Labyrinths of Language : Philosophical and Cultural Investigations

Thirteen essays in the book explore and investigate diverse contemporary philosophically current themes and issues. The title is derived from Wittgenstein's statement that 'anguage is a labyrinth of paths,' and it studiously avoids any conclusive claim on its central motif. What people, both users and theorists, do with language, rather than what it is, is the running theme. The book critically presents the views of a wide range of philosophically and analytically oriented authors including, de Saussure, Levinas, Lévi-Strauss, Wittgenstein, Derrida, Bakhtin, Benjamin, Kafka, Heidegger, Blanchot, Jean-Luc Nancy, Barthes and Deleuze. Only two essays diverge from the main concern with language: the one on the discourse of death, and another on the philosophy of image. One essay involves an analysis of the cultural and political discourse in a contemporary Malayalam novel. The concluding essay attempts to develop a postcolonial field of language studies, with reference to the works of the 18th century British jurist and linguist Sir William Jones and the subsequent philological tradition, whose political consequences are only beginning to be understood. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents Preface and Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1: The ‘Social’ and the ‘Cognitive’ in Language: A Reading of Saussure and Beyond Chapter 2: Between the Self and the Other: Language after Levinas Chapter 3: On Language and the Assumed Unity of the Human Sciences Chapter 4: Between Pragmatics and Deconstruction: Wittgenstein, Bakhtin and Derrida Chapter 5: Time, Language and the Destruction of Power Chapter 6: Kafka: Literature, Law and Language Chapter 7: Blanchot, Writing and the Politico-Religious Chapter 8: The Discourse of Death Chapter 9: The Body of Sense, the Sense of Body Chapter 10: Towards a Philosophy of Image Chapter 11: Culture and Politics in the Novel: On the Banks of the River Mahe Chapter 12: Globalization of English and the Indian Linguistic Context Chapter 13: Beginnings of Modern Linguistics and the Colonial Context: Perspectives from History, Culture and Religion Bibliography