SELF-ACCUSATION. Handke

“I came into the world.

I have become. I was conceived. I came into being. I grew. I was born. I was entered into the birth register.”

Handke’s text SELF-ACCUSATION begins with the most self-evident thing. But it is also the most sensational thing: that human beings can speak of themselves as a self. An AI cannot do that. Nothing has a self except the human being.

“Against which rules of life have I sinned? Against which farming rules have I sinned? Against which rules of love have I sinned? Against which rules of art have I sinned?”

The text is also a celebration of human flaws, of admitting mistakes, of resisting and breaking the learned systems of rules. It is a counterpoint to self-optimization and the polished image of oneself that so many people strive for today.

“I am not what I have been. I have not been as I should have been. I have not become what I should have become. I have not kept what I should have kept.”

The human side of being human, the imperfections and the daily breaking of rules, such as “I placed objects in places where placing objects was punishable,” are the creative joy of being the sand in the gears and not only the cog in the smoothly running machine of a collective system.

Handke created a text that today, 60 years after it was written, feels like an invocation: SOS. SAVE OUR SOULS!

As if we were all standing very close to the Last Judgment or preparing ourselves for it.