Degrammatic Inversemantics (DI) is a tool one uses in order to undo the hegemonic knot created and sustained through the concretization of language and its “products” (i.e. singular meanings). DI is a writing method that contests all forms of linguistic construction in an effort to disrupt the ways in which members of society corral other members of society into a singular and biased definition of the world. Degrammatic Inversemantics is the umbrella under which reside many different techniques, all of which work towards the development of an environment based on the findings of intimate semi-autonomous meaning-makers, as opposed to the mass passive reception of social code. Some of the techniques in alignment with DI are the Deliberate Almost (currently in print only), as well as the Negative Depth Experience.
We work from:
hand: n. a portion of the arm or anterior limb of a human or other primate, at where the appendage terminates. This part of the limb is especially used in grasping and holding. Each hand is a mirror image of the other.
to:
hand: n. the location, the periphery of which marks the beginning of the extra-world and the ending of the epidermus-realm. The hand can be used to divide experience (i.e. the visions before you). Each hand is not mirror images of one another.
Degrammatic Inversemantics is a method. It is a way of enacting and engaging the world, as well as a means to disrupt the hypnotic effects produced by the representation of the world. It is not anti-hypnosis, though rather troublesome to hypnosis. To make a distinction: The world as experience is not hypnotic, though perhaps it is hypnautic, and the oceanic mass of people-brine are 7am placid and glassy-eyed with sleep. However, the Greek god Hypnos does not reign supreme here. Hypnos governs the representation, “The World,” or so our scouts have told us. “The World” is hypnotic in that it is a representation. This is basic Baudrillard. We will act from this though we will not remain here.
Though it may be beneficial to not accept the longing for an “original” as revolutionary . Perhaps this tale is a lie—a big ado about nothing. Maybe this is yet again the carrot on the stick hung just out of reach for us to place our hope in. Could it be that the longing for something “authentic” is yet another prize? Baudrillard’s perceived nihlism may really be a disguise for another unattainable goal. The idea of an original preceeding the hyperreality certainly smells a lot like heaven. It certainly sounds a lot like heaven. Are we really to believe that there is some “original,” some Platonic Ideal, preceeding the ever enveloping hyperreality that is our daily experience? Who, dare we ask, benefits from such a premis?
Degrammatic Inversemantics takes it’s cue from these questions, for there is no idea that should not be contested. Especially itself! From this, DI finds validity in methods clearly understood to be methods and systems clearly understood to be systems. We are attempting to produce no fluff here. The grand narrative isn’t even a question. We emerged from wombs having already internalized the postmodern ethos of context rule. Methods we say. Mathematics. Means. The embracing of via, by way of…. Postmodernism means only in as much as it can be used to embrace contradictions. Nay, embrace the Great Contradiction(s)! Nay? And blessed is that which does not resolve! And blessed is that which resists resolution and embraces the great turn of revolutions pluralized upon pluralized! The universe is our proof!
As a method of writing/reading, Degrammatic Inversemantics takes a cue from the popular-anarchism of reader-response criticisms. From wikipedia:
“Reader-response criticism is a group of approaches to understanding literature that have in common an emphasis on the reader’s role in the creation of the meaning of a literary work…. Since the theorists who make up reader-response theory were not consciously creating a school of thought, it is very difficult to say when and with whom the movement began. Also, since reader-response criticism is a reaction to perceived excesses of New Criticism, it did not emerge as a total system…. Reader-response theory recognizes the reader as an active agent who imparts “real existence” to the work by reading it and completes its meaning “by applying codes and strategies”. It is concerned with the reader’s contribution to a text. It stands in total opposition to the text-oriented theories of formalism and the New Criticism, in which the reader’s role interpreting literary works are not taken into account.” (emphasis ed.)
It is this radical approach to reading Islam, either through its texts (Qur’an, etc.) or it’s praxis (salat, etc.), where I find most contemporary Muslim thinkers (I have read) lacking. To me, Muslim thinkers informed by the postmodern (that is writers and practicioners of a postmodern ethic) seem restricted in their willingness to attempt a leap beyond the confines of a fabricated tradition (a tradition that perceives itself as singular) and therefore lack in, for all intensive purposes, sexiness. By sexiness I am referring, quite seriously, to the ability of a particular conglomeration of cues to arouse a person. Sexiness is the perpetual shifting field of triggers unique to every person that taps into the seat of being. It can be daring, or it can be safe when daring becomes passe. It calls a fish a flan when the evening has become just too stale. Is there anything sexy about Arkoun’s Rethinking Islam: Common Questions, Uncommon Answers? I could be wrong, and not to sound elitest, but to me this work reads like Islam through the lens of “Postmodernism 101,” without any enactment of the theories proposed. Again, this is not to say “Postmodernism 101″ is not necessary, but rather that condensations is blasphemy.
