Download From subaltern silence to diasporic voices: the

From subaltern silence to diasporic voices: the language of double consciousness
To begin with I will briefly take into account some basic ideas from two highly
relevant theories in modern general linguistics, i.e. Ferdinand de Saussure’s
Structuralism and Noam Chomsky’s Generative and Transformational Grammar.
Saussure (1916) saw language as a system of signs out of the relations of which
meaning is extracted. He also established a fundamental analytic distinction between
‘langue’ and ‘parole’. Saussure acknowledged thereby that speech constitutes the
basic informant domain of human experience, yet language as ‘parole’, that is, as the
multiple manifestations of individual language games (L. Wittgenstein, 1974), or as
the actually and intentionally uttered acts of speech (J. R. Searle, 1965, J. L. Austin,
1976) remains too chaotic for coherent and reliable descriptive purposes. Only
language as ‘langue’ is to be validated as the very object of linguistic inquiry.
‘Langue’ is ‘the’ objectified social fact rendered safe for analysis through the
description of stable sign structures within any (synchronically) given linguistic
system.
In this respect, it could also be argued that Chomsky’s rationalistic and
psychological approach to linguistic phenomena is not different from Saussure’s.
Chomsky only alters the terminology speaking of ‘competence’ and ‘performance’
instead of ‘langue’ and ‘parole’. For Chomsky, performance is carried out through
the effective use of language in concrete and specific situations. Nevertheless, what
counts for analysis is competence, i.e., the human ‘preprogrammed’ and
‘predetermined’ ability to speak which is embedded in the cognitive capacity of the
mind (‘mental organ’). Competence, thereby, is the very condition of language as
possibility. Competence is inherently constitutive of the speaker, it is the ‘innate’
capacity of “an ideal speaker to generate an unlimited sequence of grammatically
well-formed sentences” (1965:3-4).
The respective positions of Saussure and Chomsky enable us to specify an
important theoretical problem. As it appears, the presuppositions of both modern
linguistic theories isolate, and privilege, the configurations of abstract ‘langue’ and
idealised ‘competence’ from the actual conditions of their material use as ‘parole’ and
‘performance’ within defined and concrete contexts of verbal interaction. Is it not the
case then that Saussure and Chomsky do ‘silence voice’ de facto in their respective
theories of language?
The answer to the question would obviously require further in-depth and
contrasted debate. In the mean time, however, the alluded general linguistic theories
also allow us to shift our attention and display their practical relevance when applied
to particular field studies.
For instance, out of Chomsky’s distinction between ‘competence’ and
‘performance’, cognitive anthropologists such as Hymes and Basso formulated the
notion of ‘communicative competence’. The concept as a whole refers to the
speaker’s ability to perform and communicate ‘effectively’ as well as recognising
when is it ‘appropriate’ to talk according to a given culturally significant setting of
interaction.
The ethnographic study of communicative competence comprises, according
to Hymes (1972) the analysis of what ‘counts’ as communicative events, the kind of
participants, the settings in which communication takes place, the various codes
shared by the participants (linguistic, kinesics, musical) and the character of the
communicative events as a whole. In such a context, Basso (in Giglioli, (ed) 1985)
also reports that being silent is itself an activity that may be appropriate on certain
occasions. As a saying goes “it is not the case that a man who is silent says nothing”.
Moreover, “for a stranger entering an alien society, a knowledge of when ‘not’ to
speak may be as basic to the production of culturally acceptable behaviour as a
knowledge of what to say” (69).
For a foreigner, therefore, in addition to learning a new language, knowing
‘when not to speak’ or ‘to give up on words’ remains crucial.
As a conclusion to a testimonial paper read in Cardiff (‘The 1992 Raymond
Williams Lecture’, The Welsh Open University and the National Institute for Adult
and Continuing Education), Stuart Hall (1993: 259-262) pointed out that,
increasingly, modern people of all sorts and conditions have to be members,
simultaneously, of several overlapping ‘imagined communities’ (B. Anderson, 1989).
These members of the ‘new diasporas’, as Hall calls them, have the capacity to live in
and negotiate between and across several cultural worlds: they have the capacity to
struggle with the burden of ‘double consciousness’ (W. E. B. DuBois, [1904], 1989).
On the one hand, they bear the traces of their own particular cultures, traditions,
histories, languages and systems of belief. On the other hand, they must come to
terms with, and make sense of the new host culture and society they take residence in.
Whether economic migrant, political exile or expatriate of some other kind, the
‘diaspora subject’ has to learn other skills and other lessons. Existing “in a median
state, neither completely at one with the new setting nor fully disencumbered of the
old” (E. W. Said, 1994:36) the ‘foreigner’ is compelled to inhabit at least two
identities, to speak at least two languages, and to negotiate and translate between
them.
Julia Kristeva (1988: 28-34) explains that once deprived of the attachments to
the maternal tongue, the individual who learns a foreign language is able to enunciate
the most unpredictably daring, bold or audacious statements in the newly acquired
means of verbal communication. Even to the point that, for the amazement of the
native listener, a scatological catalogue of obscenities too wide and astounding in
range to cope with seems to reconcile, nevertheless, with much admired formal
stylistic variations of elaborated verve. Having said this, Kristeva does not fail to
remind us that to the new comer, the foreign language newly learned remains, like
algebra or solfeggio, an artificial language altogether. Like in a hallucination, she
continues, the verbal constructions of a foreigner - be they scholarly or improper- roll
on empty space, dissociated from his/her body and passions, and taken hostage by the
mother tongue.
