Language The First Divider
What if, however,
humans exceed animals
in their capacity for violence
precisely because they speak?
Language dismembers a thing,
destroying its organic unity,
treating its parts and properties
as autonomous.
-*-
The fact that reason and race
have the same root (ratio) in Latin
tells us something:
language, not primitive egotistic interest,
is the first and greatest divider,
it is because of language that
we and our neighbors can
“live in different worlds.”
-*-
..when workers protest their exploitation,
they do not protest a simple reality,
but an experience of their real predicament
made meaningful through language.
Reality in itself,
in its stupid existence,
is never intolerable:
It is language, its symbolization,
which make it such.
So with the scene of a furious crowd,
attacking and burning buildings
and cars, lynching people, etc.
Never forget the placards they are carrying
and the words which sustain
and justify their acts.
—excerpt from Violence by Slavoj Zizek
Conflict (polemos) is the father of all things and king of all. Some he shows to be gods and others men; some he makes slaves and others free.
—Heraclitus fragment 53
