Is it a strange thing, to, in the same text, talk about subjective experiences, political strategy and the nature of human bonds, and still - to expect _thought_ to be one? Especially as now us having realized the multiplicity deeply embedded in all thinking moments of our existence, the "unity" of thought, of desire as much as of expression and rhetoric, comes into question. And it is thus that I think I need to give some reflections upfront of why I think my own, phenomenological, purely subjective observations, can have, beyond the affirmation of their own authenticity (which is not quite so distinct from its opposite as from any use), a reason to it being used and understood in this larger search for a kind of meaning, or understanding of the elements within the world, which they, as singular reflectionspoints thereof, correspond to, and can embody in a sense (in the way in which, as Leibniz says, each monad is the whole universe), but never can quite reach, or be as a whole, and as which I therefore try to strive for understanding, forgiveness as well as laughter, to get a light back from the absolute unity of everything in thought, of which this very experience I describe already becomes a point of critique, or which goal, while trying to find its divine laughter, I make, within the absurdity of trying to find it while knowing it can't exist or can't be reached or both (or is there a difference?), already having had laughed about itself, and of which's laughter I therefore, by reflecting on my own condition of striving, can honor in the highest way by getting to understand it in its reflection, reflected back to me in my desperate attempts to understand, in such general and universal/singular (as once/the same) terms, the whole I am working on understanding, or in my attempts to find it funny (and write this sentence too) too, maybe even more. But enough meta-meta ironic humour of the form of comedy of my mind. In truth: What do I want to do here? How can I honestly expect these so disparate moments to be capable of becoming moments of a single movement, of an action within my own mind?
The unity of a political identity is that of a difference. That means, all political differentiations are not simple differentiations - as are the differences for, say, colors and numbers, which I look at and differentiate, but which don't differentiate themselves, which don't have the consciousness of being themselves differentiated - instead, they are already reflected differentiations; there are reflections of situations, where members of opposing sides each define themselves as being opposed to the other; and the _unity_ of one group therefore hinges not so much on the unity of the other (as it does for externally differentiated things, where this is the same: A to be one, and Non-A to be one, are directly connected; if A isn't one thing, neither is the predicate "non-A", instead being equally differentiated in non-A1, non-A2 etc.), as it does on the unity of the perception of the other, or on the way, in which this difference to the other is maintained. The true unity of politics is the unity of an enemy. And that enemy is always a conception of difference, a negation; and as such, one could say, all political unities are always essentially negatory; they define themselves by what they're not as much as what they are. This can be many things: law against anarchy; democracy against aristocracy or technocracy; capitalism against socialism etc. In all these differentiations, the unifying element is that of the differentiation, and the true difference between them is not just of them, but of their opposing view(s) of the other, and what is lost or gained in that. This kind of missing-in-addressing is, what I think, we rightfully and with all meanings of the word should call _communication_.
Because what do I do when I communicate? I sound out a word and try mean something with it, and the other listens and tries to understand. There is also this particular difference: I imagine I understand, what the other thinks and understands of me, and the opposite for the other, but our actual communication doesn't happen when we understand each other; it happens when we don't, and when the reality of the relationship, the materiality of communication, is stronger than the idea, of what we think we already know of the other. Communication _is_ misunderstanding; the kind of communication we think is not misunderstanding also is, but just in a form, where through its success it becomes less obvious, that actually no one knows how anyone else would successfully understand anything from words spoken into the air and written into paper or a computing machine. The very fact you can read, and somewhat understand, what I write here, is absolutely absurd! After all, I simply type letters out onto a digital page; it could have been done by a machine, and a machine could also "read" it; but we wouldn't really be calling that reading a page (moreso reading a file, or presenting, processing a page); we presume, that some "other" understands, gets it. And that connection becomes most apparent when it doesn't happen, and opens up only then the circumstances, under which communication is produced, in which it is for itself constituted as this thing _in between_ differentials.
