[-empyre-] Third Response to Judith on Bourriaud and Foucault ...

[Robert Summers]

Judith,

You make an interesting and important point, and one that needs to be
reckoned with: you write, "How has the 'aesthetic' realm, understood
within the range of 'relational aesthetics,' thought of or about the
'relational'?"  I think Kant (meets Foucault) could be searched out to
answer this insightful question (at least regarding aesthetics and
relationality, and i do not think we have to keep either of these
terms "within the realm of "relational aesthetics" -- as Bourriaud has
linked them, but I do not think that was exactly your point.  But, to
ask another question, one that I think resonates with yours, how has
"relationality," understood within the range of "relational
aesthetics," or not, thought of or about "aesthetics" in a way that
would serve the various discussions on and around "queer relational"
on this listserv, at this virtual symposium?  I wonder what your
thoughts are on the very question/s you posed.  Also, I would ask, how
has "queer (theory/praxis)" thought of or about "relationality" and
"aesthetics," and how has "relationality" and aesthetics thought of or
about "queer (theory/praxis"?  I believe that Virginia and others have
gestured toward some interesting answers, which bring up new questions
and potentialities.

On another note, I think that by looking at, surfacing, and engaging
with artworks, something I have been chronically doing and discussing
on this listserv, this symposium, does lead to some interesting
answers -- or, maybe better, more questions.  I think art's _work_ is
to have a re-thinking and re-experiencing take place -- in its taking
place -- and art does create (an)other world to draw from Jean-Luc
Nancy.  And, indeed, as you well point out, "those 'speech acts'
articulated by such art objects/events ... are just as valuable as the
statements by those philosophers who have written about them."  It is
interesting that you state this because one of the most beautiful
passages in Sedgwick's last book (_Touching Feeling_) articulates, in
the "Introduction," a wonderfully engaged and sensual theoretical and
artful discussion of the artwork by Judith Scott, which informs much
of Sedgwick's thinking in several of the essays in her text, which is
deeply textual, sensual, artful, and philosophical: no descrete
categories are to be found in _Touching Feeling_.  Hence, I agree,
which is something I think is written between the lines of your post,
that the artwork is not best put to work, or discussed, in being
illustrative of a theory or philosophy, and similarly that a theory or
philosophy is not best put to work, or discussed, by being
illustrative of an artwork.  In the case of Sedgwick and Scott,
Sedgwick thinks "beside" the artwork in and for her theoretical work;
it _inform_ her work.  That stated, I think that we need not make
discrete categories between the written text and the art object/event:
I think a lot of theory and philosophical writing is art -- the
categories leak.  But, how to, and this is for my own thinking, which
I hope resonates with and for others, have a
relationality-without-hierarchy and without there being the
construction of discrete categories between published texts and
artworks, and a relationality-without-hierarchy of art and theory or
philosophy is an important thing to ask, do, and think about: often it
is not done at all or well.  I think this is what you are getting at,
and correct me if I am wrong, or off, or what have you regarding your
previous post.  I deeply want to think all of these intersecting
issues together, or beside one another, and I want to make sure I am
getting closer to what you are writing.  Indeed, I am not playing a
game that has winning as its aim.

Now, on the note of "history," which you bring up, as if it were an
agreed upon construction,or some naturally occurring phenomena, and
following Foucault, Deleuze, and Derrida (which I would argue are
artists), "history" is precisely what separates us from not only
ourselves but from various modes of thought, and dominate history
restrains though -- often making some though impossible to think; it
does not necessarily inscribe, as some would have us believe, what has
been, and it does not reify ones identity, but rather "history" -- as
un-traditionally construed -- has the potential to becoming something
other and even creating someone something else.  Indeed, history is
something we have to _go through_ -- as in break.  And I think that
"queer practitioners" need to do more "ahistorical" thinking and/or
"historical promiscuities."  I think that D-G's _A Thousand Plateaus_
demonstrates this -- as does Heather Love's _Feeling Backward: Loss
and the Politics of Queer History_ -- to mention but two texts.
Indeed, a re-thinking is in order, or simply a re-reading of what has
been aptly written about "history" over the past 20+ years.

Finally, which Is never final, I think what you are referring to is
having the eyes go beyond things to visualities (and even
intensities): the youtube video and the question of the rabbit, etc.
I find this very interesting and important.  Indeed, how do we "take
things" -- be they texts or art objects or events (or why make such
discrete categories?) -- and find the (precarious, precious)
visibilities, visualities "in" them?  And, what, indeed, is visible at
a given time (and space)?  What "flashes and shimmerings" appear in
order to make the visible legible -- as in the youtube video, which is
a "nice" didactic video?  I do wish the video was in three-dimensions,
so that one could stand in it.  I also think that it can be seen as a
modality of relationality and positionality in the world and among
singular bodies/selves.

I wonder if anything that I have written here, now, prompted by your
gestures and re-directions, can be taken and re-drafted and re-crafted
in order to re-think all that has been going on on this listserv, this
symposium: to name a few, then, "queer," "aesthetics,"
"relational/ity," "visibility," "history," erasure, amnesia ...

In solidarity without solidification,
Robert

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