Episode 4: The Poets Made All the Words

You say it just kind of emerged to you one day? Do you remember how that happened?

Oh, yeah. I was in conversation with fellow disabled writer and thinker Amy Gaeta, and I texted her and just said, what would Andy Warhol do? What can we do? What would Andy Warhol do? And I said, I think he would play a game. I think we… I think we need a game for only disabled people. You can’t play it if you’re not disabled. It’s not for you.

The game is Borg Diem, and it is the focus of this episode of Many Academies. Borg Diem is a dictionary curated by my guest, The Cyborg Jillian Weise, along with a group of disabled judges, cyborg pirates, and, as the description of the first edition of the dictionary informs me, the spirit of Epictetus, disabled philosopher. I am Lette Bragg, and today, with the dictionary as our guide, we think about language, words on the page, fragments, and how to disregard the rigid rules of academic publishing. We think about naming worlds. First, though, let’s hear some more about the origins of Borg Diem.

Amy and I collaborated more about our need for language, about how all these words that we’re given often come from non-disabled sources. And so, we just thought, let’s play a game to make a dictionary and invite people to create a word that explains some aspect of their disabled experience and hashtag it BorgDiem and we’ll give prizes. Um, and that’s how it started.

I’m thinking now about the need for language. Reading over Borg Diem, it’s, like, surprising the effect that these words have in naming something. It kind of shifts the framework of what’s possible. One of the reasons I really wanted to interview you was because, like, from the beginning when I read The Amputees Guide to Sex, I was, like, blown away by the use of language, um, in a way that just shifts reality in some way. And I’m always thinking this… we have to be doing this all the time. It’s crucial because I find myself slipping into habits of thinking or of talking, and so I’m always wondering, like: how? So do you have a method not of, like, writing, although to me that’s part of it, but of living that allows you to kind of keep this relationship to language so that it’s there for you.

Yes. I love how you talk about slipping into habits because language is sneaky like that, and we are using words often we don’t know why or how or what they mean. Practically, like on an etymological basis, we don’t know what they mean. We’re just adopting them. We’re just using them. And yeah, I am trying to live in such a way that I think more consciously about words like: who gave them to me? What is the purpose? Do I like the words or do I not? And, in a practical sense, it helps me think about common interactions, and how to subvert them, or how to change the interaction, or how to change the language. Also, I just really wanted more words to use in medical settings with doctors, and I kept finding that the doctors made all the words. Which isn’t true, because Emerson tells us the poets made all the words. But I know an awful lot of doctors who are not poets, and I feel like medical language is not… it just isn’t, it isn’t great for me as a disabled person. And so yeah, I try to live in such a way that I am wondering about words and whose they are… who, who are the words serving, and, if they’re not serving me, then why am I using them?

I know… I remember after I had my after I had my kid, I wasn’t able to read prose anymore, um, and a lot of people would, I think, bring it down to attention or ability to focus or not enough time. And I’d be saying no, it’s actually syntax. It’s something about syntax or grammar that doesn’t make it possible for me to have this embodied relationship to another. Like the skin to skin intimacy is taken away from just syntax. And so: I can’t do it anymore, like, viscerally. You might remember me as a student, pushing myself, trying to work so hard to be a good student, finding intelligence and brilliance in the labor. And then at this moment of, like, all these sleepless nights, um, and caring for this other, this other person, I just kind of gave in. I just, like, surrendered to another way of writing. And then, yeah, I could only write fragments.

Also: the fragment’s great. Like, where would we be without Sappho’s fragments? You know, so I, I love that you went to fragments as, uh, as an adaptation.

So another thing with BorgDiem, is it… it no longer comes down to the just one author, right? There are so many… there are so many people who are taking part in this. And so, you see, like the variation right between the different entries, the different focus, the way each entry turns another way. Um, but then it’s all just slightly kind of listed there, right? in alphabetical order. So, it’s also a kind of beautiful way of not having to find all the language yourself.

