By RENATO ORTIZ*
In the solitude of the digital screen, the individual lives the illusion of his infinity; the other is perceived as potentially disruptive in his invasive presence. The insult protects him, reinforcing the barriers of his narcissism.
The term derives from classical Latin insult, literally meant assault; it was commonly used in military language as a synonym for attack, and also expressed the idea of a place of protection from enemy threats, that is, “away from insult”. Over time, languages bend to the demands of history, the concept is identified with insult, outrage, a word offensive to the dignity of another.
The previous collective content ceases to exist and the individual dimension predominates, the act is directed at a specific target; there is the insulter and the insulted, the one who exerts verbal violence and the one to whom it is directed. In this sense, it differs from the idea of swearing; swear words can often imply the depreciation of people, however, on some occasions, they are uttered without considering the existence of someone outside the one who utters them (for example, when I say “shit”, “fuck”, when I trip).
Linguists say that an insult is inseparable from its context, where its meaning becomes complete and fully intelligible. There are ritual insults, usually made between young people, when one of them speaks and the other responds in the same offensive tone; mutual insults do not necessarily have a pejorative intention, they simply indicate belonging to a specific group (it occurs mainly among members of a gang).
They can also make people laugh; Henri Bergson said that laughter had the “function of intimidating and humiliating”, revealing the malice hidden in the soul of every human being, an insensitivity that would “anesthetize the heart” (humorists are horrified by his interpretation). There would thus be a kind of elective affinity between insult and laughter.
Insults are a widely used artifice in politics; in argumentative disputes, they often disqualify the opponent. In the battle to be won, the chosen combat strategy combines disdain, neglect and contempt. But this is a specific “fight” between antagonists, not exactly a “war” of destruction. However, its generalization and recurrence transform it into a constitutive element of a type of language, that is, of understanding the world.
A language does not only refer to a fortuitous event; the words that name it shape thought. They constitute categories of classification and knowledge of reality. Every authoritarian system aims to discipline language. In this way, insult becomes a natural resource of linguistic expression. This occurs with the aggressive statements made and repeated by far-right groups (in particular what I have called Lingua franca of boçalnarism). They are part of a lexicon in which intolerance has become a virtue.
The clash with the world is based on a philosophical conception, that is, an ideology that presupposes the existence of an “us” against “them”, an exclusionary perspective in which the adversary is an enemy, a stranger to be demeaned, preferably eliminated. Reality, or truth, as philosophers say, in this case is an impertinent noise to be dismissed. Verbal violence fulfills the role of reducing the other to a position of humiliation and impotence, their illusory presence is disarmed by the conviction and the uproar of the offense.
There is a correlation between insult and public space. Restricted to the private domain, its implication is partial, involving only the participants in the discursive act. In summary, it can be said that public space is a common territory in which individual opinions are expressed. It presupposes two dimensions: the common and the individual. However, in its origins, in industrial modernity, a clear distinction is made between the public and the private.
Nineteenth-century modernity expanded the space for people to be included, regardless of their social or class background. However, it also established a clear separation between privacy and the public domain. Walter Benjamin used to say that in the comfort of bourgeois homes, the furniture was marked by the fingerprints of its owners. The home was a refuge from the hustle and bustle of the street. The boundaries were clearly expressed in a literary genre of the time, women's novels (I'm thinking of Jane Austen), in which women found themselves confined to the living space and its surroundings (dances and parties).
But the public sphere is changing, particularly with the media and technological changes; social networks radicalize this process, breaking the incompatibility that previously existed. Interaction expands, involving a group of actors who inhabit a shared universe. But we cannot forget that the delocalization of digital interactions favors an exacerbation of the Self, it becomes public, it is “everywhere”.
Subjectivity is thus experienced in its expansion, it is perceived as an infinite quality, it cannot be restricted. The obstacles in relation to communication do not constitute a censorship of what is said, it is the restriction that constrains, it circumscribes the action of the minimal Self to the exiguity of its borders.
In the solitude of the digital screen, the individual lives the illusion of his infinity; the other is perceived as potentially disruptive in his invasive presence. Insult protects him, reinforcing the barriers of his narcissism. In its original meaning, insult referred to the idea of assault; ironically, the “new times” bring us closer to its etymological past. The exacerbation of individualism builds a “place of insult” in which the murmur of the language finds itself sheltered from the storms of life.
* Renato Ortiz He is a professor at the Department of Sociology at Unicamp. Author, among other books, of The universe of luxury (Mall). [https://amzn.to/3XopStv]
Originally published on BVPS blog.
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