Hi,
thanks for this posting (below). It has brightened my day. I have been
involved with a discussion for creative writers and what I found was
quite sad. It seems to me, writing today is about not using
imagination, not about being creative, not about art and not about
literature. One must not even think about writing something creative
or new. A product extracted from something I will call
"post-modernism" although we must be silent on that term and quite
sad.
It is like writing today is a state-war culture. If I can try
to describe the world today in poetic terms, I would say something
like; a mental state of war, a constant mental preparation for war, a
trap of sad war-like feelings. Little wonder then so little worth
reading in fiction is been published because it is not being written.
Fiction writers have become a terrified, frightened and ineffectual
lot. One may well say the author is dead, but your posting provides
hope. Can you give a reference for the quote?
many thanks
Chris Jones
On Wed, 27 Sep 2000, you wrote:
> 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
>
thanks for this posting (below). It has brightened my day. I have been
involved with a discussion for creative writers and what I found was
quite sad. It seems to me, writing today is about not using
imagination, not about being creative, not about art and not about
literature. One must not even think about writing something creative
or new. A product extracted from something I will call
"post-modernism" although we must be silent on that term and quite
sad.
It is like writing today is a state-war culture. If I can try
to describe the world today in poetic terms, I would say something
like; a mental state of war, a constant mental preparation for war, a
trap of sad war-like feelings. Little wonder then so little worth
reading in fiction is been published because it is not being written.
Fiction writers have become a terrified, frightened and ineffectual
lot. One may well say the author is dead, but your posting provides
hope. Can you give a reference for the quote?
many thanks
Chris Jones
On Wed, 27 Sep 2000, you wrote:
> 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
>