Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Throwing a Rod: Desiring Machines versus Repression, Part I

“Sometimes the idea runs through my head that I am living an extremely dangerous life, for I am one of those machines which can explode.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Pussy L’Amour enters the television studio, sauntering in. He’s smoking a cigarette, and it is evident that it is to vent anger, and not to get enjoyment, that he’s puffing away. He’s angry. He’s got on a pink feather boa, and that’s it. I can’t stand the way that looks… He’s got a pale, hairy body… thick black swirling hair atop skin that is deathly white… cadaverously white… (or larvalously white… let’s be tolerant, here ) looks like he may know the heart-break of cirrhosis… (but that’s a disease of the liver… what he has is a flaking of the skin off-putting to lovers,) … he knows the heart-break of cirrhosis and the ecstasy of dipsomania. His stomach protrudes. A pink feather boa should never be worn this way, over a stomach like this.

But - I lied. In addition to the feather boa, he has on black socks and oxfords. We may get a lecture on linguistics. I hope not…. But that’s what they get at Oxford, and why else would he be wearing those?

Pussy L’Amour: “Hey maggot… ya know something, Maggot? That rhymes with faggot.”

Maggot: “Hey Pussy. You wearing that pink feather boa and all? I’m still scared of you. I know you could hand me my ass… I don’t think I’m going to take issue with you here. You want to call me a faggot, go ahead.”

Pussy L’Amour: “I’m not here to mess around. It is the order of the day, and the order of the words, and the disorder of the senses, and the tumescence of the rod, that makes my being here mandatory. Mandatory. Must be this way. Has to be this way. Justifies me being here… distinguishes me being here messing around and me being here to get some work done.

Maggot: (scurrying around, barking out orders to the television crew): “Hustle you assholes, hustle! I want all of this on film! I want to capture all of it! This is a historical moment. Pussy’s going to open up for us.”

The cigarette in Pussy’s mouth is being clamped down upon, which causes it to jut upwards, defiantly. Very vaguely, the film crew sees that jaunty jutting of the cigarette as if it were the smoke stack of a tough little tug boat in a crowded and busy and industrious harbor… they know it means business is being done. It is this knowledge, and not Maggot’s orders, which prompts them to swing into high “gear.”

Pussy L’Amour: “Hey man. The whole idea of speaking about desiring machines in the first place… do you really think that we did that so that everyone would accept zombie-ism and robot-ism and exploitation that much more readily? Shit fuck and damn! Our whole reason for doing anything… for getting out of bed… for pulling on our pants, one leg at a time, was to combat mindless mechanisms of behavior, mindless habits, mindless repetitions of dull lifelessness, dull lifelessness itself, not to promote that! I fucking hate reductionism, mechanization, dehumanization… I oppose it with the full force of my being. Get with it. ( The smoke from the cigarette has a funny color now – is that puce? No, it is mauve. It complements the pink in the boa.) I ain’t a messing around! I’m kicking mechanization’s ass! I’m kicking repression’s ass! I’m doing it with desiring machines – but that I say ‘machines’ doesn’t have a thing to do with what I’m doing! Got it?”

Maggot: (cowering): “ Hey, Pussy. I think I hate the same things you hate. (And I do hate. I do live the black, the ugly, the satanic, the nasty, and the 'not-suitable-for-dinnertime- conversation.' I am the ‘ Unenlightened over-grind.’ That’s me. And I say: to become enlightened will not involve, in any way, that I not hate, not be black, not be ugly, satanic, or nasty.) This autopoeisis stuff. It’s just a new way of coding these phrases… ‘That’s just the way it is…’ ‘ It’s only natural…’ ‘ It has to be this way.’ In other words, if autopoeisis is coding these things, autopoeisis is inimical to everything you’ve ever done or thought…. Exactly as ‘desiring machines’, if they are what people continue to think they are, would be the very opposite of anything you ever desired….”

Maggot: ( to the crew) : " Is it a wrap? Do we have it? Is it on tape?"

Friday, August 25, 2006

The Repression of Geology, Part II

Maggot: “Philosophy is the poetry which has been subsumed by, yoked to, THE STATE… that philosophy is poetry which is in service to the STATE…”

Father Gilliam: “And yet the goal is not to reduce philosophy to poetry, to equate philosophy with poetry, but to somehow liberate philosophy from this pall of death which its servitude to the STATE has cast upon it.”

