ABSTRACT
The divide between language and the world is immemorial. It has been approached in many ways: in religions, mythologies, sciences, fairy tales and philosophies. For example, the conceptual heart of Michel Foucault’s Les mots et les choses is the concept of the episteme. He did not define this concept, but it is reasonably clear that he thought of the episteme as a determining framework of epochal proportions, and that this would condition the way in which language and the world would be for the epoch concerned. Within each episteme-if we can allow the concept for a short time-the relations between language and world are, regrettably, made no clearer merely because of the insight that their clarification is almost certainly just the first step on an infinite journey. Perhaps, then, the attempt to locate and dissect the very heart of the relation is misguided, and would this not be because language and the world are inseparable? Language forms the world at the same time as the world forms language? Might there not be some unspeakable and unexperienceable unity here? As Castoriadis put it:
The relativity of the cultural and linguistic world, while incontestable, cannot even be expressed without immediately invoking the obscure and ineffable non-relativity of the world.
