The Interview of a Non-Criminal
Only prisoners have time to read, and if you want to engage in a twenty-year long research project funded by the state, you will have to kill someone.
-Mark Fisher
In the town of Novis, residents were increasingly at unease. An uncanny fear of safeguarding themselves, their loved ones and their futures trapped them. It wasn’t so much that the culprit hadn’t been identified; he had been. The problem was: he could not be charged with any wrongdoing, any felony. He walked free, like so many others. What we have today is a tape recording of an interview with him. Mr. Peccans had agreed to it because he knew that getting the atrocities on tape won’t jeopardize him, that those who listen intently will celebrate him. Some would say his death wasn’t painful enough, he was happy during his death; he was happy he was the one to sell the noose.
Notes on Tape Number 313; recorded on May 5 19XX
Context: Mr. Peccans was interviewed about dehumanizing rituals.
Mr. Peccans started off by saying “Novis was a dim town with dumb folks. And may be immunodeficient as well.” Then he continued, “I use the past tense, I know, I am not suggesting they’re not dumb and dim anymore, rather what I am suggesting is that they’re not much of a they anymore; there’s no township anymore.” The officer asked him to take responsibility for the undoing. Mr. Peccans responded saying, “they all chose it, no one is blameless.”
The reports of posthumus torture were laid on the table. “I don’t know if I would call it posthumus. The term seems to…humanize it all a little more than I’d like.” The officer scratched the word ‘posthumus’ and wrote down a couple of words — senseless, insentient, inanimate. It did not matter at that point, Mr. Peccans knew what the officer and the reports were referring to.
“You know, it always blew my mind when I actually took time to marvel at my doing; it is so easy to look at a community and not see human relations, rather see the webs between them as something run by me.” He laughed, then continued. “When it is a religious town, they’re all slaves to a man-made object: the Bible. When it is a factory town, they’re all slaves to a man-made building: the factory. When it comes to Novis, they were all slaves of a man-made panic, and their limbs were attached to threads: they were seized by selfish fears and that’s what made it such an ideal town to hunt in.” The officer did not say anything so Mr. Peccans continued, “If we come back to the terminology you’d used, that the reports use, it would be poetic to see the town as something posthumus even as they were living: a puppetry of cadavers.”
Notes on Tape Number 396; recorded on July 2 19XX
Context: Mr. Peccans was interviewed about mutilation.
“I suggest you use the word ‘dismantling’ instead of ‘mutilation’, it fits better. Also seems a lot less aggressive, bodily at least.” Mr. Peccans said it with a pleasant face. The question asked was ‘What do you feel about the mutilation that took place in the process of dehumanization?’ He was gaining quite a bit of media coverage now. Although no one from Novis wished to see him, on the days of these interviews folks and media from neighboring towns usually made a crowd. It did not matter to Mr. Peccans, however. For his eyes, a crowd is as good as a mountain of spasming cut flesh. Dead, the movement only a farce of independent consciousness.
“Do you have any sense of right or wrong? As in, how would you weigh or define something as right or wrong?” Mr. Peccans did not seem to like this question very much. But nonetheless he did not make it apparent on his face for more than a second before responding with “For that, one would need to know their rationale of ethics. I do know mine, but it cannot be used to draw this binary of right and wrong. My rationale is one of power; it is how I avoid actions and allow some. If understanding things as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ was a conclusion people reached, things would become instructional: they could be taught. Power, on the other hand, assertiveness, manipulation, alienation, intellect, whatever you may call this, this whole phantasmagoria, this cannot be taught. One has to learn it themselves through trial and error, and more importantly, through experience.”
The officer who was present this time took a lot of interest in Mr. Peccans. He asked, “So, do you not value education?” Mr. Peccans laughed. Then he said, “Okay, let me answer this by giving you an example of my rationale of power. Now, I value learning, and respect intellect. However, doing what I do, teaching others would melt all my power away. I focus on the words ‘I’, and ‘my’ because I am talking specifically about my techniques of, let’s say, mutilating the town.”
“People like us,” Mr. Peccans said, “want to be in power. They like to know they’re the one with power. Knowledge and consciousness about things we think about in ordinary folks — now why would I want that?” The interviewer at this point mentioned the topic of the day’s interview; mutilation. Mutilation, for Mr. Peccans, is alienation. His power only comes to its full potential if the victims are alienated, distressed, and find themselves in a completely strange environment. “And that is why I chose Novis. The town was too simple, they already had a crowd that made a followership. Before I settled here it was Jesus, and I wanted to replace Jesus.” Mr. Peccans laughed. “That’s the thing about a group that makes a followership, a cult, if you will. They always need something external to them to show them their path. Something external that they believe will become internal if they just did enough. They’re afraid of being left alone. They mock people who aren’t afraid of it.”
The officer was taking notes as quickly as he could, and Mr. Peccans slowed down for him. “So, are you saying that they were all slaves?” the officer asked.
“Oh no no no no, no they are not slaves. Slaves are freer in their minds than these followers.” Mr. Peccans lit a cigarette. “But there’s one way they’re like one another: survival. And what survival means to them is, of course, a different matter.”
Notes on Tape Number 399; recorded on August 17 19XX
Context: Dealing with being admired and resented at the same time
“Let me get this clear, what you’re asking me is how I dealt with the population of Novis hating me but also respecting me?” Mr. Peccans looked truly confused, while the officer thought he’d made himself quite clear with the question.
The officer said, “we know why they hate you, you’ve put them in misery and changed their ambitions. However, they admire you for how you’ve done what you’ve done. They do not see you as a culprit, but even those who do are bound to you.”
Mr. Peccans took a couple of minutes to write something down, then continued. “Okay, let’s start by imagining a caged bird, who is caged for profit. One who was not always caged, but did not spend a great deal of time in the world before being caged. And the cage is important here: it’s a rusty old one, one that did not grow with the bird, so even though the bird is bound to love it because of familiarity, it is suffocating.
“But you do have the power to unlock the cage?” The office asked.
“The cage does not have a lock. I have as much power to unlock it as I did locking it: which is next to none. It is a cage that has been constructed around the bird. Coming back to the bird, the ones who have caged it do take care of it; feed it, bathe it, talk to it, and develop a bonding more or less. What we might call the bird’s dependence, the bird will see it as an attachment. And I use the word attachment because it does not have any qualitative descriptors of what it is like. The people of Novis are the caged bird.” Mr. Peccans laughed. “But I am not the one who has caged them, I am just its representative.”
Notes on the Final Tape; date is unknown
These were the final recorded words of Mr. Peccans:
“There was this stupid Valentine’s card going around last year that said something along the lines of ‘If you were a flower, I’d pick you’; and that is my goodbye card for Novis. It is a love letter. With no malice. But it is also an intimation of starvation that is to come, and eventually, death. I know why you’re taping me. The criminal who committed atrocities far worse than mass murders. And what might that be? All I did was set up a factory. The youth have fancy names these days for people like me, who they try their best to frame: capitalists, bourgeoisie, whatnot. Very articulate, the youth is. But capitalism is out of the realm of language. This virus is what I am a representative of. I guess a fever is a sign that the body will fight the illness, but Novis is not ill yet. When the fever comes back, it’s a nostalgia. Novis will now live in the limbo of nostalgia for long. The uncanniness will give birth to a neurosis, and that will be their illness.”
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