The Hustle Never Stops, It Just Gets Smarter
Post-Structuralism didn’t die, it went corporate. Burned bright, ate itself, and what’s left is a set of moves you can pull at faculty meetings, a way to sound dangerous while keeping your parking spot. Derrida says kill your idols, declares the author dead, and sure, on the page that reads like liberation. But if you’re actually standing in a room with bodies sweating under lights, with people who need to know where to stand by Tuesday, that whole death-of-the-author thing doesn’t kill power, it just gives it better PR.
I still need that ghost. Need someone to blame, someone to commune with at 2 AM when nothing’s working. I know it’s bullshit. I know my Shakespeare is a Frankenstein’s monster stitched together from term papers and drunken arguments and whatever I read in college when I was trying to get laid. But Derrida’s version, the author as some unconscious static between meat and grammar, that’s just another puppet show. Different strings, same dance.
The con isn’t that it’s fake. The con is that it works.
Rehearsal: Chaos on a Leash
Rehearsal is where Derrida becomes useful, not as truth, but as cover. Early days, you can try anything. Contradictions pile up. Nothing means anything yet. Everyone calls this freedom, but what it really is? A grace period.
Because chaos was never the point. It’s a phase, like being young and thinking you’ll never sell out.
And I’m the one who decides when recess ends.
I decide when exploration curdles into masturbation, when an actor’s weird choice becomes a liability instead of a breakthrough. I own the clock. I own the memory. I decide which improvisation makes it into the show and which one dies the second we move on to blocking Act Two.
Derrida doesn’t die in rehearsal. He gets a timeslot.
When opening night gets close, instability stops being profound, it’s just unprofessional. Same moments, over and over, until they calcify. Rhythms lock in. Bodies learn to repeat themselves. What started as collective discovery narrows into one version, one take, one night we can actually run without someone crying. My version.
This isn’t the villain speech. This is middle management.
Authority doesn’t storm in with a whip. It arrives as notes about pacing, as “let’s make this clearer for the audience,” as grinding everyone down until they’re too tired to fight. It arrives through repetition sold as craft. Through decisions made fast enough that arguing feels petty. The system doesn’t need monsters. It needs someone who can make the trains run on time.
I don’t steal labor, I schedule it. Which is exactly the fucking problem.
Deconstruction as Brand Identity
Sometimes, to feel better about myself, I destabilize things on purpose. Make the seams show. Let the audience know this is just one angle, one interpretation, nothing definitive here. Look how humble I am. Look how theoretical.
But that move is safer than a trust fund.
The audience still shuts up. The actors still show up on time. My name’s still on the program. The risk still belongs to everyone else.
Destabilization becomes a controlled substance, proof you’ve read the right books without actually threatening anyone’s job security. Doubt doesn’t challenge power; it is power, disguised as sensitivity. Even refusal has production values. Even uncertainty gets lighting cues.
The machine knows how to eat this. It’s been eating it since the ’70s.
What I Actually Want (And Why That’s the Problem)
Here’s the part where I stop pretending: I want the credit.
Not despite the ambiguity, because of it.
I want my confusion to look intentional. I want my refusal to nail things down to read as rigor, not flailing. I want the right people to nod and think my interpretation matters, that it’s smart, necessary, urgent.
That hunger gives the game away.
I don’t want the author dead. I want him on life support, technically not there, theoretically disavowed, but still signing paychecks.
This is authorship 2.0: power that knows how to apologize for itself while keeping the keys. The game doesn’t collapse from that move. It upgrades.
Who Gets to Be Messy
I reach for the Viola/Cesario thing because it makes me sound interesting, caught between identities, between categories, gender as performance, ambiguity as rebellion.
But that reading is too easy.
Who actually gets to be unclear without consequences?
Not the kid fresh out of undergrad. Not the director without tenure. Not the body already coded as wrong, excessive, unprofessional.
My ambiguity is insured, by credentials, by vocabulary, by knowing which theorists to name-drop. I’m not just between genders; I’m between danger zones. The costume works because someone upstairs already vouched for me.
That’s part of the scam too.
No Way Out, No Clean Hands
I can’t quit the director’s chair without quitting the work. Can’t fully own the role without betraying whatever idealism dragged me into this racket to begin with. And the system pays me best when I turn that contradiction into content, when I perform my guilt as insight, my hesitation as sophistication.
I know the rules. I know which rebellions are marketable. I know how to signal resistance without losing my key card.
And I keep doing it, because the game doesn’t punish players who know the cheat codes.