Thursday, January 20, 2011
Signifiers of Psychedelia
Professor Fink talked about the signifiers of psychedelic music on Tuesday: dynamization, dechronization, and depersonalization. Does literature have the same signifiers? Both Professor Fink and Professor Decker talked about Ken Kesey and the Acid Tests and how they made made things that were inanimate seem to be moving, like the ceiling. Professor Fink went more into what psychedelic looks and sounds like, and Professor Decker talked about the differences in hippie language and new journalist language. But can the music, literature, and styles of art all be identified with the same three signifiers?
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According to Professor Fink, the LSD experience causes the sign and signifier concept to disappear, leaving the user with reality. Instead of destabilizing the system of language, it goes beyond it. It often leaves the user speechless, unable to articulate the experience, leaving them with simply, “Whoa.” It lead the hippies to resort to such ambiguous language like, “something” and “ I dunno man.” They rejected signification altogether, and instead whatever “it” is became the ultimate answer for everything. Whatever “it” was, they did not know and they couldn’t express it. So instead, they resorted to musical signifiers to express this state that was beyond signification.
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