Bad Words
Author(s): Denise Riley
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Diacritics, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Winter, 2001), pp. 41-53
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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BAD
WORDS
DENISERILEY
Introduction
The worst words revivify themselves within us, vampirically.Injuriousspeech echoes
relentlessly,years afterthe occasion of its utterance,in the mind of the one at whom it
was aimed:the bad word, splinterlike,pierces to lodge. In its violently emotionalmateriality,the word is indeed made flesh and dwells amongstus--often long outstayingits
welcome. Old word-scarsembody a "knowingit by heart,"as if phraseshad been hurled
like dartsinto thatthickly pulsatingorgan,buttheirresonancesarenot amorous.Where
amnesia would help us, we can't forget.
This sonorousnessof vindictive words might help to characterizehow, say, racist
speech works on and in its targets.But doesn't such speculationalso risk becoming an
advocacy for the cultivationof insensitivity on the part of those liable to get hurt-or
worse, a criticismof their linguistic vulnerability:"Theyjust shouldn'tbe so linguistically sensitive"?There's muchto be said for studiouslypracticingindifference.But the
old playgroundchant of "sticks and stones may breakmy bones, but words can never
hurtme" was always notoriouslyuntrue.The success of the tactics of indifferencewill
also depend on the vicissitudes of the words' fate in the world, which is beyond my
control.I change, too. As the terrainupon which malevolentaccusationfalls, I am malleable, while the harshwordsthemselvesundergotheirown alterationsacrosstime, and
so theirimportfor me weakensor intensifiesaccordingly.At times the impactof violent
speech may even be recuperablethroughits own incantation;the repetitionof abusive
language may be occasionally "redemptive"throughthe irony of iteration,which may
drainthe venom out of the originalinsult and neutralizeit by displayingits idiocy.'Yet
angry interpellation'svery failure to always work as intended(since at particularhistoricalmoments,I may be able to parody,to weakenby adopting,to corrodeits aim), is
also exactly what, at othertimes, works for it. In any event, interpellationoperateswith
a deep indifferenceas to where the side of the good may lie, and we can't realistically
build an optimistictheory of the eventualrecuperabilityof harm.Here there's no guaranteedrationality,nor any inescapableirrationality.Repetitionbreedsits own confident
mishearing,2but its volatile alterationslean towardsneitherautomaticameliorationnor
inevitable worsening.
This observation,though, leaves us with the still largely uninvestigatedforensics
of spoken injury.Verbalattacks,in the momentthey happen,resemble stoning. Isn't it
making heavy weather,then, to ask how they do damage: isn't the answer plain, that
they hurtjust as stones hurt?At the instantof theirimpact,so they do. Yetthe peculiarity
of violent words, as distinctfrom lumps of rock, is theirpower to resonatewithin their
targetfor decades afterthe occasion on which they were weapons. Perhapsan urge for
privacy about being maliciously named may perpetuatethe words' remorseless after1. See chapter5 of myTheWordsof Selves:Identification,
Solidarity,
Irony.
2. Joan Scott, writing about history'sphantasms,notes that "retrospectiveidentifications,
after all, are imagined repetitionsand repetitionsof imaginedresemblances"[287].
diacritics I winter 2001
diacritics 31.4: 41-53
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41
ME
.
. ... ..
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life: I keep what I was told I was to myself, out of reserve, shame, a wish not to seem
mawkishand othernot-too-creditablereasons such as guardingthe word so it can't slip
away to be lost in the broadlinguistic flood; yet even if I manageto relinquishthis fatal
stance of nursing my injury,it may well refuse to let go of me. Why, though, should
even the most irrationalverbal onslaught lodge in us, and why should it stubbornly
resist ejection, and defy its own fading? For an accusationto inhere, must its human
target already be burdenedwith her own prehistoryof vulnerability,in the shape of
some psychic susceptibility;mustit even dependon her anticipatingreadinessto accept
or even embrace the accusation that also horrifies?Maybe, then, there's some fatal
attractionfrom the aggression utteredin the present towardearlierestablished reverberations within us, so that to grasp this phenomenon,we have to leave a linguistic
account and turninstead to a prelinguisticpsychic account.Yet here the standardcontrastbetweenthe linguistic andthe psychic, in which we areusuallyforcedto plumpfor
either the unconscious or language, is especially unhelpful. There's nothing beyond
interpellation,if by that"beyond"is meanta plunge into an etherof the psyche as soon
as we topple off the ledge of the historicaland linguistic. Forrefusingthese thoroughly
synthetic alternativesneed not commit us to a belief in an instantaneous,ahistorical
impact of the bad word-or to assume some primal word of injury which made us
subsequentlyopen to verbalassault,as if the chronologyof harmmustalways unfoldin
a straightline of descent.
