Originary Grammar as the Study of the Scene's Linguistic Structure
Originary grammar, in Center Study, begins from the premise that the forms of language — ostensive, imperative, declarative — are not arbitrary conventions but structural deposits of the originary scene itself. As Katz writes in Cognition as Originary Memory, "the declarative constrained by the imperative order it transcends and, of course, the imperative by the ostensive. The economy of the dialectic of linguistic forms is conserved."1. Each grammatical form carries within it the trace of the scene from which it emerged: the ostensive points, the imperative demands, the declarative completes — and each higher form remains answerable to the lower one it transcends, just as biology remains constrained by chemistry.
What makes originary grammar distinctive is its insistence that sign use is never free-floating but always embedded in an imperative exchange. Katz notes in Media, Technology and Originary Grammar that "the sign is always supplementing some blocked desire, or the dead-end or “knot… of any imperative exchange"2. This means the declarative — the form most associated with propositional knowledge — cannot be understood in isolation. It is always embedded in an imperative background, which is itself modeled on prayer: "the model for which is prayer (which is therefore also the model for desire)."2. Grammar, on this account, is anthropomorphics: the study of how scenes are stacked, how imperatives issue in declaratives, and how ostensives complete the scene.
The grammar of originary scenes is also a grammar of memory. As Katz argues in Cognition as Originary Memory, "remembering the sign is a way of forgetting the scene, immersion in the declarative dimension of culture is a forgetting of the imperative and the ostensive."1. Originary grammar therefore has a diagnostic function: it tracks what gets suppressed or forgotten as language moves up the hierarchy of forms. When the declarative forgets its imperative ground, or the imperative forgets the ostensive that conditions it, something of the scene's structure is lost — and originary grammar is the practice of recovering it.
The broader ambition of originary grammar is made explicit in Anthropomorphics, where Katz describes "media, or the stacking of scenes" as "the anthropomorphics of imperative exchange"2. To analyze any discourse, text, or medium through originary grammar is to ask: what scene does this construct, what imperative exchange does it channel, and what ostensive does it aim at completing? The grammatical forms are not just logical categories but scene-configurations, and originary grammar is the systematic articulation of their interrelations.
The most concentrated statement of what originary grammar is ultimately after comes from Cognition as Originary Memory: "If linguistic presence is continuous, then our relation to the originary scene is continuous — in a real sense, we are all, always, on the originary scene — it has never 'closed.'… As long as we are within linguistic presence we are iterating the original scene, in all of our uses of signs."1. Originary grammar is the discipline that takes this iteration seriously as its object of study.
Excerpts
"Of course, with the media we have much more than linear, written or printed discourse: we have sound and images of all kinds—all the senses are involved. And what we can add to Olson's model is that even his 'originary' speech situation is supplemental, because the sign is always supplementing some blocked desire, or the dead-end or “knot (to dip a bit into Lacan) of any imperative exchange. And this was part of what has prevented me from thinking through originary grammar past a certain point—a failure to sufficiently bring in, not just the imperative, but imperative exchange, the model for which is prayer (which is therefore also the model for desire). Media, or the stacking of scenes, is the anthropomorphics of imperative exchange."
[Media, Technology and Originary Grammar] · Substack Read →
"Now, the embedding of the declarative in the imperative order is not very important if once we have the declarative, we have the declarative, i.e., a new linguistic form irreducible to the lower ones, in the way biology is irreducible to chemistry, and chemistry to physics. But biology is still constrained by chemistry, and chemistry by physics. So is the declarative constrained by the imperative order it transcends and, of course, the imperative by the ostensive. The economy of the dialectic of linguistic forms is conserved. Just as on the originary scene remembering the sign is a way of forgetting the scene, immersion in the declarative dimension of culture is a forgetting of the imperative and the ostensive."
[Cognition as Originary Memory] · GABlog Read →
"This raises the question of how we conserve linguistic presence by lowering the threshold of significance. If linguistic presence is continuous, then our relation to the originary scene is continuous—in a real sense, we are all, always, on the originary scene—it has never “closed.” In that case, a crisis in linguistic presence marks some weakening of that continuity with the originary scene—the crisis is that we are in danger of being cut off from the scene. But in that case, continuity with the scene must entail the repetition of the scene or, more precisely, its iteration. As long as we are within linguistic presence we are iterating the original scene, in all of our uses of signs."
[Cognition as Originary Memory] · GABlog Read →
"Originary mistakenness provides an alternative heuristic to what I have been calling the "grammarian" one, which presupposes a shared model and measures and punishes deviations from it: something will be mistaken in any utterance or gesture (some context overlooked, some shifting of emphasis askew, some possible response unanticipated), and if we train ourselves to attend to that mistakenness then much that is invisible in the utterance or gesture becomes visible. What has become visible is the idiomatic character of all semiosis: we can identify what is formulaic in a free expression, and free in a formulaic one: mistakes break up the cliché and the commonplace."
[Originary Mistakenness, Defilement and Modernity] · PDF Read →
"And 'discipline' is just an extension of 'deferral'—it is self-conscious, systematized deferral. I treat 'deferral,' then, the way marginalist economics treat 'marginal utility'—as a concept that singles out the distinctive and new (the emergent event), and turns it into a hinge upon which all of social reality turns."
[The Originary Hypothesis and Reactionary Thinking] · GABlog Read →