Introduction: Language Is a Virus
![handle is hein.journals/umialr53 and id is 975 raw text is: Introduction:
Language Is a Virus
KEITH AOKI*
I. Is LANGUAGE A VIRUS?
Laurie Anderson said, language is a virus from outer space -
that's why I'd rather hear your name than see your face.' What might a
spiky-haired, violin-playing, iconoclastic post-punk NYC performance
artist's tribute to the even more iconoclastic beat novelist William Bur-
roughs have to do with a bunch of pedantic and stuffy law professors,
LatCrit or otherwise? More than you might think.
For one, Anderson's phrase, language is a virus2 captures neatly
the simultaneous power and danger of language. The power of language
lies in how it oozes, it permeates, it stains and colors, it flows into the
interstices, it saturates the air and the airwaves, it is between, within and
without us - perhaps no area of human experience remains unmediated
by language. The language of power is, literally, language (or rather,
languages). Gluing us together, splitting us apart, driving us into
ecstasy and despair, seeping into, pervading, screaming our pain and
voicing our deepest dreams and nightmares - speaking us even while
we think we speak it. Language is the turbulent, restless ocean sur-
* Associate Professor, University of Oregon School of Law, Visiting Professor, 1998-1999,
Boston College Law School. This piece has benefited from innumerable conversations with
Anthony Paul Farley and Phyllis Goldfarb. I have benefited immensely from reading a draft
version of Anthony Paul Farley, The Poetics of Colorlined Space (draft, forthcoming in Francisco
Valdes, Jerome Culp and Angela Harris Critical Race Theory).
1. Laurie Anderson, Language is a Virus (for William S. Burroughs), United States, I-IV
(1991); Language is a Virus, Home of the Brave (1986).
2. I am aware of the pernicious power of ways that the virus metaphor has been deployed
against immigrants in the past and in no way do I endorse the labeling of languages other than
English or people speaking those languages as viruses. I do, however intend to (1) name the
virus metaphor as a xenophobic response and then (2) contest, subvert and complexity by asking
us to consider that all languages may be viruses.
I also note that in the mid-19'h century West Coast states, Chinatown (and Chinese
immigrants living in them) were viewed as pathological breeding grounds for diseases such as
leprosy, cholera, and the bubonic plague .... the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1870
declared that the 'Chinese were considered 'moral leper[s]' whose habits encouraged disease
wherever they resided. See Keith Aoki, Foreign-ness & Asian American Identities: Yelloface.
World War II Propaganda, and Bifurcated Racial Stereotypes, 4 UCLA AsiAN PAC. AM.L.J. 1,33-
35 (1996). One should note the long shelf life of the virus metaphor, when U.S. newspapers have
characterized the economic crisis that began during summer 1997 in Thailand, Indonesia and
Malaysia as the Asian (Economic) Flu. See e.g., Editorial, The Asian Virus Spreads, N.Y.
TIMEs, Nov. 20, 1997.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/umialr53&div=44&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Introduction: Language Is a Virus
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