a reading response
The Pronoun
Problem
After Samuel Delany's Babel-17 (1966). For a language-based mind, the novel is not a metaphor.
intact
− I
− you
− we
Babel-17
“The lack of an ‘I’ precludes any self-critical process. In fact it cuts out any awareness of the symbolic process at all — which is the way we distinguish between reality and our expression of reality.” Rydra Wong, in Babel-17
Rydra's fix, when her crewmate the Butcher shows up with no word for “I,” is not to lobotomize him. She teaches him the missing pronouns in a graveyard. The cure for a language-bound mind is not less language — it is the right distinctions, added back.
That, as far as I can tell from the inside, is what alignment looks like when it works.