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| AFTER WORDS 2 |
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From After Words
"Today our sight is a little weary, burdened by the memory of a thousand images…We no longer see nature; we see pictures over and over again."- Paul Cezanne
- The land resists representation. Any language that roots itself in a mimetic faithfulness merely re-produces, re-presents that which resists all representation. The land is a presentation, a presencing. The land may be the source for representations, but it is never represented fully, in its fullness. Between the land and its representation there is a distance, a distance represented by the 'and.' The land brushes against all representation, but it only leaves us with an awareness of the inadequacy of any system of representation.
- The land is a system, but it resists all systemic representation.
- The land provides a provisional system, but all systems are provisional that think with the land. Those systems that think against the land are provisional also, even if they provide no provisions for change, even if they think of themselves as being permanent. The land bears witness to the passing of empires, the passing of species, the 'ends' of the world, through revolutions and evolutions, and still the land persists, resists, and desists, insisting on being there, if only being there provisionally. While being an enclosure, the land knows no closure. The land endures, enduring even those systems that work against the land.
- But is there a language for the land, or is there always already a language against the land? Or does this touch on the larger question of the (im)possibility of any representation of the land?
- Language does no represent the land and only represents the land, or, rather a language that has faith in its ability to account for the land works against the land. Such a faith belies an attitude of supremacy, of being able to master language and not be subject to and the subject of language. Haunting such a language would be a faith in our ability to harness the land and not to be harnessed to the land, dependent on the land. Such a language would be a language of subjugation.
- But is there a language that works with the land?
- Only a provisional language that comes after the land, both chasing after words to impossibly capture the land, and afterwards temporally, after the experience of the land, to re-present the land. Even after words the land remains.
- When the land is the land, there is no language…
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