CHROMATIC DISOBEDIENCE

When A Child Colours

When child colours in a colouring book what he or she is doing is colouring-semantics. It is moot whether or not they stay within the prescribed lines, because when they colour outside the lines, what they are doing, so I suggest, is colouring-semantics; they have established new rules. In this manner semantics is simply ascribing to, and following, the rules of colouring; when those rules are broken, or contravened, as when the child colours outside the lines, they have shifted the rules to accommodate a new semantics of colouring, and in doing so, have extended the possibilities of semantic-colouring altogether. Semantics is a way of doing things, not just with or within words, but with the use of language itself. If we accept Wittgenstein’s notion of language as an infinite set of language games, then its not the words that are important (there prescribed meaning-value in an Augustinian sense of words as having defined meanings, which are then sewn together with other words, also with defined meanings, which when strung together form a sentence within the definable structure of word strings, leaving no room for a shifting meaning-value in word-use as language games) but the use we put them to in an infinite variety of epistemological meaning –laden situations. Its what we want to communicate that’s important here, not some intransigent definition of words bound by some rule-driven semantics. In this sense semantic-use is polymorphous, suggesting that it can be ‘used’ not only within the structure of language per say, but in the language-game of colouring, even outside the prescribed lines of an established colouring-semantics that is always shifting and creating new semantic-usage, an infinite progression of possibilities.
Now the question remains, can we communicate at all without using some form of semantics? If as I am suggesting semantics is not the sole property of word usage, but can also be extended to things like colouring (even outside the lines, breaking one semantic rule while creating another. An infinite progression of semantic possibilities that defies rule-categorization; and, I suppose, doing away with the idea of rules altogether) is it plausible to suggest that semantics is uselessness?
And when I add up a series of numbers and get the wrong answer, I cannot be said to be doing mathematics, but simply playing with numbers. I have broken the rules of mathematics and am therefore doing something completely different. Rules, rules, rules! Who needs them? Answer: politicians and knowledge-makers. Foucault you nasty little philosopher you.