Cite Spoken Quotes

Every sign, linguistic or nonlinguistic, spoken or written (in the usual sense of this opposition), as a small or large unity, can be cited, put between quotation marks; thereby it can break with every given context, and engender infinitely new contexts in an absolutely nonsaturable fashion. This does not suppose that the mark is valid outside its context, but on the contrary that there are only contexts without any center of absolute anchoring. This citationality, duplication, or duplicity, this iterability of the mark is not an accident or anomaly, but is that (normal/abnormal) without which a mark could no longer even have a so-called “normal” functioning. What would a mark be that one could not cite? And whose origin could not be lost on the way?

If performativity requires a power to effect or enact what one names, then who will be the “one” with such a power, and how will such a power be thought? How might we account for the injurious word within such a framework, the word that not only names a social subject, but constructs that subject in the naming, and constructs that subject through a violating interpellation? Is it the power of a “one” to effect such an injury through the wielding of the injurious name, or is that a power accrued through time which is concealed at the moment that a single subject utters its injurious terms? Does the “one” who speaks the term cite the term, thereby establishing him or herself as the author while at the same time establishing the derivative status of that authorship? Is a community and history of such speakers not magically invoked at the moment in which that utterance is spoken? And if and when that utterance brings injury, is it the utterance or the utterer who is the cause of the injury, or does that utterance perform its injury through a transitivity that cannot be reduced to a causal or intentional process originating in a singular subject?

Nor are languages any respecters of frontiers. If you drew a map of Europe based on languages it would bear scant resemblance to a conventional map. Switzerland would disappear, becoming part of the surrounding dominions of French, Italian, and German but for a few tiny pockets for Romansh (or Rumantsch or Rhaeto-Romanic as it is variously called), which is spoken as a native language by about half the people in the Graubünden district (or Grisons district—almost everything has two names in Switzerland) at the country’s eastern edge. This steep and beautiful area, which takes in the ski resorts of St. Moritz, Davos, and Klosters, was once effectively isolated from the rest of the world by its harsh winters and forbidding geography. Indeed, the isolation was such that even people in neighboring valleys began to speak different versions of the language, so that Romansh is not so much one language as five fragmented and not always mutually intelligible dialects. A person from the valley around Sutselva will say, “Vagned nà qua” for “Come here,” while in the next valley he will say, “Vegni neu cheu” [cited in The Economist, February 27, 1988]. In other places people will speak the language in the same way but spell it differently depending on whether they are Catholic or Protestant.

Significantly, the story of Ps 116 closely resembles the story of Jesus as told in Phil 2:6–11. That hymn portrays Jesus as one who emptied himself and took on the form of a “slave” (Phil 2:7),[12] “humbled,” or lowered, himself,[13] and became obedient unto “death” (2:8). And it goes on to declare that God regarded Jesus’ death as precious and thus vindicated him (“Because of this, God greatly exalted him”—2:9). Paul evokes the story of Ps 116 because it resembles the story of Jesus. Thus it is Jesus whom Paul has in mind in quoting the psalm. In Paul’s mind, Jesus is the protagonist of the story told there; he is the one who took on the form of a slave, who humbled himself even more, who gave himself for others, suffered, and offered his life in obedience to God, and who was vindicated and exalted. Thus in Paul’s reading of the psalm, it is Christ who speaks the cited words, which can be rendered: “I have been faithful, therefore I have spoken.”[

Language had a role to play in all this, the written language of course, but especially the spoken form. Some of the most problematic words created unimaginable difficulties, such as ‘gentleman’, ‘lady’ or ‘miss’, to cite only three. These words were rightly considered significant obstacles in the transition to communism. Each communist country had had its own experience of its language, often strange, as in the case of Albania. This little country, generally famous for its failings and backwardness, took an unexpected approach to these three words. Whereas the word ‘gentleman’ disappeared from currency in the very first phase of socialism, like in the Soviet Union, the word ‘lady’ had a certain staying power. But the nicest surprise turned out to be the word ‘miss’. There was a determined effort to replace it, because in Albanian it carried the affectionate connotations of the word ‘mother’, especially in primary schools. Despite the annoyance it caused, it was used by tens of thousands of little children instead of the word ‘teacher’. Efforts to supplant it failed one after another. The children stubbornly continued to call their teachers ‘miss’. It was this army of countless toddlers that proved indomitable, and the word ‘miss’ with its striking

I will be his Father, and he will be my Son” (2 Sam. 7: 14 LXX in Heb. 1: 5)—were spoken to the Son by the Father not at the occasion of his resurrection or enthronement, but at or prior to the time when God commanded his angels, “Let all the angels of God worship him” (Heb. 1: 6 citing LXX Deut. 32: 43/Ps. 96: 7).

