[Text originally published in Innovations and Therapeutics in Oncology 2023; 9:7-12. doi:10.1684/ito.2023.0356]
The sin of sins — the sin of all unforgivable anachronism[1]Febvre L. The problem of unbelief in the 16th centurye century. Rabelais' religion. Albin Michel, 1968, p. 15 Lucien Febvre
Using the right vocabulary is essential to making yourself understood. You have to know how to find the right word, the right expression, the best formula. But sometimes we see a distortion of these basic principles of communication. There are words that are forbidden because they are derogatory – or more precisely because we judge today that they could have been rude in the old days. But words only become insults when they are used in a intention derogatory! Other words are forbidden because they are too clear and must be euphemized. Most languages have thus eliminated from the vocabulary the words designating certain parts of the human body or its ejecta, for convenience: the word chest was thus considered inappropriate in the 17th centurye century.[2] According to Vaugelas (Notes on the French language, 1647), who condemns this euphemism, it is because one can speak of veal breast ; I won't dwell on others, which have remained so: everyone knows them! I don't frequent playgrounds, but as far as forbidden words are concerned, I think that today's children could give us some points, as shown by this pretty drawing by the pen of Yves Calarnou in La Croix...
Some words, on the other hand, were used precisely with an offensive intention, towards particular human groups, at a time close to ours: it is necessary to maintain their elimination, if not from dictionaries, at least from common usage. Some words are also making a comeback after having been replaced in this way: usage had come, in the first half of the 20th centurye century, to no longer speak of the Jews, but Israelites ; it was the Jews themselves who rehabilitated this word to designate them. There is of course no question of rehabilitating the word No…, loaded with too much contempt for the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa to admit it into language today. Biology has taught us that there is no races human, and anthropology that there are no peoples primitives : but there, they are no longer the mots that must be accused and banished, but the ideas that they convey.
There are much more harmless words that some would like to ban for reasons they believe to be similar, and in which they find a derogatory, even offensive, meaning. Let us take the word racisme. Le Monde one day replaced it with racialism[3]Robert J. Alternating Current in Medicine. Innov Ther Oncol 2021; 7: 171-4., a neologism that does not exist in our language. It was to avoid accusing anthroposophy of racism – what a nasty thing for such a beautiful movement of thought! By watering down the term, the editors of the newspaper believed they were restoring a certain dignity to its followers. A waste of time for those who know what anthroposophy is. In the same vein, a leader of what was then called the National Front replaced the word in her speeches nationalists to designate his supporters by the word national, less connoted. Some words have been banned by a famous board game, such as the word Jesuitical, considered offensive to the Jesuits (and yet they are used to denigration!). And to stay within the framework of board games, what should we think of belote, where the King takes precedence over the Queen, as indicated here a journalist from Point ? Fortunately, the Jack of Trumps wins over them, which is comforting from a class struggle perspective.
Another word has just been banned from scientific language (sociological to be precise): the word 'tribalism'. A very interesting article from Journal of Hospital Medicine [4]Kanjee Z, Bilello L. Tribalism: The good, the bad, and the future. J Hosp Med 2021; 16: 227. Retracted and republished in: J Hosp Med 2021; 16: 357. used it to describe the herd mentality of medical corporations walled up in their communal inner circle. Tribalism? How awful! The editor-in-chief, Samir Shah, made amends in April 2021 for allowing the article to be published, which he retracted and republished under a different title! And the new article replaced tribalism by silo… Understand who can… Wheat producers will appreciate this, because the primary meaning of silo, in English as in French, is precisely what is used to store grain.
Tribalism! Can you imagine! A dirty word like there are few… Next to that, sh…, f…, p…, dirty c… remain in the domain of good manners! Tribalism… Absolute horror! And it wasn’t even to talk about the f… people, the N…, it was to evoke the mentality of doctors who behave like Panurge’s sh… and stand together when attacked, as if they belonged to a t… I don’t dare finish my words: my readers, I’m sure, will guess (they have bad enough spirit for that!) And Samir Shah even tweeted: “We erred in publishing an article that used 'tribalism' to refer to silos [5]'silo' here meaning 'partitioning' in medicine. We thank readers for educating us". Let's educate, let's educate, they said... What a bunch of Tartuffes! In French, this gives, in the language of Claire Bretécher: "Kick my butt, please!"[6]Bretecher C. The frustrated, vol. 2, p. 66. Edited by the author, 1972. All rights reserved.