Maybe I have wrongfully glamorized Deleuze & Guattari sitting on each other’s lap. Maybe my knowledge of Foucault’s proclivity for men and leather has clouded my vision. Maybe I am much too interested in the practice of the human theorists, for I find it is the only way to tell if this stuff works. Maybe I want to appreciate them as reader-writers far too much, where they too appreciate the reader-writer, and as such we one day find ourselves eating lampshades by the banks of coconut rivers.
Farid Esack hints at an appreciation of the reader (sans writer?), and is the closest I have read to inviting a reader-response approach to the reading of Islam, notably through his hermeneutic of liberation investigations. However, I have found little to suggest a complete and commited approach to investigating the ways in which we read the wor(l)d Itself (the greater always already present submission to Allah willingly or unwillingly). For instance, what happens when we realize that our engaging the Qur’an, first and formost a text, our reading the Qur’an completes the process of “I was a mystery and wanted to be known”? What happens when we realize that to “be known” is to engage and interact with the text. What happens when we realize that the meaning is not sitting complete in some distant land waiting to be found, but rather is always in a process of development through the co-creative process of reading the world? The impulse for this co-creative meaning-making being a desire to be known—as if to say: the knowing of me allows you to be you. Without the knowing, Reality Itself remains incomplete.
It is my feeling that when we finally accept the idea that Islam through it’s books and actions is a co-creative, yet autonomous process of fluctuating occurences of meaning-making (identity constructions, ethical and moral “truths,” etc.), and that because of this we can understand how Islam can be read to both support people flying planes into buildings, AS WELL AS read to support all those trying to stop planes flying into buildings, only then will be in a place to once again see the world we seem so bent on representing back to ourselves for easy consumption. We mustn’t kid ourselves by being so arrogant as to say that those who fly planes into buildings are not Muslims. This is simply too easy. (The same goes for referring to George W. Bush as Adolf Hitler. It’s merely a way of Othering he and his actions.) We need to accept that TO THEM, they were the best of Muslims, and as such are now a blemish in the history of Islam, as well as a blemish in the history of hyper-capitalism/globalism. They found support in Islam to kill and we find support in Islam to protect.
What I propose and have always proposed on this site, is that this seeming conundrum is not a hindrance, but rather a blessing. That, the mirror-like qualities of the Qur’an (in that it reflects a person’s current conciousness back to them) places the emphasis squarely on human agency (as much as we may make the claim that we possess agency). You look for someone to take your hand and guide you, and you are met only with yourself. The hidden imam is not coming and the last Prophet has walked the Earth. We can now get on with our (THE) work and stop rushing to our front doors every time a car drives by thinking it’s the latest savior.
As you can see, we are developing a Degrammatic Inversemantics that encompasses much more than a few word games. This is more than an Islam spoken through the commodified language of postmodernism. DI is actually a method by which we read the world in such a way as to embody the radicality of Allahu alam God knows best. You can’t just say it. You’ve got to live it. This is a scary suggestion, for it would truly necessitate submission (Islam) to the Knower/Known. One would be forced to concede to the always greater than… The scholars (traditional or otherwise) would be forced to admit that no matter how close they feel they have come to understanding the so-called intentions of Allah (an anthropomorphic concept if ever there was one! Idolatry I say!) that all falls short of Allahu alam, and as such the risk of imposing religious laws (secular or otherwise) on another human being is too high, for Allahu alam.
Humble ourselves. Just imagine you takfired the wrong person. As the clubs say to the bump bump bump: “It’s gettin’ hot in here. So take off all your clothes.” (1)
1. (Ladies, please refer to 24:31 in your Noble Qur’an for a list of all those before whom you may “take off all your clothes.” Not to be rude, but it’s a rather long list. Ha-zaaaaah!
