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roachboy · 02-28-2007, 07:24 AM

i would make a distinction between the way in which gitmo itself is framed as an exercise in the illusion of deterrence and the way in which the folk who are in gitmo are framed--as non-beings wholly defined by the strange rhetoric host has outlined above. so if there is a threat to "national security" contained within these particular poems, whatever they are, it has nothing to do with what the dod memo outlined: the "threat" is the undercutting of the bushco marketing job around guantanomo itself--and that threat is one of individuation. perhaps the "secret message" these folk are really afraid of is not secret at all: i am a human being, i have not and will not face charges, i have not and will not be tried, i have not and will not be found guilty or innocent--i rot here, which is nowhere, a special kind of nowhere, the one that is an internal vanishingpoint, the mirror image of that other vanishingpoint in the ideology of bushworld, the one at the core of the trajectory that would connect the notion "terrorist" to any referent in the reality that other people know about.

what i was really distracted by in the article, however, was the more general statement that poetry in itself constitutes a threat to national security because of its form and content.
even in the context of the grotesque charade being performed around the release of these particular poems, that statement was really striking.

strangely enough, it echoes boundary markers within contemporary poetry--and in many other types of writing--between those who invest in narrative forms, representational language, etc. as over against those who experiment with form and cultivate other models of precision in word usage. behind this, you can see another version of the same political boundaries: narrative forms, representational language are linked to a set of assumptions about the world--that it is given, that it is a collection of objects created once and for all by some god or other along with the forms that define them, that the order of the world is immanent or present within the world, some of it manifest, other aspects hidden. human beings do not make anything, do not create anything: they find what is already there. so narrative and its correlate in representational language is appropriate--it indexes a certain deferrence in the face of the Given.

conversely, to break with these conventions is hubris.
to break with them on conceptual grounds is problematic.
to break with them on political grounds is a threat.
there is no way to tell these apart.
so all of it is a threat.

the perverse thing about this is that it is a validation of that which it would exclude: it implicitly elevates types of writing--and by extension types of cultural work more generally--that break with conventional modes of expression to the status they usually aspire to: to pose a real threat to the existing way of life, rooted in a desire to smash it--all of it--by undermining its relationship to language, exposing as arbitrary its conventions for making meaning. making the entire communicative apparatus shake as a way to make ideology itself shake.

but given the fact that most work on this order sells very little, and is mostly consumed by other people who also do this kind of work, these motivations function largely at the level of self-conception.

so it is a strange kind of favor that the bush squad has done those of us who work away on strange things in obscurity to elevate that work to the status of a national security threat.
and somehow it seems typical of the existing state of affairs in general that this unintended gift to experimental art would come wrapped in a phenomena as outrageous--as reprehensible--as guantanomo bay.

i do and do not look forward to the splitting of the general from the particular statements and the installation of poetry detection technologies in airports.

perhaps people could be encouraged to call the tips line in the event that see someone engaged in suspect activities that could be linked to poetry..."hello? is this the department of heimat security? good. i was driving on I-80 and i passed a car. the passenger was reading susan howe. i thought you should know. yes yes, i copied down the license plate number..."

02-28-2007, 07:24 AM	#8 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	i would make a distinction between the way in which gitmo itself is framed as an exercise in the illusion of deterrence and the way in which the folk who are in gitmo are framed--as non-beings wholly defined by the strange rhetoric host has outlined above. so if there is a threat to "national security" contained within these particular poems, whatever they are, it has nothing to do with what the dod memo outlined: the "threat" is the undercutting of the bushco marketing job around guantanomo itself--and that threat is one of individuation. perhaps the "secret message" these folk are really afraid of is not secret at all: i am a human being, i have not and will not face charges, i have not and will not be tried, i have not and will not be found guilty or innocent--i rot here, which is nowhere, a special kind of nowhere, the one that is an internal vanishingpoint, the mirror image of that other vanishingpoint in the ideology of bushworld, the one at the core of the trajectory that would connect the notion "terrorist" to any referent in the reality that other people know about. what i was really distracted by in the article, however, was the more general statement that poetry in itself constitutes a threat to national security because of its form and content. even in the context of the grotesque charade being performed around the release of these particular poems, that statement was really striking. strangely enough, it echoes boundary markers within contemporary poetry--and in many other types of writing--between those who invest in narrative forms, representational language, etc. as over against those who experiment with form and cultivate other models of precision in word usage. behind this, you can see another version of the same political boundaries: narrative forms, representational language are linked to a set of assumptions about the world--that it is given, that it is a collection of objects created once and for all by some god or other along with the forms that define them, that the order of the world is immanent or present within the world, some of it manifest, other aspects hidden. human beings do not make anything, do not create anything: they find what is already there. so narrative and its correlate in representational language is appropriate--it indexes a certain deferrence in the face of the Given. conversely, to break with these conventions is hubris. to break with them on conceptual grounds is problematic. to break with them on political grounds is a threat. there is no way to tell these apart. so all of it is a threat. the perverse thing about this is that it is a validation of that which it would exclude: it implicitly elevates types of writing--and by extension types of cultural work more generally--that break with conventional modes of expression to the status they usually aspire to: to pose a real threat to the existing way of life, rooted in a desire to smash it--all of it--by undermining its relationship to language, exposing as arbitrary its conventions for making meaning. making the entire communicative apparatus shake as a way to make ideology itself shake. but given the fact that most work on this order sells very little, and is mostly consumed by other people who also do this kind of work, these motivations function largely at the level of self-conception. so it is a strange kind of favor that the bush squad has done those of us who work away on strange things in obscurity to elevate that work to the status of a national security threat. and somehow it seems typical of the existing state of affairs in general that this unintended gift to experimental art would come wrapped in a phenomena as outrageous--as reprehensible--as guantanomo bay. i do and do not look forward to the splitting of the general from the particular statements and the installation of poetry detection technologies in airports. perhaps people could be encouraged to call the tips line in the event that see someone engaged in suspect activities that could be linked to poetry..."hello? is this the department of heimat security? good. i was driving on I-80 and i passed a car. the passenger was reading susan howe. i thought you should know. yes yes, i copied down the license plate number..." __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 02-28-2007 at 07:28 AM..