What is water within the disciplinary discourse of media studies? It is a figure. A figure appropriates for its signifier or vocabulary some first-order information (word, image, sound, scene) and operates it rhetorically, to say something else. A figure relies upon AS the way concepts rely upon IS. For example, the water works by Roni Horn.
April 18, 2008 at 9:20 pm |
Anne Carson, “Kinds of Water,” puts the figure into words (excerpt).
“The small hotel of Buergete is made of water. Outside, rain streams all night. Roofs pour, the gutters float with frogs and snails. You would not see me – I lie in the dark listening, swirling. Walls of the hotel are filled with water. Plumbing booms and sluices. A water clock, embedded in the heart of the building, measures out our hours in huge drops. Wheels and gears turn in the walls, the roaring of lovers washes over the ceiling, the staircase is an aqueduct of cries. From below I can hear a man dreaming. A deep ravine goes down to the sea, he calls out, rushes over the edge. The mechanisms that keep us from drowning are so fragile.”
Anne Carson
Shall we clarify the downpour? “Water” as dilemma, as the motif of our consultation, may be configured anew from this as-pect (as figure, distinct from both fact and value).
glue