply that names-and-verbs are complementary parts of the experience or reference-perception in its aptitude of naming. They lead to the common belief in referents and objects of perception, not the other way around. The act of naming manifests itself in nouns and verbs. This raises a new question: How can I understand 'noun,' 'verb,' and their relationship, when they arc supposed to predetermine the subject and object of reference? If I continue to use 'noun' and 'verb,' I will never be able to overcome my limitations, the obvious reason being that 'noun' and 'verb' arc names designating nouns and verbs, as references. Following the way of thinking that inspired my meditation on naming, let me state that nouns and verbs imply processes of nominalization and verbalization within the act of naming, and even that naming is a simultaneous power of nominalization and verbalization. Is it possible that I may have reached the most superficial stage of my writing, just playing with words, but neglecting their true meanings? Yes, but at this stage I have to face the fact that nothing else is allowed. I can only write reluctantly: naming, in the same impulse, is nominalizing and verbalizing as two universal and complementary referential experiences. If there is something to understand here, it is simply how naming splits itself into the two functions of nominalization and verbalization as necessary parts of reference. Surely I am unable to reach them directly, since my writing is attached to a fully developed and grammatically organized language. However, I anticipate no insurmountable obstacle when I turn my attention to nouns and verbs, not as designators or expressors, which they are indirectly, but as universal and direct aspects of "referrors" (if I may create this barbarism). Both of them, in their close association, are giving my enunciated language its referential power. Indeed, they receive the cooperation of a few other elementary particles, but I can temporarily forget those and concentrate my attention on the making of reference by norms and verbs. I have already observed that nouns and verbs belong to the dynamics of naming. As immediately acknowledged by grammarians, they are inseparable and need each other to achieve full reference. In many cases, the same word is used for both of them, with different markings: to name, name and noun; to love, love; to cry, cry; to imagine, imagination; to refer, reference; to rain, rain, etc. More generally, every noun has a corresponding verb, and vice versa; every verbal sentence can be converted into a nominal phrase: "The French army defeated the German army at Verdun in 1917," or "The victory of the French army at Verdun in 1917." Surely, the nominal conversion calls for another verb.

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Thus a tongue functions like a permanent shuttle between nouns and verbs, each one borrowing some strength from the other, each one compensating the incompleteness of the other. In the same train of thought I come across the mythical notion of splitting unity, as if naming at its origin were the original Egg, a sort of absolute name or absolute verb, the absolute Being and the absolute Act. Evidently, I am crossing the boundaries of grammar and entering the field of theological difficulties. Current grammatical definitions lead to the opposition between Being and Action. Adjusted to the present meditation, it would mean that, by its referential exigency, naming requires a double awareness to Being and Action. Writing that sentence does not imply the hidden reintroduction of referents. It means that reference by itself is consciousness of being and consciousness of acting, and that one calls for the other. Here, I am speaking of a dual referential existence of language. It is reference itself that cannot be aware of itself without understanding itself as reference, that is, as being and not being, as acting and not acting; or as understanding itself as understanding; that is as naming itself as noun and verb. I wrote before: naming is to name a name. I may add now: naming is to give language a double power of nominalizing and verbalizing. Subsequently, it is to constitute a referential unit, and in mythological terms, it is returning to the fundamental Egg: any sentence entertains the nostalgia of the unique and total Name, which in turn contains infinite possibilities of naming. Rereading the preceding paragraph I feel uneasy. Am I not reintroducing one of the traditional distinctions between noun and verb? Yes, in a way; but I identify that opposition to the direct experience of reference at its source: language is reference, that is, naming, that is, experiencing norms and verbs, as expressions of being and acting, that is, understanding reference by itself as intimate part of the experience of reference. I understand my existence as reference and not as being; all the same I understand my existence as reference, not as action. Being and action designate the unattainable limits of reference, and those limits are expressed by the duality of nouns and verbs. Then, I am able to lead to its conclusion my meditation on description and definition as movements of a word toward other words through the experience of naming. A description establishes verbal connections between names. As literary descriptions can show, verbs are at the origin and center of the art of description. On the contrary, a definition tends to be a reduction and concentration of names into one: on one side, expansion of naming; on the other, condensation of naming. Thus 'action' and 'being' are projecting those two tensions that

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constitute the act of namingnaming by nouns and naming by verbs. Using my mechanistic imagination, I can distinguish a double intertia in reference, the inertia by immobility that is the state of nominalizing, and the inertia in movement that is the verbal process. Then one can also understand why it was so difficult to clearly differentiate definition and description: both of them express the pure rhythm of reference between the search for name's aim at totalization and search for alliance. Finally, understanding reference gives the key to the grammatical difference between noun as substantive powers and verbs as attributive powers and from there, to the culture of realist commodity. In order to refer to, I am not what I refer to: naming is the awareness of that linguistic condition. It is the way to give to my reference a stabilized form: a noun is a referential stabilizer. Nevertheless, my reference concerns myself; it is more than a stabilization by noun; it is I who refer to; I am conscious to refer to a noun, and I need a verb to express a noun. It is why nouns arc calls for verbs. There is no noun without naning a naming. The verb is the referential energizer; that is, the power that gives force and weight to my referential life. Such is the point of departure for anything happening in languagethe marking of nouns and the introduction of definitives, the marking of verbs as voices, modes, and tenses, and the introduction of pronominal attributives. A meditation on referential grammaticalization would be the next step to take, but it would lead me away from my purpose, which is to become cognizant of the quadruple foundation of reference in its relation to perception, memory, and judgment. 3 One last remark on this point: Surely during that attempt to understand the noun/verb duality, I have come across the great philosophical oppositions that helped grammarians and philosophers to interpret that duality in various but unverifiable modes: substance/action, subject/object, substantive/attributive, space/time. I hope that it has become clear that those dualities are projections of the fundamental experience of reference, without which they would have been inconceivable. Succinctly put, nouns and verbs form two complementary modes of living our existential referential lives, which I approximately called stabilizing and energizing. Cybernetics has proposed a theory of information and opened the way to linguistic physicalism. We can go further, replacing 'information' by 'reference.' A physical theory of reference with a mechanics of norms and verbs is conceivable. One day it will be achievable. For the moment, we can be satisfied with the Parmenidian formula "Being is," grouping the nominal and verbal unity at its minimum of reference. It does not suggest that there is a referent named 'being' with the attribute of being. It posits

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that the noun/verb relationship is circular within the exercise of reference, and even, that it makes reference possible. Consequently, if there is no reference without naming, as I argued, there is no naming without referring a noun to a verb, and a verb to a noun. That condition is also the condition of perception: 'tree' exists in a state of reference, that is, for instance, through 'seeing a tree,' and then 'seeing a tree growing.' However, I cannot say in English 'tree is treeing,' as I could say, although in an ambiguous and unnatural manner, 'love is loving.' Maybe William Blake would not have objected to such linguistic freedom. In each case 'is' has a very strange function: it transcends nominal and verbal forms in order to posit their identities, and thus, to reinforce a decision of reference. It could be put in parenthesis as in the circular phrase 'name naming' and 'naming name.' It also expresses perception as a minimal description, that is a minimal perception-reference. One can complete the Baudelairean "correspondences": if perfumes, sounds, colors, and echoes complement one another, it is because nouns and verbs answer each other and are blending ("se répondent, se confondent"). Poetry is the ultimate perception and reference when it tends to confer on nouns the power of verbs and on verbs the power of nouns. 3. Proper Names, Common Names That distinction is as commonly accepted as it is enigmatic. It has been a source of unanswered philosophical problems at the ontological and the epistemological levels. For recent philosophies of language and reference, it is still the object of vivid discussions. Traditional and present arguments imply the help of the R-postulate, the Psy-referent, and the Ffunction. Since my meditation is bound to avoid all of them, I must understand common and proper names in the spirit of the preceding analyses as well as in the perspective of referential experience; that is, I must speak of naming common names as well as proper names, as of common and proper references. First, let us discard the criterion according to which proper names are "rigid designators" whereas common names are not. Any reference is rigid in its own way. 'Jacques Dupont,' the name of the General Inspector of Historical Monuments in France, is no more "rigid" in its reference than 'trace' or 'hammer,' so that I could say that any act of naming generates a proper name, and all names are potential proper names. I can mention

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large, limited, restricted, or individualized references, and their corresponding referents. But that kind of quantification of subjects and predicates does not coincide with the distinction between common and proper names. I say "Human beings are rational" (I could have written as well: "Mankind is rational"), then "French people arc cynical," finally "John is brilliant." Why would I say that 'human beings' is a common name, 'French people' and 'John' proper names' Very strange indeed! 4 Should I infer that the distinction between common and proper names is a very confused one that illustrates the wisdom of tongues and the mystery of their use, and that such a distinction should be avoided in a philosophical or scientific study of language? Even logicians do not dare take such a radical stand. Maybe mathematicians have succeeded in building a universe of words and references that can dispense with the duality of common and proper names. Is this why Frege developed a theory of proper names that has nothing to do with the common (if I may say so) proper names? But I am neither a logician nor a mathematician. Still, if I Fail to understand that distinction, all my efforts of examining language will collapse. To comfort myself I can claim that all attempts to define or describe common or proper names eventually will fail because they treat names as independent referents such as species, groups, or individuals, when they should understand them as products of reference. Let us try this formal hypothesis. 'Common' and 'proper' mark two basic kinds of reference that we will call common and proper references: 'John, the English (people), the American God' in opposition to 'the tree, the hammer, the being.' All criteria based on the R-postulate fail. 'John' is no more unique than 'man,' especially if I oppose 'man' to 'Martian'; and why is 'English' a proper reference when 'man' is considered common reference? And what about 'hammer'? Are the designations of different kinds of hammer proper references? How can I explain that a well-recognized proper name is used as a common name: 'the Rockefellers of this planet'? Thus the secret of the opposition lies in the reference itself as power of naming (as nominal reference, not as verbal reference). If I liberate the grammarians' distinction from realist language assumptions, I end up with the following formulae: a proper reference refers by differentiation, the proper name being the name that no one else has the right to claim, or that I cannot attribute to anyone or anything else; a common reference refers by assimilation, the common name being the name that belongs to possible or real beings or objects. But how can we understand collective names' Arc they proper when they are in opposition to others, and common when they aim at possible or real

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beings designated collcctively? Obviously not. If I think of the French, not as different from the English or the Germans, I do not stop considering 'French' a proper name. Then, I should look for a certain quality of differentiation and assimilation, which make them sources of proper and common names. Grammarians and logicians do not seem to have noticed that proper names are reserved for the human race and that, if living beings or even objects have proper names (for instance a dog called 'Leda,' the painting entitled 'Mona Lisa'), it is by extension and by human decision. Names of roses acquire the value of names designating nobility or wealth: "the Christian Dior," as one says "the La Rochefoucault." I can give a proper-personal name to the oak tree in my backyard. When Francis Ponge writes a poem entitled "Le pré" (The Meadow) or "La figue" (The Fig), the words 'pré' and 'figue' take the simultaneous values of proper and common names. The poet sings the simultaneous birth of a name and an essence. In its oneness the fig is all figs, and there is no possible substitution of names. In this poem, the name becomes an irreplaceable prototype and as such possesses the double power of individuality and universality. What has become a nearly systematic poetics with Ponge, expresses the deepest intent of poetry: to ressuscitate the (linguistic) Paradise Lost and to reintroduce absolute baptism (through naming). I cannot indulge in theories positing that the distinction between proper and common names is the result of linguistic decadence or fall, or that proper names were and continue to be reference by personification or differentiation by personification. When I use a proper name, I assume that my reference concerns a person. To say so, is it not implying that philosophy of reference should be based on metaphysical personalism, or at least, on psychological animism at the origin of language? Since I cannot afford that enticing hypothesis, what remains to be said is that animism or personification of language are aspects of reference and should be understood through the experience of reference in the very art of naming and of understanding. I am conscious of a name as absolute reference, as the name that cannot be told, as the name that is beyond description and definition, or that replaces them as pure naming. The proper name in any language is the word that expresses in relative manners that referential exigency. I am close to that high existential tension when I begin to pray and murmur "O God," or when I am in love, I call silently the name of the person I love, feeling that her name is her person and her presence. Even in the most banal moments of my daily life, when I say "I'll will call Philip and ask him if he is free to come for dinner tomorrow," the proper name

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'Philip' gives to my invitation its existential power of reference. When I buy a cockatiel and decide to give it a proper name, I recognize the referential poverty of a common name. It does not mean that I treat my new bird as a person, but that I give to a word a high referential status. Am I arriving at the hypothesis that there are degrees in the referential power of naming and that the highest degree corresponds to the attribution or consciousness of proper names, while the lowest degree corresponds to what is currently called common names? Such a view has definite advantages. It allows me to take care of the relativity of the distinction between proper and common names. Any wording, depending on the intensity of naming, is proper or common. And there arc states where the distinction becomes blurred. The act of proper-naming represents reference in the pure intensity of the referential power, as if names were absolute concentration of language. The explosion of a name, leaving nothing else to express, is in a way a sort of extra-grammatical state. It is probably why grammarians feel uneasy when facing a name, and why they go to the point of saying that it is hardly a part of grammatical analysis. 5 In a way; if grammarians understand language as the organization of meanings, they are correct in pushing proper names beyond the limits of language: pure naming could be felt pre- and postgrammatical and proper names, grammatical ways of being nongrammatical! Here I am facing the hypothesis of referential energy within a plus/minus scale of variations. We have yet to understand how and why there are variations in referential intensity Do I posit it as a general fact of experience concerning my referential life? Yes, but it is difficult to explain it except by characterizing it as a double principle of ascending and descending linguistic energy, which constitutes the rhythm of naming, with moments of picking marked by proper names and moments of relaxation marked by common names. For instance, we might look at the difference of intensity between "Sima came to my office yesterday" and "A student came to my office yesterday." Does it mean that common names arc the results of a degradation of proper names, implying that proper names are prior to common names? No, such a genetic explanation would be arbitrary. The proper/common duality has its origin in a total experience of naming, which is a hypothetical and primitive state of language, attainable only through proper and common names. I have to admit its existence through its consequences; and its real consequences are proper and common names as products of its variations of intensity. Now I may understand the feelings of finality, absolute concentration, impenetrability, inscrutability, that generates a proper name: it is as

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if language were absorbed into and stopped forever in its referential tracks. There is nothing more to say: it is reference at its peak. All I can do is repeat that name. Lovers and believers know this referential epiphany very well. On the contrary, a low degree of reference is lived, not as really optimal or arbitrary, but as referring relatively to its referent. As we said before, and as such, it is no less coercive than a proper name. But it does not have the same intensity because I know that it can be used for other persons, beings, or things. 'Student' neatly delimits a category of occupants of a school or a campus. In that capacity it is no less rigid a designator than 'John' or 'Elizabeth,' but it does not have the same final and exhaustive power of naming. It is open to other names; it belongs to a community of names; at the limit and with all its nuances, it is part of the lexicon of a tongue, whereas a proper name belongs only to itself, unless I convert it into a common name. If I tried to imagine the universe of proper names, I would discover an immense archipelago of independent islands. On the other hand, the domain of common names is a continent of interrelated countries. One could object that in this kind of analysis the distinction between proper and common names is expressed, in the current practice of language, by grammatical devices such as presence or absence of articles, of gender, of quantity. That is undeniable, but those markings are possible only because reference can vary in intensity. If references were lived at their maximum intensity, language would be only a succession of absolute and discrete nominations; if it were at its lowest marks, it would be like an idealist's dream, where words could subsist in a stream of semantic continuity. Any grammatical work on language requires a preliminary experience of reference. Unfortunately, for the coherence of their theories, and in a forgivable inclination, grammarians interpret their intervention at the level of semantic organization: they confuse reference and meaning. Writers who do not stay at the level of simple communication are sensitized to proper names. Some are even more respectful than others in the degree of importance they grant to their art of naming. One of the most remarkable examples is the French novelist Colette. I base the following analysis on the excellent critical study by Jerry Aline Flieger, Colette and the Fantom Subject of Autobiography (1992). Flieger quotes the last paragraph of Le Pur at l'impur. As that word ''pure" fell from her lips, I heard the trembling of the plaintive "u," the icy limpidity of the "r," and the sound aroused nothing in me but the need to hear again its unique resonance, its

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echo of a drop that trickles out, breaks off, and falls somewhere with a splash. The word "pure" has never revealed an intelligible meaning to me. I can only use the word to quench an optical thirst for purity in the transparencies that evoke itin bubbles, in a volume of water, and in the imaginary latitudes entrenched, beyond reach, at the very center of a dense crystal. (as quoted by Flieger, Colette, pp. 112-13) De ce mot "put" qui tombait de sa bouche, j'ai écouté le tremblement bref, l'u plaintif, l'r de glace limpide. Il n'éveillait rien en moi, sauf le besoin d'entendre sa résonance unique, son écho de goutte qui sourd, se détache et rejoint une eau invisible. Le mot "put" ne m'a pas découvert son sens intelligible. Je n'en suis qu'à étanther une soif optique de pureté dans les transparences qui l'éoquent, dans les bulles, l'eau massive, et les sites imaginaires retranchés, hors d'atteinte, au sein d'un épais cristal. For a psychoanalytic critic like Flieger, this kind of paragraph crystallizes "an obsessionthe desire to see what is heard, a desire to follow the siren's call, the impossible desire of Orpheus for Eurydice" (p. 129; Flieger's emphasis). I will not discuss that interpretation, which is illuminating when one moves from the perspective of the author-scriptor to that of the author as his own receiver. If one considers the word pure in the movement of Colette's writing, one feels, beyond any kind of obsession, the need for intense referring in its original birth, that is, a will to reach a maximum reference capacity. The striking phrase "to quench an optical thirst for purity" aims at language itself, not at the mythological incarnation of herself, but at the linguistic combination of seeing-hearing. 6 Reference to pure, or more exactly, reference as experience of purity, is lived at the double level of sound and vision, with a transfer from the sonority of a name to its visual power as crystal, because of the crystal's exceptional alloy of transparency and density. Colette does more than suspending the ''signified" in order to concentrate herself on the signifier (to use here the convenient Saussurian distinction). Displaying herself in the act of writing, she attempts to express the referential power embedded in the naming of a word by its audiovisual appearance. She gives up any hope of Platonic intelligibillity. When Colette recognizes that pure is "beyond reach," she admits that the limits of reference are transgressed by the transparency of a crystal, but within its own means of expression. For the writer of La Naissance du jour ( Break of Day) 'pure' is more than an adjective referring to a moral or aesthetic quality, it is the naming of a basic desire for language; it possesses the value conferred on proper names.

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Let us listen to the provocative treatment of a new word: I [the little girl] had absorbed the mysterious word with its harsh and spiky beginning and the brisk trot of its final syllables. Enriched by a secret and a doubt, I slept on the word and bore it off to my wall. "Presbytery!" I would shout it over the roof of the hen-house and Miton's garden, toward the perpetually misty horizon of Moutiers. From the summit of my wall, the word rang out as a malediction: "Begone! You are all presbyteries!" I shouted to invisible outlaws. (quoted by Flieger, p. 144) J'avais recueilli en moi le mot mystérieux, comme brodé d'un relief rêche en son commencement, achevé en une longue et rêveuse syllabe. . . Enrichie d'un secret et d'un doute, je dormais avec le mot et je l'emportais sur mon mur. "Presbytère!" Je le jetais, par-dessus le toit du poulailler et le jardin de Miton, vers l'horizon toujours brumeux de Moutiers. Du haut de mon mur, le mot sonnait en anathème: "Allez! vous êtes tous des presbytères!" criais-je à des bannis invisibles. (Colette, uvres, p. 986) In its presemantic propriety, the word obtains the exclamative power of a curse or ban. At the same time it is "a secret and a doubt," that is, a reference that understands itself as more or less than reality, also as a way to apprehend and constitute the space created by the little girl. J. Flieger reminds us that "Gabrielle enjoys the private game until she is set straight by Sido [her mother] . . . who insists that Gabrielle stop this nonsense and calls things by their proper names" (Flieger, p. 144). In French the text says literally: "Il me fallait apprendre. . . ce que je tenais à ignorer, et appeler les choses par leurs noms'' (Colette, uvres, p. 986). [I had to learn. . . what I was so anxious not to know, and to call things by their names.] Colette, the writer, makes a subtle distinction between names as common names, as they arc "defined" by dictionaries, and real names, proper names, which, by virtue of their physical body, achieve their true referential power. Is it then unexpected when the 'I' scriptor of Break of Day declares: "I now have only one name, which is my own" (Flieger, p. 203)? J. Flieger proposes a fascinating psychoanalytical interpretation. However, I believe that we should recognize, at first, in Colette's art of naming, the presence of referential exigency, and above all, her conscious decision concerning her name as a writer. "At the time of her first marriage Gabrielle-Sidonie Colette drops the mother's appellation ('Sidonie') and takes on the family

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name as given name, becoming Colette Willy; at her second marriage she again retains the nom du père as her given name, becoming Colette de Jouvenel. And with her final marriage. . . the given name Colette is taken in place of her husband's name in an act of self-nomination" (Fliegcr, p. 206). Flieger concludes: "Thus Colette is perhaps a Paternal Metaphor of sorts, but it is a purloined paternity" (p. 208). For my purpose, I should like to return to the writer's marvellous analysis of "presbytère." To me, "Colette" is more than a feminine assertion through the name of the father, it is a name chosen for its mysterious character because it is charged with secrecy and doubt, but it is also a name to stay with, to carry to the roof of literature. At the same time, this name can be shouted as a challenge, even a triumphant anathema, above the domain of all possible referents and the interior world where the writer hides the infinity of her ''I." 4. Concrete Names, Abstract Names Among common names, one distinguishes concrete and abstract ones, it being understood that proper names arc absolutely concrete. Many grammars ignore that distinction, which is overloaded with epistemological and psychological intricacies. However, it is obvious that it cannot be discarded lightly in a philosophy of reference. 7 Remaining obedient to the same requirements as above, I am exempted from reopening the Locke vs. Berkeley conflict, which dealt with the question whether or not abstraction corresponds to a psychological process. However, I still have the obligation to explain what the experience of reference becomes in the case of the so-called abstract names. I must also ask why language opposes the concrete and the abstract, when the hypothesis of an outside world is suspended. The classical distinction between designation of a being and designation of a quality continues to be used by grammarians for didactic purposes.8 For generations, consciously or unconsciously, philosophers and grammarians in the Western world clung to the tradition of realist and psychological approaches to language. First, I eliminate any genetic perspective concerning the priority of concrete over abstract. There is no acceptable justification for saying that 'man' is prior to 'humanity.' How can I understand 'man' if I do not see that 'humanity' designates a basic quality opposing a certain kind of being to any other being' The two terms illustrate a permanent case of reciprocal implications within the experience of reference. There is no absolute concrete unless one imagines a leap outside language. Conversely, there is no

