Every question is the reverberation of a questioning. No question escapes a history of questioning–but is this really true? Are there no spontaneous questions? This is similar to the question of whether questions are creative. How would we ask a spontaneous question if we didn't already know how to ask questions? What is the distance between knowing how to do something and knowing what that something is, between a spontaneous question and spontaneous questioning? To think of a method of questioning is to travel the distance between a question as search and a questioning as research. Perhaps to search intently means also to step back from the search, to search with care. Could it be possible that people practice research without knowing what a search is? Carefully?
Is questioning really a mode of searching? I'm not sure that seeking is a good metaphor for asking. To ask is to ask someone, some person. More explicitly, to ask is to ask something of some person. When we speak of questioning things, or inquiring into things, are we speaking figuratively, are we completely eliding an addressee, or do we somehow have in mind some ideal person who would take our questions and possibly even provide answers? Do we project our future selves into or through the question? Conversely, is the question the opening of an encounter with another person? If you've read this far, how would you describe your coming to be involved in this question?
Does the question have its own voice? I doubt that the question truly owns its resonance. On the other hand, what if that's all it owns? Of course it might be said that resonance can't be owned at all. Can there be things that are truly given but never owned? Is a question given voice? For whom? Cavarero again: "Free from the presence of Narcissus and from Ovid's textual games, Echo comes to appear as the divinity who teaches an acoustic relationality, still linked to infantile pleasure, in which uniqueness makes itself heard as voice."
Labels: Cavarero, echo, questions
1 Comments:
I came to a point where I had a rational response to this, however after reflecting on some of your historical posts I couldn’t help but think;
You’re just dancing, being flirtatious, poetic, never really saying what “it is”. And I must admit I’ve developed a bit of a fondness for it all.
There’s nothing worse then when you roll over after making love to your significant other and she pronounces, “when you did [black box] that was so [black box]”, as it seems to completely ruin the moment.
Or perhaps when you’re in a moment of deep thought and someone enters the room, perhaps they’re silent, perhaps they ask a question. When they leave, what you had before they entered never remains because they always leave behind a psychic eddy-current; the room is completely changed by it.
In other words to come to a conclusion would be completely defeating. In an earlier post I left this:
"...Mark Twain's experience comes to mind, in which, after he had mastered the analytic knowledge needed to pilot the Mississippi River, he discovered the river had lost its beauty...."
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