Post-exoticism in 10 Lessons: Lesson 11, by Antoine Volodine

The Unseen Book Club

Post-exoticism in 10 lessons is a sweltering, dreamlike study of narrative under conditions of extreme surveillance. Translated into English in 2015 (Open Letter), the book is a part of pseudonymous French writer Antoine Volodine’s larger meta-fictional project. His characters are incarcerated writers, former militants who develop ‘post-exoticism’ to communicate with each other using new subjective forms as the world liberation movements of the 60’s and 70’s are crushed and superseded by the neo-liberal world order. The book is itself a document of the unique literary modes of post-exoticism as its practitioners die off one by one, determined to be forgotten and remembered on their own terms.

This is a very special episode, in which Max and Dan are joined by a dear friend and comrade, Anita Negrini. We talk about languages of evasion, the resonant anti-politics of extreme genre-forms like grindcore, and the liberatory(?) chorus of the (un)remembered dead.

Music of avant-grind militants Cokskar can be found at:

https://cokskar.bandcamp.com/

The beautifully printed theory/review zine, Grind DIalectics Vol. I and II, can be acquired via [email protected]

https://twitter.com/unseenbookclub

Art by Eli Liebman: https://elimack.weebly.com/