CorporealSemiotics:TheBodyoftheText/theTextoftheBody 391
Cavell develops his line of thinking in (occasional) dialogue with
Wittgenstein. Like him, Cavell is essentially an analytic philosopher
who likewise rejects correspondence theories of representation or, more
broadly, semantics, and proceeds programmatically "from inside the
language." In the chapter above on non-normative life, I have already
used Cavell's injunction that the self needs to "make itself intelligible"
(Conditionsxxvii). On this basis, language is for him, anything but a
deficient "acquirement," a flawed tool for communicating our
experience (as it was for Wittgenstein), but a "bequest,"^85 a bequest,
moreover,thatmustbeshared(C laim189).
Inhiswritings,Cavellrepeatedlyreturnstothisprincipleofsharing,
by which he means "the absolute responsibility of the self" to
communicate his or her experience, "without falsifying itself," even if
that means relying on imperfect, even proto-semantic forms of
communication: "Making oneself intelligible means to be willing to
stammer, to probe silence, to resort to prophetic speech, or to scream
andresorttointensepathos"(Co nditions xxvii).Thisisparticularlysoin
moments of an "exposed human condition" (Conditions xxviii). A
prototypicalexemplarofsuchaconditionisintenselyfeltpain,andthus
Cavellreturnstothisconditionagainandagaininhiswritings.
"Making oneself intelligible" for Cavell does not mean to create
stable ontological or epistemological correspondences between the
somatic and the semantic which would answer the requirements of
epistemologicalcertaintyespousedbyWittgenstein.Instead,itmeansto
be committed to a communicative ethos reminiscent of what in the
language of the Frankfurt School would be phrased as communicative
action. In Cavell's words, "my knowledge of others depends upon their
expressing themselves, in words and conduct" (Conditions254), and
these expressions move the person addressed to communicative actions
ofherorhisown.^86
(^85) There are striking parallels here to Gadamer's emphasis on "devotion" and
"commission" (Schmerz 27, 34, 48) only that his perspective is grounded in
experience,whereasCavell'sisgroundedinthelinguisticuniverse.
(^86) Cavell also speaks of "emphatic projection" (Claim421) here. For this whole
complex, cf. Shuster, Martin. "Nothing to Know: The Epistemology of Moral
Perfectionalism in Adorno and Cavell."Idealistic Studies44.1 (2014): 1-29.
Print.(onpainesp.3-5).