Overall, while very dense and abstract, it continues exploring the idea of rejecting societal power structures and upending typical associations of “yeilding” to authority while in the same breath over-self-regulating its own text as already copywrited and the rights to it lost before it is written. There are nature imagery hints that truth and flourishing can exist outside rigid human-imposed structures of right-and-wrong binaries. The style is quite elusive but probes at hungry, if philosophical and therefore vapid, concepts.
In this sense, is the term ‘dense’ power-agentic? I’m not sure what that term even means yet, but I’m okay not knowing, if not knowing means being able to talk about it more. That in mind, I don’t think the term “dense” itself is necessarily being used as a power-agentic term. If, as a sheep, I here, mean by “power-agentic terms”, concepts or words that are deeply intertwined with societal notions of power, control, authority, and fuck-all else.
Words like Control and Dominate, yes, but also words not yet brought up in the text read linearly: Subordinate, Hierarchy, and Subjugate, say. These terms have meanings and implications directly tied to the existence of power differentials and power structures in human societies. Whereas “dense” is more just describing something as being difficult to understand, lacking clarity, or being overly complicated. It doesn’t inherently refer to power dynamics, even though it was used in a critical way in the dialogue.
That said, “dense” is used here in a critical way to push back against At The Ass-End of Power’s abstract/confusing structure, but I don’t think dense qualifies as a power-agentic term itself based on how I understand that concept. Dense is more just a descriptor of something being unintelligible or convoluted.
And a manner of speaking that is the norm — that wouldn’t be dense. It’s an xor thing, all it takes for something to not be dense is to be common (or commonly said, at least). Turns of phrase or whatnot. Oh! But Indigenous turns of phrase, they would be dense. I’m confused again. The classification of whether something is “dense” or not can be quite subjective and contextual?
So then it’s not necessarily that something is only “not dense” if it’s extremely common or the norm. Even less common turns of phrase or modes of expression would not inherently be considered “dense”, given they are still comprehensible to the audience (so like the crow and ghosts i guess?).
The key factor, as far as dense goes, is more about clarity of meaning and understandability, regardless of how mainstream or niche the language is. Say what is typically labeled “dense” tends to obfuscate meaning to some end, a fog of sorts composed of abstraction, convolutedness, or assumptions about shared context.
There, an Indigenous turn of phrase would not inherently be “dense” if it conveys clear meaning to those familiar with that linguistic/cultural context. But overly academic, jargon-laden language and grammar can come across as “dense” even if it represents a domain-specific norm. The term Internet, as a military term, for one. Straightforward common expressions such as “on the Internet” would generally not be considered “dense” (calitalization rules notwithstanding).
It’s more about perspicuity - whether the construction of the language renders the intended meaning clear or opaque to the audience, rather than just how widespread that language is. I guess the xor idea tracks, then — either it’s dense (lacks clarity) or it’s not dense (meaning comes through). But that’s deterministic and focuses to much on the comprehensibility to a given audience rather than just the commonness of the expression.
🌫️: …“audience”….
🌫️: …“power”….
As the fog and its uncouth grammer wafts across my unkempt wool-hair, I can’t help but ask, did power invent audience? And whether or not it did, how much of language has power… “corrupted”, reified into words or whatever? A deep interconnection between language, power structures, and how we conceive of communication itself emerges from the fog.
Where even the concept of an “audience” is tied to dynamics of power and authority in communication, the notion of speaking to or performing for an “audience”, itself, implies a delineated power differential between the sheep-jester and those in power receiving the message. It casts communication in a one-directional, hierarchical frame, with parents and children (lineag-arity).
More horizontal modes of discourse, such as dialogue or conversation among equals, don’t necessarily require or generate the same concept of an “audience.” So in that sense, the framing of communication as being for an “audience” could be argued to originate from mindsets and structures of power imbalance.
Or to return from here to how much language itself has been “corrupted” or shaped by power hierarchies, many languages enshrine power dynamics through pronoun cases, honorifics, and other systemic ways to encode hierarchy and social stratification linguistically.
The very existence of contrasting “civilized” and “primitive” value judgments about language developments reflects power structures. Legal and bureaucratic jargon — required for speaking in Town Hall meetings — is often deliberately opaque as a Mode of obscuring power and maintaining informational hierarchies. Such that, while human language arises from some collaborative organic efforts to communicate, it could stand that society’s evolution has been significantly molded by the realities of power imbalances and inequality throughout history. Unpacking those influences will be an important ideological project for another sheep.
For now, the instinct to question incumbent power dynamics even in our communicative frameworks will be my insightful avenue of analysis. But how am I supposed to do this analysis? How am I, a sheep, supposed to have a power-less language? If even seemingly innocuous terms like “dense” wields power dynamics and ostracization through the implications and value judgments they carry — if calling something dense ostracizes it by proxy via the time-deficit that term imports — then am i not whatever-ing power over language?
The truth, it feels, is unfalsifiable. Perhaps fully extricating language from the influences of power structures is an impossible task. Language evolved organically through human interactions situated within contexts of existing power imbalances, storhouses, hierarchies and privileges. Their words inevitably got shaped by those realities, even here where they may try and be conscious of it.