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absolute abstract, even in the case of the most advanced stage of schizophrenia: silence indicates relative absence of language within language experience, but never its total abolition. Thus, my new task is to understand how, in Western languages, reference itself has induced the sharp distinction between 'abstract' and 'concrete,' which does not apply to other conceptual opposites such as proper and common names, or individuals and universals. We arc dealing here with two types of conceptual oppositions that should not be confused. There is an existential experience of concrete and abstract behind so-called concrete and abstract names, and that experience should be that of reference itself. When I refer to something or someone, I exist as reference; I feel real in putting myself in reference to some being that I perceive as real through my sensory experiences and my decision of naming: I call, that is, I qualify as concrete the name through which I make that complex experience. When I speak of concrete things, I am simply making a linguistic transfer from 'name' to 'thing' within my realist language framework. But, basically, I require that my reference be "concrete"; if it were not, it would not be a reference. At the same time, I feel separated from its attributions. If I may say so, I feel it in its special "namity." 9 In the usual realist language, philosophers will speak of 'entity' trying to forget that they are dealing only with words. Then, they find themselves involved in infinite and specious discussions about the 'reality' of these entities as qualities of being, when the true problem concerns the "namity" of names, for instance, in the case of the humanity of men and women, the craziness of the crazy, the instrumentality of instruments, and so on. One could object that abstract names come later in the learning of a language, and even that many people use them very rarely. Are not grammarians taking pains to describe the passage from substantives to adjectives and then, from adjectives to abstract names' I do not deny that abstract names appear late in language acquisition. But that may be due to a certain common education. It does not prevent another system of education that could privilege abstract names as authentic concrete names. Thus abstractionit would even be better to say "abstractness"is present in any experience of reference, insofar as it is consciousness of reference, as distinct from reference itself, in each experience of naming. Opposed to "abstractness" would be "concreteness," which is reference in the very act of naming. This is why proper names are the most concrete names possible, and the least abstract possible. Another approach to the opposition of concrete and abstract names might also be helpful. In Western artistic culture of the twentieth century,

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the phrase 'abstract painting or sculpture,' or 'abstract art in general' are widely used. People say "I like that painting although I do not understand abstract art"; but they seem to understand neither its conception nor its derivations, such as abstract impressionism or abstract expressionism. Nobody has denounced the paradox of expressions implying that an art dealing with colors, matters, and forms could be abstract. In its common meaning, 'abstract' is understood as synonym of nonrepresentative or nonimitative, and it is the last qualification of art, which more than a century ago began to reject the techniques of perspectivism. Thus, 'abstract' qualifies art that considers colors and forms as references in themselves, and not as means to refer to already perceived or even perceptible things or beings. A critic of traditional allegiance could even claim that, actually, abstract art is the most concrete of all because it invites a referential experience stronger and deeper than any kind of representative painting. The so-called subject or anecdote in a Delacroix painting diverts me from being conscious of its great play of colors and lines, as if the painter, in each of his paintings, were replaying God's fiat of the Genesis. The adjective 'abstract' was chosen to underscore the revolutionary scandal in aesthetic expression. It never meant that painting and sculpture were severing themselves from the need to refer by colors, lines, and material forms. However, artistic abstraction is more than a protest against naive or transposed imitation; it is the search for the essence of painting, expressed in lines and colors: "I no longer claim, the painter implies, to compete with our daily perceptions, with our mythological or historical remembrances; in a way, I paint painting, and no more this person or that object. My pictureto use a confusing termrefers only to pictorial reference." Manifesting admiration for great painters like da Vinci, Greco, de la Tour, Chardin, and a few others, one could add: "Representative art was also abstract; Greco did not paint as illustrator in the service of the Catholic Church and its theology. He painted for the glory of painting as he understood its referential expressivity and power. In our century I could evoke surrealist painters like Max Ernst, Dalí, or Tanguy. They use realist and hyper-realist techniques, even trompe-l'il, not only to invite viewers to go from perception to dream and to reunite sensation and imagination but also, and even more so, to abolish distinctions between concrete and abstract experiences deemed artificial, obfuscating, and obsolete. In short, representative art is abstract in a secret way; abstract art, even at its minimal expression, always deals with concrete elements." This brief meditation on abstraction in artistic life sheds some light on the linguistic distinction we are exploring. It confirms my interpretation of

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abstract names as words that insist on the general character of each name, what I called its "namity" or reference to its reference as in my standard example: humanity for man. It shows also that the distinction is relative. Any recognized concrete name hides an abstract name. This being said, I am not insidiously introducing a Platonic innuendo by claiming that reference to humanity is prior to the reference to man or woman. But I might just have uncovered the source for recurrent Platonism in Western cultures. Fighting the Sophistic dispersion of language in his time, Plato hoped to save language by hypostasizing its abstract power of reference. When his disciple Aristotle did the contrary and built a logic that intended to contain the dissemination of concrete names within adequate boxes, he changed the familiar, quasi-instinctive opposition into a pyramid of degrees of reality. He thus paved the way for future scientific languages, as Plato did for metaphysical ones. Today, our languages continue to be uneasy combinations of Platonist and Aristotelian intents. I wrote "our languages," not "our vocabularies," suggesting that the distinction between concrete and abstract names should be apprehended, not as a basic opposition between discrete linguistic units, but in their presence through discourse. Any name has the quality of being at once concrete or abstract, depending on intents, definitions, and philosophical decisions. Consequently, is the opposition meaningful only at the level of the discourse in action, and should I speak exclusively of concrete and abstract discourses? I cannot propose a statistical definition such as "a concrete (abstract) discourse is the one where concrete (abstract) names are predominant," since I just posited that names exist only as parts of discourses. I cannot invoke the R-postulate, saying in a descriptive way that a concrete discourse is the one that accepts the R-postulate in order to qualify its references. Subsequently, the abstract discourse would be the one of which referents show a very high degree of generality. It would be falling back trader Aristotelian obedience, for which abstraction is assimilated to generality. Once again, I must return to the referential experience and state that the concrete discourse is the experience of reference-perception when all names acquire a concrete power; and that the abstract discourse is reference to reference when names become aware of being names, that is, aware of their ''namity." Thus, a name is concrete when it is involved in a language of perception. For instance, the most concrete discourses are descriptions and narratives; the philosophical essay is the typical abstract discourse. But how can I qualify the mathematical discourse? We commonly speak of mathematical abstractions. Is 'abstract' proper when mathematics are applied to physical experiences, when variables arc replaced by such concepts as

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movement, energy, mass, speed, and so on, and differentials and integrals designate aspects of the physical world? Depending on the point of view, mathematical language either aims at the most general concrete realitiesfunctions, sets, numbers, geometrical formsor is the formalization of metalanguages. I could say as well that mathematics is the most concrete science or the most abstract science, depending on my insistance on one of the two powers of reference: as pure reference, which requests the concrete qualification, and as reference of reference, which is designated as abstraction. I hope to have demonstrated that the concrete/abstract opposition is relative and that its implications must be fully understood within the limits of the experience of reference, without the assistance of the R-postulate and of the Psyreferent. To this I add one more comment: I referred to the concept of language-perception, examined earlier, stating that the concrete discourse is attached to perception and that a concrete experience is always the experience of a perception. It does not mean that despite my vows, I have restored fully the perception/language duality. If that were so, I should conclude that perception is concrete, and language abstract; or that the word concrete designates a state of "beyond-language," which I consider possible only by linguistic imagination. Only language can be qualified as 'concrete' or 'abstract.' I must accept the following consequences: When I say that a word is concrete, and if by that sentence I mean, for instance, that when I perceive a bird, not only do I experience a certain possibility of language but I also understand a bird as a living being, that is, as a specific affirmation and interpretation of "birdness," even if the word bird belongs to the English tongue and has equivalents in most other languages. Returning to my meditation on the act of naming, I feel forced to write that, in each double exigency of the concrete and the abstract, a name is a concentration and polarization of continuous creation: I see me writing "I look at a bird in my backyard," and, writing this, I whisper the following lines of Saint-John Perse's meditation on Braque's color etchings: Dans la maturité d'un texte immense en voie toujours de formation, ils [les oiseaux] ont mûri comme des fruits, ou mieux comme des mots: à même la sèe et la substance originelle. (Perse, uvres, p. 417) In the ripeness of a vast text that is always in a formative stage, they [the birds] have ripened like fruits or, better yet, like words: produced by the sap and the original substance.

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Ce sont les oiseaux de Braque: plus près du genre que de l'espèce; plus près de l'ordre que du genre; prompts à rallier d'un mêrne trait la souche marc et l'avatar, jamais hybrides et pourtant millénaires. (p. 424) These arc Braque's birds: closer to the kind than to the species; closer to the order than to the kind; eager to rally in swoop the matrix and metamorphosis, never hybrid and yet millenary. Tout synthétiques qu'ils soient, ils sont de creation première et ne remontent point le cours d'une abstraction. Ils n'ont point fréquenté le mythe ni la légende; et, répugnant de tout leur être à cette carence qu'est le symbole, ils ne relèvent d'aucune Bible ni Rituel. (p. 424, emphasis added) Although they arc synthetic, they result from a founding creation and do not retrace the course of an abstraction. They never consorted with myth or legend; and, loathing with their entire being the deficiency called symbol, they arc answerable to no Bible or Ritual. Sur l'orbe du plus grand Songe qui nous a tous vus naítre, ils passent, nous laissant à nos histoires de villes. . . Leur vol est connaissance, l'espace est leur aliénation. (p. 425) On the orbit of the greatest Dream that has seen us all being born, they pass by, leaving us to the town stories. . . Their flight is knowledge, the space is their alienation. In the absolute idealism of The Republic Plato recognized three kinds of beds: the ideal bed, the perceived bed, and the painted bed. He invited man t-o turn his mind from pure imitative illusion to appearance, and from appearance to transcendent reality. He inaugurated two millenaries of powerful efforts that became the building blocks of Western civilization whose conceptual framework is based on a delicate harmony of concrete and abstract experiences. Today, the poet sees three kinds of birds: the bird in space, the bird on the canvas, and the bird in the poem, all of them actual parts of the infinite "Songe" (dream and vision) that generates all existence and weaves the metamorphoses of a never finished text. Con-

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trary to the Platonic view, among those metamorphoses there is no visible hierarchy: there are only three ways of being birds, that is, of being existence-and-essence as bird. However, Perse suggests a poetic hierarchy: the bird in space, if not an incarnated Fall, is an "alienation"; it is itself and other; true "birdness" is lived and expressed by the word as painting; in its discursive knowledge, the poem has to refer to the etchings as if it were taking its referential strength from the eye of the painter. Let us not be mistakenPerse's is more than a polite gesture from one artist to another. Tacitly the poet admits the irreducible duality of two species of reference, one by seeing and one by voicing. And, with humility, he recognizes the superiority of the painter's etching over his poem, even if he keeps the privilege of the last word in naming existence and essence. In conclusion I can now state that the traditional distinction between concrete and abstract names is based on common sense and sensualist realism: are declared concrete those names that refer directly to so-called sensory-data and abstract those names that signify universal qualities apparently independent of sensorial experiences. Obviously such a distinction is relative and ambiguous. Philosophy can be said to be both the most abstract or the most concrete discourse. It depends on the subject of reference, the needs that guide its search for reference, and the linguistic level at which its experiences are realized. Actually the distinction between con-creteness and abstractiveness does apply more appropriately to the qualification of the experience of reference itself, that is, the experience of naming, than to its products as names, the oral or written forms of which hide the double dynamics of reference as description and definition. These, then, arc the origins of that confused distinction between concrete and abstract names. It reflects a basic quest for existence and essence, a quest shared by all those men and women who have composed or are composing our cultures in their search for the universal and unique quality that makes them deserving of the name 'human? It is in these quests that the expansion of description and the condensation of definition find their daily realizations. 5. Grammar As the Oldest Servant of Reference Admittedly my present meditation has not exhausted all the resources of grammar. To remain faithful to my referential perspective, a full examination would require also the reinterpretation of the relationships between nouns and adjectives, and verbs and adverbs, and of the role of

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prepositions and conjunctions. However, those investigations would add nothing important to this new understanding of grammar. For centuries philosophers and grammarians have discussed the problem of the correspondence between their two disciplines, unable to assert a sure priority between establishing a code of descriptions and conceiving laws of being. In similar ways they never solved, in theory and practice, the problem of logico-grammatical parallelism and, thus, never achieved the intellectual superdream of a formal and general grammar controlling any kind of possible language. I have become aware of the reasons for such an awkward situation. The R-postulate and the Psy-referent have permitted the construction of limited and practical languages, but they never have contributed to the understanding of language and its grammars. Far from it. They have amounted to making language invisible. This is why I propose to generalize the idea that led me through the consciousness of naming as perception-and-referential power. There is no language-experience without grammatical distinctions organizing the art of naming and giving to language its referential strength. I can formulate grammatico-referential intimacy in two ways: (1) there is no referential decision without grammatical formations; (2) there is no grammatical differentiation without referential consciousness. In the language of the F-function one would say that grammatical concepts are instruments of the referential order. Subsequently, the act of referring to a referent has a grammatical vection. I cannot mention a referent without special grammatical qualifications that are direct expressions of reference, and without distinct referential operations that grammars designate as sentence, and logic as proposition. If I write 'birds,' first, the lexeme 'bird' is part of my present act of writing; second, it can be understood as an act of naming; third, it can be a sub-nomination, like a call, a marking, finally, an exclamation. Discussing the act of naming itself, I admitted the existence of a pre-grammatical name, as an act of identifying and titling, as name before it becomes noun; but I added that terms like 'before' were ambiguous, and actually did not imply genetic growth and in this case, temporal passage from 'name' to 'noun.' That analysis simply underlined the necessity of differentiating the name as naming power and its particular determinations. The term 'pregrammatical' should not refer to a state of language preceding the intervention of grammatical classification, but the fact that grammatical markings do not exhaust resources, especially the power of reference-perception. Grammars help to develop our descriptions and our

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inscriptions-in-the-world, but they are not descriptions as extensions of naming. One should also refuse the well-known psycho-sociological theories of grammar. Grammatical codes make communication possible between members of a group. They possess a regional legality transmitted by learning. However, as I suggested in the introduction to these meditations, communication is not the prime source of language. I do not refer to someone or something in order to communicate. I try to communicate what I refer to, and I know that my effort to communicate references is always partially achieved and imperfectly understood. Maybe that situation explains why French culture places such an importance on the knowledge of grammar and associates it with the general ethics of individuals. French people like to say "good grammar leads to correct thinking, which leads to good behavior." It is certain that in another mood the same French people, paraphrasing their much-admired Talleyrand, say that grammar gives men the power to disguise their thoughts. Whatever it may be, each attitude expresses a true reverence of grammar, not because of its communicative powers, but because of its educational and formative powers in the complex art of reference. Those remarks warn me that the experience of reference sustained by grammatical devices does not perform as a perfect mechanism. Reference often fails; it has many degrees of success, and, as I already noticed, it is always incomplete. There is a personal anguish of reference, which is hidden behind metaphysical anguish and nourishes it. Is the contemporary development of the philosophies of anguish, with their different degrees of profundity, with their gripping or theatrical tones, not the most revealing symptom of a serious crisis in the referentiality of our modern languages and cultures, accompanied by a rather naive indictment of our grammars? Skepticism is rooted in our referential insecurity and, more specifically, in the experience of our art of naming, that is, a complex art of giving names, receiving names, and becoming names. Indeed, such an art varies from individual to individual, from social group to social group, from generation to generation. It has also its intents and its levels of achievement, its changes from one profession to another. It has its daily routines, and its exceptional moments of perception and creation. Is it not the true reason why the word, grammar itself has taken such a semantic extension in our languages? Expressions such as 'grammar of thought,' 'grammar of music,' 'grammar of fine arts,' to quote only a few, are not obtained by metonymic or metaphoric transfers; they manifest a

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permanent grammatical exigency in the diverse domains of cultures. A meditation on the fine arts in their relation to literature, both of them understood as creative experience of reference, should complete the present reflection on grammar and naming. It should also serve as a counter-proof as part of my attempt to comprehend perception and reference through the experience of naming. Let us repeat the gist of the argument: The mysteries of language are not to be found in the examinations of our current and superficial uses of our tongues, but in the ways our tongues come to existence in the sciences, literature, and the arts. At the present moment of my meditation, sciences cannot be referred to, because, as I know too well, their languages imply the fundamental use of the R-postulate. I do not imply in any way that sciences, mathematics included, are not to be taken into account in the exploration of our contemporary referential techniques. However, by themselves and in their present state of expression, they cannot help justify philosophical meditations. Literatures indeed use the Rpostulate; they even abuse it. But, as recent criticism has shown extensively, they arc also taking languages as their own targets; they are thus living and conscious tests of reference-and-perception. Furthermore, a comparison of literature with the fine arts, especially painting, should permit me to clarify the distinction between visual and aural perception, a basic duality for field-specific experiences. I do not plan to consider music; it finds its proper place later when I try to understand the intervention of memory in the experience of reference. 6. Naming, Religion, and Literature This field of reflection is inexhaustible. Considering the present state of my meditation, I concentrate my exploration on three questions that are of limited but crucial importance and universal significance for any philosophy of language. (1) Since in any historical culture literature is rooted in religious experience, what are the referential aspects of religion, and how are they connected with the perception of the world? (2) Is literature understanding itself as referential power and permanent source of perceptive models? (3) The interpretation of the verbal and the visual, and thus of literature and the visual arts, is a constant cultural condition, which has be-

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come an obsessive feature and problem For twentieth-century writers and artists. Is it possible to reach a satisfactory comprehension of that duality by exploring the relation between painting and naming as double aspects of the global experience of reference-and-perception? Following the present trend of my meditation, I am entitled to write that religion as a total human experience looks for total reference-and-perception, and that any religious behaviorbe it an individual or collective prayer, the performance of a sacrement, the participation in a sacrifice, a mass, a serviceintends to give access to the real world and its beings. In that perspective, temples, churches, mosques, synagogues, pyramids, and so on arc hallowed concentrations, absolute moments, and points of referenceperceptions of the world as it should be. For the faithful, religions are schools for the training of reference-and-perception, because other parts of the world take their meaning in reference to that unique point, at that unique and transtemporal moment. It would be foolish and inappropriate to get involved in a comparative meditation on religions and be carried away toward a philosophy of religion with all its theological intricacies. My purpose is to focus strictly on the understanding of the power of reference in its universal expression. As a matter of illustrative allusion, I reinforce my abstract analysis, not with a few samples of occurrences in daily life, but with testimonies borrowed from my cultural life. Obviously, religion is a privileged testing ground. Among a quasi-infinite choice of references I am selecting two personal experiences of special significance: ancient Egypt's temples along the Nile valley and privileged moments in ancient Egypt's religion and Christianity, when language found its consecration in the naming of the Unknown. The Egyptian temple is a triumph of visual reference, not reference to divine referents, but reference in action toward that real life which is man's afterlife. It is not a place for gathering, apprenticeships, or existential and referential recharging. It is not even a space where priests work, so to speak, at teaching and leading humanity in its homage and tribute to deities. It is a space reserved for gods and men or women who have recovered their divine personalities. This house for real things is a true theological autography that takes the form of an autobiography in stone: the existential, the material, the formal, and the graphic are united. A statue does not refer to an invisible God; it is that God in its hieratic presence. The narration of a battle on the wall does not refer to a historical fight that is celebrated; it is part of the God's life and history in its eternal

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existence. Artistic creation and hierographic writing belong to the same spatial language. Sculptures separated from the walls, sculptures on the wall, are different aspects of a supreme life where body is language, and language is body. To use Western metaphysical distinctions in an approximative way, the Egyptian temple is a spiritual materialization with language as unique art of creation. Walls arc not flat surfaces that wait for sculptures and writings; they are those sculptures and writings, in the totality of their plenum and vacuum, in a state of permanent repetition and offerings. The most frequent motif is that of the Pharaoh, often with his wife, giving offerings to gods, so that they may be accepted among them. Each sculpted writing is accompanied with escutcheons listing the names of the Pharaoh. The famous Book of the Dead, fund in the sarcophagus aside the mummy, in a very relative way, could remind us of the Christian Book of Hours. But it is not really a book of prayers; it is a temple by itself, concentrated in a rolled palimpsest, a mixture of illustrations and writings, like modern comic books, with the same mythopoetic power. There reference and perception realize themselves with no referents and no perceptions. The Book of the Dead proclaims that a person is right for the empire of the dead, for eternal life with the gods. The fundamental expression of reference is "coming forth by day," that is, "to arrive in daylight" and, after a series of tests, to be able to live in full light and to be identified with the sun. Then, for the dead, who actually is the true living person, the sun is by itself ultimate naming as pure reference. The text takes the form of a prayer, neither act of faith nor call for divine grace, but invocation in its literal sense and conquest of name. To succeed in their travel, in their navigation from death to life, from night to day, the dead must know the names that open the way through successive trials. Thus repeatedly, language focuses on the power of naming, and the conversion of reference into perception and existence: ''Formula to say," "Formula to come forth by day," "Formula in order that N. remember his names in the empire of the dead," "My heart is the heart of that one who is rich in names," "I am the one whose mouth is pure," "Tell me your name!," "I am the one who knows thy name," "I know your names, and all the gods of the empire of the dead, because I am one of you!" The following statement seems to concern language itself in its sheer power of naming: "Behold. I am associated with that magic consequence in every place where it manifests itself, faster than greyhounds, prompter than light." Indeed, the name, which is at the same time guide to existence, passage from nothingness to being and glorified existence, is more than our modern identification and fixa-

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tion. The dead takes possession of the right names of the gods if their souls are purified; they conquer and becomes all their names, all the gods' names, name among names. Ancient Egypt's religion is not polytheistic; but it is more than a monotheism with facets. 10 It is a sort of visual onomatology, turning into an onomadicy: living beings exist and arc justified (in the etymological sense of becoming just) through their names; the act of naming is understood as a quest and a trial until the ultimate identification with tile sun; and the name becomes pure light, where naming is seeing, and language, visual perception. The great temples along the Nile, as well as the resplendent caverns in the valley of the kings and the queens, are the contrary of tombs. They assert triumphant transfigurations in the art and the conquest of naming. They are references as glorifications of names. The power of naming requires purification and the art of "Opening the Mouth."11 The ignorance of the right names, the risks of perversion and omission threaten the navigation of the dead. The name is eternal, but hidden. Actually, it is the Unknowable that makes itself known through the plurality of names. It would be naive to conclude that the Egyptian onomadicy implies an agnostic metaphysics, Western style. Specialists seem to waver when they try to interpret the Egyptian temples in modern languages. They know that they are themselves trapped in their own religious structures. I do not pretend to give lessons to Egyptologists. For my present purpose, I simply note that the great Egyptian art of naming is aware of the fundamental secrecy of language. It calls for the concept of the Unknowable, that is, the concept of the name beyond all names. Every name is conscious of its own limits and of its being truly and in a particular manner the name of the Unknowable. Modern agnosticism after Descartes and, more specifically, after Kant's theory of the inaccessible thing in itself, makes of the Unknowable an untouchable, invisible referent. The logical contradiction of this theoretical position was well exposed by Hegel. Walking through the temple of Karnak I felt that the priests-artists who built it were recognizing and living another kind of agnosticism: the name, not the thing, is the Unknowable by itself. Language is the art of naming the Unknowable, which is reference referring to itself. To name is not to give a name to something unknowable, as modern epistemologies believe; it is seeing in the name the beginning and the end of knowledge, and thus the consciousness and the expression of the Unknowable. In the Judeo-Christian language of revelation (as reference) the duality of the visible and the invisible is central. There is the hidden God

