Playing the Douzaines
In an otherwise pedantic article on French street dialects, Marc Hatzfield, writing in Eurozine here, relates that African American verbal games are big in the slums of France, among the mostly foreign lower classes.
Only a philosopher could write the following paragraph, but do try to read it—he’s getting at something fascinating:
Slam, like the dig and verbal sparring, legitimizes verbal artistry in an environment that keeps exponents of the written word at a distance: slam is the acrobatics of the spoken word raised to the level of a fine art. In this sense, it may well be reconnecting with certain cultural phenomena that predate the written word, a furious, destructive archaism that relocates the present moment – the now – at the centre of the world by rejecting the arguments and expertise of organized memory and capital. In this way it restores pleasure in the instantaneous and the volatile to both authors and listeners, qualities that are tending to disappear from creative possibilities.
The important idea here, for me at least, is that the shift to oral culture is also a shift to the valuing of the "instantaneous", in other words, performance. What is said becomes less important than how it is said.
This is neither good nor bad, but carries challenges and opportunities for believers wishing to follow Jesus. For instance, when performance directs the message, the messenger gains in importance, relative to the content of the message. Which means less room (if there ever was any) for hypocrisy.
Jesus, after all, tells us that we will be witnesses (noun), not that we will do witnessing (verb). We are to be the good news: they will know by our love. To tell the good news, while being bad news in our lives is an insult.
Anyway, back to the point: playing the dozens is an African-American performance art. (Over the many years I’ve been enmeshed in black culture, I’ve never developed much verbal dexterity.) But our global and print cultures are changing in the direction of performance, those who’ve learned how to speak from early childhood will increasingly be at an advantage as messengers.
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"What is said becomes less important than how it is said. This is neither good nor bad."
Really? I'm not diminishing the importance of how, but the valuation of image over substance strikes me as an objectively bad thing. Thoughts?
-I've learned that truth doesn't change lives when it is repugnant. People prefer ignorance to morally smelly certainty.
-I've learned that passion for absolute truth is partly a personality trait. Some people are more comfortable with an incoherent worldview, as long as they can go about their lives in a way that works for them.
I don't think either concession diminishes the value of truth, but—back to the case at hand—the culture-wide shift we're seeing these days, that of image over substance, is too big to waste our time fighting.
Rather, we've got to work with the system. It's an opportunity, because in a previous generation, one more committed to truth, people were also more willing to separate intellectual assent from lifestyle change. So the cultural change in the weather can help correct for that.