letters in the dark

falling letters, breaking words

Apr 10, 2007

I guess this is one other reason I write, and write anxiously and copiously: if texts are themselves "performance of self," then the more texts I write the more occasions I bring about in which the norm's illusiveness--which is to say, the self's essential "elusiveness"--can be laid bare. Writing, being yet another kind of performance, is a wedge that can pry the self apart, if only to recover, ironically enough, some semblance of its agency, some precious evidence of its freedom. As performance, writing is the production of interpretative space, in which the self can simultaneously be lost and resignified. Fortunately or unfortunately, this is the only way the self can be free.

--J. Neil Garcia