#post-literate

This time, a certain meta-legality seems to keep private ‘aesthetics’ save from general ‘law.’ Earlier, you had denied the legality of sexual codes of conduct: “Cette pratique de gouvernement [l’hétérosexualité nécropolitique] ne prend pas la forme d’une loi, mais d’une norme non écrit, d’une transaction de gestes et de codes.” [This practice of rulership (necropolitical heterosexuality) does not take the form of a law, but of an unwritten norm, a transaction of gestures and codes.”] (Prediado 2018) Here, codes get scrambled: a ‘gouvernement’ (not a Foucaultian ‘governmentality’) that rules without law, rules without writing, but nevertheless violently enforces complicity, demands submission, favors its flatterers. There is a lot to say about the differences between ‘laws’ and ‘norms,’ ‘writing’ as ‘inscription’ and the ‘writing’ of, on, or by ‘bodies,’ the relation between ‘writing,’ ‘performance,’ and ‘material reality.’ What if conduct used to be written, then lived on in custom? What if custom becomes legalized by writing it down or incorporated by living it through? What is the role of violence here? When is a law a law?

The easiest way to grasp the difference between the written world and the oral world is that in the latter, there’s no way to look up anything. Before the invention of writing, knowledge existed in the present tense between two or more people; when information was forgotten, it disappeared forever. That state of affairs created a special need for ideas that were easily memorized and repeatable (so, in a way, they could go viral). The immediacy of the oral world did not favor complicated, abstract ideas that need to be thought through. Instead, it elevated individuals who passed along memorable stories, wisdom and good news.