This morning, on the way to the farmer's market, there was a woman standing on the corner with a handwritten sign that stated "Honk for Peace." There were many peace-loving drivers who obliged, and each time someone honked, the woman yelled with enthusiasm. It was as if with each honk of the horn, she believed peace was actually being achieved.
I want to be cynical about this woman's efforts, that she's not doing much but generating a lot of noise pollution (increased--to good effect, I thought--by the man who sits by the traffic light and asks for spare change respoding with loud singing, including a moving hare krishna chant). But then, I wonder whether my cynicism is right. I've been talking to my students all semester about how language does do something, that it does effect change. Thursday, we talked about the Rwandan genocide and the newspaper publishers who were tried as war criminals for promoting hate propaganda, that their constant references to the Tsutsi as "cockroaches" led, in part, to the genocide. So there is language altering material reality.
Also, my friend G. is a potter and spends weeks by himself firing work at his place near Hanksville. He told me about how someone asked him whether he'd ever felt an earthquake there. He wanted to say yes, but he stopped, thought for a moment, and replied, "I'm not really sure. I think I have, but I've never told anyone about it." So, the experience was uncertain because he'd never put it into language.
And, of course, there is theory about this. Take Saussure: "Without language thought is a vague uncharted nebula. There are no pre-existing ideas, and nothing is distinct before the appearance of language."
So, is the woman with her incitement to honking doing anything? Clearly change can begin with protest, with discourse, but how does that change happen? Is it just about the aggregate--that if enough people honk, someone will listen? Or does the act of discourse (the honking, in this case) change something in the world?
A while back, I heard some commentary about the media attention directed towards Cindy Sheehan's Crawford, TX protest, questioning the relevance of the attention. Why? the commentator asked, are we focusing so much time on something so anecdotal. Someone responded that 40 years ago Rosa Parks was just an anecdote.
So, readers, if you have thoughts about how anecdotes and honking become material change (or whether they actually can), let's hear them.
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2 comments:
The fact that you are blogging about this woman and I am reading your blog and commenting on it suggests that this woman is affecting the universe in a positive, powerful way. She has gotten you (us) thinking about peace, protest, change, language, and the concept of reality itself. Wow. Not bad for a stupid sign.
The other thing to think about is how any historical change takes place. Sometimes, things coalesce sort of quickly, but usually there's a huge backstory. Women suffrage? Ninety years of fairly constant effort by the women's movement. Who is to say what a single sign, participating in a single protest, writing a single letter, adds up to? And as a part of a big anti-war protest, maybe the sign has the big plus going for it--collective action.
We saw this woman this morning, too. We honked.
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