What Could Be Never Comes

Last week and over the weekend, the city set up barricades, fences, and a phalanx of snow plows to create a hard security zone around the United Center. Cops patrolled the neighborhood in droves, preparing for and fortifying themselves against the coming protests. And it was this building of these provisional structures and the visibility of the technologies of policing, control, inclusion and exclusion, that prompted the intensified circulation of a certain kind of language. What circulated most rapidly and extensively was, put simply, talk. Talking. The talk said that the neighborhood could be plunged into chaos, violence. The talk talked about a besiegement of houseless people, rioters, vandals, break-ins, bombs, bioweapons. And the word was passed along. “What could happen?” we asked, earnestly and incessantly, as our eyes darted this way and that. The more the talk circulated, this “could” more and more took shape as a certain kind of entity, a vague, and yet somehow definite creature, the subject of our disdain, our disgust, our anger, our fear, and the more we anticipated its arrival in circulating the talking, the more definite it became–for us. For itself, it could be nothing to itself, since it was–nothing (yet). The “could” could not be anything definite, since it could be–anything. This is how the talk produces anything and everything it wishes to talk about. Each one of us is equally culpable, insofar as no one in particular is responsible; the talk circulates itself by itself through all of us. It is chatter, static. The talk, in talking, circulates, and that’s all that it does. And the more that it circulates, the more definite and actual this “could” becomes for us. And yet, as of yet, it is nothing. In what sense is the “could” nothing?

Even when, in anticipating the “could”, something that the talk talks about comes to pass, still the talk persists. Even when the talk was wrong, and what it talked about did not and will not arrive, the talk persists. Why? The talk persists because it talks about what “could” happen, and in this sense what the talking talks about never comes. Because what is talked about never comes, the talk persists, we persist in circulating the talk. Either the talk says, “See? Wasn’t it worth talking about that? I wonder how this will turn out,” and still yet goes on talking, or it says “Forget that I ever said that. There are more urgent things to talk about,” and still yet goes on talking.  

Now this “could” is what the talk is about. The talk talks about something. What the talk is about is distinct from the talking.  In this case the talk talked about this “could” which was announced and is still being announced by the visibility of the police and the slow arrival of the DNC in the form of a coalition of personages, assemblages, and technologies. The “could” is what the visibility or presence of these assemblages means. From the perspective of the talking, the meaning of the “could” is the expression of the possibility, and only the possibility, of the beings present in the situation. For the talking, the beings present, such as they are, are what “could” happen. Strictly speaking though, this “could” is distinct from this what, because what “could” come for us, encroach upon us, become something or other for us, may just as well not. The “could” is this oscillation, this either/or, and it incites the talking into talking about it. Why does the “could” incite the talking? What is the nature of this essential bond between the talking and the “could”? 

The talk talked, and that’s all that it did. The talk talked about a “could”, whose what was a spectacle, a vague and remote show that enticed the talk to come up with a truly endless number of things to talk about. And the talk never ceases asking, “What could happen?” and our eyes dart back and forth, and we wring our hands, and we huddle beside one another in tight circles, and shiver, and–talk. This question that the talking asks is not really a question. It is how the talk gets itself to start talking, or else, it never began and never ended, since the talk is and always was wrapped up with the “could” which, as a “could”, never comes. And if the talking begins to tire itself out, if it begins to struggle or strain to imagine yet a new thing to talk about, it asks it again. “What could happen?” It is simply not possible for the talking to end. No, the talking continues, on and on, and it conjures up all kinds of creatures of every shape and every size, until the occasion for the particular “what ‘could’” passes. And still the talking persists. 

Simply put the talking persists because it cannot tell the future, and by virtue of the fact that it cannot tell the future, it is inextricably bound up with the “could”. And it is not the talking’s fault that it cannot help itself in asking “What could happen?” because simply and essentially, that’s all that the talking ever does. The talking invokes the “could” and maintains itself strictly in relation to the “could” that it talks about. The talking will not and cannot learn to stop doing this.

But should we then be wary of the talking? And is it enough that we have already pointed out a glaring flaw in the talking’s talk, namely, that it can never concern itself with anything other than what “could” come to pass, which strictly speaking never comes? The talking cannot learn to talk about anything other than the “could”. This means that the talking cannot listen. I will refrain here from citing any one particular formulation of the common thought, “In order to be silent one must first have something to say.” For the talking talks still further about this, as though the thought were an occasion for something new to come to pass, because the talking cannot not do so. And in persisting in talking on and on about this thought, a thought that, if it were really thought, would finally somehow bring the talking to an end, it forgets to think it, and the thought goes away. 

Should we then be wary of the talking? Needless to say it is difficult to avoid. Many countless individuals have devoted their entire lives to achieving a radical break from and abandonment of the talking. If we ask “Why?” and answer further, “Because the talking cannot learn, and therefore it cannot listen,” is it obvious that we have obtained a reason to adopt a wariness of the talking? It would first have to be established that our desire and purpose was to listen. Can listening become the subject of a desire or the aim of a purpose? Or does listening not evade every subjection, every aim? Listening lets beings be. If for even a moment, instrumentality, for example, impinges on the attempt to let a being be what it is, in that very instant it fails to do so. Instead, talking talks about it, talks about what it “could” be, and the being that was trying to be what it already was, under the immeasurable weight of the talking’s endless babbling, goes away, and talking succeeded in what it cannot fail to do, namely, not learn.

Nothing that the talking talks about can ever arrive, because it talks about only one thing, namely, what “could” be. If it arrives, the talking persists in talking, because it does not concern itself with the beings that are and always have been trying ceaselessly to be what they already are. Precisely nothing is heralded by the talking. It passes over and drowns out everything, and everything is forgotten, because nothing in particular held sway for the talking.       

“Well this wasn’t a particularly useful discourse. What am I to make of this? What did I seek to achieve in writing this? In any case it isn’t very nice.” The talking persists and it cannot fail to do so. From the perspective of the talking, each and every being is another episode of the eternally deferred eventuality of the “could”.