Harnessing Language Effects

Miriam Nichols in "Deep Convention and Radical Chance: The Two Postmodernisms of Robert Duncan and Robin Blaser" in W [dix] a Duncan Delirium published by the Kootenay School of Writing.

If theory taught us anything, it is that cognitive liberation is never enough: change has to take place in social institutions, not in texts. Blaser has repeatedly argued, for example, that the arts have a place alongside other practices like politics and philosophy; they cannot displace these others. This is to say that a change of consciousness is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a change in the world.

It begins with ways of reading. And moves on to practices of inscription. It is a form of engagement. The power of the textual is in the redundancies that it builds.

And so for day 930
30.06.2009