This is a guide for instructing posthumans in living a Dada life. It is not advisable, nor was it ever, to lead a Dada life. It is and it was always foolish and self-destructive to lead a Dada life because a Dada life will include by definition pranks, buffoonery, masking, deranged senses, intoxication, sabotage, taboo breaking, playing childish and/or dangerous games, waking up dead gods, and not taking education seriously. On the other hand, the accidental production of novel objects results occasionally from the practice of Dada. During times of crisis like wars and plagues, some of these objects can be truly novel because they sabotage prevailing sentiments. At other times, Dada objects are merely interesting, by virtue of an added layer of irony, an extra punch line, or a new twist to an already-consecrated object. In such times Dada objects amuse everybody, and since these objects are (mostly) made collectively, they are a strong community bond. Amusement (of oneself and others) and the making of art communities are the goals of Dada. Dada is a priori against everything, including goals and itself, but this creative negation is very amusing and is meant to be shared. For one whole century, Dada has delighted in uncovering and using contradictions, paradoxes, and negations, the most important of which are: 1. most people read signs, Dadas make signs, and 2. most people are scared of scary faces, Dada makes scary faces. No one should go Dada before 1. considering whether one would rather be a. amused or b. grim; one must weigh in the balance childishness and seriousness; both a and b have a history; both affect everyone in the world; both are possible at any moment, but the difference is that being childlike (a) is pleasing to creatures lighter than air (with or without wings), angels, St. Francis, and Candide, while being (b) serious is a weight, like the cross, and heavy as a lead ball (see hugo, ball) and iron chains; and 2. understanding that art is life and vice-versa and Dada is against both, except on the road to ecstasy when it stops for exceptions. It is the thesis of this book that posthumans lining the road to the future (which looks as if it exists after all, even though Dada is against it) need the solace offered by the primal raw energy of Dada and its inhuman sources.

Swells, you bring up tragedy in 18 and there definitely is something tragic to this whole business. I’m no Nietzsche scholar, but maybe the idea of learning what’s “right” and losing access to what’s “wrong” is related to the Appolonian/Dionysian business? What you say about Wallace Stevens and the sea makes me think of the 18th-c. notion of the sublime, particularly in Kant’s formulation: something (for Kant and those guys, it was always in nature) that completely overwhelms our categories of understanding. Maybe the experience of the sublime is one way in which we escape the rules by which we order the world, which is what attracts us to this otherwise fear-inducing experience.

I love the newscaster imitation. the authority of straightening the papers. the incomprehensible cursive. what a great piece of performance art.