Three Different Perspectives: Arganaraz, Aragao, and de Campos

The writers that we have read each seem to call for experimentation with the shapes, movement, and arrangement of writing, although they are not all for the exact same reasons. Arganaraz was motivated to call for change based on his political philosophies. He followed the Marxist belief that “it is not a matter of interpreting the world but transforming it”, and “there is no revolutionary art without revolutionary form.” Aragao’s motivation was based on technologies of the time. In the past, writing and forms of expression relied on an industrial technology. Now that industrial era has given way to a more electronic time, and thus we need to experiment with the electronic technologies as a form of expression- television, video, etc… De Campos gives us reasons for experimentation on a more philosophical level. He tell us of Susanne Langer, and her argument that words in poems function on a different linguistic level than the words of other written discourses. These words are then able to be used in a different manner than traditional discourse.

All of these writers seem to have a logical, valid argument for experimenting with writing, yet all of their arguments come from vastly different perspectives. The political, the philosophical, and the technological are three very different things. Is one reason more valid than another? How can three different writers come up with the same conclusion about writing, even though they arrive at it from very different starting points? This is even slightly different from what Maso tells us about changing the way we write. She tells us that the way we write will one day help us break free from those that oppress us, whether it is simply mental or actually physical is not determined.

All of these writers give great reasons for changing the way we write. The writer whose reasoning we can cling to is going to be the writer that we can more closely relate our own individual process to. While I do not disagree with the arguments of the other writers, for me the argument that makes the most sense is based on Aragao’s thoughts. We have new technologies, so why not use them to our advantage to express ourselves? Why must we confine our expression only to things that were relevant in the past? I don’t believe we should. While I think that older, more “industrial” technologies are wonderful and have its place, we should not limit ourselves only to those technologies in our expression, especially when there are so many wonderful things out there in the world for us to use to help convey expression, thought, and art.