The language of community has gone on holiday

In his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein notes that "Philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday". Our frequent (ab)use of the term "community" seems to me to be a case of language being on permanent vacation or even a kind of "gardening leave". We become bewitched by our own misuse of the language of community in ways that I have tried to describe in this blogspot. At one and the same time it is both "cosy" and unquestioned as well as actually being "distancing" and discriminatory. It sounds as though it is an uncomplicated concept that points to a real set of social relations when in fact it is the intellectual equivalent of blancmange. It conveys a special, even "unified and holy" state of affairs even when it is actually only being used to describe the people who live in a particular area or who share a common and often arbitrary characteristic (such as ethnic background, type of profession - "the business community", hobby - "the golfing community" or disability - the"deaf community"). It is often used where it literally doesn't exist "a gated community", a "virtual community", "the Islington community" etc. In these instances almost any other term is less mystificatory - why can't we just say "business people", "golfers", "deaf people", "Islington people" etc.?

Not surprisingly any attempt to construct a sensible social policy based on this woolly nonsense(especially around "cohesion" or "regeneration") is doomed to both failure and incoherence.

"Community" is neither cohesive or coherent. There is a sense in which the concept is highly "adhesive" - it sticks around and cannot be got rid of . Like a bad penny it keeps turning up. It has a sort of cloying desperation when it is used by politicians. It gets stuck in almost any inappropriate situation so that it ends up becoming oxymoronic or tautologous. It is abit like getting chewing gum in your hair - the more you try and get rid of it the more tangled it gets - best to chop it off!

Confucius was once asked how he would deal with a particular problem for the administration of his government and instead of replying at the level of social policy he called instead for a "rectification of names" - a clarification of the langauge used to describe the situation: "If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant. If what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone. If this remains undone, morals and art (ie society) will deteriorate. If justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above all." (Analects 13.3).

Well Amen to that!

Lets try and avoid this dangerous and ideologically loaded concept of community where we can, rather than bring it into every possible conversation as if to bless and sanctify the proceedings. Otherwise we are going to keep spinning around like Alice:

"Then you should say what you mean" the March Hare went on.
"I do!", Alice hastily replied "at least I mean what I say - that's the same thing you know"
"Not the same a bit!" said the Hatter. "Why you might as well say that 'I see what I eat' is the same thing as 'Ieat what I see'!" (Lewis Carroll)