[-empyre-] David Chirot

Fri Jul 10 07:28:59 EST 2009

many thanks for your kind words Robert

and, --which version of "tainted love" do you have in mind--the original
one  by Gloria Jones-or the later ones
the song was written by producer Ed Cobb, who also penned such chefs
d'oeuvres as the mighty "Dirty Water" for the band The Standells (who were
from San Diego and had never seen the "dirty water" of the River Charles)
Ed Cobb also produced another Tower (LA based)  label classic group--the
Chocolate Watchband --one of most renowned and one of the best--as the
Standells are also-- of the 1960's punk-psych  garage bands

the right to refuse/ of refusal began in the 1940's as Major first step in
the creation of the energy and commitment and rage to have the people of
Quebec treated as equal and be recognized as a separate culture--
until the 1960's al the working class people i Quebec were french--the white
collar all english-between the english and the catholic chucrch the
Quebecois had so oppressed thy y were call ed the white n word of North
america

an amazing group were The Automatistes as a journalist dubbed them (of
course; they are often the ones who give names to groups that stick)
or--amorphous group through at the time were 16--but 16 an this moment--of
Quebecois writers and artists wrote and signed their manifesto which went
even further with le droit de refus
it was called "refus global"!
this was 1947--

my Quebecois nephew when he was young--and stil toay actually- and like a 11
year old punk rocker dj-his favorite phrase was--and remains- "j'al le
droit" i have the right--

Edgardo vila-matas from Spain--has a book i have only so far found excerpts
from that was was wel rec'd in the us when came out in translation--Bartleby
and Company--real and fictitious "writers of the No" as the french writer
Jouannais had dubbed them--

Melville's Bartlby the Scrivener" significantly--today --and always really--
called "A Tale of Wall Street"-is the model for many of the fictitious or
when found real also writers of the No

i ve written some things re this as before i knew there was the writing of
the No i was writing stories which are closely and also wildly r-related --
Genet to me is the most amazing writer i know of for what he does with the
genders of words--
and their colors, heir sounds, their tastes really, as well--smells--touch--

some of Mishima's novels let alone some of his writings in Sun and Steel are
very  interesting also--
the novel Forbidden Colors in which the only way the beautiful protagonist
can make love with his beautiful wife is to imagine that he is making love
with himself!

the ultimate form of "being in love with  one
thanking you again, everyone-
the discussions on this group are always great --and educating
--inspriing-"--!

On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 10:23 AM, Robert Summers <robtsum at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
> >>
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