For advocates of social justice the problem of postmodernity is generally seen in terms of political impotence, specifically a subjective, individual impotence. The conditions of postmodernity are allegedly such that the pre-emptive co-option of social action into the reproduction of capital is assured. Capital, despite creating first and foremost its own gravediggers, has somehow 1. achieved hegemonic dominance, 2. circumvented the creation of alternative productive modes, and 3. completely subjugated the site of resistance, the working class, into its reproductive program.

The pipsqueak, by now, is an old, well-explored character in literature. Normally I’d avoid quoting Tao Lin, but he’s one of the few writers today who’s realized that the pipsqueak’s mind-disease has leaked out of literature and now roots in the populace at large—that is, we’re all of us, men and women, rich and poor, smart and dumb, we’re all of us becoming pipsqueaks. Never has this been more clear than at a party I attended last Friday night.