IAL e International ~ Journal Of Communication Vol. 8 No.1-2 January-December, 1998 Editor U.S. Bahri Bahri Publications New DelhiThe Crippled Creativity— Brief Theoretical Framework DEBAPRASAD BANDYOPADHYAY [In this positional paper J have attempted to establish thenavure of “Crippled Creativity” by correlating the human cognitive domain with Institutional repression.. Apart from establishing the theoretical foundation of crippled creativity, I will focus en some institutions, viz. school, prison, army as a centre iumineux de la theorize, to show the the evidence of Crippled Creativity.] “Suffering comes from three quarters: from our own body, ...from the outer world, which can rage against us with the most powerful and pitliless forces of destruction: and finally from our relations with other man.” Freud,s. Civilization and its Discontents 1.1 ONTOLOGICAL PROBLEM — MY COLONIAL PAST Before going to the main issue. I want to convey some problems of my discourse, through an L2, which I had learned in my schools by means of Anglo-vernaculer method. Indian schools still bear the hangover of their colonial past. The colonial power in India introduced English as a hegemonic instrument to produce interpreters, not analysts, who could analyse the meaning of European culture, specially the meaning of “ Pure Reason”, “Free Reason” etc. As Enlightened Europe played like an Equalvocator, at the time of talking about the Free rationality, enslaved Asia, Africa and Latin America to establish its Empire. This according to Frankfurt Marxists, is called “dialectics of Enlightenment”. They give us some signals, some word lists in the form of stimulus and we cram and reproduce thosé words, imitate them without knowing the possiblity to create or understand the infinite sets of sentences. Thus the anglophone education, imposed upon us by the colonizer, produced a Stimulus-response Situation in the realm94 DEBAPRASAD BANDYOPADHYAY of education and schooling. They constituted a system or control in the production of discourse. In this situation my L2 competence is barred by my colonial past. So one may hear an invisible voice or control preceding my voice, and that voice compels me to live in a world of a black box of stimulus-response situation. This is, of course, a problem of my second language learning. This problem may be represented as follows: I progress from an initial state with my innate endowment of knowing nothing. This is represented as Zero State (S,) ] then want to attend a Steady State (S,) in my first and second language one after another. l observe it is difficult to attend such §, a8 | am under the contro] of different institutions surrounding me, viz.family, schools, religious institutions, media, professional groups etc. This problem of Subject under the control of Institutions has already been discussed by Althussar, Barthes, Lacan, Bernstein, Illich and cven by Chomsky. in case of L1 learning, f am bound by mental regimentation to repeat clichés, stereotypes, rather than to create infinite sets of sentences as I am being taught the communicative competence (Deli Hymes-Brand), phatic commune and School Grammar as a form of either stratified or differentiated ritual. Bangla Prescriptive Grammar is being taught with a view to acqu iring the said language by transmitting highly condensed symbolic messages in a controlled manner, which ultimately gives birth to a highly ritualistic discourse. In case of L2, I am not starting from zero, but from an initial state, $ as | have somehow acquired Li in highly condensed form. But L1 8, is different from L2 S., which is reffered to as S.. As already stated, this L2 is being acquired by me by means of Anglophone teaching procedure. In both the cases the mechanical solidarity is operating through some sacred formlae to be crammed. THE CRIPPLED CREATIVITY 95 This deficit on my part compells me to search on the institutions and to build up its phenomenology as well as the phenomenology of my body. Thus, the phenomenological analysis of institution-body relation will take us to a new area of Cognitive- psychoanalytical Socio-linguistics related to Ecology. It is Ecology because the body, my physical organs, is polluted by the outside sociality. My cognitive structure is part of my body and Chomsky suggested to study this struture as physical organs are studied (Chomsky 1976:18). Considering it as a physical organ we want to study the degree of pollution on this cognitive structure. This state of affairs, leads to the problem of Learning theory (LT) for the organism O in the Cognitive Domain (D). This theory, as Chomsky called it, LT(O,D), “can be regarded as a function” which has a certain “input” (analysis of data in D by O) and certain “output” (cognitive structure of some sort) (Chomsky 1976:14). One may specifically reformulate LT(O,D) by considering O as Humans (H) and D as Language (L). Thus one may investigate LT (H,L) as L is strikingly different from other non-humans. But, within this framework, there