[-empyre-] David Chirot

[Robert Summers]

beautiful and insightful, david chirot

... and the surfacing of the art of literature (genet, rimbaud, etc.)
as relational

and .. the art of refusal as relational

and now *tainted love*?

-robert

>
> every question is an inquisition (or interrogation) -rb (attributed)
>
> yes--"interrogation of the text"--
>
> in an interrogation during/for torture for example:  what matters is not the
> content, assumed to be "questionable," "of questionable use and
> verity,"--but the fact that there is a spoken, shrieked, groaned, spat out
> through broken bleeding teeth,  reply--
> reply, a speaking that is forced--
> a Russian artist wrote that "language is a fascism because it forces one to
> speak"
>
> i do not know if you accept attachments, but if so, this collage has a quote
> relevant to the discussion from jean genet, coupled with one from St Paul,
> the famous "For now we see, As Through a glass, darkly--"
>
> inVermont, where i grew up, the older vermonters held to the tradition of
> answering a question with another question--
>
> that way the interroagtion is turned back on the interrogater as an
> interrogating of him/her--
>
> to refuse the role of being "subject to questioning"--
> "le droit de refus" the right to refuse/of refusal--
>
> "the Literature of the NO"--refusal to write by a writer--
> (Rimbaud, Melville's Bartleby the Scriver, many others real and fictional in
> works by hofmannstahl, Edgardo Villa-Matas, variations in Borges and Bolano
> and in works by chirot)
> in part becuase to do so means that one is "subject to interrogation" of the
> text, the author--
>
>
> read in french, genet works a lot with the role of masculine and feminine in
> the naming of things persons actions ideas--
> clusters of feminine nouns for example --will gather around a masculine
> figure, a live man--
>
> while the macusline and feminie may also change--or there wil take place a
> fmininizing of a masculine noun or verb and vice versa--
>
> the use of colors and their genders as names also plays  role--
> does one wish to abolish or keep in ones lexicon, one's consiouness, the
> colors of the French flag which are the colors of that State and country
> which has condemned on its language?
> to abolish from any part of one's being & lexicon the colors red, white,
> blue?--
>
> in genet's plays the relationships of Maids, The Blacks, etc are "subjects"
> of interrogations of power relationships--
> to overthrow a color or a social status is also in effect to change a coded
> gendered relationship--
>
> Genet, passionate suporter of the Black Panthers and Palestinian people,
> remakred that he chose to support causes as long as they were not the
> dominant-
> not the State--the Flag--the Governement--the prison, etc-- (in french all
> masculine nouns)
>
> genet's "queer eye and ear and hand" so to speak, are continually
> transforming and retransfroming the world via the names, the actions, the
> colors, the races, the power relationshsips which can be shuffled back and
> forth as gendered "le" or "la"--masucline/feminine--of the French language--
>
> "the queering of the text" becomes "literalized'" in this activity, in this
> often cry of love--"prisoner of love"--(title of his last book, on two years
> spent living with the Palestinians in early 1970's)--
>
> in an interview with Wm Burroughs about he, genet and terry Southern
> covering the Democratic Convention in Chicao 1968, with the violent
> confrontations which the police initaiated and wreaked on protestors and
> reports--Burroughs noted that rather than being angry at the cops as
> Burroughs was, genet was fascinated bywhat their boots represented, this
> hard shiny masculine leather, odorsof leather-and what distrubing Burroughs
> even further was that genet found the crotch areas as they stercthed
> andmovedinside the unifroms something erotic--
>
> everytime one things one has reached "an understanding" of and with the
> genet text and vision--it shifts, moves, becomes again an elusive thief,
> stealing the objectsof understanding and friendshipo, or "fellowship,
> identitifcation" one as a reader he knows might find in his writing--
>
> as he doesin ppolitics, being a suporter of the oppressed until they succeed
