,
m, indi1Jeren
t, not only
dm
bl for its d
In h country children have
bitten their tongu off and
bulle inste d to iterate the
voi of speechl , of di -
abled and disabling language, of
languag adult have aban­
doned altogether a device for
grappling with m ning, provid­
ing guidance or exp ing love.
But she kno tongue-suicide'
not only the choi of children It
is common among the infantile
heads of state and power mer­
chan whose evacuated lan­
guage leave them ith no
access to what is left of their
human instincts, for they speak
only to those who obey, or in
order to force obedience.
SHE DOES OT answer
and the qu tion is repeated. "Is
the bird I am holding living or
dead?"
Still she doesn't answer. She
is blind and cannot her visi­
tors, let alone what is in their
hands, She d not know their
color, gender or homeland. She
only kno their motive.
The old woman's Hence is so
long, the young people have
trouble holding their laughter.
Finally she speaks and her
voice is soft but stem. "I don't
know,· "1 don't lmow
hether the bird you are holding
is d d or alive but what I do
know is that it is in your hands.
It is in your hands."
Her answer can be taken to
mean: if it is dead, you have
either found it that way or you
have killed it. If it is alive, you
can still kill it. Whether it is to
. stay alive, it is your decision
Whatever the case, it is your re­
sponsibility .
FOR PARADING their
power and her helplessness, the
young visitors are reprimanded,
told they are responsible not
only for the act of mockery but
also for the small bundle of life
sacrificed to achieve its aims.
The blind woman shifts atten­
tion away from assertions of
power to the instrument
through which that power is ex­
ercised.
Speculation en what (other
than its own frail body) that
bird-in-the-hand might signify
has always been attractive to
me, , t especially so now, think­
ing as I have been, about the
work I do that has brought me to
this company. So I choose to read
the bird as language and the
woman as a practiced writer.
She is worried about how the
language she dreams in, given to
her at birth, is handled, put into
service, even withheld from her
for certain nefarious purposes.
Being a writer she thinks of
language partly as a system,
partly as a living thing over
which one has control, but
mostly as agency - as an act
with consequences, So the ques­
tion the children put to her: "Is
it living or dead?" is not unreal
because she thinks of language
as susceptible to death, erasure;
certainly imperiled and salvage­
able only by an effort of the will.
Sh believes that if the bird in
th hands of her visitors is dead
th custodians are responsible
for the corpse.
OR HER . DEAD lan­
guage is not only one no longer
poken or written, it is unyield­
ing language content to admire
i own paralysis. Like statist
language, censored and censor­
ing. Ruthless in its policing du­
ti ,it has no desire or purpose
other than maintaining th free
range of its own narcotic narcis-
i m, its own exclu ivity and
dominance. However, mori­
bund, it is not without effect for
could have been the intellectual
history of any discipli ifit h d
not insisted upon or been forced
into the waste of time and life
that rationalizations for. and
representations of dominance
required - lethal discourses of
exclusion blocking access to cog­
nition for both the excluder and
the excluded.
The conventional wisdom of
the Tower of Babel story is hat
the collapse was a misfortune.
That it was the distraction or h
weight of many languages hat
precipitated the tower's failed
architecture. That one mono­
lithic language would have expe­
dited the building and heaven
would have been reached.
Whose heaven, she wonde ?
And what kind? Perhaps the
achievement of Paradise was
premature, a little hasty It no
one could take th time to under­
stand other languages, other
views, other narratives. H d
they, the heaven they imagined
might have been found at th ir
feet. Complicated, d manding,
yes, buta view ofh ven as life;
not heaven as postlife.
SHEWO
lea her youn visito with th
impression that language
should be forced to stay live
merely to be. The vitality of lan­
guage lies in its a ility to limn
the actual, imagin and i-
ble lives of its s ake, de,
write . Although i poise i
sometimes in displacing experi­
ence, 1t is not a sub titute for it.
It 8l"C9 toward th place here
meaning may lie.
When a President of the
United States thought about th
graveyard his country had be­
come, . nd said, Th w rId will
little note nor long re ember
what we say here. But it will
neverforgetwhatth ydidh re."