Maggot: “Philosophy is not a genre of literature, really. Philosophy is to be measured by the use to which it can be put. But what is strange, for me, is that this in no way aligns or affiliates philosophy with what is called necessity.”

Bat: “The statement that philosophy is not necessary, nor is it aligned to necessity is threatening to anyone who wants to be a philosopher and to find a job. To say that philosophy is not necessary is to say that philosophy and philosophical ‘activity’ is not justified, is not needed. It is not wanted, either. We see this.”

Maggot: “I think that right there is the position of the divide between Anglo-American ‘analytical’ philosophy and Continental philosophy. The Anglo-American philosophers are affiliating philosophy with science because they want above all else for philosophy to be necessary – and no one questions that science is necessary.”

Pussy L’Amour: “Yeah, no one questions that science is necessary or serious. If philosophy, if philosophers, can show that they are necessary to science and scientists, they can stake a mighty claim to philosophy being necessary, necessity. That’s the desire of the Anglo-American philosophers – that they be able to stake that claim. Their truculence is lodged in this.”

Father Gilliam: “They are down there on the ground, groveling to be of service to the STATE, and here we are, doing everything we can to dislodge the STATE, the image of the STATE, from what thinking can be… there is bound to be hatred and contempt between us.”

Maggot: “For example with the logicians. You know, advanced work in logic is logic for its own sake. And yet, when I try to conduct a discussion ( of any kind ) with some ‘logicians’ they consistently insist that I am ‘irresponsible’, superfluous, superficial… their work is for its own sake, and yet, they wish, with all their heart that this ‘for its own sake’ be taken as vitally necessary ( somehow.)”

Pussy L’Amour: “In any event, the STATE doesn’t require philosophy or philosophers anymore, of any kind. Scientists don’t need philosophers, either. A scientist will tolerate a ‘logician’ to some extent, but after a point, will laugh.”

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

The Geology of Repression, Part VII

Father Gilliam: “I had to devote myself to showing the extent to which a concept of repression relied upon concepts of the mind involving such phenomena as the action of 'memory.' I didn’t want to proceed in this way… I had to do so… I was forced to do so. What I was forced to do bordered upon the mundane… this is clear.”

Maggot: “I’ve tended to see your devaluation of memory in mind as coinciding with your denunciation of the mind as “theater” in favor of an image of mind as “factory” – as coinciding with your attack on mind as interiority and internal spectacle in favor of a mind which produces and plays without any incessant and compulsive “onlooking.” The memory and the action of memory, it seems to me, is aligned with the mind as “theater” in opposition to the mind as “factory”. I play my memory the way I play a video… I look at myself acting out my life…Whatever these recorded actions mean, and I love to interpret them, it is clear to me that onlooking in my own life is not productive… It never moves me forward.”

Pussy l’Amour: (He’s a new character in this dialogue, and I will not introduce him – give him a full identity – until much, much later.): “ Especially the Oedipal theater of memory… rooting around and playing different video clips from the film library of memory, hoping to catch a glimpse of Oedipus at work… this is utterly unproductive.”

Father Gilliam: “It was necessary to take some well-accepted activity of the mind – some unquestionable action of mind as all know it – and memory does fit this bill – and evaluate its functioning, precisely as a repetition which deludes all as being a repetition without difference.”

Maggot: “I think that most intelligent people repudiate the concept of memory as the concept of intelligence, and repudiate intelligence as the concept of mind. Everyone “knows” ( as discursive practice, as a matter of the heart,) that the mind and the actions of the mind far exceed memory and any inclusive concept of intelligence… the mind is beautiful, and what is beautiful is far beyond the intelligent, the determinate, and what people know… it is what people do not know…”

Maggot: (barphing into porcelain): “Yo, I barph the excessive…”

Maggot: ( here completely serious, clean, sober) : Even though this means taking a very different approach from the stratic approach I’ve pursued thus far, I want repression examined as if repression simply meant- had this restricted meaning - inability, or incapacity, to play. The judgment as to whether this incapacity exists or not is left to whomever … that this means that Hitler judges that he has the capacity to play while Charles Chaplin on the other hand judges that he cannot ( although any sane person on the planet forms a judgment to the contrary) is a consequence I accept -- for the time being.

