Practices of art and knowledge alike are rife with misreadings, misrepresentations, mistakes, and misuses. Often these misses have served a subjugating authority, given short shrift to that which they claim to do justice, or simply testified to their creators’ limitations.
It’s a different story on the margins. Here, reading into and in spite of texts, following inclinations and curiosities that stand in tension with their foundations, gives us both a more comprehensive picture of their successes and failures and more creative, constructive relationships to canons as sources of knowledge, fonts of inspiration, and sites of challenge. Above all, we – the editors – wanted to understand “counter-work” as an intellectual methodology and artistic practice in its own right, borne out of a brave engagement with what or whom it addresses. All works, questions, and material innovations contain the seeds of their own undoing – and we wanted our contributors to take them there.
For this issue, we looked for pieces that forced the resources of their chosen subjects to speak (out) against themselves – ones like FICT.site, M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong!, and David Kolb’s Socrates in the Labyrinth. We asked potential contributors to show us how their chosen sources are dead and boring by making them do conceptual and performative work that vibrantly testifies to the truths of their own lives. As we told them earlier this year: Meet them as you would a friend who fascinates and frustrates you.
“Counter-work” is a tricky concept to explain as much as it is to execute. Still, digital tools, resources, and platforms of dissemination make this practice more accessible to creator and audience alike than ever. On that note, this issue also features the winner of last year’s Critical-Creative Philosophy competition, a retrospective of which you’ll find here.
We hope you enjoy this issue; that it shows you some new ways to do serious art and scholarship; and that it inspires you to “counter” your disciplines, mediums, and platforms in your own professions and projects.
— Carlota Salvador Megias and Ian Hatcher, co-editor-conspirators
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