<documenta X><blast>Words Wearing Us

cwduff@alcor.concordia.ca
Sun, 27 Jul 1997 01:00:39 -0400 (EDT)

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> Marshall McLuhan in a striptease establishment in San Francisco. Wolfe,
> McLuhan, and some others congregated there, and Wolfe, thinking that he'd
> catch the outwardly conservative McLuhan off balance, asked him what he
> thought of the topless "waitresses" who were threading their way around
the *********************************
** as we wear language it also wears us, and to replace the word,
the very fine visually rich word WAITRESS with the non-word "waitpersons,"
is to erase its beauty of connotation, and its richness of history. Some-
thing M. McLuhan would have disapproved of vehemently. As if one could
replace the word siren and its referents with some neutered word; or
perhaps replace the lovely drifting word nymph with its centuries of
imagistic connotation. How can one do this without falling into the worst
sort of conformity to politically
stero-typed postures?

> evening's crowd. McLuhan opined "well, you see, they're wearing us". >
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As M.M. points out so succinctly, the waitresses were wearing
their spectators, just like the words we and others speak and write, wear
us. If we don neutered and emptied words, what do
they reveal to the reader? Do we see desirable, interesting, challening,
striking, loving, desiring, wanting, ugly, shapley, radiant bodies, or do
we see the conforming body of the late 20th. century? Words are also
bodies with sexes and places, names and colours. Why deny that, and try to
dry clean them?
Better that we let the words speak, in the same way that we let
bodies speak. In the similar way that we let spaces speak as we penetrate
past the dead holes of subject-object splits and disavowals. If we see
words like a lover sees her beloved, we laugh at their desires, at their
unities and splits, their histories and richnesses instead of wanting to
repress them. Either not speak the word one finds offensive (euphemism is
awlays there as a handy tool), or choose to be ironic. But to replace the
richeness of one noun, with the drabness of a non-word (really an
Orwellian no-speak nightmare), is to do a disservice to oneself and to
language.
"they are wearing us... says McHulan" ... Now let us continue to
wear the words, and be worn by them like sheets and garments, like games
and caresses, like teeth and charms. To speak the space of words in their
interior movement, to shudder at their inner desire, to let the space
between them filter through to us in their inter-subjectivity and tension.
Then their auras, their halos will join us, and be one more piece
carrying us on our adventure to a new world.
"All words are restless grains and gods waiting to be opened."
CD.
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