Discourse and gibbons

[Timothy Mason]

One thing I think I know about discourse is that terms can slip from one
discursive domain to another, changing meaning and role, and occasioning
clarity/perplexity or whatever. If people who study primates - or bees
or sub-nuclear particles - find a use for the term 'discourse' - or for
terms such as 'dance', 'language' and so on - then they will use them.
Boundary managaers may well feel moved to condemn, but the best they can
hope to do is to wag a stern finger at any illicit border-crossing.

	Best wishes

		Timothy Mason


Celso Alvarez Cáccamo wrote:
> Kerim,
>
> I admit to certain circularity in my reasoning: if agency is human
> agency, then non-human primates don't have agency (though they do
> transform contexts, but in qualitatively different ways: in humans there
> is deliberately planning to create new forms of social organization, to
> reinstate old ones, etc.). And if agency is a constitutive part of
> discourse, then non-human primates can't have discourse. We haven't
> introduced ideology centrally in the discussion, but here is yet another
> point of difference.