[-empyre-] Para-site: Queer?: Specters of Derrida

[virginia solomon]

all of this talk of the parasite etc makes me think of a couple few things -


William Burroughs

General Idea

Leo Bersani

In "Is the Rectum a Grave?", Bersani talks about anal sex as an operation
that undermines the bourgeois individual, but he goes on to discuss the
problem of that as a metaphor in a moment in which, within a homophobic AIDS
discourse, the rectum literally was rendered a grave - anal sex was the
cause of AIDS, as a just reward for the evils of homosexuality.  I think
about this a lot in relation to General Idea's *AIDS* project, in the
context of their other work.  *AIDS* was a viral project, and its critical
purchase as a virus is read in relation to the disease, but the group had
been operating virally since its inception in the late 60s.  Drawing on
William Burrough's notion of the virus, of making something by cutting up
other forms of culture, GI staged projects that highlighted the iterability
of all social phenomena, and that created a kind of common sensibility based
upon such practices of highlighting.  For example, staging a beauty pageant
where contestants were asked to submit photos of themselves or a proxy in a
found dress that had been discarded from the neighborhood thrift store, and
choosing the winner based upon the submission that "captured glamour without
falling into it." Or, in general, mail art.

I think that in queer contexts AIDS overdetermines, and yet maybe also
underdetermines, any metaphorical engagement with either virus or with
parasite.  In a way that can limit, or case doubt upon, play.  In fact,
General Idea was slammed for precisely this suspicioun of play in its
*AIDS*project.  Even in revisitations of the AIDS moment, we have
advocates for
making space for mourning, but not for play.  I think that these are both
vital, interrelated tactics, the viral and the parasitic, part of whose
efficacy involves precisely playing with notions of autonomy and
authenticity and value.  What is the play in this context, in this space, in
this 'para-site'?



On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 11:07 PM, Robert Summers <robtsum at gmail.com> wrote:

> I think that Christina is at play, in play, which is to also say
> immersed: an immersive thinking that plays and is relational, which is
> a(n) (il)logic of *queer.*  I really find the notion of *para-site,*
> which Christina surfaces, absolutely interesting, and I think it plays
> well with Serres' theorization of *the parasite*-- anyone else?
> I think *the parasite* is a site and a movement toward mediation -- to
> mediate in a specific site, though _this_ site is no-site: cyberspace;
> nowhere and everywhere.
> Back to Seres: *I live among things—divine things—and I am plunged in
> the obscure group. They are easier to understand than it is—not more
> simple, for they are exquisitely complex. I find happiness in the
> divinity of things themselves; they push me toward pantheism; I suffer
> quite often in the group and in the dark, in my intelligence and in my
> life. Soon, in order to make the collective clearer, I shall use the
> notion of quasi-object. It circulates, it passes among us. I give it;
> I receive it. Thank you; you're welcome. Eucharist and Paraclete. We
> are the second and third persons, submerged in the incarnation and in
> the wind of Pentecost, leaving the Father to infinity for all
> eternity. Grace passes in the fuzzy area between words and things,
> between the canals where substantial foods and sonorous voices flow,
> between the exchanges of energy and information, an intermediate
> space, a space of equivalence where language is born, where fire is
> born, where it makes the things of which it speaks appear, an unstable
> distance of ecstasy and existence, of incarnation and ascension, of
> bread and birds. I move forward a bit in the black box. I hear the
> invitation to live together in the space in which the material and the
> logical are exchanged. The third appears; the third is included. Maybe
> he is each and every one of us.*
> (Indeed, I think, and this my own highly invested reading and claim,
> that *the parasite* -- both literal and metaphorical -- can be
> productive in a discussion of *relational aesthetics* ... but perhaps
> I am taking up too much time at this discussion, this proverbial
> dinner table.)
> So, then, finally, can *we* articulate *queer* as a third (referring
> back to Serres) without the first or second, which is to say without a
> dialectics, without phallo-centericism, and without erections, but
> with a unholy third?  ... 3 ... nothing before ... 3
> On Derrida: I think that Michael O'Rourke has made a brilliant
> discussion of *queer Derrida* in the issue of Rhizomes (which
> resonates, the rhizome, with the movement of the parasite):
> http://www.rhizomes.net/issue10/orourke.htm
> And, I think that Paul Hurley has performed brilliant body art pieces
> that *queer* Deleuze and Guattari:
> http://www.rhizomes.net/issue11/hurley/index.html
> Hurley enacts the parasite, the insect, the animal ... his work is an
> embodied artwork that activates queerness, and necessarily *queers*
> the spectator -- if only momentarily, temporarily.
> As for *queer,* I do think *we* should discuss this more -- as Micha
> Cardenas calls for.  I would say *queer* is more of a question and a
> way of looking and engaging with/in the *flesh of the world,* than it
> is an answer or a set of established guidelines -- not that Cardenas
> suggests that -- but that is my quick response.  Thoughts, anyone?
> Critiques?  I shall remain quite ... I look forward to Virginia
> Solomon's and Emily Roysdon's engagements: both of them brilliant and
> invaluable.
>
> As ever, Robert
>
> Robert Summers, PhD/ABD
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>



-- 
Virginia Solomon
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