to unspeakable wonder

to freedom that blooms on stumps

––Édouard Glissant

Legality encroaches, and in its encroachment, obfuscates; conceals. The law and its unyielding propensity-cum-obsession for ‘meaning’–making will not save us. A quieting, or a blurring––it makes no difference. The hurt and violence is ever-present; a lingering shadow. The systems that govern us are not simply irreducible to a lack of care, or a failure on our part. This is, and always has been, an emergency. The corralling of possibility and the otherwise stems––ontologically and materially––not from a momentary event, but from the very systems that reduce us to subjects; didactically and physically determine that harm, disenfranchisement, and deracination are the only organising principles of social life permissible; kill what Cedric Robinson called, the promise of liberation.

HEREIN

these Terms and Conditions are an attempt to converse with the echoes and distant reverberations of those no longer with us. they linger. reticent, yet cajoling.

ARTICLE I.

Harken to the frenzied chorus; the ghostly entourage. Like those who came before you, disrupt for the sake of disruption. Disruption as a refusal of tabulated structure; the formalisation of our trinkets of social life. Disruption as temporal and spatial antagonism. Disruption as in the no trespassing sign and the trespass. Disruption as an opening, an interruption, an experiment with the otherwise.

ARTICLE II.

Ragged breath. Knuckles gnarled by the grip for which you detest this world. One wonders: if the world is not ending, then what is this? Where do we go from here? When are we? I will these words and enunciations remain with you––as sticky matter; congealing substance; connective tissue. We remain in process, in this ghostly waiting room, ruminating and yearning for the possibility to rub against/with the otherwise; each other.

ARTICLE III.

Violence and capital gloat, resubstantiang themselves. You have to make a choice. The fine print has already had its way with us. These terms and conditions are an outstretched hand, for it could be you bleeding out, surrounded by a glut of ghosts. Write another story, despite the seemingly impossibility of this undertaking. The law does not make us, and it will not protect us from the fabilized myth of modernity; the insurmountable loss borne of finance capitalism’s violent logics.

ARTICLE IV.

Harm inflicted upon the body, upon the psyche, upon the land. The nuptial of state-orchestrated violence, capitalist expansion, and organised abandonment geared towards premature death consistently surrounds us. It is all now. This is, and always has been an attempt to foreclose the possibility of something else.

ARTICLE V.

A gentle reminder: the otherwise cannot be eradicated. Sometimes, you will not know what to say, or how to end the story. But remember: the residuality of your breath and lust for more is vibrational. Our insolence and proclivity to disrupt brews due to the brevity of time; its circularity. This is just one of many revisions and beginnings. The spark endures as long as we remember.

ARTICLE VI.

August this cool gust of wind. Prolonged sigh, and tongue to the roof of mouth. This is not an epitaph. It is an opening. Freedom is not a place we arrive to, but an ongoing enunciation; formulated through and by its constant making, and remaking, and making again.