Definitions and Exchange

Naming and its more complicated form, definition, constitute special moments of language where words themselves are given to satisfy the listener's meta linguistic needs (needs regarding language itself) of the listeners. By telling others the names of things, or giving definitions of words, we are giving them the means of production of linguistic co-munication. This situation is different from speech proper, because naming and definition are at least somewhat de-contextualized, and their internal processes are of a special kind. We step outside the flow of speech to a meta level, to provide the listener with something she does not already have, a 'new' term which satisfies some constant general communicative need.¹

The need satisfied by the flow of speech, instead, is a need for a present and contingent relation to something(s), satisfied when the speaker gives the listener a verbal product, combining words (each of which, taken alone, would provide a constant relation) into sentences. In speech, the listener could, in principle, make the speaker's sentences herself, but has not (in that instance) recognized the need to make them. In the case of naming or definition, the listener needs, because she does not yet have and cannot use, the appropriate words. Her need is like a material need for the means of productionin this case it is a need for the means of production of verbal gifts.

In the processes of naming and definition, the speaker performs a service for the listener, understanding what she needs to know and providing her with a word in a way that is fashioned so that she can learn it. If she is talking to a child or to someone who speaks a foreign language, she may say the word at the same time that the 'thing' is present as an experiential given. She may also point at it, pick it up, hold it out towards the other person, etc. However, if she thinks the listener already has some knowledge of the vocabulary of that language, the speaker can fashion a defining phrase² using terms she imagines the listener already knows.

In order to do this, she has to put herself in the place of the other person, thinking of her knowledge, 'mind reading' about the other person's vocabulary and life experience. The definition requires other-orientation on the part of the speaker. Her guess is informed by her having heard the words others used when they were speaking and she was listening. Even when she is defining something for the general public, the speaker or writer has to use terms she thinks the others already know. If a written definition is not clear, the reader has to supply the further linguistic knowledge from some other source--for instance a dictionary. However, even those seemingly impersonal dictionary definitions require that their definers use terms that others will understand. Definitions do not stand on their own, as philosophers (influenced by equations and exchange) seem to think. They are gifts of words from one person to another or to many others.

The definiens is a phrase which is the part of the definition which functions as a provisional substitute gift for the thing defined, allowing the thing's general social relation to its name to be brought forward. The name is the constant social gift-word, which satisfies the general communicative need regarding that kind of thing in the society at large. The speaker provides an individual provisional gift, substitutes it for the given thing and for the social gift-word and makes it available to the listener. 'Furry friendly animal like Aunt Mary's pet' and 'domestic feline' are both provisional gifts that might be given to listeners to define the word 'cat.' Their selection, or the selection of other variations, depends upon the listener's vocabulary and experience (and her communicative need), as interpreted by the speaker. The definiendum is provided as the constant social communicative substitute gift (the name) for that kind of thing and for any number of other definiens regarding that kind of thing. (See Figure 3.)

Figure 3. Gifts taking the place of gifts in the definition.

The implication is: What the definiens has done regarding the thing, the definiendum can do--and more. In our examples, 'furry friendly animal like Aunt Mary's pet' picks out a 'sample' cat, while 'domestic feline' locates the animal in a taxonomy, which requires a complex interrelated system of definiens and definienda to distinguish among similar categories. 'Cat,' the definiendum, is more general than any definiens (any defining phrase), and it takes the place of all possible defining phrases as the name of that kind of thing for the speakers of that language.

By providing a name through the process of substituting the definiendum for the definiens, the speaker is also passing on the gift, a word she has received from others. This free process of giftgiving, receiving, and passing it on creates human subjectivities in relation to language, to each other and to an immense variety of qualitatively different things, events and ideas. In this linguistically mediated relation, we humans find ourselves to be a self-constituting species, able to bond with one another in almost as many ways as there are experiences. And we use gift processes and verbal gifts to bond with each other, also at a newly-created level of organization of experiences--the level of shareable topics which are linguistically given.

The definition can be seen as a 'package' containing several gifts at different levels. By creating a definiens, arranging terms the listener already has, the speaker performs a service for the listener. She relates something in the world and the definiens to the definiendum, providing the listener with the use of a new word. The 'things,' for example cats, are made to give way for the moment as co-municative gifts, because now indeed there is a substitute gift phrase which is being given in their stead--the definiens, for example, 'domestic felines.' Then the combination of words, the phrase which constitutes the definiens, 'domestic felines,' is also made to give up its equivalent position in favor of the definiendum, 'cat,' which takes over. Both the experiential givens, 'cat,' and the definiens, 'domestic felines,' give way to the definiendum, 'cat,' as the verbal gift by means of which co-munication usually happens with regard to that kind of thing, for people in that co-munity.

