In this article three viewpoints on the relation of body and language are discussed: the poststructuralist viewpoint of Judith Butler, the phenomenological viewpoint of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the postmodernist viewpoint of Jean-François Lyotard. The reason juxtaposing for these three accounts is twofold. First, the topic requires a combination of post-structuralist and phenomenological insights, and second, the accounts are supplementary. Butler's account raises questions that can be answered with the help of Merleau-Ponty's work. Lyotard's anthropology of the inhuman offers a perspective (...) of finitude that is missing in the other two. The aim of the article is to outline the necessary ingredients of an adequate conception of the speaking embodied subject. (shrink)