In:
PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, Modern Language Association (MLA), Vol. 120, No. 2 ( 2005-03), p. 341-361
Abstract:
We respond in language to catastrophic, or traumatic, shocks to symbolic systems, for which the fall of the Tower of Babel can be seen as a mythic model. One response is an exploration of new uncertainties; another is a fearful rigidity that seeks to return to an imagined Adamic wholeness of language; another is an effort to transcend language altogether. This essay examines two contemporary responses to a perceived “fall” of language—several case studies of Oliver Sacks's and two novels by Don DeLillo—and places them in the context of the twentieth-century “linguistic turn” in the humanities and social sciences and what I call a “counterlinguistic turn” that is contemporaneous with the linguistic turn and represents developments of some of its key assumptions.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
0030-8129
,
1938-1530
DOI:
10.1632/003081205X52446
Language:
English
Publisher:
Modern Language Association (MLA)
Publication Date:
2005
detail.hit.zdb_id:
2439580-8
detail.hit.zdb_id:
209526-9
detail.hit.zdb_id:
2066864-8
SSG:
7,11
SSG:
7,24
SSG:
7,12
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