War, the Serial

Given the current state of the nation and its sadistic thrusts, it seems as useful as anything I’ve come across lately to state this plainly:  that we have hit a moment in history where “warspeak” has taken on a particularly literary trope.

Why am I throwing the word “trope” around?  Because two of its definitions include:

1. any literary or rhetorical device, as metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony, that consists in the use of words in other than their literal sense (imagine here the load of utter bullshit oozing from the mouth of our so-called president and his mis-use of about a gazillion terms in an attempt to distract you with figurative hoo-doo).

2. (in the philosophy of Santayana) the principle of organization according to which matter moves to form an object during the various stages of its existence (I just like this.   So there).

And what I am saying is, the talking heads of warspeak—Bush, his cronies, the media, “experts in the field”–are stealing language and literary devices right and left.  From us.  Writers.  Artists. Activists.  Ordinary people.

Proof:  what we’ve got now is war the serial, the ongoing story, the television production, the mini-series, the movie, the show—and the events—the so-called war on terror, war in Afghanistan, war in Iraq, war on illegal aliens, war on Islamic fascism (particularly dunderheaded idea)–and the representations are no longer distinguishable.  The rhetorical and the discursive and the representational have, in other words, done that Baudrillard thing to the nines.

Aside from, of course, the matter of dead bodies, which, conveniently, are ushered off screen or slipped into statistical data so as not to interrupt the narrative flow.  Dead bodies are someone’s “report,” or “special segment” on CNN, or an Op-Ed piece—again, all representational.

But the literary troping of contemporary “war”—a term which by the way has lost its moorings representationally and ethically—has utterly atomized the reality it may have at one time attempted to metaphorize.  Literature may have troped war, but now war tropes literature, and it aint pretty.

It’s not like I’m the first person to think this up.  About a gazillion people have noticed this war troping business, all across history.  See list at the tail end of this bad boy.

Some humorous and at the same time serious contemporary manifestations:  Cindy Sheehan and John Stewart . . . humorous because apparently the poet activists can appear in the least expected places, and serious because they are doing our work for us.

Then there is the frightening facet of pure fiction and stylized persuasion masquerading as the nightly news . . . simply put:  pukedom.

Don’t even get me started on how shitty it is – no, beyond shitty – that these so-called “wars” are displacing event horizons like Darfur.  How the Darfur “story” keeps failing to “get air time” or narrative weight.  Or Katrina—how bout that?  One day of commemorative punk-ass shows while thousands of humans drown in their country’s apathy.

Or our crappy ass shrub-of-a-loser brainless commander in chief saying “we’re in a battle for civilization.”  As if the front for the battle of civilization is Iraq.  This dude has been reading the bible a little too literally.  Jesus Christ.

So what, right?

Well, here’s the thing.

I still believe art can and should stand up to the state rather than suck its dick by producing mindless entertainment and supplicant pigshit.  In fact, even though we live in times deadened by consumerism and economy, I still believe it is the best use and function of art to speak the emotions, truths, and realities that organized society refuses to legitimate.

Call me crazy.  Call me naïve.  Call me not academic enough.  Call me a girlie man.

You’d be dead wrong on all counts, because artists need not fit the category of sane, they need not become good and proper citizens, they need not score the big touchdown in academia.  And women—since I am the one saying this I’d like to speak from my actual corporeal position instead of pretending it doesn’t matter–need not apologize for being pissed off enough to use their bodies and language to say fuck you, stealers of language.

We—writers, artists–just need to make art.

If writers wanted to, we could effect change, and not simply in candlelight vigils and highly publicized and sanctioned literary “events.”  If we wanted to, we could go underground and punch our way up and through this shit.  Because between you and me, I’ve about had it with relegating writers and writing to some impotent realm of academia and prizes and conferences.  Or worse, snagging a spot on a talk show.   Interviewed by NPR (god love em, but still…).  Sidelined like bat-boys.  Ball-less in our pretty utterances.  Do we really want to look like congress?  What a bunch of punks.

So.

I’m throwing it out there as a challenge.  Any writers or artists want to make some noise not sanctioned by the okey-dokey meisters?  Anybody want to steal language back from the artless and spineless morons currently controlling it?

Anybody want to interrupt war the serial with a linguistic insurgence?  One coming from a place of love (hey, love can be loud too, baby) and fierce creativity, rather than death, killing, and economy?

If so, lemme know.

Oh and by the way:  nationalism ought not be confused with religion, buying and consuming ought not be confused with being, and US citizens ought to wake the fuck up—because we’re the ones doing it.

With love and a pounding heart,

Lidia, an ordinary person, writer, mother, wife.

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Paul Fussell, Robert Hughes, Paul Virilio, Andrei Codrescu, Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil, Noam Chomsky, Czeslaw Milosz, Fredric Jameson, Walter Benjamin, Edward Said, James William Gibson, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Kathy Acker, Marguerite Duras, Monique Wittig, Leslie Silko, Doris Lessing, Baudrillard, Derrida, Adorno, Joy Harjo, hell, remember Don DeLillo’s White Noise?  Before he was Mr. Big and writing tomes about baseball?  I’m sure you can all think of other even better examples as well.