Cl@robscuro

2007-10-15T21:27:00.000-07:00

Op-Ed Contributor

Questions You Should Never Ask a Writer

DORIS LESSING

Published: October 13, 2007 (NYTIMES OP-ED)

On Thursday, the novelist Doris Lessing won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. Moments after the announcement, the literary world embarked on a time-honored post-Nobel tradition: assessing — and sometimes sniffing at — the work of the prizewinner. One of the most pointed criticisms of Ms. Lessing came from Harold Bloom, the Yale professor and literary critic, who told The Associated Press, “Although Ms. Lessing at the beginning of her writing career had a few admirable qualities, I find her work for the past 15 years quite unreadable.” He went on to add that the prize is “pure political correctness.” Interestingly, Ms. Lessing had some strong thoughts about political correctness, thoughts she expressed in this adapted article, which appeared on the Op-Ed page on June 26, 1992.

Anthony Russo

WHILE we have seen the apparent death of Communism, ways of thinking that were either born under Communism or strengthened by Communism still govern our lives. Not all of them are as immediately evident as a legacy of Communism as political correctness.

The first point: language. It is not a new thought that Communism debased language and, with language, thought. There is a Communist jargon recognizable after a single sentence. Few people in Europe have not joked in their time about “concrete steps,” “contradictions,” “the interpenetration of opposites,” and the rest.

The first time I saw that mind-deadening slogans had the power to take wing and fly far from their origins was in the 1950s when I read an article in The Times of London and saw them in use. “The demo last Saturday was irrefutable proof that the concrete situation...” Words confined to the left as corralled animals had passed into general use and, with them, ideas. One might read whole articles in the conservative and liberal press that were Marxist, but the writers did not know it. But there is an aspect of this heritage that is much harder to see.

Even five, six years ago, Izvestia, Pravda and a thousand other Communist papers were written in a language that seemed designed to fill up as much space as possible without actually saying anything. Because, of course, it was dangerous to take up positions that might have to be defended. Now all these newspapers have rediscovered the use of language. But the heritage of dead and empty language these days is to be found in academia, and particularly in some areas of sociology and psychology.

A young friend of mine from North Yemen saved up every bit of money he could to travel to Britain to study that branch of sociology that teaches how to spread Western expertise to benighted natives. I asked to see his study material and he showed me a thick tome, written so badly and in such ugly, empty jargon it was hard to follow. There were several hundred pages, and the ideas in it could easily have been put in 10 pages.

Yes, I know the obfuscations of academia did not begin with Communism — as Swift, for one, tells us — but the pedantries and verbosity of Communism had their roots in German academia. And now that has become a kind of mildew blighting the whole world.

It is one of the paradoxes of our time that ideas capable of transforming our societies, full of insights about how the human animal actually behaves and thinks, are often presented in unreadable language.

The second point is linked with the first. Powerful ideas affecting our behavior can be visible only in brief sentences, even a phrase — a catch phrase. All writers are asked this question by interviewers: “Do you think a writer should...?” “Ought writers to...?” The question always has to do with a political stance, and note that the assumption behind the words is that all writers should do the same thing, whatever it is. The phrases “Should a writer...?” “Ought writers to...?” have a long history that seems unknown to the people who so casually use them. Another is “commitment,” so much in vogue not long ago. Is so and so a committed writer?

A successor to “commitment” is “raising consciousness.” This is double-edged. The people whose consciousness is being raised may be given information they most desperately lack and need, may be given moral support they need. But the process nearly always means that the pupil gets only the propaganda the instructor approves of. “Raising consciousness,” like “commitment,” like “political correctness,” is a continuation of that old bully, the party line.

A very common way of thinking in literary criticism is not seen as a consequence of Communism, but it is. Every writer has the experience of being told that a novel, a story, is “about” something or other. I wrote a story, “The Fifth Child,” which was at once pigeonholed as being about the Palestinian problem, genetic research, feminism, anti-Semitism and so on.

A journalist from France walked into my living room and before she had even sat down said, “Of course ‘The Fifth Child’ is about AIDS.”

An effective conversation stopper, I assure you. But what is interesting is the habit of mind that has to analyze a literary work like this. If you say, “Had I wanted to write about AIDS or the Palestinian problem I would have written a pamphlet,” you tend to get baffled stares. That a work of the imagination has to be “really” about some problem is, again, an heir of Socialist Realism. To write a story for the sake of storytelling is frivolous, not to say reactionary.

The demand that stories must be “about” something is from Communist thinking and, further back, from religious thinking, with its desire for self-improvement books as simple-minded as the messages on samplers.

The phrase “political correctness” was born as Communism was collapsing. I do not think this was chance. I am not suggesting that the torch of Communism has been handed on to the political correctors. I am suggesting that habits of mind have been absorbed, often without knowing it.

There is obviously something very attractive about telling other people what to do: I am putting it in this nursery way rather than in more intellectual language because I see it as nursery behavior. Art — the arts generally — are always unpredictable, maverick, and tend to be, at their best, uncomfortable. Literature, in particular, has always inspired the House committees, the Zhdanovs, the fits of moralizing, but, at worst, persecution. It troubles me that political correctness does not seem to know what its exemplars and predecessors are; it troubles me more that it may know and does not care.

