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As much as I feel I would benefit from having a big book of
postmodernism to refer to, I would pause before advocating a
postmodern manifesto. Paul Mann makes a very interesting application
of Paul Virilio's work to intellectual warfare:
It is nonetheless already the case that, in critical
discourse, behind all the humanistic myths of
communication, understanding, and interpretive fidelity,
one finds the tactical value of misinterpretations. In an
argument it is often crucial for combatants not to know
their enemy, to project instead a paper figure, a
distortion, against which they can conceive and reinforce
their own positions. %Intelligence%, here, is not only
knowledge of one's enemies but the tactical lies one tells
about them, even to oneself. This is so regular a
phenomenon of discursive conflict that it cannot be
dismissed as an aberration that might be remedied through
better communication, better listening skills, more
disinterested criticism. One identifies one's own signal
in part by jamming everyone else's, setting it off from the
noise one generates around it. There is, in other words,
already plenty of fog in discursive warfare, and yet we
tend to remain passive in the face of it, and for the most
part completely and uncritically committed to exposing
ourselves to attack. Imagine what might be possible for a
writing that is not insistently positional, not devoted to
shoring itself up, to fixing itself in place, to laying out
all its plans under the eyes of its opponents. Nothing,
after all, has been more fatal for the avant-gardes than
the form of the manifesto. If only surrealism had been
more willing to lie, to dissimulate, to abandon the petty
narcissism of the position and the desire to explain itself
to anyone who would listen, and instead explored the
potential offered it by the model of the secret society it
also hoped to be. Intellectual warfare must therefore
investigate the tactical advantages of deception and
clandestinity over the habitual, quasi-ethical demands of
clarity and forthrightness, let alone the narcissistic
demands of self-promotion and mental exhibitionism, from
however fortified a position. If to be seen by the enemy
is to be destroyed, then intellectual warfare must pursue
its own stealth technology. Self-styled intellectual
warriors will explore computer networks not only as more
rapid means of communication and publishing but as means
for circumventing publication, as semi-clandestine lines of
circulation, encoded correspondence, and semiotic speed.
There will be no entirely secure secrecy, just as there are
no impregnable positions -- that too is Virilio's argument
-- but a shrouded nomadism is already spreading in and
around major discursive conflicts. There are many more
than nine grounds, but the rest are secret.
NGoralnik
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As much as I feel I would benefit from having a big book of
postmodernism to refer to, I would pause before advocating a
postmodern manifesto. Paul Mann makes a very interesting application
of Paul Virilio's work to intellectual warfare:
It is nonetheless already the case that, in critical
discourse, behind all the humanistic myths of
communication, understanding, and interpretive fidelity,
one finds the tactical value of misinterpretations. In an
argument it is often crucial for combatants not to know
their enemy, to project instead a paper figure, a
distortion, against which they can conceive and reinforce
their own positions. %Intelligence%, here, is not only
knowledge of one's enemies but the tactical lies one tells
about them, even to oneself. This is so regular a
phenomenon of discursive conflict that it cannot be
dismissed as an aberration that might be remedied through
better communication, better listening skills, more
disinterested criticism. One identifies one's own signal
in part by jamming everyone else's, setting it off from the
noise one generates around it. There is, in other words,
already plenty of fog in discursive warfare, and yet we
tend to remain passive in the face of it, and for the most
part completely and uncritically committed to exposing
ourselves to attack. Imagine what might be possible for a
writing that is not insistently positional, not devoted to
shoring itself up, to fixing itself in place, to laying out
all its plans under the eyes of its opponents. Nothing,
after all, has been more fatal for the avant-gardes than
the form of the manifesto. If only surrealism had been
more willing to lie, to dissimulate, to abandon the petty
narcissism of the position and the desire to explain itself
to anyone who would listen, and instead explored the
potential offered it by the model of the secret society it
also hoped to be. Intellectual warfare must therefore
investigate the tactical advantages of deception and
clandestinity over the habitual, quasi-ethical demands of
clarity and forthrightness, let alone the narcissistic
demands of self-promotion and mental exhibitionism, from
however fortified a position. If to be seen by the enemy
is to be destroyed, then intellectual warfare must pursue
its own stealth technology. Self-styled intellectual
warriors will explore computer networks not only as more
rapid means of communication and publishing but as means
for circumventing publication, as semi-clandestine lines of
circulation, encoded correspondence, and semiotic speed.
There will be no entirely secure secrecy, just as there are
no impregnable positions -- that too is Virilio's argument
-- but a shrouded nomadism is already spreading in and
around major discursive conflicts. There are many more
than nine grounds, but the rest are secret.
NGoralnik
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