ABSTRACT
The system of closure that provides our sensations and thoughts, that gives us reality and the lifetime dance that is experience, is subjective in the sense that it is realised by an individual alone. It is also at the same time dependent on the closures of others. For the intersensory closures of personal space, and linguistic closures in particular, are realised with encouragement and direction from other individuals who are acting in accordance with their own closures. Moreover, in the case of linguistic closure a history of prior linguistic closure on the part of others is embedded in the marks available in cultural space. For the patterns of closure offered by the marks of language are themselves the outcome of countless individual closures that individuals in the culture have realised over time. Through the marks of language therefore, a history of prior linguistic closure is carried in every individual’s space and in turn every individual’s space contributes to cultural space: what we are is dependent on the closures that others have realised and what others will be is dependent on the closures we ourselves realise. The irretrievably social aspect of the closures of personal space is thus played out even in seemingly purely private moments of experience.There is no hiding place from the closures of language, and as a result no hiding place from the closures of others.We do not therefore have our own personal data of the world, a hot line to openness which provides us with independent information. How reality is, is a function of how we hold it through our system of closure. This system incorporates at its highest level linguistic closures that have been realised from the marks of cultural space, and thus from a cultural history of the closures of others.1
