Weird Heterogeneity

I had a dream last night, which I don't remember. But I woke up thinking: "Any useless action which is not prohibited is outside of the social narrative."

This has to do with something I've been wandering about recently. The social/historical narrative of production is, in my opinion not wholley determinate for society. Other narratives disrupt or determine it. At the same time, however, the base/superstructure model of culture is not entirely wrong. To a high degree the economic base of a society does determine the cultural superstructure.

So what is wholley beyond the economic and social narrative? I would argue that heterogeneous activity is brought into the mainstream of society precisely thorough being made criminal.

Heterogeneous activity is activity that is not commensurable with the mainstream of homogeneous society. However, by being understood as a crime heterogeneous activity is made into something that can be understood, measured and even treated. There are even situations where limited transgression of a law upholds the law in principle. For instance, almost all teenagers in Britain who are not mentally unwell commit one crime or another. And through this limited transgression they "get it out of their system" and go on to be law-abiding citizens.

Certain societies see all non-commensurable activity as in some way suspect because it presents the possibility of non-state dominated discourse. For instance an Iranian friend recently told me that Ayatollah Khomeini went so far as to write a book describing what Qu'ran verses to read on the toilet. In this way, almost every part of our society is understood through the dominant social discourse.

But there is always that which is non-commensurable, that which is too Weird to be understood. It is small and insignificant. It cannot afford to be condemned as criminal or upheld as moral. It cannot be uplifting, or profitable, or respectable. It can't even afford to go for shock value by breaking taboos. But maybe it is where we can get a true alternative view. Maybe there's value there.