ABSTRACT
This chapter provides aspects of the complex economy of words and images, speaking and writing, speaking and silence, that make up—in part—the constitution of politics in linguistic practice. The conventions of political discourse have opened writing to dialogue. Written words are challenged, debated, opposed, supported, expanded, responded to as if they were speech. Mythic constructions of writing and speech, the practices of conversation, debate, oratory, legislation, legal opinions, books, articles, and reports meet in a common privileging of the word. Contemporary controversies over the representation of women's bodies—in advertising, in pornography, in anti-abortionists' display of the contents of their wombs—alternately challenge and reiterate the meanings inscribed upon the bodies of women. The economy of speech and silence in the employment of the image gives it a perverse ambivalence. Recourse to negotiation may silence mass movements that speak in action rather than in words.