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whom men and women should follow and offer their absolute faith: a problem of faith or of loyalty becomes a problem of names and finally of the perception of reality. There is no other way to understand the famous passage of Exodus. Moses accepts his divine mission, which is to speak on behalf of God, but he is worried about the name: "If they ask me 'What is his name? what shall I say?' God said to Moses: 'I AM WHO I SHALL BE.' He said: 'Thou shalt speak in this manner to the sons of Israel: "I AM has sent me to you."' God still said to Moses: 'Thou shalt speak in this manner to the sons of Israel: "THE LORD, God of your fathers, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, has sent me to you. That is my name for ever, that is the way I shall be called for ever from generation to generation'''" Exodus, 3, 1315). Thus, before leaving God to achieve his mission, Moses is asking for a name to serve as the reference for his future language. God does not say: "I am the Unknowable," nor does he refuse to give his name. He recognizes the necessity of naming. His understanding of his name is striking. Actually, he enunciates three names: "I am," "The Lord," "The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." The second name is the direct interpretation of the first one: 'I am' is your 'Lord.' The third one is a historical qualification of the second one: your God is the God of your ancestors, the God of your past from its beginning. The third name could qualify only for the so-called causal theory of proper names. It is clearly subordinated to the others, all the more since it uses the term God, not as a proper, but as a common name. But does it really? The narration begins like most usual narratives: "A said to B. . .," and in a very logical, although surprising manner, continues "Tell me, A; if those people to whom you are sending me ask 'What is his name?,' what should I tell them?" It is as if Father Mersenne were asking René Descartes: "If the people of Paris ask me your name, what should I say?" He would imply that 'René, Descartes' (and in the case of Moses, 'God') is not enough for a name. Let us imagine that Descartes would have answered "Tell them 'Cogito, Sum' has asked me to be his mailbox for mankind." In his instructions to Moses, God recognizes that 'God' (proper or common name, but does it matter to specify whether it is one or the other?) is not a convincing form of naming. Then, God gives Moses an ontological naming that is a name that is not a noun, but a personal deictic and its verb: "I AM." Is this name phrase a powerful metaphysical condensation, all possible discourses put into one minimal sentence "I am"? God says to Moses: "I am 'I am"' and he calls that expression his name. Does it mean that God in his essence and existence is the only one who can say "I am who I am"? If so, the name God gives to Moses is the

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expression of his quality of being God, a sort of abridged ontological argument; but it would not be a name. However, both God and Moses agreesuch is the implication of the narrationthat 'I am who I am' is the fundamental name, and that there is an original need for a name; this original need for identification induces God to name himself to Israel. Ultimately, the only possible name is "I am who I am." As one can guess, for centuries, biblical commentators have competed in subtle interprestations of the name of God. The name says: "I am with you in a manner you will see," or "You should ignore my personal name, I tell you that I am, but not my real name, which should remain unknown" (See Judges, 13:18: "Why do you ask for my name? It is a name of wonder."); "I am the only God who 'is'; the other gods do not exist.'' (See Isaiah, 43:10: "Before me no god was formed, and after me there will be no god. It is I, it is I who am the LORD; out of me, there is no savior.") To which I would add: "there is no possible naming." In light of those current commentaries, one could consider the signification of the blasphemy of the name and the stoning of the blasphemer. In the sentence "The son of the Israelite woman blasphemed the name and insulted it" (Leviticus 24:11), the reference to the name is understood as a turn of phrase enabling us to avoid writing or pronouncing the name of the Lord next to the verb 'to blaspheme.' I think that that interpretation, although acceptable, stays on the surface of the problem of naming. The name has power to refer to the Unknowable. A blasphemy is an act of language attacking the act of naming. It is the rejection of the name in its relation to the Unknowable. The Lord is the Lord because he is the one who says "I am who I am," and that phrase expresses my power of expression, which is my power of naming. Thus, I have to return to 'I am who I am,' as the absolute name, the necessary name, the only possible name at the beginning and at the end of language. That unique and mysterious name does not, cannot take the form of a regular proper name. For the English reader, it has to be a personal deictic and a verb, and it precedes the grammatical noun. However, does that observation not contradict one of the conclusions of my meditation on the act of naming, namely, that deictics imply the power of naming, not the contrary? No, it only shows that deictics belong to the power of naming, but by naming first and, subsequently, by showing. The name of God can only be reference of the name to Itself, in the assertion of its existence. Grammatically speaking, it becomes a personal deictic and its elementary verbalization. However, it does not mean that a proposition is reconverted into a noun, as if I were saying: "'I sing'

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is the name of my neighbor downstairs." It is the way to unravel the source of any kind of name, and, in the case of the Bible, to actualize the covenant between God and his people. It should also be noted that the covenant between God and Moses is the fundamental and permanent conversation of language with itself and with mankind. It concerns the revelation of the name and, thus, the justification of the art of naming. It is the only way to name the Unknowable, not as reality separated from the Known, but as language in the mystery of its power of reference by naming. To express it in another manner, 'mystery' does not designate an inaccessible referent; it is the consciousness of language, and it is present in any name, individual or collective. In the Christian search for reference, the dialogue between God and Moses finds its second and final formulation on the Golgotha, in the inscription at the top of the cross: there, the new covenant is consecrated through the name of Christ and for future Christian names. Such is the deep significance of the sacrament of baptism. To baptize is more than taking an oath by proxy (in the Catholic tradition), which seems to me rather preposterous (on behalf of what principle can one commit some innocent person for the future?); it is recognizing the urgency of greeting the newborn with language, and thus, recognizing her by name. To baptize is also more than a convenient social declaration, because naming makes society possible: priests, godparents, and parents are all present in the baptistery because they have already received their names and become parts of the covenant. It is more than a necessary linguistic fixation, a tag to be placed at the entrance of the Christian conference. It is an act similar to the Egyptian "opening of the mouth" seen as introduction to the true life with the gods, since for the early inhabitants of the Nile valley death marked the beginning of the real travel to the truth of language. The Christian name is taken on behalf of a name. Indeed this initial and initiating name, which by its form is far from unique, has the practical power of an identification and a title. It publicly displays these secondary powers as far as they are consequences (not causes) of the act of reference by naming. These brief observations on two samples of religious language and behavior would certainly deserve to be expanded into a full comparative philosophy of religion. Actually, starting in the Enlightenment, it has been done already by a string of thinkers such as the Schlegel brothers, Schelling and the German Idealists, and in our century Martin Buber, Mircea Eliade, and many others. All of them, despite their differences, agree on the foundational nature of the problems posed by the name and its powers. My meditation on a few examples confirms my view that, in its

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attempts to give mankind an absolute language, religion understands itself as the power of universal reference in and by itself; it does not refer to an independent reality; it is that reality, composed by names addressed to a central name that transcends grammars and logics, but has to affirm itself, to name itself, through them. Temples and cathedrals in natural or painted stones arc monumental models of perception and orders of reference. They also show and narrate the lives of names, dead or alive, actual or virtual. They are mysteries in action and of consciousness. Everyone re-erects, re-enacts the works of the primitive builders who were not creators, but practitioners of the experience of reference, mouthpieces, perceiving and perceived, saying and said, naming and named. My next test will be applied to literature and the modern manifestations of its creative endeavors. As is well known, most literatures have religious origins. But I examine them in their independent activities even if, in a typical way, each of our literary genres aspires to be a total expression of itself, claims to name the Unknowable and the Unnamable, and confers on itself the equivalent of a religious power. As before, I choose a few examples that should help probing my views on the relationship between perception and reference within the limits of the art of naming. If my hypothesis is correct, literature should play an important role in the historical and collective art of naming. Will I detect expressions of such an awareness that might call for a secret or open fight against grammatical structures, against the degradation of the name to a noun, and, at the same time, a restoration of the name to its original function as pure explosion and cry of language? Implicitly I admit that poetry is exercise and consciousness of reference at the peak of its quest; it teaches us how to perceive and to think, that is, how to give to our perceptions and our thoughts their forms and weights of reference. 12 Let us begin with a text by the novelist Julien Green, who refers to poetry as the source of any Form of literature: "My own name [he just said how fascinated he was with the name Paris: "I never discovered anything, except that Paris was called Paris"; one always comes across that unfathomable tautology] would also cause me to lose myself in endless reveries. I found it extremely curious that a certain combination of sounds should designate me in such a way that, by making those sounds, one could reasonably expect to see me appear. I hope not to sound too childish if I say that to this day the designation of objects and beings has lost nothing of its old fascination for me. The source of much poetry lies right there. Almost all children are poets, that is, they often have a sense of the mystery of creation. . . . The poet is a man who retains in himself what might

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be called a sense of mystery and the ability to experience surprise" (Green, Langage, p. 218). Green's analysis is clear: the fascinating surprise of the proper name as unique power of naming is at the origin of poetry, and poetry is the power to change any name, or thing, or being, into a proper name, that is, a mystery. This is the mystery of creation lived by the experience of language as absolute surprise. The word surprise, which drives language back to its birth, designates 'reference' as experience of creation through proper names. For the poet, the proper name is more than an identification and a title; it is naming in its perceptive responsive powers. Poetry makes beings and things appear simply by calling their names. Green identifies 'sense of mystery,' 'ability to experience surprise,' and transmutation of words into proper names. He is confirming my conclusion that the power of naming transcends grammatical structures and the quantification of propositional functions. He is also confirming that referential power is associated with our consciousness of the world, which means that perception, in its authentic life and exercise, is a permanent play of calls and answers, a play that very early in life falls into habitual patterns. In reaction against the alliance of romanticism and realism, which permitted the triumph of the novelistic language from Stendhal to Flaubert and Zola, Mallarmé, searching for the absolute poetic art, calls for an idealist language to give poetry its full theoretical power; he opposes poetry to all other literary genres, at the same time liberating it from the general condition of communication through learning and description: Narrer, enseigner, même décrire, cela va et encore qu'à chacun suffirait peut-être, pour échanger la pensée humaine, de prendre ou de mettre dans la main d'autrui en silence une pièce de monnaie, l'emploi élémentaire du discours dessert l'universel reportage dont, la Littérature excepté e, participe tout entre les genres d'ecrits contemporains. A quoi bon la merveille de transposer un fait de nature en sa presque disparition vibratoire selon le jeu de la parole, cependant, si ce n'est pour qu'en émane, sans la gêne d'un proche ou concret rappel, la notion pure? (Mallarmé, vres, p. 857; emphasis added) To narrate, to teach, even to describe, all that is convenient, and, in order to exchange human thought, it would probably be enough for everybody to take from or to put silently in the hand of other people a coin[;] the elementary use of discourse serves universal reporting of which, Literature excepted, everything among the varieties of con-

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temporary writings partakes. However, what is the use of the wonder to transpose a natural fact into its almost vibrating disappearance, according to the game of speech, if it is not that from it, without the inconvenience of a close and concrete reminder, the pure notion should emanate? That text echoes the poem Prose, dedicated to des Esseintes, Huysmans's decadent hero. Indeed Mallarmé borrows from the Psy-referent to alleviate the pressure of the R-postulate. But his poetic sense of reference forbids him to escape into a poetic spiritual world. He fights against the grammatical structures that could insidiously maintain his language within the game that Western tradition plays with abstract and concrete words. He is inspired by the "desire" to restore the word to its original and permanent power of naming: the "pure notion" is the proper name that has become essence and, at the same time, unique and universal. Maybe this is the reason why proper names play a marginal but powerful role in Mallarmé's poetry. They are too loaded with remembrances to be able to reach their maximal intensity; their mystery remains anecdotic, and they risk distracting the poet from his return to the purity of the name, and to the perceptive vocation of poetry. To evoke Paul Eluard's saying, poetry gives to perceive: Such is Mallarmé's act of poetic faith. In our century, Saint-John Perse was another great witness in the poetic recognition of the Name as the beginning and the end of reference, as irradiating center of perception. Here are a few remarks of the poet of Birds: "The art of writing, which is the art of naming or, even more generally, of designating, will never function except through words, which make up a kind of society and that are further entailed by etymological meanings" (Perse, Letters, p. 53). "Nommer, créer! Qui done en nous créait, criant le nom nouveau?" (Perse, uvres, p. 683). (To name, to create! Who, then, within us created, crying out the new name?) "I have never enjoyed naming things for another reason than the joy, very childish and primitive, of feeling that I am a creator of the name. Just think for a minute of the radical difference there is between a 'word' and a 'name'" (Perse, Letters, p. 231; emphasis added). In the same letter to Valery Larbaud, Alexis Léger refers to the poem I just quoted. His only excuse, he says, not to look like "some ornithological crank or pedant," was that these birds had received from him "without any deception of my part, the baptism of their names'' (Letters, p. 231; emphasis added). One more quotation, which dates from a much later period in the poet's life: "II n'est pas un mot pour nous que nous n'ayons créé" (res, p. 399). (There is not

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one word for us that we did not create). Thus, for Perse, poetry, as creation, is the supreme art of naming, that is, the art of transforming words of our tongues into names that act as referential powers. One may remember the statement the poet made in Florence: "Poésie, science de l'être! Car toute poétique est une ontologie" (uvres, p. 453). (Poetry, science/knowledge of being! For any poetic is an ontology.) There is no need to paraphrase Perse's texts. However, I would like to confront them with a surprising remark reportedly made by W. H. Auden about Perse's poem Amers (Seamarks) according to which one of the first characteristics of Perse's universe is the total absence of proper names. Indeed, more pedestrian critics would conclude that Perse's poems actually contain proper names. But I shall favor the flair of one poet speaking of another poet. Even if his facts arc wrong, Auden's principle is right: proper names do not play a significant part in Perse's poetry, and for a paradoxical reason. Perse treats the common words of our vocabulary as true proper names, underlying the referential power of signs: All names should be proper and essential. Perse personifies general terms: The Poet, The Enchantor, The Narrator, The Innovator, The Celt, The Horsemen, and so on. Poetry is the substantiation of all the words of our lexicon, a return from wording to naming; and the name, being the knowledge of itself, is reference conjuring up its referent in naming it. Poetry is grammatical transgression. One may remember the first line of the last stanza of Exil: "Syntaxe de l'éclair! ô pur langage de l'exil!" (Syntax of lightning! Oh pure speech from exile! (Perse, Exil, p. 136). It is the syntax that precedes the usual grammatical distinctions and reminds us of the art of Old Chinese poetry, where the function of syntax is taken over by pure rhythm. 13 Exile with no possible return to the Promised Land is the unsurpassable condition of language, and the poet's destiny: "Pétrels, nos cils, au creux de la vision d'orage, épelez-vous lettre nouvelle dans les grands textes épars où fume l'indicible?" (uvres, p. 242). (Petrels, lashes, in the trough of our storm vision, do you spell a new letter from the great scattered texts and the smoke of the inexpressible') Hence, these often repeated and obsessive confessions: ''Transgression, transgression, ô tristesse! Hanter l'être est d'un mime" (uvres, p. 338). (Transgression, transgression, oh sadness! To haunt being is but an act of mime!) "Transfuges sans message, ô Mimes sans visage, vous meniez aux confins de si belles semailles!" (uvres, p. 148). (Fugitives with no message, oh faceless Mimes, what fine sowings were yours at your borders!) Thus, at the very moment of their poetic power of naming, reference and perception belong to the art of mimingnot the art of imitating and carica-

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turing, but the art of miming what is imaginary: "mimer la fiction!" (Perse, Letters, p. 231). The poet does his best to escape the common realist vision and to translate the experience of reference as creation in exile, as transgressive mimic, or, as I suggested above, as onomadicy. Similar conclusions may be drawn from a meditation on the surrealist art of naming, its call for the grace of automatic writing, and its quest for a unique point where contrariesespecially the duality perception/imaginationcan meet. However, I prefer to insist on a less noticed aspect of the surrealist linguistic revolution, that is, its secret understanding of the name and thus, of reference, as the mask. In a very illuminative foreword to Georges Buraud's Les Masques, André Breton underlines the universality of the deep human "need" that induces mankind to hide its face behind the shape of an animal, an ancestor, or a god. He suggests a psychological explanation: Through the small apertures of the mask, a person can observe the emotional reactions its appearance incites among other people while hiding his own feelings. That way of hiding oneself is associated with a person's true identification with the being represented by the mask. Then, says Breton, the person "participe et fait participer tout son groupe aux forces occultes qui mènent le monde" (participates and makes the whole group participate in the occult powers that lead the world). If one remembers that André Breton said that surrealism is, at its deepest level, a revolution of language by language, one can feel authorized to conclude that the occult forces to which Breton refers here are forces of language itself, and that the mask is a visual way of naming, of becoming real through a name. There is more than an analogy between the name and the mask. Both incarnate acts of language, sources of mystery and participation: in an indissoluble alliance, the name experiences masking-unmasking by names; it unmasks by remaining masked. That participation-in-hiding implies also the experience of perception through names: the object perceived is the mask of the Other. The surrealist language corroborates the complementary perception-naming. It invites us to live the secret connivance between masks, names, objects, and persons. René Char calls poetry "une perception princière" (a princely perception) (uvres, p. 824). Then he adds: "Sans doute jugez-vous cela une bien pauvre condition. Songez devant quel soupçon et quelle torture se sont trouvés Villon, Baudelaire, Nerval, Rimbaud, Mandelstam ou Marina Tsvetaieva, Miguel Hernández et Georg Trakl." (Maybe you are thinking that this is a rather poor condition. Think what suspicion and torture Villon, . . . had to face). An impressive list indeed of proper names-masks all of whom were themselves princes of perception! According to Tristan

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Tzara's profound observation, those names are instruments of exploration that consist in "le système coherent de références qu'est la poésie en tant que sujet-objet de désir" (Char, url'es, p. 1233) (the coherent system of references that is poetry as subject-object of desire). I might as well let René Char conclude for me: "La seule signature au bas de la vie blanche, c'est la poésie qui la dessine" (p. 411). (The only signature at the bottom of blank life is drawn by poetry). If poetry reflects the need for and is the expression of a princely perception, if it gives to reference a native nobility, the modern novel since the eighteenth century articulates indeed a "bourgeois perception," and as such, a commitment to the R-postulate. Literary criticism, especially after Lukács's impressive studies on nineteenth-century realism, has emphasized the relationship between the novel, the age of industrialism, positivism, the ideology of individualism, and, subsequently, the close kinship of scientific and artistic realism. In my discussion of the state of the modern novel (Morot-Sir, Reference, Meditation One), I have suggested that there is a difference between the epistemological rule governing science and the aesthetic rule controlling novelistic forms of realism. It means that we should discard the naive definition of realism, which makes of the novel a privileged part of human sciences and, by its own claim, a scientific memoir of its time. We may understand why Balzac, presenting the Comédie humaine to his public, made a declaration of realist faith, why Zola claimed Claude Bernard as his direct model and interpreted the novel as a kind of laboratory, and why Flaubert could announce "Reality writes." All of them dreamed of a novel that would transcribe ''the world as it is." Their model was the scientific belief in referents. They wrote imaginary stories that were expected to be more real than the reality perceived. They remained mostly oblivious to the fact that their "reality" was a vision obtained by literary techniques, techniques that had very little to do with the experimental methods of natural sciences. Actually, they were reorganizing the old literary art of naming, describing, and narrating. An aesthetics of the smallest significant detail was combined with a new concept of proper names referring to individuals, from Pamela to Madame Bovary, from Manon Lescaut to Albertine retrouvée, allied also with a new art of description related to theories of geographical and historical environments. All of this was done in order to produce what Roland Barthes aptly called "l'effet de réel" (the effect of the real). Indeed, most of the theories on the novel conceived by Lukàcs and his followers, or, before them, by Taine and many others, offer some elements of truth, and certainly contribute to a new understanding of the novel in our century, but

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they remain theoretically limited precisely because they borrow from science an inappropriate language. These theories nevertheless point to an authentic referential desire. They justify it as well as they can, with the help of biological, psychological, and sociological referents, based on the contemporary principle: any truth should imitate scientific truth. It is undeniable that the modern novel has been and continues to be the most efficient instrument for the dissemination of so-called scientific truths. However, in and of itself it brings to readers something other than the results of scientific exploration. It is bourgeois indeed, but not in a Marxist or Darwinian sense. Marxist and Darwinian languages themselves presuppose a bourgeois approach to language, which finds its typical expressions in the novel. What, then, is a bourgeois perception-and-reference? It is the cultural belief in the mimetic vocation of language. It finds its philosophy in a variety of humanisms that promote mankind as beautifying the mirror of the world, as its intellectual and spiritual measure. I do not mean that Aristotle, with his notion of mimesis, was a Greek bourgeois. I leave it to historians of Antiquity to interpret the Greek mimesis through the battles of language fought by philosophers and grammarians in order to describe and codify its referential powers. But I cannot avoid participating directly in our view on these problems. In modern times, mimesis has been experienced (and continues to be experienced) through an ongoing polarization of realism and idealism, but also within the duality of poetry and the novel: on one hand, the romantic poets and their successors refused the mimetic behavior and claimed to be antibourgeois; on the other hand, most novelists acted, even when they were portraying peasants and workers, as mouthpieces of the bourgeois order. Then, at the end of the nineteenth century, came the double crisis of poetry and the novel. Challenging modern scientific civilization, surrealism looked for techniques to liberate the primitive forces of reference from wellestablished logics and grammars. In the meanwhile, the novel initiated a deceptive fight against itself, attacking its mimetic codes. . . but only to seek a better mimesis. Even antinovels and new novels have led fictitious struggles only to keep the bourgeois order of referents and to protect it against revolutionary solicitations of poetry. This situation explains why today the novel hesitates between the form of the essay (more or less autobiographical) and the form of the extended prose poem of which the former surrealist Julien Gracq provided the most impressing examples. From a more general cultural point of view, there is a striking parallelism between the decline of the modern mimetic novel and the decline of the bourgeoisie. The same trend

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can be detected in the development of rightist and leftist fascisms with their attacks against individualism and socialism, but also against liberalism. All these developments arc consequences and late images of the bourgeois mimetic vision. One of the best witnesses of the modern crisis in referential understanding is indeed Marcel Proust and his work (should we say novel?), which tends to destroy its own referents thanks to their transposition into the autonomous world of art works. Is A la recherche du temps perdu not the story of the magician who liberates himself from the referential chains, always narrating and being narrated, present and absent, an imitator of himself who is playing a game of hide-and-seek and who, eventually, conjures his referents for a better reference? To succeed in his conjurer's tricks, Proust called for the help of memory as the powerful mediator of perception. I shall return to the Proustian experience when I examine the relation of reference to memory. For now, let us underscore a less-noticed aspect of the Proustian search for reference, that is, his acute awareness of the power of naming in the act of reference. If Du côté de chez Swann's "Introduction" ends with the famous, all too famous, madeleine's spontaneous and magic sleight of hand, this first station in the quest of time lost concludes with a third part that is much shorter than the other two: 45 pages in the Pléiade edition (1954), against the 185 pages of "Combray" and 195 pages in "Un amour de Swann." Curiously enough, this part is entitled "Noms de pays: Le nom" (''Place-Names: The Name"). Its apparent purpose is to introduce the names 'Gilberte' and 'Swann' at the moment of the narrator's walk with his nurse Françoise on the Champs Elysées. Its real purpose is to meditate the power of naming, thus suggesting that the power of memory, as an instrument of storing and delivering material, is ultimately subordinated to and inspired by the decision of naming. In one stroke, Proust separates the novelistic reference from its scientific counterpart, that is, the language of the metaphoric narrative from the language of causality. Let us follow the narrator-scriptor, step by step, in his own meditation, which leads his first involuntary experience of remembrance to the full consciousness of the name. He starts by underlining the common difference between perception and dream: "Mais rien ne ressemblait moins ce Balbec réel que celui dont j'ai souvent rêvé" (p. 389). ("And yet nothing could have differed more utterly, either, from the real Balbec than that other Balbec of which I had dreamed" [Moncrieff, I, p. 461]). 14 Perception is understood as a local reference: "Un moment dévoilé de la vie réelle de la nature" (p. 384). ("a momentary revelation of the true life of

