Abstract
What happens when the links between words make sound but not sense, but
nevertheless a poetic world is built across the borderzones of these different
linguistic and significatory origin points? What does this sort of etymological
‘unmooring’ show us about trans/in/fusion’s way of thinking ‘tradition as
entanglement’ (Ghosh 2021)? What can this tell us about the relationship
between noise, crosscultural aesthetics, and the c.21st human, ‘teetering on the
brink’ (Ghosh 2021) where normative modes of trans/lation do not operate?
How, then does the production of reason operate, rootless? This essay takes a
transinfusionist approach to the plastic, odic constructions of a specifically lyric
mode of reason (see Yeung 2020), humming along with a Trans(in)fusionist mode
of thinking, which this author hears as inherent in trans/languaging’s
sonorousnesses as well as in its fundamental nature and its performances of
libidinal attachment. In order to do so, the essay reads by mobilizing and
navigating a phonoaesthetic constellation of 3 ‘hum-‘s: the hum of ‘humming’
noises (the quasi-mimetic German-indebted hum, which can be tuneful or
otherwise; with a repertoire spanning the human, non-human, or inhuman), the
‘hum’ of the rising (lyric) bird (the Persian-indebted huma, akin to a phoenix),
the ‘hum’ of the earth (the Greek-indebted humus – from khamai), to get to the
idea of the hum of understanding, and its veil, or borderzone.
nevertheless a poetic world is built across the borderzones of these different
linguistic and significatory origin points? What does this sort of etymological
‘unmooring’ show us about trans/in/fusion’s way of thinking ‘tradition as
entanglement’ (Ghosh 2021)? What can this tell us about the relationship
between noise, crosscultural aesthetics, and the c.21st human, ‘teetering on the
brink’ (Ghosh 2021) where normative modes of trans/lation do not operate?
How, then does the production of reason operate, rootless? This essay takes a
transinfusionist approach to the plastic, odic constructions of a specifically lyric
mode of reason (see Yeung 2020), humming along with a Trans(in)fusionist mode
of thinking, which this author hears as inherent in trans/languaging’s
sonorousnesses as well as in its fundamental nature and its performances of
libidinal attachment. In order to do so, the essay reads by mobilizing and
navigating a phonoaesthetic constellation of 3 ‘hum-‘s: the hum of ‘humming’
noises (the quasi-mimetic German-indebted hum, which can be tuneful or
otherwise; with a repertoire spanning the human, non-human, or inhuman), the
‘hum’ of the rising (lyric) bird (the Persian-indebted huma, akin to a phoenix),
the ‘hum’ of the earth (the Greek-indebted humus – from khamai), to get to the
idea of the hum of understanding, and its veil, or borderzone.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Trans(in)fusion and Contemporary Thought |
| Subtitle of host publication | Thinking In Migration |
| Editors | Jayjit Sarkar |
| Publisher | Lexington Books |
| Chapter | 4 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9781666935073 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781666935066 |
| Publication status | Published - Sept 2023 |