Lawrence Weiner's Materialism∗

Abstract From the 1960s until his death in 2021, Lawrence Weiner developed an art practice operating in language, which he described as being that of a “materialist.” This paper examines the scope of Weiner's career to determine what he could mean by that term—to derive the specific characteristics of his linguistic materialism. Differentiating his work from existing materialist paradigms in poetics and linguistics, this paper argues that the matter of language for Weiner was not reducible to the visual character of the signifier or to the physicality of the referent. Rather than attempt to define language as such, Weiner's materialism set into motion the infinite social uses of words within the “stream of life.”