The word 'cat' is used by people more often to talk about cats, and is therefore more general than the definiens, 'domestic feline,' or 'an animal like Aunt Mary's pet,' or 'a furry friendly animal with a long tail.' It is used by more people, more often, than are any of these definiens. However, they could be used if a contingent communicative need arose for talking about those animals in that way, at that level of specificity. 'Cat' is more constant and more general than 'a furry friendly animal with a long tail.' We give the name 'name' to 'cat,' not to phrases such as 'a furry friendly animal,' etc.

All these gifts are tied together by the meta linguistic communicative need of the listener and the need-satisfying service of the speaker. She does not keep her knowledge of the lexicon to herself (though some elites and in-groups do this), but gives it freely to the listener, taking it upon herself to create and provide a definiens the listener can understand.

In spite of its being a package of gifts, the definition does not function internally according to the giver-gift-receiver process the way we have been saying a transitive sentence does. Instead, it functions by an internal and an external substitution. Both a nonverbal given and a phrase give way to a general word, the name which takes their place as the constant co-municative need-satisfying substitute gift.

Let me just mention that contained in the definition, the verb 'to be'³ is the substitute for the acts of substitution which are the definiens and the definiendum, which also both give way to it, implying that these acts are the same because, as acts, they are substituted by the same word, thus bringing the whole operation neatly into the present. (See Figure 4.)

The relation of words to words and things to words in 'the girl hit the ball' is different from the relation of words to words and things to words in 'a ball is a round object used for games.'
Figure 4. 'Is' substitutes for acts of substitution in the sentence.

In the former, the whole sentence is a gift, and within it there is a gift of a predicate given by subject to object. In the definition, someone is providing the gift of a word to someone who doesn't know it, through substitutions of something the listener does know--for example, 'a round object used for games' by something she doesn't know, the 'new' word 'ball.' The speaker is the giftgiving subject who gives the definiens and the definiendum to the listener, who is the receiver of the definiendum as a permanent acquisition. The definiens gives-way to the definiendum, which takes its place, much as the kind of thing 'gives-way' first to the definiens and then (in a permanent way) to the definiendum as its name.

The listener has an immediate meta linguistic need for a word she does not 'have.' The memory and understanding of that phonetic pattern constitute 'the means of production' of a word-gift speakers can give to satisfy others' communicative needs, and listeners can receive, creating bonds with them regarding that kind of thing. The speaker gives the new word to the listener, satisfying the listener's meta linguistic need.

Origin of Exchange

I believe that the processes of substitution and giving way in the definition and in naming are the original processes from which exchange derived. They have been transferred back into nonverbal patterns of interaction and distorted to mediate the kind of co-municative need that arises from the mutually exclusive human relationship of private property. Statistics show that very little private property--perhaps 1% world wide--is owned by women (who nevertheless are well able to perform the processes of naming and definition). Moreover, private property is an institution of so-called 'developed' societies, not of so-called 'primitive' ones, which nevertheless must have naming and definition processes. Thus, mutually inclusive gift-based language precedes exchange and the mutually exclusive property relations which are mediated by it. The processes of naming and the definition, where substitution and giving-way are predominant, have been stretched and altered as they have been transferred onto the material plane. This is particularly visible in monetized exchange where because of its function as a substitute gift, money creates a self-similar image of the word at a different scale. Moreover, in the absence of giftgiving and without a process of exchange, the institution of mutually exclusive private property would become sclerotic and unmanageable, since each owner would have no peaceful access to the satisfaction of her needs by others.

The use of these linguistic processes to avoid giftgiving and maintain the isolation of each economic operator contradicts the fundamental giftgiving-and-receiving principle of life and language, and creates a misogynist and hostile environment to which human groups have had to adapt. In fact, we have adapted to it so well that it appears to be natural, while the kinds of aggressive and competitive behaviors that are made necessary for survival in it appear to be 'human nature' (which expresses itself 'his-torically').

The existence of the same processes on the verbal and the nonverbal planes creates many re-verberations. In our present capitalistic society, for example, there is a feedback loop between verbal definition and nonverbal exchange, whereby the one validates the other and takes on the function of the other. A person or a product is defined by the amount of money s/he or it is 'worth.' Names, categorizations, titles from 'policewoman' to 'doctor' have a monetary value.

