{"id":2724,"date":"2025-02-25T17:19:50","date_gmt":"2025-02-25T22:19:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/?p=2724"},"modified":"2025-02-25T17:19:50","modified_gmt":"2025-02-25T22:19:50","slug":"the-mountain-and-the-violence-of-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/2025\/02\/25\/the-mountain-and-the-violence-of-language\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mountain and The Violence of Language"},"content":{"rendered":"

“I grew up to the words cripple, retard, monkey, defect, took all the staring into me and learned to shut it out.”<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The list of slurs, starkly presented without conjunctions, mimics the overwhelming accumulation of these words throughout Eli Clare\u2019s life. Their placement in a single sentence (bam, bam, bam, bam, bam!) illustrates the relentlessness and inescapability of the labels. Clare writes he\u2014<\/span>“grew up to the words”<\/span><\/i>\u2014meaning these disparaging words have been a constant for the entirety of his development. The phrase <\/span>“learned to shut it out”<\/span><\/i> indicates survival but not resolution; language\u2019s wounds remain even if they are silenced.<\/span><\/p>\n

Clare complicates this depiction of linguistic violence by exploring how marginalized people navigate the tension between self-hatred and pride. He writes: <\/span>“The body as home, but only if it is understood that language too lives under the skin… They mark the jagged edge between self-hatred and pride, the chasm between how the dominant culture views marginalized peoples and how we view ourselves, the razor between finding home, finding our bodies, and living in exile, living on the metaphoric mountain.”<\/span><\/i> The metaphor of the razor demonstrates the power of words\u2013 they cut, wound, and represent the precarious boundary between acceptance and rejection.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The mountain, a recurring symbol in Clare\u2019s work, also functions as a metaphor for linguistic violence. When describing the decision to climb Mount Adams, Clare acknowledges: <\/span>“Climbed surely because I wanted the summit, because of the love rumbling in my bones. But climbed also because I wanted to say, ‘Yes, I have CP, but see. See, watch me. I can climb mountains too.'”<\/span><\/i> The repetition of <\/span>see<\/span><\/i> emphasizes the internalized pressure to prove oneself through unmistakable action, forced by the ableist gaze. The mountain becomes a linguistic construct as much as a physical one, representing the unattainable standard of overcoming disability. Clare\u2019s eventual decision to turn back suggests a rejection of these imposed narratives, yet the mountain\u2019s <\/span>grip<\/span><\/i> implies that the violence of language cannot be fully escaped. <\/span>Words remain “<\/span>written on the body<\/span><\/i>,” if you will, forever shaping how we see ourselves.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I grew up to the words cripple, retard, monkey, defect, took all the staring into me and learned to shut it out.”\u00a0 The list of slurs, starkly presented without conjunctions, mimics the overwhelming accumulation of these words throughout Eli Clare\u2019s life. Their placement in a single sentence (bam, bam, bam, bam, bam!) illustrates the relentlessness … Continue reading The Mountain and The Violence of Language<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5010,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[346812],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2025-class-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5010"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2724\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}