Chris!

"Language is not innocent."

Language is neither innocent nor guilty - it's burble-babble has been going
on since usness began. Wot's English - well it's what Donald Rumsfeld
attempts to talk in, Hyacinth from West Bromwich tries to deny she's on the
game in, Tony Blair rehearses in, Ronald MacDonald's name stands on
orphanages in, Meng the innocent from a somewhere outside Guangdon dreams
she will make her fortune in, Euro-tunnel refugees from Rumanian provinces
imagine Social Security in London will grant them fortunes in, Sir Isaac
Newton counted himself but standing upon the shoulders in, five of my
grandfather's six other brothers died in Flanders believing in, little lusts
for gold and town and country houses via (long voyage though) Richard (elder
brother) Wellesley and Clive of India despoiled and loeb classics and
America, America! and Lucasfilms and meet my dictionary - she's called Sam -
I bring her out for crosswords - her voice y'know sounds like mine - that
Scots whatisname can tell youse - she used to walk all the way from
Lichfield to meet us, Lunarly, and it's this and it's that and it's ....

But the guilt, the geld, the guilds are always ours.

The issue of Standard English begins well before America, I for one do not
speak RSP, in fact nobody outside the upper middle-classes does here now,
there is a new kind of Standard English I think, but its based somewhere
between Hollywood and Windsor Castle, fuck all to do with me, if you want to
hitch a ride on other people please do so, but don't draw me into your own
guilt, I have my own private supply, which has nothing to do with
generalities. All I asked you was what the privileged technical definition
of that word 'problematise' was. Nothing else. Now it seems I am a denier of
voice to American blacks for that question. As one of my girlfriends used to
say, you're a ras-claats.


David Bircumshaw

Leicester, England

Home Page

A Chide's Alphabet

Painting Without Numbers

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: "ccjones" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2002 2:50 AM
Subject: respect for english


Language is not innocent. Language, in this case English, is not a nature,
even an artificial nature, to be molded as if a docile medium by the artist,
the poet, the writer. There is nothing new in that statement. Derrida would
perhaps be well known on this list as one who investigated the structures of
language, Samuel R Delany would be another, and came to this understanding.
Kafta understood it only too well when dealing with the problems of writing
in German: the impossibility of writing in such a language after the Jewish
experience in World War Two and the impossibility of not writing in German.
I
am also thinking of the sociolinguists, MAK Halliday is the one I have read,
who untangle as best they can the very structures of language which make it
chauvinistic and despotic. If language is consensual then the implication is
clear: one is commanded to consent to language. Deleuze also illustrates and
understands the despotic structures of language. The history of the English
dictionary is a history of defining national borders and the imperial reach
of the British Empire. The Empire demands English. We write poetry in
English. Who is the imperial Royal "we" in this statement?

Black American English, so called, is not just another form of English that
should be given just as much credence as so called Standard English. That
statement is surely racist with a liberal chauvinism built into it. If, as
so
many have argued English is so tightly enmeshed in the structures of racism
I
should be liberal and not be a racist. I should write in some other language
that perhaps does not enmesh itself in the active construction of a racist
structure. Make racism go over there, somewhere else: I am not a racist.
That
statement should be made to howl with racism. Who am I, a privileged white
Australian male, to say: I am not a racist? My very subjectivity which I was
born into and educated in a racist culture can put racism over there, not be
a racist? In putting racism over there, I would deny any responsibility for
racism. I can call others racist for racism is over there. It is not my
responsibility. I is now someone else's responsibility and I can, being a
liberal who is not racist, let racism go on with its dirty work out of my
sight, smell and hearing. I am not a racist but now I am supporting racism
by
refusing to take any responsibility for it.

Racism is my responsibility just as much as it is the responsibility of
Malcolm X and the American black rights movement, the struggle of Australian
Aborigines, the refugees in concentration camps in the Australian desert. I
cannot claim my innocence, make I some other which I put over there, to then
claim with a weak liberal smirk: I am not a racist. I will and must take
responsibility for my discourse, this I that I am. Discourse is a site of
struggle. That struggle happens in language and against language.

Artaud wrote something like: creation is an act of war. To create poetry
Artaud smashes language. It is a violent act. It is a political act. To take
responsibility and smash racism, sexism, homophobia, class oppression.

If I am denied respect because some self appointed judge claims I abuse
language that would surely be grounds for laughter and joy. As for the
charge
of elitism: why should one even bother answering to a charge which has the
intent of defending stupidity with banal facts?

many joyous times

Chris Jones




On Thu, 31 Jan 2002 02:22, you wrote:
> Hi David
>
> actually much as i liked the drive against standard, nay imperial, English
> in Chris Jones' post I didn't take on board that i was simultaneously
> aye-ayeing to the slur of racism which seems bizarrely inappropriate under
> those circumstances.
>
> I'd be keen to hear quite how Chris thought it was applicable?
>
> love and love
> cris