Introduction to Phagolanguage

Paula Calleja Cardiel 33428544

INTRODUCTION TO PHAGOLANGUAGE SOCIETy & Culture

Cover photograph by Sean Pomposello

Photograph by Sean Pomposello

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THE ROLE OF LANGUAGE We think language and language engineers our thinking.

Ideology is the process of production of meanings, signs and values in social life. A body of ideas characteristic of a particular social group or class. A systematically distorted communication. The confusion of linguistic and phenomenal reality (Eagleton, 1991). It is ridiculous to think of ideology and disregard language; our, and ideology’s, primary tool in any engagement with the world and ourselves. Social institutions such as the nation-state, schooling, gender, dispute settlement, and law hinge on the ideologisation of language use (A. Woolard & B. Schieffelin, 1994). Everything is built on language and vice versa.

Language is a pervasive agent, it imposes a certain worldview, exclusive of others. Even if you are open to the other, you automatically translate him into your horizon of understanding (Zizek, 2016). It is not static, it expands and

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infects, and is a most effective tool of discourse since it inhabits everyday tasks, conversations and thoughts. No word is innocent in its use, it possesses power - beyond political manifestations - and power is not something confined to armies and parliaments: it is an intangible network of force which weaves itself into our slightest gestures and most intimate utterances (Eagleton, 1991).

What we say, who says it, to whom and for what reasons.

Fascism tends to have its own peculiar lexicon (the term Lebensraum, sacrifice, blood and soil) (Eagleton, 1991) with the corresponding outcomes. In fiction novels, especially those dealing with an utopian or dystopian thematic, there is a specific structuring of language. Bokononism in Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, Nadsat in Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange and the forbidden “viviparous” vocabulary in Huxley’s Brave New World are good examples of this. Structure conditions ideology, which then reinforces and expands the original structure, distorting language in the name of making it more like itself (A. Woolard & B. Schieffelin, 1994).

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parent mother born viviparous God home family intimacies baby monogamy romance old age pain Christianity breastfeed pregnancy lover marriage love Some uncomfortable words in Brave New World.

A word’s connotation is a powerful peg in the discourse machine. The mere notion of parenthood, religious zeal or exclusivist relationships embarrasses and sickens the characters in Brave New World’s utopia. “Mother” acquires a new layer of meaning, of embedded fiction, that sustains their reality as much as it deforms it.

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However, we should be aware not only of the word itself but also the semantic field it belongs to, and pay attention not only to “demonised” words but also to the new and substituted ones. For example, between 1939 and 1948, Francisco Franco’s speeches where constituted approximately of 31.18% abstract concepts (Destiny, Peace, Unity, Mission, Authority, Supreme Interest); 12.09% religious terminology and 7.08% political terms that referred to themes like enemies (18.5%), Spanish history and tradition (9.67%) or the Civil War (7.82%) (Eiroa San Francisco, 2010). If we do that with Huxley’s novel, we would find three main pillars for the portrayed system: Reproduction, Industrialisation and Science (Biology). This simple task gives us a general outlook of an ideology’s guidelines upon which social interactions will be built and developed, with their own particularities and lexicon.

Busy, busy, busy, is what we Bokononists whisper whenever we think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.

Excerpt from Cat’s Cradle.

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Ideology has a project, and designs it, starting with language. It is not completely self-evident and objective, as it is open to subjective interpretation, conceptual traps and paradoxes; and in such ambiguity a wider meta-structure of distortion is assembled. Some at least of what we call ideological discourse is true at one level but not at another: true in its empirical content but deceptive in its force, or true in its surface meaning but false in its underlying assumptions (Eagleton, 1991).

Donald Rumsfeld: Belief in the inevitability of conflict can become one of its main causes. That is a truth. The other side of the coin, which is also true, is if you wish for peace, prepare for war.

Interviewer: But if both are true you can use that to justify anything.

Excerpt from The Unknown Known documentary.

On one hand, ideology is no mere set of abstract doctrines but the stuff which makes us uniquely what we are, (...) on the other hand, it presents itself as an ‘Everybody knows that’, a kind of anonymous universal truth (Eagleton, 1991).

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Photograph by Sean Pomposello

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Photograph by Sean Pomposello

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THE CORE OF IDEOLOGY

Phagocytosis: a biological process by which phagocytes (white blood cells) engulf other cells and/or pathogens and secrete the leftovers to their surroundings.

