Defining the crux of linguistic entrapment :-

A critical review of Pradeep Sharma’s Book titled Limits of Language

Book Title : Limits of Language.

The book under review by Pradeep Sharma is a very engaging and intellectually appealing,
theoretically dicursive one that takes into account both the power and limits of language, even
though he gives central emphasis to the maximum capacity of language for revealing meaning.
Both language and literature are discussed in this mentally stimulating book but the author admits
that ultimately it is language that constitutes our being. Even though language and literature are
inextricably related, Sharma argues following the dictum of the poststructuralist school of theory
that even after admitting the fact that language gives meaning to our life, language, after all, has a
transcendental hypothesis. Language in the obvious sense is nothing but a set of sounds and we all
know that the so-called superiority of human beings depends upon their invention of language.
According to many intellectuals and writers, it is language that gives us reality and it is also the
very limits of language that often cripples us while defining the world through language. F.R.
leaves, the famous author of New Bearings in English Poetry and also the editor of Scrutiny once
mentioned that, “Discrimination is life and indiscrimination is death” and it would not be an
exaggeration to say that it is only through language that we, human beings are able to disemminate
our being and it is highly interesting to comment that the book under review takes this fact into
account.
In literature no writer can write without any ideological mooring and Pradeep Sharma is
also not an exception. Our reading of literature and its constituting element language are
occasionally overridden by some sort of identical base. Our approach to the interpretation of
language and literature emanates from the fact that we are accustomed to go through the process
of Hermeneutics quite efficiently, during the contemporary period. There is no reading now-a-days
that is innocent, non-cognitive or non-ideological as globalization and neo-imperialism has not
only polarized the world but also attempts to homogenize the universe without taking care of the
local culture, local identity and above all local-existence. Pradeep Sharma is conscious about all
these merits and demerits of language (which is the constituent element of all literature) and to
augment his tenacious propositions, he intensively and extensively cites comments of many
western and Indian writers, theorists and philosophers and he then interprets almost everything
related to poststructuralist school of criticism without any limit. And sometimes it only becomes
his lack of farightedness but also reveals a myopic vision regarding western literary theory.
It is a known fact that during the second half of the 20th Century the reception of literature
in the west took a U-turn because of the sudden emergence of various literary and critical theories.
All the expounders of critical theories like Michael Foccoult, Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes,
Lacan, Irigray, Helen Lixous, Jutia Kristeva and later on postcolonial theorists like Edward W.
Said, Gayetry Chakravorty Spivak and Homi K. Bhabha redefined language and its intrinsic
relation with literature which Pradeep Sharma acknowledges in the book under review and he
comes up with a few brilliant comments that are not only important, but also highly stimulating,
Sharma brings up all the binaries like signifier / signified, langue / parole etc. and then goes on to
analyse how all these dichotomies have enabled us to reinterpret our known universal relation.
Like the western critical theorists he also believes that such binary oppositions help us to read
everything under the universe as texts. Sharma believes that Gayetri Chakravorty Spivak’s
translation into English of Derrida’s French book Of Grammatology was a watershed event in the
history of critical thought. He believes that too much emphasis on the strength of language and its
dissection can sometimes result in misreading. The poststructuralists claim that it is language that
not only shapes our understanding but also constitutes our world. Thus we become entrapped in a
linguistic quagmire misconception and misreading, a fact that Pradeep Sharma often tends to
overlook. Whether this attitude is lackadaisical or purposeful can only be measured by his own
conception of contemporary views on various philosophical, anthropological, linguistic,
sociological impetus. Sharma sometimes seems to quote a number of social and philoshopical
thinkers along with critical theorists to validate his comment (often hidden) that we as individuals
are caught in the linguistic quagmire. Sharma extensively quotes Derrida and his unique reading
technique “Deconstruction” which means de-centering the so-called central discourses and giving
privilege to the so far neglected marginal discourses. Sharma also heavilly quotes Russel, Sartre,
Wittgenstein, Heideggar, Frederic Neitzee and also the 20 th Century Frankfurt School of critics
who have commented upon the limits of language upto a certain extent. He (Pradeep Sharma),
however, shows how the various philosophical and critical schools of theories often mar our
enjoyment of literature as language often extends its limit and turns out to be a barrier regarding
human understanding of the world as texts and all other units as sub-texts. Sharma also questions
the postmodern concept of lack of fixity of meaning and criticizes it on the ground that if there is
no fixed meaning, then what can be understood by a person whether academic on nonacademic.
Pradeep Sharma extensively discusses Derrida’s concepts like “difference”, “aporia” and other
hypothetical meaning generated by deconstruction. Pradeep Sharma’s credit lies in fact that even
within the limit of an academic book where perspective dominates, he remains quite like a sentinel
to save misreading of theory. He has dealt with how one form of critical theory leads to the
understanding of a different literary or critical theory that complement each other without
cancelling each other. He refers to Husserl and discusses in detail the phenomenological
perspective and Sharma also understands this dielecties of meaning in terms of a juxtaposition of
the dualities between time and space.
However, Sharma’s greatest credit lies in the fact that he tries to understand Western
poststructerralistic school in the light of ancient Indian literary and critical theories and in this
context he discusses thinkers like Vartihari, Nagarjun, Kautilya, Harshavardhan, Bharat and many
others who led to the gradual dissemination of ancient Indian theory of aesthetics and its various
connotations. Pradeep Sharma’s approach is comparative and by citing comments of various
Indologists he tries to produce a theory of his own which would see a contrapuntal and
re-configuring relation between Indian classical theories viz-e-viz Western critical schools of
thought. He (Sharma) also draws heavilly upon Indian aesthetic theories in the light of his
understanding of western critical theory without often neglecting the fact that he is prioritizing
Western critical thoughts. Sharma also talks about various Indian philosophical cum theological
dogmas of Jainism, Hinduism and Buddhist discourse. He traces some of the western critical
thoughts to the beginning of Enlightenment. Towards the ending Sharma becomes confident to
propose that there is a limit of language in human discursive practices.
Finally, I would like to say that the book could have become more original if Sharma,
would have avoided a huge number of quotations. However, his language is lucid, free of jargon,
urbane. It is not easy to discuss every pros and cons of a particular book within a limited space,
but credit goes to Sharma for his mixture of erudition with an original standpoint.

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