Michael Rowley 

Forgetting Sexy, Workshopping Beautiful:  
Accessibility Within Revolutionary Literature and Theory

The left, always represented in revolutionary literature through an
underdog trope, constantly struggles behind capital.  In revolutionary
literature, performativity must take the form of the aesthetic
equivalent of approximate and relative truth.  Too much revolutionary
literature has been of the Protekult model; such Man Loves Tractor
literature, as it has been commonly called, strips bare the
knowledge-base of aesthetics in favor of dogmatic tropes.  What is
meant when a metaphor works within a piece of fiction?  In creative
writing, we mean the metaphor is genuine to the material circumstances
of the work, organically arising from within the already existing
elements of the text.  While revolutionary art must seek its own
aesthetic epistemology, theorists must stop trying to be so sexy and
must also focus on performance within their work.  How can we discuss
performativity before we free the language of our own theories from
the alienating quality they possess for those on the left who actually
engage in praxis?  Not stagnant Old Left parties, but rather the
groups who might form around one or two issueswhat Jameson has
observed as the difference in the left between single issue politics
and a totalizing systemiand who become more generally radicalized
usually do not speak coded language.ii Theory must make itself more
visible not when it prances around being sexy, but rather when it
unearths texts long buried.  Why, for instance, has the Bolshevik
Aleksandra Kollontais work been afforded so little attention outside
of Russian Languages and Linguistics?  Theorys real work with regard
to literature should be canon fighting.  Why must we shy away from
didactic literature?  Why must the poetry of IRA hunger striker Bobby
Sands, MP, go unnoticed simply because it rhymes when critics forget
that it was written on toilet paper with the refill of a pen Sands
kept hidden inside his body before he starved to death fighting for
status as a political prisoner engaged in a colonial fight with the
British Empire?  Therefore, I would argue that revolutionary
literature must move closer to the aesthetic, while literary criticism
must be pushed by a strong cultural theory of literature that sees the
didactic/aesthetic divide as relevant only when the performativity of
the text is in question by the workshopping readerthat is before the
text has fully come into being.  For revolutionary literature this
move toward the aesthetic involves a push away not from the didactic,
but away from the simple underdog trope toward pride and celebration
in the beauty of positionality; or, in other words, non-utopian
revolutionary literature has fundamentally been a literature about the
rise of the subaltern and while this work is important, revolutionary
artists should also look to the celebration of the beauty of moments
within that rise; or, to reframe Trotskys revolution as a locomotive
image, literature, like revolution should not be a locomotive, but
more like a bicycle whose constant revolutions move the society
forward but while constantly recognizingand more importantly,
feelingthe individual static illusory moments of beauty within the
spokes.  I would be happy to discuss performing this presentation as a
workshop on creative writing or theoretical writing or both in finding
the metaphors toward a new revolutionary literature.  I would also
feel comfortable delivering this as a talk.  But I would prefer the
former.  i See Jamesons article, Actually Existing Marxism in
Casarino, Makdisi, et al, Polygraph 6/7:  Marxism Beyond Marxism.
Durham:  Duke, 1993.  ii The U.S.  Green Party, with all its
misdirection and failings, represents an example of a site where
interest groups intersect and cross-pollinatehence the radicalization
of the U.S.  Green Party in recent years when compared to that of the
co-opted centrist elements of the German Green Party.

2 English 53 8:23 PM, 5 February 2002 Michael Rowley Title:  Subtitle
Instructor

Michael Rowley Forgetting Sexy, Workshopping Beautiful:  8:23 PM, 5
	February 2002 Accessibility Within Revolutionary Literature
	and Theory