Language and the Body

The problem of the body in Romantic Studies: On the strengths and limits of New Materialism

“…Looking at the body through the gaze of deconstruction might appear futile, given that deconstruction is not a theoretical tool made to figure out what something is . This might explain why, besides Andrew Bennett's “Language and the body” (2015), the Romantic body has not been subject to very many purely deconstructive analyses. Another reason might simply be that, since its inception, many critics and historians alike have treated deconstruction as a theoretical strand disinterested in “matter,” including that of the body, and as something favoring the linguistic sign at the expense of signified “reality.” 5…”

“…In his brief outline of a Derridean conception of the body, Bennett draws on Derrida's deconstruction of the opposition between speaking and writing. According to Derrida, this opposition is premised upon further oppositions such as that between signifier and signified, sensible and intelligible, and, fundamentally, body and mind (Bennett, 2015, 74). “Writing, the letter, the sensible inscription,” Derrida writes in De la grammatologie (1967), “has always been considered by the Western tradition as the body and matter external to the spirit, to breath, to speech, and to logos.…”

“…And the problem of soul and body is not doubt derived from the problem of writing from which it seems—conversely—to borrow its metaphors” (Derrida, 1976, 35). According to Bennett, this leads Derrida to “deconstruct the proposition that body is to mind or spirit as writing is to speech” (Bennett, 2015, 75). Traditionally, both body and writing have been placed under the category of the sensible and material, while mind and speech have been placed opposite as immaterial and internal.…”

“…Traditionally, both body and writing have been placed under the category of the sensible and material, while mind and speech have been placed opposite as immaterial and internal. Further, as Derrida scholar Jack Reynolds outlines, due to the “ethics‐religious ideal of the body as subordinated to the mind,” in the hierarchy between writing and speech, speech has been favored and has become the basis of a “logocentrist” disparagement of the written word: Speech is a direct outpouring of consciousness, whereas the function of the written sign is to make speech present when it is absent (Bennett, 2015, 74–75; Reynolds, 2004, 30). Writing, then, is marked by difference, by delay.…”

Derrida and the Flesh of Metaphorical Language

“…To put it in his own words, "[t]he question of the origin of writing and the question of the origin of language are difficult to separate" (Derrida, 1974). Commenting on this, Andrew Bennett writes: "[f]or Derrida, the 'problem of writing' is in effect more generally the problem of language" (Bennett, 2015). Derrida points out that "writing thus comprehends language" (Derrida, 1974).…”