Phagocytosism is a decontextualising practice based on cellular behaviour, bringing the micro scale to the macro and blurring the boundaries between the human and cell levels. The phagocytist adopts the phagocyte’s controlled, tunnel “vision” in its interaction with the world. Phagocytosism can be viewed as a lived form of collaging, and the very nature of collage demands fragmented materials, or at least materials yanked out of context. Collage is, in a way, only an accentuated act of editing: picking through options and presenting a new arrangement (Shields, 2011).

Phagocytosism needed a voice as an ideology. The phagocytist had to be characterised not only in his

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attire, gestures and productions but also in his language. How and what does he think? How and what does he say? Is a banana to a phagocytist a banana or something else entirely? Does he call it ‘banana’?

They are making up their rassodocks (Russian minds) what to do that evening. The times are skorry (sorry). There is no law yet against some of the new vesches (things) they put into moloko (milk) to give one a horrorshow (good) feeling. Their pockets are full of deng (money) (O.Evans, 1971).

Excerpt from A Clockwork Orange A full-fledged language is incomprehensible for a nonspeaker and isolated from his discourse. It is set aside from his, on Zizek’s terms, horizon of understanding.

This alienation prevents the non-speaker from sensing an underlying ideology, and would deter him from ever joining such system.

A better strategy would be to intoxicate the existing, dominant, language - thus, ideology - with argot.

Nadsat in A Clockwork Orange is essentially a mixture of Russian and German vocabulary deformed to fit Anglo-Saxon pronunciation. For the Anglo-American reader the Slavic words connote communist

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dictatorship, the society of Darkness at Noon, without moral value and without hope (O.Evans, 1971).

And he, Burgess, makes the argot Russian, as if to warn his readers of what society may become if it communises itself along Soviet lines (O.Evans, 1971). Prison argot, however, utilises existing words but in different contexts and with new meanings. The most significant argot words or representations encapsulate the distinctive social roles played by prisoners in response to the problems of imprisonment (Awofeso, 2015).

rat - individual who betrays his fellow inmates kites - encrypted written messages between prisoners screw - guard poof - receptive male homosexual Examples of English prison argot Phagocytosism is not interested in what you are looking at but at what you see and what you do based on it. What do you distillate?

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Take a source, extract what appeals to you, discard the rest. Such an act of editorship is bound to reflect something of the individual doing the editing: a plaster cast of an aesthetic - not the actual thing, but the imprint of it (Shields, 2011).

Donald Rumsfeld: I want to make a list of things I’ve done at the Pentagon like getting rid of words: National missile defence, requirements, readiness ready for what?

Excerpt from The Unknown Known documentary.

Biological terminology is the foundation of the phagocytical argot. Scientific terms related to immunology, cellular processes and macromolecules invade our routine, small talk, grocery shopping and internet browsing. This vocabulary, completely decontextualised from its original purpose, is pasted into everyday speech. Under phagocytosism there is no differentiation between natural, biological language and the cultural, social one. In their day-today actions, people do not use scientific language, nor do they resort to logical procedures to demonstrate their theories (Neculau, 2010), this is no longer the case for a ‘phagocyte’.

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This is Joey. Joey is a phagocyte.

Photograph by Melina Hadjiargyrou

Joey can only see through that tube, pointed downwards.

That is his particular ‘“controlled” vision.

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Photograph by Sean Pomposello

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THE CONSTRUCTION OF LANGUAGE

Metaphor is for most people a device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical flourish - a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language. If we are right in suggesting that our conceptual system is largely metaphorical, then the way we think, what we experience, and what we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson, 2003).

Biological terminology becomes the poetic element that substitutes the ‘real’ image. The metaphorical identification is complete so the ‘imaginary’ image substitutes the ‘real’ one, omitted from any formulation.

To eat out, for example, would be to exocytose in phagolanguage.

Exocytosis is a process by which a cell expels molecules from its insides, that is the formal

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concept, but we take the notion of ‘outside the cell’ (exo and cyto) and relate it to an outdoor, sociable activity. The point is not to know and divulge the scientific definition, but to understand it based on context and use and let it sink in daily activities. The task of understanding does not basically amount to recognizing the form used, but rather to understanding it in a particular, concrete context, to understanding its meaning in a particular utterance (Shotter, 2015).

Lakoff, when analysing the metaphor ARGUMENT IS WAR in Metaphors We Live By, comments that “we talk about arguments that way because we conceive them that way - and we act according to the way we conceive things”.

If lunch is conceived as exocytosis, as a cellular process, how does that affect this social ritual? Language, in Goffman’s terms, is above all a matter of performance.

