The imperfect is
our paradise.

How does one start to speak? The term glossolalia signifies to babble, to jibber-jabber, or to stutter (Greek: lalein) in the tongue (Greek: glosse). So it is no surprise to find glossolalic traces or moments in the speech of children just as in innumerable literary texts (see Rabelais, Cyrano de Bergerac and so on) that concern the nature, conditions, and beginnings of the Word [la Parole]. But bound to the question of the beginnings of the spoken word [la parole] is the question of its lapsus or its end. How does speaking come undone? The passion of the fall redoubles the passion of the birth. Each, moreover, can be the very site of the other, and accordingly the two figures frequently mix. Every glossolalia combines something prelinguistic, related to a silent origin or to the "attack" of the spoken word, and something postlinguistic, made from the excesses, the overflows, and the wastes of language.


Michel de Certeau, Vocal Utopias : Glossolalias
In Representations 56, fall 1996