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<span class="home"><a href = "../">🌍</a></span>
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<h3><span class="reveal emoji" ><span style="color: red;" class="emoji">Punctuation</span><span class="text">A special symbol that you add to writing</span></span> is not merely linguistic, but imaginistic and political. It creates conflicts and misunderstandings. From its presence in Philosophical texts to Trump tweets punctuation alters wor(l)ds. You’re invited to alter the punctuation in this text and see for yourself how it affects your understanding and perception.</h3>
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<h1>! / ?</h1>
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<p2>Nina Power<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji"></span><span class="text">(original text)</span></span></p2>
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</section>
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<section id="part1">
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<h2>Part 1: <span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">!</span><span class="text">?</span></span></h2>
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<p>“The entire thrust of the LTI The Language<a class="ties" style="font-size: 16pt;" href = "../PRACTICAL_VISION/">P</a> of the Third Reich was towards visualisation, and if this process of visualizing could be achieved with recourse to Germanic traditions, by means of a runic sign, then so much the better.<a class="ties" style="font-size: 16pt;" href = "../OTHERNESS/">O</a> And as a jagged character the rune of life was related to the SS symbol, and as an ideological symbol also related to the spokes of the wheel of the <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">☀️</span><span class="text">sun</span></span>, the swastika … <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🧐</span><span class="text">Renan's</span></span> position: the question mark – the most important of all punctuation marks. A position in direct opposition to National Socialist intransigence and self-confidence … From time to time it is possible to detect, both amongst individuals and groups, a characteristic preference for one particular punctuation mark. Academics love the semicolon; their hankering after logic demands a division which is more emphatic than a comma, but not quite as absolute a demarcation as a full stop. <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🧐</span><span class="text">Renan's</span></span> the sceptic declares that it is impossible to overuse the question mark.” – <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">👴🏻</span><span class="text">Victor Klemperer</span></span>, ‘Punctuation’ from The Language of the Third Reich.<span class="reveal footnote"><span class="emoji">➀</span><span class="text"><font size="5">➀</font>Klemperer, Victor. Language of the Third Reich: LTI: Lingua Tertii Imperii. Translated by Martin Brady. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.</span></span></p>
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<figure id="visual" class="left-aligned">
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<img src="./images/ascii_trump.jpg">
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<figcaption><span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🍊</span><span class="text">Donald Trump</span></span></figcaption>
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<img src="./images/ascii_flag.jpg">
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<figcaption>U.S flag</figcaption>
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<p>In the era of <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">😡</span><span class="text">emojis</span></span>, we have forgotten about the politics<a class="ties" style="font-size: 16pt;" href = "../ECO-SWARAJ/">E</a> of punctuation. Which mark or sign holds sway over us in the age of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🤬</span><span class="text">comments</span></span>, emails, and text messages<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">?</span><span class="text">!</span></span> If we take the tweets of <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🍊</span><span class="text">Donald Trump</span></span> as some kind of symptomatic indicator, we can see quite well that it is the exclamation mark – <span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">!</span><span class="text">?</span></span> – that dominates<a class="ties" style="font-size: 16pt;" href = "../UNDECIDABILITY/">U</a>. A quick look at his tweets from the last 48 hour period shows that almost all of them end with a single declarative<a class="ties" style="font-size: 16pt;" href = "../UNDECIDABILITY/">U</a> sentence or word followed by a ‘<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">!</span><span class="text">?</span></span>’: ‘Big trade imbalance<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">!</span><span class="text">?</span></span>’, ‘No more<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">!</span><span class="text">?</span></span>’, ‘They’ve gone CRAZY<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">!</span><span class="text">?</span></span>’, ‘Happy National Anthem Day<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">!</span><span class="text">?</span></span>’, ‘<span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">⚰️</span><span class="text">REST IN PEACE</span></span> BILLY GRAHAM<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">!</span><span class="text">?</span></span>’, ‘IF YOU DON’T HAVE STEEL, YOU DON’T HAVE A COUNTRY<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">!</span><span class="text">?</span></span>’, (we shall leave the matter of all caps for another time), ‘$800 Billion Trade Deficit-have no choice<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">!</span><span class="text">?</span></span>, ‘Jobless claims at a 49 year low<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">!</span><span class="text">?