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Emerson and Disability Emerson and Disability
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Aphasic Etymology in Whitman Aphasic Etymology in Whitman
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September 17–18, 1881 September 17–18, 1881
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Notes Notes
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33 Aphasic Etymology: A Disability Poetics and the Emerson-Whitman Connection
Get accessDon James McLaughlin, Assistant Professor, University of Tulsa
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Published:18 July 2024
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Abstract
This chapter describes as “aphasic etymology” Emerson’s studied devotion to concealed histories of linguistic meaning, his attunement to our inability to excavate all we attempt to express. Emerson’s interest in etymological estrangement shapes his essay “The Poet” (1844), which likens poetry to etymology. “The poets made all the words,” Emerson explains. “For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was a stroke of genius. … The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry.” Here collective memory loss becomes the landscape of speech itself. “The Poet” thus makes room for a social model of aphasic etymology, resituating the “fossil poetry” embedded in language as a forgetting commons. “Poetry” is the mechanism of accessibility that endeavors to traverse these spectral distances. This chapter concludes by using such concepts to reframe Emerson’s relationship with Walt Whitman.
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