kenneth.mackendrick at utoronto.ca wrote:
> If we start with the idea
> that nothing escapes language, that we can't think outside
> of language, then it all starts with words... mere words.
>
This is both a false premise and (even given the premise) a non sequitur. It does not at all follow from "Nothing escapes language" that it "all starts with words." But the premise is false because if one grants it then the existence of language itself becomes impossible to explain except on creationist principles (see Book VIII of Paradise Lost, where Adam leaps to his feet alone in the garden and begins to speak like an 18th c. philosophe). Clearly humans (the human species) were always already acting before the existence of language, and language arose or emerged from that pre-lingual behavior. (As far as I can tell from my struggle with *Bodies That Matter* Judith Butler's thought self-destructs through inability to explain the very existence of language.)
Of course Kenneth's exposition is even more absurd, "If we start with the IDEA of language." How odd. Do we start with language or do we start with the idea of language? One can't have it both ways.
Carrol