Table Of ContentMetanoia
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Metanoia
A Speculative Ontology of Language,
Th inking, and the Brain
By Armen Avanessian and Anke Hennig
Translated by Nils F. Schott
With a foreword by Levi Bryant
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
LONDON • OXFORD • NEW YORK • NEW DELHI • SYDNEY
iii
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First published 2014
Originally published in German as Metanoia: Spekulative Ontologie der Sprache,
© Merve Verlag 2014
English Translation published 2018
English language translation © Armen Avanessian and Anke Hennig 2018
Armen Avanessian and Anke Hennig have asserted their right under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identifi ed as Authors of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission
in writing from the publishers.
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accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.
British Library Cataloguing-i n-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN : HB : 978-1-3500-0472-6
e PDF : 978-1-3500-0471-9
ePub: 978-1-3500-0474-0
Library of Congress Cataloging-i n-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Typeset by Refi neCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
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Contents
Foreword viii
Introduction 1
I Poetics: Principles of Lingual Poiesis 15
Th e poetic function of language (Jakobson) 15
Th e potentializing function of language (Guillaume) 17
Poietic linguistics 23
Th e myth of the arbitrariness of the sign 28
Speculative poetics 32
II Th e Analytic Circle: Th e Lingual Creation of a True World 37
Triadic logic of the sign (Peirce) 45
Th e poietic triad 54
Th e linguistic turn, or the signifi ed as predicate of the signifi er 61
S means X by Y (Kripke, Meillassoux, Harman) 75
Lingual things and the ontology of individuals (Strawson) 83
III Speculation: Aspects of a Poetics of Th ought 87
Th e speculative triad 99
Subject—object—other: our methodical constellation 103
Abduction as a poietic procedure 111
Poeticizing philosophy 122
IV Cognition: Metanoia is an Anagram of Anatomie 135
Th e recursive structure of cognition (Metzinger and Malabou) 141
Th e coevolution of language and the brain 148
Aspects of universal grammar (Chomsky v Leiss): generative,
extra-linguistic, cognitive 151
Semiotics of the brain (Deacon) 154
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vi Contents
Epilogue: Th e Whole Truth and Nothing. But the Truth! 161
Matters ethical (and religious) 166
Going beyond thought: temporality 172
Glossary 179
Notes 187
Index 203
Illustrations
1 Semiotic triangle by Andreas Töpfer 47
2 Semiotic triangle by Andreas Töpfer 50
3 Semiotic triangle by Andreas Töpfer 51
4 Semiotic triangle by Andreas Töpfer 52
5 Eco’s Subterfuge 57
6 Rosa x Centifolia “purpurea” 63
7 “Maheka” “La Belle Sultane” 64
8 “Rosa Indica dichotoma. Le Bengale animating” 65
9 “Rosa Indica Caryophyllea. Le Bengale Oeillet” 66
10 “Slater’s Crimson China” 67
11 Abduction in perception 123
12 Terrence Deacon’s Semiotics of the Brain 157
All chapter opening images are from Armen Avanessian, Andreas Töpfer,
Speculative Drawing, Berlin: Sternberg Press 2014.
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Foreword
Th e book before the reader brilliantly deals with the theme of m etanoia . Drawn
primarily from religious language in the Christian tradition, metanoia is oft en
mistranslated as “repentance”. More properly the term should be translated as
“conversion”. M etanoia refers to a fundamental transformation of one’s self,
nature, thought, and world. However, it would be a mistake to conclude that
the origin of this word indicates that this book is a work of theology. In the
concept of m etanoia Avanessian and Hennig discern a phenomenon that is far
more pervasive than the religious register and its conversions, but that lies at
the core of thought and language. Th ere is a power of language, thought, and
speech to transform both the subject and the world. How is it, Avanessian and
Hennig wonder, that a book, a poem, a conversation, or a thinking can
fundamentally transform both the subject and the world? We enter that book,
poem, conversation, or trajectory of thought at one end and when we come out
the other everything is completely diff erent. Indeed, in such experiences we
can scarcely remember who we were and what the world looked like before. So
thorough is the transformation that it even transforms our retroactive selves
and worlds. We see the past diff erently than we did before. Th is is metanoia . In
a thinking that traverses speculative realism, new materialism, neurology,
structural linguistics, and Peircian semiotics, Avanessian and Hennig seek to
determine just how something like metanoia is possible. I will leave the book
to the reader for the details of this account, instead using the space of this
foreword to discuss both how we might think about the phenomenon of
metanoia and some of the implications of the concept.
In what follows I will use language and games as a launching point for
discussing philosophy. In linguistic circles it is a commonplace to compare
language to a game. Take a board game. A board game has the board upon
which it is played, the pieces with which the game is played, and the rules of
the game by which moves can be made. Simplifying matters dramatically, the
pieces of the game in language would be phonemes, while the rules of the
game would be the syntax by which those elements are composed into larger
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Foreword ix
units such as semes, sentences, paragraphs and so on. Th ese would roughly
be the paradigmatic and syntagmatic dimensions of language respectively.
Competence here would consist in knowing how to make moves in this game;
which is to say, knowing how to form sentences or engage in speech- acts.
We can think of philosoph ies as similar to games and languages in this
respect. Th ere is a Plato game, a Lucretius game, a Descartes game, a Hegel
game, a Deleuze game, a Heidegger and Badiou game, and so on. Each one of
these philosophies has its own “phonemes” or pieces that inhabit the game and
each has rules for making moves in that game. One shows competence in any
one of these games not when they can cite the intricacies of these philosophies
chapter and verse, but rather when they can make a n ew move within those
games according to the rules governing the game. Compare the Plato game and
the Epicurean game, for example. Suppose we were to ask whether or not it is
ethical to do the drug MDMA or ecstasy? Now clearly we will not fi nd an
answer to this question in the writings of either Plato or Epicurus (or Lucretius)
because the drug did not yet exist and therefore could not become a topic of
ethical refl ection. It is likely that both Plato and Epicurus would be opposed to
MDMA , but for entirely diff erent reasons. Th e goal of Plato’s philosophy is the
purifi cation of the soul so that it will separate from the body at death and go on
to the world of the forms. We achieve this goal by living a life of intellect and
by turning away from the body and the fi ve senses. If Plato would be against
MDMA , it would be for the same reasons that he rejects certain musical
instruments, forms of art, and poetic meters in Th e Republic : they draw out the
passions of the body, clouding the power of the intellect, just as the drum is
among the anti-Platonic instruments p ar excellence because it evokes sensuous
aff ects that lead our body to move involuntarily, emphasizing the body and its
passions over the intellect. One need only think of the famous dance scene in
Th e Matrix Reloaded to discern the power of the drum and bass.
Like Plato, Epicurus would probably be against the use of MDMA , but for
entirely diff erent reasons. In Epicurus the goal of the game is to live the most
pleasurable life possible (because pleasure is the moral good) and to minimize
anxiety as much as we can. However, while Epicurus treats the pleasurable as
the moral good and the painful as the moral wrong, he nonetheless argues that
we should avoid forms of pleasure that are either too much trouble to fi nd or
that cause pain as a consequence. For Epicurus, the question would then be
