Defining Apparatus

Prendergast begins by noting that this is not a book that is concerned with "defining the effects of linguistic imperialism related to British and american colonial and neocolonial activity" (19). Instead, she's interested in the effects of "Soviet imperialism on English and English language learners" (19).  I feel like this is an important distinction because, when we tend to talk about the role of English in globalization, we tend to speak with a finger-wagging tone toward "English" or America or Britain or Composition or Capitalism - as if they were the sole arbiters and creators of English-ness. If that makes any sense. But what I think Prendergast's book does a remarkable job of doing is noting the multiple players involved in the construction of the various "imaginaries of English" (52). The geopolitics of language is not the geopolitics of English. And the geopolitics of English is not merely the geopolitics of (neo)colonialism. It is a conflict among different apparatus.

The apparatus - a delightful, obfuscating word - is almost always the same in structure and function, but the difference is to what extent do those operating in the apparatus use its various tools of control and whom is being targeted as unnecessary or marginal. Foucault is perhaps most known for his talking about the apparatus, but I haven't ever seen him try to define it. Deleuze tries to define it in Thousand Plateaus noting that a "social apparatus consists of lines of force" that "act as arrows which continually cross between words and things, constantly waging battle between them." The links define categories, "correct" curves, connect tangents, establish boundaries and spaces, and it is through this defining of space that is internal to the apparatus and space that is external to the apparatus that the apparatus itself is formed. Just as how power is formed. They both emerge from the spatial defining of knowledge. In "What is an Apparatus?" Agamben argues that there is a link between the Greek oikonomia (a word which refers both to the home [oikos, I believe] and economy) and the Latin dispositio (where Foucault gets his dispositif or apparatus), between the economy and apparatus. From what I can tell, he defines apparatti? apparatusses? as "literally anything that has in some way the capacity to capture, orient, determine, intercept, model, control, or secure the gestures, behaviors, opinions, or discourses of living beings."

It is through various apparatuses that the various imaginaries of English get defined. But the various apparatuses use different tools through which to create their definitions. In Soviet control, English was unnecessary and therefore okay to let shrivel and die through bureaucratic run-arounds. It was an existence that could be killed, but not sacrificed... Maybe... Maybe not... During the establishment of ethnonationalism, the nomination of Slovak as a national language seems at the same time to be a deliberate choice to make language a central part of national identity that allows an aspect of culture to become something that can be "left" to shrivel and die or systematically destroyed. Western capitalism establishes the periphery as well. Except instead of using language as an explicit connection to one's centrality, it uses one's geographic origin. One speaks English, but one is still from Eastern Europe. Or one speaks medical English, but not business. While in the imaginary defined by the Soviet apparatus all Englishes were defined as external and dangerous (or revolutionary and culturally free [pending on the person]), in Western capitalism various Englishes have become part and parcel of the division of labor. They are central to the linking and establishing of the a capitalist apparatus. But in each, the apparatus captures English(es) and puts it (them) to use for a specific purpose (e.g. the Soviet apparatus used English to mark out enemies of the party).

Perhaps the divergent experiences of the people could be defined in terms of the relative power and influence of each apparatus on their understanding of how the lines and links are formed. Maria understood the cultural utopia of America as part and parcel with English. However, as she adjusted to the new apparatus of Western capitalism, she discovered that language was not the only line that defined whether or not one is on the inside.