[-empyre-] Robert's Re-Response/Comment To Marc

[Robert Summers]

I am interested in a post-structuralist phenomenology that is
influenced by feminism, and how they have both influenced various
strands of *queer theory* (however one construes the term, but I would
argue it must always be thought in the plural, and it must always be
rethought-reworked).  I have always had a *problem* with
psychoanalysis, thought I understand its importance, and I even use it
(e.g., Dean, Bersani, Lacan.), but I am nonetheless ambivalent about
it.  I am interested, thanks to Michael O'Rourke's insistence, in
keeping a critical engagement with psychoanalysis, and I must say that
in doing so I have come to see Bersani's rethinking of relationality
as instrumental in also rethinking the couple, the bond, the
"community" ...
In an interview in *October* (82, Fall 1997, pp. 3-16), Bersani, by
way of Laplanche, argues that *the idea [of the enigmatic signifier]
traces the end of psychoanalysis as a useful way of describing [and
discussing] relationality ...*  In the same interview he begins to
articulate what I would call *queer relationality* -- which is a
nonreciprocal relationship as the basis of relationally.  I do not
fully agree with him, but I do think he has begun the work of laying
out what a *queer relationality* may look like, and what I find
interesting is that this relationality need not be only between
subjects, but also objects.  I think this is crucial, and it can aid
in rethinking Bourriaud's theory of "relational aesthetics," which is
specifically about relations between subjects.  I am very intrigued
about having relations with objects -- be they sculpture, photographs,
paintings, books, what have you.
In summation, I think that what can be considered *queer* about *art*
and *relational aesthetics* is that it can dissolve hierarchies and
traditional subject/object relations and binaries.  And as for Zizeck:
sans commentaire ...

As ever, Robert

Robert Summers, PhD/ABD