In Psalm 30:5, King David declared, “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” In Psalm 30:11, David proclaimed, “You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have put off my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness.” In Psalm 16:11, David said, “You will show me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” In Nehemiah 8:10, Nehemiah stated, “Do not sorrow, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” In Philippians 4:4, the Apostle Paul proclaimed, “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice.” PEACE: When the enemy attacks you with anxiety and worry, reply to him by citing the following scriptures. In Psalm 29:11, David declared, “The Lord will give strength to His people; the Lord will bless His people with peace.” In Isaiah 26:3, the Prophet Isaiah said, “You (God) will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because He trusts in You.” In John 16:33, Jesus stated, “These things I have spoken unto you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” In John 14:27, Jesus proclaimed, “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give unto you. Not as the world giveth, give I onto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” In Ephesians 2:14, Paul declared, “For He Himself (Jesus) is our peace.” In Philippians 4:6-7, Paul said, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

When he was twenty-four, André floated down to Saigon and returned with a wife standing upon his prow. Eugenia was the eldest child of Pierre Cazeau, the stately, arrogant owner of the Hôtel Continental, on rue Catinat. She was also deaf. Her tutors had spent the first thirteen years of her life attempting to teach her how to speak like a hearing person, as was dictated by the popular pedagogy of the time. Her tongue was pressed, her cheeks prodded, countless odd intonations were coaxed forth from her lips. Cumbersome hearing horns were thrust into her ears, spiraling upward like ibex horns. It was a torture she finally rejected for the revolutionary freedom of sign, which she taught herself from an eighteenth-century dictionary by Charles-Michel de l’Épée that she had stumbled upon accidentally on the shelf of a Saigon barbershop.1 Based on the grammatical rules of spoken language, L’Épée’s Methodical Sign System was unwieldy and overly complex: many words, instead of having a sign on their own, were composed of a combination of signs. “Satisfy” was formed by joining the signs for “make” and “enough.” “Intelligence” was formed by pairing “read” with “inside.” And “to believe” was made by combining “feel,” “know,” “say,” “not see,” plus another sign to denote its verbiage. Though his intentions may have been noble, L’Epée’s system was inoperable in reality, and so Eugenia modified and shortened the language. In her hands, “belief” was simplified into “feel no see.” Verbs, nouns, and possession were implied by context. 1 “So unlikely as to approach an impossibility,” writes Røed-Larsen of this book’s discovery, in Spesielle ParN33tikler (597). One could not quite call her beautiful, but the enforced oral purgatory of her youth had left her with an understanding of life’s inherent inclination to punish those who least deserve it. Her black humor in the face of great pain perfectly balanced her new husband’s workmanlike nature. She had jumped at the opportunity to abandon the Saigon society that had silently humiliated her, gladly accepting the trials of life on a backwater, albeit thriving, plantation. Her family’s resistance to sending their eldest child into the great unknowable cauldron of the jungle was only halfhearted—they were in fact grateful to be unburdened of the obstacle that had kept them from marrying off their two youngest (and much more desirable) daughters. André painstakingly mastered Eugenia’s language. Together, they communed via a fluttering dance of fingertips to palms, and their dinners on the Fig. 4.2. L’Épée’s Methodical Sign System From de l’Épée, C.-M. (1776), Institution des sourds et muets: par la voie des signes méthodiques, as cited in Tofte-Jebsen, B., Jeg er Raksmey, p. 61 veranda were thus rich, wordless affairs, confluences of gestures beneath the ceiling fan, the silence broken only by the clink of a soup spoon, the rustle of a servant clearing the table, or the occasional shapeless moan that accentuated certain of her sentences, a relic from her years of being forced to speak aloud.

And, truly, the case against Christianity is plain and damning. Never, during the whole of its history has it spoken in a clear voice against slavery; always, as we have seen, its chief supporters have been pronounced believers. They have cited religious teaching in its defence, they have used all the power of the Church for its maintenance. Naturally, in a world in which the vast majority are professing Christians, believers are to be found on the side of humanity and justice. But to that the reply is plain. Men are human before they are Christians; both history and experience point, to the constant lesson of the many cases in which the claims of a developing humanity override those of an inculcated religious teaching. But the damning fact against Christianity is, not that it found slavery here when it arrived, and accepted it. as a settled institution, not even that it is plainly taught in its 'sacred' books, but, that it deliberately created a new form of slavery, and for hundreds of years invested it with a brutality greater than that which existed centuries before. A religion which could tolerate this slavery, argue for it, and fight for it, cannot by any stretch of reasoning be credited with an influence in forwarding emancipation. Christianity no more abolished slavery than it abolished witchcraft, the belief in demonism, or punishment for heresy. It was the growing moral, and social sense of mankind that compelled Christians and Christianity to give up these and other things.