For Marx

So this is where I will start—where I will take my position—somewhere between the literary and the theoretical. More and more I find that the literary becomes the theoretical. For Althusser, the literary is a literary event because it has been re-presented, re-translated—re-produced. He is remaking on the rescue of a text from obscurity, from misunderstanding through language. Now, today, we must struggle to rescue so much, so much more. It may be necessary to unearth that which has been lost or stolen from our grasp. That which is theoretical can possibly be rescued by the literary.

We live in dark times. We have seen the waves of resistance and clear understanding of yje need for resistance and its futility come and go. We have seen the need for change been made irrelevant over and over again. The horrors of our time reverberate in our ears as we try to listen for words of hope. Now, this is because we can find hope only in words—words and their actions. We need the force of language to be able to undermine the sense of the scientific demanded by the theoretical.

Now, we need the force of the figure. The demands of the figurative. Only through the lingering pulls to the sense of what language means allows us to function in the face of overburdening reason. Sense threatens to strangle the life from the corpse.