Controlling people through salary, which is definition by money, backs up naming, labeling, and defining others as a way of controlling them. Product names and brand names justify higher prices. We look at definitional processes as giving meaning to our lives. If we have a title, a university degree, a married name, we 'are somebody.' However, all this naming is taking place in a society that does not recognize giftgiving as the underlying principle of meaning for language and life.

Restoring Gifts to the Definition

Exchange reflects back on the idea we have of the definition, making it seem aseptic--an intellectual equation instead of a package made up of many gifts. Among the gifts we have already enumerated, we must also include the wider consideration that the definition sometimes serves to transmit words socially between generations, linguistic groups, etc. Moreover by finding a 'common language,' using the words which many others already have, both in speech and in performing the service of the definition, the speaker or writer is able to co-municate with people who are elsewhere in time and space. She must succeed in identifying, using and/or building upon the terms others already have--though of course the others may themselves have made the effort to acquire these terms through education, developing a body of knowledge about some discipline or area of life (sometimes with its own specialized language).

Because the need for the definition of terms is common, since none of us was born knowing them, definitions abound in books, dictionaries, and treatises. The nature of things is explored as well, in discussions which seek to define kinds of things. If it is well-fashioned, using words others commonly have, the gift package of the definition can continue to function independently of its maker. Its gifts leap to the satisfaction of the reader's need, as soon as she opens the dictionary.

This ability to continue to satisfy (meta) communicative needs independently makes it appear that the definition's human source and the relation between giver and receiver are unimportant. In one sense, we might say that it is society itself, the collective, that gives us these verbal 'means of production,' establishing a bond with us. On the other hand, the definer's unconditionally generous service is easily forgotten when we use the words we have been given to establish relations with others.

Equivalence

When the service or gift aspect of language is ignored, we tend to look at the way words take the place of other words in the definition as the basic process of language, rather than need satisfaction. A kind of fetishization occurs in which 'meaning' seems to come from the relation of words to each other, rather than from the relation of people to each other using things or using words regarding things. Then since philosophers have concentrated on definitions to tell us about everything from mankind to God to Being itself, we investigate definitions to find out the relation of words to the worldand we only see words taking the place of other words in closed systems. We do not look at nurturing as co-munication, nor do we look at linguistic communicative need as a socially relevant need, already necessarily arising from the world and from others, the satisfaction of which is an end motivating verbal and nonverbal interaction among individuals.⁴

Because of the magnetic template of the exchange logic, we see the need of the other only as functional to our own need. Her 'demand' must be 'effective;' she must have the proper amount of money equivalent to substitute for our product to satisfy our co-municative need for money.⁵ We do not see the 'service' side of the definition but only its so-called 'truth function,' whether its 'intension' (or meaning) corresponds to its 'extension' (the instances of that kind of thing in the world).

For example, 'A bachelor is an unmarried man' is an example which is often used because the 'definiens' and the 'definiendum' appear to completely correspond. Any man who is a bachelor is also an unmarried man. Definitions of this sort are gifts which satisfy the meta linguistic need for philosophical examples of definitions. The aspect of the meta linguistic gift of the word has become secondary. The other-orientation of the definer also seems to be irrelevant to the equivalence of 'extension' and 'intension.' It is therefore ignored while the definition appears independent and aseptic, untouched by human relations. The aseptic appearance might disappear if the listener were an unmarried woman. Some questions could arise about a bachelor being an unmarried man. Why is she not also called 'bachelor?' Are her material and communicative needs being considered? Why presuppose an insensitive male definer?

In our thinking about language, we are being influenced by the priorities of exchange, the necessity for identification of goods, their measurement, and the assessment of their equivalence to the satisfaction of both parties (or of society as a whole). The correspondence between giving and receiving or selling and buying is the model for the correspondence between language and reality. The motivation towards the need of the other as an end is ignored both in exchange and in the study of language.

Since definitions are made with words substituting for other words, the relation of words to the world seems to come from the form of the definition, the form of substitution as an end in itself--and without seeing the creative activity of giving-way. The relation of words to the world appears to come from the form of the equation (x = y), or from the words themselves, or from the will of the people who are saying them. By concentrating on substitution without the idea of giftgiving, it is difficult to get back to the world from language, and it appears only that "the sense of a sign is another sign,"⁶ andso on in infinite (albeit systemic) regress as if words were not 'hooked on' to the world at all.

