Word, World, Flesh

Stephanie K. Dunning in the acknowledgements to Queer in Black and White: Interraciality, Same Sex Desire, and Contemporary African American Culture signals the contributions of a care giver — a type of acknowledgement that one rarely sees.

In addition to my friends and colleagues, I'd like to acknowledge a few people who played a more indirect role in the publication of this book. I must give credit to Crystal Haymes, a positively amazing child-care provider, who came into our lives and transformed everything for the better. Without her cheerful, reliable, and excellent child care, I would not have been able to complete this project.

I want to be slightly naughty and tie this acknowledgement to the paean to swearing that is highlighted in her epilogue "Reading Robert Reid-Pharr"

From that moment, my love of Robert Reid-Pharr's writing began. How can one not love a writer who can academically deploy the word "fuck"? I am a person who says fuck, cock, pussy, shit, and muthafucka with great regularity. I delight in introducing my students to the powerful rhetorical pleasure of actually saying precisely what several adjectives and a discrete noun mean to one simple word: fuck. (My students, I must say, are not always as delighted.) What the use of such frank language suggested to me was that there was a place for me in academe — a place for me in language — that I had previously thought was unavailable.

And what name do I invoke to tie these passages together? Bakhtin.

I find hilarious, Nicole C. Kear's rules in the Salon article Mommy’s got a potty mouth which reminds us that there are elaborate discursive dimensions even in the employment of the most course language.

I'm sure my perspective will change as they get older, but my children are still mastering basic language skills, and you have to learn the rules before you can bend them. Unlike other parents I know, I have a perfectly traditional perspective here: I don't think it's OK for my kids to swear, not at home, not at third-grade recess, not on special occasions. Until they can scan iambic pentameter or explain dramatic irony, my kids will have to keep their language G-rated.

In her conclusion, Kear appears to be channelling Dunning with profit.

And so, apparently, will I. The only question is, how? Resolutions are made to be broken, cuss jars are no deterrent, and substitutions only remind me of what I’m missing. It would appear I’m going to have to kick this habit with good, old-fashioned willpower, by biting my tongue. Until bedtime, at least. After all, I’m only fucking human.

Merde! always translated as "Break a leg!"

And so for day 2032
06.07.2012