Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Picnoleptic suggestions for the Chinese Politburo

co The Poliburo of the Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China (PSCCCC) vigilantly  attends to all the material and psychic needs of the citizens. The citizens also need to be vigilant especially when interruptions occur in PSCCCC thinking. Recently Wen Jiabao warned against a return to the Cultural Revolution.Was he thinking of the overly zealous local actions of Bo Xilai and his wife? Or did he have in mind the ups and downs of Confucianism; once seen as midieval and next as fostering loyalty to the state but now perhaps a political threat?  The PSCCCC could learn from Kafka's Great Wall of China; workers on the wall operate a system of piecemeal construction so that once a 1000 yards is completed then, after due celebrations, the High Command transport them faraway to start another 1000 yard section; on this journey they see innumerable other partial sections of wall in the process of completion accompanied by the usual celebrations and so on for ever. These are stories of the mass management of peoples which pay careful attention to the mental states of wall builders; only this section of wall is ever visible. But yet more care could be lavished on the worker's soul. Specifically what is the optimal mental state for perpetual interruption? How do I best cope with only ever experiencing a 'bit' and never a whole? It is possible to make mass use of Virilio's idea of  picnolepsy where the worker's ego is not continuous but made up a series of little deaths with fits; during each fit there is no awareness only oblivion. It is in principal possible to calibrate the timing of fits with those moments when the High Command is planning to move wall workers to a new location; a process of inducing oblivion is required; the PSCCCC can adopt a similar routine to coincide with their periodic ideological interrruptions To imagine this, from the perspective of the worker's experience, just take a look at the fitful aspect of many of the dance sequences in Pina Bausch's Cafe Muller. The figures shake and convulse. Perhaps Gombrowicz is thinking of these Chinese wall builders when he talks about the 'grimace'; a picnoleptic fit is sure to make the victim grimace like the 'grimace duellists' in Ferdydurke.

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