#Misanthropocene
September 26, 2022
#Misanthropocene: “This is how the misanthropocene ends. We go to war against it. My friends go to war against it. They run howling with joy and terror against it. I go with them” (8). But then Clover and Spahr’s #Misanthropocene doesn’t end. There are four more theses, each less cogent than Thesis 20. And that’s the point, maaan. The seemingly apt coda to the poem/pseudo-manifesto ought to be rejected, for adherence to seemingly apt constructs is an act of submission to the obstructing powers that be and also the poem/pseudo-manifesto/et cetera doesn’t deserve a coda because the exercise is in itself futile. Duuude. A sucker for postmodern splintering of form and metacommentary to the point of infinite regress, I developed a surface level appreciation for 24 Theses upon my initial read. But I had some gripes. It doesn’t utilize the tools of postmodernism to their greatest extent. Not committing to its own bit is its bit, but it doesn’t commit to that either. It doesn’t commit to anything, dulling its rhetorical saber. Like most works of the same ilk, its attempt at any solution to the issue cluster it rails against is slight, and its self-consciousness about this, while necessary, is amplified to the extent that the vinegar and anger that propelled its first half is retroactively rendered weak. For how self-conscious it is, however, it stops short of bulletproof self-insulation (which again, it should just about be capable of). And then, you know, some other minor stuff. Of course those nits I just picked could be viewed as its strengths. Brooo. Either way, evidently #Misanthropocene has lodged itself in the continuity of my thought. So it has won after all. I’ve come to view it as an incredible artifact of mania (Freud’s). It is the product of excess libidinal energy, reflecting an almost ballistic attempt at catharsis, at getting it all out. And of course, after mania, the melancholia (Ngai’s ugly feelings (somewhat), impersonal feelings, etc.) tends to return. Hence why there are four more imperfect theses after the ‘perfect’ Thesis 20. You could apply a number of the related theoretical frameworks we’ve discussed to a similar tune––Freud’s was just our most recent. I think #Misanthropocene is aware of them, and exists as an attempt at embodying their progressions. At that, I marvel.
(26 September 2022)
P.S.
“It doesn’t use the tools of postmodernism to their greatest extent.”
…
Yeesh. Everything I write about #Misanthropocene could be written about the introduction to this anthology, about this post, this postscript, and all of the posts that follow. I can identify the errors in this kind of writing, but I will undoubtedly make them myself, again and again. But no, this one’s pretty tight. A neat reversal at the end, everything I criticized becomes what I cherish about the text in question most. A brief mention of Ngai, but I wish I would’ve related my babblings about “postmodern splintering” to the issues of our discussion more. That’s an arch problem of mine with most of these entries. How do they contribute to the discourse? Who was this for?