JCNT - May 2025 Release - Full Release - Flipbook - Page 20
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Handmade language vs. Ready-made language
Art can transport us beyond words, beyond the body, beyond articulation itself.
To articulate means "having or showing the ability to speak fluently and
coherently," adhering to the rules of logic and recognizable language. Yet art has
taught me to value incoherence, disorganization, garbled mutterings, silence, and
visual forms of meaning that may more accurately capture specific experiences of
everyday life. We may purposefully struggle with language to keep it in process
and to zigzag between intelligibility, mystery, disruption, and flow. I'm curious
about Deleuze's (1997) appreciation of stuttering and stammering at the edges of
language's stretched limits (pp. 107-114). Barbara Bolt (2004) describes this in
Paul Cézanne's painting, writing that he "... sets in motion perpetual
disequilibrium, which makes the whole visual system heave. It makes it 8stutter9=
(p. 46). We can experiment with disequilibrium in narrative conversations by
impeding closure and identity conclusions. Deleuze (1997) writes, "... one can
reach the limits of language itself and become something other than a writer,
conquering fragmented visions that pass through the words of a poet, the colors
of a painter, or the sounds of a musician" (p. 113).
Touchon's artwork prompts me to free language from the field of psychology and
facilitate handmade meanings. In narrative therapy, we privilege clients' language
and can challenge psychological jargon that defaults to normative assumptions.
Words like cognitive distortions, coping mechanisms, treatment plans, resistance,
evidence, assessment, and outcomes often reduce language to conclusive,
generalized meaning at the expense of local descriptions and extraordinary
understandings. Our habitual interpretations link to larger systems, such as the
word "codependence," which is discoursed as an individualistic pejorative rather
than a relational strength. Instead, when narrative therapists externalize and
rename problems, depression can become a "giant fog," distraction may be a
"hummingbird," and fighting can be an "amoeba,= a
