Burke....

Well, so much has already been said, I figured I'd offer some clarifications as to how I perceived it.

- I believe that when Burke describes man as the “symbol-using animal” and also as the “inventor of the negative” he is describing man’s use of language. Derrida said that language is only a system of difference. This is to say that for someone to know what one thing is is to know how it is different from every other thing he knows. It’s not very complicated, that’s to say that you know what dog is because it’s not a cat, a chair, a country, a hill, etc.This ties into Husserl and Heidegger’s writings on phenomenology when Burke mentions the example of a tree. We see the tree, and we name it a tree. Therefore, the name “tree” is only a symbol of what we see. From the on, a tree “can’t not be a tree.” Furthermore, we know the tree by what its not (a dog, a house, a lawn, etc.)

- The issue of language and how we are “rotten with perfection” is evident. We want so badly to be able to explain ourselves fully, yet it’s never possible. I agree with Derrida on this issue, for every word, there is a context, and the context can never be dully defined. This is why words can’t be defined. We were given the illusion of definition from the Eighteenth century lexicographers like Samuel Johnson who started writing dictionaries to put specific meanings with words. The problem is that we have been instilled with the myth of definition because of this. In the eighteenth century, they were defining the words as they understood them. We no longer feel that we have the right to do that, so we resign it to the modern day lexicographers. Most people, therefore have the idea that the definitions of words don’t change through time (Look at the words “cool,” “gay,” “nature,” etc.).So, I would say that there is no such thing as a semantic meaning, only a poetic meaning, because there are so few words that lack some emotional distinction among different people. For instance, in another post about the “Guerilla Girls,” Rebekah said (I’m not trying to pick on you or anything; this just stood out to me, because of Morrissey, whom you mentioned in the post), “I am not aspiring to call myself a feminist.” The way I look at the word feminist suggests exactly what you mentioned in the middle of the paragraph: equilibrium. When women like Helene Cixous were developing (she still is) what would become “feminism,” they were saying that there should be equality, not that men should pay for millennia of treating women as lesser people. They were simply fighting for equal power. Yet, now there are teachers who, because of reading Cixous, will not call on the men in their classes, they disregard everything the mails can squeeze in. The “meaning” of the word has changed. I’m a feminist, but not in the way that most people think of it these days. I’m stopping here.

I figure this will suffice.