Regular reader and commenter John Bradley sent along this, from Daniel Greenfield, who addresses the “The Battle of the Redskins” in a way that will sound, particularly toward the conclusion of his piece, quite familiar to many longtime readers of this site:
[…] liberal speech codes emphasize the formalism of offensiveness. It’s not why you say something or what you mean. It’s whether something you say resembles something on the prohibited list.
The racism standard has moved away from motive to effect. Laws can be struck down as racist if it can be shown, not that they were discriminatory in intent, but in effect. It doesn’t matter what you do, only that someone was offended. And the only way to screen out the things that someone might possibly be offended by is by banning everything that could possibly be offensive. Even niggardly.
When anything and everything can be offensive, the safest way to speak is to say nothing. Conformity is a safe bet and administrators cry out for speech codes to tell them exactly how to enforce the rules. Instead of changing how people think, the codes only change how they speak. The everyday speech of even ordinary people becomes filled with the bureaucratic euphemisms and academic jargon that destroy language and make meaningful communication impossible.
Words however aren’t meaning. They’re only the costume that meanings wear. Each euphemism eventually follows the euphemism treadmill to take on the inappropriate meaning of the idea it was meant to suppress. The only escape is into bureaucratic language that is so awkward and so hyphenated that no one can possible make a slur out of it. And the paranoia still doesn’t end.
Controlling language is about controlling people. Language, like all living things, is fluid. Any censor must forever live in terror of new subversive meanings arising out of the common speech, from the mouths of the youth and the obscure codes of secretive groups. The censor must always be vigilant for his cause is a futile one. Words can be banned, but the ideas inside them spring up again as long as they are socially relevant. To censor words is to know the hollowness of power over men.
Greenfield gives his discussion of language a power an elegance and simplicity that I often can’t muster in my discussions on the topic — though in my defense, I believe the reason is a matter of purpose: Greenfield wishes to teach by way of observation using the hook of the occasional; that is, using current events as a jumping off point to make the case for what he terms “the formalism of offensiveness” inherent in liberal (which is to say, leftist) speech codes.
I, too, have used this tack in the past, be it in disquisitions over the swirly cone of Allah, the radio offerings of Bill Bennett, the written contributions of Ed Morrissey as massaged (or more likely, sucked upon like a hambone) by Oliver Willis, the colloquialism of Tony Snow, the standards for racism in British law and parroted by the First Lady, the colonialist / racialist aspects of King Kong, or the rather shortsighted attack on intentionalism by an adjunct English teacher working out of an annex in upstate New York who quickly found himself in way over his head.
But in each of those instances — and countless others relating to how certain kernel notions that undergird what it is we think we’re doing when we claim to interpret — I’ve tried to teach the subject to people at the linguistic and hermeneutic level, as well, to break down the methods deployed by various theoretical schools into their primary linguistic pieces and roles, so that they may understand precisely how the left goes about creating the conditions for authoritarianism through the very structural and interpretative assertions and assumptions they introduce and promote. That is, I’ve tried, by way of teaching how signs are created, and how interpretation truly functions, to arm my readers with the specific tools necessary to rebuke the incoherent (and yet often widely accepted) attempt at an unraveling, or deconstruction, if you prefer, of how meaning is produced and who gets to determine it.
Intent has always preceded — and must precede — convention, because convention is nothing more than the shorthand for common and customary intent, an aid to quickly ascertain meaning in those situations where meaning is desired to be both quickly expressed and readily understood. The ability to purposely misread, however, has since been elevated to a kind of acceptable and even appreciated scholarly endeavor, making of communication a game of power, and making of interpretation a kind of consensus driven parlor trick: power is derived through what the left has trumpeted as the “democritization” of language, breaking it free from the author’s intent, whose control over the text s/he produced is said presented as authoritarian. And many on the right, who’ve embrace “textualism” — which is nothing more than New Criticism dressed up in more contemporary garb — aided, either wittingly or unwittingly, in the move toward inevitable linguistic totalitarianism, which itself will move us inexorably toward political authoritarianism.
