Selves into Subjects

One doesn’t have to be an avid reader of Michel Foucault to see that our willing participation in social media is a new and invidious form of confession, which he understood as the most intimate instrument of institutional power and control. As we delineate and expose our wishes, wants and needs, our likes and dislikes, we willingly provide the information necessary for our own manipulation and subjugation. We make our selves into subjects, unless we learn to simulate, dissemble, bluff, fake, counterfeit, feign or sham. Never tell the truth. Never turn yourself in.

 

Elective Affinities

Earthlings we are, so clouds we keep making
Last in the sky as long as the light,
Thoughts tracing the same thoughts at flight
In the afterglow of an undertaking.
Say some man leaves his wife. Say she leaves.
Said man sees the sun set through winter smaze,
Though no orb sinks into distant waves.
It is the spin of the earth he perceives.
Despite quakes and slopes, plants grow straight
On this planet. We walk about, change spheres,
Gravity keeping up and down athwart,
Moving the sun as the solstice nears.
Are there decent grounds to celebrate
When bodies slip their bonds and fly apart?