(^{radically trivial}) Facetious Fascism (FF) or How Clown Pedagogy Legitimates Bigotry

(Τηε   Φιρστ   ιν   αν   οχχασιοναλ   σεριεσ   ιν   τηεσε   συππλεμεντσ)

The trajectories of these supplements of

THE FIRST FOOTNOTE WHICH IS REALLY NOT A FOOTNOTE BECAUSE IT IS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE TEXT:

Since the scribes and readers of the Radical Tangerine have complained about the high level of difficulty in the languages of these Supplements of the Alternative Orange, the Alternative Orange Collective will soon publish a Glossary of terms for the benefit of the Facetious Fascists--probably at the 8th grade reading level. The Glossary will be bound and will have the picture of an Uzi on the cover. It will be the size of THE CONTRACT WITH AMERICA so that the scribes and readers of Radical Tangerine can always carry it in their hip pockets. At the beginning of each session of their English, Philosophy, Humanities, Religion, Creative Writing and Rhetoric classes they can, then, flash the GLOSSARY out and (Gingrich-wise) read from it and remind themselves that they are Facetious Fascists and damn proud of it.

The trajectories of these supplements of (as the suspended sentence had started to indicate) the supplements of the ALTERNATIVE ORANGE, which is itself supplementary to the teaching of humanities at the University (as, in fact the sentence had started to write)

THE SECOND FOOTNOTE WHICH IS REALLY NOT A FOOTNOTE BECAUSE IT IS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE TEXT:

Since the scribes and readers of Radical Tangerine have stated that they cannot read advanced syntactical structures such as embedded clauses and here we have already transgressed that rule and violated the laws of crisp writing as taught in the creative writing program at the University, the ALTERNATIVE ORANGE COLLECTIVE will soon teach night classes for Facetious Fascists in which syntactical structures unfamiliar to readers of cartoons will be taught. Those who intend to attend should bring with them their copy of the GLOSSARY (titled: COMPANION TO BUILDING ORPHANAGES).

This is the third time we have started to write our sentence that begins with "The trajectories" and it is the third time that the sentence refuses to be written. So (following the codes of post-al realism) here is the 4th try:

THE THIRD FOOTNOTE WHICH IS, etc. etc.

NOW, we ourselves are beginning to suspect that we are deliberately testing the attention span of the members of the FF and their verbal ability to follow a trace-full text . . .but are we? We have not decided yet. We were taught in creative writing courses that these are all up to the author, until, of course, we learned, second hand, that authors were dead--even though the Forrest Gump who now teaches in the creative writing program at the University swears that he has seen the author and he is alive and well living in the pages of the New York Times Book Review. He said (when he was teaching us how to read Chekov in a politically incorrect way) that It was POLITICALLY CORRECT to say authors are dead. They are not, he said: go check my checking account. So we have to decide if we are testing the attention span of FF members (because we are the author) and we will soon do so.

The trajectories of these supplements of supplements are not in the direction of focusing on the texts of Radical Tangerine and its quotes from philosophy text books, or on the fog of cappuccino and café au lait which hovers over it and are represented in Radical Tangerine as boundary marks (watch your language) of worldliness and the limit-texts of sophistication (look at the prose; getting out of hand again!), but, rather, on the clown pedagogies that produce those who regard these as signs of knowledge, sophistication and wit. For a few issues of Radically Trivial, however, in the light of numerous complaints about the abstractness and difficulty of our discourses we have received from the members of the FF, we have decided to become simple and concrete and in fact quite anecdotal. After all isn't one of the slogans of FF that: SIMPLE IS BETTER. . . . we want to be better, that is the AMERICAN WAY, yes, indeed, we want to be simple and we want to be the BEST which is in fact better than better.

So, in response to the call of the FF for simplicity we will devote some issues of RADICALLY TRIVIAL to a step-by-step “lite" reading lesson: we will read very slowly and “litely” and with simple words and declarative sentences (although we cannot guarantee simplicity and evenness of style at all times; we often simply get carried away, enamored by our own virtuosity and wit and lose our simplicity and become involved in intellectual obfuscation (which, like other things intellectual, is banned in the creative writing department of the University) but, we will try to read slowly and litely the

discourse universe of Radical Tangerine

in order to unearth the treasures of this world of wit and wisdom which is now codified as the 10 items of the FF TRAINING MANUAL which are taught in the first 100 days of breathing lessons for new recruits.

Now, we have to confess that beneath this seemingly innocent project, we have (as often is the case) a dark scheme: the scheme is to show that Radical Tangerine is merely a symptom of a new form of American fascism, and that, if we read the Radical Tangerine slowly and litely back to its scribes and readers, we will find the signs of this emerging fascist consciousness in the USA today. This in turn will enable the advancement of our lifelong project which is to unveil (go to the Humanities Doctoral Program and borrow a joke about the death of Enlightenment and put it here) the TOPOGRAPHY OF POST-AL FASCISM (this sentence will be explained in the forthcoming GLOSSARY but in the meantime the Radical Tangerine can chew on it--there are 467 puns here).

[Next issue]

A LITE READING LESSON:

TOWARDS THE TOPOGRAPHY OF POST-AL FASCISM

LESSON ONE: [. . .]

In the meantime. . .

a marginal bulletin for the FF. . .

THIS IS YOUR UNIVERSITY

. . .the parodic and the jest-full at work — for the more "efficient" and "flexible" clown pedagogues of TOMORROW. . .