Rolling the "RRRR"
Marc Latamie responds to The Substantial Ghost: Towards a General Exegesis of Duchamp's Artful Wordplays
by Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould's
text is very interesting and full of pleasant "interactive consonants."
Though it seems important to add Frantz Fanon's "R- assimilationist"
so to speak, to the discussion. Fanon actually devoted part of his book
"Black Skin, White Mask" (1952) to the importance of language and pronunciation.
A doctor and trained psychoanalyst, Fanon discovered an obsession of
pronouncing the letter "R" by the people from the French speaking Antilles
(Martinique and Guadeloupe). To differentiate themselves from other
black people in Paris during the 1950's and 60's, these so-called "assimiléé,"
went out of their way to pronounce the rolled "R," producing an exaggerated
sound effect. The general French black population had a tendency to
skip and not pronounce the consonant.