Re: [-empyre-] nice and naughty

[The Paul Annears <the.paul.annears@gmail.com>]

The Paul Annears have a rule: no assumptions.  The Paul Annear
yesterday certainly didn't assume that everybody was familiar with
Ivan Illich's thought.  He hoped they would be or if not that they
would be persuaded to read him.  Surely, though, it would be
impossible for anyone who teaches (for example) not to have read Ivan
Illich.  Not read about him but actually read him?

Another Paul Annear went to Mr Illich's series of lectures in the 70's
at the Auckland University Gym (anybody else on this list there?) and
he was an example of a guy who had thought for himself and was able to
project into the room, and into my mind, a series of marvellous
concepts that I am still thankful to him for.

Of course, dear Ms HVJ, my obscure may be your well known.  (Your
Aotearoa might well be my banana).  As long as the stars in the sky
look different one from the other that will be the case.

Frameworks exist (that is to say people imagine that they see
frameworks).  My argument today is that if you see a framework, would
it not be wise to remember that this is a individual, or more likely,
a group delusion?

I would totally disagree that "using words like 'good' & 'bad' implies
some kind of measuring framework".  (In fact I so totally disagree
that at this point it is slowly dawning on me that perhaps Ms HVJ is
talking dirty and pulling my tit).

In my sentence where those words are used, there are clear references
to what could be called a South Park way of thinking, okay?  I only
see perhaps an hour's TV a year but I am familair with aspects of the
South Park mentality or mentalness.  (Who remembers the inch and a
half speech in Team America? Sometimes the good and the bad are very
close together - or even equally attractive). Those weren't 'serious'
value judgements, may I assure Ms HVJ, they were clearly tongue in
cheek.

The starting point for a discussion, in language, talking of tongues,
is to understand (from moment to moment) what language is.  To have a
discussion in words without understanding language, is like swimming
with no water, never mind the costume.  Discussion builds, after all,
from expressive 'pre-language' precursors.  (Is it alright to have two
pres in a row?)

And as for the boom bust artist and the dreaming academic...I reckon
that the idea that any idea is correct is very dodgy indeed.  (I refer
the list to the insane scribbling of M Artaud, below).

APA


MANIFESTO IN CLEAR LANGUAGE
by Antonin Artaud

(for Roger Vitrac)

If I believe neither in Evil nor in Good, if I feel such a strong
inclination to destroy, if there is nothing in the order of principles
to which I can reasonably accede, the underlying reason is in my
flesh.

I destroy because for me everything that proceeds from reason is
untrustworthy. I believe only in the evidence of what stirs my marrow,
not in the evidence of what addresses itself to my reason. I have
found levels in the realm of the nerve.

I now feel capable of evaluating the evidence. There is for me an
evidence in the realm of pure flesh which has nothing to do with the
evidence of reason. The eternal conflict between reason and the heart
is decided in my very flesh, but in my flesh irrigated by nerves. In
the realm of the affective imponderable, the image provided by my
nerves takes the form of the highest intellectuality, which I refuse
to strip of its quality of intellectuality. And so it is that I watch
the formation of a concept which carries within it the actual
fulguration of things, a concept which arrives upon me with a sound of
creation. No image satisfies me unless it is at the same time
Knowledge, unless it carries with it its substance as well as its
lucidity. My mind, exausted by discursive reason, wants to be caught
up in the wheels of a new, an absolute gravitation. For me it is like
a supreme reorganization in which only the laws of illogic
participate, and in which there triumphs the discovery of a new
Meaning. This Meaning which has been lost in the disorder of drugs and
which presents the appearance of a profound intelligence to the
contradictory phantasms of the sleep. This Meaning is a victory of the
mind over itself, and although it is irreducible by reason, it exists,
but only inside the mind. It is order, it is intelligence, it is the
signification of chaos. But it does not accept this chaos as such, it
interprets it, and because it interprets it, it loses it. It is the
logic of illogic. And this is all one can say. My lucid unreason is
not afraid of chaos.

I renounce nothing of that which is the Mind. I want only to transport
my mind elsewhere with its laws and organs. I do not surrender myself
to the sexual mechanism of the mind, but on the contrary within this
mechanism I seek to isolate those discoveries which lucid reason does
not provide. I surrender to the fever of dreams, but only in order to
derive from them new laws. I seek multiplication, subtlety, the
intellectual eye in delirium, not rash vaticination. There is a knife
which I do not forget.

