Mike Young—
“I am not opposed to poems. I love poems. I love people who write poems, passionately. But the SOCIAL ROLE OF POET is a disaster, just like every other social role. The struggle is for the end of roles, for the end of the division of labor, for the end of the gender distinction, for the end of identity as it exists. Free relations, not roles. Poems made by anyone who makes them. No poets.” — Joshua Clover has one point and it’s about rabbits
oh weird, HTMLGIANT isn’t listing tags anymore that i can see // here are the tags i put for this:
X it’s fun to agree and disagree at the same timeX Joshua CloverX probably kind of a simple idea but simple ideas are still fun to talk about randomly on tuesdayX tuesday provocation
I don’t think it’s a simple idea at all! In fact, it reads to me as a pretty complex point, and one I’m having trouble reconciling with what I’ve read by Joshua Clover. His Totality for Kids, for instance, struck me as an expressly political work, the political equivalent of a Situationist dérive. And while I greatly admired the effort, and thought the whole thing beautiful, I wasn’t convinced it really worked, in the end. But in this passage here, Clover seems to be arguing against an expressly political poetry, or at least seems to be questioning poetry’s efficacy at achieving specific political ends (and I’d agree with him here).
Anyway, it’s curious and well worth thinking/talking about. Thanks for posting the link!
[…] Davis, and Santa Cruz. I went to a discussion on manifestos where Joshua Clover delivered his Don’t Put the Rabbit in the Hat. Later, at “The Public School” Joshua and Jasper read from Götterdämmerung Family […]
[…] Davis, and Santa Cruz. I went to a discussion on manifestos where Joshua Clover delivered hisDon’t Put the Rabbit in the Hat. Later, at “The Public School” Joshua and Jasper read fromGötterdämmerung Family […]