</span></span>’ and so on … you get the picture. <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🍊</span><span class="text">Trump's</span></span> exclamation mark is the equivalent of a boss slamming his fist down on the table, an abusive partner shouting at a tentative query, an exasperated shock jock arguing with an imaginary opponent. It is the exclamation mark as the final word, which would not be so frightening if <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🍊</span><span class="text">Trump's</span></span> final word was not also backed up by <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🤯</span><span class="text">nuclear annihilation</span></span>, the US army, the <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🚓</span><span class="text">police</span></span>, court and prison system, vast swathes of the US media and electorate, and multiple people around him too afraid to say ‘no.’ This is the exclamation mark as apocalypse, not the ‘<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">!</span><span class="text">?</span></span>’ of <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">😮</span><span class="text">surprise</span></span>, <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">😂</span><span class="text">amusement</span></span>, <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🤭</span><span class="text">girlish shyness</span></span>, <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🤡</span><span class="text">humour</span></span>, or ironic puncture. This is the exclamation of doom.</p>
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<figure id="visual" class="right-aligned">
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<img src="./images/ascii_LTI.jpg">
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<figcaption><span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">✋</span><span class="text">The Language of the Third Reich by V. Klemperer</span></span></figcaption>
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<p>The Sturm and Drang needed an unusually large number of exclamation marks, suggests <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">👴🏻</span><span class="text">Klemperer</span></span>, and, though you might suspect the LTI (Lingua Tertii Imperii – the language of the Third Reich as <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">👴🏻</span><span class="text">Klemperer</span></span> calls it) would adore the exclamation mark, “given its fundamentally rhetorical nature and constant appeal to the emotions,” in actual fact “they are not at all conspicuous” in Nazi writings.<span class="reveal footnote"><span class="emoji">➁</span><span class="text"><font size="5">➁</font>Klemperer, Victor. Language of the Third Reich: LTI: Lingua Tertii Imperii. Translated by Martin Brady. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.</span></span> Why did the Nazis not need the exclamation mark<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">?</span><span class="text">!</span></span> <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">👴🏻</span><span class="text">Klemperer</span></span> states, “t is as if [the LTI] turns everything into a command or proclamation as a matter of course and therefore has no need of a special punctuation mark to highlight the fact – where after all are the sober utterances against which the proclamation would need to stand out<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">?</span><span class="text">!</span></span>”<span class="reveal footnote"><span class="emoji">➂</span><span class="text"><font size="5">➂</font>Klemperer, Victor. Language of the Third Reich: LTI: Lingua Tertii Imperii. Translated by Martin Brady. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.</span></span></p>
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<p>This point alone should herald a terrible <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">⚠️</span><span class="text">warning</span></span>. “Sober utterances” – from rational debate, to well-researched news, to public and open discussion – when these go, the exclamation marks will go too, because there will be no opposition<a class="ties" style="font-size: 16pt;" href = "../HOPE/">H</a> left to be falsely outraged against. There will be no critical press, no free thought, no social antagonism, because anyone who stands against the dominant discourse <a class="ties" style="font-size: 16pt;" href = "../UNDECIDABILITY/">U</a> will disappear, and perhaps social <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">☠️</span><span class="text">death</span></span> will suffice, rather than <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🔪</span><span class="text">murder</span></span>, if only because it is easier to do. When <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🍊</span><span class="text">Trump</span></span> and others attack the media, it is so that one day their tweets will no longer need the exclamation of opposition.<a class="ties" style="font-size: 16pt;" href = "../HOPE/">H</a> It is so that all statements from above will be a command or proclamation in a frictionless, opposition-less universe.</p>
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<p>But we are also tempted by the exclamation mark because it is also a sign, in some contexts, of another kind of <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">😤</span><span class="text">disbelief</span></span>. Not the <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🍊</span><span class="text">Trump</span></span> kind in which he cannot reconcile the fact that others disagree with him (or even that they exist), but the kind which simply says ‘oh my goodness<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">!</span><span class="text">?</span></span>’ or ‘that’s great<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">!</span><span class="text">?</span></span>’ or ‘I’m <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">😱</span><span class="text">shocked</span></span>/<span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">😮</span><span class="text">surprised</span></span>/<span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">😃</span><span class="text">happy</span></span>/<span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">😶</span><span class="text">stunned</span></span><span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">!</span><span class="text">?</span></span>’ But then we use them all the time and they grow tired and weak…and we use them defensively, when we say: ‘I’m sorry this email<span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji"></span><span class="text">email</span></span> is so late<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">!</span><span class="text">?</span></span>’, ‘I have been so useless lately<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">!</span><span class="text">?</span></span>’, ‘I’m so tired I can hardly see<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">!</span><span class="text">?</span></span>’ and so on, ad infinitum … (and what of the ellipses? … another time, another time).</p>
