a king listens

"Language, in the world, above all is power. Whoever speaks is powerful and violent. To name is that violence that distances what is named in order to possess it in the useful form of a name. [...] To name has been given only to a being capable of not being, capable of making this nothingness a power and this power the decisive violence that opens nature, dominates it and compels it. That is how language projects us into the dialectics of the master and slave with which we are obsessed. The master has acquired the right of speech because he has gone so far as to risk death: alone, the master speaks, and his speech is commandment. The slave can do nothing but listen. To speak is what is important; he who can only listen depends on speech and only stands in second place. But hearing, this disinherited, subordinate, and secondary side, finally is revealed to be the place of power and the principle of true mastery" (Blanchot 32-33)