"A spectre is haunting contemporary literary writing, the spectre of necromodernism… a type of modernism in its posthumous state, a necromodernist condition in which writing persists in the ruins of literature’s once-modern ambitions. Necromodernism neither celebrates the new nor nostalgically mourns the old, inhabiting instead a space where cultural memory, media saturation, and infrastructural collapse converge into textual practice. It is neither an elegy for modernism nor a prophecy of what comes next, but rather a practice of endurance." From my notes towards "Necromodernist Architectures in Contemporary Writing", a propos of some of the most exciting 21st-century fiction to date... @LouisArmxnd, @1111Press, @incastellated, @CoronaSamizdat, @rickharsch1

A new disturbance in the circuitry… DO NOT BREAK THE SEAL.

DESET OTÁZEK K REORGANIZACI FF UK / 10 QUESTIONS ABOUT THE RESTRUCTURING OF FFUK (For ENG see below) Současná reorganizace je představována jako nutná, udržitelná a dlouhodobě připravovaná. Znamená slučování pracovišť, personální redukce, pozastavování přijímacího řízení a možný zánik samostatných kateder a ústavů. Deset otázek přitom zůstává pozoruhodně obtížné zodpovědět. 1. Pokud se reorganizace připravuje od roku 2023, proč se dotčená pracoviště o jejích důsledcích dozvěděla v létě 2026? Zásadní rozhodnutí přišla těsně před prázdninami, někdy s několika dny na reakci. Tři roky na přípravu, pár dní na odpověď. Zvláštní představa o transparentnosti. 2. Kde je odborná koncepce? „Stabilita“, „udržitelnost“, „synergie“, „potenciál“, „excelence“: slov je dost. Mnohem obtížnější je zjistit, jak menší počet zaměstnanců, rozptýlení odborných týmů a rušení institucionálních struktur zlepší výuku či výzkum. Ekonomický argument je celkem zřejmý. Akademický stále chybí. 3. Kolik lidí má přijít o práci? Vedení připouští až 57 zasažených zaměstnanců a očekává úsporu až 37 milionů korun ročně na mzdách. Ať se zvolí jakýkoli termín, značná část plánované úspory vznikne tím, že fakulta bude zaměstnávat méně lidí. 4. Jak se z vyšších mezd stal důvod k propouštění? FF UK léta zajišťovala mezinárodně respektovanou výuku a výzkum za pověstně nízké mzdy. Ty se konečně začaly zvyšovat. Růst mzdových nákladů nyní zaujímá významné místo mezi argumenty pro reorganizaci. Někteří z těch, kteří fakultu celé roky drželi v chodu za nedůstojné mzdy, tak mohou jejich zvýšení pocítit ztrátou zaměstnání. 5. Odkdy znamená malý totéž co postradatelný? Muzikologie, sinologie, divadelní věda či translatologie nikdy nebudou masovými disciplínami. Velikost vypovídá o hodnotě specializovaného vědění pozoruhodně málo. Univerzita řízená především úsporami z rozsahu nakonec nevyhnutelně zjistí, že značná část humanitních věd je ekonomicky nepraktická. 6. Co zbude z oboru, když ztratí vlastní institucionální zázemí? Zrušení či sloučení pracoviště formálně neznamená zánik oboru. Jeho název může dál bez problémů přežívat v akreditačním dokumentu. Lidé odejdou, týmy se rozpadnou, institucionální paměť zmizí. Výzkumné prostředí budované desítky let se vytrácí poněkud tišeji. 7. Proč právě v létě? Zásadní návrhy přišly těsně před prázdninami. Dotčená pracoviště popsala proces jako překotný a netransparentní; zazněla závažná svědectví o nátlaku a zastrašování. Tříletá strategie tedy dospěla do své nejzásadnější fáze právě v době, kdy byla možnost kontroly nejslabší. 8. Co se stane při příštím rozpočtovém problému? Reorganizace nijak neřeší strukturální podfinancování humanitních věd. Další výpadek proto dříve či později přijde. S ním patrně další „neudržitelné“ pracoviště, další slibná „synergie“ a další politováníhodně nutná redukce. „Udržitelnost“ tak začíná připomínat program permanentního zmenšování. 9. Kde tento proces vlastně začíná a končí? Nejdřív přišlo omezení doktorských programů a změny oborových rad. Poté návrh na zrušení Ústavu translatologie. Nyní slučování a personální redukce napříč fakultou. Dohromady tyto zásahy popisují instituci, která se postupně zmenšuje tak, aby se vešla do objemu prostředků, jež má k dispozici. To může být finanční management. Jako představa o budoucnosti fakulty je to poněkud chmurné. 10. Jaký problém se tedy vlastně řeší? Základním problémem je dlouhodobé podfinancování. Reorganizace nepřinese humanitním vědám více peněz, nezmění systém jejich rozdělování ani nezlevní provoz specializovaných disciplín. Sníží výdaje tím, že zmenší instituci. Jakmile se nedostatečné financování přijme jako přirozené měřítko velikosti fakulty, každý další nedostatek už v sobě obsahuje své řešení: méně lidí, méně pracovišť, méně oborů. Účetnictví se možná nakonec podaří vyrovnat. Otázkou je, co v něm ještě zbude. ============= The present restructuring is being described as necessary, sustainable and long planned. It involves mergers, staffing reductions, suspended admissions and the possible disappearance of independent departments. Ten questions remain remarkably difficult to answer. 1. If this has been planned since 2023, why did affected departments learn the consequences in the summer of 2026? Fundamental decisions arrived shortly before the holidays, sometimes with only days allowed for a response. Three years to prepare; a few days to react. A curious model of transparency. 2. Where is the academic strategy? “Stability”, “sustainability”, “synergies”, “potential”, “excellence”: the vocabulary is plentiful. Much harder to find is an explanation of how fewer staff, dispersed specialist teams and abolished institutional structures improve teaching or research. The economic argument is clear enough. The academic one remains elusive. 3. How many people are actually going to lose their jobs? Management acknowledges that up to 57 employees may be affected and anticipates payroll savings of up to CZK 37 million annually. Whatever terminology is preferred, a substantial part of the projected saving comes from employing fewer people. 4. How did higher salaries become a reason for redundancies? For years, FF UK maintained internationally respected teaching and research on notoriously poor salaries. Those salaries finally began to rise. Increased payroll costs now feature prominently in the argument for restructuring. Some of the people who kept the Faculty functioning while chronically underpaid may thus experience the improvement in university salaries by losing theirs altogether. 5. Since when did small mean dispensable? Musicology, Sinology, Theatre Studies or Translation Studies will never be mass disciplines. Size tells remarkably little about the value of specialised knowledge. A university organised primarily around economies of scale will eventually discover that much of the humanities is economically inconvenient. 6. What remains of a discipline once its institutional home has gone? Abolishing or merging a department does not formally abolish a discipline. The name can survive perfectly well in an accreditation document. People leave, teams disperse, institutional memory disappears. Research cultures built over decades unravel rather more quietly. 7. Why the summer? Major proposals arrived just before the holidays. Affected departments have described the process as opaque and rushed; serious allegations of pressure and intimidation have been made. A three-year strategy apparently required its most consequential stage to begin precisely when scrutiny was at its weakest. 8. What happens at the next budget crisis? Nothing in the restructuring solves the structural underfunding of the humanities. Another shortfall will therefore arrive sooner or later. At that point there will presumably be another “unsustainable” unit, another promising “synergy”, another regrettably necessary reduction. “Sustainability” begins to look remarkably like a permanent programme of contraction. 9. Where does the process actually begin and end? First came the reductions in doctoral provision and the reshaping of study boards. Then the proposal to abolish the Institute of Translation Studies. Now mergers and staffing reductions extend across the Faculty. Each intervention has its separate justification. Together they describe an institution steadily being resized to fit the resources made available to it. That may be financial management. It is a bleak substitute for a vision of what the Faculty should be. 10. What problem is actually being solved? The underlying problem is chronic underfunding. The restructuring does not provide more money for the humanities, alter the system that distributes it, or make specialised disciplines inherently cheaper to maintain. It reduces expenditure by reducing the institution. Once inadequate funding is accepted as the natural size of the Faculty rather than a condition to be challenged, every subsequent shortage contains its own solution: fewer people, fewer structures, fewer disciplines. Eventually the books may balance. The question is what will be left on them.