This is apparent within us already. Our system is constituted not through successful communications, but mostly though mis-haps, fights, different goals, missing memories turning up at unfortunate times etc. The communication I have with my little is mostly misunderstanding for example; there is no bad blood involved, as this word might imply to some, but there is a form of base misunderstanding, of really not getting the other persons perspective, and from that we understand, in that way, that we are not the same. Differentiation, on this level, is, from the personal description, an element of all communication. And it even happens communicating to me; maybe to me in the future, but even to me right now. Thinking isn't transparent; I don't always know what I think and why, and effects like de-ja-vu and loosing a train of thought are obvious examples of that. So what unity then does language offer in these networks of inter- and intra-alterial, and even societal differences of differentiations? What can I hope from language, when I know I won't understand the other as the other?
I think that in all these questions, and in the despair, that always is present in the confrontation with the misunderstandings within communication, lies a false understanding of what communication actually is. If "understanding" would mean mind reading, then yes, it's a failed task, but that is not what is being asked of us. Communication happens within, between us, can therefore not be at all connected to anything happening in consciousness. That _communication is not an act of thinking_ is probably the most important fact here; it simply does not have any intentionality (in the Husserlian sense), it's no designator, because it's not within language, it is language.
To make this point more clearly: I can refer to a table with a word; and then the communication, that uses this word ("table" in English) can be said to refer to the table. But is that true? It might be, that the table doesn't exist. And then truly, the table is nothing being referred to by communication, so it seems. But actually, there are three things happening: a) linguistically, "table" refers to something by a certain eidos (form, concept) within the language; this remains true, even if the table doesn't exist, for otherwise, the sentence "the table is here" would have no meaning, and could also not be wrong; b) mentally, the concept _table_ we have (or rather, each of us have one, as seperate concepts, which may or may not be the same; I will not discuss mono- vs. polypsychism, or the idea of shared concepts, at this point), refers to a thing we each conceive with our senses (which, even in monopsychism, clearly are distinct between individual sense-havers); this reference is there or is not, and therefore actually has to refer to the real table; and c) we have what we could call _objective reference_, which is created within language, in discussion, by talking to each other whether each of our perceptions and understandings actually see the sentence to be true, and for which then there is a specific "objective thing" created, which no one actually sees, but to which the agreed upon hypotheses of objective knowledge refer to. It is now important to understand, that misunderstandings and unclarities do arise, but not because sentences don't have a referent; it's because _the eidos of a sentence can be no subjective or objective reality_. Within communication - i.e. the acts of saying and receiving sentences - no object is actually referred to _between the correspondents_. Each one - person A and person B - may have a conception of the object thus talked about; and they may, to gather an "objective understanding", correspond and agree or disagree on some of the qualities; however, these qualities would not, in the example, be one of "table", but of the table, that is, not of the word or its linguistic meaning, but of a shared object, one neither of them have, but both believe their own interpretation of the word approximates (however badly). (In other words, their misunderstanding _is_ precisely what is referred to by them as _objective reality_; that reality is the reality, or the effective impact, of their misunderstaning, materialized as a "common denominator" object.)
This means, that no sentence actually has a meaning, like a thought has an object; there is no relation of intentionality, rather, each participant has to bring their own intentionality to bear, and collectively they may create an objective idea; but it is not as if our thoughts, if not shared, would make communication meaningless, rather, its "meaning" is materially (not intentionally) constituted in each persons interpretation of a sentence. The meaning is not something that simply is preserved in the sentence; it's no treasure to be hauled up; it's _the act of meaning_, by which people, in a particular situation, mean an idea, that they have (from whereever, you may believe from eternal platonic forms or from bare sense data), into a sound. This act of meaning transcends misunderstanding; or rather, misunderstanding is its result, and its institutionalized form. (Or the act of meaning is the attempt to transcend that form, to create an impossible unity.)