Let us try to dissect the meaning of tribe and tribalism. Tribes represent a particular organization of society within a nation-like community. Everyone has heard of the twelve tribes of Israel; the democratic reform of Cleisthenes in 508 BC redistributed the Athenian population into ten tribes; that of ancient Rome was divided into three tribes, the Luceres Ramnes and Titianses ; and many ancient peoples were thus subdivided. The word is in no way pejorative and is simply used to designate the components of a population. This is how many human groups have referred to themselves up to the present day in most of North Africa, the Sahara and the Middle East.[7]Julien CA What is a North African tribe? in: Tribute to Lucien Febvre, Armand Colin, 1953[7]. And since the feeling of chauvinism is universal, everyone considered their tribe to be the best (or the oldest, or the most honorable). The word is used by zoologists who have inserted a subdivision 'tribe' between 'family' and 'genus'. Anthropologists have taken up the term to speak of the subdivisions of certain populations that they studied. Certainly, for decades, anthropology had an evolutionary view of cultures, thinking that some cultures were more 'primitive' than others, considered more 'advanced': a concept coined by Lewis Morgan[8]Deliege R. A History of Anthropology. Schools, Authors, Theories. Editions du Seuil, 2006, pp. 23-50. and popularized by Friedrich Engels, whom anthropology got rid of more than 80 years ago under the influence, in particular, of Claude Lévi-Strauss; we now know that no culture is 'primitive' in relation to another...
As for the word tribalism, in question here, is only a derivative of the word tribe, designating that latent chauvinism which arises from belonging to a group, whether it be a group dependent on age, geography, politics, religion, without forgetting the love of opera or Vire andouille[9]But yes, there is a brotherhood called Friendly association of lovers of authentic andouillette.... This feeling is universal, and one can deplore it or accept it. One can see manifestations of tribal behavior by attending a political party meeting or a pétanque club, a football match, the Bayreuth Festival or the annual excursion of the Alumni from the canton of Gleux-les-Lure. And I was going to forget the tribe of Jets and that of Sharks, recently brought back into fashion by Steven Spielberg… So why ostracize the word tribalism? I would like to show here that our moralizers are mistaken and that it is them who return to the abandoned evolutionary conception of anthropology. If they eliminate the word tribalism, this is because they give it a pejorative meaning: they therefore start from the hypothesis that cultures where society is organized in tribes are inferior to those where it is not… Which is unacceptable, I fully agree. Racism is in their heads, not in the word!
If we start removing the words that bother us, we will have to rewrite a lot of things! For the fossils who still read poetry, I refer you to these two lines from Drunken Boat evoking the cruel fate of the haulers:
Screaming Red Indians had targeted them
Having nailed them naked to the colored posts.
Redskins is improper; likewise American Natives besides… we must talk about native Americans or, if you want to speak French, Native Americans, as I once read it from the pen of an incompetent translator [10] And then the derogatory idea that they were screaming, and that they attacked and tortured the haulers must be eliminated: if they did it, it was surely because of social constraints imposed by the colonizers. Finally, fortunately, Rimbaud spoke of colored poles, and not of the doldrums [11], which is to his credit.
And now we are republishing scientific articles by eliminating retrospectively words that annoy. It is astonishing to see scientists lending themselves to this masquerade. What a strange initiative that of the editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal (see here) to return to old articles to water them down, label them with an infamous label, and even consider deleting them, because they convey words or ideas that are considered offensive today, whereas they were accepted when these articles appeared. We cannot judge the cultural options of the past by the cultural options of the present: we must admit them, we must not fall into the trap of anachronism by committing a historical misinterpretation, as I mentioned in the quote from Lucien Febvre that serves as my epigraph. We cannot rewrite history. Man can change the future [12], but he cannot change the past. We cannot make that past not have happened.
If we can remove the words that bother us and which, I repeat, were not necessarily considered derogatory at the time they were used, we can also remove books: the idea is not new, and the Nazis put it into practice. Fahrenheit 451: this is the temperature at which paper spontaneously ignites, according to Ray Bradbury; 1984, this is the date on which George Orwell's novel takes place: do you think that this date is behind us? Oh, no! It is a date that is always before us, and towards which we are marching happily as if towards an asymptote... After words and books, we must also remove people. Does that remind you of anything? For me, it makes me think furiously of the iconographic removal of politicians who have ceased to please; the Soviets were past masters in this rewriting of history:
Let's delete words, delete books, delete people... Those who try to rewrite history are dictators: we replace a word that could arouse unhealthy thoughts, we burn a book deemed subversive, we remove a disgraced minister from a photo, we erase a genocide by saying that it never happened. Of course, we can regret the past, we can plead guilty to collective crimes committed in the past by our ancestors: domination and intolerance towards women and minorities, colonization, slavery, there is no shortage of them. But we cannot erase them: there is no point in hiding them. There was no point in retouching the photo above: the original version is still available. Which seems to be what the editors of the British Medical Journal when they write: " Even when publications decide to correct or remove content, the original version will remain in print editions and in other locations online through third parties such as indexers and libraries. "Erase, gentlemen, erase, there will always be something left! Yes, but... until when? As long as there is paper?
