[-empyre-] Apology I sent uncorrected- draft just now-thisis the right one)Queer Is Violent: Response to Part of Judith's Position/Statement

Thu Jul 23 02:05:00 EST 2009

Re the Derrida quote--re kissing and biting etc--
(like a vamyre??)--
(remember at one point the sudden plethora of new vampire films, which was
attributed in so)me quarters to the reactionary stereotyping  of the
fear-mongering   re AIDS?

the Phil Spector produced
"He hit me and it felt like a kiss"

*HE HIT ME (AND IT FELT LIKE A KISS)*  Gerry Goffin and Carole King
   *LYRICS*    He hit me and it felt like a kiss
He hit me but it didn't hurt me
He couldn't stand to hear me say
That I had been with someone new
And when I told him I had been untrue
He hit me and it felt like a kiss
He hit me and I knew he loved me
'Cause if he didn't care for me
I could have never made him mad
And he hit me and I was glad
Baby, won't you stay
He hit me and it felt like a kiss
He hit me and I knew I loved him
'Cause when he took me in his arms
With all the tenderness there is
He hit me and he made me feel
Baby, won't you stay

� 1962 Screen Gems-EMI Music, Inc. (BMI), Screen Gems-EMI Music, Inc. (BMI)

Lyrics courtesy of EMI Music Publishing.

"*He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss)*" is a pop
song<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_song>written by Gerry
Goffin <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry_Goffin> and Carole
King<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carole_King>and recorded by The
Crystals <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crystals> under the guidance of Phil
Spector <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Spector> in
1962<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1962>
.

[edit<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=He_Hit_Me_%28It_Felt_Like_A_Kiss%29&action=edit&section=1>
] The Song

Goffin and King wrote the song after discovering that singer Little
Eva<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Eva>was being regularly
beaten <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_abuse> by her
boyfriend.[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Hit_Me_%28It_Felt_Like_A_Kiss%29#cite_note-allmusic-0>When
they inquired why she tolerated such treatment, Eva replied, with
complete sincerity, that her boyfriend's actions were motivated by his love
for her.[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Hit_Me_%28It_Felt_Like_A_Kiss%29#cite_note-allmusic-0>

The song was written and intended as a sort of protest
song<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protest_song>from the point of view
of an abused woman.
[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Hit_Me_%28It_Felt_Like_A_Kiss%29#cite_note-allmusic-0>
Phil
Spector <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Spector>'s arrangement was
ominous and ambiguous.[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Hit_Me_%28It_Felt_Like_A_Kiss%29#cite_note-allmusic-0>
 “ It was a brutal song, as any attempt to justify such violence must be,
and Spector’s arrangement only amplified its savagery, framing Barbara
Alston’s lone vocal amid a sea of caustic strings and funereal drums, while
the backing vocals almost trilled their own belief that the boy had done
nothing wrong. In more ironic <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony> hands
(and a more understanding age), 'He Hit Me' might have passed at least as
satire <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satire>. But Spector showed no sign of
appreciating that, nor did he feel any need to. No less than the song’s
writers, he was not preaching, he was merely documenting." ”    — Dave
Thompson <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Thompson>[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Hit_Me_%28It_Felt_Like_A_Kiss%29#cite_note-allmusic-0>

Upon its initial release, "He Hit Me" received some airplay, but then there
was a widespread protest of the song, with many concluding that the song was
an endorsement of spousal
abuse.[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Hit_Me_%28It_Felt_Like_A_Kiss%29#cite_note-allmusic-0>The
song soon became played only rarely on the radio, as now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f20Oz9Yr_So
crystals version

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzF_bweZY4o
courtney love with Hole

Phil spector the song's producer--was this year convicted of the murder of a
young actress/model he had invited to his home-

This is a great point naxmash makes regarding the selfishness of Genet's
"own freedom" which becomes a coldness--rather than the "hot erotic," there
is the coldness of distancing--the fantasies via the image of a criminal
stuck inside the little door that initiates a great deal of miracle of the
rose--for example-
and the imagery of the Palestinians and panthers not as their own images,
but as those aesthetic ones chosen by Genet--

set in the context of Fanon and Derrida--is very interesting also in that
Fanon is psychiatrist who comes from Martinique to Algeria to study the
psychiatric/psychological effect of colonialism and warf the "wretched of
the earth"--an interriorization  of the texts, laws, acts, behaviours,
attitutdes, points of view-- of colonialism and how it produces "black skin,
white masks"--

