Word-Things: Haptic Semiology in Contemporary Writing and Thought

In the service of reconceptualizing twentieth-century philosophies of language (after recent developments in continental philosophy), this dissertation introduces a theoretical tool: the word-thing. The word-thing constitutes a reconfiguration of the sign through a dual operation: on the one hand, a word-thing conceives of the thinghood of words and, on the other hand, a word-thing encapsulates the linguistic entification of the Kantian thing-in-itself. Ever since Kant, the question of the relationality between word and object has been framed by post-German Idealism in which apparent phenomena stand in stark contrast to their noumenal basis (or the thing-in-itself), and twentieth-century philosophies of language have been largely a struggle to think words and language within Kantian categories.

By contrast, Word-Things posits an inherent embodiment of the word and an innate linguistic and haptic quality to things. Drawing on work in speculative realism, object-oriented ontology, and non-philosophy, Word-Things advances a new theoretical approach to language called haptic semiology. Word-Things theorizes the relation of word and object as a form of touch, distinct from anthropocentric hapticity, in which the signifier presses against the referent, reformulating the substance of the sign itself. The dissertation considers the following issues: 1) an ontology of language, 2) the reconfigured relation of word and thing as being based on touch, and 3) an understanding of touch that is situated through a non-corporeal definition of flesh (combining the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty with the work of Jean-Luc Nancy).

Rather than offering one, delimiting definition of a word-thing, I offer a taxonomy of possible (re)definitions of the word/object relation. Each chapter may be thought of as a case study examining a different hypothesis of the word/object dyad. Chapter One inverts the relationship of signifier and referent by postulating the sign as being referent-based rather than signifier-based. The second chapter considers the possibility of flattening the word/object relation within a flat ontology in order to read the avant-garde poetries of Francis Ponge, conceptual writing, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry, Mark Laliberte, Natalie Czech, and Jaz Parkinson. Chapter Three expands on the flat ontological thesis while situating the world/object relation as an actor-network and also as a fractal; this argument is advanced through readings of the fiction of William S. Burroughs, Tony Burgess, Franz Kafka, and Alain Robbe-Grillet. In the fourth chapter, the word/object relation is considered both as a fuzzy monism and also as a fleshy fold; put differently, the slash that separates word and object is considered as a fleshy, combinant space. The chapter uncovers permutations of this fleshy fold in James Joyces love letters and the provocative fiction of Urs Allemann. Chapter Five further extends this flesh hypothesis to include the embodiment that occurs during theatrical performance (as seen in the plays of Caryl Churchill), within Hlne Cixouss theorization of criture fminine, and in the idiosyncratic poetics of Hannah Weiner. The final, concluding chapter asks a non-intuitive question: if words can be conceived as material objects, then how precisely can this materiality be understood? My response locates a word-things materiality within the Theory of Objects offered by Alexius Meinong alongside Martin Heideggers work on the thing, which theorizes essence on the basis of a structural void that holds objects. Heideggers own thinking is strongly informed by East Asian philosophy, so, by linking Meinong with Heidegger, I then conclude by looking at the Shinto theory of kotodama (or the spirit of the word).

Therefore, the presence or essence of a word-thing depicts a paradox: the ontological ground of a word-thing is nothingness. However, this nothingness or void is a productive nothingness that permits the emergence of both linguistic meaning and non-meaning.