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<figure id="visual" class="left-aligned">
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<img src="./images/ascii_ellen.jpg">
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<figcaption><span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">👱🏻</span><span class="text">Ellen DeGeneres</span></span></figcaption>
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</figure>
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<p>If you look at the <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🤬</span><span class="text">comments</span></span> to <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">▶️</span><span class="text">YouTube</span></span> videos (a sentence to which nothing good is ever likely to be added), you will find a particular use of the exclamation mark. Take, for example, the currently number one trending video: ‘Jennifer Lawrence Explains Her Drunk Alter Ego “Gail”’, where the actress talks to <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">👱🏻</span><span class="text">Ellen</span></span> on the latter’s popular programme ‘The <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">👱🏻</span><span class="text">Ellen</span></span> Show’ about how when she’s on holiday and drinks <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🍹</span><span class="text">rum</span></span> she becomes a masculine, <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🪂</span><span class="text">adrenaline-junkie</span></span>, alter-ego ‘Gail’ who jumps into shark-infested waters to amuse her friends, eats live sea creatures, and challenges people to <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">💪</span><span class="text">arm-wrestling</span></span> competitions. Apart from the slight melancholy induced by wondering why Jennifer Lawrence has to split herself into different beings in order to have a break from work, how does the ‘public’ response to the video tell us anything about the various uses of the exclamation mark<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">?</span><span class="text">!</span></span> While many of the <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🤬</span><span class="text">comments</span></span> suggest that Lawrence is the victim of MKUltra <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🧠</span><span class="text">mind control</span></span>, and a victim of child abuse, or that she is fake, some of the <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🤬</span><span class="text">comments</span></span> shed a small, pitiful, grey kind of light on the exclamation mark as a kind of pleading into the void – the mark that will never be registered, because the speaker is speaking primarily to reassure him or herself.</p>
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<p>There is the pleading, compassionate use: “love how she is so open<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">!</span><span class="text">?</span></span>” says Kailey Bashaw, to which Oliver 2000 responds, “Yeah I love her <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🔞</span><span class="text">porn</span></span> pictures” with no punctuation at all. <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🧑🏻</span><span class="text">Lauren Robelto</span></span> writes: “Everybody <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🤬</span><span class="text">commenting</span></span> about alcoholism makes me so sad. She’s worked very hard and just wants to take a break and have fun and everyone’s criticizes her. Honestly if I were her I wouldn't be able to stop drinking because of all the hate<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">!</span><span class="text">?</span></span> Lighten up people<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">!</span><span class="text">?</span></span> JLaw is gonna keep thriving with or without your support<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">!!</span><span class="text">??</span></span>” A similar kind of <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🙏</span><span class="text">plea</span></span>, the <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🙏</span><span class="text">plea</span></span> of the fan, a <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🙏</span><span class="text">plea</span></span> for understanding combined with a passive-aggressive double use of the exclamation mark to signify a kind of double-triumph: the commentator has both convinced themselves and history that leaving negative (or indeed positive) <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🤬</span><span class="text">comments</span></span> on <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">▶️</span><span class="text">YouTube</span></span> will in no way affect the reception of whoever they are passionate about.</p>
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<figure id="visual" class="right-aligned">
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<img src="./images/ascii_marx.jpg">
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<figcaption><span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🎅🏻</span><span class="text">Karl Marx</span></span></figcaption>
