When we claim to have been injured by language, what kind of claim do we make? We ascribe an agency to language, a power to injure, and position ourselves as the objects of its injurious trajectory. We claim that language acts, and acts against us, and the claim we make is a further instance of language, one which seeks to arrest the force of the prior instance. Thus, we exercise the force of language even as we seek to counter its force, caught up in a bind that no act of censorship can undo.
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Excitable Speech. A Politics of the Performative (1997), by Judith Butler
feminism, language, linguistics, metaworks, performance, theoryTuesday, January 1st, 2013