The impact of violent speech in the present may indeed revive far older associations in its target.An accusationwill always fall onto some kind of linguistic soil, be it
fertile or poor; and a well-preparedloam is no doubt commonerthan a thin veneer on
bare rock. Should we, though, necessarily call such a variationin anger's receptionits
"psychic"dimension, in a tone which implies a clear separationfrom the domain of
words?Therehas, undoubtedly,to be somethingvery strongat work to explainwhy we
can't readily shake off some outworn verbal injury.The natureof this strong thing,
though,might betterbe envisaged as a seepage or bleeding between the usual categorizations; it need not be allocated wholesale to an unconscious consideredas lying beyond the verbal,or else to a sphereof languageconsideredas narrowlyfunctional.3For
the deepestintimacyjoins the supposedly"linguistic"to the supposedly"psychic";these
realms,distinctby convention,are scarcelyseparablein practice.Insteadof this distinction, an idea of affective words as they indwell is implied in this essay-a broadly
linguistic conception, but which isn't separatedfrom, contrastedto, or opposed to the
psychic. So, for instance, my amateurphilology may be quiet vengeance: fury may be,
precisely,an intense, untiring,scrupulouscontemplationof those old bad words which
have stuck underthe skin.
The tendency of malignantspeech is to ingrow like a toenail, embeddingitself in
its heareruntil it's no longer felt to be "fromthe outside."The significance of its original emanationfrom another'shostility becomes lost to the recipient, as a tinnitus of
rememberedattackbuzzes in her inner ear. The bad word reverberates-so much so,
thatit holds the lureof false etymology; it's easy to assumethat"toreverberate"derives
from characteristicallyself-repeatingverbalactions (whereasit meant"strikingor beating back.")Rancorousphrases,mattedin an undergrowth,appearto be "on the inside"
as one fights them down while they perpetuallyspring up again. This is where it is
crucialto rememberthatthe accusationsoriginallycame from the outside, and the rage
they echo was another'srage. But this half-consolationof the realist's recourseto history is not enough; we also need to dedramatizethe words as they continuetheir whir3. Words of Selves 84-89. For an introductionto the history of pragmatics, which does
differentlyconsider theforcefulness of language, see Nehrlich and Clarke.
diacritics / winter 2001
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43
ring, and to sedate theirbitterresonancesin the innerear's present.For how does anyone withstandthis common experience of being etched with harshnames? One art of
survival,this essay will suggest, is to concede that, "Yes,this personreally wantedme
dead, then,"yet in the same breathto see that the hostile wish is not identicalwith the
excessive hostility of the lingeringword, which has its own slow-burningtemporality.
The accuser'spersonalrage has a differentdurationfrom the resonancesof the recalled
innerword:to be able to separateand apportionthese two may help. We would need to
try out some artof seeing the denounceras separatefromthe denunciation,while also at
its mercy himself. Is there some stoical language practice to counterthe propertyof
accusationto continueits corrosivework, even thoughthe accusermay have died years
ago? How this might be attemptedis venturedin the following discussionwhere,rather
than any kindly strategyof humanizingthe pronouncerof the bad word, or of grasping
the special susceptibilityof its humantarget,a cooler tactic of enhancingthe objectification of the word is suggested. It is the very thinglike natureof the bad word which
may, in fact, enable its targetto find release from its insistent echoes.
1. Accusation OftenLodges in the Accused
There is in Paris, on rue Pavee in the quatrieme,a decrepit-lookinglanguage school
which displays in its window, in English (on a dusty cloth banner,in fifties-style white
on red lettering),this injunction:"Don't let the English languagebeat you-Master it
before it mastersyou."A curious exhortationto have been chosen as a motto by any
language school-since for the native speakerthe onrushof language is unstoppable,
yet the exhortationis also irrelevantfor the non-native,who's never subjectto joyous
captureby a languagenot her first.
But what certainlythreatensany comfortingnotion of our masteringlanguage is
the grippingpower of predatoryspeech, which needs our best defensive efforts in the
face of its threatenedmasteryof us. It's true enough, though, that not only imperious
accusationis apt to indwell. So can lyric, gorgeous fragments,hymns;beautifulspeech
also comes to settle in its listeners.There's an unholy coincidence between beautyand
cruelty in their verbal mannerisms;citation,reiteration,echo, quotationmay work benignly, or as a poetics of abusive diction. If graceful speech is memorable,by what
devices do violently ugly and lovely language both inhere, or what does the internal
strummingof lyric quotationhave in common with the quotationof aggressive speech?
Perhapsthe happilyresonantindwellingof lyric may be explainedin ways applicableto
the unhappyexperienceof being masteredby hardwordsfarbetterforgotten.Evidently
there exists what we could call "linguisticlove," a love sparkedand sustainedby the
appealof another'sspokenor writtenwords-that is, by somethingin the loved person
which is also not of her,andwhich lies largelybeyondher control-her language.But if
thereis a linguistic love which is drawnoutwardto listen, there'salso linguistic hatred,
felt by its object as drawn inward.A kind of extimacy prevails in both cases. Such
imagined speech hollows can resemble a linguistic nursinghome, in which old fragmentsof once-voicedaccusationor endearmentmayresentfullyor soulfullylodge.Where
verbalrecurrencesaredistressed,they arecarriedas scabs, encrustations,calcifications,
cuts. If inner speech can sing, it can also tirelessly whisper,mutter,contemplateunder
its breathto itself, and obsessively reproachitself. It can angrilyfondle those names it
had once been called. If there'sa habitual(if not inevitable)closeness between accusation and interpellation,there's also an echolalic, echoic aspect of interpellationitself.