Does political correctness have a good side? Yes, it does, for it makes us re-examine attitudes, and that is always useful. The trouble is that, with all popular movements, the lunatic fringe so quickly ceases to be a fringe; the tail begins to wag the dog. For every woman or man who is quietly and sensibly using the idea to examine our assumptions, there are 20 rabble-rousers whose real motive is desire for power over others, no less rabble-rousers because they see themselves as anti-racists or feminists or whatever.

A professor friend describes how when students kept walking out of classes on genetics and boycotting visiting lecturers whose points of view did not coincide with their ideology, he invited them to his study for discussion and for viewing a video of the actual facts. Half a dozen youngsters in their uniform of jeans and T-shirts filed in, sat down, kept silent while he reasoned with them, kept their eyes down while he ran the video and then, as one person, marched out. A demonstration — they might very well have been shocked to hear — which was a mirror of Communist behavior, an acting out, a visual representation of the closed minds of young Communist activists.

Again and again in Britain we see in town councils or in school counselors or headmistresses or headmasters or teachers being hounded by groups and cabals of witch hunters, using the most dirty and often cruel tactics. They claim their victims are racist or in some way reactionary. Again and again an appeal to higher authorities has proved the campaign was unfair.

I am sure that millions of people, the rug of Communism pulled out from under them, are searching frantically, and perhaps not even knowing it, for another dogma.

2007-08-31T17:55:00.000-07:00

I hope that Vladimir Putin and Nicolas Sarkozy are aware that, by choosing to appear in public half-naked and advertise their physical fitness, they are following in the footsteps of Benito Mussolini. Unlike Hitler, a timid fellow who liked to keep his clothes on, Mussolini saw displays of vigour and masculinity as essential to his public image. His spin doctors would let it be known that he started the day with a cold bath and followed it with spells of riding, swimming or fencing; and he had himself endlessly photographed in a state of semi-undress, often sweating profusely after helping peasants bring in the harvest or engaging in some other strenuous activity.

This is not so different to Sarkozy flaunting his enthusiasm for jogging or being photographed as the only bare-chested man aboard his crowded holiday motor launch in New Hampshire; or to Putin showing off his muscles on a mountain holiday in Siberia and having himself filmed on television driving lorries and piloting a fighter jet.

There is a link between power and nudity, though in Britain it is only revealed in private. In his Diaries, Alastair Campbell recalls how he and Cherie Blair complained to each other about how much time they had had to spend talking to Tony Blair in his underwear since he had become Labour party leader. Campbell even mentions that Blair once received him while stark naked.

This habit of receiving acolytes in a state of partial undress was shared, among others, by Winston Churchill and John Major; and I can only imagine that this eccentric practice was to do with them wanting to show how powerful they were, how they had to be listened to and taken seriously, however repulsive they might look.

Alexander Chancellor
Friday August 31, 2007
The Guardian

2007-08-27T11:20:00.000-07:00

Rhetoric Online: Persuasion
and Politics on the World Wide Web
Barbara Warnick
Peter Lang Publishing, 2007

This book is the outcome of 10 years of research into the rhetorical dimensions of persuasion in Web-based environments. The book proposes a program for continued study of online persuasion by rhetorical critics and analysts.

Chapter 1 argues for greater attention to the persuasive elements of online resistive discourse alongside study of institutionalized discourse.

Chapter 2 describes how digitization, media convergence, and technological and social factors have changed the communication environment in which persuasion occurs.

The remaining chapters then explore online credibility, interactivity, and intertextuality to develop theories of persuasive action adapted to online communication. The theories take into account such factors as coproduction of messages, uncertain authorship, discontinuous modular texts, hypertext structure, and multi-mediated communication as they are found online.

via: University of Pittsburgh, Deparment of Communication

Retorica por Alfonso Reyes

2007-08-24T22:33:00.001-07:00

La antigua retorica - Alfonso Reyes

From: jlmejia, 2 weeks ago

Fragmento del libro "La antigua retórica" de Alfonso Reyes.

2006-09-11T18:13:00.000-07:00

El lenguaje
por José Woldenberg

En una película de 1952, Rumba caliente, de Gilberto Martínez Solares, Lilia Prado (Ticha Mendoza) es una cigarrera que quiere ser bailarina. Se presenta de "colada" a una fiesta muy elegante y les presume a algunos invitados como si fuese estadounidense: "¿conocen ustedes el estado de Virginia". A lo que uno contesta: "Sí, pero no acostumbro hablar mal de las mujeres".

Por su parte, Resortes (en el papel de Resortes) le pregunta al dueño de un cabaret donde quiere que contraten a su amiga Ticha: "nos tomamos una copita". "No", responde el empresario malencarado, "no bebo". "Pues que lástima", le responde Resortes, "desaprovecha esa cara de borracho". En el primer caso, con ironía, el invitado decide hablar de menos. En el segundo, con malicia, Resortes opta por hablar de más.

