Is any imposition of form or definiteness by that very fact oppressive? Some argue that creating a grammar restricts something wilder that needs to be liberated so we can live more fully. Depending on the tradition the critic is working in, that wildness might be chaotic reality, or the body, desire, and so on.
Such claims are self-proclaimedly postmodern, but they follow the standard modern goal of the liberation of possibility from restriction. What differentiates them from more usual modernity is that what is being liberated is not a free creative or rational individual, but something conceived as prior to individuality.
These claims combine truths into falsehoods. It is true that we are oppressed in many ways, and that the body, desire, social interaction should be liberated. It is true that in making any possibilities definite we operate within a condition that defies reduction to determinate form. But it is false that we could or should be liberated into living purely in an indeterminate condition.
(c) David Kolb, 1 August 2001