of Maxwell Clark
“A truly perfect relationship is one in which each
party leaves
great tracts unknown in the other party....”
—Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus
4.
I begin (having long ago since already once begun) by
noting how ghastly terrible is the secondary literature on Hannah Weiner’s
canon at present (2015). In their bombastically putrid drivel, utterly inappropriate
to Weiner’s entire “outsider” ethos in its unabashed sophistication, or whorish scholasticism, her (“so-called”) commentators
thus far have positioned themselves such as to prevent me from naming them
personally, so as not to risk suits of defamation from these same “morans”
(mostly, if not all, ‘Murican—as well)—which would seem to me to be the price
of the frothing apoplexy which might come over this word of mine, indeed, and
even lead me to pitiless rhetorical whippings and wantonly lucid tortures, if their
own names actually appeared anywhere herein. Her heretofore commentators would
be those who cannot be named anymore,
were I the sole arbiter of society’s tastes in criticism (which I am not,
thankfully). Verily, however, Weiner has been very much too egregiously and
indignantly addressed as an author yet so far; and so, too, also almost afar and away moreso
too improperly, inethically, and even, as such, disgracefully addressed—as an author... almost as if her disabilities,
as they are presently called in the normal sense (sensors) of the world, also
rescinded her rights to be an author, or authority,
and so thus also a literary (et. al) personage
of respect, much less veneration. To address Hannah properly and respectfully
(if not also in admiration or wonder) is not, nor ever will be, to confusedly, delusionally,
and errantly clutter together, almost unformed, and at the most elephantine and
boring lengths, any incoherent nonsense of lately fashionable, but (and thus so)
pretty-much meaningless, or affectless, and thus so also exceedingly morbid, or
dead, i.e. “unproductive”, specialized intellectual terminologies, their
syntaxes, rhetorics, and/or phraseologies, et.
al.
3.
Instead
of writing a bunch of "INTELLECTUAL scriptures" (Spoke, 'JUNE 20 SAT') about Hannah, haha, because the persons who have been writing these
so far are "STUPID AND THEY KNOW IT" (ibid.), I am just going to
respond to Hannah's
writings, mostly Spoke (—because:
... lazy—), however I feel Hannah herself would like me
to: "BECAUSE I CAN BE FELT [...]" (ibid.). Hannah can be felt, yes, or at least I feel her, still, if maybe only because I'm
quite highly pleased to believe in just such a (happy-true) delusion as this feeling for her, or the caress of her trace ("sis thats a
strict revolutionary/ principle" [ibid.]), which I already cherish about
her and this writing of her. I write of Hannah not in the "INTELLECTUAL"
(hahaaa) way then (or again), but rather just with the (such intense and so
kookiest) feelings I get of her from reading her works. Or: "I AM
WRITING" (ibid.). MEANING: Hannah is writing
this a lot, too, and moreso than most anyone else for now, because I'm —"...now..."—
focusing the best and most of my attention on the feelings her words inspire me
to. She's still hiding-out in there, in her journals and plus whatever else of
hers is still around, if maybe only for me alone upon this drear earth, because
she likes me a lot too (evidently a lot, lot more than you other of her exploiters—forgive)
maybe, or maybe because I am just really blessed enough to feel her influence
over me so much more than (you) others that I don't, or can't, feel ashamed of
exposing her as the one saying to and through me what is said here under my own
authority and responsibility for it alone. She is out there for me, I can hear
her through the medium of her texts -- plus I do what she says to do, as such,
more than most of you ever have yet.
2.
"I AMS CHARLES"
---H. Weiner, Little Book Virgin Feb. 78
Because Hannah's face (or "phenomenology")
absurdly/profoundly confuse-s/-ed almost everything she grasp-s/-ed at with(in)
it, as is perhaps altogether too-redolent of (an unmedicated) psychotic
delusion to feel very "safe" or "non-clinical" about (—see
also: the "fatal" immaturity of Hannah's [and perhaps also her historical
age's] non-compliance with her [/their] psychiatric state-apparatuses)---yes,
somehow because of this uttermost confusion, everything in Hannah's texts
also become far more wonderfully legible and sincere (than is
so in "normal poetics"). There is absolutely no nonsense about her, further—only direct transpositions from her
senses (i.e., her “face”) into her grasp/s (i.e., her direct and very
endearingly basic and almost too-obviously predominant repertoire of direct statement-forms), provided only
that her reader is at least a little familiar with the characteristics of these
senses's in their condition-of/generation-into psychotic abnormality.
1.
Hannah Weiner never publicly admitted her madness, at least, as of yet, for the
historical record. I believe she was too socio-psychically repressed to do so.
