Mike Krel

English 2150

February 15h 2017

Two Voices in Speaking in Tongues

This essay will be looking at Zadie Smith’s text Speaking in Tongues. The intellectual problem present is the divide between two specific voices in the author’s life: the one she acquired from her lavish education and the other from her childhood living as a working-class youth. These voices battle and she attempts to balance them. The intellectual problem she poses is: which is the real voice? Are either of them more real than the other? If one’s voice is split, how is one able to ultimately restore their identity? This essay will explore this concept and formulate a reasonable response to this question of identity and voice. There are three categories that will be helpful in this essay’s analysis that must be looked into. First, is the concept of stable content which refers to information that will not change. The status quo is the state of affairs that is “expected.” It is the state of affairs that generally precedes a destabilizing moment. Which brings us to the third concept, a destabilizing moment is something that challenges the reader’s hope in the status quo; in other words, it is a moment that calls the entire order of things into question and usually leaves the reader unsure of where the story will follow. These three components are the fundamentals found within Smith’s text

Zadie Smith beings with a simple “Hello.” She begins by being honest to the reader about this not being the voice of her childhood. She developed new tastes since then, and education has changed her so drastically that who she is not is unrecognizable to her childhood self. Her own childhood has been the story of “disparate things” which never occurred to her when she was actually living it (Smith, 2). In essence, she was not able to communicate with those around here all throughout the duration of her childhood. She describes it like “being alive twice” since “her old voice… seemed to feel and speak things that I couldn’t express in college, and vice-versa” (Smith, 2). She describes this as an ongoing trend, described by George Bernard Shaw and others, as a process of thousands of British men and women drop their native tongues and acquired an entirely new dialect. This new dialect was sophisticated and educated, but it lacked no resemblance to the older voice that these peoples spoke when they were younger. All of this caused her to think about on her own identity, the posh educated one and the working-class voice of her youth. Having said this, the said makes it clear that in due time and through knowledge, the ability to communicate only progresses for the better.

Moving forward, she compares the situation to how Barrack Obama’s was when he was developing his own political voice. While Obama appears to be an expert when it comes to speaking, it was not always that way. “For Obama, having more than one voice in your ear is not a burden” – and so, she thought, Obama was able to gravitate and use the voice he found useful given the social situation (Smith, 5). However, Zadie Smith continues with this narrative onto the second section of her essay. She finds Obama’s dual-voice intriguing, but it has also created an air of secrecy around him that has been filled into the political sphere. Since he had two voices, or more than two, his election brought about a damage in the political status quo. He had no stable content; he was in flux, and his voice was dependent on many factors, but he was able to adapt. Smith finds it to be a wildly lucrative talent. However, one that she may not be able to fully appreciate in the grand scheme of things. Yet, as Zadie Smiths, the conservative opposition found this enraging. In fact, they “they would rage on in the blogs and on the radio, waiting obsessively for the mask to slip” (Smith, 7). The saying goes, from these pundits, is that he “says one things but means another” – this, Zadie Smith calls, the “essence of the fear campaign” (Smith, 7). These have their roots in the anxiety of many middle Americans that America itself is splitting in its voice. Obama is the personification of this split; he comes from two, or more, different Americas, and hence he is not stable in his identity. Him being in flux brings anxiety, and this likewise brings fear, which fuels politics and drives these people into opposition. Therefore, the entire presidency Obama dealt with question of “Who is he? – and indeed, conservative experts were asking this same question during his reelection campaign, even after he had been president for four years. This question of identity and Obama’s many voices was never resolved, even now. Altogether, Smith is using Obama in this way to prove the point that no matter who one is, intellectual problems always prevail in the long-run.

To take things to the next level, Smith continues with her discussion of politics and attempts to dig deep. Zadie Smith goes further to talk about politics, and here lies the intellectual problem that she is trying to solve. She writes:

… for reasons that are obscure to me, those qualities we cherish in our artists we condemn in our politicians. In our artists we look for the many-colored voice, the multiple sensibility (Smith, 11).

Therefore, it is the struggle she sees present in much of human history, bringing-up Shakespeare and the medieval art. As the essay closes, Zadie Smith makes her case for Barrack Obama’s presidency. The truth came to actualization as she considers it daring that such a man would put himself out there for the presidency. She bases on optimisms on that fact that Obama was a “man born and raised between opposing dogmas, between cultures, between voices, … and could not help but be aware of the extreme contingency of culture” (Smith, 16). She hopes that since Obama has two voices, he will be able to convey a real reality that will overturn the status quo; that patriotism will coexist with the idea that “my country is also a country like other countries” while also stating as a fact that our patriotism lends itself to thinking that it is the best country. These opposing narratives can only be brought together with someone who has multiple voices, and who grew up “in-between” two different poles. For Zadie Smith, Obama possess this dual voice and she believes it will allow him to sit in between two opposites that were previously not able to be merged.

However, this brings us to the fundamental problem posed by Zadie Smith in this essay, apart from Obama: how does one reconcile their identity if they have a split voice? In the case of Zadie Smith, she has the voice of a college-educated person, while also holding elements of her voice from her working-class childhood. In the end, one cannot cling to the past like this, but there is a sense something was basically lost. Zadie Smith lost those working-class tastes that she so unconsciously operated in when she was young; this, indeed, is a loss that she cannot account for. However, having been educated in a luxurious environment, and having all the gifts that come along with it, she has gained tremendously. In fact, it is because of higher-education that she came so attached and aware of her working-class childhood voice; it is because of her higher-education that she is able to contrast and be conscious of this childhood voice. Therefore, it is basically like a double edged sword and although tragic, and something was inevitably lost, the educated voice has developed tools with which to understood what was lost. However, one cannot go through life without changing their voice. One’s voice is dependent on their social conditions, and where they grew up, and where they settle now. Somehow something is always “lost” when moving about from location to location. Of course, one can (and should) stay committed to not losing everything about their past even if they are in such change, but one also cannot cling to them to strongly that they impede on their movements and aspirations. Of course, in the case of Zadie Smith losing one’s childhood voice is sad. However, I think this voice could have changed nonetheless even if she was conscious of it when it was occurring. Now, she considering it after-the-fact, and this makes it tragic but is also something to celebrate and think about. One is capable of reconciling with an identity if different voices are spoken by adjusting and adapting to the situation at hand. Without the ability to adapt, one may never be able to come to terms with the particular identity that they are carrying.

All in all, the intellectual problem posed by Zadie Smith is a question of identity. Identity is never a consistent, cohesive whole; it lacks clarity sometimes, and oftentimes fights against itself. There are regrets, since identity is in constant motion and change, but one must take this motion for what it is, and cling to the parts of one’s previous identity that are still able to used/seen. However, in a world where most people have a singular voice, rather than split voices, having a split voice like Zadie Smith or Barrack Obama could come off as threatening. This is the real social reality that one with split-identity must confront: those that are not able to cope with it, and who desperately want to maintain the status quo. In this case, the status quo never does not have an answer; one must always have one voice. The status quo always has a know which a split-identity doesn’t. This is ultimately the takeaway of Zadie Smith’s essay – that although having dual voices is complex and even confusing, one must press one so that those that are ignorant of other voices be fought against. Obama was the political manifestation of Zadie Smith’s intellectual problem, and ultimately the solution is to take the contradictions of one’s voice as-is and be proud of them.

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