If we understand society in general as fossilized, institutionalized misunderstandings, as a heap of historical hiccups (which I think, given the state of the world, is most appropriate, for all its faults and surprising goods alike), then we can understand _miscommunication as the fundamental social act_, the Urform of socialization. By miscommunicating, something is put between us, that we both have to deal with; and through that, something like society can arise in the first place. Not through magical "understanding", not through a golden age of harmony (which only those imagine that are too naive to think such an understanding would be golden, if it already had in it the fruit of its own destruction - chaos omnia tegit...), but through the arduous process of managing conflicts and disagreements, of trying to work within the misunderstandings that constitute what we call our "shared world", and what truly is the way, in which I can see in my own consciousness the differences and disagreements between my own mind and thought, and mine and others' acts of speaking and their respective interpretations, associations and protentions of meaning (if in the outside or the inside, in the physical world and head space alike).
The unity of political identity then has become clearer. And so has the misunderstanding within me/us as a system. It even has, as explained, become apparent as a structure within my own consciousness (in awareness of something like a "world"). What is unifying, is precisely this difference; what is communicating, is not the meaning of a word, but its effect to evoke meaning, its act of speaking and listening, and meaning a meaning into a sound. In this way, the unity of the world appears as that of rhetoric. The shared world is precisely not eidos, not pure form; it's doxa - opinion, hypothesis. It is, to use the platonic metaphor, shadow; or the dirt of reality. But it is running in those shadows and playing with that dirt that we live our lives, only occasionally, through difficult reflection, reminding ourself of the contingency of this "shared world", of its ontological status as based not so much on deceptive elements of rhetorical quippe, but on a pun. In the laughter of the real halls back its origin; that its "reality", its constructedness, is absurd, but in such a way that it bends its words of expression to become true, or creates them with that construction firstly, so that only in the form of creation of completly aside meaning - of the joke, and in the purest, of the pun - shines back to us this origin of it, and the pain from which it was birthed, visible and understandable in every subsequent miscommunication based on it.
But that is aesthetics, you might say, and rightfully so. The unity of politics is not aesthetical, and neither is the personal; the joke, or the deception also, is only a form of reflection of this general societal schema. The actual, political, historical misunderstanding is not that vibrant; it's institutionalized, fossilized. The real form of this institution is of that _of a misunderstanding in form of a communication with no participants_. Let's explain this in more detail also, since the previous exposition may have moved the understanding too much to the side of the subjective, or of understanding within misunderstanding (rather than, as we could say, misunderstanding _inquantum_ misunderstanding, insofar it is itself and for itself nothing but itself). Take the institution of the economy: In a small, simplified community situation, one can imagine economic interaction as individual, as bartering. In this scenario, the misunderstanding is very concrete: I think some object has a certain value, wheras the other person knows, that it actually has a smaller value (lets say in production, or itself in exchange); then, the buying of this article, the purely economic side of it (besides the seperate social system of production) is based on this misunderstanding, and the money exchanged represents, in a fossilized way, that misunderstanding. Because in a concrete social situation, without money and the state etc, the misunderstanding would be about how much someone is owed something, and disagrements of that kind; but without such direct interaction, the "value" moves from a subjective quality to a quantified expression of many peoples ideas of value, and the various misunderstandings stratify into the economic structure of society. This is what I mean with "fossilization"; not the keeping of grudges, but the movement from grudges to calculable debt. But this is just one example. The political system fossilizes different appeals to authority and discussions about what the law should be into "political positions", of which the people who hold them, are of the misunderstanding, that they agree, when they really only agree on the negative. This is most important here: Political positions are also _fossilized_. As nice as the idea of communication, laid out at first, is, it doesn't quite capture the political system. It captures _poltical debate_, as the dabate is the personal interaction/difference/dispute, from which the system is fossilized; but the political system actually is not based on real debate, but on _imagined debate, on the imagination of what debate should be_. And this kind of fossilization is a clear distinction; something, that does not so much distinguish political and general thought within a consciousness, but political and philosophical, artistic, scientific etc. modes of communication in society.
