Sublime

If we hold language up as a mirror to the mind, what do we see reflected there: human nature or the cultural conventions of our society? This is the central question of the first part of the book.

Geiger went further than Gladstone in one other crucial respect. He was the first to pose explicitly the fundamental question on which the whole debate between nature and culture would center for decades to come: the relation between what the eye can see and what language can describe.

It is not insignificant that the English language is 70 percent nouns, while Potawatomi is 70 percent verbs.

Joyce is clearly both exemplary and representative for Lacan for how we can do new things with words; and this has something to do with aliveness.

Motor-activity properties

We have discussed how keywords lead to governing metaphors (“metaphors we live by”) and how those metaphors do a tremendous amount of underground work, directing our responses to others in ways that we’re often unaware of.

Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.

words, figures of speech, and playful alliteration.

Where the body leads, language can follow.