This ‘globalisation of nonsense’ is obtained by the operation of woollen
language, defined by Huyghe as follows: ‘it has an answer to everything
because it says nothing...it is a consensual language of power par excellence’.^18
What interests me is the linguisticdescription of this language given by Perrot.
It emerges that the language of consensus is not transparent, that it does not
make itself invisible, that it has a materiality and a specificity (it will be argued
that the language of international institutions is English even if the text is
translated into innumerable languages). I rapidly cite the main characteristics
referred to by Perrot. First of all, we have the semantic characteristics. Naturally,
they concern the construction of the consensus, according to the principle ‘no
meaning, no waves’. Hence the impression of a loss of meaning and the
prevalence of fine sentiments. Who could find fault with the perspective of
a ‘better world for all’? Who, without laughing, would declare themselves
opposed to human rights, to peace (even George Bush is in favour of peace),
or sing the praises of poverty? This is obvious, but still too general: the lexicon
of consensus lapses into facile moralism and erases – deliberately ignores –
economic, social and political problems at the very moment that it promises
to resolve them. What is more interesting is the very form of the language
of consensus. For what must be called the ideology of consensus is also
conveyed by grammatical markers. Here are some of them.
The first is effacement. This does not only concern the comprehensive
effacement of thorny issues or words that contradict the ideology conveyed
by the consensual text – which require that we engage in a symptomatic
reading of it – but is inscribed in the syntax of the language. We have seen
an example of it with the sentence heard on a BBC TV news broadcast: ‘The
dispute of the health workers is now in its third week.’
The second is the presupposition. We are familiar with the aggressive potential
of this logico-linguistic phenomenon (‘Are you still beating your wife?’).
Woollen language makes great use of it, in the form of what Perrot calls
‘naturalised axioms’, ‘subtracted from discussion automatically and in
authoritarian fashion’.^19 This involves not only particular contents, but much
more basic imaginative schemas. The example she gives – you will have
understood why – is ‘More is always better ’.
218 • Conclusion
(^18) Quoted by Perrot 2002, p. 206.
(^19) Perot 2002, p. 218.