Aye I: A Note Away From Specificity

Here's a thought: when I write "i", you know that I mean me. Except, when you (read or?) write "i", you mean you - which at that point is also "me". Is this a funny trick of self-expression?

In writing, any "i" we find must be filtered through our reading of that "i" not as an "i" at all, but of a "he", "she" or even "it", "they". "i" may as well be a horse, a kettle, the abstract concept of disappointment. And why not? It is not a case of our giving an “i” to a horse, a kettle, or the abstract concept of disappointment. Rather, it is understanding the capacity for “i”ness for and from these diffuse examples, which radiate outwards. In essence, our anthropocentric notion of what “i” can cover must be re-evaluated. To understand the noumena within Objects, within Things (depending on whose terminological favouritism one follows), one must first designate the possibility of an “i” to them.

Such a task is not as onerous as it sounds, since “i” is nomadic, homeless. Even when used in basic communicative presumption, it is fluid and inadequate. Let’s say that one day one declares “I like swimming”. That very day, they have a traumatic experience while out sailing and later in life can no longer countenance swimming at all. Whose, then, is that “i” in “I like swimming”? By any stretch it cannot be that self same person who uttered it initially. “i” is linguistically synchronic, yet strives to define something in perpetual flux. That one could have a fixed, or even static, personality or notion of self is an illusion propagated by the linguistic limitation of “i”. While such a statement may sound complex, it is an aspect of communicative language every speaker of English accepts every time they say “i”. It is a postcard, already too late, but enough for now.

Nonetheless, we must accept that Things, the world with which we engage, is as fixed as we are in its essence, in its Thing-ness. We can attempt but always fail to capture the lemon-ness of a lemon, until perhaps it rots beyond that lemon-ness. Does it have to be yellow? Of a certain shape? What if it is unripe? Or chopped in half? We access the world, the Things we encounter only obliquely. To truly work within a flat ontology, therefore, one must adequate, condescend, Things to be as fluid as we casually allow ourselves to be in our own Thing-ness, by allowing them an “i”. To frame the thought another way, humans must remove themselves from the epistemic centre, to look at things bigger, rather than smaller.    

"i" is promiscuous, simultaneously everyone's and no-one's*, nowhere at all. Feeling inauthentic in the face of linguistic limitation, of not being able to get at the truth, should really - then - be very common. If our very selves have to be transmuted through a hoped-for (mis)understanding. Any "i" speaks for itself, as does "you". A grammatical offer of unique identity is always, therefore, untrue. "i" is by definition the most impersonal pronoun. 

(Yet, for whatever reason we are still reluctant to give "it" an "i", most of the time. Anthropocentric insecurity/hubris rears its head even with the impossibility found in giving others - let alone ourselves! - clear linguistic identity. I posit that every Thing we engage with is bursting with an "i" we have disallowed it.) Too much?

What if - and pronouns are a political hot topic at the moment, which is a bit mad to me, given the above (since any "he", "she", "it" &tc. must only ever be the speaker or writer's designation - a shortcut, selfish, to help their mind) - we/one could envisage a new personal pronoun? A grammatical innovation signifying the tacit paradoxes of self-expression. Not the barred/barring "i" (do I pun on Lacan here, linguistically?), but an opening in which to breathe, to trade life. A fair exchange, unmuted by conflicts of "i" meaning "you" and vice versa. 

Or just get rid of them.

Which is tougher?

Which is more worthwhile? 

(The question is not, note: is either worthwhile?)

*Side note: I find it also funny-peculiar that no-one requires a hyphen, whereas everyone/someone/anyone does not. What is it about the lack inherent in the "no" that therefore requires clarification? It seems to give more weight to the one of which it speaks by separating it from the absence. Hmm.