Persecutoryinterpellation'sshadowfalls well beyondthe instantof its articulation.There
are ghosts of the word which always hauntany presentmomentof enunciation,render-
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ing that present already murmurousand populated.Perhaps "the psyche" is recalled
voices as spiritvoices manifestingthemselves clothed in the flesh of words, and hallucinated accusationmay underscorefactually heardaccusation.There exists in effect a
verbalform of post-traumaticstress disorder,markedby unstoppableauralflashbacks.
Hereanamnesia,unforgetting,is a linguisticcurseof a disability.The inabilityto forget,
too, has been classified as a neurologicalillness.4
If languagespills to flood everywhere,if it has no describable"beyond,"thatbroadly
true claim can't tell us exactly how it operates on its near side and why its apparent
innernessis so ferocious. The malevolentword's reverberationis incalculable;it may
buzz in the head of its hearerin a way that exceeds any impact that its uttererhad in
mind.Yetits impressmay be weak. Orit may feed melodramasof an apparentaddiction
to domestic-as-linguisticviolence: imagine someone who habituallyends up in a position of pleading with those deaf to all her appeals to act humanely,when it was long
clear that they would not do so, yet at those dark moments it seemed to her that her
whole possibility of existence was at stake in extractinga humane word from them,
althoughthis had always proved impossible. She compulsively redesignsa scenarioin
which her question"AmI a bad person?"can be askedand answered,always in its own
unhappyterms;for she cannotget herancientinterrogationansweredby someone who's
not alreadyher opponent;anyone else would rephraseher question,returningit to her
for reexaminationto expose its irrationalities.Only she can undo it. Meanwhile if she
persists in posing it, it will only receive an affirmativeanswer.Must the force of "the
psychic" be isolated here, then, if the unrelentingperson to whom she presents her
hopeless appealis rediscoveredwith a terriblereliability,if some damagingnext interlocutor conveniently appearsfor her, while the impassioned questionerlabors to rephraseher historyas if to discover groundsfor believing, despiteher own soundmemories of real events, that such crueltycould not have happened?
To continue in this (fatally exhilarating)vein of psychologizing speculation-the
capacityof laceratingaccusationto indwell may be such that,while its targetis fearful
that it may be true, she's also fearful that it may not be true, which would force the
abandonmentof her whole story.As if in orderto "justify"the years of unhappinessthat
it has causedher,she almostneeds the accusationto be correct-as much as in the same
breath,she vehementlyrepudiatesit. Perhapsshe would rathertakethe blameon herself
for the harmof the past, because it has alreadyand irretrievablybeen visited upon her,
thanto admitit had happenedarbitrarilyin that she was then (as a child) trulyhelpless,
an accidentalobject lying in the pathof the assault.Perhapsthe need for the accusation
to be true,as well as foughtagainst,is in parther need to have some show of a rationale,
and hence less of frighteningcontingencyas the only explanationfor the damage.Perhaps her pleadings for exonerationare also pleadings to have some nonexistent logic
underlyingthe blame laid bare,so thatat last she can graspandunderstandit. Hence her
tendency to ask repeatedly,"Butthen why am I, as you tell me I am, an evil person?"
Thereis an anxietyof interpellation,in which the subjectpondersincessantlyto herself,
"AmI that name, am I really one of those?"Her query,while it interrogatesthe harsh
attribution,remainsunderits rigid impress. She needs to find those to whom she can
addressit andhave it takenseriously,despite its capacityto provoketheirirritation;this
is why recalcitrantlyobduratepeople will always prove her "best"(that is, least malleable) addressees. She is reluctantto be emancipatedfrom her distressing situation,
only because that rescue would make retrospectivenonsense out of a wrong that she
was forced to live out as if it had a rationale. Her attachmentto the apparenttruth
inherentin her damnation(even while she nervouslydenies it) is that she must know it
4. In,for instance, some SouthAmericanpsychiatricclassifications.
diacritics / winter 2001
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to be deserved,to make sense of the misery it has caused.To have thatmimesis of logic
takenaway from her in retrospect,to be shornof its "necessity"in the name of her own
emancipationis hard--despite the fact that she also profoundlydisbelieved it. She has
struggledintently to convey intelligibility to the damage in the moment that she has
undergoneit, as if there had to be a truthin it. This is a difficult point, and I am not
hintingat any masochisticnotionof hers thatherpain is deserved,is her own fault-am
simply describingher wish for thereto have been some retrospectivenecessity for it, in
orderto justify it.
These last two paragraphshave mimickeda trainof speculationas to why, for some
purelyimaginaryheroineof pathos,the harshword might have come to resoundin and
be taken seriously by her.Yet if we're inquiringwhat exists alreadythatchimes within
its target for laceratinginterpellationto work, the pathology of that accusationitself
might accompanyour attentionto that of the accused.An air of reason makes its fatal
appearancewhen accusationinsistentlyclaims thatit speaksa purelyrationalcause and
effect in its sentence "Youare this bad thing, because I say so."A fantasyof formulaic
interpellationis that it's really addressingthe targetwhich standsbefore it, whereasits
own temporalityis badly askew.5Then the distortingwork of repeatedecho may happen for the hearertoo: "I've heardthis accusationbefore, so it must hold some truth."
