Thought experiment -- Suppose it is 50 years in the future. We have
continued our intellectual struggle with gender and identity, and here is
the latest thinking: Every person as an individual should best be thought
of as dual gender. This position is based on biology, endocrinology,
sociology, psychologiy, anthropology, etc. Therefore, there are no more
gender specific pronouns -- he and she have been replaced with we, and his
and her have been replaced with wir. "We" captures the pluralistic nature
of gender, and "wir" compines we, his,and her. The old we now becomes
"wwe".
Example -- the perfectly ordinary
Present Clinton returned to Washington, and he immediately convened his
advisors.
becomes:
Present Clinton returned to Washington, and we immediately convened wir
advisors.
This scenario is neither far fetched nor hard to accept, actually. WWe
just dont practice it currently.
Here are my questions -- to what degree should I, writing in 1999, be held
accountable for my lack of use of we and wir? Does the fact that we and
wir are not a part of my writing mean that i would reject them if they
existed, or rather only that they do not exist yet? Or is my ignorance
really a form of false consciousness, that i need to be held accountable
for? That is, should i have been trying to express the ideas of we and wir
somehow using the writing conventions that i did have? Or is it a sign of
false consciousess in my culture that affects everything i say or do, no
matter how peripheral it might appear to be? Should we therefore go back
and edit in we and wir? Or would that be our own form of false
consciousness?
I'm not trying to start a fight. I'm working with some very old texts that
are saying some very valuable things in non-20th century ways. How do i
need to handle those texts, so that my readers can see the meat and not the
vast difference in styles and cultures? My thought experiment is designed
to put myself into the shoes, of, say, Duns Scotus and see how it would
feel to have my words understood in a contemporary polticial way. Not that
I expect anyone to be reading any of my words 700 years from now, or 7
years from now, for that matter :-)
your thoughts?
gary shank
shank who-is-at duq.edu