Words Mean Things (Part 1)

‘Culture War’ is a battle of narrative, language the front line

gen ai is pretty good at old white dudes hehe

I’m not a huge one for reading thick philosophical texts. I’m a lass who needs plot and action, and let me tell you, Heidegger is just not that. But, for better or for worse, a few of these twentieth-century European philosophers did produce some useful ideas for making sense of the world. Against my better judgement, I occasionally fall into a Wikipedia-induced whirlpool, swimming in hyperlinks, exploring the web’s depths for ever-elusive illumination. So it came to pass one balmy afternoon, with my guy, Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Wittgenstein did a lot during his sixty-two years on this planet of ours (including receiving a diploma of mechanical engineering, good man), but it was his work on philosophy of language I found most enthralling.

See, I had become increasingly frustrated by contemporary cultural conversations that seemed to go . . . nowhere. Discourse online, on mainstream media, even those hosted by prestigious cultural institutions felt stale, circular and rarely enlightening. These fruitless arguments wormed their way into my personal life, consuming valuable oxygen at dinner parties, casual coffees, Facetimes with family. Half-baked anecdotes thrown around like confetti, substitute for critical thought. ‘You can’t say anything anymore,’ an Oxford-educated banker tells me at a party, sandwiching trite complaints between boasts of his cryptocurrency investments. I smile and excuse myself, reluctant to endure another ‘hot take’ that is neither as controversial nor original as the speaker would like to believe. ‘Just to play devil’s advocate . . .’ is another canary in the conversation coalmine. I wasn’t aware of Satan’s need for a defense team.

I began avoiding these ‘debates’, which frequently appeared in national broadsheets, in part because I was never quite sure what exactly was being examined; in part as their setup was rarely in good faith. Whether on ‘cancel culture’, ‘wokeness’, or the evergreen ‘free speech’, little interest existed in defining terms, grounding them in reality, making it make sense. Winning, not understanding, was evidently the primary objective, as if we were trapped in an ultimately meaningless university debate club, à la Sally Rooney. Any hopes of improved circumstances outside Australia were summarily dashed when a British cultural institution invited me to speak on yet another grab-bag panel of international guests, discussing whether cultural appropriation had ‘gone too far’. It all made me want to tear my hijab off.

Words mean things! I would scream into the ether.

Well, Yassmin, intoned the aristocratic Austrian-British accent of Wittgenstein’s ghost. Yes and no . . .

Bloody philosophers, eh.

In his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein suggests that the ‘meaning of a word is its use in the language.’ In essence, words gain their meaning from their context. Wittgenstein refuted the idea that any word has a universal truth (or the fancier term, ‘epistemic objectivity’). He didn’t even totally buy a word needed ‘clarity’ for meaning. It was all about how it was used, and critical to that operation was that all those using the words were playing the same ‘language game’.

I know it is getting a bit abstract, but stay with me for a second.

The rules of a language, Wittgenstein would say, are similar to the rules of any game. Saying something in a language is like playing a move. The meaning of the move, word or sentence comes from the rules of the game.

For example, kicking a soccer ball to a stranger in a park might indicate the beginning of a casual game. The exact same kick, if on a field during an actual match, might indicate to a striker it is time to attack, and they should run towards the ball to complete the cross. Similarly, the word ‘water’ could be an order, the answer to a question, or a simple description, depending on the context. This context is not only grammatical but also socio-cultural: ‘Thank you so much for your contribution’ could be a warm demonstration of how valued you are, or, if spoken by a tight-lipped English woman at the end of your worst ever pitch meeting, might mean your idea will forever remain in purgatory, never to be spoken of again (not that I am speaking from experience).

Wittgenstein’s interpretation leaves unanswered one vital question. If the rules of the language game give words meaning, who decides the rules? What happens when someone decides to change said rules (halfway through the game) in their favour without consultation? Forgive me the pun, but whose rules Trump?

the worst pitch meeting in the world, according to gen ai. i suppose a pitch meeting COULD BE a meeting at a pitch-

This is the tension persistently playing out in how words or phrases operate in the milieu of mainstream media, social media, and everyday conversation today. Pundits and politicians are constantly changing the rules of the language game, tilting the board, moving the goalposts; whatever works in their favour. And, as is so often the case, he with most power wins.

‘Woke’ started out as a word within the Black American community as a warning to each other to stay ‘awake’, to be on the lookout for the violence of the state. It has ended up as a bizarre pejorative, a term co-opted by conservative pundits who use it to delegitimise anyone and anything they disagree with. Almost anything they oppose is derided as ‘woke’, from decolonising the curriculum to gender-neutral traffic lights to non-dairy milk (regardless of the health implications!). This is also how, for example, ‘leftie’ has become ‘a slur’ in working-class British towns,2 an unfathomable development in what used to be staunchly Labour-held territory. From spoken language to body language, this process has happened time and time again, words and symbols completely recast, unrecognisable from where they began.

