[-empyre-] Response to Virgina Re: Robert's Response on Queer Mésentente

[Marc Leger]

christina, it's the institutional critique artist in me (or is it
performance or over-identification), playing with your original invitation
to investigate the way that queer praxis develops the space of the
democratic "violence of participation" in contravention of, as you put it,
the clichés of relationality that mitigate against the uncontrollable and
the parasitic - like the amazing File cover image with the milk moustache

ok, i'm looking into Tainted Love and will get back to we for some idea of
the critical function of the curators.  in the meanwhile, i would be
interested in hearing from Virginia what you understand from some of the
statements that you made in "the stuff," among others,

* what do you mean when you say the avant-garde's "being"? does this refer
to the subjectivity of the proletariat?
* what is wrong with a negative assertion? (i.e. is this a reference to
Deleuze's Negations?)
* how is Nancy's being-in-common-in-difference, as you see it, different
from liberal pluralism?  in other words, is there room here for a common
political project, which is what i've tried to do with Nancy, linking him
with Rancière and Badiou (against, by the way, Grant Kester's critique of
the "non-discursive" strategies of the avant-garde - which would probably
exclude GI)
* how can "the aesthetic" have a "cultural politics" in and of itself?  more
importantly, what assumptions are you making about aesthetics if you eschew
both Kantian and Hegelian (and by implication, Marxist) philosophy?
* what do you mean when you refer to "the limits of a certain kind of
understanding under our moment of capital" (from Dada to Surrealism to
today) that formalizes queer sociality and queer relationality?  doesn't the
idea of queer relational/queer aesthetics do that more insidiously than a
politicizing position with regard to the social function and production of
art - from whatever prevalent theoretical position you may articulate this -
i.e. Deleuze, Rancière, Nancy, etc...  [my sense and concern is that in
wishing to criticize *certain* political articulations, one risks conceding
the space to that which one seeks to challenge - academic liberalism
supplying the conservative right with criticism of the left - Bourdieu's
late political writings and campaigning make a good counterpoint]
* related to the latter, how do you (following the discussions among Butler,
Zerilli/Zirelli, Laclau, Zizek, Rancière, Balibar, Badiou) connect this to
the concept of universality and emancipation - or do you, as much postmodern
and post-structural theory in the 90s typically asserted, associate all
universalizing theory with masculinism, hypostatization, totalization, etc?

i would be interested in hearing more from you on whatever seems most
important for your work in Tainted Love and related research

collegially,
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