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Richard Rorty provides a striking example of a certain popular, optimistic, and poststructuralist view of language when he endorses Katherine MacKinnon's call for a change in male attitudes toward rape. This change requires, Rorty points out, that “people … feel … revulsion and rage where they once felt indifference or resignation” (44). What must be generated here is a new emotional response. Rorty argues this new response can be produced by language, through what MacKinnon terms an “extension of logical space” (44). If social injustice is perpetuated by thoughtless and unreflective habits of thought, and if social justice is impeded by an acceptance of or indifference to such habits of injustice, new language, producing new “logical space” and emotional response, can lead people to no longer tolerate what they once unthinkingly accepted. Rorty explains:
One way to change instinctive emotional reactions is to provide new language that will facilitate new reactions. By “new language” I mean not just new words but also creative misuses of language—familiar words used in ways that initially sound crazy. Something traditionally regarded as a moral abomination can become an object of general satisfaction, or conversely, as a result of the increased popularity of an alternative description of what is happening. Such popularity extends logical space by making descriptions of situations that used to seem crazy seem sane. (44)
Rorty's goal is to “change instinctive emotional reactions.” And Rorty's plan for this change is to adopt “creative misuses of language.” “Instinctive emotional reactions” normally imply spontaneous emotive impulses that precede language use. Rorty's argument, however, suggests the opposite: language use generates instinctive response. This paper will take a Lacanian perspective to explore how “instinctive” reactions are interwoven with language—both produced by and resisted by linguistic structure.
Rorty's hope that “logical space” can be “extended” by