The Chicken Or the Egg?

The paradox I thought of the most while reading "Terministic Screens" is the chicken-egg question. Is our reality constructed by our symbols and language? Burke claims "much that we take as observations of "reality" may be but the spinning out of possibilities implicit in our particular choice of terms" (Burke, 46). So, what does that mean about representation? As Butler points out, "representation is the normative function of a language which is said either to reveal or to distort what is assumed to be true about the category of women" (Butler, 2). For some reason, our society is obsessed with labels. It's as if you don't know who you are unless you are labeled, categorized, or represented by some sort of symbol. This blurs the line between what is real and what is represented. While Burke claims that man is attached to a verbal realism, Butler insists that "instead of self limiting linguistic gesture that grants alterity or difference to women, phallogocentricism offers a name to eclipse the feminine" (Butler, 16).