[-empyre-] Queer *Is* Violent: Response to Part of Judith's Position/Statement

[Judith Rodenbeck]

Art Journal published a piece on images of falling after 9/11 that I thought
dealt with this question pretty well. Tough piece. Georges Bataille
reproduces a photo of "death by a thousand cuts" that I just can't look at.
Elkins reprints it, and I still can't look at it. Sorry, I guess I'm just
sensitive.


On 7/16/09 6:36 PM, "naxsmash" <naxsmash at mac.com> wrote:

> On Jul 16, 2009, at 1:47 PM, virginia solomon wrote:
> 
>> so in all of this talk of violence and the violence attendant to any
>> sort of queer operation or tactic, I very much understand Robert,
>> Davin, and Christina's arguments but I am nevertheless troubled,
>> with Judith, about the stakes of referring to that as violence.
>> What are the stakes of calling an ontologic/epistemologic shift
>> violence when those enacting that 'violence' face the very real
>> threat of actual physical violence?
> 
> yes I guess that is what Judith is saying when she notes that the
> videos coming out of the Iranian election protests are 'queer'....
> ....

Those videos are unlicensed, often as not shot on cell phone, uploaded by
someone else, copied and spread. In a lot of them not much happens: videos
of black night, with maybe a blobby light patch, and people shouting Allahu
akbar. Think of that: moving images of the dark and the voice track of the
multitude shot by a device meant for talking to one another. And then the
astonishing calls: don't be afraid, we are together, natarsid.

>>  Reconfiguration is certainly violent, enacts a violence, because it
>> changes the meaning of bodies for those whose very bodies have been
>> the site of their power.  But what is at stake for emphasizing that
>> violence?
> 
> 
> I had a very strong desire to make a repetitive collage stacking video
> stills of Neda's face as she died.   Yes this was the site of her
> power.  And still to honor that power, that sacred face-- (meaning
> sacred as all faces are but also beyond this , her face, this terrible
> violence )
> means not to show her face.
> 
> So i didn't make the collage.  At least not yet.  So far I have
> thought it would be violent, and I wasn't sure I totally could
> understand or take responsibility for that (if I were to go ahead).
> But, if violent, also in the sense of swerve: turning the video image
> into a flag-like repeat-- the wallpaper idea (of how traumatic images
> are part of a 'resonating surface' (Suely Rolnick) we do not want to
> really look at , like wallpaper.   something like that
> 
There are actually two videos of her, plus another from just a few minutes
before she was shot. How could one make that image, when her eyes literally
go blank and the blood rivers out of her nose, swerve? I'd think a
3-Songs-of-Lenin treatment rather than Nam June wallpaper. Or Kali Ma.

> me; I was in a trance.  I wonder now whether the means, 'alteration
> and fever' around 'inaction' is an aesthetic mode that alllows us to
> let the comprehension of violence seep into us, even against wishes to
> stay normal, follow the action, look at a picture
> the usual way, ie go to the theatre, watch the dance, leave the
> theatre, unscathed.

Inaction fever. Resisting also the fascinosum.