La langue

There is another solipsism I forgot to mention in the last post. This is the structuralist notion of language as a system of autoidentical forms. A brilliant critique is to be found in Voloshinov's Marxism and the philosophy of language. It is turned against what he calls abstract objectivism, a view that is formulated most systematically in Saussure's Course in general linguistics. Voloshinov ask from which perspective language can be seen as a rigid system. Viewed from the outside it is a constant flow, language is not static, but dynamic in its nature. Therefore Saussure errs when he believes we can extrapolate objective fixed laws from a cross-section of actually spoken language. Viewed from the inside, from the perspective of one using language, the situation, the social circumstances of a specific speech act are determining. Of course this does not mean that we can not abstract from living language certain universal - and universal does not mean static! - autoidentical forms. It means that these forms are exactly that: abstractions from the process of living language.

In an earlier post I formulated an analogous critique of a Laclau's application of structuralism. I wrote:

To top it of Saussure's "la langue" is an abstraction, a system of language that the linguist constructs, not an empirically existing system. It is already a concept, abstracted from the origins of language in mimesis.

After reading Voloshinov I realised that my critique generally went in the right direction - intuition should not be underestimated in scientific work - but was short-sighted. It is not the historical origin in mimesis (a view I am inclined to reject at this point, it was a simplification based on tendentiously selected evidence, following from the lack of an adequate conceptual apparatus), but - worse - the whole process of living language that "la langue" abstracts from. I would nonetheless still agree with the conclusion I drew from a flawed premise:

If there is an inherent impossibility of signifying to fully constitute itself, it is an impossibility the linguist, not the speaker faces.

Let me formulate my critique of Laclau in clearer terms. Since living language is constantly in flux, it does not need "closure" - remember that Laclau believes that for a system to constitute itself, it must be able to signify its borders i.e. achieve closure - nor is any sort of "closure" possible. Meaning is almost endlessly flexible since it manifests itself in myriad social interactions, is exchanged among varied social groups and (sometimes adverse) social classes. Voloshinov presents the illuminating example of rudimentary languages that knew only a single word, the meaning of which was determined exclusively by the context it was used in. "Polysemy," Voloshinov argues "is a constitutive trait of a word." It is impossible to achieve closure of the system of language (la langue) because the structuralist concept of language is a flawed concept, neglecting the constitutive trait of living language: change. Laclau projects this logical fallacy, the proton pseudos of structuralism, into living language itself. He comes up with the ridiculous claim of "empty" and "floating" signifiers. There is no such thing as an empty signifier in living language, precisely because it is not a system of autoidentical forms that would need "closure". The concept of "floating" signifiers is as useless as it is correct: there is not a single sign that is not constantly in flow, not just from a diachronic perspective, but also from a synchronic one (meaning changes according to different coincidental uses in different social contexts). A signifier that is not floating is none at all: it is not part of language, it is merely a signal.