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from William S. Burroughs, "Prisoners of the Earth Come Out," in The Job.

...Image and word are the instruments of control used by the daily press and by such news magazines as Time, Life, Newsweek, and their English and Continental counterparts. Of course, an instrument can be used without knowledge of its fundamental nature or its origins. To get to the origin we must examine the instruments themselves; that is, the actual nature of word and image. Research along these lines is discouraged by those who use word and image as instruments of control. So we do not know what a word is or what an image is. The study of hieroglyphic languages shows us that a word is an image... the written word is an image. However, there is an important difference between a hieroglyphic and a syllabic language. If I hold up a sign with the word “ROSE” written on it, and you read the sign, you will be forced to repeat the word “ROSE” to yourself. If I show you a picture of a rose you do not have to repeat the word. You can register the image in silence. A syllabic language forces you to verbalize in auditory patterns. A hieroglyphic language does not. I think that anyone who is interested to find out the precise relationship between word and image should study a simplified hieroglyphic script. Such a study would tend to break down the automatic verbal reaction to a word. It is precisely these automatic reactions to words themselves that enable those who manipulate words to control thought on a mass scale.

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from Ursula K. Leguin, A Wizard of Earth Sea

There was a little pause; and Yarrow asked... “Tell me just this, if it is not a secret: what other great powers are there beside the light?”

“It is no secret. All power is one in source and end, I think. Years and distances, stars and candles, water and wind and wizardry, the craft in a man’s hand and the wisdom in a tree’s root: they all arise together. My name, and yours, and the true name of the sun, or a spring of water, or an unborn child, all are syllables of the great word that is very slowly spoken by the shining of the stars. There is no other power. No other name.”

Staying his knife on the carved wood, Murre asked, “What of death?”

The girl [Yarrow] listened, her shining black head bent down.

“For a word to be spoken,” Ged answered slowly, “there must be silence. Before, and after.” Then all at once he got up, saying, “I have no right to speak of these things. The word that was mine to say I said wrong. It is better that I keep still; I will not speak again. Maybe there is no true power but the dark.” And he left the fireside and the warm kitchen, taking up his cloak and going out alone into the drizzling cold rain of winter in the streets.

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Merleau-Ponty

Jaspers

Entry 43

Burroughs

LeGuin