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The Manifesto of Negativity

January 12, 2021 in Manifesto of the Month, Feature

Harry Polkinhorn

1. Prescript: I have nothing to say.

2. Nothing counts any more; nothing ever did.

3. Culture is dead. It committed suicide because it had become successful.

4. The liberation of language, a poetics of freedom of the word, the Futurists’ parole in liberta, the jouissance of schizophrenic discourse, the transrational zaum of the Russians, all fit perfectly into their preordained boxes, gagging them forever.

5. The violence of pure heterology runs rampant in the streets.

6. Poetry has no impact on people. Right when they think it does, they are furthest from its transmuting power, to which the weak look back in nostalgia.

7. Personhood is fictional.

8. There is no synaesthesia right around the corner to bail us out.

9. Only the foolish believe that technology has an autonomous status. They rush into its arms expecting salvation and find only their own asphyxiation.

10. In a zero-state world, you can’t go on vacation any more.

11. All the so-called great achievements of our generation are nothing; you can’t distinguish between “them” and the versions of them we are force-fed.

12. The artist has no public. The audience is bought and paid for.

13. After Auschwitz, poetry was written, but it might as well not have been.

14. At the extreme end of representation, nothing remains, or what is left is precisely that: remains.

15. The apotheosis of display ends up where it started: with less value than that of a bad joke.

16. Our only chance is total denial.

17. Language is nothing more than a running back and forth.

18. Nihil obstat everything.

19. The king is dead.

20. Integration: all previous manifestoes are hereby declared null and void.

Manifestoofthemonth1.jpg

The manifesto as a literary art form is often forgotten, but we here at Mutable have had the audacious notion of collecting these remarkable objects for our Manifesto of the Month series.

For our very first manifesto, we’re posting one by Mutable author Harry Polkinhorn. The Manifesto of Negativity was published in Manifesto I, the first official publication of Mutable Press, now Mutable Sound. Enjoy.

Tags: Harry Polkinhorn, Manifesto I
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