Gisela J. Hinkle

O Loma! in context: An introduction

No doubt the long range significance of Kurt Wolffs little volume of O Loma! for social thought and theorizing will take some time to determine, but judging from the responses to date, it has already provoked many scholars, social theorists, feminists, and others to re-view their own intellectual practices. For the editors of HS to request a set of review essays six years after the original publication of a text points to its singularity and mystery. Indeed, as 1 described it briefly some time ago: O Loma! is an unconventional, personal little book of selected diary-like entries made by Wolff over the seven year period from 1977 to 1984; it is what he calls an irregular, meditative journal. It speaks frequently about Wolffs past, his life as an adolescent and as a young man as recollected during the maturity of age. It is not a linear or even a very sequential narrative. Rather it describes and reflects on a tapestry of events and occurrences, Wolffs daily present, his lived experiences (Erlebnisse) and his contacts with the world in which he is both at home and homeless. Many segments of his text remain unfinished but comfortably so since the major effort is one of transformation or wording of his sensory attention to both the natural and the social world. Sometimes his wordings are fluid and wonderfully pleasing and sometimes they are desperate struggles to put his fleeting impressions and monstrous silences into words. It is a text which prioritizes purity and honesty to genre and which readily and without apologies resorts to drawings and poetic forms when they promise to communicate more adequately (Hinkle, 1995: 443).