Drucker
James Mulholland (jsm5q@faraday.clas.Virginia.EDU)
Wed, 26 Mar 1997 04:22:21 -0500
Just thinking a bit more about the idea of a vacuity lying at the very
center of this book, and there was one passage that just buzzed with
importance (for me) when I read this book. It was a sentiment that's
familiar to me in a lot of different forms. Drucker writes on p. 82 "So many
values had been lost--so little remained to be violated. This was the
tragedy of our times, a jaded populace unwilling, unable, to be shocked"
which is of course a wonderful perhaps useful sentiment. Not trying to work
too hard, I would connect this to the idea of these old stories, or the
possible existences of old forms in here precisely because they are old
forms-- meaning evacuated forms that not only show a vacuity but can also be
filled with a pate of language. The media forms are hollowed and Drucker
finds there to be a possible space there that can be filled with something
vastly different, and not nearly as immeadiately comprehensible. It's
interesting the connection that Drucker immedaitely makes between values and
violation, their value is in violation, and perhaps one of the problems of
the book is that it no longer exists as startling or shocking, just another
language work with its tagged "opaqueness." Wondering whether this
violation, the ability to violate, is the state that Drucker is attempting
to (re)acheive, whether the lack of shock or desentization is actually what
Drucker is using, a slickness of langauge that is some sort of new(er) state
of narrative.
James