By coopting positive labels for its mechanism of undermining the locus of meaning — and assigning to its opponents an unflattering label — those who preach “democratization” over “authoritarianism” in the area of interpretation have managed to confuse the political with the linguistic, intentionally so.
But this attempt at conflation fails once we are able to see what the assumptions are behind each label: authoritarianism in the act of willing meaning into being is not “authoritarianism” at all: it is individualism, autonomy, mapping one’s will into being by way of intent made manifest in the codes of language, and then made accessible by way of the conventions that we use to reconstruct that meaning, that intent. It is, in short, an affirmation of the individual over the attempted theft of will by some or other collective. Similarly, and lofty rhetorical labels aside, “democratization” of meaning is nothing more than a will to power affected by some motivated consensus group who assumes its intent to resignify a text — in a way that it can argue “reasonable people” could possibly read that text, if given the proper “nudge” — takes social and hermeneutic precedence over what the text comes to mean. This is what Greenfield argues when he writes that motive has moved to effect.
Now, not to rehash earlier arguments I’ve made concerning the “textualism” embraced by certain writers and thinkers on the right being nothing more than a form of intentionalism that privileges the reader, but in order to forestall the typical (and consistently incorrect) objections to an intentionalist stance toward a text, let me just remind the legally minded that we (intentionally!) make a convention of insisting legal language be used conventionally. This is a strategy for legal writing and for judicial hermeneutics that we have determined best works for ease of interpretation and clarity of meaning — of making manifest the expression of legislative intent in ways that are difficult to misapprehend.
But it is precisely because conventions change over time that we insist upon texts, comprised of signs that are only signs because they were turned into such by a desire to mean, by the will of an agent or agents wishing to mean, by an intent — to attach to signifiers specific referents, specifically signified — being approached not as emptied documents awaiting resignification by someone engaging them with their own intent foregrounded, but rather as presignified, intended texts (the thing that makes them language to begin with, and differentiates them from the egret tracks that may look like language by are not, save our intent to see it as such) awaiting decoding that appeals to the original intent of the author(s) and or ratifiers, in the case of a corporate intent.
None of this is fundamentally unserious, as some on our own side have called it in an attempt to dismiss it in favor of expediency and pragmatism. And in fact, I’ll even go so far as to argue that had we made the teaching of linguistic assumptions a priority in classical liberal, libertarian, and conservative circles, we would today be much more adept at beating back the Gramscian attempt to take over our institutions through a control over our epistemology — which itself can only happen through language.
The left has been attempting to destroy the ideas of the Enlightenment for some time — and in so doing, to take us back to the hidden relativism first promoted by the sophists. Because once all is relative, truths become mere competing narratives. And once that happens, language is reduced to a pure, distilled, naked method for seizing and controlling power, to rejecting the individual in favor of a willful collective who presume to determine meaning and, in many instances, assign their own intent to the individual whose intent they have negated in order to destroy him. All while crowing about their honorable and compassionate motives for allowing the ends to justify the means.
This is not a game and it is not some arcane feature of language that has no bearing on politics. It is, instead, the essence of political trajectory. And it is through language that the long march through the institutions has received its greatest gains.
Until we recognize that, we will win the occasional battle, but the war is already lost, because the ground upon which we stand can never be stable enough for us to hold it, or even plant our flag.
(thanks to Terry H for one of the links used here)
if native americans want to take away connotations of fierceness and denude the language of redskins and choppy tomahawks, mostly what they’ll be left with are connotations of shabby casinos and poverty and alcoholism and welfare
#danceswithwinning
Why do you think Orwell included a “MiniTru” in his predictive novella? When you control the past, you control the present, and when you control the present, you control the future. Being able to redefine what was meant in a text written long before (ideally, long enough so that both the author and everyone who might have had a chance to know him personally and discuss the ideas under question with him) makes it so much simpler than having to tell the guy to his face “This is what you really meant, because I have a degree and you don’t”.
