excess

Meaning is not quite the product of grammar.

We live within an excess of meaning and connections that is regimented, not created, by social grammar.

Spatial areas and human psyches and societies are not tabulae rasae for an imposition of meaning. The grammar of place exists within a space of meaning that it does not create*, and that space is not subject to some largest grammar.

The 'space' we exist/act/speak in is bigger than any current grammatical possibilities, and not just because there are distant horizons. There are wild possiblities, and the combinatorial play of what can be done with, or is being accidentally done with, or might be done with the language. Then there are the intersections with other grammars and other modes of individuation. Accidental variations, through default of material, or missing the mark, or stumbling in the ritual, or mispronouncing the word, or misspelling, or interference from another system that is then repeated, picked up. Or deliberate extending or crossing of grammars. Places have this too in their signifiers, in the locales, in the activities, that can always become more than the norms, can always make new connections.

What is more than definite form is not indefinite formlessness, but this unmeasurable, unschematizable excess of connections and combinations beyond any one grid or space of possibilities. There is no way to envision it; it can't be presented. It is not a single net nor some neutral stuff waiting for a net. The excess is in or around the signifiers, and so in places, too, anywhere with regioning and meaning and revealing.

Index
connections/oppositions