Language, Counter-Memory, Practice “Language to Infinity” – Michel Foucault, p.55

Perhaps there exists in speech an essential affinity between death, endless striving, and the self-representation of language. Perhaps the figure of a mirror to infinity erected against the black wall of death is fundamental for any language from the moment it determines to leave a trace of its passage. Not only since the invention of writing has language pretended to pursue itself to infinity; but neither is it because of its fear of death that is decided one day to assume a body in the form of visible and permanent signs. Rather, somewhat before the invention of writing, a change had occur to open the space in which writing could flow and establish itself, a change symbolized for us in its most original form by Homer, that forms one of the most decisive ontological events of language: mirrored reflection upon death and construction, from this reflection, of a virtual space where speech discovers the endless resourcefulness of its own image and where, it can represent itself as already existing behind itself, already active beyond itself, to infinity. The possibility of a work of language find its original fold in this duplication.

Language, Counter-Memory, Practice “Language to Infinity” – Michel Foucault, p.55