If therefore I can speak, starting from my own personal experiences and subjective perspectives, about political questions, it is not for ignoring the kind of fossilization that exists, or denying it; not even for reforming it entirely (as that is, at least within the current structure of society, almost impossible); but for moving it, shifting it slightly; giving terms, hitherto fixed, a more flexible position; and to, in that way, deal with the overarching dissimilitude of the possibility space of individual conceptualization with the strictness and compliance of public expression.
This is, more than anything, a reflection on political use of language, and the way it might be transformed; more a reflection of how we deem certain uses of words inaccurate etc.; rather than it is itself a political call to action. It _could_ become that, but only retroactively. One must see, however, that even such abstract lexicographical questions, like how to draw the line between "plural" and "dissociative" (as will later be considered) do have quite immediate consequences, and not just in the context of "community". Because, it is in these horizons of imaginations that we conceptualize what _should be done_, that it will, down the line, determine what _will_ (a line down which however also is merely a projection, and therfore not ever accurate). "Merely linguistic questions" do have an importance outside of discourse, and that more in the grammar of their usage, than in the content of their definition.
For this reason, I think that the following should be investigatet in other areas or research (partially realized in other texts of this collection): A) a classification, in broad terms, of phenomenological structures surrounding the phenomena of plurality, dissociation and the like. This may not be as detailled as I wish I could give; also not as sourced, and certainly not comprehensive. The main point here is more to give an outline of the _minimum necessary extent_ of phenomena such covered to estimate any meanings of such terms. B) a description of various types of definitions (essential, accidential, differential) for use of various modalities of social structures (community, society, the individual / identity), and their respective success or failure for their intended goals. C) These various types of definition are now applied, based from the understanding of the other areas, to the phenomenon of plurality and dissociation, to create various forms of opposing self conceptualizations of plural groups. D) would be an investigation into the history of "plural" and "dissociative" online groups (following for example the great historical review by L.B.Lee, with some extra sources, especially the historical review by the plural deep dive project), and tries to see the connection of these various definitions to the political fomation of groups, with an emphasis on the current situation. E) would posits my own concept, of what I think should happen, and which type of organization would be useful. F) finally tries to explain the possible steps that can be taken into that direction, and, to that effect, tries to explain the various connections between theory and praxis, also in connection to the elements and effects of the politics of condemnation and redemption, and of the relations that we build not just within and by communication, but also through our own theoretical frameworks, by which be begin our conversations and through which we tend to judge them, creating our horizon of action and life. - [It is noted that D) is the most lacking in my own research, but also very much developed elsewhere, it would be an important project to integrate the more abstract aspects of the present collection with these more general intentions.]
This all is then a description of _use of language_, as a clarification of the results of the difficulties in the _methodology of definition_. Having come from a more theoretical, mathematical-philosophical background, these debates are somewhat new to me (which also might be a reflection of English being not my native language, and, as Hannah Arendt rightfully said (in an essay on US culture and the English language), a more political language than the more contemplative German, which I do encounter with the naturality of these kinds of these types of arguments); but I hope that these more abstract reflection, as well as their consequences, that do have a political, but a theoretized, calculated political background, can help as a counterweight to sometimes overheated discourse on the definition of terms, of which the disputants often as little as their opponents know or try to understand, by which methods or in which terms they are defined by, and therefore lose in the heat of argument, and in the striving to convince, not just their conviction, but also that, what in the situation of communication is most necessary: that beyond your conviction is the other; and that to understand, and even to know, who is an ally and who is an enemy, more than intuition and knowledge of elements of discussion, is necessary the way in which, by means of definition and thought, you relate to the other as someone/something outside of you, different from you, that you however can communicate with, not inspite, but through and by the understanding, that you are talking to a misdirected image; and that the goal is not to get to the "real other", but, by learning to see the difference from the "other" to the other, also realize the difference from the "self" to myself; or the realization of the ignorance of reason, that, trying to not have, or engage with the other, still has to believe, impotently, that it knows itself, and is not itself its own unknowing.