(ideally, long enough so that both the author and everyone who might have had a chance to know him personally and discuss the ideas under question with him ARE DEAD)
Correct as needed.
Echoing others, among whom I count my younger self of some many decades ago, ought we not propose to ourselves (and occasionally to others perhaps not of our peculiar political disposition) that we cease to use the leftists’ self-selected term “Liberal” to refer to those leftists, who are not liberal in any significant sense of the term? I’ve abjured such usage long ago, and keep to that forswearing to the best of my abilities. It isn’t terribly hard to say or write “leftist”, or Democrat authoritarian, or deceptive Progressive, when that’s who we mean.
It isn’t terribly hard to say or write “leftist”, or Democrat authoritarian, or deceptive Progressive, when that’s who we mean
Why use all those syllables, when two will do? “Traitor”. Le bon mot.
Reading through the linked posts in your 3rd paragraph, I think I can sum up your opponents’ arguments thus:
Jeff, stop telling people that meaning adheres to the author’s intent. Because if people accept that view, we’ll stop getting grant money for telling folks what Shakespeare, Marx, et al. really meant and lose our sweet-ass teaching positions. I mean, those hot junior girls will do anything for a B+.
I object to “liberal” because we who know what the word actually means know it does not describe those who once claimed it.
I object to “leftist” because that word actually has no useful meaning; it implies a one-dimensional spectrum of political thought, and we all know there are multiple axes.
I object to “progressive” for the same reason I object to “liberal.”
I think I like “socialist” and “fascist” because they make the socialists and fascists howl.
The only escape is into bureaucratic language that is so awkward and so hyphenated that no one can possible make a slur out of it.
Oh, I’m sure people will find a way. Affectation can always be mocked.
There is definitely a tendency to believe that the higher the syllable count, the less offensive it is.
And also the more anodyne and boring, not to mention imprecise. “Negro” was precise because it referred to black people of African ancestry, wherever their residence. “African-American” doesn’t include British or French citizens of African ancestry but does include white Afrikaners, even though it’s not supposed to. It’s parallel with the replacement of “Oriental” with “Asian-American” and all the other hyphens, all of which are awkward and border on affectation.
“Negro” was never intended as a slur back in the day. It was the neutral descriptive, just as “colored” was.
But just as wealthy Parisians changed the clothing styles as quickly as they tired of them, thus to ensure that only the wealthy could be in style, the intelligentsia has to keep changing the
shibbolethsterminology, all the better to berate the rubes and h8rs.” . . . those hot junior girls will do anything . . . ”
I wondered how long it would take for Eros to raise his head at the thought of “This is not a game and it is not some arcane feature of language that has no bearing on politics. ” heh. The junior god sure ‘nough gets around quick.
I always liked Commiecrat because it got a rise out of them, but that’s just me.
All good objections and well grounded McG, though it does seem to me as though attaching the [inadequate] foundations of formal Progressivism to the contemporary Progressives may have some salutary effects — but granted too, that’s not a sound-bite project.
I wondered how long it would take for Eros to raise his head at the thought of “This is not a game and it is not some arcane feature of language that has no bearing on politics. ” heh. The junior god sure ‘nough gets around quick.
As Goldwater said, “Sex is a lot like politics. You don’t have to be very good at them to enjoy them.”
And I always noted how fawning the obedience of the Commiecrats to the Soviets or Sandinistas was back in the day. They would politically fellate the enemies of America.
And I always noted how fawning the obedience of the Commiecrats to the Soviets or Sandinistas was back in the day.
Birds of a feather…
They always recognize their own.
I just call them Commies. But, I’m a “let’s cut to the chase” kind of a girl.
