February 29, 2004

Subject: Abel Rechaufe's comments on Kane X. Faucher’s reviews

Dear Abel Rechaufe -

Thank you for your thoughtful comments on my style of review; they were considerably less tinged with ad hominem attacks than previous assessments. I wanted to take the opportunity here to respond to a selection of comments you have made in your last letter.

Doubtless, you object to my "barbarous" use of terms (qualified as my being cavalier or "thoughtless"). I do believe we speak and read differently, and I am not of the mind to declare which is Right and Wrong, for I think (implying here that your method of speaking/writing has its own unique rigour) we are two "styles" among many. I have no qualms in speaking like a "barbarous" being who takes great liberties with terminology and distends the theoretical gains of others, for it is in the spirit of my rather playful satire. Satire of what? Well, the entire review process itself.

I do not think we read "coextensive" in the same way. Perhaps I added this word in a certain temperament in concerns to creating something phonically resonant (in my badly damaged jazz-ears).

Silly me, was I writing for the general public? Damned am I to cater to a minority. But, perhaps, I believe that an author constructs his or her own audience rather than rely on some generalized conception thereof. To the objection that I may in fact only be writing for an audience of myself and a few others, there is no way that I can be certain if that is the case (even if we collect mostly negative responses to my review). That is, I am not willing to speculate on the size of a receptive audience, nor do I believe that all work pledged to a public space must make itself public especially when what is "public" is so loosely defined anyhow. Imagine the limit of all attempts to create being under the yoke of this generalized conception of "public"...it would be too much like How Things Are.

That you claim very little has been said is only part of the matter. How it was said, exactly what it may have set out to achieve or destabilize, is another potential aspect. And to the claim of the "signified order of violence" being manifest in other works, certainly. This does not make it an invalid offering in the context of a.e.m's work. Perhaps we can find it in cheap cinema, but I am no cultural elitist to the extent that I would not rule out even the most allegedly "low-brow" entertainment as having some kind of interesting subtext. 

This by far brought me joy:

"Young Mr. Faucher once had the (now suppressed) realization that he had nothing original or insightful to give to the world of literature and philosophy, yet, he yearned to walk with giants. One day he happened upon a few works by Derrida, Deleuze and others, and found that what his former, now latent, self construed as mere recapitulations and unoriginal thoughts, could be transformed (with the aid of obscure vocabularies and metaphors) beyond recognition. He could parade about in his new technicolor coat, to borrow a metaphor from Tim Rice (another hack), without danger of being lampooned or (worse yet !) ignored. If others criticized his thoughts he could retort "you simply do not understand my words," or "I am trying to express myself as purely as possible," or "there is no notion of "right," "reasonable," "original" or "clear"? and on and on."

You built all this up by reading one review? That is a great deal to pack into one piece of writing without taking into consideration the corpus! And a hack, too! Just when I was about to take your argument seriously, you go ahead and do a silly thing like perform a nasty little valuation. And, yes, I am not one to believe in those shabby things of "right" and "reasonable", etc. I have enough personal experience to make my own observations on this score, and I am not about to bang the gongs to try and get others to see it from this side. I suffer enough from the tyranny of Reason's Majesty of the Purple in the institution. And, besides, (pseudo?) Freudian analysis can only work in certain conditions that I am, for good or ill, not amenable. But that the rot of names truly is troubling, I suppose we are no longer permitted to speak of them anymore - as if they never existed. We can be neoists! We can be like post-1976 New York art school and claim all art is dead! O ho ho! We can sound the trumpet and herald the end of all theory and its dead theorists! The metaphor is dead, long live the metaphor! Alas, you are so quick to pass judgment based on so little evidence, and there you were, at the top of the page, engaging in that archaic practice of prefacing, and relying on those damnable rotted names in order to - what? - prove that your position was indisputably right. 

My damn ego and sense of baffling pride has roped me in again, to defend again. Why do I let myself be dragged into these silly scandals? I am not a bad guy. I just love words. I just love to create things, even if some of those items in my toolkit are recognizably rotten according to others. Does their use doom my entire project to being perceived as uncreative? I hate to leave off this way, but our dead, rotten pal Deleuze had said:

"You can listen to people for hours, but what's the point?...That's why arguments are such a strain, why there's never any point arguing. You can't just tell them it's wrong. But what someone says is never wrong, the problem isn't that some things are wrong, but that they're stupid and irrelevant."

And, just to be fair, we can both interpret this statement as having relevance for us, applying it to one another. It seems to support both our overarching claims. I would just as soon forget it. I have no desire to judge you, not openly nor implicitly. If I have done so, I can assure you that it was only a secondary effect of yet again having to defend myself when I oughtn't have had to. Let us hope for my quick deterioration into aphasia. Until then, I think I'll stay awhile and harlequinize the proceedings, natch.

Defendit non numerus

Kane X. Faucher