There is a front stage and a backstage. And regardless of the particular deviations the metaphor TO EAT OUT IS TO EXOCYTOSE may generate, in order to sustain the (science) fiction that is phagocytosism, the performers must wholeheartedly submerge themselves in their roles and respective argot. Impressions fostered in everyday performances are subject to disruption and while the performance offered by impostors and liars is in a sense quite flagrantly false and differs in this respect from ordinary performances, both are similar in the care their performers must exert in order to maintain the impression that is fostered (Goffman, 1956).

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Photograph by Sean Pomposello

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LYN CASSADY You were in there for hours.

What colour were the chairs?

BOB Um...brown?

LYN CASSADY They were green.

How many lights are there in this room?

Bob starts to look around.

LYN CASSADY (CONT’D) A Super Soldier wouldn’t need to look.

He would just know.

BOB A Super Soldier?

LYN CASSADY A Jedi Warrior.

He would know where all the lights were.

He could walk through a room and tell you how many power outlets there were. People are walking around with their eyes closed. At Level One we were trained to instantly absorb all details.

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BOB (BEAT) What’s a Jedi Warrior?

LYN CASSADY You’re looking at one.

BOB You’re a Jedi Warrior?

LYN CASSADY That’s correct.

Excerpt from The Men Who Stare At Goats’ script.

Phagocytosism introduces a thread of science fiction into the dominant, humdrum discourse by acting as an extravaganza. The sound of the biological lexicon already breaks with ordinary conversational expectations. Metaphors that are imaginative and creative are capable of giving us a new understanding of our experience (Lakoff & Johnson, 2003). Thus, they can give new meaning to our pasts, to our daily activity, and to what we know and believe (Lakoff & Johnsen, 2003).

There are no people, only phagocytes, no stations, only lymph nodes, no arguments, only lysosomes, no death, only apoptosis, no feeling of betrayal, only anaphylaxis.

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Rather than language considered in terms of previously existing patterns or systems formed from ‘already spoken words’, the focus is upon the formative uses to which ‘words in their speaking’ are put, and upon the nature of the relational ‘situations’ thus created between those in communicative contact with each other in their speakings (Shotter, Conversational Realities: Constructing Life Through Language, 1994).

To live by the CHEMICAL metaphor would mean that your problems have a different kind of reality for you.

A temporary solution would be an accomplishment rather than a failure. Problems would be part of the natural order of things rather than disorders to be “cured”.

Excerpt from Metaphors We Live By. Science fiction generally doesn’t explain why the world is the way it is, laying out a rational graph of causality right at the beginning of a story. The reader, or spectator, is thrown right into a universe without a clue. Nonetheless, the author keeps a minimum level of relatability to the reader’s own fiction - original ideology - so he can slowly access the new fictional

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Photograph by Sean Pomposello

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Photograph by Sean Pomposello

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worldview and eventually figure it out. Phagocytosism yanks the realm of science fiction from the experiential realm of novels and film, escapist leisure, and introduces it to other, actually any, aspects.

“But, alas,” the Director shook his head, “we can’t bokanovskify indefinitely.”

“I’ve been feeling rather out of sorts lately,” Fanny explained. “Dr. Wells advised me to have a Pregnancy Substitute.”

“Not nearly so pneumatic as Lenina. Oh, not nearly.”

“Perfect!” cried Fanny enthusiastically. She could never resist Lenina’s charm for long. “And what a perfectly sweet Malthusian belt!”

Excerpts from Brave New World.

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Photograph by Sean Pomposello

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Photograph by Sean Pomposello

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Photograph by Sean Pomposello

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LANGUAGE IN ACTION Imagine a culture where an argument is viewed as a dance, the participants are seen as performers, and the goal is to perform in a balanced and aesthetically pleasing way (Lakoff & Johnson, 2003). In such a culture, people would carry out arguments differently but we would probably not view them as arguing at all: they would simply be doing something different (Lakoff & Johnson, 2003). How would a train station work or look like if thought of as a lymph node? Would we even recognise it as a ‘station’?

Would we get an adrenaline shot whenever we felt betrayed or heartbroken (anaphylaxis in phagocytical terms)?

Phagocytosism starts by introducing its language in inner monologues and informal conversations, for which; for the sake of the early adapters, a glossary was created. The following excerpts belong to two of the

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films produced for this project: Phagotour of Oxford Street and Introduction to Phagolanguage. The former presents a female voice talking inside the viewer’s head - who is referred to as ‘you’ and ‘fellow phagocyte’ who gives him her general impressions of Oxford Street while the viewer walks around that space. The latter is a friendly conversation between two anonymous phagocytes.

