Language as Ideological Prison
[Acknowledged: it’s been a bit since my last post. Life. Hopefully back in the swing.]
In response to my last post on Anarcho-Primitivism, Leonard Williams provided a paper he’d written on Zerzan, language, ideology and anarchism. Williams opens with a summary of Zerzan’s argument. Civilization marks a break with direct experience and nature. Civilized life is mediated experience, and mediated experience always yields inequality and oppression, particularly through the mechanism of property. Mediated experience, and therefore, civilization, is made possible through symbolic language, which is imposed upon us from outside (it’s unnatural). Symbolic language not only makes possible mediated experience but is the mechanism whereby it is perpetuated – ideology. To overcome the inequalities caused by civilization’s mediated experience, we must overcome symbolic language. For Zerzan, this means a return to pre-linguistic life: primitivism.
Zerzan has, quite understandably, no solution for how to achieve this. Williams takes this as the departure point for an exposition of an anarchist theory of language and ideology that might permit an overcoming of inequality and oppression from within symbolic language. Williams’ paper is both detailed and broad, bringing together thinkers such as Chomsky, Gramsci, Foucault, Derrida, Cixous, and Wittgenstein. To recapitulate the argument would take an entire post - I leave it to the reader to explore it for themselves.
Williams’ conclusion is that language, while imposed upon us (a specific language) and carrying ideology, is natural and is not closed, monolithic, and immutable. The project of emancipation must begin with a recognition that language is essential to the human condition and shapes – while being shaped by - lived experience, mediated and oppressive as it may be. If it is possible at all to change the conditions of our civilized existence, then it is possible to change language and ideology along with it. The task is not to abandon symbolic language altogether (a practical impossibility), it is to change the conditions of life made possible and reinforced through the prevailing language and ideology. Language will change with it.
I believe Williams successfully counters Zerzan’s claim that primitivism is the only response to the hegemony of civilization and language. Civilizations and cultures change and along with them, the linguistic structures that articulate and perpetuate them change. There is every justification for anarchist collective action from within an oppressive ideology and symbolic system. It is not possible to tear everything down and start from scratch, and there is no reason to think this is the only possibility.
What’s at stake is not simply change, but emancipation. If symbolic language is inherently oppressive, supplanting one linguistic system and ideology with another – no matter how well intentioned – will yield the same results. It remains to be shown not only that revolutionary action is possible, but that it can lead to lived experience that shapes and is shaped by language that doesn’t make possible and perpetuate inequality.
When we consider symbolic language as a carrier of ideology, we typically think of a modern, Western language, in use by a community of fully competent speakers. The emancipation we seek is for those fully inculcated in the culture, experiencing the full brunt of oppression. To understand how symbolic language distances us from direct experience and reinforces ideology, it is natural to look at where that language is at its most developed, in use by the most competent practitioners.
Language, however, is acquired. Though natural to humans, we do not come out of the womb as language users. The language and ideology by which a child will be shaped is an accident of where and when they are born and to whom. Importantly, language is acquired socially and there is also a window of time during which language can be acquired. If a child fails to get the appropriate linguistic socialization at the right age, they not only fail to acquire language, they lose the ability to do so later in life.
If we want to develop an emancipation strategy from within the hegemony of our linguistic ideology, it makes sense to intercept the process of ideological indoctrination at its inception, rather than target those who are already fully in its grasp. We should expect, at least, that such an approach would have a greater chance of success.
Thanks, Seth for this meditation. I’m certainly flattered that you found my paper useful. Moreover, your conclusion builds on it well and raises interesting points. This passage struck me as quite stimulating: “If we want to develop an emancipation strategy from within the hegemony of our linguistic ideology, it makes sense to intercept the process of ideological indoctrination at its inception, rather than target those who are already fully in its grasp.” We need to teach children new and better ways of living, obviously. But do you have any ideas on how this might this happen? Particularly, do you have any thoughts that get us out of the paradox that the very people entrapped in the system are the ones to lead others out of it?