On Censorship and Denial

To be confronted, con-front, fronted, af-afront, affronted, to come face to face, to be faced with something by someone, a summoning and a contestaion of wills, where usually one individual triumphantly imposes his will on another.
It usually entails a coup de grace, a swift blow that decisively destroys the opponent.

I was confronted, and censored.

And while the act of being silenced and robbed of the right of free speech is a abominable violation of human rights, I didn't mind it one bit.

One very common interpretation of what I write, is defamation of character, which is a legal violation in itself, and a double ended weapon, used very commonly to filter out what should and should not be said.

What I think was my decisive blow, was not taking a post or two or a reference or two out (physically removing them), it was being dis-acknowledged (un-acknowledged, de-acknowledged).

"Who are you?"
"Do I know you?"
"Do you know me?"

And I wonder, what does it take to know someone?

To know their names? when were they born? their likes? dislikes? hopes? dreams? personal fantasies? their level of arithmetic competence? what schools they went to? their classmates? their families?.....etc etc

How do you "claim" you know someone?

And based on that claim, what kind of right are you granted to speak (or ill-speak in my case) of this person?

Is it enough that you kissed them? Or held their hands? or discussed their childhood?
What is the qualifier?

I think the act of denial, is the worst violent speech act anyone can do.

"I don't know you."
"You don't know me."

Its a little scary when you believe there are a certain sequence of memories, of events that you think you and someone shared, participated in, and they avowedly deny it ever happened.
There is a certain level of terror in it.
Terror in the sense of an extreme sense of fear and dread that physically makes someone shake and tremble.
You become terrified that you were "imagining" things.
These memories, these recollections are all fragments of your imagination. They never happened.
And you have no right to hold on to these acts or events.
And hence you're denied, you're denied as in inflected object, and denied yet again as an inflected subject, of the privilege of making this claim, that "you know" such and such.

I was not horrified by censorship, as I was horrified by my denial.

I understand that I can take an undue license of denigrating someone, but a full, frontal disavowal is something else, I was not prepared to face.
To confront.

I will consciously and physically censor myself, remove, excise all these references and texts, and every time I censor myself, I will deny myself.
The two acts, will be a simultaneous process.
I will remove a discursive statement and simultaneously remove a memory.
It never happened.

I don't know you.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I have no idea what this post was about in your life but i found it very touching all the same, all through it i kept remembering julianne moore in the hours, after she kissed her neighbor and the neighbor acted as if nothing happened.
No one can take the memories away from you as Billie holiday beautifully sang, yet I don't advise giving them too much importance, it would be just another form of disavowal.
Moses said…
equally lost over here
E said…
http://awkwardsexinthecity.blogspot.com/2009/03/exexed-outexile.html
Unknown said…
This comment has been removed by the author.

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