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Book Review

∵
Language, Alienation, and World-Disclosure

Carolyn Culbertson, Words Underway: Continental Philosophy of Language.

New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019, 141 pp.

What do we study in the philosophy of language? A common answer is to

claim that what unites the range of disparate philosophical projects in the
twenty-first century that fall under that label is a shared focus on collective
means of sense-making and communication. This approach, however, risks
covering over a vitally important facet of our experiences with language: alien-
ation. Linguistic alienation refers to a wide swathe of experiences in which we
encounter language as inadequate, uncontrollable, or systematically distorted.
Carolyn Culbertson’s incisive study Words Underway: Continental Philosophy
of Language homes in on this neglected dimension of linguistic experience by
arguing that restricting the study of language to collective systems of meaning
overlooks “the potential for members of that collective group to feel alienated
from language,” as well as the personal, social, and political ramifications of
such alienation (3). Her project draws from a number of sources in Continental
philosophy of language, including Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer,
Jacques Derrida, and Julia Kristeva, all of whom grapple with linguistic alien-
ation, and all of whom are widely excluded from anthologies and textbooks on
philosophy of language. Culbertson’s argument, which is made rigorously and
persuasively over six chapters, is that engaging with these Continental philoso-
phers of language allows us to better address the widely experienced phenom-
enon of linguistic alienation.
By using the term “Continental philosophy of language,” Culbertson aims to
“help bring more awareness to the existence of a distinctive tradition of phil-
osophical inquiry into language and to the important questions, arguments,
and problematics that have been developed within this tradition over the

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past century” (7). This is not to claim that the study of language in the
Heideggerian phenomenological tradition has ready answers for us to im-
port into current debates in Anglo-American philosophy of language. Rather,
Culbertson advocates for a set of distinctive and pressing questions and pri-
orities in the work of Continental philosophers of language that deserve to be
taken up on their own terms.
In this review I will give a brief overview of some of the key arguments from
each chapter in order to partially reconstruct Culbertson’s convincing case for
the uniqueness and urgency of Continental perspectives on linguistic alien-
ation. I will also emphasize the relevance of her book for scholars of phenom-
enology, Anglo-American philosophy of language, and social epistemology.
Given Culbertson’s stated goals, it is perhaps surprising that her project be-
gins with Walker Percy. But this choice makes a great deal of sense considering
the influence of European philosophy on Percy’s conviction that linguistic be-
ings inhabit a world, as opposed to an environment. For Percy, the acquisition
of language fundamentally transforms our relationship to the world because it
empowers us to participate in a shared world with others. Through this trans-
formation language itself becomes a source of unique ends, and not merely a
means of achieving prelinguistic ends. Extending Percy’s thinking, Culbertson
argues that artistic expression, mathematics, formal logic, and even scientific
inquiry “draw from the social activity of language and would be incomprehen-
sible without it” (17). This insistence on the integral role of language in human
life underscores the ontological stakes of linguistic alienation: when we can-
not wield language fluently (perhaps as a result of marginalization or trauma)
we are deprived of this all-important common world. Culbertson detects a
distinctly phenomenological influence at work in Percy’s descriptions of our
linguistic world, which she traces back to Heidegger. In Heidegger’s early work,
Percy finds support for his suspicion that language is not merely a medium, but
also an indispensable ontological condition of human life. Culbertson’s rare
ability to tame Heidegger’s jargon through the use of intuitive examples allows
her to draw connections between Percy and Heidegger that are both novel and
heuristically useful.
This early engagement with Percy prepares the way for a more detailed
analysis of hermeneutic phenomenology in the second chapter. Here, the
focus of the text shifts towards Heidegger’s later work, especially On the
Way to Language, in which Heidegger is explicitly concerned with the “non-
immediacy” of language (32). Culbertson understands this non-immediacy
in two senses. First, language is non-immediate in situations in which words
escape us and language does not function in the smooth way that it does in

