characters out in their thousands is a book of tensions between the entrapment and resistance of individuals in contemporary consumer and corporate culture. “Mc pit-a-list self endearing its ugly head” materializes subjectivities that support, uphold, and accept the objectives of neoliberal culture. “sudden change to whatever” tries to map out possibilities for forcing lapses in this inscription, possibilities for temporary re-inscriptions of subjectivity.
But how can a poem itself be such a lapse? Could it be by requiring the kind of attention that resists a commercial culture, a commercial culture thriving on and demanding manifestations of frenzied concepts of pseudo-culture and the attention-deficient subjectivities they generate? Could it be by presenting itself as a long-range collaborative project? Could it be by insisting upon multiple subject positions to resist the dominant culture’s smoothing over of difference? Could it be by denaturalizing history to attempt to undo the airbrushing out of History’s alternate currents, its objectors and residues? Could it be by consisting of fragments of anecdotes, stories and text, passed on by fellow writers and resisters? Could it be in processing my ‘database’ of linguistic experiences, associations, reflections and intuitions through everyday texts such as newspapers or gas bills to start examining inscription into the system? Could it be by refusing to oversimplify? Refusing to pacify? Could it be in manifesting disgust?
Much of the text is concerned with protest, and indeed a protest is a manifestation of disgust, as it can also be a temporary lapse in the daily drudgery of the competition of Western democracy. Protests that figure here range from 1930’s Scotland through to Brazil 1968 and onto recent protests against the G8 at Genoa 2001and Scotland 2005, where this text was first performed on the streets of Edinburgh .
Download An audio file of this poem is available on www.archiveofthenow.com follow the links to Ceri Buck