Compelled to seek out any logic in the chargesagainsther, she may desperatelytry to
impose some sequence upon the deeply irrational.Perhapsher will to find consistency
and sense, especially within cruelty,means that she won't ever detect and registerany
sense in whatevermore benign utterancesmay later come her way. But now we have
slipped straightback onto the terrainof speculative psychology again; this time we
might try turningit, not onto the target,but onto the uttererof the bad word.
2. Accusers ThemselvesAre ForciblySpoken
It is the cruel gift of the malignantword to linger and echo as if fully detachedfrom its
originaloccasion, whose authoritativehostility I might by now, havingrecognizedit as
such, have dethroned.For the word itself still retains its reverberatingautonomy,despite my potentialoverthrowof its speaker.This fact may offer one answerto the suspicion thataccusationcan retainme in its clutches only because I am especially emotionally pliable in the face of the authorityof the Other.The word, instead,may be the real
Other. Or the Other may be cut down to size as "just"words, and dedramatizedto
lower-case.
A difficultywith theoriesof the capitalizedOtheris thatthey short-circuitthe complexity of influences, suggesting a narroweddialectic, since they function as descriptions of a fantasized masterywhich operateswithin and on the singularfigure of the
self. But my "I"also always emergesfrom somewhereelse, beforethe congealingof the
Other,and across some historyof linguistic exchanges priorto my masteryof words.6I
am the residueof echoes which precedemy coheringand imbue my presentbeing with
a shadowiness.These aural shadows may be dispelled, but they may thicken and as5. As Joan Scott writes, "thefantasy also impliesa story about a sequentialrelationshipfor
prohibition,fulfillment,and punishment(having brokenthe law thatprohibitsincest, the child is
being beaten)" [290].
6. Jean Laplanchehas remarkedon the "message"whichalways comes to mefrom another
as an impingementon me of the other's unconscious,formativefor my own, and has raised the
question of how to take account of that constitutivealterity. "Confrontedwith this enigmatic
message, a message compromisedby any numberof unconscious resurgences,the child translates it as best as he can, with the language at his disposal" [Laplanche59].
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sumedeeperpowersof obscurantism.This uncertaintyalso troublesmy accuserequallyor perhapsworse. Which is not to deny that there is (relative)mastery;but we could
rememberthat the big Other of theorized fantasy is also mapped onto the mundane
lower-caseotherin the daily world, those ordinaryhumanotherswho arealso produced
by the scriptof rage, drivenalong by its theatricalauto-pilot.The accuser,too, is spoken.
Wittgenstein,a nervouslydrivenquestionerhimself, broodedover the psychology
of compulsive philosophicaldoubt:"Why should anyone want to ask this question?"7
The same musing could be turnedtowardthe accuser as a phenomenon:"Why should
anyoneever want to speakwith this violence?"But there'sanotherthoughtwhich sidelines such an interrogationof my accuser's motives: the reflection that he is dispossessed of his own words in advance.The rhetoricof rage speaks him mechanicallyand
remorselessly.Howevermuch the accuserfeels himself to triumphin the momentof his
pronouncement,he is prey to echo. For,as WallaceStevens neatly observedof the cavernousgrandeurof inneroratory,"Whenthe mind is like a hall in which thoughtis like
a voice speaking,the voice is always thatof someone else" ["Adagia"907]. The orator
of violence is a mere instrumentof dictationby tics and reflexes.There'snothinggratifyingly original about the language of attack, in which old speech plays throughthe
accuser; it's the one who speaks damage who becomes its sounding board. (I'm not
inching toward a sneaking sympathyfor the uttererof hate: that he himself is not remotely in possession of his language does nothing whatsoeverto soften his words as
they streakthroughhim to crashonto his target.)Rage speaks monotonously.The righteousness of wrathful diction's vocabularyoften sorely restricts it, and the tirade is
markedby that lack of humorwhich alone lets the raging speakerrun on and on. Once
any awarenessof his repetitiousnesscreeps over him, ratherthanfeel vindicatedby the
traditionwhich is drivinghim, he's more likely to feel embarrassedenough to stop. His
fury may be exaggeratedby his helplessness at being masteredby his own language
(whetheror not he gives this descriptionto his subjugation).For the languageof anger
is so dictatorialthat it won't allow him to enjoy any conviction that he is voicing his
authenticity.Meanwhile,my very existence as the butt of his accusationis an irritantto
him, since underhis onslaught,I am apparentlynothing for myself any longer but am
turnedinto a mere thing-bearerof his passion, to which I am maddeninglyunresponsive. This is almost irrespectiveof my own passivity or my retaliation;it is because his
utterancehas, in its tenor,thrownme down. For the rage-speaker,I can have no life left
in me, or rathernone of thatcombative life thathe needs to secure his own continuing
linguistic existence for himself. Attacked,I have been rendereddiscursively limp, but
no real relief can be affordedto my adversaryby what he has producedas my rag doll
quiescence. The more intense the anger, the less the sense of any agency its utterer
possesses, until eventuallyhe feels himself to be the "truevictim" in the affair.Hence
that common combinationof rage with self-pity: a lachrymosewrath.