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nature" [Moncrieff, I, p. 417]). He confesses that his narration is prompted by a desire that transcends and controls perception: "It n'étais curieux, je n'étais avide de connaître que ce que je croyais plus vrai que moi-même" (p. 384). ("I was curious and eager to know only what I believed to be more real than myself." [Moncrieff, I, p. 417]). "Truer than myself" means "more real than myself,'' and that truth, that reality is found through the thought of a great genius or through the "force and grace of nature," "telle qu'elle se manifeste livrée à elle-même, sans l'intervention des hommes" (p. 384) ("the force or the grace of nature as it appeared when left entirely to itself, without human interference" [Moncrieff, I, p. 417])· The "genius" is the artist who recreates language and confers on it a new power of reference. But what to make of this "nature" that is independent of mankind's civilization? Is Marcel Proust suggesting that, in order to conquer its references and give them existential fullness, language should go back to an experience of natural and romantic mysticism? I do not think so. For him language in its originality is nature manifesting and discovering itself in a state of perceptive nomination: . . . car il [the 1:22 train] s'arrêtait à Bayeux, à Coutances, à Vitré, à Questambert, à Pontorson, à Balbec, à Lannion, à Lamballe, à Benodet, à Pont-Aven, à Quimperlé, et s'avançait magnifiquement surchargé de noms qu'il m'offrait. (p. 386, emphasis added) . . . for it stopped at Bayeux, at Coutances, at Vitré, at Questambert, at Pontorson, at Balbec, at Lannion, at Lamballe, at Benodet, at Pont-Aven, at Quimperlé, and progressed magnificently overloaded with proferred names among which I did not know the one to choose. (Moncrieff, I, p. 419) For one who obeys geographical common sense, such an enumeration cannot be the itinerary for a train, even if the latter were steered by the most imaginative railroad engineer. Marcel Proust is aware that he is dreaming, or more exactly that he is carried away by dream-writing, and thus is able to juxtapose the 1:22 train to the dream-writing of the Florentine countryside: Je n'eus besoin pour les faire renaître que de prononcer ces noms: Balbec, Venise, Florence, dans l'intérieur desquels avait fini par s'accumuler le désir que m'avaient inspiré les lieux qu'ils désignaient. (p. 387; emphasis added)

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I needed only to make them reappear, pronounce the names Balbec, Venice, Florence, within whose syllables, had gradually accumulated the longing inspired in me by the places for which they stood. (Moncrieff, I, p. 420) Then the scriptor-narrator explores the power of naming: space and its places arc submitted to the specific laws of naming and become capable of stimulating human imagination. The terms he chooses to describe that experience are revealing: . . . je ne me représentais pas alors les villes, les paysages, les monuments comme des tableaux plus ou moins agréables. . . mais chacun d'eux comme un inconnu, essentiellement different des autres, dont mon âme avait soif et qu'elle aurait profit à connaître. (p. 387, emphasis added) I did not then represent to myself cities, landscapes, historical monuments, as more or less attractive pictures. . ., but looked on each of them as on an unknown thing, different in essence from all the rest, a thing for which my soul thirsted and which it would profit from knowing. (Moncrieff, I, p. 420) At this point, Marcel introduces a distinction between names and words (noms and mots): Combien ils prirent quelque chose de plus individuel encore, d'être désignés par des noms, des noms qui n'étaient que pour eux, des noms comme en ont des personnes! Les mots nous présentent des choses une petite image claire et usuelle comme celles que l'on suspend aux murs des écoles. . . . Mais les noms présentent des personneset des villes qu'ils nous habituent à croire individuelles, uniques comme des personnesune image confuse qui tire d'eux, de leur sonorité éclatante ou sombre, la couleur dont elle est peinte uniformément. (pp. 387-88; emphasis added) How much more individual still was the character they assumed from being designated by names, names that were for themselves alone, proper names such as people have! Words present to us a little picture of things, clear and familiar, like the pictures hung on the walls of schoolrooms. . . . But names present to usof persons, and of towns which they accustom us to regard as individual, as unique, like per-sonsa confused picture, which draws from them, from the brightness or darkness of their tone, the colour in which it is uniformely painted. (Moncrieff, I, pp. 420-21)

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For example: Quant à Balbec, c'était un de ces noms où, comme sur une vieille poterie normande qui garde la couleur de la terre d'où elle fut tirée, on voit se peindre encore la représentation de quelque usage aboli, de quelque droit féodal, d'un état ancien des licux, d'une manière désuète de prononcer qui en avait formé les syllabes hétéroclites et que je ne doutais pas de retrouver jusque chez l'aubergiste. (p. 388) As for Balbec, it was one of those names in which, as on an old piece of Norman pottery that still keeps the colour of the earth from which it was fashioned, one sees depicted still the representation of some long-abolished customs, of some feudal right, of the former status of some locality, of an obsolete way of pronouncing the language which has shaped and wedded its incongruous syllables and which I never doubted that I should find spoken there even by the inn-keeper. (Moncrieff, I, p. 421) Names, not words, should be understood as types of aesthetic hypostases. They arc the magic keys that change our references into attractive realities, car, ne pensant pas aux noms comme à un idéal inaccessible, mais comme à une ambiance réelle dans laquelle j'irais me plonger, la vie non vécue encore, la vie intacte et pure que j'y enfermais donnait aux plaisirs les plus matériels, aux scénes les plus simples, cet attrait qu'ils ont dans les uvres des primitifs. (p. 390; emphasis added) for, since I thought of names not as an inaccessible ideal but as a real and enveloping atmosphere into which I was about to plunge, the life not yet lived, the life, intact and pure, which I enclosed in them gave to most material pleasures, to the simplest scenes, the same attraction that they have in the works of the Primitives. (Moncrieff, I, p. 423) Later, in a slow process through geographical names, through the mediations of the narrator, Proust leads us toward the names of persons, especially the name of Gilberte: Ce nom de Gilberte passa près de moi, évoquant d'autant plus l'existence de celle qu'il désignait qu'il ne la nommait pas seulement comme un absent dont on parle, mais l'interpellait; il passa ainsi près

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de moi, en action pour ainsi dire, avec uric puissance qu'accroissait la courbe de son jet et l'approche de son but;transportant à son bord, je le sentais, . . . tout cet inconnu encore plus inaccessible et plus douloureux pour moi d'être au contraire si familier et si maniable pour cette fille heureuse qui m'en frôlait sans que j'y puisse pénétrer et le jetait en plein air dans un cri . . . tandis que Françoise me criait "Allons, aboutonnez voir votre paletot et filons" et que je remarquais pour la première fois avec irritation qu'elle avait un langage vulgaire et hélas! pas de plumet bleu à son chapeau. (pp. 394-95; emphasis added) The name Gilberte passed closed by me, evoking all the more force-fully the girl whom it labelled in that it did not merely refer to her, as one speaks of someone in his absence, but was directly addressed to her, it passed thus close by me, in action so to speak, with a force that increased with the curve of its trajectory and the proximity of its target;carrying in its wake, I could feel, . . . that unknown existence which was all the more inaccessible, all the more painful to me from being, conversely, so familiar, so tractable to this happy girl who let it brush past me without lily being able to penetrate it, who flung it on the air with a light-hearted cry . . . while Françoise shouted: "Come on, button up your coat and let's clear off home!" and I remarked for the first time how common her speech was, and that she had, alas, no blue feather on her hat. (Moncrieff; I, pp. 428-29) I apologize for quoting Proust so profusely, but nobody has expressed better than he and with such accuracy and complexity the experience of naming and its referential power. A la recherche du temps perdu also exemplifies how, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the novelist is keenly conscious of his responsibility to use naming as a linguistic innovation that remains outside the framework of psychological and sociological laws. The form of the novel is thus entering a no-man's-land where traditional genres, from the epic to the essay, experiment with their rejuvenated energies. After Proust, and with increasing transparency; new techniques will be tried: Gidean "mise en abyme," deconstruction by the American novel, cinema flashback and montage, decharacterization and objectivation as practiced in the New Novel, and so on. From the beginning, these shifts in narrative techniques will have seemingly inevitable consequences: a final dramatic collapse of the text's referential power and an considerable decline in the number of readers, that is, of people looking for referential

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stimulation. Marcel Proust had a presentiment of this catastrophic future and announced, through his novel, the gradual disintegration of the mimetic paradigm as a disaster affecting languages in our times. His forecast may have been even more accurate than James Joyce's. Both wrote about our dreams of a modern Odyssey. Ultimately, the Proustian and the Joycean Ulysses travel inside the closed circle of their respective cultural cities, Paris and Dublin. Their Ithacas are the mother's womb of language. It is no longer certain that today's peregrinating heroes are still able to overpower Penelope's suitors and provide new patterns for her tapestry. Marcel Proust, in particular, was aware of the modern contest-in-reference, when he confronted his writer-model, Bergotte, with his two equally imaginary artists, Vinteuil the composer, and Elstir the painter. One gets the uneasy feeling that literature, in its new form of self-consciousnessconfession-and-apprenticeship, can be no more than tile humble servant of music and painting, both of which have become for today's cultures the most powerful means of reference by sound and colors. Nevertheless, Vinteuil's sonatas and symphonies and Elstir's paintings are integral parts of A la recherche du temps perdu; they are surrounded by clouds of names and words that form Proust's narrative. To be heard and seen, music and painting need to be performed and depicted. At this point we must confront the third problem listed at the beginning of this final phase of our reflection on language and perception, namely, the mystery of double perception-reference. In visual arts and literature, painters and writers create the latter by organizing sounds and colors, by seeing and hearing, by saying and showing, that is, by mastering our perceptive-and-linguistic universe. 7. Depicting-Seeing, Voicing-Hearing I must confess that weeks, even months, have passed since I felt able to pursue my meditation, not only because of accidental and external events, but, above all, for intrinsic reasons. I needed time to accept the fact that perception is a primordial part of my linguistic experience, to give to the terms marking and titling, describing and defining, their new values, to understand the main consequences of the universality of naming as fundamental and unique exercise of reference, and to learn, so to speak, how to see and voice by referring. Once and for all I had to change my realist, psychological, and functionalist habits into a new

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perceptive life-style suggested by novelists, poets, painters, and by great artists in general, who refuse to take their languages for granted and put their lives at stake in a radical referential wager. It has been stated that perception is language, and language only. When I wrote that perception also is not language, I did not mean that it succeeds in escaping the prison of words but that there arc kinds of language, such as mathematical language or languages codifying values (in law, ethics, logic, etc.), that are not relevant to perception or where perception is present at a near-zero degree of perceptive reference. It is true that sense-data are fictitious beings. But it is no less true that they play an essential role in the development and the exercise of the art of naming and its complex manifestations of marking, identifying and titling, of describing and defining. Not wishing to fall into the physicalist trap, I can better understand my present state of meditation and reinforce my position if I call for a language of the brain. From the statement "perception is language," I can infer that perception constitutes an important part of the cerebralization of my body. Sensorial organs belong to my brain, which acts as the coordinating center for linguistic experience in its fullness. From my point of view, naming would be the true intent and finality of cerebral life in its three aspects of naming, being named, and naming naming. This, then, would be the mystery of cerebralization once it is liberated from the instrumentalist perspective. In the same vein I can add that the terms marking, identifying, titling, describing, and defining will find their places as part of the naming process and in their dynamic simultaneity. As already observed, these terms are not independent entities, but constituent elements of the universal endeavor of reference. Indeed, it is still proper to state that my brain more or less coordinates my thoughts, feelings, and actions. Philosophies have been built on those unifying efforts. However, if my meditations have not gone astray; I can safely conclude that all thoughts, feelings, and actions are under the control of reference, each of them indicating some aspect of naming. A recent experience of mine echoes my views on the relationship between cerebrality, reference, and naming. Last week, I was driving along the road from Wilmington to Chapel Hill, looking at the autumnal foliage with a double feeling of exhilaration and nostalgic aspiration to find the appropriate language. At the same time, I was steering my car relative to other cars, passing and being passed, speaking with I. Clearly, the complex simultaneity of diverse operations involving perceptive language is not exaggerated. However, all along I remained fully aware of the unique

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character of my "seeing the autumnal foliage." Today, when writing about this episode, I thinkand at the moment the perceptions were taking place I already thoughtthat I was living an experience of words beginning to dawn, that I was longing for proper naming in the form of markers and descriptions. It was also a powerful experience of rhythms physically felt in my body, and the definite hope that words and rhythms would finally be gathered into the full bloom of reference. Driving on, my interior motion swiftly turned to Baudelaire and Mallarmé and their powerful expressions of the fall. But even if I had no specific line in my mind (no Psy-referent included), I knew immediately that neither would help me to find the proper language of my joy. Then, something else attracted my attention, and I passed to another of those promises of language that make up the most frequent elements of our daily life's background. Today, writing about it, I understand that I was then conscious of my referential limitations. I was expecting more expressions that would catch the moment than those few words marking a quick perceptive sketch. I was, as I am normally, at a low level of language activity, but I also sensed that I could reach a higher level if more attention were devoted to it. At least for a fleeting moment, I believed in that possibility. From the beginning of the passive apprehension of that scenery, my language-perception was looking for the satisfaction of a religious, aesthetic, maybe moral, value. Was it a lost occasion or, simply and more realistically, another linguistic aporia that causes the mediocrity of my banal and daily participation in my native or acquired tongue? We must admit that we are very poor managers of our linguistic resources. Maybe it is one reason why linguists prefer to consider language in its elementary manifestations. We may, then, conclude that even if perception is rarely an achieved metaphysical description, from its very beginnings and throughout, it remains a search for reference because in our search for expressions we are unable to find the proper words and rhythms. I should add that, when I was calling for help, I called the wrong models. Would perhaps the remembrance of Cézanne or Renoir have been more useful? Yes and no. Surely, I would have intensified my first impression of reference, superposing other visual landscapes on the one I had just started to compose with my own word-sketches. At the same time, my linguistic impotence would have been more obvious and depressing. No word, no line, no poem will ever reach the point of referential presence offered by a great painting. I think of that (now forgotten?) project of the French Ministry of Culture to put large reproductions of French Impressionists alongside National Highway 7, the highway

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leading to Provence: What a concert of exaltations and frustrations for the nonspeeding driver! On a more serious note, I must now revisit the audiovisual problem affecting my effort to translate reference and naming in terms of cerebralization. I begin by summarizing the play and interplay of consequences. If reference is the ultimate expression of cerebralization, the sensorial organs arc integral parts of the brain system that arc inseparable from its central coordination. Then the problem of the diversity of sensorial organs confronts me again, especially the audiovisual duality. If sight and hearing form intimate parts of cerebralization, they are also parts of language life. One should even say, and I insist on it, that they are language elaborating itself Let us go a little further: if painting and music manifest two kinds of referential order and invention, how do we interpret their relationship with naming? Are they language or not? A well-known and confusing problem! Another question follows: How do we interpret the duality that dominates the organization of our intellectual and artistic lives? These questions should be raised without allowing the R-postulate to intervene too easily, that is, without assuming automatically that "Seeing is perceiving physical light, hearing is perceiving air waves." Thus, our first problem is not to ask critical questions pertaining to optics and acoustics such as: "What are light and sound? What are their laws and structures?" Rather, we must ask: "What is the reason for the emergence of the words 'seeing, hearing' in our language condition?" This means that we should discard the common answer: ''Seeing is a characteristic of our eyes, hearing of our ears." The reverse statement is no less conceivable: eyes and ears exist as parts of the animal and human heads because the biological cerebralization of reference requires seeing and hearing, and the naming of it. To put it bluntly, we do not see, but we have learned to call for the word seeing in appropriate circumstances; we do the same for hearing. My way of posing the problem leads to the following ultimate and challenging consequence: we could not see if we were unable to say that we see. The cases of the blind and the deaf are not counterexamples. A certain organic deficiency does not prove that one can utter 'seeing, hearing' without actually seeing or hearing. Blind and deaf persons live, like anyone else, in a language system where 'seeing' and 'hearing' play an essential role in the referential experience. Literally and metaphorically, they learn to use those terms in an appropriate manner so that it would not be paradoxical to assert that they see or hear, but with a near-zero capacity of marking. Helen Keller is exemplary in the discovery of the full language of perception. I remember a completely blind colleague who welcomed me to a college and took me

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through the campus, describing with precision the forms and colors of lawns and buildings. At first, I believed it was pure virtuosity and bravura. I assumed that he had memorized details given to him by his wife who, he liked to say, was "his eyes." Finally, I realized that there was something deeper in that challenge and apparent tour de force. The seeing language was natural to him, as natural as it was for those who possess seeing eyes: 'seeing' participated in his spatial composition and could not be excluded from his language simply because of his handicap. Visuality and orality are dominant properties of language. 15 In that perspective, let us consider the double problem already posited: How should I understand the duality of painting and music as the prevalent arts of reference in our cultures, and how are they related to literature? Are they two different kinds of language or extralinguistic achievements? From the beginning of my meditation on the linguistic condition of mankind, I frequently referred to painting and music. In the process, I learned to think about them without realist, spiritualist, or functionalist overtones. Painting is the art of seeing with the help of aesthetic rules and the intermediary of a bidimensional space. I have also suggested that the Platonic hierarchy of ideal, real, and painted objects should be reversed: ideality and reality of things or beings belong to the art of referring to them. Thus, painting and music are the true introductions to both language of perceiving and exercises in reference. My own perception, that is, my perceptive language, depends on them as it depends on my double gift of producing and learning. At long last and painstakingly I became aware of a conceptual diagram that sums up the experience of perceptive reference. Here, then, is my new formulation:

If, as I believe, painters and musicians are our masters in perception-and-reference, (1) how can they fit into my diagram? (2) how can they also fit in the audiovisual biological duality, that is, how can they help us understand it? and (3) how can they play their role in unison with the variety of literature's techniques and artists? Those problems are interconnected and have already received implied answers. I could pursue my meditation simply by playing the formal game of consequences and by mechanically reenforcing my language with new turns of phrases. Nevertheless, I know that when the meditative flow appears to end, it should start afresh from a

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new angle. In the present case, the philosophy of art, or the language of art and language on art, too often take refuge in a remote Kamchatka or a modest addendum to epistemology. Calling for a method adopted above, I choose as a guide in the language on art André Breton's Le Surréalisme et la peinture. His opening sentence is famous: "L'oeil existe à l'état sauvage" (all quotations can be found on p. 1). (The eye exists in the wild state.) An indicative that is actually an optative! May the eye be rid of its practical and cultural barriers and return to its primitive power! Breton concedes that there is linguistic activity without the contribution of the eye: "11 [l'il] préside à l'éhange conventionnel de signaux qu'exige, paraît-il, la navigation de l'esprit." (It presides over the conventional exchange of signals, which, it seems, the navigation of the mind requires.) Then, he raises the fundamental question: "Mais qui dressera l'échelle de la vision?'' (But who will set up the scale of vision? [emphasis added]). Breton's interrogation is of biblical import. It confers on vision the power of receiving and producing light. The image of scale suggests the double experience of degrees of vision, which corresponds to the up-and-down movements of perception. At the very outset of a meditation on painting, surrealism discards the R-postulate and puts the painter at the birth of vision. Then, Breton answers his question in probable but limited ways, which mark the diverse possibilities of vision. Each answer is punctuated by the rhythm of the phrase "il y a" (there is). There is: what he André Breton) has seen many times and what other have said they have seen; what he believes he can remember for specific reasons or no reason at all; what he has rarely seen but has never been able to forget; what he never dared to see although he had looked at it; those things other people have seen, or at least say they have seen, and which, by way of suggestion, they succeed in making me see or not see; finally, his vision is different from other people's, which enables him to state: "ce que je commence à voir qui n'est pas visible" (what I begin to see that is not visible; emphasis added). Thus, the scale of vision goes from the usually already seen to the vision of the invisible. It covers the entire spectrum of human experience. Breton's conclusion promises even more: "Ce n'est pas tout" (It is not all). What remains to be seen at the top of the scale is beyond music, even beyond poetry; it is painting itself. Let us not discuss Breton's highly exaggerated preference for visual reference or what he calls "plastic expression." But it is significant for our present reflection. He accuses "musical expression" of being confused, of being less distinct and rigorous than visual images. He asks to be left to his "silent contemplation." For him a

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painting is true mediation leading to surreality: "il m'est impossible de considérer un tableau autrement que comme une fenêtre dont mon premier souci est de savoir sur quoi elle donne, autrement dit si, d'où je suis, 'la vue est belle,' et je n'aime rien rant que ce qui s'étend dévant moi à perte de vue" (Le Surréalisme, pp. 2-3; emphasis in original). (For me it is impossible to look at a picture in a manner other than the way I look at a window, about which my first worry is to know what it overlooks, in other words, if, from where I am, "the view is fine," and I love nothing more than what stretches out in front of me as far as the eye can see.) Today, Breton continues, that infinite space is scoured by a powerful searchlight, that is, by Picasso, who "explorant lui-même cette route, y a porté fort avant ses mains pleines de rayons. Nul avant lui n'avait osé y voir" (p. 5); (exploring that road himself, has brought to it quite ahead his hands full of rays. Nobody before him had dared to display his vision on it.) Breton condemns the traditional theory of imitation. If there is a model for the painter, it is "purement intérieur" (purely interior). If, in a superb gesture, Breton drops the R-postulate, he seems not to be entirely free from the Psy-referent, but I believe that he is referring to it because of its expressive resources. He has never been read), to fall into easy spiritualism or even spiritism. He expects to obtain lessons in the art of life through the grace of invention in any domain of artistic exploration. But he does prefer what he calls "plastic expression." Thus, for him, the art of seeing is superior to the art of hearing. The reason he invokes to justify his stance is curiously Cartesian: painting is marked by values of clarity, distinctiveness, and strictness, all of which remind us of Descartes's "idées assez précises et assez distinctes"; music, on the other hand, is characterized by a lack of clarity, the impression called "confusionnelle" (p. 1). The latter adjective designates more than the vague and muddled quality of auditive reception; it points to the sin of creating, generating confusion. Indeed, Breton is unfair to music. Schopenhauer would reverse his scale of values. However, Breton is right when he realizes that, within the plurality of "languages" mankind has created, there is a basic duality between painting and music, as if they were at opposite ends of referential experience. Painting acts as inspiration, model, and guide in our perceptive life as soon as we try to give up rigid behavioral patterns. Painting adds to our relationship to the space around us its complex qualities of reference and, at the same time and depending on our outlook, gives us our existential weightlessness or weightiness. Associating Braque with Picasso in his admiration for their visual creations, Breton notes:

