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THE MEANING OF SPECIFIC SYMBOLS

The ordering of words is the ordering of consciousness. The authoritative program of culture and ideology requires a particular ordering of thought in its victims which is both 'rational' and 'specific,' with a sense of 'truth' as its cornerstone. In order to maintain this situation, it is imperative that language clearly separate activites and objects into controllable fields of reference. For this reason, we consider it imperative that all magazines be called SMILE, all activities be called Neoism, and all individuals adopt the specific names of or Karen Eliot. The shifting refernts of the post-modern condition will solidify under this experiment towards a pure language of practical confusion.

The conceptual art of the Seventies legitimized an increasing and ironic separation between 'art' and 'life': a separation in which the apparent liberation of imagination is revealed on close inspection to be an exercise in (self)restraint. The 'idea,' conceived but unrealized, is more easily controlled than the commodity object: a restatement of the totalitarian dominance of 'social' ' reality' over 'personal' 'reality.'

The practical inversion of this condition is tantamount to Neoism. The 'conceptual' made social decentralizes control, increases confusion and becomes an 'act of will.' Life becomes mythology - mythology becomes life.

Reactionaries will always mistake this refusal to participate in the artificial separation between the 'rational' and 'irrational' for an inversion of the control structure of social relations. They will strengthen this misconception by attempting to show a historical line running from Lautréamont onwards, and by this linear method avoiding the central paradox of such criticisms. 'Irrationality,' discussed 'rationally,' will always fall short. It is only the rejection of this duality which can bring history into focus in time for its neccessary destruction.