Hunting the Snark: Ontology at the Edge of Meaning: 5 Nonsense as Ontological Critique

Nonsense is not absence of meaning.

It is the exposure of representational expectation to the structured potential of language, roles, and relational cuts.

Carroll’s verse teaches that meaning arises in the network, not in objects — a radical insight dressed as absurdity.

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1. Clinical: Nonsense as Systemic Transparency

• Nonsense is a diagnostic tool.

• It makes explicit the conditions under which meaning is sustained:

  • potential

  • cut

  • relational network

  • absorption capacity

• Without conventional referents, the network becomes visible.

• The Bellman’s map, the name “Snark,” the crew’s distributed roles — all are systems revealed through apparent absurdity.

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2. Satirical Undercurrent: Mockery of Certainty

Victorian readers sought moral and empirical clarity.

Carroll mocks them:

• The more one seeks fixed meaning, the more one encounters structural surprise.

• Nonsense is a satirical lens on representational hubris.

The absurd is not decoration. It is pedagogy, lightly veiled as humor.

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3. Mischievous Layer: Reader as Experiential Node

You, the reader, are implicated again:

• Every attempt to “make sense” contributes to system density.

• Every inference risks tipping the network into Boojum thresholds.

• Nonsense becomes a mirror: your own construal habits displayed, destabilised, and gently corrected.

By laughing, puzzling, or resisting, you perform the very relational operations Carroll encoded.