Glasgow is a sombre but beautiful city. Rainy. Narrow lanes buoyed by rows of colourful leafy trees. Plenty of places to drink and eat. The university’s a converted medieval castle. Iron gates. Looming towers. Stone the colour of William Wallace’s bruised back.
Delivered my keynote speech last night. Over one hundred and fifty people. Well attended for an academic forum. I spoke about language. The tyranny of it. How we’re offended. How we are not being as honest with each other as we could be. I told them about the jokes Randal and I share. How we laugh at them. How it’s not just appropriate that we laugh, but how it’s necessary. By laughing, I said, I felt liberated, because I experienced true freedom from the hierarchical tyranny of language that fixes us in, to borrow Eliot’s choice of words, “a formulated phrase.” To make and uninhibitedly laugh at jokes is to experience true freedom. Laughing at such things is a way of accepting honesty. Stand-up comedians constantly employ this tactic; why not the rest of us? To this end, political correctness is as much a clamp as right-wing or dictatorial censorship, and we must explore the possibilities inherent in lifting a politically correct agenda from academia and from daily discourse. Such habits would emancipate not just persons with disabilities, but those who occupy restricted categories of race, sexuality, and class. My body, I said toward the end, is knotted and warped, twisted and arched. It is a letter in a foreign language, part of an ever-expanding alphabet consisting of thousands of letters and infinite accents. To speak this language, the tongue must harden and curl, and the voice must growl and lurch. This language is open to all.
Several people were outraged by my tirade. At least three people walked out of the room. One young woman picked up a book, one that I wrote, and threw it, hitting me in the shoulder. The audience stirred when I told them Randal’s vegetable joke. I had to hold up my hand and pause for them to stop jittering so I could continue. During the question period, some of them accused me of being right-wing, saying that such a system would privilege white men. Others told me I was narrow-minded, that such liberty is little more than anarchy, which amounts not to freedom but to fear. I rebutted that connecting linguistic freedom with anarchy was a tenuous link at best, and that white men would be just as open to scrutiny as other races.
Afterwards a handful of us went to a place called the Buddha Bar. At a table perched beside a gigantic plaster Buddha, one of my colleagues, a disability scholar from Manchester named Baron Raymond, leaned over and said, I think you’ve struck a chord, Dexter, but you wanna be careful with how you play those notes. It’s ideas, I said, glancing down the table to ensure the others heard me. It’s about suggesting ideas, putting these things out there. These things should be talked about. I agree, but perhaps in a more tactful manner. I shook my head. Tactful won’t cut it. You need the right language to discuss these notions. Practise what you preach. Otherwise they won’t fly. Baron drank his gin. And what do the folks back in the flatlands think about all this? he said. As I recall, you’re part of a very left-wing faculty. I chuckled. What can I say? I’m a fish out of water. I’ve fallen off the political spectrum. Hmm. Well, I hope it all goes well for you, Dexter, though I have to warn you that a fish out of water does not live very long, especially in a scholarly institution. I doubt they’ll fire me. I’m a good teacher and I’ve the strongest, most progressive research portfolio in the department. Yes, good work, considering you haven’t been in disability studies for long. I smirked at him. I rise fast, I said. Like a dead fish in the ocean. Jolly good, Baron. Did you learn that phrase at a Red Devils game? Baron scratched beside his mouth. You were in British literature before, correct? That’s right. And then you came into disability studies after your diagnosis? I’d been tinkering with disability before my diagnosis. My condition just deepened my involvement. Hmm. So it’s not true that you’re simply exploiting the field to attract recognition? I glanced around the table. Several students looked at me. I beg your pardon? I said. I’d heard that you hated your initial field, that you said it was overcrowded. The arena for British criticism is overcrowded. Yes, well there are some, and I’m not included in this group, who think that you switched to disability studies because it’s a field ripe for sowing, so to speak, and that you, even though you scorn politics, you exploit disability as a sociopolitical position to attract funding and increase your academic profile. Is this true? I sipped my whiskey and shook my head. Look at me, I said. How can I exploit disability when I myself have a disability? If anyone’s guilty of exploitation, it’s you. I pointed at Baron’s long, perfectly functional legs. He chuckled. You speak, Dexter, like you’re immune to criticism. Nobody’s immune to criticism, I said. I’m safe, though. They can’t fire me for advocating what essentially amounts to free speech. People have been fired for worse, said a graduate student who, upon speaking, immediately lowered her gaze. I drank my whiskey and felt it swell through my head. Surely, I said, you understand that when I talk about free speech, I’m not talking about being deliberately hurtful. I’m just talking about using whatever words come to mind. There are so many guards in our heads that rise whenever we talk. If we could eliminate the guards in our minds, do you know how much potential that would unlock? How much more innovative and creative we’d become? Many of the students cocked their heads as they pondered. I lifted my glass. A tremor leapt and I spilled whiskey onto my lap. Two students leaned over to help; I told them to leave it alone. I wiped myself clumsily with a napkin.
I came back to the inn and logged on to my computer and found an email from Randal. Good luck on your trip, uncle, he wrote, and I came up with something last night. You remember when you talked to me about that guy in the residence, was it jeeves or reginald, the memory guy? I thought last night, what would happen if you tried to plant the idea of a crime in his head, you know ask him something like, do you remember where the body is hidden? LOL. I thought you might like that. Have fun in scotland, peace, Randal. The boy gives me so much pride. If he keeps it up, he’ll end up with a genuinely great mind.