HeteroTextuality on the Margins of Philanthropy

I don't want to take anything away from Phil Cubeta, the Master of Revels here. He is the kind of middle brow straightman that Candidia always picks to act as her feckless flunky and foil. Behind his back she calls him "totally pathetic," and who am I to disagree with she who rules us all. What I do want to protest, though, is my being confined to this Blue Box which always already circumscribes (i.e., from the Latin to "inscribe around") my discourse, reducing its credibility and putting all I write under suspicion, in my case totally undeserved, given my lifelong pursuit of excellence.  I would also like to point out in my official capacity as Senior Wealth Bondage Fellow in Charge of Hermeneutics with special reference to Hidden Meanings, is that these Blue Boxes produce a kind hernia or involution or rupture in  the sensitive membranes of our shared textuality. It both limns and violates what - yes, following Derrida - I can only call the Hymen separating Gifthub from Wealth Bondage, or Philanthropy in General, from Wealth Systems in General! That being said, I do not find this particular aporia stimulating or productive. No jouissance to speak of, really. It is all a bit too labored. You call call it post-post-modern if you wish, but it strikes me as Ancient, in fact a throw back to Menippius himself, the Cynic poet who work descends to us via Seneca the Younger, Diogenes, Sterne, Swift, and Wilde, to name a few. Beyond that, beyond the whole question of Origins (and Origin-ality) this Blue Box forces into the foreground the whole question of Authorial Intent.  Phil is not "inside the Blue Box," nor is the content here subject to his control. I kiss no one's hand and fawn upon no man, least of all Phil. Thus, what is inside the box exceeds the boundaries of the text that is Gifthub, both inside it and outside it, thereby producing its own heteroglossollalia, if I may be permitted to coin that striking term.  Who then will stop the endless play of signifiers set in motion by the Blue Box? What Author Function will wrap all within the Horizon of His/Her/Its Intentionality? Beats me, really. You know what this is like, Tom, it is as if you were reading along in Finnegans Wake and all of a sudden you stumble on a biographical write up on Richard Ellman, Joyce's profound critic, but one who would not write about Joyce until many years later. Now, if Joyce had quoted (proleptically, to be sure) his unborn critic, and had included that quotation inside some kind of Blue Box, would that tend to still the free play of the Signifier, or only make its motions ever more catastrophic to our readerly readings of that writerly text, if you know what I mean? (c.f., Roland Barthes).    Anyway, as I averred above, it beats me. I hope others will devote their life to this mystery. I have my hands full deciphering the chatter coming in through the phone tap on Gunderson. I am supposed to frame him for the Valerie Plame deal and get him to Gitmo after the hit men on the Freedom Team cut off his clothes, give him a drugged enema, and throw him in chains onto a plane bound for Cuba.  So far, all I have on him is a bunch of  repetititive verbiage about Vision in Philanthropy. But he sounds guilty.  What the hell, under torture, I am sure he will confess to something. I think I will just doctor the evidence and be done with it. The trial will be secret. It will never come back to bite me. I get paid by the job. Every prisoner in the Freedom Gulag raises the stock price of Wealth Bondage Prisons International by $500,000 and I get options. So, Gunderson, kiss Council on Foundations goodbye. - Dr. Amrit Chadwallah, Adjunct in Charge of Forensic Hermeneutics in Wealth Bondage

Comments

[tom]

Our education does us disservice, sir. As physick for distemper I always carry Plutarch's Lives and occasionally consult The Wire. In dark times, clarity is not something to be sneezed at in a glass, darkly. For a truly philanthropic, big-vision emolument, however, I'll be happy to ship you large crates of Gideon Bibles equipped with the pharmacological enegmas which your, er, patients, will need for their Cubatan spiritoons.

[Phil]

We all do what we can in these dark times. Probably best that we err on the side of caution. The Blue Box is best passed over without comment.