'The author of Charlotte Street, Mark Kaplan, may well protest his innocence here, but if you scan his various posts there is often a veiled provocation or attack on some deserving victim.’
Naturally, I have no idea what he is referring to. None. All I will say is that some of my posts are themselves provoked by some particular act of imbecility or some particular instance of the journalistic cliché machine creaking and peddling it’s vacuous wares. The particular instance or act is undeserving of attention in itself, lest it be elevated to the false dignity of an object of thought. Instead it is jettisoned in moving towards some more general conclusion. This general conclusion no longer bears the traces of the particular offending item which provoked it. At least, I didn't think so. But perhaps the more canny readers can indeed read backwards from these general remarks and dimly perceive the vestigial outline of the example which occasioned them.
Deleuze, writing about Francis Bacon, suggests that the initial painterly canvas is not blank. Not for Bacon at least. It is already scribbled through with clichés and the dead weight of the history of painting. The painter must fend off this frozen scribble and win space and freedom for himself. Similarly, any piece of writing which enters the public sphere must presumably first budge and contend with the pre-existing encrusted ideas and the inertia of received opinion. It can therefore be thought to involve, where it does not simply confirm and slot into this pre-existing field, an act of low-level violence, a pre-emptive strike, or even just a sullen reproach. It is therefore entirely reassuring to me that my posts appear as challenges, incitements or whatever.
n.b. the above post is a calculated provocation and not to be taken seriously.