Reflections: The Unnamed Namer

Ong, Janzl B.
Department of Humanities, Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy
Polytechnic University of the Philippines, Sta. Mesa Manila

Benjamin advanced in his essay that every kind of expression is

Language. This expression is a kind of mental expression. Language
is always concerned about meanings: Language is all about the
expression of these meanings, and all expressions may be conceived
as Language. All expressions therefore, might it be from animate or
inanimate beings, may be labeled as Language.
For Benjamin, everything has language. The way birds fly is a
language. The way MRT travels from one station to another is a
language. The way bakers make pandesals is also one. Everything,
from the literal nonsense to the most complex has a language.
Further, this language of everything gives a world-view that is
undivided; in such a way that the world may be viewed through
viewing the relationship interconnected languages. On the latter part
of the paper, Benjamin seems to imply that at the center of this
world-view of language is Man. Man by nature comprehends
language by apprehending the world around him. Man deos this by
the process of naming. Man, through naming, gains a knowledge of
the world around him.
This whole process of naming and apprehension of knowledge has the
core of mans relationship to his world, or more specifically, nature.
Everything has its language; moreover, nature has its language.
Somehow, Benjamin seems to imply that Mans understanding of his
world is dependent on how he understands nature: in such a way that
his knowledge is dependent on the language of nature. Man therefore
is the namer, for he is the one who assigns names, including to those
of nature.
Yet at the latter part of the paper, Benjamin speaks of the process of
over-naming. Whats fascinating to this process is that it offsets the
true language of things and nature, in such a way that naming itself
becomes an entrapment or a limit. Benjamin reminds that language

and naming must not always be about the communicable and the
expressible, but also about the incommunicable and the inexpressible.
One way or another, this calls for the recognition that constituted
language and naming has its limits. There is then a need to turn back
and retrace the true source of language: to readdress the language of
nature.
Perhaps, the only way that Man may go back to the true language of
nature is to temporarily suspend naming. On a certain degree, naming
constitutes a kind of entrapment: where man thinks that what he
names is certain. Man therefore must remember that language will
always fall short, and that his processes are only limited. It is here that
the paradox may be appreciated: in order for man to keep on giving
names, he must remain unnamed.
It is therefore essential to recognize that man will always fall short of
acquiring the true language of nature. There is, as what Benjamin
says, something that always remains inexpressible in things. It is here
that my personal dilemma arises: how, if there is such a way, can man
gain an access to this inexpressible? Although I am dubious if
Benjamin would agree with me, I assert that the limitations of
language may be crossed and surpassed by poetry. As what my
favorite writer says, Language has its secrets that only poetry can
reveal. It must be noted that poetry should not be confined to the
way poems are made, but be extended to the aesthetic culminations
of man in general. It is through aesthetic processes where systems of
naming and the limitations of language may be readdressed. If
language is a kind of limiting process, it is the intuitive direct access
of poetry that may be utilized to breach this specific system. It is
through poems, arts, literature, and so on, that we may gain the true
language of nature. Reading the weird text of Benjamin, I come to
think that perhaps, we need a new kind of language: a language of
the heart. A language between people that is a new kind of poetry, a
kind of poetry of the dancing sunflowers that speaks how good the
sunny day is. One way or another, in order to create this kind of
language, we need a stepping-back and look through a looking glass.
In this perception, where we have the sense of being united to all
things, we suddenly understand everything: we suddenly gain an
access to the through language of nature.