Absolutely. Because, well, it just completely surprised me that, first of all, this wasn’t planned at all. I thought it was going to be like, oh, this is a fun thing to do on a Tuesday night. And people already are living through language that they created, and a lot of it’s extremely helpful. There’s no way one person could come up with all of these words, but yet we need these words. These are really instructive, delightful, playful, invigorating words. And so, yeah, I’m just completely impressed with how all these smart disabled people came together to create language.

But the real difficulty for me has been how to put the dictionary out, and I come up against, the structure of publishing. So, when you mentioned like it’s a collaborative document, right? Totally. I went to a big five publisher and said, this thing is so cool, you want this, and we are going to need to get permission from like 230 people. And we’re also gonna need to pay each of them something significant. And the publisher was like, What? No. You can publish this with us maybe if it’s your dictionary, but we don’t know how to publish this, if it’s a dictionary that belongs to, like, 230 people. At which point I said, well, then I can’t work with you. So yeah, there’s all these systems at work to discourage the very kind of energetic, effervescent community that just comes together for language.

Yeah, and it was beautiful just reading it. It gave me so much. So, what are your plans for it?

Well, so I had that disheartening conversation and first went and said, well, I want to put it out soon, but I want to put it out only in Braille because so many of my blind or visually impaired friends don’t have access to books in English because the books are not in Braille, and so they have to rely on copyright to expire. So, you and I are in 2024 right now. Our blind friends are in 1924. And I wanted to reverse it for once, who has access to a dictionary and make that access available only to blind people first. So, the dictionary is out in Braille. I worked with the, uh, the Canadian Braille Superstore, and they brailled the dictionary. Everyone is credited in it. And now I’m thinking Google Doc at the same time, I don’t know how accessible Google Docs really are, but I think they are more accessible than… well, they’re certainly more accessible and ethical than the notion that I would put out a dictionary and call it mine. So, I’m going to Google Doc route, and I’m working with Audrey Lovinger, who’s this incredible disabled designer artist. And we’re working right now to figure out what does a disabled dictionary look like. And what does such a Google Doc look like? So that’s where we’re at.

Absolutely. Well, and I’ve learned so much from your last podcast with punctum about open access in regards to BorgDiem: like thinking about, of course, it can be a Google doc right now, and then it can be a book later if it needs to be like a physical object. But why do all these things have to come out at the same time? Uh, part of it’s just about my own access. Like, I thought I would put out the Braille and then maybe six months later, put out the English. But then I was on Crip time. I needed a minute to catch my breath. Things were happening in my life, so I love thinking about disabled ethos and disregarding some of the more rigid non-disabled rules and etiquettes of publishing.

I really liked your practice of editing and curating the words. Everything is kept in there from the from the original tweet, I think. Right? And even the punctuation, whether… whether there’s bolded words or not and then little, little comments. So, for, um, where is it? I think it’s desirlink” or desirlunk” [Cy: yes!] You know, the word is defined, and then there’s a little note: “Ironically, this itself is desirlunk because I want to participate fully, but I can’t.” Um yeah. And then some [entries] have square brackets that [face] outward right. And this is something that you do, right? The square brackets face outwards. Could you tell me more about your decisions around editing and curating and then the brackets?

Absolutely. I want for our listeners to know that “desirlunk” is this new word by a_george_parker on Twitter, and it means “the feeling of being excited to do something, being cut in half by the knowledge that you cannot do the thing because of pain, disability, fatigue, ableism.” And that’s also the note that you’re speaking of. And: how cool! Like, I love preserving the fragments, right? The asides that everyone or lots of people put on their tweets. Um, yeah.

And then the brackets. I’m just still learning what they are or how we might use them. But… I wanted a disabled font, actually. I wanted a disabled font to disclose on my behalf that I’m disabled. So, you would look at the page and know that a disabled person is writing it. And we tried to actually develop a font that would do this. It’s a little more complex though than I expected it to be. So, in lieu of a disabled font or until someone develops such a font, I started putting my brackets in, like outside, like just reversing them to signify, “hey, I’m disabled, I’m writing this” and other people have picked it up. So that’s… the impetus is “how can the language disclose for me?” Like, I don’t mind disclosing that I’m disabled, but I sometimes wonder with all this time I spend saying “I’m disabled, I’m disabled, I’m disabled” what am I not saying because I’m using those words of disclosure for someone else’s benefit when I could just let the font do the work and you would already know that the person using the font is disabled. And then we could get on with whatever it is we have to say.

