Date: Mon, 11 Dec 1995 11:45:48 -0500 (EST)
From: ksumner-AT-bosshog.arts.uwo.ca
Subject: (pre)language/the body



>>Wait:  are you saying that to imagine or acknowwledge a pre-linguistic
>>state is somehow more of a political move than saying that there is no
>>such thing as pre-linguistic?
>>
>>Elizabeth
>
 For me, to sit and pyschoanalyze or
>philosophize on a precultural, prelinguistic domain is to naturalize. at
>least, that is always my suspicion.
>
>quetzil.


I'm finding this a very interesting discussion.  Will somebody answer this:
What is the difference between a "prelinguistic domain" and a
non-linguistic one?  I'm having trouble with the "pre."  Why before
language - why not in addition to or alongside language?  This domain (if
it exists) need not be stable, unchanging, set at some "pre" time.

And I'm not sure that talking about a non-linguistic domain always entails
naturalizing something that is constucted.  We may rehearse our bodies in
such a way that their non-linguistic values are in some ways constructed
(in time, in space).  Why is the pre/non-linguistic said to be
unconstructed?

I think I would like someone to be more concrete, talk about the body.  On
the one hand I think, I can't know my body except through language.  On the
other hand, I think about pain and pleasure and what their relations might
be to language.  Can you only know pain through language?

And why does the body have to be either linguistic or pre/non-linguistic?
Maybe it's not a whole in those terms.  Maybe there's constant negotiation.


And why is it any more "privileged" to say that the body has a
non-linguistic element, then to say that it is constructed in language?
Doesn't each approach have its own privilege?

Confused in Canada,

Karen




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