2015
32 pages
3.875 in. × 6.875 in.
Xerox printing
Open edition of 40

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Preserving English: Proposals for Reversing Connotative Concretization addresses how language evolves over time, and how this evolution shows traces of processes by which the possibility of expression is conditioned and curtailed. Whether through technological obsolescence, privatization and copyright, taboo and othering, changes in our language reflect the ways in which we are policed and have learned to police one another.

Though the book thus draws on theorists like Lacan and Althusser, it also subverts the rhetoric of academic writing and publishing. It is not clear whether the “proposals” are the densely written introductory comments or the comically accessible single words that comprise most of the book. Practice, rather than theory, is prioritized, as reflected in the book’s preference for pronunciation guides rather than definitions.