Dicentra, regarding Orientals vs. Asians. I heard a funny anecdote from an old friend about this terminology. It seems a family of Chinese-Americans and some friends were out for dinner and one of the old uncles started talking about how Orientals did things in his day. One of the younger females interrupted him with “Uncle, we say ‘Asian’ now.” He looked disgusted and said, “I’m talking about us Chinese: Orientals. All those other goddamn ‘Asians’ can be Asian. I’m Oriental.”
If there is no meaning in intent then there is no point in communication.
If I say “pass the salt” and you infer that you have offended the Oyabun and you slice off your little finger as atonement then I don’t get salt and your hand is all fucked up for no reason. Also don’t bother telling your psychiatrist anything and don’t bother giving your prescription to a pharmacist because ANYTHING can happen.
If intent is meaningless then laws have no force because they mean whatever I want them to mean and were passed for no reason.
It’s an absurd position to strip all meaning from intent and assign it entirely to interpretation.
“When you control the past, you control the present, and when you control the present, you control the future ”
Sure if by “control” you mean watching shit fall down around you and waiting for the new vikings to realize you are easy meat for a raid and would make a great pre-broken bondsman for his household.
Dicentra, regarding Orientals vs. Asians. I heard a funny anecdote from an old friend about this terminology. It seems a family of Chinese-Americans and some friends were out for dinner and one of the old uncles started talking about how Orientals did things in his day. One of the younger females interrupted him with “Uncle, we say ‘Asian’ now.” He looked disgusted and said, “I’m talking about us Chinese: Orientals. All those other goddamn ‘Asians’ can be Asian. I’m Oriental.”
I am reminded of my campus days, when there was an exchange between a friend of mine named Partha, an East Indian (Subcontinental) immigrant who looked Caucasian but with darker skin, and “Debbie”, an “Asian American”, born and raised in California, who took umbrage at Partha’s innocent use of the term “Oriental”, to refer to those of East Asian heritage, as opposed to his South Asian heritage.
Debbie said, “But you wouldn’t understand–you’re not Asian”, to Partha.
The very definition of pragmatism, one might say.
Statists seems to cover it.
Sure if by “control” you mean watching shit fall down around you and waiting for the new vikings to realize you are easy meat for a raid and would make a great pre-broken bondsman for his household.
Other than missing the part about “hoping that the invaders will kill you last”, you have just summed up the DC mindset…
Off topic: Did you see the New York Post piece on squirrels in the Whitehouse Garden?
http://nypost.com/2013/10/14/squirrels-nuts-for-first-ladys-garden-during-shutdown/
What is not being said in the article (most likely because it would surprise no one)?
There is so much myth making in this Whitehouse, they probably named the dog “Bo” so the prez could remember it.
I heard that her vegetable and herb garden is falling apart because there aren’t any servants to tend it for Her First-Baby-Mama-dom. Guess it would be too much for M’Shell to get up off her behind and go pull some goddamned weeds…
“Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.”
— some geeky sci-fi dude
Shirley you jest, Drum. Her heiness isn’t going to get her hands dirty pulling any damn weeds.
I guess the First Brats can’t do it either or mow the lawn so our WH doesn’t look like a ghetto pos, either.
Thus, don’t call me “cracker” or “honky” or “ofay.” Call me a “flyover-American.”
I can understand the idea of uncertainty in communication, that intent can be lost via signal and noise mechanics or that it can be ignored or misinterpreted and thus the message transmitted distorted but to claim that there is no meaningful useful correlation worth tracking? That’s absolute bullshit.
The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.
That’s an odd way to divide, it seems to me — at least, if political governance (whatever may be the form) is understood as always a matter of people under controls (since cities aren’t possible without controls), rules [laws] set toward an order and the enforcement of those rules to attain that order — as put here over-against people with no desire for controls, i.e. some nominal an-archy (does this mean a type of human living outside politics?).
But isn’t the division more pointedly, at least within a political context, a question of “who” controls, in the sense of who makes the rules and enforces them, or in the most limited sense, authorizes the making of the rules (retains sovereignty) — with those on one side of the divide wanting to make the rules (and in that sense, taking responsibility for what they do and would have done) and others on another side wanting no part in making the rules (and in that sense, taking no responsibility likewise), but who are nevertheless glad to live in the city (i.e., within a political regime of one sort or another)?
