[-empyre-] coda

[davin heckman]

As I am now in the thick of finals, I don't know that I will have time
to return to many of the things that have been covered.  More than
anything, I feel like the process has unsettled me and sent me into a
variety of directions...  a perfect way to begin a summer of reading,
writing, and gazing at clouds.

I would like to say thank you.  Thank you to Nick for inviting me.
Thank you to my fellow guests.  Thank you to Empyre.  And, really,
thank you to anyone who wrote in response to any and everything.

While my tendency, in the face of conflict, particularly among people
I respect, is to revert back to my childhood habits.... trying to
patch over irreconcilable differences and variations of parental
authority by altering my perspective...  at the end of the day, I
realize that when we talk about philosophical things, try as I may to
avoid them, we end up getting down to basic questions of ontology.

And, at least for this little kid, no amount of patching and reframing
can dodge the question of being.  While I am quite content to allow
that being itself might rest on an impasse, I am more interested in
what flows into and from this impasse than what it actually is.  Being
has discernible effects....  in it rests the very ability to discern.
What have we been?  What will we become?  These questions are pinned
on the present in the way that words build our ideas and are built by
them, like a hitchiker leaving one place for another by the available
means (thanks for the ride, Dante!).  And, once again, I find myself
patching and reframing, trying to make the impasse into something it
isn't.

Maybe this is what "human exceptionalism" is, not a fact of nature,
but a fabrication, a technique, an art!  An art that, as Robert
Browning imagines Andrea del Sarto stating, should exceed our grasp.
(And, in fact, that Victorian poet might have had something to add to
these discussions:  Andrea del Sarto is about: The failed realization
of potential--our [society's] own failure to use our vast resources to
build a better society.  The effort to faithfully represent an
inconstant subject--the pernicious problems of meaning in the wake of
postmodernism.  The ethical obligation of the artist--which we have
been grappling with quite explicitly.  And, finally, the utopian
ambitions of del Sarto--the dreams, even doomed ones, that
nevertheless sustain us, even in failure.).

And, in this case, I want to know if the human capacity for drawing
exceptions can draw exceptions to the laws of capital.  I walk away
convinced that this capacity for exception is itself exceptional...  a
powerful possibility that keeps me feeling free for the time being.

All in all, a very nice month.

I still need to re-read many of the comments.  And I apologize for all
the balls that I've dropped.  But if folks still have questions....
or want to nail me down on some statement or omission...  I am always
happy to take personal messages off the list.

Peace!

Davin Heckman




On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 12:04 PM, Nicholas Ruiz III
<editor at intertheory.org> wrote:
>
> bonjour mon amies!
>
> we soon depart for our respective locales as easily as we began this month...we still have another day, as the new critical coterie for May 2009 on -empyre- should have their announcement up shortly...the forum may begin to wane as we make our exits, but all are encouraged to enter a final plea on this month's topic up until the close of this intellectual market on April 30!
>
> pax et lux
>
> nicolas
>
>  Nicholas Ruiz III, Ph.D
> Editor, Kritikos
> http://intertheory.org
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>