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Je sais que Braque cut naguère l'idée de transporter deux ou trois de ses tableaux au sein d'un champ de blé, pour voir s'ils 'tenaient.' Ce peut être três beau à condition qu'on ne se demande pas à quoi, côté de quoi 'tient' le champ de blé. Pour moi, les seuls tableaux que j'aime, y compris ceux de Braque, sont ceux qui tiennent devant la famine." (p. 11) I know that lately Braque has been thinking about bringing two or three of his paintings to the middle of a wheatfield, to see if they would "hold together." That could be very impressive, on the condition that one does not ask to what, or next to what, the wheat-field is "holding together." For me, the only paintings I like, those of Braque included, are those which hold in front of famine. In 1928, Breton and his friends are sincerely attempting to reconcile the two great revolutions of their time: the Marxist and the surrealist revolution. We should therefore not be surprised by his moral emphasis and the implicit protest against aesthetic formalism. What is more significant in this reference to Braque is the painter's gesture itself. We cannot suspect him of being subservient to the principle of imitation. Even when his sense of pictorial reference is reserved exclusively for the experience of painting, he thinks that perception itself is the fundamental experience of the painter, not the banal daily perception, but the perception of the artist who becomes the pure contemplator and will judge his own creations. One can even guess that that gesture takes the value of a challenge. Not only can Braque's picture hold its own in the middle of a wheat-field, but it asserts a superior reference, comparable to that of Braque's birds mentioned by the poet Saint-John Perse. In short, Braque's confrontation is at the same time a sign of humility and pride. It makes sense if seen in a surrealist perception, that is, as a promise of nonrealist language. Nevertheless, a canvas challenging a landscape does not yet explain the mystery of seeing as language. Breton understands this mystery at the very moment he exalts painting as the supreme art of reference and of surreal discovery. But he feels obliged to refer painting to an "interior model," thus invoking (it seems) the Psy-referent in order to free the artist and the writer from vulgar external realism. But he means more than a hidden spiritualist conversion through the mediation of the antinomy betweeen the exterior and the interior. Did he not say that surrealism is a revolution in language by language? Consequently, his reference to an interior model refers to a new language opposed to the language of common reality. Painting offers the strongest expression of that new language. In what

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way? To answer this question in my own terms, I must go beyond Breton's apology of painting and raise the following, broader question: In what way can painting be called a language and, as such, a model for poetic language' For Breton and most art philosophers, this question leads to a self-evident answer. But I can refine it: How is painting language and, at the same time, not language? What is its referential autonomy, but also its dependency on vocal language' Once again we are dealing with audiovisual antinomy, although the primary problem concerns the qualifications of seeing. Yet another another question must be asked: Is there an analogous situation between perceiving and painting, and is my perceptive life analogous to the relation between the painter and his viewer? The analogy implied in this case is old, and it likely belongs to any language: the world as picture, book, or symphony, as if any language needed to recognize the kinship of perception and art. Painters have at their disposal brushes, pencils, charcoal crayons, a great variety of pigments, and canvasses or any other material offering a normally flat surface to be covered. A painting (I am omitting the problem of a drawing) is made literally of combined lines and juxtaposed spots. That technical duality, has haunted, after Cézanne, contemporary artists like Picasso, Braque, and Matisse. One could even say that the genius of a painter is characterized by her way of tracing lines, spreading out colors, and even more, of transforming lines into colored extensions, or spots into linear movements, thus producing a referential effect. Some viewers pass them by. For them, lines and colors are not perceived as suchexcept if they are painters themselvesbut as references to natural and concrete objects or beings. Before an abstract painting they might say: "I do not understand what it represents," or, "I like those compositions of lines and colors, those movements of the brush; it is like chaos looking for shapes," or, "I am impressed, but I am unable to say why." Simply put, when the average viewer looks at a painting, he adopts the attitude of perception, with its common realist prejudice. This is the case even if we take into consideration the progress made in the reception of painting over the last fifty, years. Painters have taught the public another method of reference and another language of perception, that is, they have taught viewers to get rid of their perceptive habits and to accept painting as the true model that can give perceptive life its lived fullness. Consequently, instead of saying that painting improves our perception, one should accept a radical reversal of the statement: in the referential system connecting painter and viewer, painting is the authentic experience at the perceptive level; what is commonly called 'perception' designates its most

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degraded moments. Seeing is not an autonomous, isolated operation. It is part of a duality I suggest calling 'depictingseeing.' I do not know how it can fit within an advanced cerebral model. I just know that one day the brain-eye relationship should be understood along these lines of comprehension. I am responsible for my language of lines and colors. In a way, I am a modest painter as well as a modest speaker. Maybe that is why I often confuse depicting and seeing in my daily life, and why I understand seeing as a double experience of language and perception. The time has come to summarize my meditative segment, which began with my reading of Breton's Le Surréalisme et la peinture. I have found the leading force that inspired Breton's attempt "to set up the scale of painting" and to refer it to an "interior model." Mankind's linguistic revolutionary powers are rooted in the universal doublet that dominates visual life: depicting-seeing. The central part of my diagram should be amended as follows: "marking-depictingseeing-describing," in which group we must now emphasize the deep relationship between painting and marking, on one hand, and between painting and describing, on the other. Here, then, is another way of presenting my conclusion: "depicting-seeing" in itself is the art and experience of marking. When naming occurs, language becomes description and definition ad infinitum. Finally, I am able to understand why seeing is and is not language. It is language as marking exigency, but not yet completed by naming. That explains why, as I noticed before, painting can really exist without being named under the good or bad pretense of description, and why I feel inadequate when I give an account of my perceptions first apprehended as marking order. That explains also why the dialogue between painting and literature provokes contradictory reactions of inferiority and superiority. Breton's splendid descriptions in L'Amour fou do not "hold" before a Picasso; nor do Perse's lines "hold" before Braque's lithographs. But only in a way. A Cézanne is like a marking waiting for its naming, even if the latter is only a simple exclamation "Oh a Cézanne!" Again let us insist on the impossibility of establishing convenient priorities. What I have just said does not mean that painting comes first. Do we know the articulated language of the first painters/viewers at Les Eyzies? We have to face a reciprocal linguisticoexistential requirement: the painter's notion to use lines and colors as markers implies that language is already aware of the obligation of naming. It implies that I name those products of marking "pre-names," so to speak, but, on the other hand, language is unable to develop itself into a universe of names if it is not aware that a name has to be a marker as referential anchor and invisible linguistic particle. Such is

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the paradox of seeing: I cannot see without the intervention of the word seeing or its equivalents. The reason for the correlation of the brain and the optical system has become clear: my eyes permit my brain to elaborate markers without which language would be impossible; but the eyes contribute to the cerebralization of my body, that is, to its "lingualization." I apologize for yet another barbarism, but its presence near 'cerebralization' should remind me that the brain is both cause and effect of language, and vice versa. 16 Now the time has come to think about Breton's scandalous accusation against music and his excessive preference for painting in the two arts parallel and competitive participation in the revolutionary experience of language. This examination should help us better to understand the other side of the audiovisual experience while reminding us that language proper, with its articulated sounds, seems closer to music than to painting. It is notable that the modern hierarchies of the arts (see, for instance, Hegel and Schopenhauer) reserve first place for music or poetry, but never painting. It could be that our era has changed that auditive overindulgence. Today, we understand the arts as equal competitors, but with different powers. Yet we still remain conscious of the deep kinship between poetry and music, for example in songs where the intimacy of sounds and words reaches its highest intensity. Music and literature, be they separated or combined, obviously belong to the same sensorial system connected to the brain and parallel to the visual system. I define this complementary processing of sense-data by the doublet 'depicting-seeing.' How can we characterize (a synonym for 'define') the auditive system? A musician starts with sounds (either determined by acoustic tradition or borrowed from nature). These sounds are emitted by a great variety of instruments of which artists imagine the effects on human brains. Contrary to the painter, and except for the rare occasions when another musician reads a score, the "composer" entrusts the realization of his/her sound-universe to those intermediaries who are also called 'musicians,' that is, violinists, pianists, guitarists, trumpet players, and so on. Then, there is a receiver to whom music addresses its sounds and sometimes its words: the listener. The situation is the same for the production-reception of articulated sounds, except that the intermediary (this time called singer, actor, storyteller, or spokesperson) interposes his/her voice less frequently. To capture this system of sound-producing-receiving I am proposing the following doublet: voicing-hearing. One often forgets the necessity of that connection: there is no hearing without voicing. Vox clamans in deserto implies a voice looking for

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receivers and not reaching them. As far as our physical model is concerned, the auditive system is more complex than it seems. My throat and its vocal organization, my ears, are inseparable. They should belong to the same evolutionary process, but probably centuries will pass before theoreticians of the human body can experimentally establish that organic correspondence. In a very illuminative way, André Malraux put at the center of his literary creations what he calls "la voix de gorge" (the throat's voice), that is, the voice that comes directly from the depth of my brain, which I hear from inside before its "vibratory expulsion," as Mallarmé would say. Malraux does not mean that the listener is condemned to external reception. On the contrary, he implies, he even requires that the listener (the reader especially) must secretly reproduce the external message through her own throat's voice so that hearing is not a passive manifestation but secondary voicing. 17 One can extend that idea to painting: seeing is secondary depicting just as hearing is voicing by proxy. It is all the more true for describing what changes markers into voices and, ultimately, for visual perception as internal or cerebral depiction. Now, in reference to my diagram (p. 1883 comes the most important consequence in understanding auditive life. Where will we insert the "voicing-hearing" or "voicing1 voicing2" doublet? There is only one place: parallel to the series "marking-depicting-seeing-describing" is the series "voicing-hearing-defining-titling." This brings me to another confession. When I reached that conclusion about a month ago, I felt great resistance to accepting it. Did it mean that my inferences concerning defining and titling in their connection with naming (p. 175) were wrong, and that I was a victim of superficial and automatic conceptual manipulations? I reread all the pages devoted to the primacy of naming and its irreducible difference-and-correlation with marking. Days passed, filled with doubt. I could not give up my views on naming; but in the meanwhile, I could not imagine how to make previous insights fit the "voicing-hearing'' doublet when the "depicting-seeing" doublet agreed so well with my understanding of marking. Today, my former conceptual reluctance seems to be receding, although I wonder if this improvement in the stream of meditation is not attributable to becoming accustomed to that series of words, and if I am not forcing them on my writing by sheer stubbornness. Is my new understanding an illusion? Such a question has no answer, as Hume told us taro centuries ago. At this stage, I can only continue to play the game of consequences. Let us face it, the main consequence is that the auditive world, in its

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referential experience, has the power of changing a marker into a title, which means: the power of perceiving names as titles. I am not aware of names because I was at first aware of sounds; I do not make names with sounds. On the contrary, and true to my antirealist stance, I analyze names in sounds and noises. I must give maximum emphasis to the following observation: the auditive world is essentially a world of titles or proper names in my existential search for reference; to voice and to hear are exigencies of naming. With a nonparodic intent I should like to state: at the beginning of language was naming; and the word is the name. That step taken, we must now attempt to understand the correlation between "voicing-hearing" and "defining-titling," both acting as forces behind naming. How can the dual art of defining and titling be associated, in its essence, with the auditive biological experience, but not directly with the visual one? That question implies another fundamental question; What is a sound as distinct from a vision, if I apply to it the puzzling statement: a sound is a 'sound'? Mental notes taken in a New York hotel room a few weeks ago and put into writing as soon as I was back at my desk: Predawn; I am awakened by a telephone ringing in a adjacent room. I receive and understand the short series of sounds as more than sound waves; it is a sort of voicing bursting out of the nocturnal silence. I also know that it meansfor someone else"Time to get up!" Then I compare the noise to a sudden light exploding in the depth of darkness. But I know that my understanding through visual reference does not exhaust the initial "shock," which is not purely sonorous and not transposable into visual language, even if the metaphor (rhetoric would claim) helps consolidate the auditive receptive voicing. It is a qualified sound, not really a marker, but a call and as such, a title. Indeed, if a light abruptly illuminated my room, I could think in return that it is like an unexpected sound interrupting the peaceful silence that soothes the latent exasperation of my nervous system. The two systems (audio, visual) need each other, but with no possible substitution. The sound I receive in the middle of a quasi visual neutralization takes its value for itself, not as a marker, but as an exterior-interior voice, even if reduced to its minimum auditive quality. It is that experience which I proposed to call 'titling,' as the oral property of naming. I dare to generalize the above incident: the concept of sound in its objectivity is an abstract reference that presupposes the concrete experience of voicing as affirmation and recognition of title; thus, any sound compares to that ringing in the middle of silence. From sound to sound, any recognition

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inaugurates a life of title confrontation, that is, a life of voices bearing a specific originality, I mean to say, the originality of being named-and-naming. If I take yet another short detour, it is because I still feel that my understanding of voice as titling remains murky. Is not my New York experience analogous to what Heidegger named "Dasein"? If so, one should say that Dasein asserts itself as auditive expression. Is Heidegger's own writing revealing that audio-implication? In the Basic Problems of Phenomenology, he seems to indulge in preference of the visual. At the outset, he confesses that his aim is to achieve a fundamental illumination. However, he observes that "the world first becomes visible by what is thus spoken." 18 Heidegger associates the experience of the Dasein with the intervention of two series of images: one, audiolingual, the Dasein announces, reveals, discloses; the other, visual and gestural, the Dasein is the power of consciousness, it uncovers, unveils, opens up. I believe that the basic indication is 'disclosing,' stronger than 'revealing' or 'announcing.' Heidegger adds the other audiovisual references because he is too worried that he might attain the limits of language and conjure up a prelanguage through his own writing. He remains short of nominalism instead of going beyond it. That explains probably why he reinforces his awareness of the Dasein by words that describe actions of marking and changing a hidden place into a signalized assertion. For me the authentic Dasein should be Dahören und Dasehen, hearing-there and seeing-there, in a referential experience, that is, true disclosure through naming. It is time to clarify the relationship between "voicing-hearing" and "defining" and to show how definitions belong to the oral condition, while descriptions constitute the language of vision. We have already meditated on the ambiguous interrelations of describing and defining, noticing that even the strictest logician uses one term for the other. I suggested a momentary solution in referring to the opposite linguistic movements of opening and closing. However, 'opening' and 'closing' generate just a superficial understanding of language as reduced to a world of elementary actions. A description expresses the impossibility of staying with one named marker and thus, the impossibility of stopping naming in the quest for reference. Defining is more than trying to compensate for the flood of markers; it consists in conferring on a name an unimposable and inalienable title; if not, language would resemble the proverbial Heraclitean river, and reference would become a pure stream of unconscious senses.

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From this I draw the following consequences: naming requires titling and all titling is defined as the right and permanent possession of a name. I registered that telephone ringing at predawn, not only as a signal of 'awakening' and its consequences, but as the understanding of itself as definite naming, or naming in a limited way. To that basic requirement logicians add their well-known rules, but they do not change the initial impulse, which one can formulate this way: (I, you, we, they) name x the one who. . . that. . . I feel compelled to allude to another aspect of the oral experience of reference: contrary to visual apprehension, which puts markers in juxtaposition, oral experience generates the awareness of temporal unseizability of sounds: I hear the telephone ringing; one moment later, the sound disappears, forever uncatchable, whatever may be the pretense of what I call my memory. In an unconscious realist way I could write: naming reacts against the fleet of my life, in the same manner as Georges Bataille sees in language a fight against violence. However, in each hypothesis one supposes arbitrarily a prelingual state of affairs, and one forgets that the apprehension of fleet and violence properly belongs to the linguistic order. States of absolute becoming or absolute violence are inconceivable and unrealizable except in verbal imagination (for example, Homer describing Ajax's or Achilles's fury). Both are controlled by language, products of language aberration. In other words, the temporal experience that philosophies of the nineteenth century and of the beginning of the twentieth century have meditated on with such profundity, refers to the fundamental experience of marking-naming, with their complementary lives in describing and defining. I know that these remarks made in passing require long periods of reflection; I hope that others will devote to this issue the necessary time and effort. For the moment, I am satisfied with the following conclusions: (a) Time is neither a metaphysical nor a physical condition for language generation and expansion. It is a projection of our lingual experience into its oral condition. Through my language I learn to feel the passing of time and to control those feelings of exultation and despair, because my psychological and sociological times are neither more nor less than recurring experiences of my linguistic realizations, which take the shape of contrasting adventures of descriptions and definitions. (b) I cannot finish any description just as I cannot finalize any naming decision. We live our daily lives, in their intense and superficial

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moments, with an accumulation of unfinished descriptions and imperfect definitions. If I did not accept those linguistic failures, I would never be able to invent my language, and I would never invent myself through it. (c) Contrary to Russell, I wish to state that proper names are condensations of definitions, not descriptions, although one may wonder whether, in the exposition of his famous theory, Russell did not assimilate description and definition, confusing in a single manifestation two potential powers of language and its two sensorial sides, that is, the visual and the oral. (d) 'Depicting-seeing, voicing-hearing,' as dual properties of what one simply calls the double faculties of seeing and hearing, belong to the general process of the cerebralization of our body. Their respective necessity resides in the double nature of language naming, that is, marking and titling. This theory is reminiscent of two puzzling and contradictory situations that enable us to understand how and why language organizes itself into a world of meanings, 19 and why it tends to spatialize itself, that is, to make of seeing the art of knowledge. At the same time, I can understand now why and how naming is primarily oral, and secondarily visual, even if in most human cultures writing gives naming the fixation of a marker, although the original oral property is never eliminated from the drawing of names. Let us recall Saint Paul's Fides ex auditu. Depicting-seeing leads to the vision of an immense world of appearances, of games of lighted and shaded surfaces, of illusory plays of perspective, of scintillating marks against a background of darkness. Voicing-hearing evokes a world of revelations and beliefs, of interior convictions and liabilities, of prayers and faith. (e) Finally, this theory should comprise the coexistence of the three arts: visual arts, music, and literature. These arts are autonomous, but interdependent. Any priority between them is but a matter of gift and preference. None of them could exist without the contrasting presence of the other two. Each offers in its emergence something radically missing in the others. Eluard's poems will never replace a Picasso or a Miró painting. But the silence of paintings in an exhibition, and even more so in a museum, is a poignant and frustrating experience. After being absorbed in a Mozart symphony, I may feel the need to contemplate a miraculous fantasy by Fragonard. Or, more frequently, I will look for a poem or a prose text, as if music, in its acoustic purity, was unable to destroy another type of silence, the semantic silence that namesand only nameshave the power to overcome. Never-

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theless, literature cannot pretend to be the queen of human creations. The art of naming, as it is practiced through any of its configurations, challenges the arts in general. All arts push the language of perception to its dual and oral limits. But the art of naming will never substitute for the other arts. Does this mean that the life of reference has three main directions? I already discussed Nelson Goodman's brilliant suggestions, which are close to my own conclusions, and I take the opportunity here to recognize my debts to the author of Ways of Worldmaking. I would simply like to see his analysis freed from the Psy-referent and the F-function, just as he freed himself so well from the R-postulate. I believe in the only power of reference, which, if my meditations are correct, expresses itself by naming and forms the following quadrangle: naming, named, self-naming, self-named. Naming realizes itself through the doublet marking-titling, that is, through the duality of the two organic systems of vision and hearing. Thus, the visual arts, especially painting, are references limited to marking; music is reference limited to titling; both constitute two separate but interrelated worlds, which cannot subsist without their reciprocal and implicit reference to naming. Let us repeat one last time that there is no silent contemplation of painting or music; there is a feeling of impotence, the well-known ineffability of philosophers and mystics, or more frequently, simple carelessness, daunting shrugging of shoulders. We easily pass from one referential movement to another, not ready to compare them, and never satisfied. Very often we enjoy our limitations, naming ourselves, referring to ourselves as the ones who like Braque, or Fauré, or Char, or rock and roll, happy to be in a referential situation thanks to a chosen mediator. It does not mean that we are cultivating all resources of our personal cerebralization. Far from it. We choose the easiest way, the most successful behaviors we have learned to mime. Much more rarely, we invent our perceptions and languages and, through old means and models, we become responsible for a new art of naming. 8. Summing Up I feel ready for another meditation on language and memory, or, to put it my own way, on the language of memory, as it is at my disposal and as it is experienced in my daily life in which I must realize my referential condition. Before taking this important step, I will summarize my linguistic reorganization of two instrumental concepts: 'perception' and

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'language.' The best way to begin is to complete the diagram that helped me to float several conceptual buoys:

I wish to stress that this diagram should not be read with a genetic intent. The arrows do not suggest the preposition 'to,' but rather, since I cannot imagine a unique term for the three prepositions 'or,' 'by,' and 'with.' The movement the diagram suggests is a direct, simple superposition: reference/naming. After that assertion, terms are put on two parallel lines indicating the double realization of reference-naming. Let it be said that in this gathering of terms, once again, I avoid the risk of reintroducing involuntarily the R-postulate because the diagram refers to itself and its self-experience, as it were. For example, 'naming' refers only to itself; it is its own reference and its own referent. Subsequently, it extends its own nonrealist uncapping to the infinite totality of any vocabulary. Here I express two afterthoughts and, possibly, refute in advance two objections among many others. (1) I attempted to understand reference with the help of the sensorial doublets 'depicting/seeing' and 'voicing/hearing' and hastily and lightly discarded any reference to the other three sensorial systems of smelling, tasting, and touching, which obviously correlate directly with the language, especially when it reaches emotional intensity. I am aware (and how could I not be!) of their implications in referential life and other lingual existence: there are complex languages of touching, smelling and tasting, which participate in the recognition of reference. I describe a fruit with reference to its tactile, aromatic, and gustatory qualities. However, my referential experience is complete only when I reach the seeing/hearing duality and I am able to say: I see, I hear, and I am able to express it. I do not hesitate to utter the following paradox: as a human being, I touch an object when I name it touched and tasted. Again, no genetic interpretation is allowed: the art of touching implies the double art of depicting and expressing. The rest belongs to evolutionist biology, which may one day benefit from my awkward phrasings. (2) Most linguists, above all semioticians, could object that the term 'sign' and, more generally, the sign-paradigm are absent from my diagram. I ask them to give me credit for not ignoring that

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bizarre lexical situation, as if I were building a philosophy of language without the occurrence of the term and concept 'sign.' Actually, 'reference' stands for 'sign.' So does 'naming.' Their combined presence means that there is no sign which is not reference which is not naming. The rest of the diagram describes the life of signs without the direct help of the sign-paradigm. I reserve full exploration of that paradigm for the time (if it ever comes) when my meditation deals with the problem of meaning. At the center of the language of meaning one indeed finds the term 'sign.' Such a state of affairs is significant. You probably noticed that I am using that convenient adjective more than once. The semiotic decision to subordinate 'language' to 'sign' is understandable. It permits one to put aside the metaphysical problems I had to face when, probably because of my Cartesian training, I decided to start my meditations on language by analyzing the experience suggested by the term 'perception.' Furthermore, semioticians consider themselves subject to the imperatives of modern sciences among which we find the R-postulate and the F-function. Those afterthoughts having been settled, let us examine one last time the most intriguing issue of this meditation: PERCEPTION IS LANGUAGE. It does not mean that perception is a sort of language or a prelanguage that does not designate itself. From the beginning, I rejected those timid attempts to translate into words a perplexing state of affairs. First, it means that there is no so-called perception without language, and then, that perception is an essential aspect of language. For example, sense-data do not exist as psychological states (I agree with that recent discovery of philosophers of language). But they do exist as lingual states, as I have attempted to prove in my analyses on seeing and hearing. Let us go further: perception designates one of the most important activities of our language life, to the point that we tend to forget its linguistic origin and think of it as an autonomous psychological state. The radical rejection of the Psyreferent led me to this inevitable consequence: perception is but language. I confess my initial resistance to that statement. For many months, I accepted it as a pure linguistic fabrication, foreign to my daily and real life. Little by little, however, I have come to concede that I could not see without the presence of the word seeing. The example of the tree in my backyard became more than stubborn repetition. When I look at that tree, I "learn" to perceive it as a linguistic experience where marking and titling are combined, sketched descriptions; they guide me in the pictural composition of the entire backyard.