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<p>There is a footnote in <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🎅🏻</span><span class="text">Marx’s</span></span> Capital, vol. 1 which does something interesting with the relation between the exclamation mark and the question mark, and I want to insert it here as the perfect dialectical extract for moving from the exclamation mark to the question mark. Here <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🎅🏻</span><span class="text">Marx</span></span> is quoting Wilhelm Roscher writing about J. B. Say, the liberal economist famous for arguing that production creates its own demand. All the <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🤬</span><span class="text">comments</span></span> in parentheses are <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🎅🏻</span><span class="text">Marx’s</span></span> own: “‘Ricardo’s school is in the habit of including capital as accumulated labour under the heading of labour. This is unskillful (!), because (!) indeed the owner of capital (!) has after all (!) done more than merely (!?) create (?) and preserve (??) the same (what same?): namely (?!?) the abstention from the enjoyment of it, in return for which he demands, for instance (!!!) interest.’ How very ‘skilful’ is this ‘anatomico-physiological method’ of political economy, which converts a mere ‘demand’ into a source of value<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">!</span><span class="text">?</span></span>”<span class="reveal footnote"><span class="emoji">➃</span><span class="text"><font size="5">➃</font>Marx, Karl. Capital, Volume 1: A Critique of Political Economy. New York: International Publishers, 1977. 82.</span></span></p>
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<p><span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🎅🏻</span><span class="text">Marx</span></span> was famously brutal and scabrous in his take-downs, devoting <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">📕📗📘📙</span><span class="text">hundreds of pages</span></span> to figures that are now barely remembered, or remembered largely because <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🎅🏻</span><span class="text">Marx</span></span> took them down. But here our interest lies in the use of ‘<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">!</span><span class="text">?</span></span>’ and ‘<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">?!</span><span class="text">!?</span></span>’ and ‘<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">!?</span><span class="text">?!</span></span>’ and ‘<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">!!</span><span class="text">??</span></span>’ and ‘<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">?!?</span><span class="text">!?!</span></span>’ and ‘<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">!!!</span><span class="text">???</span></span>’. What is <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🎅🏻</span><span class="text">Marx</span></span> signalling here<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">?</span><span class="text">!</span></span> Disbelief in idiocy, incomprehension, mockery, but also perhaps a curious hope. Hope<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">?</span><span class="text">!</span></span> Hope in a better analysis, one worthier of the world, one that will explain rather than mystify…</p>
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</section>
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<section id="part2">
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<h2>Part 2: <span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">?</span><span class="text">!</span></span></h2>
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<p>Are we today in need of more question mark<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">?</span><span class="text">!</span></span> <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">👴🏻</span><span class="text">Klemperer</span></span> describes, as above, the question mark as being “in direct opposition to National Socialist intransigence and self-confidence.”<span class="reveal footnote"><span class="emoji">➄</span><span class="text"><font size="5">➄</font>Klemperer, Victor. Language of the Third Reich: LTI: Lingua Tertii Imperii. 74.</span></span> The question mark is itself a question, a kind of collapsed exclamation mark. A question mark can be an act of aggression or interruption: ‘oh really<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">?</span><span class="text">!</span></span>’ But it can also function as a kind of pause, a break in the horrible flow,<a class="ties" style="font-size: 16pt;" href = "../LIQUID/">L</a> the babble, the endless lies. The question mark is the person who says ‘hang on, what is being said here<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">?</span><span class="text">!</span></span>’, ‘what is happening<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">?</span><span class="text">!</span></span>’, ‘is this okay<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">?</span><span class="text">!</span></span>’ It is the question of the body that stands against the crowd, head bowed, frightened, but compelled by an inner question of their own – ‘is this the right thing, what they are saying<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">?</span><span class="text">!</span></span>’ It is the feeling and the admission that one doesn’t know, and the intuition that there might not be a simple answer to the situation. We are surrounded by people who want to give us their <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">📝</span><span class="text">solutions</span></span>, who tell us how things work, what we should think, how we should be, how we should behave. There are too few Socratic beings, and far too many <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">👍</span><span class="text">self-promoters</span></span>, <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🤓</span><span class="text">charlatans</span></span>, <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🐍</span><span class="text">snake-oil salesmen</span></span>, <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🤥</span><span class="text">liars</span></span>, confidence <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🧙</span><span class="text">tricksters</span></span>. We want to be nice, but we end up getting played. Anyone who claims to have ‘the full picture’ is someone who wants an image of the world to dominate <a class="ties" style="font-size: 16pt;" href = "../UNDECIDABILITY/">U</a> you so you shut up or give them something they want. They are not your friends.</p>
