The Prerequisite Text

Abstract

This essay maintains that the importance of the avant-garde text, as a prerequisite of the avant-garde, rests in the fact that it is the text itself that most bears and transmits patterns of culture. Both a visible record of its emergence from culture and the basis upon which culture could be visibly recomposed, the text was a recognition and reflection of culture. As a "configuration" of institutions, ideas, and events, the avant-garde text drew attention to the nature of culture, per se. This act was more important than advocating any specific historical expression of culture. Thus freed, for the most part, from party-specific politics, reigning ideologies, and the limitations of their expressions in conventional texts, the avant-garde text could intercept and critique normative culture, propose alternatives to it, and project future visions of it on an operational rather than historical basis. Although questionable as an instrument of practical politics, the impact of the avant-garde text on humanistic social perspectives and concepts of culture has been considerable.