Derrida was a "pied noir'--a colonialist French person--in this he is part
of those French colonialist writers of North Africa such as Camus, another
pieds noir, and Edmond Jabes, who lived decades in Egypt and never learned a
word of Arabic--

Genet lived quite a bit in Tangiers; i dont know if he spent much in time in
Algeria at all----

the situation which Fanon is trying to understand that of the person
oppressed and in sense both created by and rebelling against colonialism and
in search of both an individual and collective identity--is a situation
which Jabes, Camus and Derrida as colonialists are in many ways "silent"
about as their attentions are turned notto the situation, the terrains,  but
to the text, the book--that spiritual instrument existing outside  of the
"local" cultures--

Genet as naxmash observes, is --like the drug addicts--i was/am one
myself)--basically selfish, narcissistic, obsessed,
fetishistic--aesthetically examing and colody observing, distanced while in
the midst of things-- the misery around him--
and, in another sense, he is a "tourist in other people's misery" as the
Situationists put it--

the period 1954-62 was one of the most tumultuous in the history of France,
due to the "sale guerre" dirty war--in Algeria and the use of torture which
became very widespread, to counter the bombings by the Algerian FLN--

Phillipe Vidal-Nacquet's great work, Torture: Cancer of Democracy
France-Algeria 1954-62 examines the ways in which the cancer of torture
begins to make an entire society and its language "sick" with caner--

in a sense, Camus, Genet, Derrida and esp Jabes, ignore this question
entirely--the one person to confront it  is Fanon--

the effects of torture on the language of the states using it is
extraordinarily deep and pervasive, and pervasive in such a way as to be
hidden in plain sight/site/cite to the community which is using it.

that is, language turns into doubletalk, into Orwell's Newspeak--in order to
make "equal" things that are not the ame "2+2=5" "War=Peace"
a glaring example would be that the USA has a Black President who supports
and An Apartheid regime in Israel

as the song lyrics and little discussion of it above indicate, "he hit me
and it felt like a kiss" can be "read" many different ways--(though usually
al lead to very bad events to say the least, in my experience--)

i thank naxmash for the remarks re Genet--
as it is very true, Genet puts himself basically in aristocracy of himself
in regards to the world--
in fact, one suspects al along that Genet's revolution may in many ways mean
the return of a form of aristocracy of the people that he finds beautiful
and their beings fraught with meanings which only Genet can express,
decode--

the connection with colonialism that is latent n Camus and Derrida and Jabes
also--that of the word taking precedence over the actuality of landscapes,
populations, events--is a removal from ex9istence via the existence of the
text taking precedent--in of itself and as a bearer of Spirit, materiality
of the text , etc etc

Those who are in revolt are those whose text has been erased and suppressed
as much as possible in the palimpsestic reconstruction/deconstructions of
colonialism living in the midst of those colonized, or, removed from the
physically, still textually dominating them by exclusion

The work of Fanon is to realign words and things, persons events, theinner
life as it is affected by colonialism, and especially by interiorization,
one of the most insidious actions which the mind can be submitted to and in
turn keep this submission in the forefront of its own thinking that does not
agree with those ideas submitted to--

Torture is not the screams of the tortured alone, nor the laughter or speech
of the torturers--it is also something else, that which a Russian artist
notes i writing:
"Language is a fascism not because it silences, censors, but because IT
FORCES ONE TO SPEAK"

it is the forced speech which  is important--not what it says, its truth or
falsity, but simply that the tortured being as been forced out of the
privacy of a realm of silence which makes a protective barrier between
tortured and torturer---forced OUT into the realm of speech, of language, a
place, site of, control even when it is controlling nothing "coherent" or
"useful"--it is forcing the individual to be participating in a
collectivity  which it has been resisting--

a critique of sytems of control then begins not at the top, in the language
of "those presumed to know"--but from the other way round (which feminism
and the studies of everyday life made possible--)--from the smallest daily
facts and acts, that is where as in the "divagations" (also the name of a
Mallarme book)-- of the young women of Tehran.