It’s kind of relieving to see it, you know, and, um, and, in a way, I wasn’t even aware it would be to see the… the brackets containing something reversed so everything else is contained. There’s something kind of freeing about that, right?

Yes. Yes. Well, and I’m a Lacanian, so I’ve been using these reverse brackets, but also thinking like there’s something else here, I don’t know what it is, maybe I’ll find out one day, but I really like the way this looks, so I’m just going to keep doing it. And then, um, I have a book coming out from Ecco of poems called Pills and Jacksonvilles, and the designer put those brackets on the cover, and I realized, oh, I just, I have been drawing the metal rods in my back. Yeah, it was so. It was really creepy. It was really… like it took someone else showing me what I was doing for me to recognize how I was trying to get my body into this limited amount of character space and language. It wasn’t conscious at all. But as soon as I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it. I was like, oh wow. Yeah, we have metal in us. Not just me, but lots of people. And it’s always hidden. It’s invisible, and it’s not on the page unless we use a word probably that came from a non-disabled person. So how can we skirt that? How can we have some fun?

But that’s, yeah, that’s… that’s amazing. Yeah, that’s the way… that’s the way language works, though, right? Things just slip in, and we don’t know why, and then they come out. Like, if I analyze it too much, it gets it gets weird. But it’s just interesting the kind of decisions that we make.

Absolutely. And the fact that we don’t know what we’re doing often and maybe only later, we sort of know, but we probably still don’t really know. I mean, I, I am so ready to geek out on anything psychoanalytic. At the same time, that is a decision that seems informed by me being inside the academy. I just landed at a place where everyone was a huge fan of Derrida, and, um, I wasn’t, I wasn’t, and I… first of all, was surprised to be in a tenure track job at, well, anywhere, given that I’m like 4’6″ and very disabled, obviously disabled.

And, Yeah, So, it was a little bit like, how do I meet these men with their non-disabled bodies and their talk of Derrida, like, how do I what do I do with that? And I thought, oh, I just need to go to Lacan because everyone’s afraid of him. It’s so if I can… if I can find company with Lacanian thoughts, then I’ll have a way of entering the conversation that’s on my terms, hatever I make of Lacan, instead of once again being on their terms. But so I was my interest was piqued when you were talking about, like, postmodernism and the disavowal of the fragment.

Mhm. The first line of my book is my ruin was inevitable. I read Derrida while nursing. So, uh, it’s all Derrida, but I argue, I argue he’s a mother and that we have to change everything and um…

See, that will change a lot for me. Oh, I can’t wait to read this, I cannot wait. I had never once thought of him as a mother.

I think he’s one.

Uh, oay. You might bring me closer to him, then. It… it seems possible.

Maybe. I hope so.

Yeah. I’m picking up… like, there’s different things I want to pick up on, and so for some reason, I’m thinking of the introduction you wrote to the new edition of um The Amputees Guide to Sex. And you said you were really struggling to write the introduction. And then a friend advised you to smuggle something in? [Cy: Yes.] And so I was thinking about the practices that that you’ve developed to, um. to say the things that you to say, the things you want to say within, to an academic audience.

Oh, well, that’s such a great one. That’s a credit to my friend Aga Skrodzska, who’s a film scholar and is writing with a background of being an Eastern European and a Communist nation. And so, I want to recognize, like, there’s all of her own politics with smuggling something in. But for me, it’s like, yeah, how does anyone write as a disabled person when the presumptive audience is this, you know, blob we call the general audience. And what we mean by that is the non-disabled audience. So I’m always having to smuggle something in or do some negotiation between what it is I want to write and what it is, like, publishing wants me to write.

