On turning theory into some motherf*%!ing praxis!!!

**parental advisory: explicit content** ;P

The Marcusean philosophy of individual subjectivity and the power of (deviant?) art to shift it (“Philosophize This” #113) is very compelling to me. I appreciate how Marcuse’s notion of the “shifting of class consciousness” recognizes the paradox of human beings and systems existing perpetually within imperfect systems, and that Marcuse’s suggested way to turn this theory into praxis is through deviant art – deviant in the sense of something “that diverts or causes to turn aside,” (Oxford English Dictionary). In the context of shifting class consciousness, pieces of art would be measured by the number of individual subjectivities they can cause to turn aside from their entrenched worldviews; and the ultimate reward of this process would be a liberated society, no longer bound to an endlessly looping structure of some dominating class presiding over some other subservient group(s).

I believe that this Marcusean dialectic provides an interesting and fruitful lens for delving into the rest of this week’s readings and listenings – especially relative to other critical perspectives on communication we’ve discussed in class, cf. Isin (2008) and Georgakopoulou (2019).

Let’s start with cursing (and general parental alarm over explicit content, swearing and otherwise), before moving into “mock” accents. I don’t think it will surprise anyone reading this to know that I agree with Deborah Cameron’s argument that social perceptions of people (women) who curse reflect “socially selective prejudices” about how language and speakers should operate (“Call the fishwife”) – though it might surprise you to hear that I am a woman who tends to curse a lot in her most vernacular speech! ;) My personal linguistic tendencies aside, I think that normative social conceptions of the appropriateness of cursing, as well as which members of society curse more, etc., reflect the standards set by those in power – much in the way that other linguistic practices tend to reflect the knowledge, expertise, and beliefs of (local) “citizen sociolinguistic” gatekeepers. The multiple articles about “parental advisory” stickers show how powerful such deviant practices – of language and other “non-normative” content – can be, given the intense feelings of threat that deviant music production seemed to instill among members of a socially-elite class. I think that counter-cultural, deviant practices tend to skeeve out powerful people in such ways because these practices represent another way that things can be, another way that people can act – which threatens the existing standards of being. What gets labeled as “deviant” in the first place also reflects social hierarchies of inequity and domination. Continuing with the case of parental advisory labels, I’d like to highlight two quotes from the Newsweek article we read:

“If you were a white rock act, you could get away with a couple of F-bombs or a couple of curses on your album and not get stickered," says chart analyst and pop critic Chris Molanphy. "But if you were a rapper or even a hard R&B singer and you said something as daring as 'pee,' you could get labeled." (Does the parental advisory label still matter? Newsweek | Culture)

Since deviance must inherently be relative to something else in order to be meaningful, it is unsurprising that behaviors or speech acts by people with more “social capital” have more leeway in terms of deviating from social norms – as opposed to other social actors, who can almost seem to challenge “standard social norms” in their very existence.

On a slightly separate note, I also believe that conceptions of “deviance” also tend to reflect topics or practices that those in power are uncomfortable or incapable of discussing. Again, in the context of parental advisory labels:

“Jack Feerick, a dad with two kids, finds the labeling inadequate in general. "I think the desire to control what your kids see and hear is a tacit admission of your own failure as a parent," says Feerick, who encourages family sing-alongs to Rage Against the Machine. "If your kids can't handle explicit language, whose fault is that?" (Does the parental advisory label still matter? Newsweek | Culture)

Evaluating these conceptions and accusations of deviance through the lens of Marcuse makes sense to me. “Acceptable” social practices, especially linguistic ones, tend to be determined based on their social ramifications – which basically have nothing to do with the inherent linguistic validity of every way of speaking. Yet straying from (linguistic) norms can have significant consequences, as we live in a socially-mediated, hierarchical world. Further, given the arbitrary and damaging systems of our world, it can be difficult to figure out how to harness social/linguistic methods for subversive purposes – even when, in the case of language use, “the medium [can be] the method”.

On this complex note, I’d like to turn to a handful of examples of “art as a tool for liberation”. I think these examples are especially relevant and related given their use of deviant language as a means for shifting individual subjectivities. I think they also do a good job of illustrating how deviant/unexpected linguistic behaviors can turn theory into praxis.

First – the graphic YA novel American Born Chinese, written by Gene Luen Yang. I just had to read this book for the children’s lit class I’m taking, and was struck by how well it both employs “Mock Asian” dialogue à la Margaret Cho, as well as embodies the liberating power of deviant storytelling. I’d like to illustrate this with the following excerpts from the book – for those who haven’t read it but might want to, I don’t think it should spoil too much!

The book includes (satirical) character Chin-Kee, who consistently speaks and acts in the following way:

The transcription of his speech reflects many of the phonetic/phonological/morpho-syntactic elements that Chun (2004) details in her analysis of “Mock Asian” speech. In line with Chun’s points, I think that the dialogue works in American Born Chinese because the harmful, stereotypical speech is being created by an author who seems to have in-group credibility with the group he is mocking. In this way, we see a “…legitimized performance of a debased racialized variety by a person who can speak the socially powerful one ultimately maintain[ing] the hierarchical relationship between the two racialized varieties” (pp. 276).

Another recent example of what I understand as deviant, and politically-effective linguistic behavior, is the Gen Z phrase “Ok, boomer”. I’m not sure how effective this rallying cry has been for changing the individual subjectivities of baby boomers – the handful of articles I’ve read about this movement seem to unanimously reflect baby boomer anger towards millennials for their use of the term, but less so a changed perspective of “millennial subjectivity”. Yet I think that this deviant linguistic expression has the potential to change perspectives in the service of spurring social change – thus embodying the sort of artistic/aesthetic practices for liberation that Marcuse so advocated.

(Watch this video to see "Ok, boomer" used in context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3_tocfXUiI)

I’d like to conclude by circling back to the notions of narrative and storytelling, which we discussed a couple weeks back in relation to Georgakopoulou’s work on digital storytelling (2019). When we skyped with her as a class, we discussed the changing definition – and arguable disintegration – of traditional storytelling practices via Instagram stories, which seem to break all of the fundamental norms of telling a story. Yet in the context of deviance and Marcusean philosophy, I wonder if Insta (and other similar social media) stories can in fact be recontextualized as deviant aesthetic practices, with the potential to shift our subjective notion of what storytelling means. Changing our subjective understandings of storytelling – from what constitutes a story, what the appropriate timescale of a story is, who can tell a story, how a story can be told, etc. – seems to me like a plausible instance of divergent (linguistic) behaviors having the potential to shift many peoples’ perspectives, to all of our collective benefit.