[-empyre-] Ranciere: The Political Is Rare, so Is Queer? And Is Relationality Rare? More to follow ...

[Judith Rodenbeck]

Interesting, Robert, and others should weigh in. I've been trying to finish
Ranciere's Ignorant Schoolmaster, a book I've been worming my way through
for a while (I read rather slowly). Kristin Ross's intro, on my first
encounter with it, made me think about Allan Kaprow, especially the
workshops he did in the 1970s and in particular those done in Europe (a more
receptive ground, fwiw).

Queerer of Christina's work than the pink thing is the little clip in the LA
basin she put up on Facebook. I know she's the effing moderator, but I do
think it's on the way to brilliance. I also read a really amazing account on
one of the Tehran sites today of last Friday's prayers in which the
raconteur details the divagations from the "proper" format of various
religious practices: women doffing the chador and praying, sexes praying
together, burning chadors to mitigate teargas, etc. The latter is so
allegorically beautiful.

Out of curiosity, too, since Vaginal Davis is on the roster, where you
(Robert) are with Annie Sprinkle and her current projects? I don't want to
get too deeply inside the topic, to coin a phrase, but I think her oeuvre
might go into the mix.

Must go watch Scarface with the partner's daughters. Something wrong with
this particular gynocracy...

Namaste,

Judith


On 7/20/09 6:08 PM, "Robert Summers" <robtsum at gmail.com> wrote:

> I hope you do not mind a brief rehearsal and then a series of questions ...
> 
> I have been writing on the work, which includes the life, and which I
> call the "art-life," the "aesthetics of existence," of Vaginal Davis
> (http://www.vaginaldavis.com), and I argue -- which has been argued
> before (and possibly much better) -- that aesthetics is tied to ethics
> and politics: they are thoroughly intertwined.  I argue that an
> aesthetics of existence is to be enacted on a daily basis, not just on
> rare occasion.  I then go on to articulate Ranciere's notion of the
> political -- in which he argues that politics is rare (in his text
> _Disagreement_), and I then argue that queer is rare, but this seems a
> contradiction: queer aesthetics of existence is to be enacted daily,
> but queer is rare!?!  So, perhaps, it is "queer politics" that is
> rare, but then what is "queer politics" -- IS IT NOT "SIMPLY" QUEER?
> What constitutes the politics of queer?  Is queer always political --
> I would think, and I do think that queer theory is political?
> Now, to a visual example, Christina (McPhee)'s video "Tesserae Hot
> Pink Cali (2009) ( http://vimeo.com/5303813), this is a queer
> visuality that is also political, so a queer politics (of aesthetics)
> (?).  Here is another visual example, it is Vaginal Davis enacting
> "Chicken Man" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEdaUvW81Zw), and I
> would argue this is deeply political (the politics of parody, of
> exasperating racial identity and racism, and in a queer way.
> So, again, is queer rare, as Ranciere says of the political?  Or is it
> not?  or both?  Or is queer politics rare?
> Also is relationality political?  Am I making queer, aesthetics,
> politics, and relationality over-determined?  Perhaps my terms are
> clumsy?  not thought out?
> 
> Thanks for your time,
> 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
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