But other methods are… like I was thinking earlier when you said something like, I wanted to be a good student when you were writing early on in your academic career, which I resonate with a lot: Wanting to do a good job. Right? And I was thinking I’ve felt that so often when writing. But what I might do is just write it on the page. Like, right now I’m trying to be a good student. And suddenly you write it on the page, it just zaps the power out of it for me. Whatever that metacognitive moment is, it zaps the, um, power out of that. Like, oh, I’m trying to be so good here. Right? Because you put it on the page. So, you’ve kind of like… I don’t know how to say it. One upped it in a way. Checked it, recognized it, and… So that’s another trick that I have. Um, being meta cognitive about something. And then in the midst of writing it.

Do you leave it on the page?

Yeah. [Lette: Okay] Until much later in the draft. But a lot of times if I didn’t write something like that, I wouldn’t get to the next sentence. I have to, like, check the fear or the emotion, like acknowledge it and um, and drop it, and then like hopefully keep going after that. Otherwise, I can kind of get stuck.

That’s so interesting. I’m thinking of things I’ve read that resonate to me on that level, you know, because I’m, I’m always skirting around the thing, you know, and then sometimes you read something and someone’s named it. Just that in itself is incredibly powerful. The naming of the thing. It’s so hard to do.

It is. It’s hard to be present for language in that way. Like the first time I remember it was with the word “despite,” which is a poem in The Amputees Guide to Sex That’s it. It was just the word despite. And I kept getting the word “despite” from people like, oh, you’ve achieved so much despite your disabilities. And sometimes a word will just stick like a burr on me. And, i’s actually kind of helpful because I’m so aware of that word or what that word is doing in a way that most of the time I’m not aware of what words are doing. So. Yeah.

So… I’m like, I want to, like, find a way to… to see if there’s, like, something we should take away for… for… for early career, early career scholars (I mean, like myself, I’m precarious. I’m always trying to figure out a way to be in the academy) um, or grad students. Like: what is… what do you think is most important to you about the academic world? Like why does it matter? And what is worth caring for such that we can orient ourselves in a certain way or develop a certain practice?

I mean, I would say, first of all, that anyone who’s a graduate student or precarious, y’all are already doing everything you need to do. The system needs to drastically change. The problem is not you. The problem is these systems are completely, um, I was going to cuss, but I don’t want to curse on your podcast. Um, they… they need radical change. So how do we move in these systems? Well, I’m still figuring it out, honestly. I’m also feeling really privileged. Because you need a job, right? Like anyone who’s precarious or a graduate student who gets a job, tenure track, suddenly has health insurance and like a 401K and all of these really basic things. Um. And so how to move within that system? Well, how did I do it? Well, the only way I landed a job was luck. So know that it’s really not talent. It’s really a complete gamble. Um. Why someone got the job and someone else didn’t… it’s… I truly feel that it’s about chance and the composition of a committee. Which no one can ever know in advance. Um, navigating that, for me, is about complete love for books… writing. And then the rare people—rare though—people that you find who are your… your like cheer squad and you’re their cheer squad.

And then the other thing is, um, working in crip time, if you can. The academy doesn’t want you to at all. But if there’s a way that you can subvert or warp deadlines, academic clocks, that… all of that pressure and work at your own pace.

And that extends… So there’s some practical things you can do, like ask for the extension. And that… that’s something that I didn’t know going in as a PhD student. I never asked for an extension. I was having like night sweats and anxiety attacks rather than ask for an extension. Like, now, I look back and I go, oh, I could have at least asked, right?

Um, take the medical leave. Like, I don’t know why I didn’t take a medical leave, ever in my PhD program. It was really stressful. It was detrimental to my health. Why did I push through? What would it have mattered if I took the medical leave? I feel like there’s stigma around all this stuff that if I went back in time and did it again, I would ask for extensions. I would take the medical leave. I would just try to use—smuggle—something in or use the system to my advantage more. I think that’s it.

Since this interview, there have been developments in the publication of Borg Diem. The journal, Including Disability, wants to publish a preview of the dictionary. Next, there is a plan to build a living dictionary website. Thank you to Cy Weise for talking to me today. Thank you to the Aydelotte Foundation for your support. Thank you to Jodie Riddex for your art and to Sebas Bauer for your music. Thank you for listening.