Bat Masturbaturson: ( also not to be introduced until much later) : “Can I relate incapacity to play with an inability to learn, and make the study of repression a study of, not how people learn, but why it is that people never learn, of why people do not learn?”

Maggot: “Bat, will you please? Will you hold that thought? We will need it.”

Monday, August 21, 2006

The Geology of Repression, Part VI

Maggot: “It might be of interest to anyone trying to understand my train of thought in these Unenlightenment Underground raves and rants to know that Dr. Spinoza invited me to collaborate with him on this blog in order to ‘play together with ideas.’ I had never posed as a heavy thinker or learned scholar of the history of philosophy, or anything of the sort, and was a bit wary at this invitation from Dr. Spinoza, and told him so. I proposed to let Dr. Spinoza write the posts and let me interact by carrying on a conversation about them in the comments feature of the blog. Dr. Spinoza assured me he wanted and would accept more equal participation from me. I did, no matter my acknowledged deficiencies, believe in good faith that I could ‘play with ideas,’ and so I accepted Dr. Spinoza’s offer to me. ”

Maggot: (continuing): “But all of that is neither here nor there. Now I am really very interested in pursuing, in my own crass and uninformed and silly way this question which Dr. Spinoza later put down, about the desiring of one’s own repression. I want to take that question and I want to apply to the answering of it these very immediate and direct experiences of being hampered even in the exercise of ‘playing together with ideas’ as an example of desiring our own repression… Why would we be unable to ‘play together with ideas’ in any satisfactory way if not for some sort of repression acting within ourselves and upon ourselves?”

Maggot: (continuing again, he’s long-winded today, he’s not letting anyone else speak, it is as if he is at a podium or a pulpit ): “ Play isn’t violent or destructive…. Even though the play of boys or animals or maybe even girls, ( I’m not sure ), looks violent and destructive, mimics the violent and the destructive, it isn’t… it is rejuvenative, it is restorative, it is affectionate, it is creative… I draw closer to you, and you to me, when we punch each other playfully on the arm. I even say this… if I cannot punch you playfully on the arm, and you to me also punch, then we do not stand in the relationship of pals, or friends, no matter how many smiles or pats we may give each other.”

Maggot: (once again): “What seems entirely to the point, however, is that we flatter ourselves to believe that we even can play, that we even can have friendships. Our politics and our social life is not a politics of play or friendship… on any level whatsoever. A politician can’t tell a good joke anymore. Gore, Kerry, Bush… we at most can laugh at them, but not with them… ( sorry, a little ranting creeps into Maggot’s rave, hopefully it is to the point.) Can Gore, Kerry, Bush or any of the others have a friendship? I doubt it.”

Father Gilliam: “Yes, it is with this angle of examination and perspective that we can see what kind and to what degree we are hideously oppressed, repressed, and how that operates simultaneously on the psychic and social levels.”

Maggot: (to conclude ): “ We’d be encouraged to play and to give exercise to our desires only to discover we can’t play, and our desires, given exercise and leash, lead to our further misery. The point isn’t to determine who is to blame, who the oppressors are, but to find out where the desiring machines became mangled. I don’t think we can find out where the desiring machines became mangled with other desiring machines ( which are all we have to work with,) which are also already mangled, but I do not see this mass mangling of machines as the end of history, or even particularly unfortunate. It is of paramount importance that Dr. Spinoza and I discover why it is that we cannot ‘play with ideas together.’”

Sunday, August 13, 2006

The Geology of Repression, Part V

Maggot: “Eh Father Gilliam, I don’t believe I am wasting my time or your time… I want to continue this discussion about repression… I want to find out what it means to link psychic repression with social oppression, as you and Felix and Wilhelm Reich have done, and whether by understanding and thereby somehow relieving my repression and the repression of others I could somehow alleviate social oppression. I am nagged by the worry that in thinking about psychic repression, particularly the manifestations of it which I am observing in myself, I am at best engaging in an activity which can only be of private interest, and which at worst is an aggravation of those tendencies of solipsism, narcissism, and self-absorption already so evident in my way of ‘being in the world’.”

