Xelas Magazine

All art is political -- and all analysis, more so. Interpreting the merit of any work requires making decisions that empower certain values over others -- and with them, certain world-views. As with any political system, that ability to empower is maintained by a system of legitimacy: some process or standard by which the ownership of power is accepted by readers and fellow writers. Traditionally, that literary power was granted to institutions -- newspapers, journals, academia -- and experienced writer/critics of great repute. But some would argue technology is challenging those hierarchical models; that the individual is now more empowered than ever. So you might be wondering: In the contemporary world of literature, what sort of ownership does Xelas Magazine pursue?

Yet a better question might be, what kind of land are we attempting to govern? Because while all art is political, all politics are territorial. But what does that sense of place mean when we're talking about literature -- where are stories and poetry; how would you chart them on a map?

In the Western literary tradition alone we have hundreds of conflicting perspectives regarding the nature and function of art: Art as chronicle. Art as myth. Art as beauty. Art as truth. Art as device. Art as art. At present, even the dominant source of poetic debate is divided, existing as much between a "post-avant-garde" movement and its presumed nemesis, a "School of Quietude", as it does between the emergence of performance or slam poetry and the tradition of print, academic writing. The world of fiction is likewise fragmented: Is the short story dying ? Is the novel ? Have novels lost their distinctness, becoming glorified short stories? Is hysterical realism dominating contemporary literature? If so, is this even a negative development?

Yet one facet remains unchanged in all literary circles, regardless of the group, time-frame, or culture being assessed: the distinctness of each politicized voice. Whether literature is read as reflecting actual writers or creating new perceptions of them, the act and acceptance of writing is not dependent on some absolute, detached concept of Truth: rather, it relies on individual cues, based on preferences built by previous social exposures.

Some of these exposures are beyond our control: where we were born, where we were raised, and what traditions we were first taught. If we are exposed to it at all, literature, for a large part of our childhoods, is what we are told it is. These exposures can be innocuous too: the structure of a plot, as we're taught it in elementary school; the manner and substance of stories as they're relayed within the family; the books read and praised by our young peers. They can also appear, at the outset, wholly unrelated to art: the violence many children are exposed to doesn't intrinsically make a statement about literature, but it can in time provide an argument for perceiving art as confession, escape, or release.

The presence of other media also plays a significant role in the contemporary world: Faced with the choice between reading and watching a movie, children have to question the merit of investing time in works that don't involve more of their senses. Similarly, when faced with the choice between reading and playing video-games, children have to decide if there are unseen benefits to selecting an activity that requires more passive involvement. This is not to suggest movies and video-games are superior to books; simply that because these are some of the oppositions faced by children, their understanding and appreciation for literature often emerges in relation to their understanding and appreciation for other dominant forms.

But after a certain point, while many exposures still occur outside our direct control, we gain a new ability as participants in the literary world: the ability to make conscious selections, and therefore to decide on new exposures. As adults, this act of exposure manifests in many ways: the ability to travel within and outside our country; the ability to attend conferences and readings of our choosing; the ability to enter into conversations with others or buy whichever books we like; the ability to determine for ourselves the merit of traditional institutions and alternative voices, and the opinions they each espouse.

And yet necessarily, even these most conscious of selections is regionally dependent. That is, writers and readers are naturally in a state of response to their surroundings, and the literary cultures therein. The sort of discussions being held in local papers and literary journals, for instance, limit our ability to participate in them; as does the breadth and depth of bookstores, libraries, and writing groups; and when we look beyond our community to find what it's missing, or establish our own niche organizations to fill perceived voids, this too is a kind of response.

What sort of land are we operating on, then, but a land of conversations -- a place of constant interactions between bodies of work, individual works, individuals, and the social paradigms they inhabit? And yet to use the word "land" in such a context suggests warring states of fixed localities. But can even the most entrenched literary positions be considered "fixed", especially considering the impact of time? What might have been revolutionary two or two hundred years ago may now be status quo, even antiquated; and far from the real world, where the size, strength, and mobility of one's army directly relate to one's power, in the realm of ideas mainstream popularity is rarely treated with similar regard.

What we have, then, is a culture necessarily in flux, invariably torn between a desire for "newness" and an abiding respect for the potency of works that came before. This land of conversations might thus be considered no land at all, but a vast body of water -- with all the benefits of fluidity therein. Strong undercurrents of collective thought still drive this "country", but with boundaries far less rigid. The conceit of open water also allows for the possibility that even a single work, writer, or critic may have a pronounced effect on the paths of motion for the whole.

So how could any literary institution attempt to govern, or even police, such a place? With what tyrannical rule would one attempt to own the ocean of ideas?

And yet Xelas Magazine, like any journal that accepts submissions and selects what it deems to be the best, necessarily partakes in a kind of ownership. How then to reconcile this assumed authority with the vastness and fluid complexity of the literary world? Time will help, allowing us to define in practice the place Xelas Magazine theoretically occupies in this overwhelming scene. But more important by far will be our use of this literary ocean. Will it be exploited to our own benefit, some piece of it staunchly claimed as if that whole isn't in a constant state of flux? Or will our presence help convey the very nature of this landscape for what it is: a fluid body of literary conversations, fuelled by ideological collisions both large and small, that collectively represent what our literary culture says about current individual relationships with words and the worlds they inhabit.

If Xelas Magazine's choice in this regard isn't clear just yet, our hope is that it will become so in the months to come. While selecting and publishing writing that inhabits a "sense of place" is a dominant facet of our publication, we have unveiled this blog to do precisely the kind of work that crucial function will not allow: to promote, and further, real conversations about the kind of writing being released, glorified, despised, cherished, and otherwise identified in the literary ocean at large.

Welcome to Xelas Magazine's on-going Letter-from-the-Editors.

Just call us Ishmael.