I also believe the legendary indeterminacy of her madness results precisely
from its even more absolute repression. Her madness, if she alone was
responsible for it, was thus left indeterminate by her own insincerity about
it. And she was insincere, or did repress herself—if only because she was also afar and away more mercilessly repressed
by others. To anymore uncritically affirm the indeterminacy of Weiner’s madness
is perhaps therefore also to continue her same self-repression, as an enabler
of its same injustice. Justice for Weiner therefore now
consists in undoing this repression, in the beautiful goodness of affirming and
expressing her madness as so.
0.
“The
contemporary world makes schizophrenia possible, not because its events render
it inhuman and abstract, but because our culture reads the world in such a way
that man himself cannot recognize himself in it. Only the real conflict of the
conditions of existence may serve as a structural model for the paradoxes of
the schizophrenic world.”
—Foucault, Madness:
The Invention of an Idea
The background world decipherable in the foreground of Hannah
Weiner’s writings, however many otherwise redeemable and goodly aspects it may
also have contained, was a world very much inhospitable to her madness. Or, it was a world that rigorously hospitalized
and therein attempted to neutralize (to “cure”) such forms of madness as hers;
both in the sense of her “inhospitable” clinical incarcerations (of which I
have no actual evidence) and of her thereafter stigmatic exclusion away from an
otherwise normal society. She was incessantly being forced, directly or
indirectly—peacefully or violently, to reform her behavior and psyche and
reintegrate into the then hegemonic forms of social normalcy. Madness was
barely, if at all, permitted to be itself
then (as now).
Her world’s inhospitality to
madness had not always been the case in its somewhat recent past, however, as already
both Shakespeare’s King Lear and
Cervantes’ Don Quixote attest quite
eminently. Hannah Weiner’s backdrop, more precisely then, was already long a
world of statistical norms, i.e. a late form of industrialism—perhaps already hastily
veering off into postindustrialism.
If
Hannah’s writings and performances, or the traces of these works, developed
within a definitely delimitable and describable historical period, i.e. “a late
industrialism of statistical norms”, as such it may seem so far in this, the
intricacies of this history already present an inexhaustible distraction from
her, or the remnants of her we have left, and must, as such, most of all
cherish herein. Or, these remnants themselves, with as much or as little backgrounding
context we do (if ever also inconsistently) bring to bear on them, these are
the objects are themselves “what” (as
herself is who) I seek to venerate
and cherish. In fact, it is in the very measure that Hannah Weiner’s texts
transcend their historical background, and thereby participate in that ideally
immortal world of our all too mortal desiring, that their value or valor is,
perhaps, best recognized.
This
transcendent valor of Hannah’s text, if indeed it has such a valor (as I
believe it, more or less, does), must always remain a transcendence from “...”,
or from some historically objective formation, as it were, however. The things
of her world she transcends inform the quality of her transcendence beyond
them. Thus I posit, on the methodological register of this reading, a tension
between Hannah’s foreground and background, or form and content, as it were.
The peculiar variety of forms that this tension takes in my reading practices
take I do not intend to foretell. Suffice it to affirm that anything I can
possibly do within the bounds of my respect for Hannah and her memory will
likely betray this bipartite structure, this “back” and “fore” (or forth).
Indeed, were I a law-abiding formalist (as I may well be), I might go so far as
to “observe” (beforehand) how all readings participate in a kind of whirligig
structuring-process, ever flipping, as it were, “back and forth”, between texts
and contexts. This is really not a necessary contribution the understanding of
Hannah Weiner, however, except perhaps as a testimony to the fecundity of her
inspiration upon myself, and thus also potentially upon others.
5.
Excuse me if I cannot
write this in the way each of you find best. I can only write for you as who I
am. Or, I can only write of you as myself. But you are not even reading me. You
are alone and are reading only yourself. I am separate from you. I am not there
inside your reading of this. I belong only outside of you. This, or however
society actually works, I never know. Or I wish I never knew. I know I never
know how you wish me to write this. I never know who or if you are at all. I am
just me. You are, if you are, outside of me. So that I am also not writing
about Hannah Weiner except as she is separate and outside of me, unknown to me,
and just not me. I am writing of her without her being in my writing of her. I
write of myself as I am alone and as she is apart from me. Weiner is nowhere
present herein. I tell you this, but again not as from inside your reading of
this. Weiner, you, and myself each are apart from each other. Apart, not as
herein, but as outside of this and apart, as unique individuals. Also, I myself
do not read Weiner’s presence in her writings. I read her writings as I am
alone in reading them. But she is different from me. Therefore I read the
absence of Weiner from her writings instead.
