“the role of the embodied “I can” is crucial”
“Without it, we could not acquire and enact the practical senses we gain from others. We could not articulate them. Thus, everything from learning to eat at the table to learning how to write presupposes a functioning body.”
“The role of the body in generating senses is, thus, one of enactment.”
“Without this “I can,” a person’s words lose their lived sense. The loss of this “I can” is not, then, just the reduction of the body to a non-functioning object. It is also the loss of the person’s ability to enact and, hence, disclose for herself the senses that make up the world she shares with his others.”
“Within certain limits-namely those set by the bodily mutilation-she, thus, becomes languageless. Her mutilation is not just “unspeakable” in the sense of being dreadful. It is also such as to place her outside of the context of the common meanings she once shared with her others.”
“Not being able to enact them, they remain “symbolic,” that is, they possess a sense that she cannot personally experience. Here, the result of such violence is both an isolating and silencing of its victims. It removes them from a living participation in the context that would permit the articulation of their situation.”