I want to claim Mallory Ortberg for conceptual writing. Her best works do simultaneous ‘that’s so random,’ parody, and allegory with a single formal operation more or less mechanically executed. That weird interplay between destroying meaning, laying-bare a structure, and creating a new meaning is a lot of what I love about conceptual writing.
If you’re going to be reading Aaron Bady-style defenses of the excellence of modern online activism’s fast and furious performative broad strokes against injustice, maybe keep in mind the magic mixture of utilitarianism and intentionalism that they’re always built on: it goes something like ‘it’s good you punched this person as an action to end capitalism, because capitalism ending is more important than a person’s supposed right not to get punched,’ bracketing any question of whether the punching’s gonna contribute to ending capitalism, and even of whether the puncher had a reason to think punching’s gonna contribute to ending capitalism. The formula is that an action that’s affiliated with some radical agenda is measured by contrasting its costs or damages with the importance of the agenda, not with its expected contribution to that agenda.