His imple words are xhila t­
ing in their life-s ining prop­
erties because th y 0
encapsulate th re Ii y of
600,000 dead men in a cataclys­
mic ra ar. Refusin 'monu­
mentalize, disdaining th "final
word, " h preci "sumrni ng
up," aclmowl ging h ir "poor
power to add or detra ," his
words signal deference to th un­
capturability of th lif it
mourns. I is t d f
UND TH THE elo-
quence, th glamor, the schol­
arly associations, however
stirring or seductive, the heart of
such language' languishing or
perhaps not beating at all - if
the bird is already d d.
She has thought about hat
THE SYSTEMATIC looting
of language can be recognized by
the tendency of its use to forgo
its nuanced, complex, midwifery
properties for menace and subju­
gation. Oppressive language
does more than represent vio­
lence; it is violence; does more
than represent the limits of
knowledge; it limits knowledge.
W bMJl4U' 1 obIauiDg
JaJ!I�!Uat 0 t -laN�'.
of mindless media; whether it is
the proud but calcified language
of the academy or the commod­
ity-driven language of science;
whether it is the malign lan­
guage of law-without-ethics, or
language designed for the es­
trangement of minorities , hiding
its racist plunder in its literary
cheek - it must be rejected, al­
tered and exposed.
It is the language that drinks
blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks
its fascist boots under crinolines
of respectability and patriotism
as it moves relentl ly toward
the bottom line and the bot­
tomed-out mind. Sexist lan­
guage, racist language, theistic
language - all are typical of the
policing languages of mastery
and cannot, do not permit new
knowledge or encouraga the mu­
tual exchange of ideas.
The old woman is keenly
a ware that no intellectual mer­
cenary or insatiable dictator, no
paid-for politician or dema­
gogue, no oounterfeit journalist
would be persuaded by her
thoughts. There is and will be
rousing language to eep citi­
zens armed and arming; slaugh­
tered and slaughtering in the
malls, Courthouses, post offices,
playgrounds, bedrooms and
boulevards; stirring, memorial­
izing language to mas the pity
and waste of needl death.
There will be more diplomatic
language to countenance rape,
torture, assassination. There is
and will be more seductive, mu­
tant language designed to throt­
tle women, to pack their throats
like pate-producing geese with
their own unsayable, transgres­
sive words; there will be more of
the language of surveillAnce dis­
guised as research; of politics
and history calculated to render
the suffering of millions mute;
language glamorized to thrill
the dissatisfied and bereft into
assaulting their neighbors; arro­
gant pseudo-empirical language
crafted to lock creative people
into cages f inferiority and
hopelessn l
moves her, that recognition that
I nguage can never live up to life
once and for all. Nor should it.
Language can never "pin down"
slavery, genocide, war. Nor
hould it yearn for the arrogance
to be able to do so. Its force, its
felicity' in its reach toward the
in ffable.
Be it grand or slender, bur­
rowing, lasting or refusing to
nctify; whether it laughs out
loud or is a cry without an alpha­
bet, the choice word, the chosen
silence, unmolested language
surges toward knowledge, not
its destruction. But who does not
know of literature banned be­
cause it is interrogative; discred­
ited because it is critical; erased
because alternate? And how
many are outraged by the
thought of a self-ravaged
tongue?
Word-work is sublime, she
thinks, because it is generative;
it makes meaning that secures
our difference, our human differ­
ence - the way in which we are
like no other life.
WE DIE. That may be the
meaning of life. But we do lan­
guage. That may be the measure
of our lives.
"Once upon a time ... " visitors
as an old woman a question
Who are they, these children?
What did they make of that en­
coun r? What did they hear in
th final words: "The bird is in
your hands"? A sentence that
u res toward possibility or
on tha dro a latch? Perhaps
what the children h rd was It's
not my problem. I am old, fe­
mal , Black, blind.
What wisdom I have now is in
knowing I can no h lp you. Th
futu of language is yours.
They tand there. Suppos
no hing was in their h n ?
