I begin with a simple question. How does movement take place in the contemporary world? Bombs and words are two unlikely allies in response to this question. One shatters by its explosive force, the other challenges immovable objects, or both do each by diverse means. The equation of this unlikely pair is something Dellilo posits in Mao II: "What terrorists gain, novelists lose." Words lose efficacy in the face of violence, or voice is lost in lieu of pain. Maybe in the moment, but I refuse to believe in permanent loss. Instead, I want to find the productive possibility of that absence. Not necessarily an absence the ensues from a terrorist bombing, but an absence that marks the lack of ideologies. In this vein, I think through the two words that title this blog, Prior Outpost, and find meaning in them the conveys possibilities. Prior invokes a sense of movement, of travel, of positioning oneself in an other place from which to gain critical distance. It means you just came from somewhere and now are joining a new community. Outpost signifies a refuge away from the saturation of conventional society, but also a productive lookout or guard on the frontier that needs to be manned in order to move forward. It is a place of comfort where coffee and long conversations take place. The two together provide a sense of nomads traveling along a route that leads, much in the same way blogs function, to diverse modes of politics, art, and life in general.
Much of my thinking is guided by the questions posed by the Denizen, a figure I see as in movement and as a challenge to existing forms of citizenship and statehood. No longer can people be assured of the security, possibility, and community the nation-state supposedly provides. Refugees lie in every corner of the globe confined to camps and only awaiting a piece of land and an opportunity to work, often for next to nothing. These people are literally Denizens, stateless and without a place to go due to the way borders become boundaries. I take the term in a broader sense to signify a person that lies outside of an all-encompassing ideology. The Denizen maintains the strength to move and refuse being defined by religion, media, or the boundaries that politics throws in our faces. The Denizen does not embrace a totality except in its multiplicity and finds ethics in embodiment and contingencies. Simple relationships no longer suffice. The definitions are too complex. We need movement, interaction, and places to build communities instead of kill in the name of totalities. Idealistic, yes, but the idea is to provoke productive ideas, not foreclose them as already imagined borders do. It is something Sebastiao Salgado's photograph (above) does. It bridges a gap that may create a Prior Outpost......
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