In a preseason National Football League game in 2016, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and his teammate Eric Reid knelt on one knee during the national anthem, a silent demonstration against police brutality and racial injustice in the United States. In the years since, ‘taking the knee’ became a popularised method of peaceful protest, with football players in the Premier League, Formula 1 drivers and a range of Olympians at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics (in 2021) demonstrating solidarity by kneeling during their national anthems. Despite the benign nature of the action, echoing Martin Luther King Jr’s solemn kneel in prayer during the 1965 voting right campaigns, remonstrations from the powerful have been endless and extirpating. President Donald Trump stated that NFL owners should fire players who kneel. Let go at the end of the 2016 season, Kaepernick remains unsigned. When the English football team announced their decision to take the knee during the Euro 2020 Championship, the reaction in the UK was stark. The Times columnist Melanie Phillips said it was in fact a ‘racist gesture’; Education Minister Gillian Keegan said players were ‘creating division’; and Conservative MP Lee Anderson boycotted them completely for their choice to support ‘a political movement whose core principles aim to undermine our very way of life.’ Then-Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab even described taking the knee as ‘a symbol of subjugation and subordination’. Not to be outdone, Australian broadcaster Rowan Dean stated the Australian men’s cricket team ‘disgraced themselves’ when they took a knee on a 2021 tour in the West Indies, describing Black Lives Matter as a ‘sinister cult’. Protest against injustice has been slyly reframed as the problem, distracting from issue it was designed to highlight. Such recriminations have real world impacts, not easily undone.

None of this is new, but it has taken on contemporary urgency in a world where the myth of a ‘culture war’ takes up an inordinate amount of column inches and airtime. It is unclear if anyone knows what the culture war actually is (in a 2021 British radio poll, 76 per cent of respondents said they didn’t), although pundits insist it is alive and kicking. The historian Dominic Sandbrook suggests it is more ‘a dispute between two sides of an educated elite’. Indeed, ‘culture war’ exchanges dominate the preserves of small, politically motivated groups; active consumers of mainstream and social media, universities, literary festivals. I find myself torn on whether or not it is worth paying attention to, avoiding a decision by instead choosing to focus on who is propagating and benefiting from this landscape.

It brings to mind the work of another twentieth century philosopher, German Jewish thinker Walter Benjamin. In his book, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, Benjamin argues fascistic governments maintain power and control by allowing the public to express themselves aesthetically, keeping them far from the work of material reform. Similarly, today’s ‘culture war’ binds us to the realm of words and symbols alone, rather than using them as leverage to push for sustainable structural and material change. Decrying athletes who take the knee keeps the focus on ‘gestures’, rather than on the reality of expanded of police powers, immigration detention, voter suppression legislation. Not only does it distract, but it creates new realities. As Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik writes, ‘culture war is an aggressive political act . . . aim[ing] to create its own truth’, a battle between manufactured narratives that seeks to mould a nation.

If the ‘culture war’ is a battle of narrative, then language itself is the frontline. Control of the language game rules becomes a war-time strategy.

For today’s weaponisation of ‘context’, ‘narrative’, and ultimately, ‘language rules’ is all about power. It’s winning votes, advancing agendas, gaining electoral majorities – it is politics. But though the personal may always be political, the opposite isn’t necessarily true. We can argue about what ‘freedom of speech’ means until the cows come home, but though it acts as a proxy, it is not intrinsically personal. It does not replace a sense of self. It is a concept or an ideal, rather than an identity.

What, then, of the words we use to define ourselves?

In his 1996 text ‘Citizenship, Identity and Social History’, Charles Tilly states that ‘language provides a medium for the establishment and renegotiation of identities’. But what do we do if, reflecting on Wittgenstein, language itself is unstable, because the language rules are changing? What do we do when the language used means something different in every context? Selfishly, what does it mean for someone like me – born in Sudan, bred in Australia, living in the United Kingdom and working across the United States and Europe – to talk about who I am, if in every context the words I use mean something slightly different?

That is to say, what does it mean for me to say I am ‘Black’?

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This is an excerpt from the opening essay of my collection, TALKING ABOUT A REVOLUTION. If you like my work, I recommend checking it out! The second half of this essay is banging, trust!

I’m hosting a few guest writers on this platform over the next few weeks as I begin observing Ramadan (and editing my way through a book manuscript I cannot wait to share!). Remember, if you like to write a guest post, either during Ramadan or in general, drop me a line with a short pitch and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can, inshallah.

Sending my best to you all, inshallah. Oh, and if you haven’t had a listen to my recent Prospect podcast on Sudan, I highly suggest you check it out. Thank you <3