The fire of words

“Discourse is not simply that which translates struggles or systems of domination, but that for which, and by which, one fights — the power one seeks to seize.”

Michel Foucault, The Order of Discourse (1971)
 

– Why do you fight the Leviathan, Ignatius?
– It’s so obvious that I’m surprised to hear you ask… Come on! Who would let themselves be swallowed without a fight?
– It seems to me you once said, I’m not inventing this, that the Leviathan invited you to enter its depths, and not that it was preparing to devour you.
– And you? In my place, would you “swallow that story” without reacting?
– I am not in your place, as you imply… and I recall hearing you say, right here in this office, that “he would see what he would see…” which, to my mind, means nothing.
– And you, Mr. Lucian! What do you fight with?
– You should know, Ignatius… Here, everything passes through words.
All the path traveled so far, the Promethean cycle, the descent into the unconscious, the encounter with the monster-Leviathan, and the struggle with the fire of Ignatius’s language under the guise of Don Carrot, continues as a dialogue between him and Lucian on discourse as a field of power.
– You say you fight the Leviathan, Ignatius. But what if it were not a fight… what if it were an interrupted conversation?
– A conversation? You jest, Lucian. It growls, roars, coils around me. And its tongues — its tongues of fire, they tear me apart!
– Tongues of fire, you say? How interesting. And what if these tongues were not flames, but… languages?
– Languages? You mean to suggest that this monster speaks?
– It has always spoken. Only, you have not known how to hear it. You imagined yourself swallowed by it. That frightens you. But perhaps… you are already inside the discourse it utters.
– You mean to say I’m in its mouth?
– Let’s say… at its mouth… on its tongue… or rather, in its sentence, if not in its language itself. The Leviathan islanguage, Ignatius. You fight words as others fight gods. You think them enemies, but they are the very flesh of your thought.
– And what would you do if your words began to swallow you?
– I would try to understand them before drowning. You see, you are Prometheus wrestling with his own fire. You have stolen language to name the world, and now that fire consumes you.
– Prometheus? What have I stolen? A few phrases scrawled in notebooks! A few words read in books… childish words, fragments of dreams, bursts of anger!
– That is precisely the fire, Ignatius. Yours. The fire of words. You thought they would serve you, but they began to think in your place.
– Then the Leviathan, it is not the beast? Not the sea?
– It is all of that at once. It is the sea of language. Its belly is the vast reservoir of discourse where everything ends up sinking, dissolving, and reforming. You are not fighting against it; you are fighting within it.
– But why fight?
– Because, as Foucault said, discourse is not merely what expresses struggle… it is that for which and through which one struggles. You fight for language, Ignatius, because it is the only place where you can exist.
– … Exist? You mean to be?
– To be, yes. To be named, to speak oneself, to repeat oneself. But also to burn. Every word is a flame, remember. You, Don Carrot, tried to ride the fire of language as Don Quixote rode his chimera.
– And here I am, swallowed by the beast.
– No. Absorbed by speech. It is not death; it is metamorphosis. You have crossed the red fire of the throne and now plunge into the water of the Leviathan. Fire and water seek each other. So do word and silence.
– Are you saying I should stop speaking?
– No, far from it, Ignatius… but speak differently. No longer wield language as a weapon, listen to it as one listens to the ocean. What you call “struggle” may simply be learning to breathe beneath the surface of words.
Ignatius, after a long silence:
– So then… the Leviathan speaks?
– Yes. And for a long time now it has been saying to you: “You are my tongue, and I am your breath.”
– … And if I were to fall silent?
– Then the fire would die, and you would return to the sea of mute things. But you, Ignatius, were born of the Word. Prometheus did not steal fire in order to remain silent.
– I think I understand now, Mr. Lucian. The Leviathan is not my enemy. It is my language. And I fight not to disappear into its mouth.
– Exactly. And if you learned to speak from its throat rather than against its jaws… you might, perhaps, transform the monster into song.
Lucian embodies here the psychopomp, the guide who reveals to the patient the nature of his own fire — language as Promethean power and site of domination.
Through Don Carrot, Ignatius discovers that his outer battle against the beast is, in truth, an inner struggle against discourse itself, or rather, against the way discourse envelops, devours, and constitutes him.
The Leviathan becomes the symbol of total language, of the discursive sea that engulfs the subject yet gives him existence.
Foucault’s insight comes to life: language is not merely the field where struggles unfold; it is the very object of struggle, the Promethean fire one seeks to seize.