Suppo e the vi it was only a
ruse, a rick to to b spoken
to, taken riously they ha
no n fore? A chance to in-
t rrupt, to violate the adul
world, i miasma of di 0
bou th m, for them, bu n
o th m?Urgentqu tions a
s ak , including the on th y
have ked: "Is the bird w hold
living or dead?" Perha the
011 tion mPAnt· "r.nl11rl c;:""",,,
one tell us what life is? What is
death?" No tri at all; no illi­
ness. A straightforward ques­
tion worthy of the attention of a
wise one. An old one. And if the
old and wise who haw lived life
and faced death cannot describe
eith r, who can?
BUT SHE does not; she
keeps her secret; her good opin­
ion of herself; her nomic pro­
nouncements; her art without
commitment. She keeps her dis­
tance, enforces it and retreats
into the singularity of isolation,
in sophisticated, privileged
space.
Nothing, no word follo her
declarations of transfer. That si­
lence is deep, deeper than the
meaning in words he has sp0-
ken. It hivers this silence, and
the children, annoyed, fill it with
language invented on the spot.
"Is th re no speech," they ask
her, "no words you can give us
that helps us break through your
dossier of failures? Through th
education you have just given us
that is no education at all be­
caus we are paying close atten­
tion to what you ha done as
well as to hat you have . d? To
he barrier you h r ded be-
tw n nerosity and wisdom?
"W hav no bird in our
han , living or d d. We have
only you and our impor ant
qu tion th n bing in our
han ' thing you could not
bear to cont mpl te, to even
gu ? n' you r mem r be­
ing young wh nIangua was
magic wi hout m ning? Wh n
wha you co ild y, uld not
m n? Wh n th invi ibl w
what ima . nation s rov to e ?
Wh n que io and demands
urn 0 brightly
ith fury not
your
"You trivialize nd trivial-
ize the bird that' not in our
hands. Is there no context for our
li ? 0 song, no literature, no
poem full of vitami , no history
connected to experience that yet'
can along to help us start
stronglYou are an adult. The old
one, the wise one. Stop thinking
about ving your face. Think of
our li and tell us your particu­
larized world. Make up a story.
arrative i radical, creating us
at the very moment it is being
created. We will not blame you if
your reach eXceeds your grasp; if
love so ignites your words they
go down in flames and nothing is
left but their scald Or if, with
reticence of a surgeon's hands,
your words suture only the
places where blood might flow.
·We know you can never do it
properly - once and for all. Pas­
sion is never enough; neither is
skill. But try. For our sake and
yoU1'8 forget your name in the
street; tell us what the world bas
been to you in the dark placee
and in the light. Don't tell us
what to Ii bat to fear.
Show us wi skirt aDd
t stitdt that unrave
caul. You, old woman, bl
with blindness, can speak the
language that tells us what only
language can: how to see with­
out pictures: Language alone
protects us from the seari of
things with no names. Language
alone is meditation.
"Tell us what it is to be a
woman so that we may know
what it is to be a man. What
moves at the margin What it is
to have no home on this place. To
be set adrift from the one you
knew. What is it to live at the
edge of towns that Cannot bear
you company.
"TELL US about ships
turned away from shorelines at
Easter, placenta in a field. Tell
us about a wagon load of slaves,
how they sang 0 softly their
breath was indistinguishable
from falling snow. How they
knew from the hunch of the
nearest shoulder that the n
stop would be their last. How,
with hands prayered in their sex
, they thought of heat, then suns.
Lifting their faces, as though .
was there for the taking. Turn­
ing as though there for the tak­
ing. They stop at an inn. The
driver and his mate go in with
the lamp leavingthem humming
in the dark.' The horse' void
teams into the snow beneath its
hooves and its hiss and melt'
the envy of the freezing slaves.
"The inn door opens: a girl
and boy step away from itsJigbt.
They climb into the wagon bed.
The boy will have a gun in three
years, but now he cam a lamp
and a jug of warm cider. They
pass it from mouth to mouth.
The girl offers bread, pieces of
meat and omething more: a
glance into the. eyes of the one
he rves. One helping for ch
man, two for each woman And
look They 100 back. The next
stop will be their last. But not
this one. This one is warmed. "
.It's quiet again when the chil­
dren finish speaking, until the
woman breaks into the sik :e.
"Finally," she says, "I rust
you now. I trust you wit} the
bird that is no in your ha
beca you have truly caught it.
Look. How lovely it' , this thing
we ha don:- together. "