After ten years in the making, the first copy of COOK YOUR GRAMPAS: PRAGUE DADA has arrived. Here it is photographed in four different positions, partly to prove that it is a real, 3D object and not some elaborate avantgarde rumour. 466 pages of a century of Prague Dada. Several kilos of manifestos, photomontage, cabaret, sabotage, pataphysics & weaponised nonsense loaded onto this nifty vessel. It exists, with corners, and it can even stand up unaided. Even if I tried I could hardly be prouder. "Here WAS Prague Dada, here IS Prague Dada. Avant-incubator>>intnl breeder reactor. Displode us some more of yr fissile material, a 21st century gobstopper."—Ansgar Allen "If there isn't the saying "scratch a Czech and you'll find a Dadaist" there ought to be. As twentieth century Europe wove a rope out of bourgeois platitudes, nationalist marching songs and political rants to hang itself with, this wonderful anthology shows that the Czech Dadaists continued to intervene in the ceremony with heroic insouciance."—Zeese Papanikolas "A very valuable anthology. […] Overall, this book should force some serious rethinking not only of the alleged absence of Dada in Prague, but of the wider historiography of Devětsil, Poetism, & the Czech avantgarde. It is an important contribution to art-historical scholarship."—Derek Sayer Free pdf downloadable & print version available from: litterariapragensia.wordpres…