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everyday life. In such moments, “we experience language as conspicuously

unready-to-hand” (32). Much like the famous image of the hammer in Being
and Time, the unreadiness-to-hand of language brings about an interruption
of unreflective linguistic habits.
Second, the non-immediacy of language can also be understood ontologi-
cally. In Heidegger’s view, because our immersion in a world of concerned en-
gagements entails wielding language unreflectively, we are in a certain sense
insulated from what language actually is. This leads Heidegger to call for a new,
more authentic relationship to language that acknowledges that “the essential
nature of language flatly refuses to express itself in words—in the language,
that is, in which we make statements about language” (32). For Culbertson,
Heidegger’s sensitivity to these two dimensions of the non-immediacy of lan-
guage (as a tool and as an ontological enigma) is essential to the development
of his theory of language. Still, she takes her distance from Heidegger’s mysti-
cal description of non-immediacy as “the true nature of language, a nature
that is hidden from us for the most part but occasionally can be grasped” (35).
Instead, Culbertson closes the chapter by arguing that a more lucid account of
linguistic non-immediacy can be found in the philosophy of Heidegger’s stu-
dent, Hans-Georg Gadamer, who places a much greater emphasis on the posi-
tive role of non-immediacy as a precondition for interpretive understanding.
It is important to note, however, that experiences of the non-immediacy of
language are not all the same, and can arise from a number of sources, includ-
ing trauma and systematic marginalization. In Chapter 3, Culbertson turns to
Blanchot and Derrida’s marked interest in Holocaust survivors who produced
writing as a way of recovering from their trauma. Here, Culbertson focuses on
the complicated interplay of language, alienation, and trauma, which are im-
portant motifs for European philosophers in the aftermath of the Second World
War. Blanchot, for example, argues that experiences of fleetingness, contin-
gency, and mortality lead us to seek out the stability and relative permanence
of writing. In this view, writing can be understood as the working-through of
human experience by way of creating objects that we can revisit and reflect
on in different contexts and stages of life. Simply put, the act of writing is a
process of interpretation and organization of memory. In Culbertson’s words,
“through speaking and writing about them, survivors could distill from these
traumatic experiences a new object of consciousness, finding some determi-
nate meaning in them that could be passed on to others” (50). For Blanchot,
when Antelme writes about Dachau he does not report a series of events, but
rather uses language to therapeutically transform his raw memories into new
interpretive objects.

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Culbertson is clear, however, that language has the potential to both soothe
and exacerbate the effects of trauma. Drawing on Antelme and Celan, she
demonstrates that part of the dehumanization that victims of the Holocaust
suffered was distinctively linguistic in nature. For example, Antelme’s speech,
which was “usually the locus of transcendence, became a means through
which he was cruelly reduced to mere facticity, to the object of an irrational
power” (53). But despite this acknowledgment that linguistic alienation can
intensify the effects of trauma, Culbertson also stresses that for a number of
Continental thinkers the induced linguistic alienation of the Holocaust is not
necessarily indelible. As Derrida’s interpretations of Celan reveal, linguistic
alienation does not eradicate the need to connect to others through empa-
thetic understanding. By ending her engagement with Holocaust literature on
this intersubjective note, Culbertson primes the reader for the following two
chapters, which focus primarily on women’s experiences of linguistic alien-
ation in situations of oppression.
With the groundwork of the first three chapters in place, Culbertson is
well-equipped to delve deeper into the interconnections between Continental
philosophy of language and social, political, and ethical concerns. If we are
attentive to linguistic alienation, we ought to notice that it does not occur uni-
formly across the population. 20th-century European feminist philosophy is
notably cognizant of this unequal burden. In Chapter 4, Culbertson reveals the
degree to which certain branches of Continental feminist philosophy “carry
forward some of the key insights of hermeneutic phenomenology” (64). This
entails differentiating the hermeneutically informed theories of Butler and
Bartky from other Continental feminist voices, such as Irigaray and Cixous,
who are more preoccupied with the reconstruction of an authentic, feminine
voice. Culbertson demonstrates that Butler grounds her feminist philosophy
of language in the irreducible sociality of human life, yielding a theory of
language in which the other is an enabling condition of understanding. This
phenomenologically informed approach allows Butler to avoid the pitfalls of
linguistic determinism that pervade other continental feminist perspectives,
including Cixous’ Écriture feminine. Instead, Butler and Bartky prepare the way
for “a critical feminist perspective, one from which we both affirm that world
disclosure is always a shared undertaking, but also give due attention to the
power dynamics that can emerge within these social relations” (79). This is
to say that critically interrogating the inequity of linguistic alienation need
not rely on the model of linguistic determinism that is common in identity
politics.
Perhaps the book’s most striking example of the uneven burden of linguistic
alienation is Culbertson’s examination of the self-silencing of women in the