In the light of this, the injunctionto "get in touch with your anger"is hardlythe
therapeuticallyliberatingpracticeits proposersassume. Instead,this varianton the Parisian language school's exhortation,"masterthe language of anger before it masters
you," might prove more emancipating.But what about being the bad speakermyself?
There's an experiencethatcould be describedas a "linguisticoccasion,"poised somewhere halfway between "languagespeaksme" and "I speaklanguage."It is the flashing
across the mind of words which fly into the head as if they somehow must be said. A
clump of phrases shape their occasion which swells toward articulation.But I could
7. A burdenof his sustaineddiscussion of pain and skepticismabout its reporting,in vol. I of
Philosophical
Investigations.
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stop their translationinto speech; when maxims are actuallyutteredaloud, then something else has alreadygiven these wordy impulses a currency,licensed theirentryinto a
world of orderedfantasy.
This "somethingelse" runs close to the question of somewhereelse. Where is the
place where languageworks?A doubtfulcontrastof inner and outerhauntsthe puzzle
of whetherI speak (from the inside outward)or whetherI am spoken (from the outside
in). This old tension between speaking language and being spoken by it is delineated
well enough, yet still vibrates uncertainly;and neither the topographyof language's
extrusionfrom the speaker'smouthlike ectoplasm,nor its companion,the topography
of linguistic penetrationfrom the outside, seem apt resolutions.The latteroffers a vision of penetrationthroughthe ear, like that persuasiveByzantine myth of the annunciation and conception,in which a falling starhas shot into the ear of the patientVirgin
Mary.Sometimes, in an attemptto resolve the puzzle of place, its polaritiesare folded
together so that the conventionallyouter traversesthe conventionallyinner.Here, for
instance: "This passion of the signifier now becomes a new dimension of the human
condition in that it is not only man who speaks, but that in man and throughman it
speaks, that his nature is woven by effects in which is to be found the structureof
language,of which he becomes the material,and that thereforethereresoundsin him,
beyond what could be conceived of by a psychology of ideas, the relation of speech"
[Lacan315]. How does such a sonorousrelationshipwork in respect of bad words? If
wordsthemselvesmightneatly exemplify the concept of extimacy,in thatthey aregood
candidatesto be thatcelebratedtraceof externality,the foreignbody at the very heartof
psychic life, our impressionof an unalloyed inwardnessin the case of inner speech is
still acute. Despite the many attractionsof conceiving language as lying out there and
lunging from the outside to speak the speaker,we still sense that we fish up our inner
words, dredge them up. But in the case of recalled damagingspeech, there's less of a
trawlingexpeditionto plumb some depth,and more of its rising up unbidden,Krakenlike, to overwhelm and speak us. Yet at the same time we might also understandthis
unconscious to come from the outside, in the shape of the common and thoroughly
externalunconsciousof unglamorouslanguage.This then mutatesinto what we experience as our profoundlyinner speech. Or as Volosinov (who by the word "ideological"
appearssimply to mean the whole world of signs and gestures8)tautly formulatedit;
"Psychic experience is something inner that becomes outer, and the ideological sign,
something outer that becomes inner. The psyche enjoys extraterritorialstatus in the
organism.It is a social entity that penetratesinside the organismof the individualperson" [39]. These shardsof importedsociality as bad wordsremainas impersonaltraces
in me, in the way that swearing is impersonal;I have not thought them up, they are
derivations,clich6d fragmentsof a deep unoriginalitywhich have lodged in my skull.
Usually my verbalmemoryisn't blandor kindly,or even discreetin its recall.Linguistic
shrapnelcan lie embeddedfor years yet still, as old soldiers from the FirstWorldWar
reportedlyused to say, give me gyp in damp weather. Still, language is not exactly
speakingme at these points-for, unlike the swear word that escapes me when I hammer my thumb,I retainsome capacityto not utterit. A single speech event doesn't work
in isolation, but darts into the waiting thickness of my inner speech to settle into its
8. TheRussian word "ideologiya"has, like "ideology,"debatedmeanings.As one glossary
on Bakhtin's terms,by GrahamRoberts,asserts, "TheRussianideologiyais lesspoliticallycoloured
than the English word "ideology."In other words, it is not necessarily a consciously heldpolitical belief system; rather it can refer in a more general sense to the way in which membersof a
given social group view the world. It is in the broader sense that Bakhtin uses the term. For
Bakhtin,any utteranceis shot throughwith "ideologiya,"any speakeris automaticallyan ideolog"
[249].
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dense receptivity.It may become a furious dialogue where I'll plead with some imagined inwardother;its scriptgrows heavy with his antagonism,which it preservesin me.
