Trash Tax

I received a letter. Due to my inability to speak Dutch the visual symbols are my only navigator to understand whatever the letter is trying to say. I recognize the yellow and green symbol, which tells me it’s from a municipality. I hesitate to open the envelope, hoping the numbers near the euro sign wouldn’t be too big. The amount that is required to pay is usually the clearest thing written in bold. However, its design is very simple. On the top right corner, I can see the column of numbers, one of them being the date. On the top left the address and a few vertical lines of different length. In the middle of the page the amount is placed on the grid. On the bottom, the bank account number and the text of information.

The translation of the document tells me to pay a tax for the trash. However, it doesn’t make the information any clearer or digestible. It does not elaborate on the reason I have to pay this amount and why am I obliged to do so as an expat student. My need for an explanation would result in more paperwork and time. Bureaucratic apparatus forms its own closed specific language existing within its group, but it is not open to other citizens who do not have access to decision-making because of their limited ability to express their political opinions and demands, which also contributes to the exclusion of citizens from the political process.

This specific language is called Officialese. Where it is possible to use a simpler word, a cumbersome special term is used instead. It unnecessarily ‘explains’ something that in the circumstances did not need to be explained at all. It is done in order to be as clear as possible, to prevent any ambiguity and emotional elements. Therefore, bureaucracy develops more successfully the more ‘dehumanized’ it is.

The unofficial general principles of Officialese:

  1. It is preferable to use sentences without subjects.
  2. It is not recommended to use the active voice, preferably the exclusive use of the passive.
  3. It is not recommended to use first person pronouns and other forms of self-reference.
  4. It is recommended to soften emotionally colored expressions.
  5. Book words and phrases should be preferred to colloquial ones.
  6. If possible, it is required to insert into the edited text as many diverse and multidirectional tautologies and lapalissades as possible.
Paradoxically this over-explanation does the complete opposite thing. It is often critiqued for being old-fashioned, contains too many nominal and subordinate clauses– that by the end of a sentence one has forgotten the beginning– and so on. Korney Chukovsky would call it ‘linguistic ailment’. This trash tax paper holds the edge between clarity and vagueness perfectly. The content and the language is full of managerial nomenclature. Its design is not set in order to be more legible and communicative, but rather set by the administrative apparatus. This activity of depersonalized rules that contains an ‘algorithm’ of actions is what this paper is, and represents the bureaucratic system as a whole. It is an example of pure unity of form and function. And here the dialectic occurs. The theory proposed by Nietzsche in ‘The Birth of Tragedy’ is the division into Apollonian –sleep, the principle of individuation, balance and order, rationalism– and Dionysian –intoxication, communion with the original unity, ecstasy and anarchy, tragedy, overcoming rationalism– principles.