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

[virginia solomon]

I apologize if this is an ignorant question, or something I should just
google, but maybe I'm that guy who asks the question everyone else doesn't
want to ask...

what is fascinosum in this context?

On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 7:05 PM, Judith Rodenbeck <jrodenbe at slc.edu> wrote:

> 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.
>
>
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>



-- 
Virginia Solomon
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