My subsequentdistress is rehearsedintently and silently undermy breath,in a darker
version of Volosinov's more benevolentpersuasionhere:
Thereforethe semiotic materialof thepsyche is preeminentlythe word-inner
speech. Innerspeech, it is true, is intertwinedwith a mass of other motorreactions having semiotic value. But all the same, it is the wordthat constitutesthe
foundation, the skeleton of inner life. Wereit to be deprivedof the word, the
psyche would shrink to an extremedegree: deprived of all other expressive
activities, it would die out altogether [Volosinov29]
My swollen (because word-stuffed)psyche can, however,assume most unbecoming shapes. Some graceless prose of the world has got me in its grip, and my wordsusceptible faculty is seized and filled up by it. It's a neurolinguisticcircus, this wild
leaping to my tongue of banally correctresponses, bad puns, retoldjokes to bore my
children,and citationwithoutdiscernment.To this list could be addedmanyotherkinds
of stock formulae, in the shape of racist utterance,idle sexism, and other prefabrications. Inner language is not composed of graceful musing, but of disgracefullyindiscriminatequotation,runningon automaticpilot. Nevertheless,even if such reflections
mean that I'm displaced as an original thinker,I'm not quite evacuated.Even if my
tawdry inner language is thinkingme (although "thought"is too dignified a term for
such gurglings)there'smany a slip between innerthoughtand lip. It's certainlyspeaking in me, but I can subdueit before it fully speaksme; I can edit or inhibitthe invading
words. I am an enforced linguistic collaborator,but only insofar as a long paradeof
verbal possibilities marchesacross my horizons. Thoughtis made in the mouth,but it
can also be haltedbefore it passes my lips. And if it isn't, this is hardlyan expressionof
my spontaneity,but ratherof my consent to language's orders.Utteringbad words entails an especial passivity of allowing myself to be spokenby automatedverbiage,by an
"it is speakingin me."If my bad words aren't moderated,my supposedauthenticityof
expression consists merely in my obedience to the rising of what is ready-madeto the
tongue. I am not literally compelled to speak my love, my despair,or my cynicism.
Utteredaggressionhappenswhen somethingin me has licensed the articulationof my
linguistic impulses into more thanflickers. The expressionflashes over me, and it will
have its way, but only if I don't throwit out. Thatis the extentof the act of my linguistic
will; it is no powerful authorof its own speech. It comes puffing up in the wake of the
inner linguistic event to deal with its violence, to assent to it or demur,to ascribesome
given sentiment,to abrogateto myself thatstandardopinion.This is whatit takesfor me
to succeed or fail at being the bad speakermyself-not to be a beautiful soul with the
hem of my skirtsdrawnaside from the mud of linguistic harm,but to elect whetherto
broadcastor to repressthe inward,yet still thoroughlyworldly,chatteringof imported
speech thatfills me.
3. The Wordas Thing
Grippedby visions of exuberanceswelling into parsimony,Hegel writes: "Speechand
work are outerexpressionsin which the individualno longer keeps and possesses himself within himself, but lets the inner get completely outside of him, leaving it at the
mercy of somethingotherthanhimself. For thatreasonwe can say with equal truththat
these expressions express the innertoo much, as that they do so too little [. ..]" [187].
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Such a reflectionseems to lean towardan antiexpressiviststance,in which the notionof
language'snatural"expressivity"becomes terriblymisleading,eitherbecausemy utterance is too immediatelysaturatedwith me, or it is radicallyseparatedfrom me andis at
the mercy of whatevercarriesmy words away and out of the range of my intentions.
Bad naming in particular,throughits overblownimmediacy,"does not thereforeprovide the expressionwhich is sought"[188] and lacks thatmutualyet finally productive
self-alienationwhichpertains(atleast in the spasmodicallysofterfocus of the "Hegelian"
view) to languageproper.In this, Languageor Wordis Spirit.If the wordis also historical and material,then the cruel word must also call us into social being, if of a deathly
kind.As for the possibility of ourresistingit, the languagehangs there,supremelyindifferent as to whetherit is resistedor not. What is more criticalfor thatratherambiguous
thing that we could roughly call the Hegelian view of language is that to ignore its
sociality would go violently against the way of language in the world. Sociality, of
course, is not sociability.On the aspect of makingpeople up, a post-Hegelianclaims,
WhatI seek in speech is the response of the other Whatconstitutes me as
subject is my question.In order to be recognisedby the other,I utterwhat was
only in view of what will be. In order tofind him, I call him by a name that he
must assume or refuse in order to replyto me. [.. ..] But if I call the person to
whomI am speakingby whatevernameI choose to give him,I intimateto him
the subjectivefunction that he will take on again in order to replyto me, even
if it is to repudiatethisfunction. [Lacan86-87]
In this manner,Lacancontinuesto emphasize, I install him as a subject.
Yet we might demur here, in respect of bad words. For hatred aims, not at any
animatedexchange with a respondent,but at that person's annihilation.My defense
against serious verbal onslaught,then, could well adopt an analogous tactic of impersonality,and espouse a principlednonengagementwith the profferedscenarioof (hostile) recognition.That is, I will ignore the utterer,the betterto dissect the utterance.To
isolate the word as thing, to inspect it and refuse it, demandsa confidentcapacityto act
highly unnaturallytowardlanguage,which normallyfunctionsas an energeticmedium
of humanmutualexchange. Bad words' peculiarly seductive distractionto me incites
me to slip towardself-scrutiny,because another'sangryinterpellationso readily slides
into my own self-interpellation-where a thousandinducementsto self-description,selfsubjectification,and self-diagnosisarewaiting eagerly at its service.9But if I simply act
"naturally"towardthese inducementsof the bad word, by treatingit as any token of
exchange and recognitionbetween humans,I'll be throwndown by it. Then how may I
shield myself from its furious resonances?If I don't want to stay petrifiedby it, then
insteadI have to petrifyit-and in the literalsense. Thatis, I'll assertits stony character.
