There’s a scene, from the now finished television drama Breaking Bad (a show no one liked, right?) wherein the protagonist (I’d call him a hero, but he’s really not very heroic) Walter White comes face-to-face with members of a rival drug cartel that he’s hoping to make a deal with. After most of White’s pitch, one of the other men says “Who the hell are you?”
Calmly, White says, “You know.You all know EXACTLY who I am.” He pauses. He nods. “Say my name.”
The thugs across from him engage in a little “oh, we don’t know who you are,” and White shares his credentials. I won’t spoil the show too much if you don’t know them. Then, again, calmly, White says “Now… say my name.”
Without hesitation, the leader of the other group mutters “Heisenberg.”
And White, unflinching, says “You’re god damned right.”
Why on Earth would I start here, quoting a cable drama where the dad from Malcolm in the Middle curses while invoking God? Three reasons. The first is that one of the things I attempt to do frequently is draw issues of rhetorical import from popular culture. There’s an importance to the way that Walter White behaves in this scene. He’s cold and calculating, but this is really one of the touchstones in his transformation (into something bad, I’d argue, but into something). The importance of people KNOWING the name Heisenberg, the identity he’s made for himself, is of critical importance to the character.
The second reason is actually a part of what I just started to tug at in point one; Walter White isn’t real, but if we as viewers submit to the fiction and think of White as real, Heisenberg is only real in that he is a rhetorical identity formed by Walter White, designed to carefully do the work of convincing us that the down-on-his-luck high school teacher with no pants we once knew is now a drug kingpin. Heisenberg isn’t Walter White, but he is, and vice versa.
The last reason is the one I hold close to myself. I recently had an extended email conversation with a colleague who is my senior. As I will explain to you later, readers, there are aspects of my personality and my own cultural/rhetorical stance toward the world that mean that I, generally, will not “pop off” or “smart off to” someone who is an elder. But this conversation consisted of emails, each of mine signed, as any of you who have received an email from me know, rather plainly “-Phill” (I’ve always used the dash before my name; it goes back to the days of USENET when you had to put in some ASCII character to indicate you were done speaking). Each email from the other would start, “Phil,” then the person’s message.
It’s certainly a small crime, and I see one-offs of it all the time. These don’t bother me. But after about eight exchanges, seeing my name typed very clearly at the bottom of what the person was quoting to respond, it started to seem a bit suspect that a fellow doctor of English couldn’t see that second “L” sitting there. Was there a belief that I couldn’t spell my own name? Was it a protest of the fact that my name doesn’t conform to the typical spelling of “Phil?” Was my colleague so lazy as to not read my name? I went from curious to annoyed… and finally, after mentioning it politely face-to-face, outright upset when it happened again.
I made the meme image here, of LL Cool J and some LLs, in hopes that I could have a little bit of fun with the idea. But underneath my desire to be funny, there’s a message that people might not really grasp upon first notice. My name is Phillip. For as long as I can remember, people either called me “Philly” or designated my name as “Phil.” It was when I became an adult, and I decided I needed to distance myself from the legacy of my father (something I might share more information about here another day) that I began stressing the second L. It doesn’t change the sound of my name. But it’s THERE. And it’s on my birth certificate, my driver’s license, my University ID, in the URL of my website, on every professional document I’ve created. While I have no idea how to cook meth, and I have no desire to be known by the name of the theorist who gave rise to the Uncertainty Principle, “Dr. Phill”– the second L that’s been on my name for YEARS and my attempt at absorbing the numerous early jokes made in relation to the TV psychologist which started just seconds after my Ph.D. was awarded– is my Heisenberg. It’s a rhetorical construction. It’s who *I* am, how the me who is writing this, who works at Miami University, who obtained a Ph.D. from Michigan State, is different from the kid who once sat at the door for hours in hopes his father–who never arrived– would show up. Dr. Phill is a rhetorical construct, and it’s my identity.
So to that colleague, if you’re reading this, I want you to take a lead from the humble barista who served me today. I am not sure how she did this, unless she either remembered me (possible) and heard me mention it or just took a stab in the dark seeing the “Phillip” on my bank card. But after maybe 99 Starbucks drinks with “Phil” written on them, today, in the pouring rain, I see:
Say my name.