24 February 2009: "Miss u newspapers"

This post is about textuality. The written word as material object presents a sensual barrier to the semiotic interpentetration of signifiers, as the images of a woman wrapped in newsprint salaciously demonstrate. The images illustrate the degree to which we literally wrap ourselves up in words, the way in which the flow of mediated information clothes us, protects us. "Newspapers were created to be recycled," Carles declares, pointing to the inherent ephemeral nature of news content when considered categorically. But the apparent permanent-ness of text as print matter is belied by its eminent disposability, whereas textuality as the tightly woven blanket of memes and signifiers allows discrete texts to survive in perpetuity. As Carles notes, the problem with printed text is its isolation: "There are no hyperlinks on the page to read about related stories or issues." That is to say, the textuality is masked rather than foregrounded, a disguise that can be exploited by the forces who seek to assert control over the flow of information. Newspapers as counterfactuals. Their pretense to truth is a kind of nontruth which aspires to truth or masquerades as truth thanks to prevailing truth procedures: "Just want to create an accurate version of ‘the world’ according 2 my internet experience," Carles remarks slyly, a nod toward the way online textuality has fashioned a densely layered world that is more real than real. And faux truth, after all, comes at enivronmental cost: "Do yall know if ‘the rain forest’ is running out of trees?"

But within the dense thicket of textuality, it is easy for us to lose ourselves, as Carles warns. "Do u believe that u can create ur own internet, and within that context, cultivate meaning + an appreciation of ‘the world’ according 2 u?" With a rigorous interrogation of online interactivity, we may instigate an inversion of the subject and object, so that the referentiality of truth may become obscure and ontology a kind of vacuum. A negative theology of the self as searchability ("Is google the ‘anti-christ’/God?"), with the real pouring out of virtual worlds rather than into them.

My life takes place
on the internet
And then sometimes
real life happens
but I come back to the internet
to reflect on it
and record it
and 2 make it
history

Just as textuality allows for the infinititude of the text, of the Word as primordial substance, so does online density of presence permit dreams of immortality. But these are just dreams: "When I die, will my social network accounts be deactivated?" Carles asks. The networks are not yet self-sustaining, or rather, as Carles harshly reminds us, they sustain themselves only to the degree to which they efface the self.