As many of you know, I’m fascinated by the ways in which the language of capitalism– and a kind of provisional contractual mobility associated with capitalism– have become ubiquitous in the language of postmodern culture. It’s become increasingly difficult to talk outside the market, even to name experiences that were long thought to be sanctuaries from or alternatives to the market.
One can see this tendency in relatively subtle changes, i.e., the turn to “lover” and worse, the truly ghastly “partner” as our common terms for the person we love romantically. “Beloved” is now an archaicism, or at the least a starchy and literary turn of phrase, redolent of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with its pretensions to permanence and dogged preference for being over becoming. Our affections are more naturally expressed in the language of active mobility (“lover”) or contract (“partner”).
Similarly, dog people no longer refer to themselves as “masters.” They prefer “owners.” I assume that “master” sounds too hierarchical and arbitrary, whereas “owner” sounds contractually legitimate. But is it really an improvement to own a creature rather than to be its master? Doesn’t “owner”— perceptibly more than “master”— imply that the creature is utterly at the disposal of the being that owns it?
No matter. As any dog person knows, the owner and the master designations are honorary titles, half-truths at best. A scent hound on the trail is its own master, as is a retriever once a ball is thrown, as is a dog wrestling with a canine friend, as is any dog I’ve known within a twenty-food radius of meat, cheese, and peanut butter. For those who are sensitive to words and culture, there is real joy in watching the wayward recalcitrance of life when language comes calling it to heel.
