Ali: I think you're being rather unfair to "cavemen." The image of the
fur-clad man with a club dragging a woman by the hair has no foundation. I
believe it was the invention of cartoonists, altho I'm willing to be
corrected if I'm wrong.
Also unfair to chimps. Chimps are not monkeys, nor monkeys chimps, and we
have no evidence that they recognize even a distant relationship. Good to
remember that a lot of the brouhaha circa 1858 over the theory of evolution
stemmed from the human opponents' scandalized denial of such a
relationship. No one asked the other primates what they thought.
I'd also like to be satisfied more than I am that writing itself causes
hostilities between peoples who don't always recognize each others'
membership in the same species. Numerous groups call themselves "the
people" in contadistinction from their neighbors without the aid of pen or
computer; the inuit and the diné in the Americas are two quick examples.
Even where the two groups live near each other in the far north they each
insist that they are "the people" and not the others.
Mark
At 02:25 PM 1/18/2001 +1100, Ali Alizadeh wrote:
>Hi everyone
>
>I'm new on the list and thought to jump straight into the conversation. To
>me language is a torment, but let's not throw the baby out with the bath
>water. The so-called civilisation, with all its agony and ecstasy, owes a
>lot to language and words. How would we go about doing that most lively
>function of life - sex - if we couldn't 'make conversation', 'chat up' or
>'get to know eachother'? In a sense, I think our words have taken the
>function of the caveman's club. And well, the rest is history. Use and
>abuse of language, however, isn't a conscious relationship. At times I have
>knowingly offended people with my poems, but I don't see that as an abuse.
>To tell a lie, to write without honesty, and to express acceptable opinions
>for the sake of being accepted; now that's the problem. Levi-Strauss made
>an interesting observation when introducing 'writing' to a 'native'
>Brazilian tribe. Not unlike the chimps of the previous messages, the
>'uncivilsed' people, almost immediately, broke into hostility and
>aggression, and they did more than calling eachother 'dirty'; they got out
>their spears. The problem with this story, and the likes of it, isn't
>whether or not they represent the truth; it's the story-teller's
>(arrogant?) assumption that 'uncivilised' people, animals and any other
>'others' don't already possess THEIR OWN code of communication. Language,
>whether a blessing or a curse, exists with or without words, with or
>without writing and, sadly enough, with or without poets. What WON'T be
>there if we take the culture - and its structures - out of communication,
>is the language's ability to transcend and overcome its barriers. An
>obstacle, to my experience, has been the superiority of English as the
>'national tongue' in Australia. Seeing as a huge number of Australians are
>non-English speakers by birth, the irony of this situation is nothing short
>of an outright oppression. Here, I think, Marx's view of alienation serves
>as a deadly reminder of how people lose their voices only to be
>discriminated within the social assemblage; an abuse of language if there
>ever was one. Nonetheless, I have not written in my mother-tongue - Persian
>- since coming to Australia at 15. To have relied on basic communication
>skills - that is, 'everyday English' - would have meant a submission to my
>being alienated. Now I'm doing a Phd in poetry. Tormenting as it often can
>be, being a 'poet', for all its worth, has brought me face to face with the
>monstrosity of language; the least I can do is giving the bastard the
>finger, or I can attempt Dante's trick and try to climb up the fiend in
>order to climb off it.
>
>Ali Alizadeh
>Melbourne
>
>
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