“Cracker” isn’t an ethnic slur, but it’s normally intended as one.
It’s an absurd position to strip all meaning from intent and assign it entirely to interpretation.
Not if controlling other people is your sole purpose in life.
as put here over-against people with no desire for controls, i.e. some nominal an-archy (does this mean a type of human living outside politics?).
I’ve always seen the divide as between internal and external controls. I want to control my own life but not yours. I want to exercise self-control but not for you to coerce me.
Heinlein is referring to the urge to impose external controls on a population (to coerce) and the desire to have someone else draw the boundaries (be controlled).
I don’t know if an entirely self-regulated populace would be living outside politics, but it would stand to reason. In a society of angels, no government would be necessary, and any rules they might draw up for themselves would be to standardize practices, not to enforce virtue.
that is why you have to add “creepy -ass” to make it a slur.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_cracker
and any rules they might draw up for themselves would be to standardize practices, not to enforce virtue.
Meaning, they’d decide which side of the road to drive on or how to regulate intersections. Laws against theft and murder would be moot.
A rational anarchist believes that concepts such as ‘state’ and ‘society’ and ‘government’ have no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals. He believes that it is impossible to shift blame, share blame, distribute blame. . . as blame, guilt, responsibility are matters taking place inside human beings singly and nowhere else. But being rational, he knows that not all individuals hold his evaluations, so he tries to live perfectly in an imperfect world. . . aware that his effort will be less than perfect yet undismayed by self-knowledge of self-failure.
I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. — Professor Bernardo de la Paz {“The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress”}
IMHO modern progressive-liberal-statist-whatevers really start to turn into fascist when they see it as there job to not just control people through the usual punishments (jail, fines, civil actions etc) after an offense but, to try to prevent “bad things” from happening in the first place.
That’s why they need to be tricked into exploring those abandoned mine shafts, bgbear.
But isn’t the division more pointedly, at least within a political context, a question of “who” controls…?
The division is between those who would molest others for their own good, versus those who would just be left alone. “Don’t fuck with me and mine” is pretty much the only law I recognize as legitimate.
The right to own property (including the intangible property between your ears)
The right to defend that property, up to and including lethal force if need be
The obligation to not use that property to harm others
That’s pretty much it
I’ll take your view of his words as definitive Squid (if for no other reason than that I know nothing of the source). But I have to say, for a writer concerned somehow with politics, I think he could do a better job.
That’s why they need to be tricked into exploring those abandoned mine shafts, bgbear.
Oh, there’s TONS of those west of Salt Lake. Perhaps they could be persuaded that awareness needed to be raised about the endangered West Desert Mine Cricket and its sole predator, the Salt Flats Mine Bat.
On the one hand, they’d perish in pursuit of a good cause, and on the other hand, they’d perish.
I’m kinda late with this, but as “crackers” have been brought up, I just found out that “scotch” tape is a slur.
Somebody tell Bob Costas.
I’ve written about the information war occasionally in the past. It can be approached from a lot of different angles, but tonight I’d like to focus on just one: the control of the language. This is where the enemy has been phenomenally successful over the past ten or fifteen years.
link
They have made us literally unable to describe the threat that faces us, or what is being done to us.
“. . . they have made us . . . ”
Nope. Never happened. Can’t happen, even. That’s not the way language (thinking, or its absence) works.
Doubleplus ungoodthink from sdferr…
Wait. “Stingy” is pejorative? SEZ WHO!?
I traded my 280+ horsepower Cobalt SS for a used Chev truck, because I’m too cheap to keep both, even though I can easily afford two vehicles.
However, with the money saved, more ammo and guns for me!!
Now there’s a win-win.
Used is good. Paid for, even better. All of our vehicles are too old to have GPS and black boxes.
Piss off, NSA.