Pamela's Blog 20

Published on Tuesday, June 9, 2009 by Nas2EndWork.org

“Is There Such A Thing As "Voicelessness"?”

by Pamela Satterwhite

To the degree to which a person conforms he cannot hear the voice of his conscience, much less act upon it. (Erich Fromm, The Sane Society)

Eduardo Galeano has one of those “voices” that you want to curl up in – not just because of its calm mellifluousness, or the driving poetry it rolls along on, but because of the size and scope of his ‘heart.’ As a person considered ‘sludge’ by this system, I can feel ‘seen,’ for a moment, listening to him.

So I particularly appreciated the treat Amy Goodman et al. bestowed on us this morning * when she devoted the entire hour of Democracy Now! to an interview with the great Uruguayan writer and journalist.

And it was a treat, thoroughly, bottom to top.

But I find myself disagreeing with, or rather wanting to modify, at least one thing he said:

It’s a mistake to say one is “a voice of the voiceless.” Everyone has a voice, but not everyone can be heard.

I know what he means, and on one level I agree. But I don’t think he appreciates, living as he does in “the global South,” the degree of our dilemma here in America.

I think Herbert Marcuse was right, that we’ve internalized the voice of ‘the master’ to an extent perhaps unparalleled anywhere else in the world – an extent unheard of in regions ‘not-West,’ where ‘the people’ have no illusions about the duplicitousness of their various states.

Does the ‘worker’ who’s internalized the voice of his ‘boss,’ and who therefore runs his own body into the ground, have a 'voice'?

Does the little child who has internalized the voice of her parent, and who therefore believes that she must ‘deserve it’ when she is ‘punished’ – does that child have a 'voice'?

And we can iterate this confusion endlessly here in the heart, or rather, the belly, of the beast.

When my son was little, one of his best friends was ‘mad’ about something called “Mad-Libs,” a word game in which you were given a story with nouns, verbs, and adjectives omitted so that the child could, in a sense, make up her own story.

Well, when it comes to abusiveness, class society seems endlessly inventive but really just delivers one variation after another of the same ol’ same ol’ song of sorrow it squeezes out to each new generation to repel thought and smother dreams. We could do a “mad-lib” about that, fer sure.

One day, the _____ decided to follow _____ heart and make _____ life more fun and _____. No sooner had _____ taken the first step down the Road to the Fulfillment of Dreams, than _____ found that _____ stood smack dab in the middle with a big sign that said, “_____,” and with a big _____ that _____ _____ so much and made _____ feel so _____, that the next time _____ heart spoke _____ _____ instead, telling _____ that having _____ was a _____ and _____ thing to _____ in your _____ to be free.

Tillie Olsen wrote a book called Silences and I was so grateful to her for naming that reality, for showing us how the overwhelming pressures of this system can swallow us up, can take even the ability ‘to think’ away from us.

But there’s also this: sometimes we don’t know what we think, or even that we think. We’re so bombarded by the voice of the master – in commercials, in our schools, in our homes – the voice that dictates ‘allowable debate,’ that tells us what we had better ‘think,’ if we want…to be accepted…to be rewarded…to not be punished…

…Sometimes we have to establish…‘distance’ – a holy, reverent, protected space, a suspension of the bombardment, in order to hear the voice of ‘nature’ in us.

In that sense, yes, we all ‘have’ a voice – but access to it…that’s another matter.

It shouldn’t be that hard.

We need a world that supports our ability…to think…to speak…to be heard and confirmed.

Pretty basic stuff, you’d think – but routinely denied.

We should have a world that works, don’t you think? …that works for us.

* The day I’m writing this is May 28, 2009.

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Pamela's Blog 20

Published on Tuesday, June 9, 2009 by Nas2EndWork.org

“Is There Such A Thing As "Voicelessness"?”