If infancy were dead . . .

by Steve McCaffery

My own involvement with the Sandinista literacy campaign in Nicaragua gave me first-hand confirmation of the human right and imperative to read. That right is irrefutable. However, a talk in praise of literacy would be fatuous and repetitive and my chosen perspective this morning is one of scepticism. In fact this paper is not friendly to literacy and given my pretensions to being an agent provocateur as well as my predilection for political incorrectness this stance is quite predictable. The potential of literacy is always incommensurate to its application, and frequently literacy finds itself involved in acts of stupidity. Two examples: a multilingual public advertisement recently appeared in Toronto Transit shelters. “Literacy is a right and You can get help by calling this number.” Precisely who is the designated addressee here? I’m literate so it’s sure not me. Presumably therefore it’s directed at those who can’t read. Ergo, although one cannot read one must be able to read the claim that one has the right to learn to read. My second example: During the mass starvation in Biafra, much needed medical supplies were shipped in, but all items were labelled in English. Some bottles and packets carried a printed prescription “Take four times a day.” But the concept of clock time does not exist in a community of starving and dying human beings and even if it did exist clocks were hardly a common household item in Biafra. As a practicing poet for the past thirty-five years, I felt it was apposite to address the stake of orality in the literatures of our new millennium. My start merits a quotation from a personal mentor and intellectual hero: Gilles Deleuze, that clarifies the background and challenge against which my own current artistic practice is formulated. It also describes the urgency I feel to stay an innovative poet.

If Literature Dies, It Will be Murder. People who haven’t properly read or understood McLuhan may think it’s only natural for audiovisual media to replace books, since they actually contain all the creative possibilities of the literature or other modes of expression they supersede. It’s not true. For if audiovisual media ever replace literature, it won’t be as competing means of expression, but as a monopoly of structures that also stifle the creative possibilities in those media themselves. If literature dies, it will be a violent death, a political assassination (as in the USSR, even if nobody notices). It’s not a matter of comparing different sorts of medium. The choice isn’t between written literature and audiovisual media. It’s between creative forces (in audiovisual media as well as literature) and domesticating forces. It’s highly unlikely that audiovisual media will find the conditions for creation once they’ve been lost in literature. Different modes of expression may have different creative possibilities, but they’re all related insofar as they must counter the introduction of a cultural space of markets and conformity.... (1995, 131)