Giftgiving at Both Levels

It seems that 're-present-ation' is the process without there being any prior 'present-ation' to back it up. Instead, 're-presentation' (taking-the-place-of) is only one moment in a giftgiving process which is both linguistic and non-linguistic. We can indeed substitute one gift for another, but the whole process from the identification of the need to the fashioning of the particular gift--words or sentences--which will satisfy it, involves much more than taking-the-place-of or substitution. It involves other-orientation, the ability to recognize others' needs in relation to the world, and things in the world as relevant to those needs. It involves recognizing oneself as a potential satisfier of other people's needs, using appropriate kinds of things, and the motivation to satisfy at least their communicative needs if not their material needs. It also involves recognizing others as the satisfiers of one's own needs. A patriarchal point of view would see the world as made up only of things for which we should compete, not things as having value as relevant to the satisfaction of others' needs.

Other-orientation is also necessary in order to be able to use words others will understand, put ourselves in their places and consider what they do not know as a need we can satisfy. Each need is a theme with many variations. The general need to communicate about cats--to form human relations regarding cats--comprehends all of the ways cats can be present or relevant to humans. We individually recognize those ways as needs arising from the extra linguistic or linguistic contexts, which others may have for a relation with us in regard to cats. The word 'cat' has been given to us socially as a means for satisfying any of those communicative needs, at least in part.

We have to have been able to receive from others materially and linguistically in the past, in order to be able to give to others in the present. That is, we must have been receivers of others' co-municative other-orientation. We must also be able to fashion new sentences according to transposed gift patterns--like matchmakers putting words in the position of giving to other words. Moreover, we have to seek and use the bonds that we create with others linguistically and with regard to the gifts of the world to develop our own, and their, social subjectivities. Giftgiving is the content of the form of substitution, which is the very reason for the existence of the form. It is what matters about the form; it is the (mothering) matrix.

Giving and giving-way have not been understood as fully human behavior. In patriarchy winning, power-over, and over-taking have been over-valued. However, giving-way is a necessary complement of taking-the-place-of. Being substituted is an active and necessary relational complement of substitution. Similarly receiving is the active creative complement of giving. In the definition the process of substitution and giving-way of gifts are the functional elements. In most sentences of speech in context, the substitution process is not in focus and gift processes at other levels create transparency.

Substitution and being substituted are the process at issue in the definition and naming because what is being given is a general word, a social gift for a kind of thing, given through a series of substitutions. The need which is being satisfied in this case is not primarily a contingent need for a mutually inclusive relation to the world, but a meta need of the other for the means of production of gifts regarding kinds of things. Perhaps because of the strength of the pattern of exchange (which is, as we said, the definition's descendent), the process of substitution and being substituted has been unilateralized, leaving aside the so-called 'passive' side of the relation. With one side lacking, the relation of substitution (and being substituted) or over-taking (and giving-way) has seemed to be no relation at all.⁷ Language no longer appears to have anything to do with what has been substituted. Instead it appears to be a unilateral, purely verbal activity unrelated to the world, a self-sufficient system which uses arbitrary sounds in a rule governed way to 'convey' (give) a 'meaning' (which is not understood either).

To some philosophers who ignore giftgiving, the relation of 'cat' to cats seems abstract, a sui generis act on the part of the speaker (or the community), who somehow equates 'cat' with cats, or imposes 'cat' upon cats, keeping them separate from dogs and monkeys, perhaps through a genetically 'transmitted' (given) ability. It seems that, by naming something, we put it in a category, which appears to be the purpose of communication.

The question then arises, what does categorization have to do with understanding? We slip into a kind of reasoning akin to private property--asking what things belong to what categories. Then the most knowledgeable person is the one who 'has' the most categories. We arrange the categories in hierarchies of inclusiveness and function, 'transforming' particular phrases by substituting more general for more specific names, all the way up sentence trees, seeing their interaction as governed by laws or rules according to what is appropriate for their identities or kinds. Then we equate these hierarchies with 'understanding.'

The Sentence Tree (or Root) Diagram

A kind is only a collection of things that is important enough to have a name because communicative needs arise regarding it. At a meta linguistic level, in fact, such names as Noun Phrase (NP) or Verb Phrase (VP) name kinds of phrases because linguistics professors need to talk about them. The rules of syntax show how words and phrases can 'give' to one another, while sentence tree diagrams visually express the gift relation as branches of dependency. The tree diagrams always looked upside down to me--until I realized they are not trees at all but root systems, with the flow of gifts going upwards (from the particular to the general) not downwards (from the general to the particular).

