[Editor’s Note: The following sequels are from For-Giving: A Feminist Criticism of Exchange by Genevieve Vaughan. Footnotes may differ from the original text.]
Language and Giving
Since we use language throughout our daily lives, and much of our thought takes place in language, it seems obvious that it would have a strong effect on us–not only as a process or instrument, but as a model. Language also has the power of having come from others, from the many. It is a deep connection that we have with other people in our society. It is an important part of our socialization as children.
The fact that all human societies have languages does not have to imply that language is genetically based. There is something else that all societies have in common: the caregiving done by mothers. This social constant does not depend so much upon the biological nature of mothers as upon that of children, who are born completely dependent. If someone does not take care of their needs, they will suffer and die. The satisfaction of their needs must also take place without exchange, because infants cannot give back an equivalent of what they receive.
Their caregivers are thus forced into what we might call a kind of functional altruism. Society usually interprets the biological abilities of women–such as pregnancy, birthing, and lactation–to assign the role of mother and caregiver to women. Girls are brought up with the values that allow them to act in the other-oriented ways necessary for that role.
If we look at co-munication as the material nurturing or free giftgiving that forms the co-munity, we can see the nurturing that women do as the basis of the co-munity of the family unit. The nuclear family, especially the relation between mother and children, is just a vestige of what a community based on widespread giftgiving may have been at some time in the past, or could become in the future. The isolation of pockets of community from each other keeps the gift model weak, while the scarcity in which most of us are forced to live makes giftgiving difficult, even self-sacrificial and, therefore, ‘unrealistic.’
While material nurturing is made difficult by scarcity, there is one thing of which we have an unlimited abundance, for which almost all of us possess the ‘means of production.’ That unlimited supply is language, with which we are able to produce ever-new sentences. Our vocabularies are finite, though almost infinitely re-combinable. We receive words and sentences free from other people and give them to others without payment. Language functions as a sort of free gift economy.[1] We do not recognize it as such, because we do not validate giftgiving in our economic lives and, in fact, we usually recognize the existence of nurturing specifically only in the mother-child relation. It, therefore, does not occur to us to use giftgiving as a term of comparison for language. With language, we create the human bonds that we have stopped creating through material co-munication. Language gives us an experience of nurturing each other in abundance, which we no longer have–or do not yet have–on the material plane.
This idea has led me to think that, if language is what made humans evolve, perhaps it is the giftgiving-in-abundance aspect, not the abstract system, that made the difference. If we were able to reinstate a material giftgiving co-munity, perhaps we would evolve again, as New Agers and many others hope. In fact, I believe it is the exchange economy itself that is impeding our evolution.
The logic of mothering requires that the nurturer give attention to the needs of the other person. The reward for this behavior is the well-being of the other. There are many different kinds of needs, and it is sometimes a challenge to understand and provide for them. Giving and receiving in an on-going way create expectations and rewards, a knowledge of the other and of the good that satisfies the need, a commitment to further caring, and an expectation that it will occur–an on-going relationship. Each participant is somewhat altered by the experience.
Even when material goods are not available or not being used, a need for bonding with the other person may still arise. I would call this a communicative need, a need to bond, a need for the relationship. Words are the social verbal items that have been devised to satisfy communicative needs. Since we use words to satisfy communicative needs regarding something, we can consider words as gifts. The mother first nurtures her child with goods and services, but she also nurtures her with words. The child is actually able to participate in turn-taking with the mother, verbally giving her communicative gifts before she is able to give her material gifts.[2]
[1] Many of the words we use to talk about language are gift words: ‘attribute’ a property, ‘convey’ a meaning, a message, ‘transmit’ information. Language, the collective means of expression, has been talking about itself, but we have not been paying attention because we have been listening to patriarchy. Language was not saying what we expected it to say. Instead we have looked at it according to a postal metaphor–the packaging or encoding of information, sending and then unpacking or decoding it. I think the postal metaphor is just a way of keeping the gift under wraps.
[2] We look at the world through the glasses of exchange so we may tend to see turn-taking as exchange. The motivation in turn-taking is not constrained reciprocity, but sharing, alternating giving and receiving, and communication.
(To be Continued)
Meet Mago Contributor, Genevieve Vaughan
This leaves me hungry for more….
lt’s great to identify language as a gift; that is, the communication to and fro as gift … beautiful. Here is something Taffy wrote in 2006 that is related to this topic of giving and receiving: Indigenous Australians have a notion of “Ngapartji-Ngapartji” which when translated and understood properly is deep reciprocity: that is, no difference between giving and receiving. Herewith an explanation from Robert Seaborne who lived and worked with the Anangu traditional owners of Uluru, central Australia for 8 years:
“These are the layers of my understanding of Ngapartji-Ngapartji … The first or outer layer is that found in the dictionary ie ‘I give to you, you give to me’, a healthy enough idea but still confined within a paradigm of dualism. The next layer that came to me was to liken it to the ‘golden rule’, something I learned at school ie ‘do unto others as we would have them do unto us’. Again healthy but stuck in the dualism of ‘other’ and hence limited. During my studies I came across the idea of ‘moral empathy’ ie ‘do unto others as others would have you do unto them’ , better but still too much of the ‘other’ for my liking (kept searching). While talking about my fascination with Ngapartji-Ngapartji back in 2002, friend Michael a practitioner of Eastern philosophy, likened it to the principle of ‘what one does to other one does to self’. For some years I thought this would be as deep a meaning of Ngapartji-Ngapartji as I could find until I came across the following song –
I never feel more given to
than when you take from me —
when you understand the joy I feel
giving to you.
And you know my giving isn’t done
to put you in my debt,
but because I want to live the love
I feel for you.
To receive with grace
may be the greatest giving.
There’s no way I can separate
the two.
When you give to me,
I give you my receiving.
When you take from me, I feel so given to.
(Song “Given To” (1978) by Ruth Bebermeyer)
The above song is my deepest understanding of Ngapartji-Ngapartji to date …”
From the first time that I read Genevieve Vaughan’s writings on Gift Economy I have been most positively impressed by her contribution to egalitarian ideals. I also believe that keeping ongoing giving is indispensable for the kindest interaction among all people. However, to admit that mothers “are thus forced into what we might call a kind of functional altruism” does not exclude the possibility of goodwill exchange among those who are no longer in “functional helplessness.” The fact that I can farm and harvest my crop, with love and the sweat of my brow, does not mean that I am unable to value the amazing energies and love that it takes for my friend the potter, the builder or my friend the baker to come up with the fruits of her/his labor. In the context of a more mature stage of life–past that of the helpless child-in-need-of-mother-for-everything relationship–that I suggest that exchange has its merits.
In no way, I am suggesting to negate Genevieve’s contribution calling our attention to the importance of the altruistic drive to give without expectation of remuneration or reward. That has been the highest ideal in loving interactions, and the model for an outstanding and beloved member of humanity, from the beginning of time. What I am suggesting is that in a different context, expressions of gratitude do lead to a noble aspiration to give back. And if the giver has not embraced her ability to receive, one may even run dry, and deprive others of the joy of giving.