K současnému dění na FFUK, které můžu jako drtivá většina z vás jen z povzdálí sledovat: Nejdřív translatologie. Teď divadelní věda, estetika, filmová a hudební věda, pedagogika, andragogika, asijská studia, sinologie, a spolu s tím desítky pracovních míst. „Optimalizace“ FF UK začíná nabývat poněkud obludných rozměrů. Chronické podfinancování humanitních věd je písničkou až příliš obehranou. Méně pochopitelné je, proč na ně fakulta odpovídá tím, že během léta, navíc bez skutečné akademické diskuse a bez srozumitelné představy o budoucnosti, začne likvidovat či slučovat obory, jejichž odborná tradice vznikala desítky let. Malý obor není obor zbytečný. Univerzita není podnik a její smysl nespočívá v co nejefektivnější správě úvazků. Jestli má být odpovědí na dlouhodobé politické podfinancování humanitních věd jejich postupná samolikvidace zevnitř, pak za jejich odpůrce odvádíme práci sami. A po tom, čím FF UK před dvěma a půl lety prošla, je mimořádně tristní sledovat, jak rychle se ze slov o péči, solidaritě, akademickém společenství a o tom, jak "to spolu zvládneme", stala řeč o „optimalizaci“, rušení a propouštění. Solidarita už nestačí, tyto plány je třeba odmítnout. Veřejně, společně a dřív, než se z „optimalizace“ stane hotová věc. Tohle bude naše fakulta ještě dlouho. ======================= À propos of the current goings-on at the Faculty of Arts, which, like the overwhelming majority of you, I can only watch from the sidelines: First Translation Studies. Now Theatre Studies, Aesthetics, Film and Music Studies, Education, Adult Education, Asian Studies, Sinology, and together with these, dozens of jobs. The “optimisation” of the Faculty of Arts is beginning to assume rather monstrous proportions. The chronic underfunding of the humanities is a tune all-too-often sung. Less comprehensible is why the Faculty should respond by spending the summer, without genuine academic debate or any intelligible vision of its future, dismantling or merging disciplines whose expertise has taken decades to build. A small discipline is not a redundant one. Nor is a university a business whose purpose is the efficient management of FTEs. If the answer to the chronic political underfunding of the humanities is their gradual self-liquidation from within, we are doing their opponents’ work for them. And after everything the Faculty went through two and a half years ago, there is something particularly grim about watching the language of "care, solidarity, academic community," and of how "together we'll make it," give way so quickly to “optimisation”, closures and redundancies. Solidarity is no longer enough, these plans need to be opposed. Publicly, collectively, and before “optimisation” becomes a fait accompli. We’ll be living with the Faculty this creates for a long time.

After ten years, numerous detours, several arguments, a few denunciations & more than one attempt to declare its subject nonexistent, the thing is finally real. “Cook Your Grampas”: PRAGUE DADA overturns a century of received wisdom that Dada passed the Czech lands by. Across 466 lavishly illustrated pages, this critical anthology reconstructs an international, multilingual scene in which Czech, German, Romanian, Serbian and other avantgardes collided—and where poetry, theatre, typography, photomontage, cabaret, political sabotage and weapons-grade nonsense became difficult to tell apart. The cast is formidable and frequently unhinged: Jaroslav Hašek founds a political party devoted to moderate progress within the bounds of the law; Walter Serner loosens the last remaining screws of European civilisation; Melchior Vischer fires the novel through the brain; Raoul Hausmann races a typewriter against a sewing machine; František Halas orders us to cook our grampas; Voskovec and Werich turn theatrical idiocy into an exact science; John Heartfield weaponises the photographic image against fascism; Tristan Tzara, Václav Havel, (the late) Milan Knížák, Josef Hiršal, Bohumila Grögerová and the Teplice pataphysicians carry the assault forward. Proving, though it seems to have been in doubt for so long, that in Prague, Dada remained what its founders wanted but never quite managed to make of it: an unfinished project. COOK YOUR GRAMPAS: PRAGUE DADA may bear my name as editor & translator, but from the beginning it has also been a shared wager. @LouisArmxnd had faith in the project long before its eventual dimensions (or its decade-long gestation) could have been foreseen. Our jointly written introduction gave the book not only its critical framework but much of its polemical impetus: the conviction that Prague was no provincial echo of Zürich or Berlin, but one of Dada’s most volatile laboratories. Louis' contribution was no less material. He designed & typeset the entire 466-page object, sourced, restored & arranged its extraordinary visual archive, and gave the book the form in which it could finally exist. What might have remained an unruly mountain of translations, documents, manifestos, poems, plays, essays & obscure historical debris became, through his work, an even more unruly, but genuinely beautiful, book. To the friends, writers, editors & reviewers reading this: should any of you wish to take a closer look, a review PDF will be dispatched with great pleasure, just say the word. For more information, the freely available pdf, and ordering details, please visit litterariapragensia.wordpres…

