Writing is my way. It is the way I gain knowledge. It is the way I spread knowledge. It is the way I communicate. It is the way I confront. It is the only way I know.
I continue to believe that writing, theory, poetics can change the world. They are able to reveal the mechanisms by which control functions. They are able to work out strategies to confront such. They are able to imagine other modes of living. I continue to believe this, maybe because I am very stupid.
Even as I believe in the value of writing I am finding it harder to see what difference it makes to anyone. I know fewer people who even bother to read at all. They might browse something on their phone, but this is not reading, no more than watching the scroll at the bottom of Fox News is reading.
I suppose this is the nature of language. Language was probably always a tool of oppression. Certainly writing seemed to have filled this function, during the transition from cultures of orality to one based on literacy. This is the bind in which I am trapped. When I first read Burroughs as a kid, learned about “operation rewrite,” and his project to “rub out the word,” I adopted this view of the author. I adopted the view that the writer can find their way out of the traps of language, exorcise the spooks haunting the psyche. Now I’m not so sure how much good this does. But this world of letters is where I inhabit.”
Jason Rodgers
“Alphabet Exorcism” is reproduced from Jason Rodgers book Invisible Generation: Rants, Polemics and Critical Theory Against the Planetary Work Machine, which is published by autonomedia.
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