association of “narrative” as being only convention—‘experience’ thus denigrated, not regarded as exploratory—in fact does not allow scrutiny of one’s own polemic.
There is a conflation in leftist thought with conservative thought in devaluing writing/experience as demonstration/process (rather than doctrine-based). “Procedure” or formalism as modes of writing are embraced by both.
A characteristic of conservative thought is iteration of tradition for its own sake, valuable in that it is that. Social conditioning is transcended—there is no “other”—rather than perspective itself being seen being created. Without the conception of the social as phenomenological, actions that are rebellious in response to whatever conditions, are seen as ‘personal’ merely. Articulating outside’s warp imitated as being one—is interpreted as one’s being unable to comprehend, couldn’t put things together.6 A syntax that is this dismemberment will be incomprehensible in the framework of conservative thought (one characteristic of which: conception of the past as entity to be preserved as being the present). In terms of a conservative framework, ‘dis-location’ is seen as merely personal aberration or failure to comprehend the whole, rather than strategic and phenomenological.
Phenomenological ‘dis-location’ in writing is strategic and specific, detail arising from or noting social conditions or background; which conservative ideology regards as without transcendence, transient. Yet such transience is change as writing’s subject (in avant garde or radical practices).
The view of aberration as failure is an exclusion that is an action, rendering what it defines as minor to the condition of nonexistent or irrelevant ‘over-time.’ (As if there were an ‘objective’ cultural basis that becomes or is ‘history.’)
Polemics was to be demonstration (that was the intention)—yet now poetry is society’s secret interior—thought’s demonstration is scrutiny (there is no ‘history,’ because that is merely a description of an overview)—in that polemics-based writing merely imposes point of view and suppresses demonstration.
Right-wing Republicans castigate labor on the radio by asking “how can ‘our’ society’s labor compete while wearing combat boots?” That is, they should not have labor demands in order to compete in the world market.
One should dismantle protection of oneself in laboring for others in order to compete with outsiders—who can underbid one if employed by those others.
The attitude that the writing is invalidated by it being experience has its corollary—in the objection to there being in writing ‘thought’ which is at one in the same time as ‘occurrence.’ Is that occurrence.
This is what makes the present-time troubling, as Gertrude Stein said.
That ‘one’ is separate in occurrence (as if occurrence were collective) is particularly heinous to Americans.
Perelman (in that articulation of ‘social power’) is taking both of these positions (critique of and authority) at once, deftly enshrining authority—seemingly in the ‘outside’ as if that were causal. The illusion of ‘occurrence’ and that it is ‘collective.’
‘Social power’ is the formation (‘I’) am trying to (‘must’) dispel.
(The delineated cultural dichotomy itself ‘makes’ the reverberation in this last above sentence only ‘extreme’ defined as such [categorical terms such as “lyrical” “personal”—negatives from a radical perspective].
One can reverberate that ridicule itself [as echo of social] on oneself effectively as the writing-syntax—to ‘bounce’ it to be a separated occurrence also.
This can reveal something about ‘one’ in relation to social occurrence. And also the intention is to see what occurrence is.)
Polemical device as a writing process isn’t to investigate shape and motion to find out what the event is—it is to instruct what one is to think about the event.
But the event (any) isn’t even there (as that formation).
One/events can only exist outside of formation there.
People in this culture are (‘described as’ being) ‘given’ the view (as if view and description were an action, and as if it were causal) that they like that which is liked—if something appears not liked (by others) it can’t have value. ‘Separation’ therefore is to be ‘ridicule’ itself.
As successful current poetic-critical ‘theory’—a description of itself as ‘radical’ (left), which is at once sign and definition of status, is dependent on reproducing the conventional distinctions (as categories of thought).
The closing of bookstores and the utter commercialization of publishing and distribution indicate there will be few reading anywhere.
My sense is ‘subjectivity’—rendered at all—is separation per se simply as observation of phenomena.
Poetically, this separation itself (delineated as writing, as its shape/syntax) is also a shadow (evocation) of that which is ‘exterior,’ the public.
Much of contemporary writing practice (of the ‘experimentalist’ mode) now is delineation (in its syntax—i.e. it is gestural, an action) of this separation of one. Writing now is being the ‘interior’ and the ‘exterior.’ To make these occur, and to see them ‘real’-ly.
“We’re not going to go on playing games, even if the rules are downright fascinating. We require a situation more like it really is—no rules at all. Only when we make them do it in our labs do crystals win our games. Do they then? I wonder.”7
—in one’s conflict—in surveillance—is at once interior and exterior. The ‘directions’ (as in a text of a play, in italics), which is the same as the rendering (as reading) of public context/scene, are the same as interior-speaking to oneself. Writing to engage the interior of the writing itself, (which are then) as exterior events, for anything to occur—its motions change events.
The discovery that poetry has no relation to society—I’d been struggling to maintain a relation. Yet writing’s an interiorization (not/of that relation?). That is a separate action.
In a critical reading group where, in one meeting, writers were discussing dreams they had had, a man, having recounted (or read) his dream, whose connections and process were its activity said—yet how could this (dream) be translated into a thought that was not personal, that was not the dream? (to be made useful—in that it is not from oneself, not a mind action.)
Articulated only as experience—an intense separation where there’s no translation. If one speaks his language one can’t be in friendship with him. Friendship having to do with extending across the social line or interior division where one has no power. Or it is that, one articulates a relation to him that is not related to power.
My sense of relief that ‘poetry has no relation to society’—is that one has despair in ‘experiencing’ that people have no connection to actions (outside, or their own)—even though these actions as if taking place ‘secretly’ change everything.
That ‘poetry’ (interior) ‘has no relation’
