Monday, 31 October 2022

A private language does different things than a public one, it serves a different kind of world-making and so does not have to be translatable. An animal might have a similar language, being the conscious boundary of the unconscious, and in that it is not necessarily the language of the self but becomes so as far as its tokens are not merely repeatable but quotable. Perhaps quotation and even metaphor are precarious achievements here since the pressure of unconscious processes always push towards literal reidentification with the original instance. This tension comes out in dreams which are filled with failed quotations.

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