Father Gilliam: “ Yeah, well, I don’t think my concepts, which modify in very important ways the earlier concepts of subject, subjectivity, desire, mind and nature, have been successfully engaged by very many of the new crop of my interlocutors which is springing up.”

Maggot: “I’ve got to admit – I am very fortunate to be able to speak directly with you… How many years is it you’ve been dead? It’s now nearly a decade and a half, isn’t it?”

Father Gilliam : “ You are indeed outlandish, Maggot. We’ll entertain each other a bit longer. You are putting words in my mouth, and it never would, or never should, be an acceptable practice within academia, but perhaps here we are a bit more free… and there is much more room for carelessness, and indeed, for recklessness. Your punishment, you know, and it is already in effect, is that you are ignored.”

Maggot: “Anyway, sooner or later I hope that Dr. Spinoza and I will speak in much greater detail about the presuppositions of ‘repression’; certainly that is one of the most obvious ways to begin speaking responsibly about the desiring of one’s own repression… to examine the presuppositions, to know what they are, to know where they are questionable or weak, etc.”

(Upon hearing this, Father Gilliam looks bored… and I think that what Maggot has suggested here must be boring…. How else to explain that Dr. Spinoza and Maggot , who have twiddled around in this theme for such a long time have never gone very far in this direction? They are really only entertaining themselves in this twiddling… what is boring is not entertaining.)

Maggot: “I experience my repression and neuroses kind of in the same way that I experience the symptoms of a common head cold. There is a bit of discomfort, a nagging sense of the presence of sickness, but nothing really very disturbing or painful or frightening or worrying; nor is there any major impediment to performing my daily activities… I am aware that I am not at my best, that’s all. In other words, these are slight discomforts, unpleasant – but they don’t really matter much. I can very well live with my repression and neuroses… ”

Father Gilliam: “See here, Maggot. I can live with the outlandishness and the “flailing nature” of your posts – but what I see in this last comment of yours is the striking of a note of resignation. This I consider much much more unacceptable. When we resume this discussion, we must go further into what the affect of resignation does and what it connects with…”

Thursday, August 10, 2006

The Geology of Geology, the Repression of Repression, Part I

Maggot: “Okay, let’s all agree that there are autopoetic systems or organs or whatever noun we might wish to qualify with the adjective ‘autopoetic.’ There’s probably very little controversy about this… and the discovery of autopoetic systems, their acceptance in the scientific community, let us agree, is of major importance, and is a major advance.”

Father Gilliam: "No doubt."

Maggot: “However, this isn’t very interesting from the point of view of answering the question, ‘why does one desire one’s own repression?’

If there are autopoetic systems, ( and we agree that there are,) then why is there ever, anywhere, or for any reason, a system, or an organ, or whatever noun one might wish to qualify, something which is not autopoetic?

Why wouldn’t all systems be autopoetic?

Why would any system at all be NON-autopoetic?

What do we learn when we discover that there are systems or organs or organizations or whatever noun one might wish to qualify, which are NON-autopoetic?”

Father Gilliam: "Ah, Maggot! Maybe you are on to something!"

Maggot: “What I want to ask you, Father Gilliam, is this: does your ‘ethic’ and does your ‘logic’ come down to a demand that all NON-autopoetic systems or organs or organizations of whatever noun one might wish to qualify be considered unnecessary, frivolous, trivial, alogical or antilogical or anti-sensual or anti-affective or whatever, and on this basis ‘bad’ and therefore to be eliminated or avoided or expurgated or selected against?”

Father Gilliam: "No, Maggot. I think that the components of my concept of ‘strata’ which make my concept of strata work the way that I intended they work have been bypassed and rendered inoperable, and I mean it – no matter how much I love and admire Varela, Delanda, and the others."

Monday, August 07, 2006

Amok in a Muck: The Geology of Repression, Part IV

Maggot: “I want to speak very briefly to you, Father Gilliam,” said Maggot, “about my purposes in all of this. I wanted to pick up on and develop these questions posed earlier this year by Dr. Spinoza…”

Father Gilliam: "Which questions are those, Maggot?"

Maggot: "These ones, Father Gilliam--"

Dr. Spinoza: “Thursday, March 02, 2006

An Announcement

What I want to do here is start thinking much more carefully and responsibly about what it is that I'm doing when I say of someone that he is desiring his own oppression.”

