The most striking feature of Orwell’s 1984 is the way he imagines the alteration of a language as a mode of control. The idea of limiting a vocabulary so greatly that merely thinking a insubordinate thought is impossible is an immensely powerful idea. The fact that social interaction is conditioned on communication is so basic that it is not often explicitly taken into account. Yet if we can focus the way we communicate, it becomes evident that the perception—as developed in a historical context—of the particular language used in a politics goes a long way in determining how that politics is regarded.
This issue has been partially considered in recent months. After Senator Giffords was shot in Tucscon early this year, an ongoing public debate began over the use of violent political language. And Jon Stewart made a grand mockery of the way Nazi comparisons are tossed around. These controversies, constructed for media ratings or political clout, show that the issues of language are not uncommon to the general public.
But what isn’t discussed as a public issue is how the public perception of language can determine how a political movement is received and its implications for what is possible in contemporary politics. These perceptions arise from a historical context, but their manifestation in language needs to be studied directly. Therefore, we must consider that we live in the wake of a century during which two world wars took place in the name of revolutionary and utopian change. The utter horror of these wars does not need to be recapitulated. But the result has been to bankrupt the very word ‘revolution.’ The idea itself now consists of the gulag when considered seriously and as the hilariously ironic peddling of a iconic images when considered popularly. Contemporary political language is now inherently conservative.
There is the popular image the word ‘revolution’ brings to mind—that of war and violence—and that more tame meaning which labels far-reaching, and peaceful, change. The latter meaning is more akin to the word when used in a phrase like “Agricultural revolution.” The word has had both positive and negative instantiations, but in politics it is the negative which dominates. Any language that contains hints of far-reaching goals is decried with the negative aspects of the word ‘revolution.’ Obama tried to find new ways of discussing revolutionary change by claiming Hope and Change as his campaign slogans. And yet he was still decried by the Right as a new Stalin (just see any episode of Glenn Beck’s show for proof). Leftist thinkers in the Marxist vein such as Jacques Rancière and Alain Badiou have renamed revolutionary politics as “emancipatory politics” in an effort to avoid the adolescent image (of a teen sporting his Che t-shirt) attributed to those who seriously discuss revolution. We are currently undergoing a reformation of political speak as philosophers and politicians search for a way to discuss broad and revolutionary change.
Here we can see the crux of the problem: speaking plainly of revolutionary change is unacceptable in contemporary politics. Doing so either harkens back to the gulag or makes the speaker look infantile. As a result, revolutionary change is not a part of American political discourse. Many have called the Occupy protests naive for thinking far-reaching change was possible. And many others have decried them as criminal. This is the result of bankrupting the language of revolution: either revolution is not possible, or its proponents are so excluded from typical politics that they are left to extreme measures. The popular image of revolution is a result of this linguistic perception.
What this means is that there is a failure of discourse. To discuss with any seriousness the possibility of revolutionary change, one must find new ways of speaking. Perhaps this can partially account for the current slogan culture of politics. It is certainly evident in the works of revolutionary thinkers, such as Badiou and Rancière, whose work is obscured by the invention of new technical ways of theorizing what could be stated plainly if the word ‘revolution’ had not been bankrupted.
The important question here is whether it is worthwhile to have a political culture in which the very idea of revolutionary change is something which cannot be discussed. A language which favors the status quo is one which forecloses the possibility of anything else, which forces those who believe in such possibilities out of politics, or at least to drastic measures. Do we really want a politics where it’s the status quo or torches and pitchforks?
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