There
is a moment when the child first sees themselves in the mirror, and they are
fascinated by the image. At first, the child sees another. Another
child, another baby. And the fascination continues as she views someone
in tandem, in pace, in synch. Soon, or sometime, there must be a threshold
moment, when the child recognizes the image not as another, but as oneself.
And in that recognition is at once loss and discovery. For the
child loses the other, while gaining the first sight of self. In that
moment, loss and death, epiphany and appearance, are all one.
So
now the child sees the self reflected -- and in that sense of reflection comes
play. The child can raise an arm and see what once they only thought and felt.
So too with the other arm and turn of head.
Yet,
as we know, the mirror, by design reverses the image: for left is right and
right, left. So the image is both a replication and a distortion of self.
I
think language contains the same tensions for me. I see the replication
or translation of the material of the world into these arbitrary phonetic
units, yet I see the distortions as well. For as soon as we see the sky,
we debate as to whether it is a robin's egg blue or azure. We see the
walls as pearl or eggshell. Even as I write, I know that each decision is
an attempt to reflect, but a failed one. And the circulation of that
eggshell claim is, well, repainting that wall by the very act of naming it.
Language, in a way, repaints the world as we struggle, each day, with the
slippage between the robin's blue and whatever blue the sky truly is that day.
Christian G. is currently a PHD
candidate in the English Education department at Teachers College Columbia
University. His interests of study include the history of thought,
dialogical self theory, Bakhtin, and the use of literature in the classroom for
moral and cognitive growth.
