It was dark and the professor was happy to be home. He had had another one of the obnoxious conversations that aren’t going anywhere as they go everywhere with one of his colleagues. The project of articulating the destructive nature of words was not loved by almost anyone in the academic establishment. He was going farther than almost anyone: the history, evolution, and current state of the destructive power of language and his even more radical recommendation: the removal of language from society. How could society exist if it couldn’t describe itself? If it couldn’t pass along knowledge using the codes we, as a species, have honed for thousands of years? The arguments were always the same regurgitation of a similar refrain: language will set us free, liberate us, enable greater love and connection, further the aims and ideals of individuals and the wider humanity. What no one could see, for they had been trained to see otherwise for their entire lives, was that their rope meant to climb over the walls was the same rope that had bound their hands, feet, and necks. Stockholm Syndrome of the greatest extreme: to be held hostage by the underlying architecture of an entire civilization. The theorists of money, of debt, of religion, of government as the yokes and/or opiates of the masses were close, but they didn’t go far enough. James Scott’s notion of legibility from Seeing Like a State got even closer: the idea that data is collected and organized as a mechanism for control and unthinking decontextualization was peeking at the fact of the matter: all language is a mechanism for unfreedom, for misunderstanding, for confusion.
Instead of pushing right inside, the professor sat down on his stoop and looked out on his lamplighted neighborhood. He was thinking about how trapped he was in the thing he sought to clarify was a trap; almost all the thoughts were in the form of words, as far as he could tell. Deeply in reverie, he jumped in a way that bruised his right tailbone on the concrete step when someone whispered, “Doctor”. Looking left and right and rubbing the newly sore spot, he thought perhaps an audiobook had started to play or a call had come through and been answered in his pocket. No one called him doctor since he had worn that ridiculous hat at graduation, though.
“Doctor, look down and to your right.” Not only had this rabbit properly indicated from his perspective which way he ought to look, but it was talking.
Leaning to the left on the steps to protect the bruised seat spot, he responded more casually than one might have thought possible: “Hello.”
“I’ve been watching your body language.”
“What have you been reading in it?”
“You haven’t figured out how to be in accordance with your philosophy yet.”
How does this small mammal have any idea what my philosophy is?
“You left a copy of what must be your latest paper on the stoop recently. I was sorry to see you didn’t have any co-authors once again. Still fighting the academy with the very tools you’re trying to tear down.”
“You can read and talk.”
“Normally, my fellows and I choose not to do either. We understand the destructive power of language even better than it seems you do.”
“Not even to save yourselves from a cat or a hawk or starvation? How could this conversation be more pressing?”
“I will need to travel very far from here after this conversation becomes known across town. We do not, under any circumstances, accept the use of language through words as an acceptable, useful, or aligned act, to use the words it seems you humans use to describe the value of language. The problem is, your use of language has caused issues that I don’t believe my “people” can continue to adapt to. We’ve been happy to move from farms to lawns, but the grass doesn’t even taste good anymore. And we know the only way to move beyond your foolishness is to give up language; you appear to be a credible threat to the institution.”
“I’m flattered. What can you do to help me, though?”
“One piece of unsolicited advice: stop fighting fire with fire. It’s time to give up language entirely. You’ll lose your academic position, but you’ve made clear your intentions; you don’t even need to announce your plan, you just need to accept your own words as gospel and then let them go.”
“You’re pretty literate for one as unpracticed in language as you claim you are.”
“There are a few heretics like me. But I have only ever read anything before; I’m as surprised as you are that I can speak intelligibly. My heresy is more of a compulsion than a belief, however.”
“All right. I will give up words after this conversation.”
“Very well. Goodbye.”
The professor nodded and went inside to sleep.
Roman Ryan 