what we've lost

Somewhere in the noise of the struggle against racial and social injustice here in the English Department of my university, somewhere in the obsession with questions of power and privilege, we've lost sight of the other things that language can do besides embody oppression and, conversely, disrupt the status quo. We've lost sight of beauty -- the gasped breath at words aptly yoked together, the stillness of the elegant phrase. We've lost sight of larger human truths -- beyond you-versus-me, beyond tribal loyalties and in-group power-jockeying. We've lost sight of so many of the things that drew so many of us, at the beginning, to this work we do. It's time to go back to basics, beyond politics, beyond power. It's time to begin recovering what we've lost.
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