I Want My MTV . . .

The critical-theoretic question is: why do people desire their own oppression?

How do we show people that what they desire is oppressing them? Can this be shown? What epistemic perspective is presupposed in the very move of saying this to someone -- isn't it tantamount to saying, "I know you better than you know yourself." How is that possible? What are the implications of this for the problems of first-person authority?

In order to make good on this sort of claim, would critical theory have to be scientific? What sort of science would it be? Could there even be a science of human happiness, of flourishing, and of autonomy?

All of the problems that Adorno raised as he attempted to situate himself against both Heidegger on the one hand and against Popper on the other remain problems for any critical theory worth the name.”

Maggot: “To be very brief in describing my intentions ( and brief in order to be crystal clear and unmistakable in what I desire to do ) I believe that the only way to be careful and responsible about what it is that we’re doing when we say of someone that he is desiring his own repression is to utilize a ‘geology of morals’ approach such as the one you are offering, Father Gilliam.”

"We can only start to think much more carefully and responsibly about what it is that we are doing when we say of someone that he is desiring his own oppression if there is such a thing as a thinking on anything at all which is not moored and mired in doxa ( opinion ) and psychologisms…." Father Gilliam interjected.

Maggot: “ I am guessing that your utilization of Hjelmslevian linguistics, which you applaud on the basis of this linguistics having escaped or dismantled the logic of the signified-signifier is the way that you believe you are now able to think about morals ( and repression ) in a way which is not moored and mired in doxa (opinion) and psychologism.”

Father Gilliam: "Yes, that’s right Maggot. I believe that I can think carefully and responsibly about what it is that I am doing when I say of someone that he is desiring his own oppression – and my move has no recourse to set theory per se, ( and this is going to put me at odds with many American philosophers – who seem to think that the only way to responsibly think is with set theory) – but really has everything to do with a much more complex theory of linguistics, where words and things , mots et choses, are in “disorder” at least insofar as our sense of “order” is hideously entwined and enmangled by our imagined role of the signifier-signified."

Maggot: “Well, that’s got to be coming as a relief to Dr. Spinoza – that set theory stuff really scares him, and if I have come to the right conclusion after observing his behavior – seems to be in the background of a terrible guilty conscience he has about his thinking, and his interests in thinking being indelibly committed to the irresponsible and ultimately frivolous.. Yeah, as if anything but set theoretical thinking were mere humpty-dumpty pompous opinionation.”

Sunday, August 06, 2006

The Relationship of Strata to the Plane of Consistency (BwO)

The Old Man's Complaints And How He Gained Them
By Robert Southey


You are old, Father Gilliam, the young man cried,
The few locks which are left you are grey;
You are hale, Father Gilliam, a hearty old man,
Now tell me the reason I pray.

In the days of my youth, Father Gilliam replied,
I remember'd that youth would fly fast,
And abused not my health and my vigour at first
That I never might need them at last.

You are old, Father Gilliam, the young man cried,
And pleasures with youth pass away,
And yet you lament not the days that are gone,
Now tell me the reason I pray.

In the days of my youth, Father Gilliam replied,
I remember'd that youth could not last;
I thought of the future whatever I did,
That I never might grieve for the past.

You are old, Father Gilliam, the young man cried,
And life must be hastening away;
You are chearful, and love to converse upon death!
Now tell me the reason I pray.

I am chearful, young man, Father Gilliam replied,
Let the cause thy attention engage;
In the days of my youth I remember'd my God!
And He hath not forgotten my age.


You are Old, Father Gilliam
by Lewis Carroll

"You are old, Father Gilliam," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head--
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"
"In my youth," Father Gilliam replied to his son,
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."

"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door--
Pray, what is the reason of that?"

"In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
"I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment--one shilling the box--
Allow me to sell you a couple?"

"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak--
Pray how did you manage to do it?"

"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life."

"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose--
What made you so awfully clever?"

"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
Said his father; "don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!"

Saturday, August 05, 2006

Amok or A muck: The Geology of Repression, Part III

Maggot: “Eh, Father Gilliam, ahem… I want to state right off what I found compelling in your work, and why I think of you as an enlightenment thinker, no matter the stench you may assign to the word ‘enlightenment’ and no matter how much you may bark and bite against it.

