Poetics of Theory: Maxims 2

Obscurantism and over-generalization as well as false clarity is counter-revolutionary regardless of its source. (In other words, I need to speak more clearly but never falsely. Consider this ideological self-criticism).

 

I just find it interesting that we often end up debating things endlessly over positions that are barely even opposed because of differing sets of jargon or load-language. Sometimes this masks real differences, and sometimes it creates false divisions. THis is the hazard of our hobby-description though. What I worry about is turning this into psuedo-activity. It’s a funny thing that people miss: Theory itself can become psuedo-activity. It can become a form of the actionism it critiques. It’s actionism of the mind.   In this sense the leftist academican is the shadow of black bloc and vice versa: they both have a repetition complex in which they cannot emerge.In simple terms, when you do the same thing despite it not working in the past and the context that generated it no longer exists: you are acting like a paranoid obsessive.The long march through the academy has already happened, and it created a generation of rhetoricians and p.r. students.

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