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The language of Neoism

is beyond representation, and therefore beyond truth. It is less a question of referential equivalence or non-equivalence, but to acknowledge that there is no such thing as a 'referent' or 'signified' which would not be a sign itself. When speaker, addressee and context have been absorbed by Neoism, the signifier-signified distinction collapses. But only if a language system precedes, writing as an appropriative derivation from a given set can be thought at all. Since the dilemma of a discourse absorbing and transforming an other is inherent in the notions of plagiarism and censorship, Neoism does not imply a delusory freedom beyond power and space. In its close ties to parodistic games and popular amusement, Neoism introduces a circular critique of both 'official' text and its allegedly subversive counterpart, the corrective of text as too contradictory and heteroglot to be fit into a 'theory.' Unlike Schlegel's and Novalis' romanticism and its re-hash in the writings of Hegel, Marx, Baudelaire, Lautréamont, Tzara, Breton, Benjamin, Debord and Home, Neoism does not try to re-gain a mirror stage; it does not imply the existence of a 'basic context,' the so-called 'reality' of 'everyday life.' Negating totality, the Neoist is neither concerned with ' alienation' and 'fragmentation,' nor does she seek a metaphysical 'freedom.' She defines Neoism rather as a state of mind than a social or institutional context.

"To 'identify' Neoist writing,

turn a deliberate number of words of a text into their supposed 'opposites' and see if it will still tell the same."

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