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The ten thousand things and the one true only.

by Kip Manley

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Things to keep in mind:
The secret of occultiana.

In books of Hidden Writing, the textual subtopia consists of plots, narrations and autonomous author-drones populating the ()hole complex of Hidden Writing. Such a subsurface life can not be reduced to ramified plot layers or buried messages (θησαυρός, thesauri) which would be the rewards of deep reading. So-called hermeneutic rigor follows the logic of textual stratification, and can be achieved by hermeneutical tools corresponding to the layering order of its text. But the subsurface life of Hidden Writing is not the object of layers and interpretation; it can only be exhumed by distorting the structure of the book or the surface plot. Exhumation includes a process of concrete crypting and decrypting, rewording, bastardization and a changing of the book. To interact with Hidden Writings, one must persistently continue and contribute to the writing process of the book. In Hidden Writings the act of reading and writing is conducted through those plot holes rejected by most interpreters as misleading obscurities. For hermeneutical explorations, plot holes are tricks, they are ill-timed and ill-space coördinates within the text—leak holes which must be plugged. But doesn’t blocking the leak shift the pressure to another region, forcing out another hole? Theology is in general constantly obsessed with plugging holes, covering cracks and fissures in reasoning of and about the Divine. Thus, it forms lacunæ of imperfection by which the corpus of theology can always be mobilized against itself, turning against itself and biting back its body. To do rigorous theology is to perforate the Divine’s corpus with heresies.

Reza Negarestani

—posted 3367 days ago


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