From the perspectiveof anyone faithful to an "intersubjective"view of language,
aggressionis only formallylanguageand scarcelythatat all. It resemblesa stone hurled
without reflection, which the furious throwerhas snatched up just because it lay to
hand.The targetwon't deflect the blow, but will be sparedits after-effects,because she
realizes the impersonalquality of the object. The word consideredas stone will shock
but not breakher. The denunciationhurtson impact, but later it weakens, as its target
sees there is only an accidentallink between what was hurledand the will to hurl. She
realizes that the bad word is not properly"expressive"of the speaker'simpulse to aggressive speech (it cannot be, since "thereis always at once too much as too little"
9. "[....] throughall the techniquesof moralandhumansciencesthatgo to makeup a
knowledgeof thesubject"[Deleuze103].
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[Hegel 308]) while the impulseneeds to be understoodin itself and independentlyof its
instrument,the thing-word.So if I decide to embracethis defensive strategy,I can inform the malignantwordthatit's not really a wordby the strenuousartificeof detaching
it from the person who pronouncedit (dispatchinghim, for the time being, to wander
strippedof his tongue in the idiosyncraticshades of his own psychology). This is my
opening gambit.Next I'll turnto contemplatethe malevolentword, now separatedfrom
its speaker,and quiveringfuriously like an abandoneddartlost to the guiding authority
of the hand that threw it. Now I have to aim at its death, in the same way that, as a
spoken accusation,it had aimed at my death.I can kill it only by artificiallyabstracting
it from the realm of language altogether(althoughI realize perfectly well that human
utterancealways bristles with such weapons). I have to let it go indifferently,as a thing
to which I myself have become as indifferentas really the bad word itself had been, all
along, to me. The accuser was not indifferent,then.But the after-lifeof malignantspeech
is vigorously spectral, quite independentof its emission at the instant of some longevaporatedrage. The bad word flaps in its vampire'safterlifein the breastof its target,
who can try to quell it, but "cannotgo the length of being altogetherdone with it to the
point of annihilation:in other words, he only works on it" [Hegel 116]. The spoken
savageryhovers therestill. How can its target"work"on it? Strippingthe speakeraway
from the word bringsit into a loneliness, into its prominentisolation from the occasion
of its utterance.This act of detachingit returnsit to its impersonalcommunalityinto the
dictionaryof latentharm,while wrenchingit away fromits respectablyblandanddemoAnd as suggested,I can
cratic-soundingclaim to sharein language's"intersubjectivity."
also turnthe phenomenologyof cruel speakingagainstmy accuserto characterizehim
as not having been the masterof his own sadism,but of having been played like a pipe,
swayed like a hapless reed. The words thatrushedto his tongue were always an ersatz
rhetoric.Meanwhile,I can also recognize his or her distancefrom me, his or her indifference -an indifferencewhich, by now, is not only a spent feeling only coolly attentive to me, but of a psychology which has long since returnedto itself, and now wanders
aboutthe world intent on its fresh preoccupations,far out of the range of my unhappy
surveillance.
Yet there's a furtherturn in the work that I have to do. (Love's work10pales in
comparisonwith Hate's work, in the sense of the legacy of being hated, which condemns its recipientsto an iniquitoustoil of elucidation.)Having returnedthe bad word
to its waiting niche in the stout dictionaryof unkindness,I'll need not only to returnthe
speakerto the accidentof himself, but I have to attempta furtherlaborof emancipation
for myself. I must recognize his indifferenceto my presenttormentedmemories of his
old utterances,andreturnhim to an absoluteindifferencein which I abandonhim, even
in my speculations.I, too, have to "havedone with the thing altogether"[Hegel 116].
But to succeed in having done with it demands a prior and ferocious dwelling on it,
which first unsparinglyremembersthe reverberatingword as word-yet only in order
to restore its truly impersonalquality, to returnit to the generality of utterancefrom
whence it came, and to acknowledge its superb and sublimely indifferentcapacity to
take me or leave me. That is, I'll get rid of understandingmyself as "the suffering
person."And I shall manageto give up thatunhappyand unproductiveself-designation
only at the same stroke in which I can fully grasp the impersonalityof the bad word.
This I'll come to do as a consequenceof registeringits cruelty,lettingit sink completely
into me-that is, by going straightthroughthe route of the profoundlypersonal.Only
then, throughenteringits peculiarblacknessunprotected,can I sever the word from its
speakerin orderto imaginativelyreturnhim to his true contingencyand to his present
10. A recall of the title Love's Work,by Gillian Rose.
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51
cheerily amnesiac indifferenceto my continuinglacerationsby his verbal attack,the
occasion of which has doubtlesslong since escaped his mind.