But it is a knife which is halfway into dreams, which I keep inside
myself, which I do not allow to come to the frontier of the lucid
senses.

That which belongs to the realm of the image is irreducible by reason
and must remain within the image or be annihilated.

Nevertheless, there is a reason in images, there are images which are
clearer in the world of image-filled vitality.

There is in the immediate teeming of the mind a multiform and dazzling
insinuation of animals. This insensible and thinking dust is organized
according to laws which it derives from within itself, outside the
domain of clear reason or of thwarted consciousness or reason.

In the exalted realm of images, illusion properly speaking, or
material error, does not exist, much less the illusion of knowledge:
but this is all the more reason why the meaning of a new knowledge can
and must descend into the reality of life.

The truth of life lies in the impulsiveness of matter. The mind of man
has been poisoned by concepts. Do not ask him to be content, ask him
only to be calm, to believe that he has found his place. But only the
madman is really calm.






On Fri, 21 Jan 2005 12:43:00 +1300, Helen Varley Jamieson
<helen@creative-catalyst.com> wrote:
> this is all well & good, but wasn't it a paul annear who assumed in a
> post the other day (yesterday?) that everyone had read a certain
> author? (i assure you everyone has not). & "some well known, some
> rather more obscure" is another assumption - what's well known to me
> may be quite obscure to you.
> 
> frameworks have 'good' & 'bad' aspects (like most things); if there's
> no framework at all, it's a bit hard to challenge, break out of, go
> beyond it. & using words like 'good' & 'bad' implies some kind of
> measuring framework. having something, be it a framework or a concept
> or aotearoa or a banana, as a starting point for a discussion is
> useful, especially if you're having a discussion with such a diverse
> group as this list.
> 
> then yeah, go ahead & hack it wide open.
> h : )
> 
> >Listening, as su b avers, is good.  Voice is good.  Labeling is bad,
> >so I would object to her comment that 'Paul may label a voice
> >academic'.
> >
> >To attempt to clarify, for those writing and for those listening, any
> >statement from this pen is not an exercise in labeling, it is not a
> >fixed position of the writer.  It is an attempt to use words
> >provocatively and therefore effectively.  To borrow sistero's
> >terminology (if I understand her correctly): to 'hack the narrative'.
> >
> >When a discussion is within certain agreed parameters it is already a
> >dead discussion.  Einstein, to pick a popular example, threw everybody
> >with his outrageous ideas.  The are plenty of other examples, some
> >well known, some rather more obscure.
> >
> >I suppose it is true that most people prefer to think within a clear
> >framework.  However there are in fact no clear frameworks, there are
> >only ad hoc frameworks of varying clevernesses.  For me the challenge
> >is to recognise a framework of assumptions for what it is ( a prison
> >cell) and to attempt by whatever means to go beyond the proven.
> >
> >One way of doing this is to use words slightly or outrageously outside
> >their commonly accepted meanings.  The categories that appear to give
> >structure to The Concise Model of the Universe are named in this way.
> >Another way is to challenge the shared assumptions of a group, and if
> >one is listening it is immediately clear when there are cozy shared
> >assumptions.  In case there is any misunderstanding, I am not
> >referring to a situation where everybody agrees with each other during
> >the discussion.
> >
> >It is instructive, I suggest to look at Shakespeare (a name mentioned
> >elsewhere on this forum, and to ask: how would my thinking be
> >different if spelling was not standardised.  What is the significance
> >of 'correct' spelling?  How would my thinking be different if there
> >was no 'written' language.
> >
> >Finally, for now, going back to the concept 'academic', it is
> >instructive to look at the origins of the word and to realise that the
> >meaning (the associative grid attached to the word) has shifted and
> >narrowed.
> >
> >APA
> >
> 
> --
> ____________________________________________________________
> 
> helen varley jamieson: creative catalyst
> helen@creative-catalyst.com
> http://www.creative-catalyst.com
> http://www.avatarbodycollision.org
> http://www.writerfind.com/hjamieson.htm
> ____________________________________________________________
> 
> 


-- 
The Paul Annears
www.xxos.net