Linguistic creativity, the ability to generate ever-new sentences using a limited number of words, is accompanied and elicited by the ability to recognize the needs which those words and sentences satisfy. Collective human need-satisfying practice with things of a kind gives value to those things which in turn is partially transferred or given by implication to the word-gifts that substitute for them. It is not a top-down categorizing relation that makes language work, but a creative dynamic of need satisfaction that moves both language and life.

I believe that the gift relations within the sentence itself, not an interplay of categorizations, are the motors of its meaning. We have mistakenly taken the naming side of language as the key to the dynamic. It is not the 'application' of words to things that promotes the change of levels, causing the move 'up' from the level of nonverbal experience to the level of verbal practice; there is a different process going on that we are not seeing.

We give a group of things something that they can be related to as their substitute. Then we transfer to it something of their value, in the sense of their importance for humans, because needs become associated with them. The substitute gift receives a destination in the satisfaction of a communicative need, which may make it also be useful from a distance in the satisfaction of material needs, for example: 'the bread is in the cupboard' or 'the train is leaving from track 12.' There is an upward flow of meaning or value from the world of which we are a part, not just a top-down application or cutting-out of categories. A meta language is only a hierarchical collection of categorizing terms, a parasite upon the object language because it lacks its own gift dynamic.

The branching of a sentence tree should be seen instead as the coming together of elements which can give to each other, a cooperative assembly of terms. We can give 'the,' or 'the' can give itself to 'girl,' and we name this gift act 'noun phrase.' Then as a unit they can 'give' the verb 'hit' to the unit which is made when 'the' gives itself to 'ball.' We can diagram these units, giving them names such as 'determiner,' 'noun phrase,' 'verb,' 'sentence.' They tell us which are givers, gifts, receivers. We give some of the parts of the sentence, 'the girl hit the ball,' to such words as 'noun phrase,' to be substituted by them. We believe we know more when we can show the hierarchy. We know who controls who and can get along ourselves better in it. But we do not notice the gifts of value percolating up from below.

The sentence tree is the one in the garden that grew from Adam's doing too much naming. It is not because they are categorized together or because they follow the rules that words stick together (bond) in sentences. Rather it is because they give to each other, combine, and then together give to another word or part of the phrase. They can do this because they have been 'given to' by things (and people). If we deny the flow upwards it appears that the only thing there is the top-down naming mechanism, and we are at a loss to see how it is attached to the world.

The question should not be, "Where does the (fractal) tree divide into branches?" but "Where does the root system come together carrying the gifts of value upward to the plant?" The question is, "Who is feeding whom?" and "Who is doing the nurturing?"--the naming mechanism or the giftgiving, value-conferring mechanism?"

Masculation

Words themselves, ruled by syntax, may appear to contain the secret of their own relation to the world. I believe this is an illusion coming from the gender definition, which exacerbates the aspect of substitution.

What happens when a boy child learns he belongs to a different gender from his giftgiving mother? As with other instances of naming or definition, the name or definiendum 'boy' causes him (as a material thing) to 'give way' as the nonverbal gift. Before he understands what adults are saying, he considers himself to be like his mother. But when he begins to understand the implication of his gender term, he must realize he is not supposed to be like her. His being named or defined as a boy (with the social definition of 'male') contradictorily makes him give up the gift-giving character, in order to be different from his mother. (See Figure 5.) His gender name is thus much more harmful for him than we imagine.

Since his very life depends upon his mother's care, a change of category, to be like his father, would seem to be a very frightening thing. The boy becomes 'like' someone he usually does not know very well, who may appear to be (like the word which is 'taking over') just an abstract dominator. An aspect of language becomes grafted on to the gender behavior of the child. Substitution, part of the definition process, self-reflectingly takes the place of the process of the gift, which gives-way. Categorization becomes more powerful than co-munication. Words are no longer benign co-municative gifts, but magic wands that can change a child's identity.

