Taylor, Zerzan, and Language

Paul Taylor grounds his understanding and argument about "race" in the concept of language and how language contributes to "race-thinking." Taylor states of language that they "are an ambient feature of our social environments in part because they are also interpretive devices: they shape our experiences of the world" (5). Language is perhaps one of the most important devices in understanding the formulation and continued usage of race concepts and of other concepts that serve in the domination and domestication of both the earth and human beings. Taylor argues that race-thinking has been an essential part of human culture since the 1600s and that a philosophy of race necessarily involves studying the consequences of race-talk. John Zerzan, a prominent primitivist author, discusses the implications and roots of language in his essay "Too Marvelous for Words." In this essay Zerzan says that "the essence of language is the symbol." Language always requires the use of substitution of a word or concept for what presents itself directly to us. This substitution will always necessarily provide a paler, less-realistic version of what really is. Paul Taylor touches on this in his discussion of race and it's limited understanding based on sociohistorical and physical context. He speaks of the ways different words and concepts of race mean are associated with different human appearances in different areas. The substitution of the words black, white, or brown produce an unclear objective reality. The language of race and language in general cannot capture a human being but it can keep human beings captive to its logic. Language holds people in place based on the formulative histories of each word used to try to describe a person. Symbolic representations are only one way of seeing and connecting things in the world. If we try to look at each person as a whole rather than trying to partition them off into categories based on race/gender/class etc. a greater appreciation for one another may be achieved. As long as we use the limited confines of language to interact with each other oppression and domination will still be at the center of our interactions. In essence, for the same reason Zerzan critiques language, Taylor takes it up as the starting point for his discussion of race because language does so much to confine the wild and natural flow of life. It serves as a cage that holds all of our conceptions of reality, including race and other understandings of ourselves. To quote Zerzan quoting Michael Baxandall, "Any language...is a conspiracy against experience in the sense of being a collective attempt to arrange experience into managable parcels."

John Zerzan Essay at Insurgent Desire