Recently I've been doing a lot of rather nebulous thinking that can basically be boiled down to a simple question: who's allowed to say what, and, to whom are they allowed to say it? What makes one's opinion or point of view valid? Can you say something provocative if you back it up with research and demonstrate a genuine knowledge of the topic? Is it okay to use the internet to spew random thoughts, or should we be applying academic rigor to the throwaway rants and political statements we all indulge in occasionally on facebook and similar?
The question of the "right" to speak is particularly troubling when one's unavoidably out of context. No matter how long I live here and how politically aware I am, no matter how many books I read or episodes of Panorama I watch, I will never be British. This will never be my country. Does that mean I can't critique it? Can I direct or act in a British play, or should I confine myself to work by American authors? Can I speak to my experience, or do I need to sit silently, because I haven't somehow earned the stripes necessary to chime in? This is an issue, to a degree, of enfranchisement. I pay taxes, but I don't have the right to vote. If something annoys me, I can't take direct action through a ballot. I can't write to my MP, I can't run for any office myself. The only recourse is to generate my own narrative, to say what I see and what I experience.
We all speak – each of us – from a deeply personal position that is the result of our upbringing and life experiences. The idea that anything is ultimately knowable in a completely impartial sense is absurd. There is no via negativa I know of that can completely subtract the subject. And why would we want that, anyway? It's the variety that's interesting in the first place.
It strikes me that the very people who object to expressions of opinion that differ from theirs tend to react in deeply confused ways, using rhetoric that is identical, if inverted, to that of the speaker they're attacking. Who is this helping? Why are we so terrified of conversation? Why do we want to rob people of the right to their own narratives? Obviously there's a special category for hate speech – Nick Griffin's controversial appearance on Question Time rightly highlighted this issue. But as the vast majority of us are not BNP supporters, or the sort of right-wing fundamentalists attacking the scientific content of Texas textbooks, surely we are capable, as intelligent adults, of civil discourse?
Maybe not. Recently I listened to an interview on NPR with Richard Dawkins. He was discussing his new book, The Greatest Show on Earth, and repeatedly had to fend off callers who wanted to talk to him about a sort of intermediary position, between religiosity and atheism, with a non-interventionist God, or in more abstract terms, some transcendental presence. Many of these callers, after describing what they were talking about, suggested that this might be a different understanding of "god". Dawkins shut them down, refusing to engage in the debate in terms other than his own. God, he argues, is understood by the vast majority to mean an interventionist, omnipotent being in the monotheistic sense, to whom one prays, etc. Using this word to discuss some more general metaphysical dimension is willfully misleading. But since when is language static? Could not deists claim it is unfair to allow religionists to hijack and appropriate the word? Why does a man of Dawkins' indisputable brilliance need to clamp down on the terms of a debate in which he is the leading voice? The same issue comes up with authors – Kundera and Beckett to name a few – who are so preoccupied with protecting their legacy that they cannot relinquish control and allow their works to become part of a general conversation about literature and culture. Why are so many brilliant people scared of letting their work drop into the general flow of discourse?
When I arrived in the UK and began to consume large amounts of British media, I couldn't help but notice the repeated and consistent use of the word "bully" – every newspaper seemed to contain an article about "bullying." I've discussed this with American friends and we generally agree that in the US we talk about harassment where the UK media uses bullying. American bullying is saved for playgrounds and childish, unsubstantiated acts of aggression and cruelty. Harassment, by contrast feels adult, premeditated; you harass a colleague to a particular aim, to make her feel small, to intimidate, etc. As I've observed –and now experienced – the bear pit of British public discourse, it seems to me that bullying is actually quite an apt turn of phrase. The speed with which the political becomes intimately personal is enough to give one whiplash. Look at "In the Loop" and its companion TV show – it's genius and I love it, but I can't help feeling disturbed by it. This deeply personal bullying in environments that should be about contesting issues, not attacking individuals, seems to produce silence or more vitriol, which means that however you shake it, the "bully" has won. Respond, and you stick you jump into the mud bath. Remain silent, and the bully claims victory.
So what's the answer? I don't know, but I'm reminded of the advice of a director I once worked with whose notes frequently included a reminder to "hold on tightly, let go lightly," a suggestion that it's possible to stand firm but not impervious, an acknowledgement of liminality as the space where we really, if we're honest, seem to do most of our living.
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