Somos nuestra historia y nuestro lenguaje. Ambos nos hacen, nos modelan. Ni adánicos (sin historia) ni mudos. Lo que decimos, cómo lo decimos y lo que callamos nos forja, nos construye. Por ello, siempre es importante escuchar a quien habla, pero también oírse uno mismo. Porque cuando uno habla, por ejemplo, de otra persona, en ocasiones algo dice de ella, pero siempre mucho más sobre uno mismo.

El profesor hace una pregunta a sus alumnos. El niño se adelanta a contestar y falla. El profesor de inmediato le dice "burro". Es probable que en efecto el niño sea un "burro", es decir, un infante con problemas para aprender. Pero al hablar, el profesor nos ilustró mucho más sobre él que sobre el pequeño. Se trata de un docente insensible, agresivo, torpe y quizá también un animal.

Una mujer camina por la calle y al pasar junto a un tipo, éste le dice a bocajarro: "si como las mueves las das, ya vas". Por supuesto, el dicho del tipo nada nos informa sobre la mujer, pero es más que elocuente para calificar al sujeto. Se trata de un patán procaz que se cree simpático.

Leo a Norman Mailer hablando de Eisenhower. "Podía representar el papel de héroe sólo para esa gran cantidad de norteamericanos cuya falta de imaginación era su mayor orgullo... Eisenhower encarnó la mitad de las necesidades de la nación, las necesidades de los tímidos, los anquilosados, los santurrones y los perezosos" (América. Anagrama. 2005. p.72). Mailer describe al ex presidente de Estados Unidos, construye una imagen, y al mismo tiempo se describe a sí mismo como la antípoda de los votantes de Eisenhower.

Los tres ejemplos coinciden en una sola cosa: al hablar de los otros siempre nos describimos (modelamos) a nosotros mismos. En un extremo, a veces queriendo hablar del otro, sólo hablamos de nosotros (como en el caso del tipo del albur). Se podría decir (quizá exagerando) que siempre hablamos de nosotros y en ocasiones, cuando somos lo suficientemente observadores, agudos y sagaces, nos acercamos a descubrir algunos razgos de la personalidad o del carácter del otro. Por supuesto, al hablar lo podemos hacer con talento, ingenio, sensibilidad (vuelva a leer el pasaje de Mailer) o de forma pedestre, vulgar, ofensiva o también de manera rutinaria, burocrática, previsible. Dime cómo hablas y te diré quién eres. Y como dice el refrán: "En boca cerrada no entran moscas".

Hay una actividad cuya herramienta fundamental es la palabra, el lenguaje. La política empieza y termina con la palabra y cuando ésta se degrada, la política también lo hace.

En medio de las confrontaciones más agudas, en las espirales de violencia que parecen no tener fin, en los desencuentros más radicales, la palabra puede reorientar los acontecimientos, forjar un cauce distinto, ofrecer otro horizonte. Es decir, la palabra puede desactivar la violencia y ofrecer una ruta política para procesar los diferendos. Y, por el contrario, la política "normal", democrática, pluralista, se llega a convertir en violencia siempre precedida de la furia en el lenguaje. No hay guerra que no haya sido anunciada con ofensas al enemigo, con proclamas incendiarias. Y no hay paz duradera sin un lenguaje que la alimente.

Sobra decir que las campañas electorales son por definición el momento de la palabra, del lenguaje. Diagnósticos y recetas, análisis y propuestas, debates y réplicas, necesitan y se asientan en el lenguaje. Pero el adjetivo mal puesto, la ofensa, la agresión y la vulgaridad también forman parte del arsenal de palabras utilizadas. No obstante, ninguna fórmula resulta anodina, ninguna está exenta de secuelas.

Podría incluso afirmarse que los candidatos y los partidos tienen que usar ese instrumento más que ningún otro. Ya se sabe que en la época de la imagen "una fotografía dice más que mil palabras" (mentira de curso legal), que el tejido de redes de relaciones son imprescindibles para multiplicar los votos, que "el carisma" (algo que nadie puede descifrar) es imprescindible, pero todo ello sin el lenguaje, sin la palabra, es humo, es nada.

Sólo quien cree que se encuentra solo en el escenario de la política o que sus palabras se las lleva el viento, que tiene escasa o nula consideración por los demás o que está rodeado de puros incondicionales que le festejan invariablemente sus gracejadas, puede pensar que se puede insultar sin consecuencias, ofender sin generar preocupación, agraviar como si fuera un chiste.

La democracia mexicana es joven. Apenas nos estamos acostumbrando a vivir en medio de la pluralidad, a convivir con el otro. Cuidemos el lenguaje. Cuidemos la palabra. Ellos son el nexo que establece las relaciones entre las personas, los grupos, los partidos. Y esas relaciones siempre estarán impregnadas de las palabras cargadas, siempre cargadas. No existe el lenguaje neutro, incoloro, sin derivaciones.

2006-09-07T11:28:00.000-07:00