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I am now realizing that my internal cerebral activity formulating interior languages defines my perceptive life as strings of impressions of clarity or obscurity, of sounds and silence. More generally, I learn to subsume the current phrases of my life under the universal process of naming, and even to apprehend myself and my behavior as sustained exercises in naming. Moreover, I learn to accept that the 'rights' and 'duties' of my 'person' are no more and no less than the rules thanks to which my name asserts, engages or disengages itself: my name exists as affirmation and negation of references. I now come to the second important conclusion: NAMING IS THE PARADOXICAL CONDITION OF REFERENCE. Traditional formulae defining universal principles of our existence and thought should be changed or at least rephrased. Not "to be or not to be," not "I think, therefore I am," but ''to name (implying naming name), or not to be," and "I name (implying I name myself and others), (therefore) I am, you are, we are, they are." There is no Unnamable as inaccessible referent (in the Kantian sense), but an inexhaustible need for continuing naming, and an ever-unsatisfied experience of reference that can never satisfy our thirst for knowledge. In short, there is no Unnamable referent whose existence I can prove. I can but name the Unnamable. Naming, as the inescapable condition of existence, is not a simple assertion. It is the complementary alliance of marking and titling, and it spends its life within the intricacies of descriptions and definitions. The coexisting systems of vision and hearing constitute the elements of that complementarity in naming. They explain the constant complementarity and rivalry between the visual arts, music, and literature, their respective need for one another, their impossible claims for absolute reference, and their anarchic cooperation in the teaching of perception at different levels of our cultural experiences, from the simplest behavioral patterns to the refinements of creation. I conclude by considering the reversal of the initial formula and thus giving it its full power: LANGUAGE IS PERCEPTION. Language, as reference-naming, does not institute a world of words living in isolation. One gets that not-infrequent feeling when one artificially separates naming into signifiers and signifieds and makes of it a pure arbitrary flatus vocis, voice's exhalation. The experience of reference applied to the totality of the name is more than signifier-signified; it is essentially presence-and-absence-to-the-world, presence-and-absence-to-oneself: the name is what I call the world-and-the-self. The word perception qualifies the referential feeling of language. It has

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perverted effects on my comprehension. It behaves as if it were independent. Ever since the dawn of civilization it has attracted the attention of poets, artists, and philosophers. Thus, aspects of language were treated as isolated units that prevailed on language that was reduced to a strict instrumental function, a shadow of experience. 'Perception' was mainly responsible for the psychologization of the Western world and for the importance attached to vision and audition at the origin of mankind's creativity. Nevertheless, that perversion had very useful consequences. Indirectly it has contributed to the formalization of language, to the passage from logic to mathematics, to the development of physics around the theory of light. It has also helped by leading the modern world to a stage of audiovisual Imaginary and, paradoxically, to this new consciousness of language that made the present meditations possible. For a few seconds I put my pen down, looking at the intense blue, wintry sky through the delicate brown of leafless trees and some large patches of deep green. Then I write, redoubling the double pleasure of my almost interior perception-and-language. May the words be blessed thanks to which I am able to enjoy naming, to enjoy feeling myself-and-the-world, and to enjoy living on the brink of a mystery that is as deep as clarity can be, when clarity becomes blue or, as I would now say, is written blue. I know that I could use other words, even the tritest ones, for the same kind of referential expression and still be invaded by the same penetrating and blissful joy. I remember Van Gogh's Chair or Pair of Shoes. I dream of Francis Ponge's poem on "la chaise" or "les chaussures." To ressuscitate reference instead of letting it fall into entropic fatal erosion, I have to relearn the perceptive power of words, their visual markings, their sonorous properties. Scientists, poets, musicians, and painters are our masters of perception-andlanguage. Each of them plays a part. We receive their creations through our families, our schools, and our personal desires and aptitudes. Theologians speak of "continuous creation." We should say "continuous learning," which makes it possible for each of us to be born again and again in language. Yes, we are only namers and named. Without names we would be blind, deaf, and mute indeed.

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The Imagination of Reference II Perceiving, Indicating, Naming Edouard Morot-Sir University Press of Florida GAINESVILLETALLAHASSEETAMPABOCA RATON PENSACOLAORLANDOMIAMIJACKSONVILLE

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Notes Meditation One 1. During the last fifteen years, I have read extensively on reference. Unfortunately, I cannot do justice to all those who helped me reach my present point of understanding. I cannot quote all of them or "refer to" all of them. Some will be mentioned in footnotes. I do not plan to discuss the theories of reference that have proliferated in our century. Taking an optimistic view, I consider all of them important parts of the twentieth century's contribution to the cultural awareness of reference, thus true from a certain point of view. Any theory of reference is a normal or pathological aspect of the referential life of languages. These theories, then, convey aspects of language experiencing their referential powers with more or less luck and efficiency. For example, Frege's famous articles "Sense and Reference," "Function and Concept," and "Concept and Object" remain fundamental documents for a modern understanding of reference. It would not be enough to study them objectively as historical data. They should be integrated into my own train of thought, for what it is worth, and as if they were mine. An example not to follow is given by G. P. Backer and P.M. S. Hacker in Frege: Logical Excavations (1984). Is it really pertinent to conclude that ''Frege's incoherent concept of sense no more provides secure foundations for arithmetic" (p. 331)? To what is the phrase 'secure foundations' referring? One is tempted to approve of Frege for not having given foundations of any sort to the philosophy of language. At any rate, why devote more than 300 pages to Frege's incoherence, if his incoherence is so obvious? I prefer to try to understand how Frege was led to certain universal statements concerning language, and how he has oriented our language on reference. The history of ideas teaches repeatedly that the cultural impact of a theory lies less in its conclusion than in the manner in which it injects in any sort of problem new life and new formulations. In this way we may discover how a particular theory rejuvenates the referential power of language in one of its domains, especially at the crucial crossroads where metaphysics, logic, and mathematics meet in a confrontation of their respective linguistic enterprise. 2. See Heidegger's, Gadamer's, Ricur's works, and many others. 3. See Edouard Morot-Sir, The Imagrination of Reference. 4. I introduce here the distinction between a direct and indirect way of presence in the case of any reference. For I still do not knowand I suppose that I am not the only onewhen the word reference appeared in the use of my vocabulary, first casually, later more seriously, finally to become the center of my preoccupation with language. I am well aware that a single word is not my personal, private cogito:

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"I refer to, therefore I am." I am not sure that Descartes gave the right answer to Gassendi when the latter objected that there was no difference between the two sentences "I think, therefore I am" and "I walk, therefore I am.'' Actually, both were right, Descartes because of the omnipresence of the referential power of thought, Gassendi because any particular experience is by itself referential. Thus the verb 'to walk' possesses a double orientation: I am referring to the world, and the world is at the same time referring to me. Generalizing, one can say that any word of any vocabulary is a mouthpiece for universal reference. 5. This is the source of Russell's paradox of the catalogue of catalogues that do not mention themselves. 6. In the Dictionart, of Philosophy, ed. Dagobert D. Runes, Alonzo Church made a significant comment at the beginning of his presentation of propositional calculus: "It is possible in various ways to define some of the sentential connectives named above in terms of others. In particular, if the sign of alternative denial is taken as primitive, all the other connectives can be defined in terms of this one. Also, if the sign of negative and inclusive disjunction are taken as primitive, all the others can be defined in terms of these; likewise if the signs of negation and conjunction are taken as primitive. Here, however, for reasons of naturalness and symmetry, we prefer to take as primitive the three connectives denoting negation, conjunction and inclusive disjunction" (p. 171). Whatever the choice may be, it is clear that the omni-present operation is negation in relation to the affirmation of P, and to another operation or connective, as Church names them, which introduces another being or proposition Q that is, another P called 7. I put 'I' into parentheses because the problem of the subject of reference has not yet been confronted. I will have to compare "I refer to x" with "One refers to x," "It is referred to x, etc." 8. What about specialized words such as paleocortex or somatotopy? It is obvious that they do not exist in Bambara; but their absence in that tongue does not mean that they are impossible there. New scientific terms are immediately integrated in many languages. I cannot prove that a language exists that would be unable to assimilate them. Contrary to that, any tongue has the power to be developed into a modern language. 9. See Emile Benveniste, Indo-European Language and Society, p. 13. 10. In their Semiotics and Language: An Analytical Dictionary, A. J. Greimas and J. Courtès introduce the two lexemes 'dèbrayage' and 'embrayage,' which are aptly translated into English by 'disengagement' and 'engagement or 'shifting out' and 'shifting in.' For them, the shifting-out operation is "logically" prior to 'shifting in.' Not without modesty, they say "We can try to define disengagement as the operation by which the domain of the enunciation disjuncts and projects forth itself, at the moment of the language act and in view of manifestation, certain terms bound to its base structure, so as thereby to constitute the foundational elements of the discourse-utterance" (p. 87). Let us note, without further comments, the metaphoric charges in "disjuncting, projecting forth" and the implied reference to language-foundations. Finally, Greimas and Courtès cross-list

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'shifting out' and 'shifting in' with 'referent,' but not with 'reference,' as if 'reference,' cross-listed with 'referent' and 'natural world' was an unwelcome guest in their dictionary. 11. Because of his obsessive vendetta against logocentrism, J. Derrida puts the emphasis on "differ(e/a)nce" instead of "reference," although for Western conceptual systematization his philosophical revisionism comes down to the impossibility of giving words their proper referential power. Consequently, in order to show that processes of differentiation are controlled by the logical power of linguistic centralization, he distinguishes a good difference from a bad one. It seems that in his longing for a good difference, which he also calls 'trace,' Derrida falls victim to the very logocentrism he is fighting: his "trace" is but an offspring of the Heideggerian Dasein, or even of the Bergsonian ''ineffable," or the "expèrience-limite" of Georges Bataille. 12. Here I am borrowing directly from Michael J. Reddy's "The Conduit Metaphor" and "Appendix." 13. Better terms could be 'antedox' or 'mexadox'; but I prefer to avoid neologisms when they are not inevitable, and as long as I am not forgetting that neither 'para' nor 'paradox' imply other prefixes. 14. Reread the last lines of Beckett's Molloy: "Then I went back into the house and wrote, It is midnight. The rain is beating on the windows. It was not midnight. It was not raining." 15. It is the solution proposed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty in Phénoménologie de la perception. 16. In Le Visible et l'invisible, Merleau-Ponty stops his analysis at this moment with the help of a chiasmatic metaphor. Meditation Two 1. Among many texts revealing Peirce's realist and pragmatist implications, I select one referring to Peirce's latest presentation of his justly celebrated division of signs between Icons, Indices, and Symbols, in one of his letters to Lady Welby (October 12, 1904): "I define an Icon as a sign which is determined by its dynamic object by virtue of its own internal nature . . . like a vision . . . I define an Index as a sign determined by its dynamic object by virtue of being in a relation to it. Such is a Proper Name. . . . I define a Symbol as a sign which is determined by its dynamic object only in the sense that it will be so interpreted" (Letters, p. 12). With those definitions Peirce put himself at the semiotic center of language; but I cannot follow him to the end of his lexical division. As example of icons he gives "a vision . . . , an individual diagram, . . . a curve of the distribution of errors" (p. 12), implying that those 'icons' are schematic images of the world. Consequently, he is still thinking in terms of representing reality, and I refuse to yield to such a facile recourse. Furthermore, Peirce seems to assimilate 'indexing' and 'meaning.'

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Even if it were true that indexing is made through names, it does not mean that indexing and naming arc identical: to give an indication or to perceive an indication is not the same as attributing a name to somebody or something. 2. See, for example, the concept of ostensive reference fixing, as used by S. Kripke or H. Putnam. 3. In Language of Art (1968), followed by Ways of Worldmaking (1978) and Of Mind and Other Matters (1984), Nelson Goodman offers one of the best efforts to derealize the concept of perception. His analysis is based on the distinction between three ways of "rendering" the world: describing, picturing, and perceiving. In an important section, "Reference" in Of Mind, he states that 'rendering' should be interpreted as reference, which is for him a very general and primitive term covering all the cases of 'standing for.' Goodman recognizes two large groups or categories of 'rendering' as 'standing for:' (1) "Denotational categories," which are verbal denotations (naming, predication, description), notation (writing, music, dance), pictorial denotation (drawing, painting, sculpture, photo, film, etc.) and quotation; (2) "Non denotational reference or non literal reference," comprehending exemplification, fictive or figurative denotation (for example, the picture of a unicorn) and expression. I have already discussed in "Meditation Three'' of my Imagination of Reference, Goodman's epistemological presuppositions in his philosophy of art, where he does not succeed in avoiding the Psy-referent and the implicit interference of the F-function. However, one must praise him for his efforts to expose the varieties of reference and not to limit it to strict denotation. No one before him has felt so strongly the universality and versatility of the referential power. My main difference with his perspective resides in my willif wavering at timesto remain a coherent and stubborn prisoner of language. 4. In his sumptuous metaphysical parade, Bergson suggests the need for the consciousness of referential and independent power through the striking formulae 'vital impulse, creative evolution, spiritual energy, intellectual effort, dynamic schema'; thus, he indicates indicating as the conversion of energy into image. 5. Two essays profoundly changed the French language after 1940. Georges Bataille's L'Expérience intérieure (1943; trans. 1988, Inner Experience) is a dramatic attempt to obtain linguistic borderline experiences such as laughter, metaphysical meditation, poetry, and eroticism, which are beyond the rational realm, but reach full referential intensity. Bataille sees in language an experiment in differentiation and reduplication. For him, language is a temporary closure, never completed and infinitely renewable; it is a sort of luxury and useless waste of energy; it is also a proscription of violence, because transposing energy and language constrains the primitive and violent expansion of life; it creates a world of proximity and communication. Thus, literature, being conscious of the paradoxical state of language, is transgression and excess by irony: language turns against itself and denounces the permanent lie of being or not being the Same and the Other, of being a difference that plays at being the same. In L'Etre et le néant (1943), Jean-Paul Sartre displays a language of consciousness that fights against

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the logical sclerosis of the language of essence, but confesses that it is a necessary struggle that is lost and must be renewed at any moment of human life. Freedom, as the will-to-consciousness and the correlated will-to-language, finds its final expression in the ironical literary protest of a prisoner who knows that there is no possible escape, and that his lucidity will soon fall into the forgetfulness and sleepiness of the being-in-itself. Both Bataille and Sartre recognize in language the negation, even the exhaustion or enervation, of desire and violence. Secretly they seek to restore desire and violence in terms of language, but they are aware that linguistic terms are neither being nor nothingness. To reveal treason in your writing does not make you an honest mouthpiece of Being or Nothingness. In that perspective, in 1943 both essays were inaugurating an era of pessimism rooted in linguistic skepticism, an era of referential suspicion, which still dominates our writing experiences. We are still fighters for the lost cause of our culture: sexual violence will never be converted into cerebral violence, the blindness of desire will never be transformed into the lucidity of reference, the biological power that contains our bodies within the social order will never translate into political freedom. 6. See, for example, David Marr, Vision (1982), especially the "General Introduction": "What does it mean to see? The plain man's answer (and Aristotle's too) would be, to know what is where by looking. In other words, vision is the process of discovering from images what is present in the world, and where it is. Vision is therefore, first and foremost, an information-processing task, but we cannot think of it just as a process. For, if we are capable of knowing what is where in the world, our brain must somehow be capable of representing this informationin all its profusion of color and form, beauty motion, and detail. The study of vision must therefore include not only the study of how to extract from images the various- aspects of the world that arc useful to us, but also an inquiry into the nature of the internal representations by which we capture the information and thus make it available as a basis for decisions about our thoughts and actions" (p. 3). Thus, for Marr, 'representing' is the keyword for the understanding of vision, and the minimal meaning one can give in the context is to present a second time, internally, in the brain, external images of, to quote Marr, "what is present in the world.'' The realist presupposition is obvious; also the obscurity of the basic words representation, images, and information, with their accompanying verbs such as 'to process, to know, to discover, to extract, to capture, to see,' and conjunctions such as 'what, where'all words that should not be received as concepts belonging respectively to the two distinct Lo and L1, but as experiments and tokens within the general language of reference. 7. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who pushed his last writings to the limit of metaphoric expressibility, decided to stick to that formulation: the "chiasmatic reversal of the Visible and the Invisible" is making of the optical nerve's chiasmatic process the physical image of a deeper and more universal chiasm. A brilliant and attractive metaphysical analogy (or is it a synecdoche?) indeed! However, why not mention, ill the same vein, the Audible and the Inaudible? Obviously, here there is no chiasmatic condition in the relation of the brain with its sense-apparatus. One

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may wonder whether Merleau-Ponty is not referring to the chiasmatic physiological structure as a convenient image for the metaphysical concept of complementarity, already used in quantum mechanics. Then there are the inevitable questions that I believe find their answers within strict linguistic exploration: "How and why, when and where can we speak of complementarity?" 8. As far as I know, the only references are Louis Lavelle, La Dialectique du monde sensible (1921), and Jean Nogué, La Signification du sensible (1936). In his Phénomenologie de la perception, Merleau-Ponty offers only scattered references to that problem. 9. See, for example, Henri Bergson's justification of the priority of affirmative judgment over negative judgment in the fourth part of Creative Evolution (1944) and my discussion ill "Le Jugement négatif," in La Pensée négative ( 1947, p. 289 ff.). 10. In our century, philosophers used and abused the grammatical corrective of dashes. I do not plan to indulge in that rhetorical convenience, which reminds us that words are not absolute discrete entities, but exist, with or without dashes, in a state of permanent communication and reversibility. However, I shall call for the help of dashes whenever it is useful to fight against any temptation to return to the ontological primacy and the schema: "Being is . . . " 11. According to Greimas and Courtès's Sémiotique: Dictionnaire de la théorie du langage (1979), deictics "sont des éléments linguistiques qui font référence à l'instance de l'énonciation et à ses coordonnées spatio-temporelles: je, ici, main-tenant. Peuvent aussi servir de deictiques les pronoms ('je,' 'tu'), mais aussi les adverbes (ou locutions adverbiales), les démonstratifs, etc. Il s'agit 1à, on le voit, de l'énonciation énoncée telle qu'on peut en saisir le jeu à travers les procédés de débrayage et d'embrayage qui simulent la mise en place ou la suppression d'une distance entre le discours énoncé et l'instance de son émission" (pp. 86-87); [ . . . are linguistic elements which refer to the domain of the enunciation and to its spatio-temporal coordinates: I, here, now. Thus pronouns ('I,' 'you') can serve as deictics, as well as adverbs (or adverbial phrases), demonstrative adjectives, etc. It is clear that we are here dealing with uttered enunciation as it is manifested by the interplay of procedures of disengagement and engagement which simulate the establishment or abolishment of a distance between the discourse utterance and the domain of its uttering (Semiotics, p. 71 )]. 12. See, for example, Michel Bréal's Essai de sémantique (19243: the article and relative pronoun come from a former demonstrative (p. 211); Quine's Word and Object (1960), chap. 3, "The Ontogenesis of Reference": 'the' is a degenerated form of 'this' and as such a singular description; Ann Banfield's Unspeakable Sentences (1982): she makes a significant distinction between the verbal present, which represents the moment of the utterance, and the indicator 'now,' which represents the moment of the act of consciousness; she observes that in speech the two coincide (p. 121). I think that Banfield's important distinction should be understood without the intervention of the Psy-referent and terms such as 'representation' or 'act of consciousness.' The coincidence of verbal indicative, 'I see' with 'now' or 'this' is the practical analysis of a preverbal, prenominal indicative power.

