Yes,Alison and David, I fully agree about the priority of language to
particular value systems: in fact, without language the very categories of
freedom/unfreedom would not exist. Does an ant think about freedom? But
parole as opposed to langage (if I'm using the right jargon here, please
correct me if not) is often loaded with socially & politically heavily
invested terms & connotations, so there isn't an absolute contradiction
here; parole is language as she is used by agents, so Chris does have a
point, though he exaggerates & paints himself into a corner, because as his
example of "Kafta" (sic ~ but he could have used Celan, a better example)
shows, all languages bear the incrustations of guilt formed through
historical praxis (Oh Goddess, I've gorn & used the dreaded word) ~ anyone
here know a language free of them? So where do you go to, my lovely, when
you're alone in your bed? A guilt-free linguistic never-never land?
("...what dreams may come, must give us pause...".)But merely the fact of
using a particular language doesn't identify you with specific practices
within that language, as David pointed out with his examples. Only
inheriting a certain language obliges you as a conscious agent to take your
bearings among the agenda of various socio-linguistic practices & make some
responsible choices. My choice is to eschew the term "problematize", for
example, as I find it distasteful in the context of bureaucratic & elitist
practices, whether translations of Deleuze or whoever use it or not, but I
don't reject it out of hand as a signifier used in theoretical
communications, (how could I? I can't make others' linguistic choices for
them), though I may choose to attempt to influence others to eschew it too;
this is after all part of what civilized discourse consists of, and a large
motive of both philosophy & poetry is to renew the language, clear up
obscurities, "donner un sens plus pur aux mots de la tribu". I rather think,
however, that the appeal to correct derivation ("problematicize" instead of
"problematize" ~ Erminia's example of "problematizzare" shows the opposite
of what she claimed, German "problematisieren" is almost certainly the
source of the English term, even if the Nietzsche story was a cod) is a lost
cause, see psychedelic & other words.
Martin
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