Rewilding Language and Syntax

Rewilding language, rewilding the human, is also paradoxically a grounding of the human.

— Eduardo Kohn (American Library Paris,

2022) tsupu

Tsupu, or tsupuuuh, as it is sometimes pronounced, with the final vowel dragged out and aspirated, refers to an entity as it makes contact with and then penetrates a body of water; think of a big stone heaved into a pond or the compact mass of a wounded peccary plunging into a river’s pool.

Once I tell people what tsupu means, they often experience a sudden feel for its meaning: Oh, of course, tsupu!’ ... Tsupu doesn’t really interact with other words and therefore can’t be modified to reflect any such possible relations. ...What kind of thing, then, is tsupu? Is it even a word? (Kohn, 2013, p. 28–29)

On Semiosis

Any language, in order to function, must contain words that relate well to other words, both grammatically and phonetically. That all common words have sounds and spellings which must relate to other words (that have in many western cases strayed far from tangible relation to their target), is crippling. This fabricated web of semiosis, self-referencial by its very construction, creates separations between us and the world we inhabit (Kohn, 2013). Situated in their respective wildernesses, languages have been responsible for the amplification, to varying extent, of this separation. But even in Quichua, an Amazonian dialect of the Runa people of Ecuador, most words are still ‘firmly in language’ (Kohn, 2013, p. 28).

A word like causanguichu, for example, which bears strong grammatical relation to other words in the language (but no onomatopoeic resemblance to the phenomena it describes), speeds up from the murky depths of its dense, linguistic context, ignorant of those worldly influences which might have shaped its being had it not risen so quickly. Firmly in support of its bounded allies (who speak only from tongues), it emerges out of the water to stand against a dwindling opposition (for whom ‘Tsupu’ leads the charge). It might just as well be spelt backwards!

We need not repeat this exercise with an array of other dangerously relational cases. All languages comprise their majority.

wherein lies the method of change?

How do we talk about nature? That phenomena so readily fetishised in the name of so many already fetishised niches within disciplines. How do we situate ourselves within a world we know so little about?

How do we maintain alarm within the confines of these steady, a(lter) priori analytics which we rely on to measure others than us. How can we encourage change across disciplines in which the (imminent) final solution is already decided? How, possibly, can we tackle problems from inside this well oiled, incomprehensibly inert system, for which the problems are its basis?

Soon, when we have reached the end of the extent of the sciences and solved our nature, and the temperatures still rise, and the storms still become more severe, and the droughts still increase, and the oceans still become warmer, and the oceans still rise, and the number of species still decreases, and the famines still increase, and the health risks still increase, and the poverty still increases (United Nations, 2023), in which direction do we turn?

The slipway is the last course of action, a fast route straight back to the bottom. For where we were unable to find cracks deep enough to push through, the structure remains firmly intact. Residing a few metres below the surface, some are close enough to see the light, but for most others below it is still dark. The only option to pass through is by that route built, and designed, into the very infrastructure of the dam itself. Language.

In this statement lies the issue at hand. The author of our ultimate fate and the leader of the opposition. The chief struggle of cyborg politics (Haraway, 1991). The opposition to finding a communication with zero bias, with ultimate clarity and perfect translation.

Radical methods of revolt, of languaging-with, are endorsed in writings on these subjects. Donna Haraway escapes the clutches of tightly bound dictionaries, which engross the masses, to confront the more-than-analytical paradox constructed at the hand of human exceptionalism. Stringing together a web of species-fluid metaphor, she finds stead in a vocabulary situated amongst those very topics with which we struggle. But I want to ask questions on the whereabouts of her Terrapolis, questions of its opposition against other aspects for which all individuals have developed a more consistent understanding. Aspects closer to perfect translation.

Should a ‘wilding’ of language really be situated in those disciplines which have decided our fate within systems of otherworldly understanding? Is this our fundamental mistake, to attempt to break through using those cracks so deliberately designed in, to try and mobilise those topics which we are so

66 Composting is so hot clearly at the mercy of in the hands of our very oppressor.

To return to our (leaky) dam is to suggest, then, that the way past this impenetrable mass is up over the top, up over those concrete abutments, against the chemical surface of those topics which we really know, which we have come to exist far more naturally with. If, as Eduardo Kohn says (and I agree), ‘rewilding is paradoxically a grounding of the human’ (American Library Paris, 2022), let us remain entangled in our wilderness and comprehend our demise through a more familiar lens (for we are not grounded!). That is, a lens not able to accurately focus on those dead end cracks, but one better suited to the wide angle splendour of the impenetrable dam itself. One that captures the concrete and its distinctly monolithic composition, one interested in the unconscious familiarity of its form, common across the boundaries of intellect, age, and discipline.

We do not try to understand anything with syntax except the relations of its subjects (for whom morphology is the umbrella term). Might this ladder, avoiding cracks in the process, offer a step up the algae-clad abutment which so firmly stands between us and our cyborg idols? Through its deeper situated-ness within our semiotic system, could syntax provide a platform for fuss with a greater removal from semiotic bias? If even those languages developed in the most unbounded, interlaced of wildernesses are still ‘firmly in language’ (Kohn, 2013, p. 28), we surely cannot hope to escape our oppressor through the contextually dependent nature of their composition?

Through the organisation and re-appropriation of morphologies, syntax can profoundly influence the meaning of a sentence, whilst avoiding an emphasis on other meanings. Interventions of this nature can be particularly effective on words with significant associated exceptionalism. Altering punctuation, sentence organisation, or a word’s grammatical category (although this one is dangerously close to provoking a bias) for example, can have the desired effect. To replace these words, however, is to impose a bias closer to those moving parts in the machine of translation (that turbine shaft offers a direct route through, but with high risk of failure), falling into the very trap we intend to avoid. re-wilding language

The further we stray from topics which define us, the more likely we are to exceptionalise our species. The more we try to convey worldly ideas with which we are less familiar, the greater we separate ourselves from our environment. The further we divert from streams of embedded, assumed communication, the more thoroughly bias manifests through slippages in meaning and understanding. How, then, might we ‘wild’ within a syntactical wilderness? Whilst this essay cannot afford an answer the attention it deserves, it can offer a starting point for certain adjustments within a vocabulary. What might be the effect of assigning an article to words which we might typically use without? Would this designation, for example, provoke a treatment of our science more sympathetic to an ‘open whole’ (Kohn, 2013, p. 15)? The Nature. The use of the possessive in a sentence can be surprising to those unfamiliar with these topics, but this essay advocates for exactly that. To mobilise alarm from outside the bounds of an intrinsically exceptional method of staying with the trouble. To re-wild a language irrespective of the bias manifest in those delicately important issues which we hope to address through our writing.