> in their revolts-
> so he does in the writing--when the moment of a "succesful enoucnter' has
> occurred, or is thought be the reader to have occured, he fllesm and if
> possible before theentirety of this understanding can occur, so that he
> isnot theone subjected to ano other's domination--
>
> even thoughas with the Chicgo cops, something crude and violent in cops as
> muc as i crimanls turns him on
>
> antoer aspects of genet's writing is that he writes in a very classical,
> pure frnech, like that of racine for example--he uses this Hig Clasical
> style to "queer it" via his subject matters and his shifting back and forth
> of masculine and feminie words--so that within the very forml, "pure"
> classical form, he is continually undoing it, yet wiihout breaking the
> style--
> not the from, whic he shaters frm withi and makes complete destabilized--
> but the style--
> as style isoneof the formenost concerns of genet i examining the world--andi
> n style, what is stylish for example is made askew turned topsy turvy,
> "punked" and "queered"
>
> (see dick hebdige's excellent book Subculture: The Meaning of Style which
> has lot re genet--and Barthes, TS Eliot and Punk)
>
> the Catholic faith of France is also turned into literally and literaraly  a
> "gay affair"' in the magnificent The Miracle of the Rose--
>
> in the writings of Rimbaud and verlaine during and after their
> relationshsip, there is also this shifting of the roles of each of the poets
> via the languge used by the toher to delinate thri love, their rage, their
> hate, their desire, their ridicule--al formsof emotion become destabilized
> as the masculine and feminie not only as nouns change but also the way each
> poet sees the oether--as man, woman, child--"the Virgin wife and the
> Infernal husband" as one art of Rimbaud's A season in hell is called--
>
> the use of classical French style which is shot through from inside with
> everything that is the opposite of it in termsof contents, genering of
> words, of vison--is aslo found earlier in Baudelaire's work, where it is
> also an underming of a stable strucutre by at once "using it" and "abusing
> it"
> i hope this is useful--
>
> in ap unning wway one might say thes works are "relational" in that they are
> about "having relations" with an other (excepting Baudlelaire-) man and also
> "having relations" with the uses/abuses of language as a form of love and
> desire of the very word itself, its gendered name--
> and from that play with the words genders, destabilizing stable structures
> which are very "in place, centralized" in France--the State, the Prison, the
> School, the Factory, the Land--
> from with these solid structures there begins to be generated a swarm, a
> swarming of "sex changed, transgendered words and ideas"--creating a Theater
> (and in the Theater after al a run of a play is called "a season")--
>
> in Deleuze's great book on Masochism, he reformalutes masochism  as
> "somewhere a Father is being beaten"
>
> that is, the masochist is beating that Father within themselves,, that super
> ego that panopiiticon observing every sin, every vile act thought or words--
> and "containing them, condmening them" to prisons,institutions, graveyards"
> mascochism then as evinced in Rimbaud and geneet, who are very much beating
> the fathers--becomes a form of Liberation in whcih again, the revrsal of
> gendered roles andnames "upsets" "the way things are"--
>
> by a swrming form of attack--on everything in
> site/cite/site--language--colors--genders--everything is in flux--and at the
> same theirony of the container remaining in the form of a classical
> style--for genet
> while Rimbaud is the opposite--he destroys and re-invenets "it needs to be
> reinvented!"-
>
> neither writer wanted ever to become so to speak aan "institution in
> thesmlves"--hence the contiinual fleeing from writing in genet's later
> decdes and rimbaud's flight into action and silence-
> the desrie not to be imprisoned, or turned into a statue--a sybol of the
> State--not to, in Franz Fanon's terms, "interiorize" the one who crushes
> onself--andbegins to wear the mask one things the Master wants to
> see--(Fanon: "Black Skin, White Masks")
>
> in the sense of questioning as being continually used as a destabilizer and
