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（2）"Voices
of the Past" by Naoki Sakai (Cornell University Press・1991)
In Nihongo wa do iu gengo ka (What sort of
language is Japanese? ), Miura Tsutomu discusses the difference between
pictorial expression (kaigateki hyogen) and verbal expression (gengoteki
hyogen). He contends that in pictorial expression the depiction of an
object inevitably involves expression of the subject's perspective. An
object can be described, identified, and determined as such only if it
seen from the position of a specific viewer. A thing seen from nowhere
is merely an impossibility. Like phenomenologists, Miura acknowledges
in pictorial expression some of the conditions of perspective or Abschattung,
pertaining to the perception of things in general. Thus he regards pictorial
expression, in contrast to verbal expression, as an imitation of objects
in the sensory aspect, which "implies that pictorial or cinematographic
expression is restricted by the position of the author's sensory organs
and by his particular way of grasping by means of the senses."
In pictorial expression, therefore, subjective and
objective expressions always coexist as already synthesized. The pictorial
expression of an object is first and foremost an expression of the subject's
attitude and position. But Miura also points out that the viewpoint
and subject's attitude that are registered in pictorial presentation cannot
be immediately identical to the position and attitude of the viewer. Rather,
the subject's imagined position is preserved in pictorial presentation.
On the other hand, this kind of immediate synthesis
of the subjective and the objective does not exist in verbal expression.
Referring to the language process theory (gengo katei setsu) of Tokieda
Mitoki, Miura defines the nature of verbal expression, noting: "One of
the main characteristics of language is that there is no direct relationship
between the sensory mode of an object and the sensory mode of the form
of its expression." Later he remarks:
[The fact] that language is
free from the constraints inherent in the sensory aspects of an object
leads, on the one hand, to the fact that it requires social convention
for its expression and, on the other hand, to the fact that objective
and subjective expressions are separated [in language]. One must seek
essential feature of language here. Duality in expression exists in the
form of synthesis in the case of pictures and movies, but in the case
of language, the duality is divided, with another duality of linguistic
and nonlinguistic expression being generated as a result.
This is, indeed, an attempt to classify various forms
of presentation in terms of their structures. Elsewhere Miura attributes
the specificity of linguistic expression to duality in expression;
There are many ways to grasp
an object. But in linguistic expression, various specificities of the
sensory mode in which an object is presented and sometimes the characteristic
of the sensory mode itself are omitted, or the nonsensory object can be
presented. In any case, an object is always presented through generalization
or universalization. That is to say, language expresses an object either
by generalizing it into a presentation and thereby conceptualizing it
or by directly grasping it as a universal aspect of the concept. Therefore,
differences that a particular object entails in the sensory mode of its
perception prior to conceptualization cannot be expressed in linguistic
form. And listeners and readers do not have direct access to an object
in linguistic expression.
He then maintains that the enunciation is therefore
an act by which the division between immediate sensory perception and
conceptualization is generated. It follows with regard to the speaking
subject that the enunciation is always a doubling of the subject. What
he refers to as "splitting in the linguistic expression of ego" is related.
To express an object through linguistic media is to posit a subject other
than the one already existing in the world. A subject thus generated is
no longer subjugated to the constrains of Abschattung. It is in
this context that Maurice Merleau-Ponty once said, "Language is not a
being-in-the-world": the subject posited in linguistic expression does
not have its place within the world of perception. In other words, through
verbalization one becomes an anonymous other who is at the same time both
nowhere and everywhere; that is, one becomes universalized. If
the nonverbal text is characterized by the subject's positionality in
the world, then the verbal text is certainly defined by its subject's
freedom from perspectival constrains. In other words, language is the
field of the other, and the enunciation is a transition from the state
in which one has not yet experienced the splitting and therefore has not
been transformed into a subject, to the realm where the subject has been
split and has thereby lost its direct rapport with the world. Such is
Miura's argument.
Perhaps I should point out a fundamental problem
in Miura's approach similar to the one I found Benveniste's ideas. By
emphasizing the difference between sensory expression and linguistic expression,
or the visible and articulatory, Miura tends to ascribe an immediacy to
the visual in contrast to the mediated nature of linguistic, as if the
visual were more directly affiliated with the primordial experience of
perception. He posits, in fact, a real ego (shutai teki na jiko) as opposed
to the ideational ego (kannen teki na jiko). In spite of his insight into
the importance of the "mirror stage" in social formation, which he draws
from his reading of Marx, he seems to posit the real ego without any qualification:
The material mirror used
in the idealistic split of ego is not exclusively a glass mirror. Already
Marx pointed out the existence of "other men" as one of those material
mirrors. "Since he comes into the world neither with a looking glass in
his hand, nor as a Fichtean philosopher, to whom 'I am I' is sufficient,
man first sees and recognizes himself in other men. Peter only establishes
his own identity as a man by first comparing himself with Paul as being
of like kind. And thereby Paul, just as he stands in his Pauline personality,
becomes to Peter the type of the genus homo." This is Marx's critique
of the idealism of Fichtean type. As I have mentioned, Fichte's "ego"
is, in fact, an ideational self, [Kannen teki na jiko ], but Fichte
insists that such "ego" exists from the outset. In contrast, Marx argues
that the ideational self does not exist with birth, but through the encounter
with "the mirror called other men," the real self [genjitsu teki na jiko]
is split to generate the ideational self.
Hence, Miura's notion of shutai
is blind to many questions that necessarily arise when the shutai
is substantialized and subjectified. This blindness is, in fact, shared
not only by Benveniste (most evidently, as I said, in his notions of discourse
and person) but also by Tokieda Motoki, as I shall indicate in my discussion
of his linguistics later. Though they do so in different ways, Benveniste,
Tokieda, and Miura all reduce the shutai to the subject of enunciation,
despite the fact that, particularly in Miura's work, the specular image
of the self is clearly distinguished from the agent who speaks.
(p.191-193)
※HP制作者注
三浦つとむ著作からの引用部となっている箇所は青字とした。
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