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context of depression, which she argues is “further enabled by the hierarchi-

cal interaction of common biomedical treatment” (85). Through a historically
grounded critique of dominant psychiatric language, Culbertson identifies the
iatrogenic harm that ensues when the treatment of depression does not suffi-
ciently acknowledge non-standard forms of interpersonal meaning-making. To
buttress this point, Culbertson turns to Kristeva’s work on the importance and
therapeutic potential of affective modes of discourse. Kristeva’s attentiveness
to body language and clothing, for example, allows her to notice that patients
may communicate self-interpretations on an affective register. Accordingly,
Kristeva’s aim is to “recognize the potential meaning of these clues and, with
them, to initiate a dialogue, bringing them into verbal expression” (96). The
argument here is not that traditional psychiatric diagnosis is inherently harm-
ful or should be phased out, but rather that depressed women may be forced
to communicate in ways that are not typically recognized by clinicians, in part
because they are disproportionately affected by structural forms of linguistic
alienation.
All of the authors that Culbertson includes in her book argue that language
plays an essential role in the process of world disclosure. One might worry,
however, that this emphasis flirts with linguistic determinism, or the view that
language exhaustively determines our knowledge and experience. For the lin-
guistic determinist, we are never free from the conditioning influence of lan-
guage, and our options for reflexively interrogating our epistemic worldviews
are extremely limited, if not non-existent.
Anticipating these objections, Culbertson’s final chapter argues that we
should not conflate the view that language is a predominant mode of access to
the world with linguistic determinism. Simply put, the latter does not follow
from the former. To be sure, it is not unreasonable to initially suspect Heidegger
of linguistic determinism, especially given his descriptions in Being and Time
of language as a fundamental mode of being-in-the-world. For Heidegger, we
employ language in the context of practical activities and engagements (an
insight that, as Wittgenstein and Austin also point out, is not always empha-
sized in the study of language.) Given this close association between language
and unreflective life, Culbertson admits that “it seems quite tempting to read
Heidegger as presenting language as an epistemic worldview that we cannot
step outside of” (109). Richard Rorty, for example, takes this determinist view
when he interprets Heidegger to support the claim that “there will be no way
to rise above the language, culture, institutions, and practices one has adopted
and view all these on par with all the others” (109).
But such an interpretation fails to note Heidegger’s insistence that we can
and do have critically reflective experiences with language. In Culbertson’s