The repercussions of designing a language, or any form of communication, are only visible after a period of time and can take many forms like production systems, social rituals, consumer goods, culture, infrastructure, censorship and institutions. ‘Culture’ in an anthropological sense would include, for example, the financial infrastructure of sport, whereas ideology would concern itself more particularly with the signs, meanings and values encoded in sporting activities (Eagleton, 1991). These respond to the ideology’s core and ‘project’; for which language has to, through its design, create the necessary cognitive and social space for them to actually take place.

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Photograph by Laura Moreno

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check glossary in the annex

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Phagocytes on their own or in their cluster, ingesting, exocytosing in nearby cafés, food chains...

Lots of potential antigens here! The bags, the buses, the bicycles, the cranes, the umbrellas... *voice starts humming* So many phagocytes in this street! White Blood Cell! We end up phagosoming ourselves in the mass. No wonder Oxford Circus lymph node is overcrowded, almost ALWAYS. I hate it.

Pretty cold isn’t it? I hope you are wearing a good membrane!

Me? Oh, that’s sweet but don’t worry! I’m just a voice in your head. I’m safe.

Mmm... this is a very good place for absorption, though I feel it can be a little too much. So many stimuli, all at once... you feel endocytosed by the end of the day I guess.

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check glossary in the annex

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* eavesdropping * ... if you let me belong to your cluster that is.

Oh yeah! I’d love to be in a cluster with you! As long as you are not bacteria or a pathogen it’s all good.

I try not to be a microorganism.

Yeah, I hope we don’t have any lysosomes... I mean, certain kinds of lysosomes, that aren’t that intense, actually help phagocytes bind.

Of course, you have to engulf everyone, if you let it be there will be loads of cell debris everywhere.

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Photograph by Sean Pomposello

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Photograph by Sean Pomposello

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REFERENCES A. Woolard, K., & B. Schieffelin, B. (1994). Language Ideology. Annual Review of Anthropology (23), 55-82.

Awofeso, N. (10th of september 2015). Prison argot and penal discipline: Journal of Mundane Behaviour. Viewed the 22nd of october 2016, from http://mundanebehavior.org/prison-argot-and-penal-discipline Burgess, A. (1972). A Clockwork Orange. London: Penguin Books Ltd. Dower, J. (Direction). (2015). My Scientology Movie [Film].

Eagleton, T. (1991). Ideology: An Introduction. London: Verso.

Eiroa San Francisco, M. (2010). Palabra de Franco: Lenguaje político e ideología en los textos doctrinales. Actas III Congreso Internacional Coetánea. Historia del Tiempo Presente. Madrid: Universidad Carlos III.

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Fiennes, S. (Direction). (2013). A Pervert’s Guide To Ideology [Film].

Goffman, E. (1956). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.

Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Social Sciences Research Centre.

Heslov, G. (Direction). (2009). The Men Who Stare At Goats [Film].

Huxley, A. (1932). Brave New World. London: Penguin Random House.

Lakoff, G., & Johnsen, M. (2003). Metaphors We Live By. London: The University of Chicago Press.

Morris, E. (Direction). (2013). The Unkown Known [Film].

Neculau, A. (july 2010). Science and Ideology: the Role of the Political Context. (M. L. Center, Ed.) Viewed the 22nd of october 2016, by European Ph.D on Social Representations and Communication: http://www.europhd.eu/html/_onda02/07/18.00.00.00.shtml O.Evans, R. (1971). Nadsat: The Argot and Its Implications in Anthony Burgess’ “A Clockwork Orange”. Journal of Modern Literature , I (3), 406-410.

Shields, D. (2011). Reality Hunger: A Manifesto. New York: Vintage Books.

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Shotter, J. (1994). Conversational Realities: Constructing Life Through Language. New Hampshire: SAGE Publications Ltd. Shotter, J. (10th of july 2015). Wittgenstein And The Everyday: From Radical Hiddenness To “Nothing Is Hidden”; From Representation To Participation: Journal of Mundane Behaviour.

Viewed the 22nd of october 2016, from http://mundanebehavior.org/wittgenstein-and-the-everyday-from-radical-hiddenness-to-nothing-is-hidden-from-representation-to-participation Sontag, S. (1978). Illness as a Metaphor. New York: McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd. Vonnegut, K. (2008). Cat’s Cradle. London: Penguin Classics.

Zizek, S. (29th of july 2016). Language and Reality. Viewed the 22nd of october 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7f8hyT46fo

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Photograph by Sean Pomposello

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ANNEX

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PHAGOCYTICAL GLOSSARY

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