Friday, March 4, 2011

A note on neologisms

You may have noticed that I use a few terms that are not in the dictionary, that I've made up to get across a meaning that is also not in the dictionary. So let me clarify at least two of them for the moment. Kennilingus is one such term. It is a take on the word cunnilingus with which you are already familiar. The kenni part refers to Ken Wilber, so it's a sort of play on one who licks Wilber. This of course is metaphorical, not meaning one who actually gives head to him, although that most certainly could be included, especially since his “suck my dick” comment to critics, which comment it seems acolytes take literally. It's more like those who unflinchingly accept his work verbatim without much, if any, criticism. We all know the type, who when speaking of “integral” will use the exact same language as Wilber, not only in content but often in the same style with the same prejudices. I also use it to refer to the source from when the language comes, to Wilber's own dogma.

To distinguish the alternative integral movement from kennilingus I use the term intergraal. Inter comes more from the interrelations of the elements of AQAL instead of their rigid distinctions. Granted the elements should be separated out to gain invaluable analysis and clarity. Nor should they be reduced to each other in some form a overarching, dominant and relativistic mush of equality. But neither should they be so distinct as to not see how they relate, for it is in the relationships that any sense of a whole emerges from which the parts participate. And said whole is not THE whole, just a particular whole relative to a particular focus in a particular context. And this doesn't have to be reduced to another form of relativism, since it can also accommodate qualitative distinction and make value judgments so to which wholes are better in which circumstances. Also said parts do not have to be entirely subsumed in any given whole, since they retain their own agency and participate in other wholes in other contexts.

The graal of intergraal is the Old French spelling of the term “grail.” We often associate grails with the Holy Grail, the cup that caught the blood of Christ on the cross, and which nectar is purported to induce in one communion with the divine. Hence we drive from such cups in religious masses where wine is transubstantiated into the blood of Christ, and we are washed of our sins by partaking in this ritualistic cannibalism. But again metaphorically it symbolizes more that communion with the big Other. We can demythologize that other from some metaphysical divinity to a more humane other, to focusing more on humanity in the here and now in this world and in this context, in our present embodiment and interactivity with our environment and other human beings. It is a transforming and perhaps even transubstantiating conversion from our isolated agency to a balance with our human communion through the emerging next wave of development in P2P networks. Hence intergraal is in distinction from the typically more agentic, individualistic, authoritarian, capitalistic and intellectualized kennilingus.

1 comment:

  1. Addendum: to make it more akin to fellatio I have another variation for the object of worship in kennilingus, the kennilingam. (See this* for a definition of lingam, which includes penis but goes into its religious meanings as well, a fit symbol of the AQAL religion.) Anyone care to come up with a graphic depiction? I'm thinking of the typical phallas with testicles but the tip being Kenni's face and head? Maybe wearing a Pope hat, which looks like a dickhead anyway...

    Actually I think it best to refer to the head of the movement as Kennilingam, the big dick, and the act of vomiting his verbiage verbatim as kennilingus, while referring to those who do so as kennilinguists. It takes time to work out the proper syntax of neologisms.

    * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingam

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