>Self-consciousness cannot be achieved with the aquisition of language (or
some
>such symbolic system that is achived through socialization). Despite our
>pre-linguistic tendencies, which facilitate language acquisition, the brain
>isn't hardwired for any *specific* language - otherwise we'd all be speaking
>the same m(other) tongue. Language-use is, essentially, alienating from our
>needful state of being (prior to language). This creates a rupture between
>"being" and "speaking." This rupture can only be "fixed" at the expense of
>subjectivity.
Without having done more than borrow and hastily return L---n to the enthusiast who'd lent him to me, I can't hope to respond to you in your terms, but I believe I can make something of what you say as follows. The practice of consciousness -- the active brainwork that keeps me in mind of the fact that I exist in the world -- often seems to interfere with my ability to live in the moment. It's always forcing me to look away (backward, forward or out on some tangent) from what my little human being is actually undergoing at the time. My dog on the other hand, who was not apparently burdened with self-awareness (though we can't be sure of that, can we), used to taste each moment as he encountered it: delighting if it was pleasurable, skulking about or wailing loudly if was not. I suppose we've all seen this condition as enviable, at one time or another. A sort of un-, or as you suggest pre-conscious paradise...to trivialise it even further: the bliss of ignorance.
Non-human animals do seem to do quite well on the whole without language. Whether that marks them more or less advanced depends on your point of view, I suppose. As I was just pointing out to a friend, football (soccer) players on the field communicate with each other quite effectively much as wolves do on a hunting expedition, and the fewer words the players use -- the more they communicate simply via body language and their knowledge of one another's game, the more fluidly they exchange roles without the use of language -- the more elegant the sport appears to the spectators.
If the regions of the brain devoted to self-awareness and language were one and the same (and apparently they're not, nor do people who've lost their language ability necessarily lose their sense of themselves) you'd have something like a case for marking a rupture between being-in-the-moment and speaking, at least.
I'm probably committing all kinds of sins, here, left and right, but (forging ahead, regardless) to say that the rupture between speaking and being can be fixed only at the expense of subjectivity may be a clever way of saying that to the extent that we are aware of ourselves we find it difficult to exist as our animal selves -- in other words that our busibody human brains often prevent us from living in the moment. So have some mindbogglingly sensuous sex, or have a beer and a fag and watch a football game -- if you're lucky you can combine all four -- and watch that rupture dissolve, language or no language. Us artists like to throw paint at a canvas with much the same effect, there are ways of getting past the mind/body split without having to resort to Lacan.
cheerfully depraved, Joanna
www.overlookhouse.com