[…] starting from the position that the status quo is unacceptable, and that some sort of change—whether transformation, disruption, rebellion, innovation, intervention, or insubordination—is therefore necessary, the works under discussion in the chapters that follow offer a version of Cage’s optimistic transferral; they expand that conviction about the intolerability of the status quo to literary modes, advocating implicitly for a more variegated canon, and then continue more radically to question the fundamental structures of language itself. Texts here are conceived not only as artifacts documenting moments in which writers have undertaken the radical reevaluation of modes of composition but also as sites encouraging readers to proceed in unconventional and innovative ways; they exhibit experimental writing and reward experimental reading. If the world requires new positions and relations, new modes of attention and perception, a refreshed awareness of material conditions, the redistribution of powers, and continually active participation, unscripted by conventions, here are the proving grounds. Those who aspire to change society shouldn’t shy from the far less ambitious task of reconsidering what—and how—they read.
Radium of the Word : A POETICS OF MATERIALITY, Craig Dworkin