"Makes you feel young. Somewhere in the east: early morning: set off at dawn. Travel round in front of the sun, steal a day's march on him. Keep it up for ever never grow a day older technically. Walk along a strand, strange land, come to a city gate [...]. Wander through awned streets. Turbaned faces going by. Dark caves of carpet shops, big man, Turko the terrible, seated crosslegged, smoking a coiled pipe. Cries of sellers in the streets. Drink water scented with fennel, sherbet. Dander along all day. [...] Getting on to sundown. The shadows of the mosques among the pillars: priest with a scroll rolled up. A shiver of the trees, signal, the evening wind. I pass on. Fading gold sky. A mother watches me from her doorway. She calls her children home in their dark language. High wall: beyond strings twanged. Night sky, moon, violet, colour of Molly's new garters." --Merry Bloomsday from Istanbul to one and all!

What the postman brought in today: a signed copy of Damien Ober’s brand-new book Voidverse (Saga Press, 2026), second after his Dr Benjamin Franklin’s Dream America, which I was lucky to publish at @EquusPress back in 2014…

"Poetry that defiantly wriggles away from being apprehended or at least reduced to singular resonance or meaning..." Angela Meyer reviews @LouisArmxnd's INFANTILISMS (Puncher & Wattmann, 2024) cordite.org.au/reviews/meyer…

Shared from @LouisArmxnd's FB: The "BARTZ, et al. v ANTHROPIC" class action has brought to light a highly obnoxious limitation on how such US companies can be held to account for copyright theft in the training of their AI platforms. Of the 7 million books Anthropic harvested from LibGen as training data for "Claude," some 1.5 million have been discarded from the class action because they were not registered with the US Copyright Office. Yes, *1.5 million* books -- & I'm referring only to English-language works -- have been excluded from any potential settlement on these grounds. Despite the existence of the Berne Convention (which automatically protects works published internationally from piracy in the US), in order to defend that copyright in a US court a work is required to be directly registering with the US Copyright Office. The issuance of an ISBN (& corresponding legal deposit) in the EU or UK or Australia or Canada does not mean that a work is automatically registered in the US. That means, any work published outside the US, but which was illegally exploited by Anthropic, is excluded from the class action unless it was separately registered with the US Copyright Office. And this despite the fact that sale & use of Anthropic's product are not limited or regulated across international jurisdictional boundaries (because the terms of use, or end-user agreements, are enforced in the jurisdiction wherein Anthropic is incorporated, i.e. Delaware.) This is the same Anthropic which is presently headed for an IPO with a valuation of around 350 billion USD. As the non-American author of over 30 titles exploited by Anthropic, it's hardly a surprise that I find this kind of American exceptionalism obnoxious in the extreme -- yet it is also, of course, entirely retrograde with regard to the contemporary reality of global technocapitalism (of which the US had been the principal architect). facebook.com/share/p/17vmhex…

"Louis Armand’s work insists that writing itself is necrotic: literature is not about the undead, it IS undead. Across the “Golemgrad Pentalogy”, this necromodernism takes on multiple forms: the golem as artificial life, the vampyr as cultural parasite, the glitch as systemic seizure, the tomb as textual infrastructure. Narrative itself becomes a necromantic process, telling stories animated by ghosts, characters stitched together from dead body parts, plots built from textual scraps." Many thanks to Joseph Schreiber (@roughghosts) at @MinorLits for publishing my piece on @LouisArmxnd's monumentally complex GOLEMGRAD PENTALOGY as necromodernist megatext, a recursive framework in which characters, motifs, and structures return as revenants, with some new critical vocabulary developed, composed of concepts such as golemic ontology, thanatotechnics, ruinality, metastatic narrativity, and posthumous subjectivity. minorliteratures.com/2026/01…