Outsidelessness

Hamann does believe, as many postmoderns do, that we have no access to reality without language. But for Hamann this does not mean that we suffer “linguistic claustropobia,” or “outsidelessness.” Dickson again:

“the fact that perceiving and understanding are inseparable from speaking is commonsensical; one no more need despair over it (nor contest that this is so) than one would trouble oneself over the fact that there is no access to sight without eyes. The fundamental differences lies in the root (perhaps even unconscious) attitude or picture of what language does . . . .

“The believer in outsidelessness essentially reacts to the difference which metaphysically must exist between object and word, between the state of affairs and linguistic account – the ‘non-literalness’ of language’s ‘translation,’ we might say – as implying a distortion by language, an obscuring by language of how things ‘really are.’ For Hamann, however, language does not ‘screen off’ reality; it does not obscure, conceal or distort the rest of reality, but reveals it, indeed, is the only organ or mode for its revelation and communication. That there is no access to reality apart from language does not mean that language has managed to insert itself permanently between us and the objects of our knowledge, and is determined forever to make mischief between us. It is because only language can make the world known and understood to a linguistic being. For Hamann, such metaphysical difference as exists between language and the rest of the world is creative , and endlesssly productive of new layers of meaning. It is not like an inaccurate and imperfect report; but rather bears the fruitful difference yet identification which a symbol bears, which opens up a new world of non-literal meaning. The subjective, interpretive moment that arises in human speaking is a clarifying and revelatory moment – just as one doesn’t quite know or understand what one means oneself until it has successfully been put into words. This common phenomenon demonstrates that the ‘translation’ of speaking, as Hamann calls it, is not a bad photo-copy of a clearer original, but the very moment of bringing into being and knowing in the first place.”