Lexical exercises

Author's name: Ali Al-Majnouni

If language is a subject worn down by constant use, then the texts in this book seek to examine the broad field in which language operates, beginning with its being a natural phenomenon felt on cave walls and on the tips of tongues, and ending with its being a cultural activity practiced between one person and another, and between the hand and the machine. In their reflections on the subject, the texts employ innovative poetic and narrative energies whose ambition is commensurate with the need for them, taking language not merely as their subject, but as a model from which they draw their tools, their artistic vision, and their stance.

The book's texts take the form of scattered lexical items or diverse plants in a linguistic and conceptual nursery that regulates the climate necessary for their growth and flourishing. They are simultaneously playful exercises and serious games. They dramatize vocabulary, expressions, and even sounds at times, then suggest windows through which these linguistic components can be viewed with sharp and fresh perspectives. Sometimes they rekindle the spark of meaning, sometimes they fabricate miniature and private linguistic myths, sometimes they bestow upon words attributes unique to humankind, sometimes they disrupt the collective consensus on forgetting, which is a condition of meaning, and sometimes they dismantle worn-out metaphors and establish new ones in their place. Thus, in their entirety, they present a clearly defined vision of language that transcends the sum of the avenues open to it.

Just as a prism intercepts white sunlight and extracts colors hidden from view, these texts interfere between you and language, forever changing the way you see it and confusing your relationship with it, and consequently your relationship with yourself as a self that cannot be conceived outside of that language.

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