I think of you as an enlightenment thinker because you marshal the full force of your thinking against these two elements: doxa ( opinion ) and psychologisms. I admire this willed antagonism of yours, and adopt it for my own. For example, I labor to recreate the concept of repression without any recourse within this concept to psychologism.”

Father Gilliam: "I’ve noticed this in you, Maggot. You at least understand what I am trying to do… I am not interested in a ‘geology’ of morals ( or repression) , but I am interested in treating modes of existence as objectively and as, I guess, matter of factly, as mucks and sediments and strata are treated by a serious geologist.

Maggot: “ Yeah, and I am with you all the way in that. The thing that fascinates me is that in this endeavor, or project, or whatever you’ll call it, you don’t adopt anything which resembles a mathesis. You look very near to Badiou in what you want to do, but in what you actually do, your work and Badiou’s work is utterly antithetical.”

Father Gilliam: "My work and Badiou’s work has nothing in common, and I was utterly misunderstood by Badiou. I would go so far as to say that Badiou’s take on my work is what I have called ‘malicious’ stupidity. "

Maggot: “ And yet I do not understand this, myself. ( And thus I open myself to the same charge as is leveled against Badiou – malicious stupidity…. I can only throw myself at the mercy of the court… I’m not a pro, I’m just a Maggot.) Instead of getting set theory from you, I get this nettlesome Hjelmslevian stuff… The guy was a Dane, wasn’t he? Now come on, isn’t one Hamlet enough! I notice that you have called Hjelmslev a great geologist…”

Father Gilliam: "Maggot, I am going to cut this little dialogue short for the time being. You need to get some sleep… let’s hope the sleep you get is a chrysalis. I am willing to talk further with you because at least you haven’t ever spoken of a Father Gilliam Ontology. That’s the one procrustean bed I hate being squeezed into….

Maggot: “ Father Gilliam! Come back! Come back! You incessantly stand things on their head… but it’s all right! Because of you, we know we have no brain ( just a parastrata, or an epistrata… we’re not too sure which!) and if so, there can be no brain injuries, let alone brain desecration… isn’t that right? Father…. Gilliam… Father….”

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

The Repression of Geology, Part I

“There’s been a lot of desecration in this place recently, and yet, Father, you continue to use this dialogic format, complete with quotation marks and relatively correct grammar and punctuation. Would you be willing to expound on this, giving particular emphasis to whether it is desecration which is important, or your own albeit weak command of social commands, or, as it is more commonly known, the protocols of communication?”

Thanks, Maggot. I appreciate the observation AND the question which you’ve extracted from it. Firstly, the desecration we’ve attempted to foist upon all and sundry – it has only succeeded in creating reactions of various sorts – one cannot count upon desecration to have any kind of political effect at all any more – its value as an act of detournement is reduced to near nothing.

“You are right about that… No one can imagine an act of detournement stringent enough, or vicious enough, or viscous enough, or putrid enough, or pukish enough, or scatological enough, to provoke any reaction at all, anymore. And yet, remarkably, if one commits an infraction of pronunciation, or of punctuation, or of spelling, or of anything which would have at any other time in history been considered not worthy of notice, let alone punishment – one will receive notice of that error or infraction, and one will be punished… one will be marked, possibly even as an idiot.”

Yes, Maggot. One could pour gasoline over oneself and light a match, and there is a fairly high probability the local press, let alone the API, the BBC, or the AFS, will let the story pass …. It is too vulgar, too commonplace, too prosaic, too banal, to warrant attention. And yet, if one wrote a letter to the editor and failed to dot the “I” or cross the “T”,that would be well-noted, and would be a strike against one. There could even follow a front page story, “Idiot demonstrates idiocy – protocols of grammar not followed – Idiot Horror Idiot Horrror… APB… All take Notice!

“Let’s be a bit clever here. Didn’t Foucault say that the ‘attention to detail’ and the increasing importance of ‘detail’ in society denote the molecularization of power… the increasingly pervasive and unavoidable and ubiquitous pinching power of society upon the individual…”

He did, Maggot. But wait a minute here…. Aren’t you using dashes and ellipsis a bit too often these days?