Can we overcome language?

This essay will be more of a set of fragments, a series of theories and processes of thought/s that are
happening when you are somehow forced to categorize and section off parts of your past, personality,
experience, gender, sexuality and way of communication. This essay will be a writing, a type of
communication or a way to deconstruct certain trains of thoughts that have occurred in an attempt to
understand things. Is it okay to forget about grammar and rules of understanding for this essay? To not
think of it as something that has to be 'understood'? We are brought up and taught into communicating
in certain ways and if we might breech those codes of being understood then there is a fear of being
alone, unsuccessful and unemployed.
When we die, if there is a continuity of 'life', experience will be completely altered, because how could it
possibly function in the same way as this life. If the body is gone then we are left without the way we
learned previously to navigate (physically and mentally).
Imagine you are running, heading towards a tunnel, once you enter the tunnel, all you see is black, all of
a sudden, a gravitational force takes hold of you and it feels like you are going over the railings on a
swing set and you are upside-down in the process of going round the swing set except the process is
slowed down to 0.0000000000000000008 of a second. This is an example of how time and space could
be completely different to how we are used to experiencing it. And at the beginning of death this will be
terrifying because we are not used to these new rules of experience, we will have no concept of what is
happening, then eventually we may get used to experience. However if there is no concept of time in
the afterlife then I dont see how this is possible...
However, whilst we are alive we learn to regulate
things, to categorize things -such as- gender, characteristics, time,- so that we supposedly find life easier
to deal with because rules have been set in place so that we can communicate and understand our
surroundings.
Gender is something that has somehow manifested itself onto almost all areas of life:
Masc
protein/bricks
Kilts/short hair
sludge
barmitzva

Femme
malteasers/d.coke
heels/mermaid
post punk
batchayil

Helene Cixous writes in Sorties: Out and Out: Attacks/Ways Out/Forays, Always the same Metaphor,
we follow it, it carries us, beneath all its figures, wherever discourse is organized. If we read or speak,
the same thread or double braid is leading us throughout literature, philosophy, criticism, centuries of
representation and reflection. (Cixous 1975 p.3) She says that codes and values are attached to a
binary system. (Cixous 1975 p.3)
Cixous identifies as a bisexual and opposes heteronormative ways of writing. Although her
deconstructive mode reduces gender to a component and product of language, an essentialist vision of
gender is something that her writing still doesnt fully overcome as identifying as bisexual still clings to a

binary concept of gender.

She is the repressed that ensures the systems functioning. Kept at a distance so that he can enjoy the
ambiguous advantages of the distance, so that she, who is distance and postponement, will keep alive
the enigma. (Cixous 1975 p.5.6).This is a crucial critique on the feminine and masculine, however, if you
do not identify with either you could be perceived as a disposable body, invisible, creating neither an
enigma for the male or having an advantage over the female. Identifying without a solid gender can
cause a sense of displacement that overlaps all areas of communication. The reason why this is
burdening is only because society leaves you feeling like you must accommodate all parts of you to all
parts of its rules and regulations (which includes language, sex, characteristics, and way of experiencing
and processing life). In this sense, being without a conforming gender could be used as a radical tool to
abolish given tropes. It would be a mistake to think that received grammar is the best vehicle for
expressing radical views, given the constraints that grammar imposes upon though, indeed upon the
thinkable itself. (Judith Butler 1999 p.xix)
In an academic essay students are encouraged to adopt a similar model of writing, in order to obtain to
marks they need to write in a comparable way, this can extent the logic of equivalence. In capitalism
money is a way to compare things that arent the same, like a sim card and a bag of flower, theyre both
a fiver but theyre not the same. The structures that govern language -particularly in very formal modes
like academic writing- reduce the complexity and diversity of thoughts and emotions that subjects are
capable of experiencing to a rational order that can be systematically interpreted to produce a
numerical value. In Gender Trouble, Judith Butler writes that Learning the rules that govern intelligible
speech is an inculcation into normalized language, where the price of not conforming is the loss of
intelligibility itself. (Judith Butler 1956 p.xix) Thats why we end up being reliant on language even
though we know its
an oppressive thing.

(Quick Tips)

