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Oscillating

between a consideration of Neoism in particular and general, 'ideological' statements, the left-wing critique of Neoism reveals a conflict between 'textuality' and 'contextuality.' It shows that the elimination of the old divisions between base and super-structure results in still unresolved problems for its own epistemology. A critique that claims to just assemble 'observations' of 'reality' is caught in a paradox when it nevertheless attempts to construct a theory, thus imposing structures on its own notions of 'reality' and the 'social process.'

Neoism externalized its own contradictions by labeling them self-perpetuating challenges. This ambiguity is to be found again in Neoism as a certain discursive space and a potentially infinite text. However, the point seems to be less a reversal of positions: consolidated through self-containment, Neoism is in an intermediate state between two fixed poles. Rather an unstable construction than an 'other,' it is not challenging the position of hegemonical agents, but their epistemological dialectic. "No force," to quote Gramsci via Lentricchia, "defines the whole of hegemony," although so-called 'counter-hegemonical' agents still suggest its mere existence.


Young Americans for Freedom
Amherst, Mass. 01003

Jan. 25, 93

Dear Mr. Cantsin,

you may or may not have seen that we already neutralized your counter-attack in December 1989--seit sechs Uhr wird zurückgeschossen--when we were Neoistischer Artillerieleitstand Ost (NAO) in Berlin-Köpenick, Germany.

Now since we retired for the rest of our life, people suspect we are convalescing somewhere with hemorrhoids. We guess this is what you would call in America "Gambling with shoestrings."

The concept of 'revolution' is inherently 'religious' and based on positivist abstractions. Those who believe in the concept of revolution are slaves to 'history.' To be a revolutionary is to engage in a nostalgic mythology, to entertain and reinforce the 'Western' spectacle. The notion of a 'historical process' is ridiculous. Dialectics are a 'delusory,' mystifying abstraction, and so is the dichotomy signifier/signified, or 'sign' versus 'idea,' implying the construct of a univocal 'truth.'

We communists aim at a collectivization of truth and the self-perpetuation of memory. 'Individuality' and 'community,' 'domination' and 'freedom,' 'power' and 'anarchy' are abstractions which mutually reinforce themselves.

You are stupid.

There is no contradiction in this text.

Lieutenant Murnau.