critique of Rawls). Since the 1980s, each side has challenged the
other to assimilate its claims, be they ontological, political, or
ethical. In Politics and Passion: Toward a More Egalitarian Liberalism,
for example, Michael Walzer argues that the “liberal hero, the
autonomous individual, choosing his or her memberships, moving
freely from group to group in civil society” is a fiction unless we
take account of the vast importance of “involuntary association, ”3
or, as Walzer puts it elsewhere, “a radical givenness to our
associational life.”
Most of us are born into or find ourselves in what may
well be the most important groups to which we belong—
the cultural and religious, the national and linguistic
communities within which we cultivate not only identity
but character and whose values we pass on to our children
(without asking them).
What strikes me, after seven years in Esperantujo, is that Esperanto
bridges the dichotomy between what is “radically given” and what is
“freely chosen.” Esperanto is not “radically given” to anyone, not
even to denaskuloj, who are free to take it or leave it. No, Esperanto
is radically chosen. And to choose a language is to see the world a
certain way; to question it a certain way; to assess, criticize,
acclaim, or reform it within certain parameters. Esperantists choose
the givenness that language gives the world. When Walzer demands
“a political theory as complicated as our own lives,” 4 he might well
be describing the complicated lives of Esperantists.
These days, the center-periphery model in which Esperanto
emerged, a model that survived numerous schisms and endured amid
empires, great powers, and cold warriors, has given way to new
transnational networks located everywhere at once: in cyberspace,
if you will. Esperanto, by necessity, is learning the language of
cosmopolitanism, which, in the words of sociologist Ulrich Becker,
entails “the erosion of clear borders separating markets, states,
civilizations, religions, cultures, life-worlds of common people. ”5
Like other geographically scattered communities, Esperantists no
longer speak of themselves as international; instead, they are
cosmopolitans, citizens of a global Babel. The poet Jorge Camacho
describes the Esperantists as a malpopolo—an unpeople—partaking
of a cosmopolitan, moveable feast.
[Esperanto is] not about the culture and society of a
separate people, but about the discontinuous culture and
society, or the paraculture and parasociety, or the
subculture and subsociety, of a group of human beings
from different peoples, scattered everywhere on the globe,
and who live part of their life in, through, and often also
for Esperanto.
I worry a little when Esperantists talk like cosmopolitans, and not
simply because in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union Esperantists
paid so dearly for being deemed cosmopolitans. No, I worry because
disappointment with cosmopolitanism was one of Zamenhof’s chief
motives for inventing Esperanto. As a Jew in the Pale of Settlement,
he rejected the cosmopolitan model of Jewishness as “inauthentic.”
On the contrary, his model for a modern Jewish identity was a
Romantic, Herderian idea of a people bound by a common
language. When Zionism and modern Hebrew failed that dream, he
reshaped it around Hillelism—and Esperanto.
But if Camacho’s endlessly morphing malpopolo sounds like
postmodern cosmopolitanism, don’t be fooled: Camacho remains a
quizzical Herderian. “Esperanto continues to give me something,” he
writes, “which I don’t find anywhere else: an irrational sense of
direct belonging to the world.” 6 That is because conversation, the
lifeblood of Esperanto, is what solders individuals into community.
In the words of the philosopher Charles Taylor:
“Fine weather we’re having,” I say to my neighbor. Prior
to this, he was aware of the weather, may have been
attending to it; obviously I was as well. It was a matter for
him, and also for me. What the conversation-opener does
is make it now a matter for us: We are attending to it now
together.…
A conversation is not the coordination of actions of
different individuals, but a common action in this strong,
irreducible sense; it is our action. It is of a kind with—to
take a more obvious example—the dance of a group or a
couple, or the action of two men sawing a log. Opening a
conversation is inaugurating a common action.…
In human terms, we stand on a different footing when
we start talking about the weather. 7
It is the Esperantic conversation, that century-long haphazard
culture of chitchat and palaver, that builds a bridge between you
and me, turning my action into ours, myself into us. It provides, in
Camacho’s phrase, an irrational sense of directly belonging to the
world. Which is another way of saying that whatever the historical
destiny of Esperanto will be—wherever it ends up on earth, on
Mars, or in some other galaxy entirely—it begins in conversation:
“Fine weather we’re having.”
Belan veteron ni ĝuas.
Glossary
Akademio de Esperanto: Academy of Esperanto (formerly,
Language Committee)
bela: beautiful
bonvenon: welcome
bonvolu: please
ĉapelo: a circumflex; literally, a hat
civitane (closing in a letter): alternative to samideane used by
Civito members
Civito: see Esperanto Civito
ĉu: interrogative particle; whether; interjection meaning “oh!”
dankon, koran dankon: thank you, heartfelt thank you
denaska: raised speaking Esperanto
denaskulo, denaskuloj (pl): a person/people raised speaking
Esperanto
Esperanto: literally, “the Hoping One”
Esperanto Civito: community constituted by the “Pact for the
Esperanto Civito”
Esperantujo: the Esperanto community; the diasporic para-nation
of Esperanto
fina venko: the “final victory” of Esperanto; finavenkismo is the
aspiration for same
Fundamento: the sixteen “untouchable” rules governing Esperanto
grammar and usage
egaleco: equality
geja: gay
gejofobio: homophobia
ĝis la revido: until we meet again
gravulo: a VIP
ho ve: woe is me (like Yiddish “oy vey”)
Ido: literally “offspring,” a language derived from Esperanto
interna ideo: inner idea
jida: Yiddish
juda: Jewish
judadivena: of Jewish origin
kabei: to abandon the study of Esperanto
kara lingvo: dear language (e. g. Esperanto)
komencanto: beginner
komitato: committee
konsulo (m), konsulino (f): “consul” or delegate
korelativo: correlative (as in “table of correlatives”)
lesbo, lesbanino: a lesbian
“La Espero”: “The Hope,” by L. L. Zamenhof, the Esperanto anthem
Libera Folio: Free Page, an online magazine
Lingvo Internacia: international language, the original name of
Esperanto
movado: movement
planlingvo: planned (sometimes called “artificial”) language
saluton: hello
samideane (closing in a letter): in the “same idea”; see samideano
samideano/j (m), samideanino/j: fellow Esperantist/s