De mest pragtfulde linjer fra de seneste to dages danske poesi kommer vel fra Fager Tam:
“Desværre var den intellektuelle verden i Danmark så hierarkisk at ingen turde holde middage med hinanden. Det gav et vist sæt i Rørvig Asmus.”
Og hold nu fast: Romanen er skrevet på 40 minutter inklusive tænkepauser og fortsætter således:
“Men ude i køkkenet rørte Syde Ramullo i gryden.”
Totalt uventet dukker Balthasar Ebenezer-og-brød-til-tak op midt i madlavningen. Han holder foredrag om det store i det små for alle børnene:
“Det gælder om, at se det store i det små og samtidig se lidt til højre. Det er ude i højre side, vi befinder os i selskab med en mængde rør.”
Å ja. Hvad er et rør? tænker man. Og det er faktisk ens egne tanker der bærer bogen oppe og forlener den med litterær kvalitet.
Når man har læst bogen får man lyst til en fodrejse gennem Kongens By København. Man går lige ud. Besværliggør trafikken. Uden om ejendommene og andre ejendommeligheder. Mens man tænker på bogen. Det smukke er så at alle har bogen. Alle går simpelthen rundt med Fager Tams bog. Med alle de Wittgensteinianske filosofiske undersøgelser bliver bogen ikke så meget et spejl eller en berøringsflade mellem alle Københavns borgere som den bliver et forudforløst samtaleemne, et fællesskab omkring retningen imod større sproglig klarhed. Og for enden af Vesterbrogade møder man så selveste Fager, å ja: Der læser op fra Toril Mois nye simpelthen så fede bog:
Wittgenstein’s most fundamental commitment in philosophy, Cora Diamond writes, was to make us give up thinking in terms of Big Questions. All we can ever do is to get clear on specific problems, one by one (cf. §133) (The Revolution of the Ordinary s. 172; §133 henviser til en “undersøgelse” i Wittgensteins banebrydende hovedværk, den posthumt udgivne Filosofiske Undersøgelser)
The purpose of his kind of philosophy is to dispel illusions, undo the false ideas, free us from the prison-houses created by our own uses of language, to help us make our way back to the ordinary and the everyday, help us to see clearly what Wittgenstein calls our “real need” (§108). We don’t enter into philosophical therapy in order to offer a new theory of anything, but rather to get clear on beliefs and assumptions that hold us captive, that prevent us from moving on. There is no contradiction between such a philosophical project and the wish to change the world. (ibid., s. 173)
Nothing is more ironic than Marcuse’s idea that ordinary language philosophy must be the enemy of difficult or stylistically challenging writing. (ibid., s. 177)
The usual argument is well put by [Judith, hedder hun så] Butler, who claims that difficult language produces defamiliarization, and thus opens our eyes to that which we have taken for granted: “One of the most important ways to call into question the status quo is by engaging language in nonconventional ways (…)” (ibid., s. 182)
Nevertheless, I am all for defamilarization through brilliantly refreshing and unusual writing. [Ahem…] In fact, I would like radical theorists to behave more like avant-garde writers. Imagine a world in which radical theorists took a real interest in their own writing style, passionately discussed strategies for how best to develop the craft of theory writing, took for granted that theorists too need to work hard to master their chosen medium! Imagine if we all began to make serious efforts to write in strikingly fresh, powerful, invigorating ways, so as truly to make us see the world anew! Unfortunately, this is not what happens. Instead such arguments are used to defend “difficulty” in general, without making any attempt to take style seriously, and without even a token effort to distinguish between syntactical helplessness, conceptual opacity, and genuinely challenging writing. (ibid., s. 182)
In Wittgenstein’s understanding of philosophy, then, a description is the therapy we need to see clearly. To describe, for him, is to point out connections, do comparisons, pay attention to distinctions, and so on. In literary studies, however, description has long been a contentious term. Proponents of “description” have been accused of being empiricists, of taking language to be “transparent,” or of believing that texts only have one “literal” meaning. (ibid., s. 198)