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13. Extract from a letter quoted in the Times Literary Supplement, January 17, 1986. 14. See Paul Bové's Destructive Poetics, Heidegger and Modern American Poetry (1980), pp. 264 and 268. 15. In Greek orismo means 'separation, setting a boundary, definition, aphorism.' See Aristotle, Categ.5.31. 16. Emile Benveniste was probably the first linguist or philosopher to emphasize and systematize the subjectivity of language. In Problèmes de linguistique générale, vol. I (1974), he writes: "C'est dans et par le langage que l'homme se constitue comme sujet; parce que le langage seul fonde en réalité, dans sa réalité qui est celle de l'être, le concept d'égo.' La 'subjectivité' dont nous traitons iciest la capacité du locuteur à se poser comme 'sujet"' (p. 259) (It is in and through language that human beings constitute themselves as subjects; because, in reality, in its own reality of being, language alone founds the concept of ego. The 'subjectivity' with which we are dealing here is the speaker's capacity to posit himself as 'subject'). He concludes his note on "De la subjectivité dans le langage" with the following epistemological remark: "Bien des notions en linguistique, peut-être même en psychologie, apparaîtront sous un jour différent si on les rétablit dans le cadre du discours, qui est la langue en rant qu'assumée par l'homme qui parle, et dans la condition d'intersubjectivité, qui seule rend possible la communication linguistique" (p. 266) (Many notions in linguistics, possibly even in psychology; will one day appear in a different light if they are reinstated within the framework of discoursewhich is the language as spoken by manand resubmitted to the condition of intersubjectivity, the only one that makes linguistic communication possible). I agree with Benveniste when he calls for the return of language to language, and when he suggests that "subjectivité" is not to be explained by intersubjectivity and communication. However, he seems to imply a hidden linguistic idealism when he refers to language "as assumed by the person who speaks.'' He makes of reflexivity an innate property of language. He comprehends language by its origin in the human subject, even if this subject is not spiritual or transcendental, but linguistic. The mystery of language's emergence does not go further than the Cartesian cogito and its illusory clarity! 17. See Roderick Chisholm, The First Person: An Essay on Reference and Intentionality (1981): "Thus Russell once wrote: 'All egocentric words can be dc-fined in terms of "this." Thus "I" means "the biography to which this belongs."' Elizabeth Ascombe has suggested still another way in which 'I' might be implicated in terms of 'this.' . . . We, however, have explicated the use of the first-person pronoun in terms of direct attribution and without reference to the use of other demonstratives, and without presupposing that 'I' has a sense. We can explicate the use of other demonstratives in a similar wayand without explicating all of them by reference to the first-person pronoun" (pp. 45-46). Chisholm should be praised for his emphasis on the originality of every indicative, as I call them. However, he remains under the spell of the Psy-referent, when he explicates 'this' as follows: "'This thing F' is used in English to express the following property of

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its utter: believing himself to be such that the thing he is calling attention to is F'" (p. 46): "believing himself to be . . . " and "calling attention to . . . " belong obviously to the Psy-vocabulary and refer to Psy-properties independent of language. The beginning of Chisholm explication, "'This thing F' is used . . . " is also a deliberate call for the Ffunction. Finally Chisholm introduces surreptitiously the reflective power when he writes: "believing himself . . . " and then, like many other philosophers, relics on an idealist interpretation of subjectivity. 18. With the example of the French pronouns in mind, Benveniste makes a clear and neat distinction between the "correlation of personality" which comprehends the opposition of the first- and second-person pronouns, and the third person pronoun as the nonperson, and the "correlation of subjectivity" characterized by the opposition of first and second persons 'je, tu.' At the plural level, 'nous, vous' indicate "amplified persons" when 'ils, elles' as nonpersons, accept a true plural (See Problèmes, pp. 235-36). One can admire the sharpness of that analysis, but not be convinced by it. The concept of a nonperson is obscure if it means something other than the property of neutrality in reference to the primitive opposition of living beings and nonliving beings. Again, my interdiction of an external referent seems methodologically safer: Is that referent primitive, as some grammarians think it is' I doubt that it would be more primitive than the grammatical distinction between the three persons. Even if the hypothetical primitive man, woman, or child perceives a difference between animate and inanimate beings, it does not prove that he controls the distinction between 'human beings, living beings, objects' and that that distinction caused the pronominal trinity. 19. Sculpture and architecture, of course, also belong to the universe of "fine arts," which not only show how to rebuild the world in view of visual experiences, but mainly give the art of indicating its full expression. Differences among the fine arts are very illuminating when we attempt to understand the ways human beings elaborated their need for indications into a complex civilization, but they are not immediately essential to our meditation. Meditation Three 1. See "Glossary," in Simon Blackburn's Spreading the Word, Groundings in the Philosophy of Language (1984). 2. I will use Max Black's translation in the 1960 edition of Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege. The German text was published in Zeitschrift fur Philosophie und Philosophische Kritik, vol. 100 (1892) under the title "Sinn und Bedeutung." In the glossary, Black justifies his decision to translate "'Bedeutung' by 'reference' instead of its natural rendering by 'meaning'; but 'meaning' in ordinary English answers to Frege's Sinn rather than Bedeutung . . . . The rendering given here seems to be the simplest means of expressing Frege's thought faithfully" (Translations, p. ix). On the contrary, in Frege's Collected

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Papers on Mathematics, Logic, and Philosophy (19845, the editor Brian McGuinness remarks in his preface: "As in most previous publications of this house 'Bedeutung' has throughout been rendered by 'meaning"' (p. viii). For the moment, let us leave that question open. In my present reading of Frege's text, my only concern is the problem of naming in its relations to reference. 3. See his article "On Concept and Object." 4. One of the most remarkable attempts to establish a connection between the perception of sense-data, geometry and physics, was made by Jean Nicod in his essay Géométrie dans le monde sensible et le problème de l'induction (first French edition in 1924). I will refer to the translation Geometry and Induction by Jean Nicod (1970). Following his method of logical construction (see p. 54), Nicod observes that "any statement of physics contains some geometry. . . . [L]et us begin by imagining worlds whose laws arc simple enough to be apprehended in a simple glance . .. science is using idealized simples" (p. 71; emphasis added). Then, the author imagines "subjects" whose "intelligence performs the service of a perfect guide in a narrative whose real object is purely descriptive" (p. 74; emphasis added). he continues, "Let us, therefore, suppose that in one single place, attitude, and orientation, our subject experiences a certain quality of sensation, for example, a sound of a certain sort. The place, attitude, and orientation which determine the hearing of this sound will be collectively known as the reference position" (p. 91). Before proceeding to that imaginary exercise, Nicod states that "the elementary terms of nature are entities known as sense data. These arc what we refer to as this . . . in speaking of something immediately present to one of our senses: this is a tree'' (p. 35). It is clear that Nicod's logical reconstruction corresponds to a geometry of reference at the simplest levels of indicating and marking; but it is also obvious that he is looking for names giving to indicators and markers their linguistic existence. Furthermore, Nicod's work on language is close to my own meditation as far as, in his attempt to unravel "the geometrical structure of one of the simplest imaginable worlds" (p. 152), he is mapping out our perceptive universe, organizing our system of marking, thus naming the basic markers of our perception. 5. In Speech Acts (1969), J. Searle underlines the relationship between reference and identification and proposes an axiom of identification: "If a speaker refers to an object, then he identifies or is able on demand to identify that object for the hearer apart from all other objects" (p. 79). Unfortunately he sticks to the R-postulate and the Psy- referent as intersubjectivity in view of explaining reference. He does not seem conscious of the fact that identification is reference by way of naming. Presupposing that ontology precedes linguistics, his problematic is dominated by the following question: How can I or any other language-user separate a singular object among many objects? As I have repeated again and again, such a theoretical attitude accepts implicitly the existence of a language-of-being preexisting a language of reference. On the contrary, I am trying to experiment language-of-being through the life of the languageof-language. However, we must meditate on Searle's deep insights, when he associates reference to search for identification.

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Meditation Four 1. I do not say more, not because I believe that ontologies are the capital sin of Western civilization, but simply because I wish to be cautious. I have access to Eastern thoughts through translations, that is, through ontological presuppositions. My guess is that, in one way or another, Eastern thinking (a very ambiguous tag indeed!) has not been able to avoid convenient ontological rigidity. 2. For all Lavoisier quotations, spelling has been modernized. 3. Lavoisier, Traité élémentaire de chimie, p. xxxii: "Mais enfin les sciences ont fait des progrès, parce que les Philosophes ont mieux observé, et qu'ils ont mis dans leur langage la précision et l'exactitude qu'ils avaient raises dans leurs observations; ils ont corrigé la langue; et l'on a mieux raisonné." 4. For the reader interested in the development of the modern scientific language, here are the full titles given by Lavoisier to each part of his treatise: Part 1, "De la formation des fluides aériformes et de leur décomposition, de la combustion des corps simples et de la formation des acides"; Part 2, "De la formation des Acides avec les bases salifiables, et de la formation des sels neutres"; Part 3, "Description des Appareils et des Opérations manuelles de la Chimie." 5. Saint-John Perse, Letters, pp. 321-22. The last sentence in French is "La petite bête s'appelle UlysseJe ne sais plus trop pourquoi" (The name of the small creature is UlyssesI don't know why anymore). 6. In a very penetrating way, John Searle makes the following remarks on the proper name: "But the uniqueness and immense pragmatic convenience of proper names in our languages lies precisely in the fact that they enable us to refer publicly to objects without belong forced to raise issues and come to an agreement as to which descriptive characteristics exactly constitute the identity of the objects. They function not as descriptions, but as pegs to hang descriptions. Thus the looseness of the criteria of proper names is a necessary condition for isolating the referring function from the describing function of language" (Speech Acts, p. 172; emphasis added). Searle's semantic system is different from mine because he remains attached to the R-postulate as basic condition for the understanding of language. Nevertheless, he rightly underlines the irreducible distinction of the two functions of referring to proper names and describing objects. He makes of reference a pragmatic function and implies that descriptions belong to the semantic condition of language. He assimilates reference to a peg permitting "to hang descriptions." Again, the Rpostulate is the culprit in introducing surreptitiously a mysterious Psy-referent responsible for the describing function of language. Searle's metaphor is by itself revealing: it suggests that 'referring to' has the double power of marking and anchoring by naming, and thus instituting the identity of an object. I agree with these perceptive remarks, but believe that they would take more illuminative significance if they were predicated on realist-idealist assumptions. 7. "La femme porte le désordre dens la société par la passion" (Women introduce chaos into society by passion) (Balzac, Euvres, IV, pp. 649-50).

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8. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason: "bleiben keine anderen Begriffe übrig, die zum Definieren taugen, als solche, die eine willkürliche Synthesis enthalten, welche a priori construirt werden kan: mithin hat nur Mathematik Definitionen" (no more concepts remain that can be used for the purpose of defining than the ones that contain an arbitrary synthesis, that can be construed a priori: it follows that only mathematics has definitions). Quoted in Lalande, Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philosophie, p. 211. Meditation Five 1. See the French translation of Hermes by François Thurot (1976) and the excellent introduction by André Joly (Geneva: Droz, 1972). 2. I would like to mention an elegant, systematic, and concise presentation in English of the grammatical structures of modern languages based on strict "sentence analysis," that is, on the process of breaking up a sentence into its parts: An Advanced English Syntax, Based upon the Principles and Requirements of the Grammatical Society, by C. T. Onions (1904, repr. 1965). The first stage in grammatical differentiation is that of the subject and the predicate, both interpreted grammatically: "the Subject denotes the person or thing about which something is said by means of the Predicate. The Predicate is what is said about the person or thing denoted by the Subject" (p. 4; emphasis in original). There arc five forms of predication: a verb alone; a verb with predicate-adjective, predicate-noun or predicate-pronoun; a verb with an object denoting a person or a thing; a verb with two objects; a verb with an object and a predicate adjective or predicate norm. Putting aside the systematization of the relation subject/predicate (it could be argued as long as this relation is really grammatical or borrowed from logical analysis), one will observe that that sentence analysis, in its basic definition or description, is not far from any contemporary or previous grammar: it cannot dispense with the common grammatical lexicon (noun, verb, etc.); the reference to reference is not avoided and the verb 'to denote' is used as surreptitious synonym; tile ontological language is also present with the doublet "person/thing." This having been said, I am not condemning enterprises of grammaticalization, but I must be aware that this kind of systematization is surrounded by a nonsystematizable environment that belongs also to grammaticalization in general or within a given tongue. It is responsible for the ontological and psychological languages. Willy nilly it refers to an original experience of reference that it is time to reconsider. 3. Maybe that referential interpretation of the name/verb distinction unravels the hidden message behind the Cartesian Cogito. There is no existence without the commitment of a name-noun to a verb, and vice versa. Referring to a name is referring to its existence as a verb. I name a name as a norm, therefore I give to that name a verbal existence. That interpretation of the Cogito is less anachronistic than it seems. It inspired Port-Royal's theory of the verb in chap. 13 of the

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second part of the Grammaire générale. Language users must invent words that "mark affirmation" ("marquassent l'affirmation," p. 95) no less than words signifying objects of thought. So, a verb is "a word whose main use is to signify affirmation" (''Et c'est proprement ce que c'est que le verbe, un mot dont le principal usage est de signifier l'affirmation" [Grammaire, p. 95; emphasis in original]). Later, after rejecting especially Aristotle's and Scaliger's definitions, Arnauld and Lancelot complete their own: "A word that marks affirmation by some attribute, with the designation of the person, the number, and the tense" ("un mot qui marque l'affirmation de quelque attribut, avec désignation de la personne, du nombre, et du temps" [p. 103]). Port-Royal's analysis is conducted at the level of the Psy-referent and based on the distinction of the three operations of the mind: to conceive, to judge, to reason (concevoir, juger; raisonner), finally reduced to the first two, because the third one is "just an extension of the second" (see Part 2, chap. 1, p. 28). To come back to my position, I have only to remember that the Psy-referent has no explanatory power by itself, and thus that the distinction 'to conceive/to judge,' far from founding the duality noun/verb, derives from it, as well as the concept of perception which, for Port-Royal, is one of the two parts of reference. However, Port-Royal simplifies the linguistic experience by reducing it to a problem of signification, and subsequently, by reducing verbs to judgments. Indeed verbs lead to judgments, but their deep power lies in the perception-reference experience. 4. This bizarre situation is reflected in M. Grévisse's Précis de grammaire française and its definition of common and proper names: (a) "The common name is the one that fits (convient à) all beings or objects of the same species"; (b) "the proper name is the one that fits only a unique being or object, or a group of individuals of the same species." Where is the difference between a common name that refers to "all the beings or objects that belong to the same species" and a proper name that refers to "a group of individuals of the same species"? For instance, the word American could apply to both definitions. 5. For instance in two chapters of Hermès, entitled "Upon the Form or Peculiar Character of Language," and "Concerning General or Universal Ideas," James Harris (1975) notes that language is expressive of nothing further than general ideas, but that, because "life . . . is merged in a multitude of particulars," language looks for methods of expressing particulars. Proper names are one case, the others being the use of 'definitives' or articles. Then Harris gives an example: "Were therefore the Inhabitants of Salisbury to be transferred to York, tho' new particular objects would appear on every side, they would still no more want a new Language to explain themselves, than they would want new Minds to comprehend what they beheld. All indeed, that they would want, would be the local proper Names; which names, as we have said already, are hardly a part of language, but must equally be learnt both by learned and unlearned, as often as they change the place of their abode" (p. 373; emphasis added). 6. See Section 7 below.

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7. One finds an interesting allusion to the difference between concrete and abstract names in Port-Royal's Grammaire générale. It comes in the chapter devoted to nouns and adjectives. ("Des noms, et premièrement des Substantifs et Adjectifs"). For Arnauld and Lancelot, nouns signify substantive names and adjectives, as adjectives signify names, accidents. The substance/accident opposition is referred to the opposition of things and "manners of things" such as to be red, hard, informed, etc. Then Port-Royal proposes a rather awkward theory of the transformation of adjectives into nouns such as from 'colored' to 'color,' or from 'prudent' to 'prudence,' as well as a theory of the transformation of nouns into adjectives, like 'man, 'human.' They note that Greek and Latin have an infinity of words formed along that device, such as aureus, bovinus, while Hebrew, French, and other "vulgar tongues" prefer, for instance 'd'or,' 'de boeuf.' Then, a theory of abstract nouns is introduccd in a short paragraph: If one strips those adjectives formed with the names of substances from their connotations of the things to which they belong, then one forms new substantives that are called abstract, or separated (séparé). For instance, from hornme, having formed humain, from humain one forms humanité. Port-Royal rejected the Scholastic ontology, and that the distinction of substance and accident has a psychological foundation, that is, "the knowledge of what happens in our mind" (''la connaissance de ce qui se passe dans notre esprit" [p. 26; Part 2, chap. 1, title]). the Psy-referent is closer to a theory of reference than the R-postulate, but it still remains too far; it subordinates the name and its modes to a theory of meaning. In a similar way, Hobbes explains the formation of abstract ideas by consideration of "accident or quality." We make up a name for that accident: for instance, from living, life, from hot, heat, etc. He concludes "And all such Names are the Names of the accidents and properties, by which one Matter, or Body is distinguished from another. These arc called Names abstract; severed (not from Matter, but) from the account of Matter" (Leviathan, I, iv, p. 16): "Account of" could be replaced by "reference to." Thus an abstract name would be a name severed from the reference to matter. It is known also that for Hobbes the R-postulate implies that every thing is "Individual and Singular." 8. For instance, Grévisse suggests the following definition: "The concrete name is that which designates a real being or thing, with an independent existence, perceptible by senses" ("le nom concret est celui qui désigne un être ou une chose réelle, ayant une existence propre, perceptible par les sens"), and "the abstract name is that which designates a quality, a property separated by our mind from the subject to which it is linked, and is considered as existing independently of the subject" (Le nom abstrait est celui qui désigne une qualité, une propriété séparée par notre esprit du sujet auquel elle est unie, et considérée comme existant indépendamment de ce sujet). 9. At the present moment of my meditation, Heidegger is helping me in elaborating that consciousness of reference through the opposition between the concrete and the abstract.

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10. See Paul Bargues, trans., Le Livre des morts des ancients Egyptiens, especially pp. 16-19. 11. See E. A. Wallis Budge, The Book of Opening the Mouth: The Egyptian Texts with English Translations. 12. I know that the expression 'weight of reference' requires a serious elaboration, but I wish to postpone it. Is it not the normal condition of metaphysical meditation to go from one state of reference to another, hoping that future ones will reinforce the past ones and reciprocally, since there is no word that does not depend on all the other words and that does not control them. In spite of many pretenses to the contrary philosophy cannot be seen as a unilinear and progressive linguistics that is unfolding. 13. See Marcel Granet, La Pensée chinoise. 14. Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu, I. English translations are taken from the translation by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin. 15. At the end of his life, Wittgenstein was fascinated by these problems of "seeing" and "hearing." "The concepts with which Wittgenstein is particularly concerned in these 'Last Writings' are those of 'thinking' and 'seeing? More particularly, his concern is with the relation between the two. Of central importance to his whole later work is the idea that there is a kind of seeing that is also a kind of thinking (or, at least, a kind of understanding): the seeing of connections. We see a connection in the same sense that we see an aspect, or a Gestalt. To distinguish this sense of 'see' from that in which we see a physical object, and to describe the connections and the differences between this sense of 'see' and the concepts of "'thinking' and 'understanding' is the central task of the work written at Ross's Hotel," writes Ray Monk in his Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (p. 537). On the following page, he remarks: "The example of understanding music was important to him" and he quotes Wittgenstein: ''Understanding a sentence is much more akin to understanding a theme in music than one may think" (p. 538). 16. I do not pretend to draw all the metaphysical implications of those statements. In the present context, I am facing more urgent problems to improve my audiovisual understanding. 17. See my study "La Voix et les voix d'André Malraux," pp. 17-30. 18. Martin Heidegger, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, pp. 171-72. 19. I am quite aware that my current meditation on perception presupposes the understanding of 'meaning.' Its unavoidable presence in our tongues will require another level of meditation and an entire revision of contemporary philosophies of meaning.

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Bibliography Arnauld, Antoine, and Claude Lancelot. Grammaire générale at raisonnée, ou, La Grammaire de Port-Royal. StuttgartBad-Canstatt: Fromman, 1966. Backer, G. P., and P. M. S. Hacker. Frege: Logical Excavations. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. Balzac, Honoré de. La Comédie humaine. Paris: Gallimard, la Pléiade, 1952. Banfield, Ann. Unspeakable Sentences: Narration and Representation in the Language of Fiction. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982. Bargues, Paul, trans. Le Livre des morts des anciens Egyptiens. Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1967. Bataille, Georges. Inner Experience. Translation and introduction by Leslie Anne Boldt. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988. Beckett, Samuel. Molloy, A Novel. New York: Grove Press, 1955. Benveniste, Emile. Indo-European Language and Society. Translated by Elizabeth Palmer. Coral Gables, Fla.: University of Miami Press, 1973. . Problèmes de linguistique générale, Vol. I. Paris: Gallimard, 1974. Bergson, Henri. Creative Evolution. Translated by Arthur Mitchell. New York: Modern Library, 1944. Blackburn, Simon. Spreading the Word: Groundings in the Philosophy of Language. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984. Bové, Paul. Destructive Poetics, Heidegger and Modern American Poetry. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980. Bréal, Michel. Essai de sémantique, science des significations. Paris: Hachette, 1924. Breton, André. Le Surréalisme at la peinture. Paris: Gallimard, 1928-65. . uvres complètes. Paris: Gallimard, la P1éiade, 1988. Budge, E. A. Wallis. The Book of Opening the Mouth: The Egyptian Texts with English Translation. London: K. Paul, Trench, Truber, 1909. Buraud, Georges. Les Masques. Paris: Seuil, 1948. Carnap, Rudolf. Meaning and Necessity: A Study in Semantics and Modal Logic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956. Char, René. (Euvres complètes. Paris: Gallimard, la P1éiade, 1983. Chisholm, Roderick. The First Person: An Essay on Reference and Intentionality. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981. Church, Alonzo. "Logic, Formal." Dictionary of Philosophy. Edited by Dagobert D. Runes. New York: Philosophical Library, 1942. Colette. uvres. Paris: Gallimard, la P1éiade, 1986. The Pure and the Impure. Translated by Herma Briffault. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1966, 1980. Descartes, René. uvres et Lettres. Paris: Gallimard, la Pléiade, 1953. Elderfield, John. Henri Matisse: A Retrospective. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1992.

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Evans, Gareth. The Varieties of Reference. Edited by John McDowell. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982. Flieger, Jerry Aline. Colette and the Fantom Subject of Autobiography. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992. Frege, Gottlob. Collected Papers on Mathematics, Logic, and Philosophy. Translated by Max Black. Oxford, New York: Blackwell, 1984. . Conceptual Notation, and Related Articles. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972. . Tranzslations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege. Translated by Max Black. Oxford: Blackwell, 1960. Goodman, Nelson. Langnage of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968. . Of Mind and Other Matters. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984. . Ways of Worldmaking. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978. Granet, Marcel. La Pensée chinoise. Paris: La Renaissance du Livre, 1934. Green, Julien. Le Langage et son double. Bilingual edition by Julien Green. Paris: Editions de la difference, 1985. Greimas, A. J., and J. Courtès. Sémiotique: Dictionnaire raisonné de la théorie du langage. Paris: Hatchette, 1979. . Semiotics and Language: An Analytical Dictionary. Translated by Larry Crist. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982. Grévisse, Maurice. Précis de grammaire française. Gembloux, Duculot, n.d. Gross, John, ed. The Oxford Book of Aphorisms. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. Harris, James. Hermès. New York: AMS Press, 1975. . Hermès. Translated by François Thurot. Introduction by André Joly. Geneva: Droz, 1972. . Philological Inquiries. New York: AMS Press, 1975. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. London: SCM Press, 1962. . Existence and Being. South Bend, Ind.: Gateway Editions, 1976. . Identity and Difference. New York: Harper and Row, 1969. . Parmenides. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992. . The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982. Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan; or, The Matter, Form and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiatical and Civil. Oxford: Blackwell, 1651, 1946. Jakobson, Roman. The Framework of Language. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1980. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. New York: Anchor Books, 1966. . Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1981. Kripke, Saul A. Naming and Necessity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980. Lalande, André. Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philosophie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1956.

