Objects of Mind, Objects of Language

Just in case you didn't think that words are objects.

How can language acquire a "reality" if it remains outside the realm of objects? [...] Words become symbols; language is symbolic: although words are not things, and things are not words, the principle of reality applies to them both as if words enjoy the same reality as things.

So writes Keith W. Faulkner in Deleuze and the three syntheses of time. A bit of a materialist push wants me to stress that things can be taken as symbols. That is the symbolic is not inherent in the word-thing or the thing-thing but arises out of a stance towards the word-object or the thing-object. Faulkner interposes between the word and the thing hysterical symbol formation.

How can language acquire a "reality" if it remains outside the realm of objects? As we have seen the indication of reality accompanies a psychical discharge. While eating, the mouth and the stomach produce a discharge signalling the reality of the food; while speaking, a physical discharge occurs in the mouth signally the reality of language. In this process, as in the process of hysterical symbol-formation, the symbol completely replaces the thing. Words become symbols [...]

I just am not convinced by the claim of total replacement. Displacement I can understand; it leads to a va-et-vient: attention circulates among objects be they words, things or symbols.

And so for day 65
17.02.2007