Manifesto for the protection of the insult
The insult is as old as the speaking humanity. We shall never know whether the first word uttered by man was a swear-word or an invective spoken to one of his fellow-creatures. It is part of the first expressions of a child’s language. And, for Sigmund Freud, the first one who threw an insult instead of a stone is the founder of civilization.
There is not a single culture, not a single idiom which does not know some offence directed at someone else, whether the enemy or the loved one. With the insult, language frees itself of the grammatical and lexical constraints, as at the same time the insulter frees himself of the social constraints. It does however use a coded language the basis of which refers, by provoking them, to the great systems of values of a society: the family and sexual relationships, the ethic models, the economy, the belonging to a social group or an ethnic group. It is entirely part of the cultural identity.
The insult belongs to the group dynamics and, in certain cultures, to the rites of passage. It can be used to elevate as well as to devaluate the member of a group, it tests his capacity of resistance to adversity. It can be cruel, humiliating, it can deeply affect the person receiving it. It is also a catharsis, the common model of the expression of revolt, the necessary passage of the fury and preliminary to violence. By discharging emotions, it may avoid the actual deed. It then becomes a tool replacing the weapon. It transforms war into contest in eloquence where the elegance of the words replaces the scatter bombs. In many cases, it could avoid the destruction of mankind.
We shall limit ourselves to the verbal insult, which must be distinguished from rudeness, from the insulting gesture, even the ignorance of the Other’s customs, even though one of these attitudes may accompany the excessive language. It may be uttered in private or in public, accompanied by humour or rage, on condition that it consists in a succession of words which are intelligible to the person they are intended for… even though its meaning is not always understood… that would be too much to ask.
The insult cannot be dissociated from the linguistic heritage of mankind. One appreciates its vigour by listening to the remarks exchanged in the streets, in particular at the crossroads, to the songs, to the evolutions of the language of the young. It is none the less threatened as are the other traditions, by the cultural standardization.
In a world where communication is a capital issue, the control of the linguistic standards is a major stake. It is also through language that the exclusions are carried out as well as the building of the social relationships. The insult belongs to the most crude of linguistic expressions and the most evident of the relationship of power.
Certain authorities have been trying for some time to contain this language by reducing the idiomatic production to the “politically correct” and by introducing the impolite apostrophe in the penal code. The fighting of discourtesies could lead to a police repression of language and consequently to its degeneration.
As a consequence, we ask our governments to act at the level of the UNESCO in order that the insult be recognized as immaterial cultural heritage of mankind and protected as such.