orders and are thereby transformed into articulated language; or in the
rhythmical sounds accompanying labour in common and finding a mode of
aesthetic expression in dance. For the ‘heave-ho!’ theory of the origin of
language, to which I alluded in a previous chapter, is not the only candidate:
there is also the ‘ding-dong’ theory which attributes a musical origin to
language, but also the ‘come hither darling’ theory in which humanity accedes
to language in the context of sexual intercourse, which it prepares for and
accompanies. These mythical theories, which at least have the merit of unbridled
imagination, are also interesting and not manifestly less plausible than the
usual theory, which I propose to call the ‘pass me the leg of mammoth’ theory.
All these theories postulate both a co-operation in, and a division of, labour
in the broadest sense – that is, the assignment of a system of places (who are
you to talk to me like that? Who am I to address you in this fashion?). From
this system of places to a system power relations is but a short step; and
Marxists know that humanity took it: language is caught up in this history
and its history – as a social process and despite Stalin’s good sense – is also
that of class struggle.
Treating language in terms of praxisraises a number of issues. For example,
what is the relationship between this form of praxisand other practices,
productive or superstructural? I risk getting lost in the paradox of the chicken
and the egg: I need language to explain the emergence of relations of an
economic type, and yet my most plausible myth of origins tells me that
language is generated out of labour in common – that is, from the most
primitive form of relations of production. Contrary to linguists who obey the
principle of immanence, however, Marxists are not afraid of the question of
origins, as we saw in the case of Engels, even if they know that the problem
has only a speculative solution – i.e. no solution or rather a solution which
is an act of ideological partisanship. For only a myth can release us from
the vicious circle and allow us to think, with the help of the concept of praxis, the
contemporaneous emergence of relations of production and language in the
context of action in common, be it the fabrication of tools, hunting, agricultural
work, or the sexual division of labour. In other words, even if they do not
entertain too many illusions, Marxists cannot be indifferent to the type of
analysis that seeks in the domain of language to produce the equivalent
of Engels’s Origin of the Family– a text which is not at the forefront of
anthropological research, but has lost nothing of its philosophical and political
146 • Chapter Six