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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. References Anderson, B. (1989) Imagined Communities, London, New York:Verso. Austin, J.L. (1976) How To Do Things With Words, Oxford:Oxford University Press. Basso, K. (1972) “‘To give up on words’: Silence in Western Apache culture” in Giglioli Bourdieu, P. (1981) Ce que parler veux dire: l’économie des échanges linguistiques, Paris: Fayard Bourdieu, P.(1985) Language ans Symbolic Power, Cambridge: Polity Press.Bathkin, M. Volishonov, N. V. (1929 [1973]) Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, New York: Seminar Press. Chomsky, N. (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, Cambridge, Mass: M.I.T. Press. de Saussure, F. (1916) Cours de Linguistique Générale, Paris. DuBois, W.E.B. (1903) The Souls of Black Folk, (1969) New York: New American Library,(1989) Harmondsworth: Penguin. Giglioli, P.(ed) (1972) Language and Social Context: Reading:Cox & Wyman. Hall, S. (1993) "Culture, community, nation" in Cultural Studies journal, 7(3): 349-363. Holquist, M. Emerson, C. (eds), (1981) The Dialogical Imagination: Four Essays, Austin: University of Texas Press. Hymes, D. (1972) “Models of the interaction of language and social life” in Gumperz, J. and Hymes, D. (eds) Directions in Socio-linguistics, New York:Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Kristeva, J, (1988) "Toccata et fugue pour l'étranger" in Etrangers à nous-mêmes, France: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 9-60. Said, E. W. (1994) Representations of the Intellectual. The 1993 Reith Lectures, Londres, Sidney, Auckland, Bergvley: Vintage, 35-47 Wittgenstein, L, (1974) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.