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<figure id="visual" class="left-aligned">
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<img src="./images/ascii_artistresponse.jpg">
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<figcaption>Artistic response of the text by Michiel Vandevelde</figcaption>
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<p>How to understand the question mark as a symbol, then, of trust<span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">?</span><span class="text">!</span></span> There must be room for exploration, of a mutual, tentative openness.<a class="ties" style="font-size: 16pt;" href = "../ATATA/">A</a> A place where it is possible to say ‘I don’t know’ and not feel <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">😳</span><span class="text">ashamed</span></span> or <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🙃</span><span class="text">ignorant</span></span>, or <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🤡</span><span class="text">foolish</span></span>, or <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🤬</span><span class="text">unkind</span></span>. The internet is so often a place where people are shunned and shamed for asking questions, as if ignorance wasn’t a condition for knowledge, and as if we never wanted anyone to go beyond the things everybody already understands. Sometimes ‘<span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🙃</span><span class="text">ignorance</span></span>’ is in fact the greatest kind of <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🧠</span><span class="text">intelligence</span></span>, and sometimes it is the most noble political strategy.<a class="ties" style="font-size: 16pt;" href = "../ECO-SWARAJ/">E</a> Philosophy and psychoanalysis tells us that, in any case, we in fact know less than we think we do know. Knowledge and understanding are not transparent processes: we bury and forget, we lose the ability to ask questions of ourselves, and we when we think we understand ourselves this is when we dismiss others. We want to think that we are solely good, that we have the ‘right position,’ and that the others are wrong. But if we give up on our inner question mark, we become rigid, like the exclamation mark of condemnation. We forget that other people think differently<a class="ties" style="font-size: 16pt;" href = "../UNDECIDABILITY/">U</a> and that not everyone must think the same thing. We forget about friendship, flexibility, and forgiveness.</p>
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<p>If we do not give ourselves enough time to think about the politics<a class="ties" style="font-size: 16pt;" href = "../HOPE/">H</a> of punctuation, we run the risk of being swept away on a <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🌊</span><span class="text">wave</span></span> of someone else’s desire.<a class="ties" style="font-size: 16pt;" href = "../TENSE/">T</a> We become passive <span class="reveal emoji"><span style="color: black;" class="emoji">♟</span><span class="text">pawns</span></span> and stooges. We become victims of the malign desires of others to silence us, to put us down, to make us terrified and confused. Punctuation is not merely linguistic, but imagistic and political<a class="ties" style="font-size: 16pt;" href = "../PRACTICAL_VISION/">P</a> through and through. The <span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">!</span><span class="text">?</span></span> and the <span style="color: black;" class="reveal emoji" ><span class="emoji">?</span><span class="text">!</span></span> are signs among other signs, but their relation and their power course through us when we are least aware of it. When we are face to face, we can use our expressions, our <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🧍</span><span class="text">body</span></span> as a whole, to dramatize these marks, with a raised eyebrow, a <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">👋</span><span class="text">gesture</span></span>, a shrug – a complex combination of the two marks can appear in and about us. But we are apart much of the time, and we must rely on markers that do not capture our collective understanding. We must be in a mode of play with the words and the punctuation we use, to keep a certain openness, a certain <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🤡</span><span class="text">humour</span></span>: not the cruelty of online life or the declarations<a class="ties" style="font-size: 16pt;" href = "../UNDECIDABILITY/">U</a> of the <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">💪</span><span class="text">powerful</span></span>, but the delicate <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🤡</span><span class="text">humour</span></span> that includes the recognition that jokes are always <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🤬</span><span class="text">aggressive</span></span>, and that we live permanently on the edge of <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🔪</span><span class="text">violence</span></span>, but that we must be able to play if we are able to understand our <span class="reveal emoji"><span class="emoji">🚗</span><span class="text">drives</span></span>, and, at the same time, the possibility of living together differently.<a class="ties" style="font-size: 16pt;" href = "../UNDECIDABILITY/">U</a></p>
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<h3>reinterpreted by Clara Gradel</h3>
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