[Concept / Object] [Text / Event]

The essay pursues an ontological question (which asks what character of being or mode of existence a text may be said to have) and a pragmatic question (which asks how a text, whatever status you grant it, may be said to function). It does so in recognition of the distinction between textual materialists (such as Susan Howe), for whom the text is inseparable from its incarnation, and those who appear to be textual idealists (such as Nelson Goodman), for whom the text transcends any particular materialization of it. The pursuit of the questions gets dramatized at the intersection of language art and Language poetry, where an awkward chiasmus becomes visible: the textualization of the material object (part of the so-called dematerialization of art, circa 1966–1972) finds its specular completion in the materialization of the text (the poet’s effort to forestall the transparency of language). After engaging the ontological question in light a various literary-critical claims, the essay tracks the career of Lawrence Weiner, from his early efforts to replace objects and events with descriptions of them, to his more recent inscriptions that assume an object-character of their own. While highlighting the inconsistent demands made on text, the essay ends by speculating on the demands made by texts themselves.