Nonsense, unsense, and neurolinguistic hacking

 We suggested in the last post that Raymond Roussel was hacking into the parts of the brain where language is stored. We related this to the condition of aphasia in which individuals begin to talk gibberish without realizing it. In fact, they aren't calling the correct records from their brain. The pointer system has been misaligned. But they are calling records that sound similar to the correct word. And hence, we know something about how the information is stored in their brains.

Could someone be so self-aware that they could come upon this by their own scrutiny? Or is their sense of what they're doing so radically different from ours that we're ascribing more intentionality than is warranted? I have no idea. Let's move on.

Nonsense

Nonsense. For our purposes, the definition of nonsense is: Nonsense occurs when there are more signifiers than required to convey a specific meaning. Ultimately, perhaps everything is nonsense on some level. Traditional nonsense, like "All mimsy were the borogroves"—has two words with no referent. This is a perfect illustration of nonsense. We have two broken signifiers and a sentence we can't make sense of without more context. Yet, we've created a space in our minds to place that sense, should it ever appear. We know that mimsy is a quality of a borogrove. In sum, nonsense occurs when there are more signifiers than referents/signifieds. The modality of creation is explosion.

Unsense

Unsense. For our purposes, unsense is the contrary of nonsense. Instead of a paucity of signifieds, you have a paucity of signifiers. Its modality of creation is compression, reduction, and excision. It causes the signifieds in a text to do so much work, that it becomes unclear, specifically, what it's talking about. Your image will become foggier. Unsense causes a text to open up to more possibilities. Horoscopes and prophecies operate on unsense. 

Approaching a nonsense text

Nonsense is about signification. How we make meaning. We don't need to know what a mimsy borogrove is to create a space in our minds to understand it. And that's immediately what happens upon our introduction to that poem. So, ultimately, we can become aware of how our brains parse language by analyzing our reading of a nonsense poem.

Approaching an unsense text

Nonsense moves the unconscious to the conscious. Unsense moves the conscious to the unconscious. It may turn out that between the two, there is more similarity than difference. But the process is different. Of the two, unsense is used tactically much more frequently than nonsense. Vague speech has its uses. Horoscopes and personality tests rely on forming a specific connection to an unspecific text. So, signifier compression is and remains a useful tool. Nonsense is traditionally a tool for clearing the mind. Unsense is a tool for clouding it. 

What is sense?

For our purposes, sense is roughly equivalent to meaning. In the context of unsense/sense/nonsense, sense would be that ever-elusive third state in which the signifiers and the signifieds are in a perfect state of harmony. Some philosophers believe that a 1:1 correspondence between language and referents can achieve this. Others play in the messiness and muck. 

Making sense of something

When you try to make sense of something, you try to make it mean something. Once you do so, you're in the realm of language. If successful, you will have come to terms. The sense of our sense of making meaning is caught up in language.