Re: Book: Lunatic Lovers of Language

Raymond Brown wrote:

Sally Caves wrote:

> >Here's a sample statement; all conlangs fall into either one of
> >two categories:  "On the one hand, an intellect, a rational,
> >analytic, and logical understanding, a utopian-constructive
> >one which aims to organise the world, and is masculine in
> >essence.  On the other, a grasp that is intuitive, instinctive,
> >spontaneous, globalising, sensual, primitive-infantile, fanciful,
> >subject to hidden drives, in short hysterical, all of which are
> >the defining characteristics of women, children, and lunatics."
> >Page 24.
>
> Good grief!
>
> I have met women who are actually intellectual; I have female students who
> are far more rational than many of their male contemporaries & who are well
> able to analyze problems & clearly show logical understanding while their
> male contemporaries are content with half-baked waffle.  I have met women
> who are idealistic & utopian and are certainly good organizers.  They all
> have struck me as feminine.  To denote these traits as 'masculine in
> essence' is just myopic narrow-minded & ill-informed sexism IMHO.
I honestly have no idea what she thinks she's doing.  When I first read
the first two chapters of her book a while back, I thought she was being
"clever"; trying to speak, as it were, with the voice of the past, in
the prejudices of the past, including using the term "lunatic" in a
quasi-laudatory way (God's fools and that kind of thing).  As I
continued,
I saw that she had a real chip on her shoulder about language inventors
and usurpation, that it was a goal of the book to restore linguistics to
the real linguists (hence the section called "In Defence of Natural
Languages").  I really take her to task in my on-line article, but I
also fault Jeffrey Schnapp, medievalist and Hildegard specialist, for
simply repeating her insults as though they are gospel.
>
> I've come across too many males whose behavior is intuitive, instinctive,
> spontaneous, sensuual, primitive-infantile (far too many of those),
> fanciful and subject to hidden drives.  None of these creatures has ever
> struck me as being remotely feminine.
>
> >The one is represented by Nikolas Marr.  The other
> >is represented by Helene Smith.
>
> I see - what about all the other language modellers, language constructors
> etc?  I guess they would sort of spoil her argument :)
She hasn't done her homework, Ray.  She loftily ignores J.R.R. Tolkien,
an omission that is patently curious, especially since she devotes a
special chapter to science fiction writers like Jack Vance and Samuel
Delaney.  _Native Tongue_ had already come out by Suzette Haden Elgin
and she ignores that, and the publication of _Fous du langage_ and
Elgin's _Laadan_ coincided; so that may explain why Yaguello ignores
her.  But it would have been convenient to ignore this woman linguist
and conlanger if what one wants to say is that woman's "language
invention" is lunatic, hysterical, infantile, and best represented by
a half-baked medium (Helene Smith) who claimed to be speaking Martian
and was really only redesigning French.


> >The whole book is full of these binary constructions and aporia.
>
> Is it?  You mean perpetuating the old dualist nonsense: good, bright,
> strong, living, positive, MALE; evil, dark, weak, dead, negative, FEMALE?
> As we say in our neck of the world - Cobblers!!
Not only that, it's dreadfully cute.  "I'm not making this up," she
says, and other chirpy things.  A lot of it is just airy fairy lit-crit
maunderings.  I really resent the book, I wonder if you can tell! <G>


> >My super-compact review: a Francophone Esperantophobic lit.crit.
> Oy, there's nothing wrong in being a francophone - some of my best friends
> are  :)
Of course not, but French literary criticism--in some circles, has
acquired a reputation for being deliberately self-conscious and
precious.  Not that I never pay my reverent respects to Derrida and
Foucault!  <GGGGGGG>

Sally-
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SALLY CAVES
scaves@frontiernet.net
http://english.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/languages.html
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Niffodyr tweluenrem lis teuim an.
"The gods have retractible claws."
                                from _The Gospel of Bastet_
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