The condition of the United States positively announces the lack of substance, of unifying principle from the start: that consensus is a lie, and that the absence of consensus is a necessary condition for, not the dissolution of the political entity, and its reconstruction according to both viral and virtual principles, which, are, in practice, user-generated.

I'm in a profession with a dismal success rate, in an academic field with a dismal hiring rate. And I don't write, really, about any of that - rather the institutional structures I've negotiated my way through, with healthy doses of luck, provide a breathing, parasitic glimpse into the bureaucratic monolith of the creative-degree machine.

The condition of the United States positively announces the lack of substance, of unifying principle from the start: that consensus is a lie, and that the absence of consensus is a necessary condition for, not the dissolution of the political entity, and its reconstruction according to both viral and virtual principles, which, are, in practice, user-generated.

I'm a bit skeptical about the possibilities for resistant fiction, and even more despondent over the potential for politically engaged writing to do much of anything outside the dominant means of production and distribution.

People like me start organizing conferences and editing journals, even become tenured professors talking about Empire of the Senseless with a bunch of wide-eyed kids from the farmland. If only one of those kids goes back home and lets her hogs out of the pen to go plum wild rolling around in their own slop while the neighboring farmers scratch their chins, then, isn't that worth it? Insert the same scenario with stockbrokers, stock-car drivers, and stock characters in the post-baccalaureate working man's sideshow, and well, that's viral reproduction.

I certainly want people to read what I've written. Yet, and here's that question of economic position, because I have a secure job, I don't need a wide readership to survive. I'm a participant in the indirect economy, what sociological critic Pierre Bourdieu would call the "economic world reversed." I get "paid" by writing whatever I choose. That's a pretty good position to be in, but I don't pretend for a moment that it is not a privileged one.

All media is moving, at light speed, toward development through viral channels.