right now
Writers/artists have adopted this form both to achieve a range of cognitive or symbolic effects and to focus on the social or political meanings of erasure. Erasure is a way to give an existing piece of writing a new set of meanings, questions, or suggestions. It lessens the trace of authorship but also draws attention to the original text. As with any allusion, interpretive questions include:
What is the attitude to the original work? Does a gesture celebrate, denigrate, subvert, or efface the source completely?
What is the process for selecting erasures? One can erase intuitively by focusing on musical and thematic elements or systematically by following a specific process regardless of the outcome.