On Disturbing Writing
There is a certain style of writing that dominates theoretical discourse, both ideally and materially - sober, calm and clear, controlled and rational.
In effect - a kind of compassionate writing, a writing with a conscience, that considers feelings, that avoids creating anxiety. This writing wants to keep everything under control, strives to cause no unnecessary duress in the course of neutral pursuit of pure function, it dreams of carefully effacing from itself all traces of trauma, and signs of struggle. In serene moments, cool and collected, it compares itself to breathing: not a struggle, not a risk - rather the easiest, simplest, and most natural act in the world.
The value of this style is obvious - communication is better helped by it, concepts better clarified by means of it. In this way, one could say that this style is a techno-style, an expression of the instrumental will towards an absolute telos of pure efficiency. On the other hand, the principle of reason underpinning this style is actually profoundly inefficient, in that it implicates itself in a meshwork of humanist assumptions, all of them ultimately unreal and misleading; constitutive communicative stylistic guidelines bleeding inexorably into constitutive communicative formalist laws, backed by sovereign superego force.
This is the limit-experience: in the midst the story is different, but still questionable – at root relating to a certain conservative impulse, difficult to dismiss on the one hand, but on other hand tending towards undeathly boredom. If enjoyment has turned into a disturbance, and secret prohibitions stand against disturbing writing, the normative need becomes to drain disturbance from writing, in order to render it sensible to the superego and hence permissible to the omniscient, omnipotent big Other.
The fundamental problem here though is that at root, writing is driven by precisely disturbance, and thus acceptance of a catechism of non-disturbance will quickly turn into a kind of masochistic hell, for the reason that it ultimately cannot be met, except by renouncing writing altogether - a choice which in fact would only make matters worse.
In this way, the following axiom seems necessary: the acceptance of both the possibility and fact of disturbing writing, while avoiding the elevation of a disturbing writing style into the position of a new normative. This axiom extends to encompass the acceptance of the possibility and fact of disturbing writing in theoretical discourse as well – to do otherwise would be to argue for maintaining class division with respect to the sacred realm of theory, which is untenable.
The radical consequence of such an axiom amounts to the following - a renewed license for formal experimentation in writing without reserve, beyond the limits of the pleasure principle – this is to say, into the disturbing. In fact, not just a license, but a call: for risk like this, exposure to terror like this, vulnerability like this.
Burroughs once stated that unless his writing could match the intensity of a bullfight, it was nothing. What writer today would dare to agree with him?
In effect - a kind of compassionate writing, a writing with a conscience, that considers feelings, that avoids creating anxiety. This writing wants to keep everything under control, strives to cause no unnecessary duress in the course of neutral pursuit of pure function, it dreams of carefully effacing from itself all traces of trauma, and signs of struggle. In serene moments, cool and collected, it compares itself to breathing: not a struggle, not a risk - rather the easiest, simplest, and most natural act in the world.
The value of this style is obvious - communication is better helped by it, concepts better clarified by means of it. In this way, one could say that this style is a techno-style, an expression of the instrumental will towards an absolute telos of pure efficiency. On the other hand, the principle of reason underpinning this style is actually profoundly inefficient, in that it implicates itself in a meshwork of humanist assumptions, all of them ultimately unreal and misleading; constitutive communicative stylistic guidelines bleeding inexorably into constitutive communicative formalist laws, backed by sovereign superego force.
This is the limit-experience: in the midst the story is different, but still questionable – at root relating to a certain conservative impulse, difficult to dismiss on the one hand, but on other hand tending towards undeathly boredom. If enjoyment has turned into a disturbance, and secret prohibitions stand against disturbing writing, the normative need becomes to drain disturbance from writing, in order to render it sensible to the superego and hence permissible to the omniscient, omnipotent big Other.
The fundamental problem here though is that at root, writing is driven by precisely disturbance, and thus acceptance of a catechism of non-disturbance will quickly turn into a kind of masochistic hell, for the reason that it ultimately cannot be met, except by renouncing writing altogether - a choice which in fact would only make matters worse.
In this way, the following axiom seems necessary: the acceptance of both the possibility and fact of disturbing writing, while avoiding the elevation of a disturbing writing style into the position of a new normative. This axiom extends to encompass the acceptance of the possibility and fact of disturbing writing in theoretical discourse as well – to do otherwise would be to argue for maintaining class division with respect to the sacred realm of theory, which is untenable.
The radical consequence of such an axiom amounts to the following - a renewed license for formal experimentation in writing without reserve, beyond the limits of the pleasure principle – this is to say, into the disturbing. In fact, not just a license, but a call: for risk like this, exposure to terror like this, vulnerability like this.
Burroughs once stated that unless his writing could match the intensity of a bullfight, it was nothing. What writer today would dare to agree with him?
2 Comments:
Though this writing ‘wants to keep everything under control’, it also ‘strives to cause no unnecessary duress.' In spite of these contradictory desires, this writing is said to ‘avoid creating anxiety’, making this contradiction a paradox. Far from being ‘boring’, this paradox of control without duress is the final dream of radical philosophy. The one that you expel is the ultimate example of your own dream.
Like a small, domesticated tyrant, have you expelled intimate discourse with the object of your fantasy so that you can keep things as you like them, piecing together a straw man that you can heroically knock down? Or have you painted a picture of the paradoxical citizen that you finally dream to be, even if this repressed desire is noxious to you? If, as Nancy says, ‘ultimately, every demand is a demand for love’, maybe it's both.
yeah yeah yeah
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