is no place of the fact that the social institutions and ideology play a role in the maturation of cognitive structure as a physical organ. Chomsky (1976:124) mentioned some objective bonds set by the biological structure {in Freud’s expression, “suffering from our own body”). But he seldom mentioned the limits, imposed upon us, from the powerful and pitiless outside as well as other. Chomsky analyzed large number of organised data, viz. sentences, with a view to establishing universal grammar, not the discourse or conversation, the actual language use in a real situation. Thus it escapes his notice that Discourse Analysis and Conversation Analysis focus on the problem of intertextual powerplay. The utterances, not organised sentences fit for the well-established theory of syntactic analysis, are distorted by the outside reality. Chomsky may answer that this is a problem of performance, not linguistic competence. But, avoiding such jungle of distorted data, how could one investigate cognitive structure of human mind? Or, one may ask, Cognitive Structure is anyway affected96 DEBAPRASAD BANDYOPADHYAY by the outside? Is my linguistic creativity crippied by the social tepression? Am I not alienated from my labour to produce my language? Am | not repeating some Techno-sentences, tntrojected by the media, total administration etc.? 1.2 THE Concept oF Lincutstic CREATIVITY A normal human being can generate and interpret infinite sets of sentences out of a finite set of words. This proves the existence of human creativity, the nature of which was much discussed by Noam Chomsky. According to him, the task of a linguist is to investigate the nature of creativity via linguistic analysis. The linguistic data is immediately available to prove empirically the nature of innate creativity and its universality. Chomsky (1987) introduced the dichotomy of internalized and externalized language. IL approach considers language as a system represented in the mind/brain of a particular individual, 1.€., it is related to the concept of Creativity whereas EL approach concentrates on the collection of the arbitrary manifestation of language. The IL approach presumes the existence of universal human nature and it is asocial in its character. 1.3 CHOMSKY’S OWN COMMENTS What Chomsky highlighted is, no doubt, the essence of human nature, (in Heideggerian terminology, ‘Authentic I’) but it is-not a theory of human existencé, i.e., ‘Inauthentic I controlled by various factors arising from different institutions. There is a great debate between Chomsky and Foucault on the primacy of essence/ existence. According to Chomsky, there is a human nature and Foucault, avoiding such investigation, questioned the functioning of human nature in a society. The dialectic of essence and existence is not completely missing from Chomsky; he himself admitted, Of course one can design a restricted environment in which such controf and such patterns .... can be demonstrated, but there is no reason to suppose that any more is learned about the range of THE CRIPPLED CREATIVITY 97 human potentialities by such methods than would be learned by observing human in prison of an army-or in many a school room.” -(1972,114) The essential properties of human mind, of course, escape such investigation in the world of behaviorial manipulation, but whe is to investigate? Obviously, a behaviorist, an official Ideology-supplier of the Skinnerian Benevolent Dictator, who schematizes a world of stimulus-respouse by manipulating the behavior. The Institutions like prison, army, schools act as official conveyer of ruling-class ideology, as is pointed out by Althussar. The essence of human nature is repressed in this critical situation of his/her existence, His/her existence is at a stake, and his/her organism is affected. His/her creativity is crippled by the behaviouristic manipulation. Here not only one’s external janguage is distorted and alienated by the ruling class, I will try . to show how creativity, as a part of human nature is crippled by the outside reality. One can show the possiblity of Crippled Creativity-hypothesis is emerging from Chomsky’s own comments. He himself has commented on the possibility of authoritarian subjugation on human nature, though not of “Crippled Creativity”. He did not even deny the possiblity of behaviorial control in an authoritarian society (Chomsky: 1972 in Peck: 1987:181) by “threat of violence or a pattern of deprivation and reward.” I want to highlight those texts te establish my hypothesis of “crippled RORY" without refuting | his ee, Mypehests, » “Iti is s reasonable to suppose that } just as intrinsic structures of maid pnderlic the development of cognitive structures, so a “species character”: provides the framework for the growth of | moral consciousness, cultural achievement, and even participation ina free and just community..... human needs and capacities will find their fullest expression in a society of free and creative producers...” (Chomsky:1976: 133-34)