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Lavelle, Louis. La Dialectique du monde sensible. Paris: Alcan, 1921. Lavoisier, Antoine. Traité élémentaire de chimie présenté dans un ordre nouveau et d'après les découvertes modernes. uvres. Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1793. Reprinted in 1965 by Johnson Reprint Corp., New York. Marr, David. Vision: A Computational Investigation into the Human Representation and Processing of Visual Information. New York: Freeman, 1982. McMahon, William E. Hans Reichenbach's Philosphy of Grammar: The Hague: Mouton, 1976. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phénoménologie de la perception. Paris: Gallimard, 1945. . Le Visible et l'invisible. Paris: Gallimard, 1964. Mill, J. S. A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive: Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation. New York: Longman, 1952. Monk, Ray. Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius. London: Jonathan Cape, 1990. Morot-Sir, Edouard. La Pensée négative. Paris: Editions Montaigne, 1947. . "La Voix et les voix d'André Malraux." In André Malraux: Unité de l'uvre, unité de l'homme, edited by Christiane Moatti and David Bevan. Paris: La Documentation Française, 1989. . The Imagination of Reference: Meditating the Linguistic Condition. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993. Nicod, Jean. Geometry and Induction, Containing Geometry in the Sensible World and the Logical Problem of Induction. Translated by John Bell and Michael Woods. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970. Nogué, Jean. La Signification du sensible. Paris: Editions Montaigne, 1936. Onions, C. T. An Advanced English Syntax, Based upon the Principles and Requirements of the Grammatical Society. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1904, 1965. Pascal, Blaise. uvres complètes. Paris: Gallimard, la Pléiade, 1954. Peirce, Charles S. Letters to Lady Welby. New Haven: Whitlock, 1953. Proust, Marcel. A la recherche du temps perdu. Paris: Gallimard, la Pléiade, 1954. . Remembrance of Things Past. Translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin. New York: Random House, 1981. Putnam, Hilary. How Not to Solve Ethical Problems. Lawrence: Department of Philosophy, University of Kansas, 1983. . Renewing Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992. . Representation and Reality. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988. Quine, W. V. Word and Object. Cambridge: Technology Press of MIT, 1960. Reddy, Michael J. "Appendix, A Partial Listing of the Metalingual Resources of English." In Metaphor and Thought, edited by Andrew Ortony. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979. . "The Conduit MetaphorA Case of Frame Conflict in Our Language about Language." In Metaphor and Thought, edited by Andrew Ortony. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979.

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Runes, Dagobert D., ed. Dictionary, of Philosophy. New York: Philosophical Library, 1942. Russell, Bertrand. Logic and Knowledge. Essays 1901-1950. London: Allen and Unwin, 1956. . The Problems of Philosophy. New York: H. Holt, 1912. Saint-John Perse. Letters. Translated and edited by Arthur Knodel. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979. . uvres complètes. Paris: Gallimard, la Pléiade, 1982. Sartre, Jean-Paul. L'Etre et le néant. Paris: Gallimard, 1943. Searle, John R. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. London: Cambridge University Press, 1969.

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Index A Absence: /presence and indefinability, 4; and identity and difference, 9; /presence paradigm, 28-29; /presence of God, 37-38; /presence of truth value, 71; /presence and naming, 92; and silence, 144; and presence, to world, to self, 190 Animism: and naming, 138 Aristotle: and order, 39; and hierarchical beings, 100; and grammatical distinctions, 130; and language dissemination, 140; and degrees of reality, 146; and mimesis, 165 Art: of painting, and criticism, 52-53; and reference, 59-60; science and, 69-70; of naming, and perception, 81; and identity, 94; and science, 100-106; and society, 108; of describing, and knowledge, 111-12; of writing, 113-15, 140-43, 160-73; and grammar, 132, 150-52; and verbs, 134; and animism, 138; abstract, 145; of language in Egyptian temples, 154-55; and Judeo-Christian cultures, 156-58; and seeing, 175-79; and voicing-hearing, 184-86; and language of perception, 187; of touching, 188 Artificiality: of linear and circular representations, 4; of alternative denial, 6;

of antinomic groupings, 17; of logical and linguistic examples, 38, 58; of universal rational principles, 55; of perceptive distinctions, 57; of concrete/abstract distinctions, 145; of signifier/signified distinction, 190 Auden, W.H.: on Saint-John Perse, 162 B Balzac, Honoré de: on description, 114-16; and realism, 164 Banfield, Ann, 198n.12 Bataille, Georges: and transposition of energy, 196n.5 Baudelaire, Charles: and naming of pain, 82; and identification, 105; and 'correspondances.' 136 Beckett, Samuel: The Unnamable, 49 Behaviorism: and double circuitry, 21-22; and sensory data, 23 Being: and language, 6-8, 21, 38, 80, 160-63; as prior referent, 7, 38; and Bergson's 'attention à la vie,' 31; and seeing, 35-36; as infinite, 37-38; and need for, 45; and triple reflective indication, 48-52; and marking, 62-63; and identity, 66, 85, 93-94; and naming, 79, 82, 85, 93-94, 97-100, 105-7, 131-33, 137-40; and Heidegger's 'Dasein,' 80; and being aware of, 114; and describing/knowing, 117-18; and action, 134, and Parmedian formula, 135; and concrete/abstract opposition, 144-49; and knowing, 154-57; and sense-data as fictitious, 170-72 Benveniste, Emile: on subjectivity of language, 200n.18 Bergson, Henri: on vital impulse, 31; and 'ineffable,' 31, 35; and affirmative judgment 50, 198n.9; Creative Evolution, 62;

and indicating, 196n.4 Berkeley, George: on renunciation of language, 35; on perception, 41 Book of the Dead (the), 154-55 Bréal, Michel, 198n.12 Breton, André: and automatic writing, 110; and perception-naming, 163; Le Surréalisme et la peinture, 176-80 C Carlyle, Thomas: and naming, 63 Carnap, Rudolph: on proper names, 63

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Cerebrality: as referential power, 21; as cerebral energy, 22; and seeing, 33, 181; and principle of identity, 94; and desire, 107; and perception, 172-74; and voicing-hearing, 181-87 Char, René: on poetry, 163-64 Chisholm, Roderick: on indicatives, 199n.17 Circularity: of meaning, 3; and linearity, 4; of Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu, 4; and referential condition, 5; of noun/verb relationship, 136 Cogito: and cogitans, 49; before language, 50; practical, 95 Colette: Break of Day, and desire for language, 140-43 Complementarity: linguistic, 24; of naming and named, 80; of identity and difference, 95; of description and definition, 121; of nouns and verbs, 135; of perception and naming, 163; of marking and titling, 190; and Merleau-Ponty, 197n.7 Conception: as experience of language, 10-11, 13, 23 Condillac, Etienne de: 24; and analytical philosophy, 101 Courbet, Gustave: and silence, 53 D Death: and power of negation, 6; and vision, 59, 62; names and relation to life and, 83, 98, 108; etymology of reference and, 120; in Book of the Dead, 154-55 Deference: 13-14, 17; and inattention, 31-32, 37

Definition: as pragmatic decision, 12-13; and aphorism, 44, 199n.15 Derrida, Jacques: and reference and difference, 195n.11; Descartes, René: and triple reflective indicating, 49; and modes of perception, 60; and body-mind dualism, 72, 103; and evident identity, 87; and practical Cogito, 95; and definition, 121; and modern agnosticism, 155 Dialectics: and order, 50; as rejected explanation, of marking, 74; of describing, 109-16 Dickinson, Emily: on language impotence, 43 Difference: 14; between word and mark, 62; and identity, 88, 119; and Derrida, 195n.11 E Epistemology: problems of classical, 21; and naming the invisible, 34, 50; and existential judgment, 38; and requirement of propriety, 55; and perceptual omnipresence, 60; and psy-referent, 62; and Kantian apriorism, 68; and Lavoisier's sensualism, 101; and naming, 105, 125; and description, 119, 123; and definition, 121; and Kripke's psycho-realism, 126-28; and Port-Royal grammar, 129-30; and linguistic freedom, 136; and concrete vs. abstract names, 143; and the unknowable, 155; and language of art, 176 Evans, Gareth, 125-27 F Fer-paradigm, 13 F-function: 1-3; and marking, 75;

and naming, 94; and Port-Royal's distinctions, 130; and Grévisse's grammar, 131-32; and traditional and modern arguments, 136; and grammatical concepts, 150; and Goodman's Ways of Worldmaking, 187; and semiotics, 189 Flieger, Jerry Aline: Colette and the Fan tom Subject of Autobiography, 140-43 Frege, Gottlob: on proper names, 65-74; and truth decision, 93; and Russell, 122-23 Freud, Sigmund: and Oedipus complex, 107

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Genetics: author's discard of, 20, 62, 74, 88, 109, 114, 120, 139, 143, 150, 188; in Russell's theory, 125 God: and ontological requirement, 8; and reference, 14; and obligation of naming, 24; and perception of, 35; and absence/presence, 37; and linguistic condition, 39; name and naming of, 79, 84-85, 156-57; and power of naming, 83; as totality/unicity of names, 89, 120; and dynamic of naming, 90; and proper naming, 95 Goodman, Nelson: and reference, 196n.3 Green, Julien, 159-60 Greimas, A.J. and Courtès, J.: and deictics, 198n.11 Grévisse, Maurice: Précis de grammaire française, 131-32; on common and proper names, 204n.4; on concrete and abstract names, 205n.8 H Haiku, 44 Harris, James: and attribution, 130-31; on proper names, 204n.5 Hegel, Georg W.F., 50 Heidegger Martin: and 'Dasein,' 2, 39, 184; and anguish of nothingness, 50, 80; and concrete vs. abstract meditation, 205n.9 Hermeneutics: and philosophy, 3-4; Hume, David: on intuitive identity, 88, 97 Husserl, Edmund, 9, 39, 50 I Imagination: vs. representation, 1; as linguistic legacy, 9, 114; and verbal images, 37-38; and intellectual and artistic constructions, 51-52, 135; and Frege's 'sense of sign,' 68;

swearing and popular, 84; reader's perception as an act of, 112; concrete/abstract antinomy, and linguistic, 145-47; and perception, 163-64; absolute states as verbal, 185 Indefinability: of reference, 3; of language, 4; and the unnamable, 18-19 Invisible (the): and the visible, 35, 155, 176; and description, 117; and language, 150; as referent, 155 J Judgment: negation of, 8; as experience of language, 10-11, 13-19, 119, 135; and Russell's principle of, 20; existential, 38; 79; Frege's value, 71; Final, 95, 100 K Kant, Immanuel: and transcendental ego, 9, 49, 60; and ontological argument, 38, 79-80; and modes of perception, 60; and epistemological apriorism, 68; and the Unknowable, 94, 155, 190; and definition, 121; and Kripke on necessity, 126; and modern agnosticism, 155 Knowledge: 3; and R-postulate, 8, 21; and reference, 12; Russell's concept of, 20; Frege on senses and, 73-74; and meaning of name, 76; and titling, 86; and being, 98; and describing, 111-19; Russell on, 123-24; and painting, 148-49; of grammar, 151; and naming, 155, 162, 190;

and seeing, 186 Kripke, Saul A.: and B. Russell, 122; on naming, 125-27 L Language: and linguistic condition, 1-2; 2, 22, 37, 96, 107; and negation, 7-8; and being, 8; and psychology, 8-10; and mind, 9; and poetry, 9, 38, 43, 63, 83; and emotions, 10, 27, 57, 82; and the unnamable, 18-19, 80, 85; and ontological substantialism, 39; and grammatical diversity, 40; and painting, 52-53, 59, 60; dynamic of, 53; and vision, 57, 59, 62; and linguistic evolution, 62; and onomastic participation, 75; and insult, 83-84; and the sacred, 84; and

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Languagecontinued naming, 90; and proper naming, 95; and arbitrariness of sign, 98; and physical Unnamable, 100; and the infraperceptive, 104; and identification, 105; and presence, 106-7; and desire, 107, 141; and reading, 113; and meaning, 119, 186; and proper naming, 139-40; made invisible, 150; and grammar, 150-52; 'bourgeois' approach to, 165; and linguistic aporia, 173; as perception, 190 Lavelle, Louis: and diversity and unity of senses, 198n.8 Lavoisier, Antoine: and scientific language, 100-105 L-language: 11, 15-17; and the language of objects, 22-23; and description, 110; and knowledge, 117 L-paradox: as inevitable linguistic simultaneity, 19 Lukács, Georg, 164 M Maine de Biran: and power of naming, 83 Mallarmé Stéphane: and 'l'uvre absolue,' 43; and 'notion pure,' 160-61 Malraux, André: and personal markings, 60, 61; and voicing-hearing in literary creation, 182 Mart, David: and representing, 34, 197n.6 Marxism: and Breton's surrealism, 178 Matisse, Henri: and signs, 53 Meaning: and circularity, 3-4, 6; and emotions, 10; of reference, 13-14; and naming, 34, 76-79; with no reference, 37, 67; as absolute indication, 43;

as empty, 43; as infinite, 43; double, 56; Frege's varieties of, 66; and reference, 74, 83; of 'identity,' 93; of description, 109; language as source of, 119, 186; in Russell's Logic and knowledge, 123; in Port-Royal Grammar, 129; true, 133; and grammar, 139; and religious faith, 153; etymological, 161; and sign, 189; the problem of, 189, 206n.19 Memory: as experience of language, 10-13, 21, 119, 135; and meaning, 43; and perception, 51, 166; Proust's involuntary, 57; and naming, 80, 166; and describing, 111; language of, 187 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice: 2, 23, 195n.15; and complementarity, 197n.7 Metaphor: and books as, 6; 'conduit,' 18; and identification, 33; and senses, 35; Proust's use of, 43, 166; natural and artificial perceptions as, 52; as opposed to direct naming, 77; of seeing and hearing, 174; as consolidation of perception, 183 Mind: and world independent of, 1-2; as preexisting, 1-3, 7-8; and language, 8; and linguistic necessity, 9, 68; and sensory-based theory vs. language of, 20; and brain, 34; and modern idealism, 45; as guarantee of linguistic propriety, 55-56; and Frege's truth-value, 70;

and Kripke's 'necessity,' 126 Music: and painting in perceptive reference, 175, 176, 177; and literature, 181, 186; as titling, 187 N Necessity: linguistic, and mind, 9; of reflective indicators, 45-46; of naming, 66-67, 100, 108, 126, 150, 156; Frege on, 67; social, 67, 75-76; of description, 110; of simultaneous identification/differentiation, 119; Kripke on, 126-27; of doublet, 'voicing' and 'hearing,' 181;

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'depicting' and 'seeing,' 'marking' and 'titling,' 186 Negation: and definition, 3; and affirmation of reference, 6-8, 14; of the unnamable, 19; of the Invisible, 35-36; and Olson's 'via negativa,' 43-44; and language, 80; and description, 109-16; and knowing, 118; and affirmation of name, 190 Nicod, Jean: and spatiality of reference, 201n.4 Nietzsche, Friedrich: and problem of truth, 93; and deconstruction, 118 Nogué, Jean: and diversity and unity of senses, 198n.8 Nothingness: and reference, 7; and 'deference,' 13-14, 17; and linguistic condition, 37; and being, 50, 154 O Olson, Charles: and poetic minimal expression, 43 Onions, C.T.: on subject and predicate, 203n.2 Ontology: and language requirements, 8; and existential judgment, 38, 79; and snobism, 99-100; and Grammaire de Port-Royal, 130; and James Harris's Hermès, 130; and poetics, 162; and Eastern thinking, 202n.1 P Painting: as off-language experience, 52; as marking, 59, 180; abstract, 145; Braque's abstract, 147-49; and Breton's surrealism, 176-80; and naming, 180-81 Parmenides: and Being, 9, 36, 135; and identity, 107;

and noun/verb relationship, 135 Pascal, Blaise: and virtual knowledge, 3, 48; and naming-value, 89-90, 95 Peirce, Charles S.: and indexing, 28, 195n.1 Perception: as experience of language, 10-13; and conceptualization, 20-21; and reference as language, 23-25, 28; and presence, 29-30, 60; and seeing, 32-34, 176-81; and negative reference, 36-37; and indicating, 40-52, 56; and marking, 58-62; and naming, 79-86, 122-25, 156, 160, 187; and description, 110-20; and reference, 136-52, 166-67; Egyptian temples as models of, 159; and names-masks, 163; 'bourgeois,' 164-65; and language, 172-75, 189-91; and voicing-hearing, 182-84 Phenomenology: 1, 56; double circuitry and intentionality in, 21; and Merleau-Ponty, 23, 195n.15; the visual in Heidegger's, 184 Philosophy: of language, 2, 14, 127, 152; presuppositions of, 2-4, 65; of philosophy, 6; of Bergson's 'ineffable,' 31, 35; and positivism, 100; and Condillac's analytical naming, 101; and language, 120; and necessity, 126; Newtonian, 131; of reference, 138, 143; of religion, 153-58; and mimetic vocation of language, 165; of art, 176 Plato: idealism of, and Western cultures, 146-48 Poetry: and reference, 9; and logical paradoxes, 38; and pure indicating, 43; and naming, 63;

and primitive naming, 83; and linguistic freedom, 136 Polonius (Hamlet), 43, 44, 82, 112 Ponge, Francis: and proper naming, 138 Port-Royal grammar: on names and verbs, 129-30; and Cartesian Cogito, 203n.3; on concrete and abstract names, 205n.7 Presence: /absence and indefinability, 4; and identity and difference, 9; /absence paradigm, 28-29; as sense indications, 35; /absence of God, 37-38; absolute, 46; omni-, 60;

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Presencecontinued /absence of truth-value, 71; of naming, 82; /absence and naming, 92; and language, 106-7; and absence to the world, to Self, 190 Proust, Marcel: and circularity, 4; and psy-vocabulary, 10; and metaphoric indication, 43; and remarking of lost memories, 57, 59; and perception beyond indication, 62; and pleasure of naming, 108; and description, 109; and imaginary naming, 112; and experience of naming, 166-71 Psychology: and language, 8-11; of perception, 22, 24, 28, 112, 191; of mind and attention, 30-32; and senses, 35, 189; and indicating, 46; and Frege's antipsychologism, 67-74; transfer of 'desire' from, to language, 107; and proper naming, 138, 164-65, 170; and concrete/abstract names, 143; and Breton's masking/unmasking, 163; author's discard of, 171, 185 Psy-referent: 1, 2, 5; and language, 8-9, 50; and perception, 20-21, 56, 189; author's elimination of, 30-32, 36, 38, 56, 109; and Being, 45; and Sartre, 49; and Frege, 62, 74; and naming, 76, 85; and interjections, 83-84; and personal pronouns, 90; and identity, 94; and identification, 105; and 'desire,' 107; and internal language, 112; and Balzac's types of languages, 115;

and knowing, 116-18; and Port-Royal's distinctions, 130; and Grévisse's grammar, 131; and traditional/modern arguments, 136, 150; and concrete/abstract opposition, 147; and Mallarmé's 'notion pure,' 161; and Breton's artistic exploration, 177; and Goodman's Ways of Worldmaking, 187 Q Quine, W.V., 198n.12 R Realism: mental or psychological, 2, 70, 130; and titling, 98; of action, Balzac's, 115; Kripke's nominal, 126-27; sensualist, 149; and romanticism, 160; and the modern novel, 164-65 Reality: of experience vs. representation, 1; of language, 9, 40; and need for aphorisms/definitions, 44; and painting, 52; naming and social, 75; and words, 78; and truth in ontological language, 107; and imagination in story telling, 112-13; Russell's postulate of 'acquaintance' of, 126; and Kripke's 'rigid designators,' 126-27; in Colette's Break of Day, 142-43; and 'namity,' 144; Aristotle's degrees of, 146; Plato's transcendent, 148; and religious faith, 156-59; and literary realism, 164-67; as referencing, 175; surreality and common, 177-78 Reciprocity: of 'deference' and reference, 13; and paradox, 19; of vision and reference, 23; of the three reflective indicators, 49; of perceiving, naming, describing, 112; of concrete and abstract names, 143;

of linguistic and existential requirement, 180; of visual arts and music, 187 Reference-affect, 10-11 Ref-paradigm: 14-15; and L-language, 18 R-postulate: 1, 2; and reference, 8, 107, 188; author's discard of, and perception, 20-21, 56; and classical epistemologies, 21; and indicating, 27; and attention, 32; and seeing, 34, 174; and requirement of propriety, 55-56; and marking, 61; and Frege's reference, 67; and naming, 75, 85, 137; and mimesis, 78; and identity, 88, 93-94, 97; and describing, 109-10, 116-18; in Port-Royal's distinctions, 130; in Harris's Hermès, 130; and Grévisse's grammar, 131; and traditional and modern arguments, 136; and concrete/abstract opposition, 146-47; and

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language, 150; and scientific language, 152; and Mallarmé's poetry, 161; and modern novel, 164; and surrealism, 176-77; and Goodman's Ways of Worldmaking, 187; and semiotics, 189 Russell, Bertrand: and objective judgment, 20; and definite descriptions, 28, 122-23; and indication, 40; on proper names and logical quantification, 125; and S. Kripke and H. Putnam, 196n.2 S Saint-John Perse (Alexis Léger): and the barrier of name, 108-9; on Braque's abstract painting, 147-49; on art of naming, 161-63 Sartre, Jean-Paul: Les Mots, 49; and transposition of energy, 196n.5 Searle, John R.: and identification, 201n.5; on proper name, 202n.6 Semiotics: and behavior, 20; and sign-paradigm, 188-89 Sévigné, Madame de: and double referencing, 105 Shakespeare, William: and original indicating (Polonius, Hamlet), 43, 44, 82, 112; as reference, 113-14 Silence: and original indicating, 43, 44, 82, 112; of painting, 52-53; and absence, 144, 205n.9 Simultaneity: of negation of two terms, 6; linguistic, between basic affirmations and negations, 19; of idealist reciprocal statements, 23; existential, of world and Self, 24; of world and language, 41; of indicating and knowledge of indicating, 47; of triple reflective indicating, 49;

of qualities of referencing, 57; of identifications and differentiations, 119; of description and definition, 121; of naming and description in Russell's theory, 125; of nominalization and verbalization, 133; of proper and common names in poetry, 138; of operations of reference, 172 Speech: and notion of force, 21-22; and deictics, 41; meaning in indirect, 67; and speech-acts, 71 Spinoza, Baruch, 4 Stalinism, 61 Surrealism: and André Breton's Vases Communicants, 110, 163, 165; and discard of R-postulate, 176-77; and painting, 177-81; and Marxism, 178 T Time: as a category, 3; Proust's lost, 60, 166; and language marking, 61; space and, and deictics, 82; and identity, 88; and scientific naming, 104; and perception/description, 109; and learning, 113-14; and Harris's 'Universal Genus,' 131; and grammar, 131-32; and noun/verb duality, 135; Plato's, and recurrent platonism, 146; Balzac's Comédie humaine of his, 164; mimesis and modern, 165-71; Breton and his, 178; as projection of linguistic condition, 185-86 Transparency: of seeing, 29, 33-34; pseudo-, of language, 60; Colette on, 141; of new writing techniques, 170 U Unknowable (the): and necessity of naming, 94, 156-57;

in Ancient Egypt's religion, 153-55; as mystery of language, 158; and literature, 159 Unnamable (the): and indefinability, 18-19; and Samuel Beckett, 49; in physical world, 100; and literature, 159; and naming, 190 V Virtuality: of knowing, 3-4; and reference, 7-8, 159 Visible (the): and the Invisible, 35, 155, 176; André Breton on, 163; and 'seeing,' 181; and spoken word, 184 W Wittgenstein, Ludwig: 4, 39; and 'seem' and 'hearing,' 206n.15 W-Language: and L-language, 18 Writing: the undefinable, 3; and reinventing language, 12; on writing, 19;

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Writingcontinued and experience, 22-27; the minimal indication, 44; and double indication, 47-49, 105; and presence, 60; and linguistic necessity, 68; Frege's conceptual, 71; and will for name, 83; and identity, 88-90, 101; and description, 110-13; as action, 114-15; and knowledge, 116, 190; and Being, 134; and desire for language, 141; as harmony of concrete and abstract experience, 147-49; hierographic, 154-55; and poetical experience of naming, 159-71; and voicing-hearing, 186; and consciousness of language, 191

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