Language as an Adventure in Knowledge and Understanding

The linguist Professor Lisa Block de Behar

Dieser Artikel in Deutsch

Lisa Block de Behar

Lisa Block de Behar has a favorite place these days: the state library in Berlin. There, the 65 year-old linguist experiences that which has driven her throughout her research career. She calls it the "adventure in knowledge and understanding." In her current literary studies, the Humboldt Research Awardee is investigating how totalitarian regimes use language for purposes of propaganda. In particular she is analyzing the established tendency to return to archaeological-but drastically simplified-forms. In this way, so-called passwords are created, which in turn enable a sense of belonging to the ruling group.

When the professor from Montevideo in Uruguay looks at the development of her scholarly interests, she sees that they run parallel to the leading theoretical and critical trajectories of the past 50 years. "I followed and participated in the thematic and methodical trends of both Europe and the United States." Eugenio Coseriu in Montevideo inspired her intensive occupation with linguistics. Lisa Block de Behar was introduced to his linguistic theories and language philosophy in the late 1950s.

Foreign, yet somehow familiar

This training in structuralism fell on fertile ground in part because of the Humboldtian's family background. Born in Montevideo, she grew up in a family of German-Jewish immigrants. "Even though family and friends attempted to make themselves at home in the culture of Uruguay, they never stopped living their own traditions-traditions in which Jewish and German culture overlapped." This was not the result of nostalgia; rather it sprang from the need to rebuild their own cultural identity in a new land.

These childhood influences led to a strange experience for Lisa Block de Behar in Berlin: "When I arrived here, I thought for many reasons that I was coming to a foreign place with a foreign culture. Yet somehow I feel like I have lived here all my life." The differences between her homeland and her host country are not what surprise her. Rather, she is taken aback by a sense of familiarity-with the names of streets or squares, certain meals, and with the occasional gesture or manner of people around her.

"The first library that I can remember was full of German books. I can still picture an old edition of the Brockhaus dictionary as if it were yesterday." A great deal revolved around language in the Block home. Words, meanings, and comparisons between languages were recurring topics of conversation. The young girl often heard the names of German authors and philosophers while growing up. However, she never learned German systematically. "I felt a strong resistance to the language. I probably related it to the aggressive voices of the Nazis that we heard on the radio in those days." Her parents spoke to her only in Spanish, although the couple spoke in German or Yiddish to one another.

Departure from Structuralism

As Lisa Block de Behar began her scholarly pursuits, structuralism was the dominant theory of the day. However, the linguist began to distance herself from it gradually: "There were too many schemata, too much striving for units and definitions. I tried to find relationships in language other than those that are purely systematic." The South American scholar developed an interest in relationships among texts, the presence of works within other works. The theory of intertextuality as formulated by the French literary scholar Gérard Genette in "Palimpseste" offered her a point of entry for her linguistic investigations. In her examination of the interaction among texts, she incorporated pictures, paintings, films and photos. She was especially fascinated by the relationship between narrative literature and the cinema. The analyses of the French film semiologist Christian Metz and his successors provided her scholarly impetus.

As the military dictatorship in Uruguay came to an end and new disciplines sprang up at the universities, Lisa Block de Behar expanded her focus to include the study of communications. In 1985 she founded the chair for semiotics, and later for semiotics and the theory of interpretation.

Since the 1970s, the researcher has investigated the language of advertisements, primarily in terms of the interplay of language and pictures. "Although semiotics was largely dominated by French theorists, I found it essential to take into account other European and American perspectives, such as the work of Thomas A. Sebeok," she explains. During the 1980s there were a number of common threads in the theories of semiotics scholars at Yale University in the United States and in her own work. Lisa Block de Behar met with colleagues at Yale, and scholars such as Jacques Derrida, Geoffrey Hartman, and J. Hillis Miller traveled to Uruguay. Genette, Metz, Sebeok, and Gianni Vattimo, a philosopher from Turin, all accepted invitations to the Universidad de la República.

Her intellectual mentors

Lisa Block de Behar makes sure to mention two scholars to whom she is much indebted. They are her teachers in Uruguay: Emir Rodriguez Monegal and Carlos Real de Azúa. "Both made it a priority to stay on top of current research in Europe and North America, without losing their Latin American perspectives or abandoning their cultural roots in Uruguay," explains their erstwhile pupil.

Lisa Block de Behar also includes Jorge Luis Borges, forerunner of modern Latin American literature (1899-1986), and Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) among her sources of intellectual inspiration. The linguist examined Borges' work in a several books. The analysis of his writings, poems, and narratives opens the door to more encompassing theories which go beyond the boundaries of the author and his creation. It is the "aesthetic of disappearance" that has long captured the scholar. The disappearance of historical events and geographical features, the lack of borders between literary genres, ambiguity between characters, the dissolution of difference between reality and its reproduction-to name just a few-are formative for Borges' aesthetic. To the same extent, his work is shaped by the search for a single word or letter. Everything disappears except for the one thing the author seeks.

In these literary representations by Borges, Lisa Block de Behar sees a multifaceted connection with the philosophical ideas of Walter Benjamin, his theory of translation, and his etymological search for the origin of words. "My scholarly work with both authors led me to follow a poetic trail to a sort of pre-language." The Research Awardee speaks of an "Edenic language," a pre-language with numerous poetic examples which can be brought to light through intensive scholarly research. For Lisa Block de Behar, this is the "adventure in knowledge and understanding." The challenge is to reveal the linguistic, semiotic, rhetorical, hermeneutic and philosophical substance. "The way to this goal leads through the library. And in the libraries of Berlin, I feel almost like I am in Paradise."

Uschi Heidel (translated by Susanne Wunner)

07.05.2003