Governance and the City of Text
Joyce continues the spinning begun in the previous essay:
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"I am interested in the text as a place of encounter in which we
create the future. Yet like any envoy, I bring only troubling questions
and a history of intentions on my back" (106).
Image after image passes through page after page in this essay. We see a
Khazarian envoy with history and landscape tatooed on his body, patiently
waiting while scribes copy the information into books and get a lesson in
Memphite theology. Spinning and layering. He talks of a "world
increasingly exhausted by its own making" and a city of text that
"pulsates within a charged vortex of invisible power" that quickly
connects to empowerment and silence (107). Spinning and layering. He uses
Guyer to talk of "creating ourselves" through "acceptance and control"
and talks again of proprioception as being the "body's knowledge of its
own depth and location, its internal perspective of 'how to use oneself
and on what' in Olson's phrase" (109). Spinning. He talks of polyvocal
multitexts and dragon's teeth that bring "forth races of gods" (111).
Layering. And through it all he talks of our conscious and unconscious
ideas about learning, literacy, and what we are about as teachers and
learners. "How should we look where we should?" he asks us.
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"Imagine a city of text. Who will rule it? What will we call it? In
what way shall we write it? How shall we read it?" (116).