Pre-emptive writers' bloc

Is all thought in language? Some answer yes to this question (Volosinov, others), but to accept this seems to accept a very limitted definition of thought. The most easily explainable problem with this thesis is sensory imagination. Is the artist or architect not thinking when she images her next project?

Of course, there's all sorts of angles we could come at the relationship between thought and language, and it could be argued that even if all thought is not "inner-language" then at the very least all thought is thoroughly structured by language. Or that even images and other forms of sensual imagination are all semiotic, so in the end its all just like language. But really, it's not this particular dispute which concerns me now. The problem that's prompting this post is certain kind of frustration I want to describe, a feeling of having something to say or express but not having/knowing to accomplish that. Sometimes I call this writer's block.

The reason the thought-language dispute pertains to this problem is that most painful moments of writer's block come when it seems I have a thought, at least in some nebulous cerebral form, but can't find language to express it. The initial thought, it appears, is phenomenal, meaningful but non-linguistic.

Now this could be just a meditation on writers bloc, but my poststructual line of thinking wants to chime in and say the whole model is wrong. Am I setting this whole equation up on a model of a soveriegn speaking subject? Is this an outdated transmission model of communication? A thought appears to a subject as some sort of interior self-created apprehension, then the thought is translated into words endowed with a meaning through the force of the subject's intention?
While poststructuralists often seem like they strip any theory of language, besides those located in their own intellectual genealogy, of its nuance and complexity, I might as well just say I'm guilty here of their accusation. The model of speaking I'm working off here is much closer to a rather traditional modernist than their own. Yet, perhaps in my mind I've overextended the poststructualists dogmatism. Maybe invoking a transmission model of communication to grapple with the particular kind of frustration I'm dealing with here isn't so much a sin in their eyes. Perhaps different models of subjects and communication really can be deployed at different instances. Or perhaps, that poststructualist inside of me might anticipate with glee, the frustration I'm encountering is an inevitable problem of modernism, the desire to "express a non-linguistic thought in speaking" will always be frustrated. Maybe, but so far I haven't encountered a poststructual diagnosis that resonates with me.

Still, I won't argue that language in any way can act as "mirror" to reflect any non-linguistic phenomenon. Translation into language is not only always messy, but always a complete leap into another form entirely.

Redundancy of Theory 1

In theory circles, at least from what I can surmise about them from my little grad student seat, there are a few refrains that come up again and again as to the nature of the grand illusion and religious fantasy of modern thought. One is that steadfast belief in a unified autonomous and effective self, a belief absolutely saturating all powerful modern institutions, except curiously enough, certain humanities departments at universities.

What are other such refrains?