By this stage, I have gradually and waveringly relinquishedwhat is standardly
assumedto be a "Hegelian"concept of language,because it would have been too optimistic (too tranquillyintersubjective)for the task at hand.Now, instead,some of Hegel's
own andless sunnydescriptionsof languageas a "stain,"a "contagion,"andthe ground
of "a universalinfection"of selves may receive theirtesting-groundon the territoryof
damaging words."1(Admittedlythere are pleasant kinds of stains, and perhapseven
happycontagions;but Hegel's scatteredmetaphorof infection is harderto recuperate.)
Let's follow its logic. To enable my release, my initial infection by the bad word with
virulentfear and the most relentless self-doubtis necessary.A mild anxiety won't suffice. My entire self-conception must have tottered."If it has not experiencedabsolute
fear,butonly some lesser dread,the negativebeing has remainedfor it somethingexternal, its substancehas not been infected by it throughand through"[Hegel 119]. With
this apparentlyparadoxicalassociation of language with infection, we are dealing, in
short, with the true sociability of language-as contagion, as a mouth disease. To recover, as I must, from accusation'sdamagingimpact on me, I can't effectively stand
lonely proof against it, but instead have to admit something that so far I have been
reluctantto consider:that, exactly as my injury,it enjoys a fully languagelikestatus.
Now, in this moment,I have abandonedall my earlier"humanist"strategyof seeing the
bad word as a hurledstone and thereforenot as true language.InsteadI have begun to
concede that the bad word is an indifferentlyspeaking stone. In sum, that harsh language evinces a combinationof sheer indifferenceboth to me and also to my accuser;
an ultimatelysociable impersonality;and a sadismthat(uninterestedin me thoughit is)
has worked successfully on me while it also suffers its own corrosionand decay.
But if instead I overlook all these characteristicsof language, and meditatesolely
I will examineonly my own idiosyncraticallyundefendedsubjecthood
"psychologically,"
by discoveringsome priorsusceptibilitywithin my depths,an early wound which is the
key to my constant vulnerability-as if therein I could unearthsome meaning to my
haunting by the word and free myself. The trouble with this speculation is that the
linguistic structureof my childhood verbal wounding was and is exactly the same as
that which vexes me now; when I was two years old, there was no "purelypsychic"
naming for me even then, but an interpellationwhich, always linguistic, was thereby
always affective. Infancy'slearningto speak is also entangledin parentalemotionsthe hostility,anxiety,lucidity,mildness.But this evidentfact only reinforcesmy persuasion that the linguistic and the psychic are neitherseparable,nor to be subsumedone
underanother.If there is now the same scenario, an original injurywhich I relive, its
endless reanimationin me is not surprising,given the paucityof my capacitiesfor selfprotectionthen. That is, there is no chronology of depth of my early "psychic"injury
which precedes,founds, and accountsfor some later,differing"linguistic"vulnerability-other thanthatvital historyof my childish and necessarydependenceon the affective words of others.
All the considerationswhich might help to deflate laceratingspeech-considerationsof the vatic andgenericnatureof the languageitself, andthe transientemotion of
its speaker,who is driven by the rhetoriche deploys-might be equally applied to a
recollected"I love you."The erraticlove-speakerclaims to have meanthis declarations
then, but now he has changed his feelings and disavows everything.And he protects
11. "Just as the individual self-consciousness is immediately present in language, so it is
also immediately present as a universal infection; the complete separation into independent selves
is at the same time the fluidity and universally communicated unity of the many selves; language
is the soul existing as soul" [Hegel 430].
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himself from the chargeof fickleness by avowing the innocentcontingencyof his declaration,ratherin the way that to protectoneself from the hate-speaker,one considers
how the bite of his words may be eased through a recognition of their awful contingency. If we comparethe aftermathof hearing"I love you" with the aftermathof hearing "I hate you," in both instances the hearermay fight to sever the utterancefrom its
vanishedutterer.Withthe formerdeclaration,the struggleis to find compensationin the
teeth of impermanence(those words were definitely said to me, so at least I can be sure
that once I was loved), and with the latter,to find protectionfrom the risk of permanence (those words were directed at me then, but it wasn't me, especially, who was
hated, I just accidentallygot in that speaker'sway).
The stoic's routeto consolation,however,can't follow this pathof detectingnecesin
sity the instance of her being loved, but contingency in the case of her being hated.
She is more proneto regardboth love speech and hate speech alike as workingsof that
languagewhich (to returnto ourParisianlanguageschool's slogan) we've not the faintest hope of masteringbefore it mastersus. Nonetheless, we can elect to suffer our subjugation moodily and darkly,or we can treatit more lightly and indifferently,as a byproductof the disinterestedmachinationsof language.To espouse a notion of linguistic
impartialityin this way is, I think,the soundercourse. I could be more effectively freed
by first confrontingand then conceding my own sheer contingencyas a linguistic subject. I am a walkerin language. It is only throughmy meandersand slow detours,perhaps across many decades, towardrecognizing language's powerful impersonalitywhich is alwaysoperatingdespiteandwithinits persuasiveallureof "intersubjectivity"that I can "become myself."Yet I become myself only by way of fully accepting my
own impersonality-as someone who is herself accidentallyspoken, not only by violent language,butby any languagewhatsoever-yet who, by meansof herown relieved
recognitionof this very contingency,is in significantpartreleased from the powers of
the secretive and unspeakableworkingsof linguistic harm.
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