In this sense, the foreigner does not really know what (s)he says in the new
language. His/her subconscious does not inhabit his/her thoughts and feelings; and as
a consequence, the language of the foreigner becomes of an absolute formalism, of an
exaggerated sophistication. The foreigner’s voice rests thus on the single strength of
his/her naked rhetoric. Or else, it turns into silence. Placed between two languages,
the foreigner’s element becomes silence. But not a silence imposed upon him/her
from the outside as theorised, for instance, in subaltern studies where ‘silence’ refers
to a condition of ‘structural’ subordination. On a more literal sense, the foreigner’s
silence refers back, according to Kristeva, to an inner state of being. It is a silence that
empties the mind and leaves the brain laden with despondency.
Kristeva’s poignant approach invites to the study of such concepts as ‘voice’
and ‘silence’ from both the psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic paradigms: which are
the relationships between language and thought that underlie the diaspora subject’s
necessarily split/fractured linguistic behaviour? Is it true that the brain’s control over
the processes of speech and understanding constitutes, all things cognitive -or mind
related- considered, an insurmountable impediment for a really fulfilling acquisition,
development and use of a new language? Pointing to another level of inquiry,
Kristeva’s position also raises questions regarding style and register: what is it that
makes a diaspora subject to express him/herself as much in an elegant as in a clumsy
way, both in a refined and in vulgar way, in a convolute/circuitous way and in a
straightforward/perspicuous way? How is it that (s)he may appear so modest and
pretentious at the same time?
While addressing part of the same problematic (i.e.: the relationships between
consciousness, identity and language) Hall’s emphasis shifts towards broader issues
that take more of a cultural and social dimension. Kristeva’s perspective is individual
rather than collective and involves a vision whereby the late learning of a new
language becomes, inevitably, a ‘source of estrangement’;- a source of disaffection,
split and withdrawal leading to the “silence of the polyglot”.
Hall’s standpoint does reflect too a profound concern about the fragile and
ambivalent communicative position occupied by the individual members of different
diaspora communities; yet this very ambivalent duplicity characterising the diaspora
subject’s cultural and linguistic identity also encourages to explore another series of
connections from a more optimistic angle. For instance, Mikhail Bakthin formulated a
systematic linguistic philosophy based both in the social character and the dialogic
nature of language. Within the context of such philosophy elicited early in the
twentieth century, his key term of ‘heteroglossia’ referred to a world that had already
become “polyglot, once and for all and irreversibly”; to a period when “national
languages, coexisting but closed and deaf to each other (had come) to an end” (in M.
Holquist & C. Emerson (eds), 1981:12).
In accordance with this predicament, could it not be argued, against Kristeva,
that the concept of ‘heteroglossia’ ushers the ‘foreigner’ into a myriad of new cultural
and linguistic possibilities? That the idea of double consciousness also indicates the
incorporation of yet another national and prestigious ‘collective treasure’ (P.
Bourdieu, 1981, 1985), and hence an expansion of the original linguistic repertoire?
In any case, within the new ambivalent (symbolic) order arising, any instance
of voice and silence comprise valuable indexes to measure the formation of new
diaspora cultures enabling its members to produce themselves anew and differently.
The linguistic experience and dislocated presence of diaspora cultures are ‘rooted in’
and ‘routed through’ an irremediable ambivalence. While an uncomfortable shelter
can be found in the paradoxical silence of the polyglot, possibilities of self-realisation
can also emerge from the utterance of fractured and complicated voices. The
dislocated presence of new diaspora cultures reflect the fragmented voices and
overwhelming silences of the diaspora subject inhabiting new provisional dwellings.
In this sense, the strain placed by the ‘burden’ of double consciousness
becomes also the source of new possibilities for ambivalent fulfillment. Certainly, the
condition of the new diaspora cultures is that their members must learn to live with
different and simultaneous identity formations. But this ability and competence
becomes also a ‘gift’ to live with(in) different “homes” and “wor(l)ds”.
The (new) diaspora subject is necessarily the product of different and
interrelated cultures and histories; and necessarily inhabits different “homes” at the
same time. The double consciousness of the diaspora subject makes it compelling to
struggle on the edges of modern fragmented identities. Certainly, the experience of
displacement, absence, separation and foreignness stirs up an almost irremediable
sentimental and nostalgic identification with the traditions, languages and beliefs of a
lost space/time. The very desire, however, to entertain a close relationship with a place
of origin is also undercut by a risky urge and need to dissociate oneself from a sense
of the obvious. Without ever being free of attachment and sentiments towards friends,
family and community, common sense fades away and things or ideas utterly taken for
granted at home become doubtful. Nothing is evident. Nothing is completely
permanent, obvious, necessary or indispensable. Nothing is ‘natural’. In the split mind
of the diaspora subject, taken for granted constructions built up in the “homeland” in
order to protect the sense of a naturally constituted collective identity lose strength and
rigidity. The precious sense of obviousness rooted in the certainty of belonging
become all too relative.
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