th con of th txt

“It becomes plain that, at root, the drive towards the exoskeletal in avant-garde work is not the push towards chaos or oblivion it is so often seen as, but rather the drive towards a reassertion of context, the desire to understand the nature of writing and its place in the world of things. A struggle to ‘read’ both reading and writing.”
-Rational Geomancy, McCaffery & Nichol

While re-reading RG, I come across this heavily underlined passage, adorned with asterisks and exclamation marks. This is what Sara Ahmed would call a “sticky” passage for me. I’m emotionally invested in this idea.
And it makes me think of Helen Hajnoczky’s thoughtful report of the bok/starnino cage match posted on lemon hound. Hajnoczky brought forward the scene of writing, the context. And reminded me of how un-avant garde much of the avant garde is.