01.1

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

If to question ethics is to have questionable ethics, then to question ethics is to take a risk. The obvious risk, of course, is that one might come across as questionable, have the wrong values, or possess a dark agenda. But the other risk is that one might say too much, go too far, and ultimately be held accountable by the very ethics which the questioning prodded in the first place. And if, as William James put it, “A great many people think they are thinking, when they are merely rearranging their prejudices,” then the act of questioning ethics is itself censored by an ethics.

Therefore, Questionable Ethics does not promote a libertine ethos any more than it promotes prohibition. Both involve the master’s discourse, both control and delimit. And of course, words themselves do the same. They fail, but in failing they reveal something else which is beyond their capacity to describe. So, permit the writing or artwork to flirt with the questionable; in style, in meaning and intent – like a dream disclosed on the analyst’s couch – where absurd banalities play alongside unspeakable intimations.

Evans Wittenberg
2023