X-erpt: the(e) eDitiZm brandi-Festo
This book begins and ends with the person. — R. D. Laing
…the culmination ov tangents, verbal circuits, and counter-realizations about historical variability, as it is today, as it was yesterday—but hopefully not as it will be tomorrow—in spheres both writerly and non-, in tones both serious and seriouser. Recognizing the constraints of this (shit) platform, as well as the seemingly inexorable march towards technomarket solution-oriented privation, Piteous (Re)X pretends to nothing more than the experience ov one man’s verbal and critical practice. It is offered gratis, but humbly demands that which is libre within and outside itself.
“As we look about / things seem worse than ever!”
Shitty though the situation may be, we accept the ingenuity of inventedness: of situations, of real life both artificial and intelligent, but never both. We reject the intolerable notion that for one to “do writing”—indeed, to do anything at all—the author must be anything other than dead. That is to say, we must cast out the idea that one must aspire to be liberated, and that this aspiration must be derived through professional or institutional pathways. To aspire to “be a writer,” that sad branding of the self as a vaguely political variable, is to never stand in the way of the wind but only in the way of the windmill.
Any political confession of faith is rendered useless without an at least tacit critique of the historically-contingent political economy from which it has emerged. Without that, the sword will always disarm the “pen”—and worse. And yet we reject the pen as we reject mercy. Institutional journalism does not, necessarily cannot, and will not ever succeed in this regard—as such it is the enemy of the medium, the enemy of the word. “Truth” oligopolies will fall like Time Warner and record labels.
Read: The rejection of autonomous concerns in favor of culture-bound conflict and just-add-water distractions-in-essence reveals a proteän X, a beast that never marks its spot, never reveals itself, and never commits to its meaning and/or non-meaning. By the same token, popular emancipation from the trap and artifice of identity is unlikely to come through purely economic gloss-dropping; it requires a name—something beyond that which signifies ownership: it is a prismatic people-led politics, a proletarian dictatorship of truth... “We” call the written script for these actions editiZm(e), because, to paraphrase Jean-Luc Godard, every cut, every edit, is a mere political act.
Piteous (Re)X is grounded in just one man’s understanding of patience, acceptance, faith, and control. To wait is not to do nothing, but to do nothing is often to do more than whatever is politically expedient. This is not “joined-up gov’t,” this is not democracy—or revolution. Though you are free to join for elevenses…
