Kobena Mercer's discussion of oppositional strategies by the subaltern and the hegemonic (via inter-culturation) through style (the zoot suit, the Afro, the Dreadlock) in "Black Hair/Style Politics" reminds me of the linguistic inversion intervention by North Africans (at least originally) in France. One could make the crude equivalence that "verlan" is the "ebonics" of France's oppressed. It basically consists of literally inverting the sound of syllables in a creative way. "Femme" (woman) becomes "moef", "flic" (cop) becomes "keuf", "fou" (mad) becomes "ouf" and "beur" (already a slang for "Arab") becomes "rebeu." This kind of street talk signifies hyper-masculinity, ghetto-ness, street-smartness and an appropriation of oppression into a willingness to talk back. In a culture that prides itself in being classy and proper, verlan can mean major ruptures, even as it is assimilated by the general "youth culture." It is also very commonly used in French hip-hop and other music genres. The name of Belgian-Rwandan singer Stromae (pictured above) is itself a product of verlan from the original word "maestro." Here is one of his really amazing tracks, "Alors on Danse" (the screen itself is chopped in half in this instance):
For Mercer, I suppose, this kind of literal inversion alone wouldn't accomplish much besides reiterating the language of the oppressed as the simple opposite of the master('s) language. Except that it probably achieves much more than a mere syntactic inversion, as verlan chops words in half, re-arranges them skillfully, re-shuffles them, re-slang-fies them in a mis-en-abime-esque manner. This symbolic intervention in language itself should also be read not just as a source for transgression but also as a symptom of other transgressions already at work that find in language itself some kind of utter-able form.
No comments:
Post a Comment