![]() ![]() Later, if inconsistently, the lone wolf is called “sick.” This is a contradictory descriptor, though, because the lone wolf is by nature a healthy designation. For, it is no coincidence that a leader who conjures the “act of pure evil” has also been described as a lone wolf. However, to don this garb is to require its legibility: namely, the gaudy context of recognition, fear, replication, perhaps even warped admiration. But the lone wolf is also an existential costume that one can put on. ![]() The lone wolf is not used to signify a dynamic entity but rather is a rhetorical maneuver that seeks to freeze and contain the subject. But I already was a part of it, through my seemingly passive consumption and spectation. And, as I write this, I necessarily become part of the matrix. ![]() There are established patterns (confusion, chaos, outrage, mourning) and ready outlets (TV, social media, op eds). There are known attractors (mass shootings) and available mechanisms (guns). The flourishing ecosystem in which the lone wolf appears to thrive is a culture of gun idolization and fetishization, of viral media and visual technologies. The lone wolf theory is a linear model but ecosystems are complex, with shared driving variables. That’s part of the problem with the lone wolf theory, and with the accounts (so far) of the events that took place in Las Vegas. ![]() Yet, how would a pure act cross over to the impurely evil realm, namely over to the land of the free? If the act were purely evil how did it get entangled with everything else that is assumedly good? If something pure can be tainted, was it ever really pure in the first place? As if such a thing can be decisively identified and routed. So, the phrasing is tweaked and strengthened, and the lone wolf is described to have committed an “act of pure evil.” This is an ultimate othering, an effort to cast out once and for all. There are always more of us around, aiding and abetting, giving and taking. Even if we would prefer things like “America first,” the slogan contains a hidden admission that there is a second, third, fourth, and so on-a list of other entities which it turns out may not be so easy to order and rank. But an outward looking investigation, such as this, is then not useful because it implicates more of them, more of us.Ĭall it the anthropocene or globalization, just call it living on a planet: we know that things are more enmeshed, more confused, less isolated. The pack is dispersed but evident: individuals who mistake individuality for priority, and who have internalized personal preference as a default modality. In this case the lone wolf is no aberration at all. An isolated organism simply could not occur, and in if this appears to be the case we must look for other members of the species as they most certainly exist. To have a lone wolf, we need not only a flourishing ecosystem with a range of species, but presumably we also need a wolf pack at least somewhere nearby. Even as this complicates the myth of singularity, the narrative manages to get absorbed into the trope. There is a hungry predator, and vulnerable prey. The lone wolf theory postulates cause and an effect, clear and distinct. It turns the person into an animal, a predator-ah, but here we’ve already admitted the non-aloneness of the lone wolf, as a predator by definition requires prey. Taken literally, “lone wolf” is a curiously naturalizing phrase. This theory also dismisses the lines that cross over and complicate this free state: capital flows, food and waste networks, gun and ammunition supply routes, firearm modification tools and techniques, communications platforms and interactive systems. The lone wolf theory imagines that a person can merely linger in a freely moving state, somehow within and yet beyond all the normal strictures and structures of society. The idea of a person existing in isolation, or able to achieve something on their own, holds up the entire “free market” ideology and every political argument that subtends and supports such an economy. Sometimes we want to be a lone wolf so as to seem extraordinary and at other times we want to label someone a lone wolf in order to marginalize them. But here’s the thing: “lone wolf” as a concept is precisely a political and ideological fantasy. It is used to signify that someone has operated without clear political or ideological motivations. We have heard this phrase a lot over the past week. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |