Language can never directly express our immediate sensory experience because words are inherently universal

Evidence

What Hegel shows is that there can be no unmediated identity between language and our sensory experience of the present, of the here and now of these unique things (also called our “sense certainty”). “If [philosophers] actually wanted to say ‘this’ bit of paper which they mean, if they wanted to say it, then this is impossible, because the sensuous This that is meant cannot be reached by language, which belongs to consciousness, i.e., to that which is inherently universal.” “Universal” is tortuously defined here as an empty concept which can preside over a multiplicity of distinct kinds of content: the “Now” as a “plurality of Nows taken together” constitutes for Hegel “the experience of learning that Now is a universal.” — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 336

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Hegel’s ‘sense certainty’ and why the sensuous ‘this’ can never be spoken — a key mechanism for how language mediates rather than mirrors experience.
• XREF: This is the epistemological basis for Jameson’s later claims that aesthetic form cannot directly mirror economic conditions — connects to the reader’s interest in style as the economy’s way of appearing, but via mediation. — connects to: Senses are inapprehensible because we encounter only objects, never sensory activity; Language resists self-knowledge exactly as the body does; Every language is already speculative and philosophy need only work with its accidents — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 1161 (+6 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Senses are inapprehensible because we encounter only objects, never sensory activity; Language resists self-knowledge exactly as the body does; Every language is already speculative and philosophy need only work with its accidents — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 1161 (+6 more)