30. "Intervention"

What do we expect of an author who calls his essay an "intervention"? That he's stepping into something that's already going on, right? The Latin root of the word means "coming between" and, up to a few decades ago, we felt it in nearly every use. "Don't intervene" meant "stay out of this." "Let me intervene" asked permission to step in.

Now we have a collection of essays, two learned journals, a program for teaching, a television program, a convention on internet culture, a song by Madonna, and a host of essays, all called "Interventions," and anybody who sees the root meaning of that word inside any of them has a lot better eyesight than I have.

This wouldn't matter — you can always pick up meanings from the context and add them — except that, for people like me who did a lot of reading in the earlier decades, the root meaning keeps coming back. Tell us that your "interaction with a previously existing artwork" is an intervention and we see you stepping into an ongoing controversy. That would be OK (except for the question of when we've ever seen an artwork that wasn't previously existing) if we were shown what the controversy was, but we seldom are.

In some cases we're at first puzzled and then get the picture. Teaching reading in elementary school is an intervention? Yes, without it the flow of ignorance would continue. Depressing but understandable.

Other cases are more depressing. Tell us that you're intervening to further good health and we see all your patients, without you, sliding into bad health. If they're susceptible to AIDS they won't be able to stop themselves. It's the same with psychological counseling as intervention. Without psychologists the troubled can't avoid pathology. We picture the whole human race sliding naturally toward dysfunction. It's the "law of entropy," ugh. Every system defaults to disorder.

There's always a chance that we could make better sense of this if we knew more. Learning more about postmodern literary theory has, at least, helped me answer one question: How can each of those different essays, like the 44 op-ed pieces collected in Chomsky's "Interventions," be an intervention, a stepping into something already going on?

The narrow answer is that what's going on is discourse in a particular area and that, though it flows in various directions, one essay, inserted anyplace, can change it. When Chomsky paddles along in his canoe he will make swirls that will make some kind of difference.

The broad answer is that what's going on is the English language. Any essay is an intervention, a disturbance of the stream coming down to us and flowing past us.

That, beyond what it says about the language, has implications for the writer. Chomsky can get someplace in his canoe, and make what swirls he will, but he can't expect to go exactly where he wants to go. The language current is full of its own swirls, and can surprise a writer.

I see one of those surprises in the re-appearance of root meanings. Say you're a writer wanting to make clear to the world the beauty of beetles. You do so and you (or your agent) decide to call your piece "an intervention," counting on your readers to see you stepping into an ongoing controversy, maybe an exciting one. But there is no controversy. Nobody has disputed the beauty of beetles and few have thought about it. You knew that when you wrote the piece. All you wanted to do was make people overcome their indifference and see the beauty of beetles.

All right, most readers, after Chomsky and Madonna, will accept the contemporary meaning you counted on in your title. Maybe all will do so, at first. But then some will either believe there is a controversy and find you careless in not revealing it, or believe there is not a controversy and find you false in claiming that there is. These are readers feeling the force of a root meaning you can't keep out. The language is stronger than you are. Nobody, not even Noam Chomsky, can put his canoe just where he wants to put it.