Dial M for Murder
Rene Magritte, The Treachery of Images (1928)
Roughly fifteen thousand years ago a person painted a picture of a bison on a cave ceiling … [T]he making of a picture of a bison was thought to yield power over the living bison such that it could be killed … it is the making of the depiction or the representation that holds the power.
(Hagberg, Meaning and Interpretation)Interpretation is thus conceived as a violent act of disfiguring the interpreted text … a case of violent appropriation … [a] very violent gesture of subjective intervention.
(Zizek, The Plague of Fantasies)[T]he birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.
(Barthes, The Death of the Author)
Lets play the game of literary criticism.
Or maybe we could play a game of hide-and-seek.
I know, lets play this murderous game, Wittgenstein!
This one-sided diet between you and I.
Look how I eloquently quote your game.
But mine is one with a violent aim;
I’ll rape; I’ll kill and I’ll maim.
All to construct for myself a frame
in the midst of this waste land
where I can connect nothing to nothing.
My mind’s knife is sharp and sweet.
All the better to kiss you with its teeth.
Murder, murder!
Dial M for my lover.
