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# 24

In what part of the body is language situated?

Believe me, my heart is crying out to you,

And if kisses were sent in writing,

Madame, you would read my letter with your lips!

Edmond de Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, 1897

Each language always implies a deterritorialization (decontextualization) of the mouth, the tongue, and the teeth. The mouth, tongue, and teeth find their primitive territoriality in food. In giving themselves over to the articulation of sounds, the mouth, tongue, and teeth deterritorialize. Thus, there is a certain disjunction between eating and speaking, and even more, despite all appearances, between eating and writing. Undoubtedly, one can write while eating more easily than one can speak while eating, but writing goes further in transforming words into things capable of competing with food. 

The sound or the word that traverses this new deterritorialization no longer belongs to a language of sense, even though it derives from it, nor is it an organized music or song, even though it might appear to be. We noted Gregor's warbling and the ways it blurred words, the whistling of the mouse, the cough of the ape, the pianist who doesn't play, the singer who doesn't sing and gives birth to her song out of her non singing, the musical dogs who are musicians in the very depths of their bodies since they don't emit any music. Everywhere, organized music is traversed by a line of abolition—just as a language of sense is traversed by a line of escape-in order to liberate a living and expressive material that speaks for itself and has no need of being put into a form. 

Gilles Deleuze, What is a minor Literature? 1975
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  • I can’t help but think of that curious delay [in translation], the gap between the spoken word and its effect. I mean the delay that we notice whenever we attend a conference or debate in several languages: the way the laughs come out of sync once the translator manages to convey the comic effect, …
# 21

Delay and understand

I can’t help but think of that curious delay [in translation], the gap between the spoken word and its effect. I mean the delay that we notice whenever we attend a conference or debate in several languages: the way the laughs come out of sync once the translator manages to convey the comic effect, and how difficult it is for the speakers to be moving or eloquent in the delayed time of translation. The European “we” is dependent on this resonance chamber, this delay. So what is the language of Europe?

Camille de Toledo, Utopie linguistique
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