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words, “Dasein’s everyday, habitual way of being-in-the-world where it is obliv-

ious to its own world-disclosive activity is not the only kind of comportment
possible” (109). Built into Heidegger’s analysis of unreflective language is his
conviction that we have the capacity to relate to language in a more thoughtful
way. The unreadiness-to-hand of language in experiences of profound alien-
ation or trauma is in this way a disclosive phenomenon because it brings the
background of linguistic practices that usually operates unseen into focus.
Though Heidegger does not explicitly spell out these linguistic extensions of
his thought, Culbertson expertly weaves together Heidegger’s investigation
into unreadiness-to-hand in Being and Time with his later work, “The Nature
of Language,” in which Heidegger specifies that our relationship to language
changes “when we cannot find the right word for something that concerns us,
carries us away, oppresses or encourages us” (112). It emerges that Heidegger
does not posit language as a univocal, determining force. Rather, our relation-
ship to language ebbs and flows. Far from being settled and behind us, our
linguistic life is always underway.
The second half of the chapter tracks this Heideggerian insight forward
into Derrida’s Monolingualism of the Other. Intervening in standard interpreta-
tions of Derrida’s text, Culbertson delineates two forms of linguistic alienation:
1) an originary linguistic alienation common to all linguistic beings, and 2) an
acute form of induced linguistic alienation that causes suffering. The originary
form of alienation, as I have discussed, is drawn from Heidegger’s analysis of
language as operative in the background of unreflective life. Because we rarely
encounter language as an object of reflection, coupled with the fact that our
linguistic inheritance is “unchosen,” we are all alienated from language in this
first sense. On the other hand, the acute (and objectionable) form of alienation
follows from specific political configurations, including sexism, colonialism,
and other forms of what in contemporary feminist epistemology is referred to
as “epistemic injustice.”1
Using this distinction, Culbertson clarifies Derrida’s argument, which to
some seems to confusingly note the inevitability of linguistic alienation and
yet also protest against linguistic alienation on ethical grounds. But there is
no contradiction in holding both that there is an original alienation built into
our linguistic life, on the one hand, and that there are “modified form[s] of
alienation” that follow from political manipulation and that deserve to be re-
pudiated, on the other (118–19). In Culbertson’s reading, Monolingualism of the
Other extends Heidegger’s philosophy of language by exploring “a dimension

1  See Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (New York, Oxford
University Press, 2007).

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of language’s power of world disclosure that Heidegger does not, namely, the
way that this power can be sustained by the political manipulation of social
arrangements” (119). Most importantly, Culbertson demonstrates that neither
Derrida nor Heidegger are committed to a determinist view of language.
Words Underway is a tremendous contribution to the philosophical study of
language. For scholars of 20th-century European philosophy or the phenome-
nological tradition, Culbertson offers productive applications of several prom-
inent European philosophers on the topic of linguistic alienation. There are
clear phenomenological, existential, and political extensions of Culbertson’s
argument that invite future work by scholars of the Continental tradition.
In particular, we might look to bolster the ranks of this distinct tradition of
philosophy of language by drawing connections to figures that Culbertson
does not address directly at length, including Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Arendt,
Ricœur, and Levinas, all of whom have a great deal to contribute regarding
the ambiguity and alienation that is irreducibly a part of our linguistic lives.
For Anglo-American scholars of philosophy of language, Culbertson makes
a compelling argument for increased attention to the phenomenon of lin-
guistic alienation, and her nuanced reconstructions of key themes and ar-
guments make a number of Continental perspectives accessible. Because of
Culbertson’s exceptional skill at translating dense Continental jargon by use of
rich examples and practical applications, her book lays an impressive founda-
tion for future engagement across traditions, even while carefully preserving
the distinctive features and priorities of Continental philosophy of language.
Her project also opens the way for future scholarship on the ways in which
linguistic alienation has already factored into classical Anglo-American con-
tributions, such as Austin’s doctrine of infelicities. Finally, scholars of feminist
epistemology, epistemology of ignorance, and epistemic injustice will benefit
greatly from Culbertson’s reminder that “the human relationship to language is
far more complicated than that of an epistemic subject to an epistemic world-
view” (122). Her contribution complicates and ultimately strengthens contem-
porary debates over the various ways in which individuals and social groups
are systematically undermined as speakers and knowers.

Magnus Ferguson
Department of Philosophy, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA
fergusmf@bc.edu

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