The question "What is man?" really derives from this question: "What is man if he is not like his mother?" The answer is--this is a false question. He is like his mother, a nurturing being, but he is altered by the naming of gender, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Since it is only a word that spirits the boy away, words must appear to be very powerful. And since his fathers before him have had the same experience, males find

Figure 5. Masculation: forming the boy's gender.

commonality in that respect. It does not seem to the childor perhaps to anyone else in the society--that an arbitrary and false distinction is being made. Rather, the community bases the boy's difference from his mother upon his genitals--upon the biological fact that he has a penis like his father while she doesn't. But if nurturing is the basis of communication and community, there is really nothing, no content available for his oppositional category. In order to fill this void, substitution, definition, and categorization themselves become the content of the (masculine) identity of those who are told that they are not nurturers. Words are cast socially in this case, not as gifts, but as powerful abstract categorizers which overtake and control a person's identity. According to the survival mechanism of imitating the oppressor, the children then become like the word--as did their fathers before them. Male gender identity imitates the naming or 'definitional' side of language and the process of taking-the-place-of--giving importance to equivalence with the other, the father who is taking the place of the mother (who gives-way) and of other males as well. The penis plays an important part in this because it is that physical characteristic which places the boy in the category with his father. Phallic symbols are everywhere, though we have learned to ignore them and to deny their importance. The equation itself, as a moment of similarity and of exchange, receives gifts of attention and value from the many. The equal marks (=) are perhaps originally two little phallic symbols. It is this characteristic (or property), which the boy has and the mother does not have, which takes him away from her nurturing category. The psycho-social effects of 'having' or 'not having' this physical characteristic have become immensely important, as we shall see. The boy receives many privileges. In fact, he is often given more nurturing because he is a male than he would have been given if he had been a female, like his mother. Often he is validated as superior, even to her. Like the word, he has the ability to take-the-place-of, which, in the absence of other-orientation and giftgiving, becomes over-taking and domination.

He is 'compensated' with that ability and those privileges because he has given up the nurturing identity.

I have coined the word 'masculation' for this process in which the boy is socialized into a false, non-nurturing identity, incarnating the word which alienates him. It seems to me that this is an essential moment in male development that is not recognized and that, therefore, spawns self-similar images in many different areas of life. By acting out this process on different social scales, the collective unconsciously hopes to rid itself of this self-created fatal flaw. At the same time, there are many fail-safes which keep it in place and keep us from clearly seeing what is happening.

¹Ferdinand de Saussure, in Course in General Linguistics, Mc Graw Hill, New York. 1959, distinguished between what he called 'langue,' the lexicon, the collection of words taken out of context and related to one another purely differentially, and 'parole' or speech. Naming and definition may appear to be pre-requisites for the rest of speech (though we also learn words from simply hearing them in others' speech). My point is that the processes by which we acquire words and consider them on their own out of context, in their generality, are different from the processes in which we use them by putting them together. I believe that the definition's internal gift processes are different enough from speech that they are the hidden model for exchange. They are what Roman Jakobson called 'equational statements.' 'The Speech Event and the Function of Language' in On Language, edited by Linda Waugh and Monique Monville-Burston, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass, 1990.

²I will use the term 'definiens' as the name for the phrase which allows the listener to identify what the 'new' word represents, and 'definiendum' for the word under definition, the 'new' word itself, or the name. In 'A cat is a domestic animal with a long tail and pointed ears,' 'Cat' is the 'definiendum,' and 'a domestic animal with a long tail and pointed ears' is the 'definiens.'

³See Chapter 9 for a more complete discussion of the verb 'to be.'

⁴Without altruism and other-orientation, we cannot justify society or culture. There is no group which can survive as a compendium of isolated egotists. Social cohesion is provided by the hidden giftgiving and other orientation of all, and especially of women.

⁵Typically, we do not consider the listener's understanding as the satisfaction of her need, but have to see it expressed in other words, just as the need of the buyer has to be expressed in money as effective demand. Otherwise it does not 'exist' for the seller.

⁶The approach of unlimited semiosis begun by Charles Sanders Peirce, Collected Papers, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1931-35, (1931, 2.230) has captured his (and Saussure's) deconstructionist descendants in an infinite regress, inside the definitional stance, far from the plane of material giftgiving co-munication. Chains of substitutes deny the importance of the 'present,' the need satisfying gift.

⁷Gandhi's movement for non-violence demonstrated the political importance of 'giving-way,' allowing us to see what women had already been practicing personally. Using 'giving-way' as a response to 'over-taking' made the over-takers realize, among other things, that their action was relational. Gift giving and giving-way are the presents which underlie the relation of re-present-ation.