What if things could speak? What would
they tell us?
Or are they speaking already and we just don't hear them? And who is going to translate them?
Ask Walter Benjamin. In fact he started asking those quite bizarre questions already in 1916 in a
text called
"On Language as Such and on the Language of Man"
Of all weird texts by Benjamin, this is definitely the weirdest.
In this text he develops the concept of a language of things.
According to Benjamin this language of things is mute, it is magical and its medium is material community.
Thus, we have to assume that there is a language of stones, pans and cardboard boxes.
Lamps speak as if inhabited by spirits.
Mountains and foxes are involved in discourse.
High-rise buildings chat with each other. Paintings gossip.
There exists even, if you will, besides the language communicated by telephone a language of the telephone itself.
And, according to Benjamin’s triumphant conclusion, nobody is responsible for this silent cacophony but G-D himself...
