linguistic turnip

[lapsedmodernist]

we are trying to solve a very important issue this morning. I just greeted fresh-from-the-shower theophile as "Hey, Jesus" on account of his face-framing locks and facial hair, and he said that he had always though that to be the sort of man that Jesus was described as being, Jesus would have had to be short.

"Are you saying Jesus had a Napoleon complex?" I asked.

"No, I think he had a Christ complex" he replied.

Can Jesus have a Christ complex? Can someone be diagnosed with something that has been named after them (or their circumstance?) It's not quite anacrhronistic...it's something else, right? When I asked theophile, he said "would you call Oedipus Oedipal?" I said that I would not think it was proper usage; he thought it was appropriate.

So is there a language rule for this? Is there a term for this? Can you say that Bonaparte has the Napoleon complex? It seems like there is a problem with the linguistic turn (or semiotic break, msmsgirl!), where the distance between the signifier and the signified collapses when you attempt that sort of usage, no?

Comments

[congogirl.livejournal.com]

But... this seems to be the definition of tautological, no? Defining (can we say describing here?) something by using the word itself? Seems to me that you must describe the original by defining it, and then you liken future entities to it.

When I think of diseases named after people, you know, like Lou Gehrig, he didn't HAVE Lou Gehrig's disease, he had a syndrome that eventually was known as Lou Gehrig's, and other people later could be likened to his condition through using that descriptor.

[maga-dogg.livejournal.com]

'Byron was Byronic' and 'Christ was Christlike' seem like tautologies, but 'was Byron really all that Byronic?' would be a non-trivial mode of inquiry.

Diseases are good examples of Kripkean baptismal acts. You don't diagnose a patient with Lou Gehrig's disease by comparing their symptoms to Gehrig's. If some medical researchers poked around and discovered that, in fact, Lou Gehrig didn't have the disease we now call Lou Gehrig's disease, but a highly unusual form of cholera, 'Lou Gehrig's disease' would not suddenly refer to cholera. (Similarly, our knowledge that Christ wasn't born in 1 AD has not caused the denotation of '5 BC' to change.) And baptism is retroactive: 'the Incas inhabited South America' is true even if nobody called it South America at the time. So Lou Gehrig did have Lou Gehrig's disease, and this is a nontrivial statement.

[theophile.livejournal.com]

well, Lou Gehrig did have ALS, and "Lou Gehrig's disease" is an American colloquialism for ALS, so I think the argument that Lou Gehrig had Lou Gehrig's disease is straightforward.

it's when we get into conditions that exist only as literary or historical referential points that things get tricky. did Happy Days jump the shark? it seems like it must have, because when we say that a cultural phenomenon jumps the shark, we're saying that the same thing is happening to it that happened to Happy Days. I'm not even sure it's a tautology, if only because saying "Happy Days jumped the shark" does convey a specific piece of information in reference to culture (Happy Days underwent a phenomenon common in popular culture in which a piece of media, in attempting to stay fresh, loses its grounding) that "Happy Days included a scene in which a character jumped over a shark" does not. similarly, saying "Napoleon had a Napoleon complex" doesn't mean "Napoleon was like Napoleon"-- it specifically means "Napoleon overcompensated for being short." the line of tautology is blurrier in the cases of fiction, like Oedipus and Christ, if only because their respective complexes refer in a sense to their overall character arcs as opposed to a particular distinguishing characteristic of either. I remain undecided.

[claudelemonde.livejournal.com]

it would almost be an autoeponym, no?

[grashupfer.livejournal.com]

Did Oedipus really have a swollen foot?

[theophile.livejournal.com]

I heard he did as a result of having a stake driven through it. what a Christ complex. get over yourself, Oed.

[isquiesque.livejournal.com]

Eeenteresting that everyone is agreeing with you instead of with theophile... I'm inclined to agree with him, myself. I mean, Napoleon did have a Napoleon complex. It just wasn't called that yet, but it still was what it was.

This is an interesting question that's made for some fun morning discussion - thanks!

[isolt.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that when you call Oedipus "Oedipal" you are in fact describing him and accurately but only with reference to himself. I imagine we're all like ourselves. It seems to me that these terms are only useful as comparisons.

[maga-dogg.livejournal.com]

A Christ complex is, imho, psychologically reliant upon being part of a culture that has a Christ-meme; moreover, it's a general emulation of character, rather than a specific attribute that exists independently of Christ. Christ may have had a messiah complex, maybe even a martyr complex, but not a Christ complex.

The Napoleon and Oedipal complexes, on the other hand, refer to a very specific pattern, one not reliant on there ever having been a Bonaparte or an Oedipus myth. Napoleon is just a convenient example. To extend things a little further, Queen Victoria was clearly a Victorian.

[boymaenad.livejournal.com]

I dunno. I tend to think of most of my friends as superheroes of their own personal flavors, and the idea that Bob is so very Bob is perfectly in line with that approach.

More human than human -- that's our motto.

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

So Kierkegaard says that Eros is the least erotic of gods, and Keats that the poet is the most unpoetical of all beings. So there are non-tautological observations to be made. Browning on Shakespeare: "The less Shakespeare he" for doing some non-Shakespearean thing. I like the poetic version of this in Wordsworth and Shelley: "sights that on a wild secluded scene impress / Thoughts of more deep seclusion." Johnson: "He that can imagine this can imagine more." James: Charlotte buys the gift as a ricorso, a reminder: of what? Of buying the gift (in the Golden Bowl).

Also, could you two or even three have lunch June 26, a thursday?

Re: More human than human -- that's our motto.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

So June 26th is when my mother is arriving in Boston...how about some time next week? I am available for lunch virtually every day! With the gnome, of course.