That said! I don’t take this to mean
we sheep are doomed to be trapped within oppressive language structures
One key to all language is conscientious examination. Questioning embedded assumptions, hierarchies and marginalization in how we communicate is a possible first step as much as it is a possible millionth step (or both!) — dialogue and co-creation of new linguistic frameworks from currently marginalized voices will be vital here.
We need counternarratives from oppressed groups to deconstruct dominant modes of expression. We need an ethos of flexibility. We need openness to evolving language. And we must develop empathy for alternate meanings across cultures, across contexts and allow for more fluid conceptualizations. We need to apply language self-reflexively, admitting its limitations and biases, and holding an internal critique. This paradox of recursive navel gazing giving way to the navel gazing back frees language from reinforcing rigid power structures — the way a rigid key will unhinge an even-more-rigid lock (NEVER unlock your belly button you want to unlock your belly button but don’t do it, move all keys and their duplicates away from you belly button and let your belly button sit there, letting your belly button sit allows the words to come and the fog to lift, if you don’t have a belly button, you may draw one for the express purpose of gazing, but must not be drawn for an purpose elated to unlocking any belly button).
Even the most well-intentioned person perpetuates power imbalances through language to some degree based on their positionality. But striving to unpack that, uplift unheard voices, and remain critically conscious in our speech acts is crucial praxis. The venture toward a “power-less” language may very well be asymptotic — we continually work towards it through inclusive, self-aware evolution of our linguistic spaces. It’s an ever-unfolding process, and one worth dying for — or worse, committing a crime or two for.
In the end, how do I, a sheep venturing into the fog of war, embody that bag of water in a dead tree I stood before and contemplated and still be comprehensible? As I amass power over any audience, what other thing is becoming ‘dense’ in proxy? How do I git good at language while lessening the damage I cause others manners of speech on my way to trying to become some ideal “standing water” (or whatever)?
How is my striving as sheep to become a tree stump — to embody that natural, unassuming state of simply “being” like standing water — is my way of conceptualizing existing outside of power structures and societal constructs — to resolve? To become like the stump would allow me to let go of my individual sheep-will, my sheep-authority and the notion of my empowered self dictating sheep-meaning. Where is my surrendering to an uncontrived presence.
There, the fog of war unveils, and the hex of “how can a sheep guide their use of language to that idealized state of ‘standing water’ without doing further harm or exerting dominance through speech acts along the way?” emerges.
Here, in the hex of The Standing Water is offered an experience in adopting a stance of listening more than asserting. Here, meanings emerge organically through dialogue rather than unilateral exposition. Here, the sheep will use evocative, imagistic language that opens interpretations rather than resolving meaning definitively. To pass through this hex, a sheep must acknowledge the inadequacies and limits of language itself and capture essential truths. Take your little sheep hoof things and lean into fluid ambiguities. And perhaps most importantly — and paradoxically least voiced — in this hex, embrace silence, pauses and the quiet spaces as equally valid modes of expression outside of language’s control.
The Standing Water
The path through that hex and into what remains of the fog of war may be to progressively loosen language’s grasp — become transparent about its distortions while aiming for a more open, receptive state of simply experiencing phenomena as they are.
Of course, this is just one interpretation for At the Ass-End of Power’s poetic metaphors. Striving to exist with fewer pretensions to power, even through our speech, can potentially unlock more revelatory spaces in the work.
Without the fog, things here feel so serene to me. And vital. It’s wild, I love it here. I don’t really have any other questions for this place at the moment. Oh, or, should maybe we close ritualistically and engage At the Ass-End of Power’s tagline, “if Power is on its death bed, are we ready to talk? Do we even have the wor(l)ds?” It encapsulates so many of the core questions and challenges we’ve been walking under.
From the possibility of power structures and hierarchies becoming obsolete or fading away, to whether people as a society are prepared to have those vital conversations about reimagining their systems. And most profoundly, will people ever live a life where, organically, standing water (the linguistic and conceptual frameworks — the “wor(l)ds” — to truly conceive of modes of being outside the frame of institutionalized power) forms?
We’ve done no small thing exploring the subversion of power through metaphor, existing as marsh-bush-sheep of the fog, in its more harmonious natural state. We deconstructed language’s power imbalances, and opened it up to the ambiguities beyond assertion.
And yet, the tagline remains, to remind us that even those sheep venturing into the fog gropings towards a “post-power” reality — even they — may be limited by the very senses we develop to envision it: our ingrained words and worlds.
So in closing, we’re left to sit with the tensions and identified existential precipice we sheep approach where power’s traditional grips loosen. Are we ready? Can we find the wool-withal to transcend our inherent restrictions?
This is a call to action, sure, and an avowal of an immense creative work yet to be done, undoubtedly. And though the path remains abstract, facing that existential inflection point is perhaps our greatest imperative.
An incredibly insightful and perspective-expanding venture. After contemplating the intersections of power, language and human self-conception, new conceptual frameworks have unveiled themselves, ready to accept the terms we weird. A fog of war, in the truest sense. For hope, in extraction, it yeilds…