> rearranger, reinventor, a questioning which begins fro the very first words
> one learns--of the words themsleves-one arrives also at a questioiniong of
> questioning
>
> who questions?
> and why?
> and--i have the right to refuse
> and let losse the swarm of attacks and refuslas and silence which begin fro
> the first instants, the first words--
> agsint this monolithic "questioiner, questioning" of the "one presumed to
> Know"--
>
> (beat that father!)
>
> to overthrow or disarm or dissasmble to destabilise and disabuse the
> question and questioner thesmlves--
> so as not be "framed " byway of an answering--as that answering in its mere
> ly being utter aloud, is the caputuilation to the toture whcihf forcesone to
> speak
>
> with genet and rimabud--theyare not going to speak in reply
> but swarm back on the attacks at every juncture of every word of the
> question--via silence--and via ASKING BACK BETTER QUESTIONS IN BETTER
> LANGAUGE--
>
> the triumph of style-as a refual to speak in the same language as the
> torturer--to over turn his langauge and turn him into anything--a little
> gril, a flower, a house .
>
> to turn aggression inside out andinto love. .
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 6:09 AM, Marc Leger <leger.mj at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> a futurist-deconstructionist poem from robert!and there i was thinking
>> that i am first of all the subject of a lack
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 2009/7/9 Robert Summers <robtsum at gmail.com>
>>
>> every question is an inquisition (or interrogation) -rb (attributed)
>>>
>>> ---
>>>
>>> ink stains: (s)tain(t)ed
>>>
>>> tainted ...
>>>
>>> ... love
>>>
>>> (desire): (     )
>>>
>>> "wayward landscape" -- md
>>>
>>> ---
>>>
>>> the baroness!
>>>
>>> (                                     !)
>>>
>>> ---
>>>
>>> every caress a blow
>>> every love a hate
>>> every tainting a cleansing
>>>
>>> ---
>>>
>>> the internal edges of the passe-partout framing the artwork (however
>>> construed) are often beveled (jd) ...
>>>
>>> ... "sip my ocean" ... (i never said i didn't)
>>>
>>> the act of interpretation -- and the body and desire of s/he who
>>> interprets are bound up in the process of framing, the frame ...
>>>
>>> beveled
>>>
>>> leak-ing
>>>
>>> tainted ... stained
>>>
>>> ---
>>>
>>> blood, feces, semen, vaginal secretions ... all ... none
>>>
>>> "bed" -rr
>>>
>>> wasit!
>>>
>>> ([not] reading desire in the exclamation point)  !
>>>
>>> ---
>>>
>>> so, then is art (history, criticism, viewing, etc.) always already
>>> relational ("")
>>>
>>> over-determined
>>>
>>> some god will speak
>>>
>>> i though they were all dead ... especially him
>>>
>>> ---
>>>
>>> is philosophy relational or ...
>>>
>>> ---
>>>
>>> relational aesthetics is not just about art (traditionally understood)
>>>
>>> ---
>>>
>>> so, is art queer then?
>>>
>>> (reading the desire [the love] in the question mark)   ?
>>>
>>> ---
>>>
>>> i hear echos: is anybody there!
>>>
>>> (reading desire in the "anybody")
>>>
>>> ---
>>>
>>> and in the end must we prove how smart we really aren't?
>>>
>>>
>>> ---
>>>
>>> there you go again ... not answering the question!
>>>
>>> i love you
>>>
>>> Robert Summers, PhD/ABD
>>> Lecturer
>>> Art History and Visual Culture
>>> Otis College of Art and Design
>>> e: rsummers at otis.edu
>>> w: http://ospace.otis.edu/robtsum/Welcome
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> empyre forum
>>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>
> -------------- next part --------------
> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
> URL: https://mail.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/attachments/20090709/3ea46e64/attachment.html
> -------------- next part --------------
> A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
> Name: artbrutpoesiebruite 091.jpg
> Type: image/jpeg
> Size: 556113 bytes
> Desc: not available
> Url : https://mail.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/attachments/20090709/3ea46e64/attachment.jpg
>
> ------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre mailing list
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
> End of empyre Digest, Vol 56, Issue 11
> **************************************
>