Language & Symbolic Power

Linda Daly
The entirety of this work seems to be centered around the validity of language as it describes classes,power,political ideation, economics and religion. I agree that the pairs of terms used to described relationships in opposition and likeness is most accomplished (147) as then we are getting around totality in language and absolutism. It is the unspoken, the unexpressed and unfound, which today will help us most in communicating experience. This is more than a pre-verbal understanding but an understanding of other, the unbelievable, the improbable and undecodable. Naming may represent power but what of non-naming? Is it not the ambiguous that is most intriguing. Domination is accompanied by structuring (1690 but why dominate, if only to encourage rebellion and starting anew? Can we live in relative freedom without risking anarchy? There is balance to Be found along with space in language and classifications that are neutralizing, shifting, doubling and lingering,expanding language and reality fields to the margins, the borders where symbolic effectiveness may be addressed for those who are at odds, at war even, in an attempt to establish a status quo for that point in time and place.