Rights of the Form



Do these spaces have to choose between self-promotion and anonymity? Anne-Lise François has shown how to think about a kind of utterance that doesn’t have to make itself heard (in fact, can you ever make yourself heard?) while inviting one to hear it more actively (François, Open Secrets: Toward a Theory of Recessive Action [Stanford UP, 2008].) Writing would seem to be a paradigm for this kind of utterance, since it makes itself available but, if it isn’t advertising, doesn't force itself into the mind of the reader. The reader can leave the sentence at any time. Anne-Lise and I went to LACMA’s show Beyond Geometry, which featured mostly minimalist objects, and we liked their air of uncaring either to obscure themselves or to take up our time. Cildo Meireles’s almost invisible 3/8" cube (below) stood directly on the floor in a little square of light; you couldn’t find the object without laughing. Writers have often inhabited imaginary spaces populated only by potential or posthumous readers. In a vast empty space it’s a good idea to write softly, since the emptiness is resounding. Every scrap of writing has a claim and a right to be, but not a right to be much.