Language and the Politics of the Living Dead
Wow. Henry Giroux keeps getting to the point in ways that elude most analysis one sees these days. This is a bit of a tour de force in and of itself, and is highly recommended reading for all, though with people’s attention spans these days, its hard to conceive of folks getting past the first paragraph of anything anymore.
In a robust aspiring democratic society, language along with critical thought have a liberating function. At best, they work together to shatter illusions, strengthen the power of reason and critical judgment and provide the codes and framing mechanisms for human beings to exercise a degree of self-determination, while holding the throne of raw governmental, military and economic power accountable.
Language in such a society is robust, engaged, critical, dialectical, historical and creates the conditions for dialogue, thoughtfulness and informed action. Such a language refuses to be co-opted in the service of marketing goods, personalities and sleazy corporations. Needless to say, it is a language that is troubling and almost always threatening to the guardians of the status quo. As Toni Morrison said in another context, this is a language, a way of reading and writing the world, that “can disturb the social oppression that functions like a coma on the population, a coma despots call peace … [that makes visible] the blood flow of war that hawks and profiteers thrill to.”
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If successful, the language of oppression and cruelty becomes normalized, removed from the sphere of criticism and the culture of questioning. Such a language does more than normalize ignorance, illiteracy and irrationality; it also produces a kind of psychic hardening and deep-rooted pathology in a society increasingly willing to eliminate the policies that enable social bonds and protections necessary for a substantive democracy….
This language of cruelty, a zombie-inspired discourse of sorts, has been given a new life within the last few decades as it has become the lingua franca of powerful American politicians, corporations, and many in the dominant media. And it is mobilized to both dismantle the liberating function of critical reason and to stifle criticisms of a society that appears to be adrift. Such a discourse turns hate-talk into a commodity and human suffering into a spectacle.
