ABSTRACT
Terrorism was in the air – like most things that are let loose and spread, signifiers, metalanguage, abstract forms in search of materialization and pure thought hungering for power – and these gentlemen had been aware for some time of certain pressures constricting their art, the most disturbing of which were intrinsic to the art itself. In appearance at least a terrorist society is coherent and powerful, and there would be no answer to such terrorism if it did not exploit an ideology of Reason and of Liberty and thus involve irrationality with Reason, compulsion with Liberty, violence with so-called persuasive measures, in a word contradiction with an illusory coherence. The significance of the written word emerges from a critical analysis of compulsion, that characteristic feature of terrorist societies, where it is excessive and outweighs adaptation; compulsive and non-violent writing – or written matter – builds up terror.
