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Hash: SHA1
Click here:
http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/pmc/text-only/issue.196/mann.196
It's from the Jan. 1996 edition of PostModern Culture
Nate
- ----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Jones" <ccjones@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2000 8:14 PM
Subject: Re: PoMo Manifesto
> 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
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Hash: SHA1
Click here:
http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/pmc/text-only/issue.196/mann.196
It's from the Jan. 1996 edition of PostModern Culture
Nate
- ----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Jones" <ccjones@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2000 8:14 PM
Subject: Re: PoMo Manifesto
> 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
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