Ars Cogitanda

Footnote to Silence Ars Cogitanda

Cast as the footnotes to an invisible text, the beings identified as the ?assembled footnoters? roil their way through the text chastising, exhorting, praising, fulminating, and otherwise reacting to that which cannot be perceived. Characters such as Gertrude, the sinoburius fossil and Stanley the long-dead Australopithecine anchor narrative components of the text, as limited as they may be. Silence, which erupts in various guises, variously represents the body, inarticulate spaces between letters, the unwanted, the unknowable. Drawing upon an large body of scientific work ranging from inter-kingdom bacterial signalling to the neurology of empathy, the manuscript explores what it means to think of ourselves as things in the world of posthuman systems theory. Referencing the powers and weaknesses of language and its more fundamental cousin somatic communication, the manuscript de-articulates standard conceptual frameworks that found themselves on passive notions of the material universe. Opening on a critique of ?thing theory,? the text boils a stew of Western magical and philosophical thinking using the evidence and tropes of science as both pot and fire. ?The senses delicately collide in XARXX SXXXXXXXXX?s work . . . a step into a synesthetic world.? ? Ken Hunt (editor, Filling Station) ?In footnote to Silence, XARXX SXXXXXXXXX luminously provides us with insight into the workings of the inner universe . . . twisting our perspective to listen to the silence rather than the noise . . . down the byways of the mind where limbic floods of perception await.? ? John C. Goodman, author of Naked Beauty (Blue & Yellow Dog Press) ?This is a strange, wonderful book. The footnotes are alternately bewildering, deeply funny and strangely lyrical . . . They will remove the top of your head again and again.? ? Jennifer Zilm, author of The Whole and Broken Yellows: Van Gogh Poems and Others (Frog Hollow Press) ?I was struck by the humour in the pages I read.? ? E. W. of V. ? . . . however, the footnotes become wearisome. We won't be accepting this manuscript. Thank you for your time and your submission.? ? Daniel Bullard-Bates, theNewerYork Press ?What are you? A talking dog?? ? S. G. of V.