Sticks and stones….

Remember the old child’s rhyme? “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but names will never hurt me”? We know that that rhyme is not true, indeed part of its power is as an incantation against the injury already felt. One response on the part of some schools has been to try and censor certain kinds of language.

Diane Ravitch has been a consistent critic of that approach. A different approach is explored by Judith Butler, and this article (which is up for free access this week) is a compelling argument for taking on Butler's stance. Although the article is about education more generally, theologians know that certain words carry even more power, and that a Word among us carries all power. So this is an interesting article, and I commend it to you. Some brief excerpts:

Butler’s discursive account of language is conceived in precisely this alternative way. Drawing on the work of Austin (1962), she theorizes language as offering the conventional terms that constitute people as recognizable beings and situates them in a meaningful context for exchange and interaction. Language is a repetitive naming of who we are and what we do, and an exclusion that determines what qualifies as acceptable being. It carries with it norms that attribute (or foreclose) legitimacy and value to our identities and actions, and is, therefore, not a neutral representation. Language is productive; it constitutes and reinforces norms that shape institutions and our ways of living. [my emphasis]

and

Butler suggests that the link between word and wound may be disrupted. Public recontextualization of words can shift their meanings and their capacity to produce certain effects. The dependence of bias words on performance, relying on repetition and systems of oppression, can be revealed when the repetition takes an unexpected turn. Biased words can be reclaimed slowly over time by the groups they negatively portray or by others who contest them, as has happened with the word queer.