To make a book entirely of quotations was and remains one of Walter Benjamin’s most oft quoted ambitions. Text-fragments are to be arranged in constellations, knit together by montages of attraction and repulsion, which create new concepts rather than simply falling under the coercive rule of an existing Idea.
A superficially similar but diametrically opposed practice exists among certain bloggers. These bloggers are given to quoting certain passages ‘without comment’, as if they spoke for themselves. They forget that the white space around these quotes is hardly empty. It is rented out in advance to Received Opinion, to which the quote has been cynically surrendered, as one might report a neighbour to the authorities for benefit fraud. In Lacanian parlance, they have been handed over to the Big Other. This practice is not about arguing a point, but about confirming one already in situ. A consensus is assumed rather than challenged, and the reader feels bullied in to approbation of what is supposed to be radiantly obvious. In exchange, one is admitted to the company of those salute each other, point and laugh.
The poor bedraggled quote is paraded before the reader before being dispatched to its pigeon-hole. And far from speaking for itself, it is made to act as the ventriloquist dummy for what is ‘already known’.