"The reiterated ellipsis lashes [the Academy] into submission, cracking like a dominatrix's whip." – Sologdin

The proper title for this text is, "Disciplining the Academy," complete with playful insinuations. We observe how modern literature is written (in a "ludic mode") to bounce (photon-ically) off of the academy in order to enter into it, and thereby (via katabasis) win the designation of Literary Fiction.

The text also contains, in abridged form, Eve's very good essay, "Crypto-didacticism and theoretical considerations in Roberto Bolaño's 2666," (previously published 2012) which originally turned me onto his work. Here, Eve further extends his remarks on 2666's critique of the Academy. Yet, his account continues to elide much of the dialectical significance of the so-called 'infamous taxi scene' in which the critics reveal, "their essence is one of violence." The scene is instigated following the taxi driver's invective, "bitch or slut or pig," and results in his being severely beaten, which (actually) reveals the critics' impotence (rather than their power) being so-called 'men of letters' unable to respond to a verbal invective (which they, sous-rature, perceive to be true). Their essence is not one of 'Violence' but one of 'the Gag' for which speech fails, and which, therefore, requires inscription upon the body. The impotence of violence is what Eve denies in the next moment, declaring the critics victorious in the exchange, though he himself infinitely lowers his esteem of them at the same moment. This elision is problematic because the perspective which declares it is possible to 'win' such exchanges by violence is one which cannot renounce violence as a tool (as Eve implies a better critical institution would be able to).

On the same theme, I remain dubious of the notion that, "2666 is a one-to-one map of the abstracted necropolis narrated with the body-as-text." That death is a Gag continues to be confirmed in my experience. (I continue not to understand it despite the direct experience of my day job.) That it can become a topology/cartography requires further investigation. Again, attention to the Gag/non-verbal remains underexamined here. (At the other end, 2666 also appears to reflect qualities of oral-tradition which remain under-investigated.)

Eve notes that Bolaño is aware of the entanglement between "Empathy, Pornography, and Suffering" (per C.J. Dean with possible reference to Adorno). In The Part About Crimes, he remarks that Bolaño avoids this because, "the text reminds us that many, if not all, of the murder victims [...] have been both vaginally and anally raped." As I have previously noted, I find the technique less successful, in part due to the "phantastic/reportative" quality of the prose of this section.

Technical-academic writing remains a great strength of the author. Frequent and appropriate references to Adorno, Foucault, Derrida, even Spivak. A bit too grandiloquent regarding his praise some works of mediocre fiction. (We should expect this given the epigraph: "We too must write interpretative essays on the work of others more intelligent and gifted than we will ever be." Eve is too good to be this servile.)

Also contains a critique of academic and publishing institutions, though not particularized to departments of English, and therefore less salacious than we might have expected. ( )