Speech

parole

Worked through in 13 videos · 25 passages.

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Summary

Dominique Pagani distinguishes language, tongue and speech: only speech really exists; it is the moment when the logos enters existence, whereas the tongue remains a canon, an ideal1. He holds that speaking is not saying: saying means speaking plus a signification, a code and a message that reaches its destination2. Hence the formula that mathematics says without speaking and music speaks without saying anything3. Before signifying something, all speech signifies for someone and calls for a response, even a person speaking alone speaking to someone, following Lacan4. Taking up Aesop, he makes speech the most perilous of goods, the best and the worst, given together with the freedom to fail as well as to accomplish5. He traces its tragedy through Eden, Babel and Pentecost. He also links it to music, whose union with speech seems to him almost incestuous, and to flowing water, in connection with the griot.

Summary produced automatically from 25 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.

Cycle 11 · 7 Aug 2023Niger special: should we “blacken the corpses”?

43:53"One must only speak," Africans say; for Novalis, speaking for the sake of speaking is the formula of deliverance.

Cycle 11 · 18 Mar 2023A springtime of the peoples?

1:39:27Speech is the most perilous of goods, given to man along with the freedom to fail as well as to fulfill.
1:41:29The tragedy of speech in three acts: naming the creatures in Eden, the confusion of tongues at Babel, the tongues of Pentecost.

Cycle 11 · 19 Oct 2022“Speech is the best and the worst of things” (Aesop)

6:38Only speech is actual and real: it is the moment when the logos enters existence, whereas a language remains a canon, an ideal.

Series · 20 Jul 2022Wagner: the truth of pure music

2:24Speech is each individual's affair: it is there that language enters into existence.
3:24Speaking is not saying: one recognizes a speech without knowing what it says; saying is speaking plus a precise signification.
7:29Before signifying something, all speech signifies for someone; what matters is to whom one speaks.

Series · 9 Feb 2021#15 Plato, Rousseau, Hegel and music

1:13:30Poetic speech subverts the ordinary use of language; the continuous parameters of the voice appear only in speech in act.

Series · 15 Jan 2021#9 Romantic irony and the Vinteuil sonata

22:46Music and speech presuppose the world of hearing; speech is language in act, heard and not merely read.

Series · 3 Dec 2020#2 From Lévi-Strauss to Nerval, on music

48:32In the Ninth, the emergence of the voice is like a sea creature rising out of the water toward air.
51:02The union of speech and music is almost incestuous: speech is the virile, diurnal instance; music, the feminine and nocturnal one.
59:22The babble of the Rhine daughters is an intermediate stage between the animal cry and articulate language.

Talks · 24 Nov 2020Between sea and mountain, the standing stones of Valinco (the Corsican Neolithic)

9:20Isomorphism of flowing water and speech: the griot and the river, speech that is labile, that flees and flies.
24:46Speech is the first middle term between the speaker and the listeners; it allows detours that writing forbids.

Cycle 8 · 30 May 2020#9 Return to the logics of the subject

46:03The most perilous of goods: philosophy is not expressed through univocal algorithms but in an in-between.
46:50Human language is made to signal, seduce, condemn, lie, but not primarily to know.

Cycle 6 · 10 Nov 2019#6.1 Prelude: Lacan, “Function and field of speech and language”

24:46Before signifying something, all speech signifies for someone; even someone speaking alone speaks to someone.
30:52All speech calls for a response, even if it meets only silence, provided it has a listener.

Cycle 5.2 · 26 Mar 2019#5.5 Nature or landscape?

1:07:24Only the unfolding of the logos is equal to a beauty that has remained nameless.
1:43:53The invisible is not mystery: it is accessible through the intersubjectivity of speech.

Cycle 2 · 1 Aug 2017#2.6 Between crisis and war: philosophising?

21:33Language, tongue, speech: only speech exists. The tongue exists only through singular intonations.
23:27Mathematics says without speaking; music speaks without saying anything.

Cycle 2 · 15 Feb 2016#2.2 Between crisis and war: philosophising?

28:37The poem sets out a tragedy of speech: dying for want of being able to make oneself heard by one's fellows.
57:50To speak is not to say: to say is to speak plus a meaning, a code, and a message that has reached its destination.
1:35:37Speech is the most perilous of goods: as a medium, it is the best and the worst.