ABSTRACT
The literary is not literature. Literature can be dismissed straightaway as a matter of opinion, whereas the literary is a matter of style. From Stein to Rimbaud, Kafka to Hurston, Proust to Perec, the literary is redolent of style ages before it's churned to literature. Production is terribly easy—literature depends on writing rolling out with industrial regularity, awarding prizes and granting grants on those who meet industry standards. Law is the speech that acts foremost, that is to say, constitutionally and presents as the sound of us. This is different from the speech act, though the speech act is perhaps its most elegant symptom. Rather, this is more stupidly and brilliantly reductive: law is language, language is law. The literary should ruthlessly spew, contradicting what has passed for beauty as philosophy contradicts its prior truths, abolishing all beneficent gesture in favor of better malediction, knowing that even the boldest lie does not fail to tell a truth.
