Barthes speaks of the "failure of language" and explains
that
. . .the more I experience the specialty of my desire, the
less I can
give it a name; to the precision of the target corresponds a
wavering of
the name; what is characteristic of desire, proper to desire
can produce only an impropriety of the
utterance. . . .To try to write
love is to confront the muck of language: that region
of hysteria
where
language is both too much and too little,
excessive (by the
limitless expansion of the ego, by emotive
submersion) and
impoverished (by
the codes on which love diminishes and levels it). (20; 99)
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