Flickering strobe lights and loud music cross-pollinated inside the lecture theater. A man, Paul de Man, sat at a desk with two pillars of books standing on either side of the work area in front of him. A large screen on the wall behind him showed a live video feed of his actions. Paul de Man sat at the desk, his chair sometimes tucked in tightly underneath him and other times pushed back so that he had to lean forward to continue slicing feverishly with his scissors. He had already been working for some time when his students entered, sat, and watched as he sliced apart a copy of Nietzsche’s The Gay Science without speaking.

First, he cut the aphorisms unto themselves. Then he cut away passages that interested him. And those that bored him. Soon he separated the paragraphs. Next: sentences. In the end, he performed the violent schism of words, isolating each from the others, reducing the following texts to their elemental state: Rousseau’s The Social Contract, Confessions, Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, The Will to Power, Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus, The Book of Images, Heidegger’s Being and Time, Austin’s Philosophical Papers, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Perpetual Peace, Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Paul de Man chopped and slit and sheared and razored the pages, tossing aside the spine and cover carcasses. Every few minutes, he looked upon the orgy of dismembered ideas and emotion piled on the table in front of him and shuddered.

Paul de Man disregarded the eyes needling into his mind, in search of an explanation. He felt them peel into his image on the screen while he sat untouched and intact. Still, Paul de Man felt naked, exposed by every flash of light, over and over. He took off his clothes. The strobe light chopped his naked body in time, chattered his movement through space, rendering a spectacle of 30 Paul de Man’s per second. The students grew disoriented and impotent and nauseous. Finished with this infinite excision, Paul de Man stood and swiped his arms across the desk, sending a snowfall of lingual confetti fluttering to the floor.

People started getting sick. Paul de Man rubbed glue all over his body amidst the sound of vomiting. He lay his tacky body down in the mental dander and rolled around, thrashing his limbs and his intellect about. The music reached crescendo. Retinas burned out. Agony broke loose throughout the lecture theater. Paul de Man stood: his body clothed, covered, coated in the words of Nietzsche, Rousseau, Blake, Proust, and everyone everywhere. He swayed in the stuttering darkness. Shuffling imperceptibly. Feeling the langue crawl up between his toes. He listened to the sick moaning and heaving in his audience, out there, between the flashes. A smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. Paul de Man approached the video camera. His naked wordy chest came flickering into focus on the screen. His nipples said (certain) (words) (yet) (again) (perhaps) (always) (death). Class dismissed.

Bio:

Josh Maday lives a few miles outside of New York City, in Saginaw, Michigan. He blogs at a place somewhere. He does not know when to stop.