Language, Discourse, Society General Editors: Stephen Heath, Colin MacCabe and Denise Riley Selected published titles: Erica Sheen and Lorna Hutson LITERATURE, POLITICS AND LAW IN RENAISSANCE ENGLAND (2004) Elizabeth Cowie REPRESENTING THE WOMAN Cinema and Psychoanalysis Teresa de Lauretis TECHNOLOGIES OF GENDER Essays on Theory, Film and Fiction Mary Ann Doane THE DESIRE TO DESIRE The Woman's Film of the 1940s jane Gallop FEMINISM AND PSYCHOANALYSIS The Daughter's Seduction Peter Gidal UNDERSTANDING BECKETT A Study of Monologue and Gesture in the Works of Samuel Beckett Geoff Gilbert BEFORE MODERNISM WAS Modern History and the Constituency of Writing Piers Gray, edited by Colin MacCabe and Victoria Rothschild STALIN ON LINGUISTICS AND OTHER ESSAYS Ian Hunter CULTURE AND GOVERNMENT The Emergence of Literary Education jean-jacques Lecercle DELEUZE AND LANGUAGE jean-jacques Lecercle and Denise Riley THE FORCE OF LANGUAGE Patrizia Lombardo CITIES, WORDS AND IMAGES Colin MacCabe JAMES JOYCE AND THE REVOLUTION OF THE WORD Second edition Laura Mulvey VISUAL AND OTHER PLEASURES
Michael 0' Pray FILM, FORM AND PHANTASY Adrian Stokes and Film Aesthetics Denise Riley 'AM I THAT NAME' Feminism and the Category of 'Woman' in History Moustapha Safouan SPEECH OR DEATH? Language as Social Order: a Psychoanalytic Study Moustapha Safouan JACQUES LACAN AND THE QUESTION OF PSYCHOANALYTIC TRAINING (Translated and introduced by Jacqueline Rose) Stanley Shostak THE DEATH OF LIFE The Legacy of Molecular Biology Lyndsey Stonebridge THE DESTRUCTIVE ELEMENT British Psychoanalysis and Modernism James A. Snead, edited by Kara Keeling, Colin MacCabe and Cornel West RACIST TRACES AND OTHER WRITINGS European Pedigrees/ African Contagions Raymond Tallis NOT SAUSSURE A Critique of Post-Saussurean Literary Theory Geoffrey Ward STATUTES OF LIBERTY The New York School of Poets Language, Discourse, Society Series Standing Order ISBN 978-0-333-71482-9 (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RGZl 6XS, England
The Force of Language Jean-Jacques Lecercle and Denise Riley palgrave macmillan
jean-jacques Lecercle and Denise Riley 2004 Softcover reprint of the hardcover I st edition 2004 978-1-4039-4248-7 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WlT 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2004 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin's Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-52139-5 ISBN 978-0-230-50379-3 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9780230503793 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lecercle, jean-jacques. The force of language. jean-jacques Lecercle & Denise Riley. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Language and languages--philosophy. I. Riley, Denise. II. Title. P107.L43 2004 401--dc22 2004051676 10 13 9 12 8 11 7 6 10 09 Transferred to digital printing 2005 5 4 3 2 1 08 07 06 OS 04
Contents Acknowledgements vii Introduction Oean-Jacques Lecercle) 1 Part I (Denise Riley) 5 1 'A voice without a mouth': Inner Speech 7 1 Introduction: Solitude's Talk 7 2 Inner Speech in Neuropathology 11 3 The Inner as the Truer 14 4 Possession and Occupation 17 5 Ventriloquy, Autoventriloquy and Interpellation 20 6 Style is Two Men Plus 26 7 The Seamless Stuff of Signs 29 8 Language as Blameless Ekstasis 31 9 Ins and Outs 35 10 Topographical Metaphor and Embodied Mind 40 2 Bad Words 46 1 Introduction 46 2 Accusation Often Lodges in the Accused 49 3 Accusers Themselves are Forcibly Spoken 52 4 The Word as Thing 57 Part II Oean-]acques Lecercle) 63 3 A New Philosophy of Language 65 1 Point of Departure 65 2 Reading Denise Riley 69 3 Two Philosophies of Language, or: e/oge des (ous litteraires 76 4 Three (ous litteraires 78 5 Two Philosophies of Language 83 6 Fous litteraires as Practitioners of Another 87 Philosophy of Language 4 The Concept of Language We Don't Need 91 1 A Critique of Chomsky 91 2 Chomsky's Language 92 v
vi Contents 3 Chomsky's Own Examples 96 4 A Spontaneous Philosophy for Scientists 105 5 Fetishism 109 s The Concept of Language We Need 112 1 Introduction 112 2 Changing the Point of View 113 3 Praxis 124 4 First Positive Thesis 129 s Second Positive Thesis 139 6 Third Positive Thesis 151 7 Fourth Positive Thesis 158 8 End Thesis 169 Notes 171 Index 181
Acknowledgements The original conception of this book was pursued with the backing of a British Academy grant awarded by its Overseas Policy Committee to the authors in 2002. Denise Riley's chapters were completed thanks to her study leave from the School of English and American Studies at the University of East Anglia in the autumn of 2002, and to a successive term of leave funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board in the spring of 2003: she is most grateful for their support. She owes warm thanks to those in the Department of Rhetoric, University of California at Berkeley who heard part of 'A voice without a mouth' in April 2003 and who generously offered her their suggestions, David Copenhafer especially. The chapter here on 'Bad Words' grew out of an exchange with Judith Butler, to whom she is, as always, greatly indebted. She also owes much to Jon Cook, Mladen Dolar, Colin MacCabe, Moustapha Safouan and Joan Scott. An earlier version of 'Bad Words' appeared in Diacritics, vol. 31 no. 4, 2001 and as a part of Denise Riley's Impersonal Passion: Language as Affect, Duke University Press, 2005. vii