Should we just accept language as being an essential indispensable form of oppression or is there a way
of retaining intelligibility whilst celebrating non conformity.
Cixous says that (bisexual) women's writing has the potential to create a less problematic and more
open language, and erasing the boundaries of the self: 'Writing is the passageway, the entrance, the
exit, the dwelling place of the other in me - the other that I am and am not, that I don't know how to be,
but that I feel passing, that makes me live - that tears me apart, disturbs me, changes me, who? - a
feminine one, a masculine one, some? - several, some unknown, which is indeed what gives me the
desire to know and from which all life soars.' (Cixous 1975 p.10)
When Cixous talks about the other she is referring to the thing which confuses her, the life she doesnt
know, the way she does not understand. But this other has as much control as she has, or as little,
because she is the other and the other is her, both cannot be born or manifested without the other.
When we are to write using a keyboard and screen, the thought is happening simultaneously as we are
tapping the keys. When we see something that gives us pleasure, for example, object/s that are in front
of you, they are without you having anything to do with why or how they or there, they are in a specific
composition and space, lit in a certain way that for some reason you find this aesthetically pleasing. This
pleasure then dies once you realize that you have been pleased. Once you realize that you are
experiencing pleasure, that you are intrigued by something that is sensory, you then may go on to think
about why that is, or maybe just observe how you were in fact intrigued and felt something from it.
Similar to writing, suppose someone is drawing this same scene that we just talked about. They will
draw at the same time as they are experiencing the object/s and so, this pleasure will not die in the
same way, as it is being preserved whilst being created and whilst being created it is being experienced.
Then the practice becomes an object, solidified, preserved in time, which can be kept to look back on if
needs be. But, the writing and the drawing are not the basis for what is created, it is simply a vessel,
the passageway for the other that we do not understand but that is everything to let itself be shown
to us.

Having a body means we have something to be drawn back to. A body can act as a kind of checkpoint. If
there are people together that are having a conversation, everyone could use their own or each others
body as something to ground themselves so that there can be this conversation. This meaning, say if you
were to be thinking to yourself, you would not necessarily be aware of your self as you do not have to
make any body understand what you are thinking because it is you alone thinking something or
experiencing something. If you want to communicate with others, it is quite unlikely that they will
understand you absolutely precisely in the same way that you understand you (or dont understand
you).When people are talking to each other there will be different formations opposing and contracting.
In a similar way, an art piece can be something to ground a conversation. If its visual, everyone can be
looking at the same thing so this means that there is a common link. If there was a red balloon
sellotaped to a red table the colour red could be discussed, someone might see the red differently to
how another sees the colour red, nevertheless the colour could be discussed, because it is there.

Language is used and seen in a similar way to understanding bodies. If someones face moves in a
certain way you can then relate that to previous facial movements you have felt or seen before. This can
cause problems as you can then create for yourself a paralyzed formation which means that you will not
be reacting to things as you naturally should, instead you will be governed by a systematic way of
response. This is the feeling of being possessed by negative societal effects; the energy of plain survival
has almost stiffened over you with a small space for feeling paranoid that something is not right. Similar
to this, imagine you are in a room that is on fire, and you keep saying to yourself everything is fine
because you have learned how to deal with situations that are bad, so instead of running out of the
room you sit there coping saying everything is ok until you are set on fire.
Repetition is key to
building formations of understanding. When lying in bed at night, the formations that you have
experienced previously are dashing through you entering and becoming your thoughts. It seems that
you cannot escape from constant patterns that are continuing to evolve.
In Meditations, Descartes writes:
~I extend my hand and perceive it; he is challenging the idea of being awake and not asleep.
~On many occasions I have in sleep been deceived by similar illusions
~What is represented to us in sleep are like painted representations which can only have been formed
as the counterparts of something real and true
~painters can create something so novel that nothing similar has ever before been seen, and that then
their work represents a thing purely fictitious and absolutely false but the colours of which this is
composed are necessarily real. (Descartes 1996 p.7)
In the first Meditations of Descartess writing he shows that uncertainty is important for working out
what is real and what is not. When he extends his hand, he is challenging language. He has been so used
to the normal way he looks at his hand and then realizes that this may be an illusion.
We havnt moved on from the doubt that Descartes entertained in his first Medition.
If we were to use the rule of uncertainty when it comes to language, the outcome would be that
language exists, but it almost feels likes it is a faade or a way to survive.

When a group of people are talking to each other, are the ideas being talked about owned by one
person? This is unlikely as things are composed from others (insert Descartes?), writing "insert
Descartes" triggers certain type/s of thought. Each - word - whilst - focused - on - individually - could alter nothing?.

Bibliography

2016. Web. 25 Jan. 2016.

http://www.balloons.co.uk/images/products-new/v-blue-balloon.jpg
BUTLER, J.
Gender trouble
In-text: (Butler)
Your Bibliography: Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge, 1999. Print.

CIXOUS, H.
Sorties: out and out
In-text: (Cixous)
Your Bibliography: Cixous, Helene. Sorties: Out And Out. Print.

ESCARTES, R., LUYNES, L. C. D. AND BEYSSADE, M.

Meditations metaphysiques
In-text: (Descartes, Luynes and Beyssade)
Your Bibliography: Descartes, Rene, Louis Charles d'Albert Luynes, and Michelle Beyssade. Meditations
Metaphysiques. Paris: Librairie Generale Francaise, 1990. Print.

LISPECTOR, C. AND PONTIERO, G.

Near to the wild heart
In-text: (Lispector and Pontiero)
Your Bibliography: Lispector, Clarice, and Giovanni Pontiero. Near To The Wild Heart. New York: New
Directions, 1990. Print.

TIPS, Q.
academic essay structures
In-text: (tips)
Your Bibliography: tips, quick. Academic Essay Structures. 1st ed. Web. 25 Jan. 2016