The anonymity and dailiness out of which changes are ignited, in part
because they are truly hidden in plain sight/site/cite--is a grass roots
from the roots up, rather than so called "changes" effected by movements who
are following a leader as the Authority and as the Word, Voice, Text of
Authority

in a sense a tactics is given to each person to find, and to find ways with
others in which, by which, for which --from the very tiniest "molecular"
events, positions, objects, words---they are interconnected, what are the
shared oppressions that are 24/7

even in movements eventually many ideas, words, voices, texts get lost in
the return of competitions for power--

in a sense what one essays as much as possible is to call into question
everything around one--continually, to be on the look out as it were for
which things begin to reappear and how--

which is what m own artworks etc are based on i cal it Necessity is the
motherfucker of Invention-what is refuse is turned into a refuse-refusal--
here are some works/essays re some of the aspects  of language in relation
with torture, and forms of resistance that may existent "right before one's
very eyes"

(i don't have any suggestions re an overall theory, only of a smal actions,
ideas, steps, methods which one use anywhere anytime--
to begin by loosening bricks in the Wall until the whole thing is trembling
and collapsing-

*
Death from this Window/Doors of Guantanamo*
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chirotzer0/sets/72157618302466170/

slideshow:
Slide Show--188 imag
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chirotzer0/sets/72157618302466170/show/

*
*

David-Baptiste Chirot: "Waterboarding &
Poetry"<http://www.wordforword.info/vol13/dbc.htm>
Wordforword #13 Spring 2008
(also has Visual Poetry by chirot)

Kaurab Translation Site
Poems from Guantánamo
The Detainees Speak
David Baptite Chirot <http://www.kaurab.com/english/books/guantanamo.html>

 <http://www.kaurab.com/english/books/guantanamo.html>

On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 10:10 AM, naxsmash <naxsmash at mac.com> wrote:
>
>  Cutting/blows/kisses are sublated via montage in " yellow tahiti
> substation" piece and elsewhere ( http://www.vimeo.com/4189136) and
> also the differential is the sense of place,  it s not just anywhere,
> its a cutting/kissing of places together
> short version on version http://version.org/videos/show/1 this matter
> of the real place, it's not theatre only but  the real world (west Los
> Angeles), i mean , here's the problem with Genet for me, leaves me so
> cold (probably as cold as
> acorpse after being beaten in some alley), because in the end it's all
> about his f-ing freedom, I say, so what, so what next.  its convenient
> to hate the world and to hate the specific places and sense of place
> in the world-- hey like Palestine, sure, so specially glorious
> that Gaza strip,  but only if it never becomes a state. A specific
> place and its familiars (the bus station mens room in the Back Bay
> 1980 for example) must be ratted out, must be exposed as vulnerable,
> as a mere shadow-play, a theatre ( yes so its ok to kill, there).
> Right. And then, in the handing out of treats (after or before the
> bloodbath).  Isn't it only ever ok to save the best meth for women and
> street kids because they look and act weak.   Us 'girlies' 'we' get
> the good stuff from the strong
> protector- lurker in the dark- but watch out if we ever become other
> than 'women' or 'working kids' , that's when we become monstrous to
> Genet and he (like David's meth head) has to be the
> only monster. No Caliban in love with Ariel, this one.   He cuts up
> the meth, or he will cut you, if you get too strong to move out of the
> shadows.   The  young women of Teheran  now rip and slash their
> chadors to pray in a new way, they burn them against the tear gas.
> Bataille in Erotism elides the erotic with death and names such
> 'transgression' to motivate all politics-- it's interesting (i was
> checking last night.. that central to the argument is that eros, gets
> down to being about reproduction, that's "all").  You end up with one
> man standing , the author (aka prick, who writes 'beautfully' and
> 'scandalously' : reproduces himself through the violence of the text,
> and also dreams of same in the 'location' of cocks inside police
> trousers, that's where he'll write his next text)...)  Following this
> logic , the young beautiful women of Teheran 's 'divagations' (wow
> that s a cool word) has to lead to their destruction; in this Genet
> and the conservative ayatollahs are agreed.  It's only ever ok for
> them (the 'girls")  to enact beauty if they are going to be mowed
> down.  LIke the sissy boys in Stonewall eighties they gotta be stuffed
> back in the garbage dump, glorious compost.  In the Sotomayor hearings
> last week the ranking Republican oozes about how  the judge is a real
> american story of success and a real family person, etc etc, and then
> accuses her of racism (bullies always accuse others of exactly what
> they are doing and think no one else can see). That's just so no
> Puerto Rican woman in her mid fifties with the most extensive trial
> career of any potential Supreme Court judge in the last 100 years in
> America, can EVER have power over the folks who want to be in charge
> of who gets the really good crystal.  Tara Mateik s work- the
> performance replay/"docudrama"  of the Billie Jean King/Bobby Riggs
> match complete with replay of the TV commentary (old fart Cosell vs
> 'cute' Rosie Casales) is pertinent here.  Tara does this series of
> inversions and replays that work more like montage , where you bring
> disparate elements together, sublating/cutting/melding- to produce a
> kind of direct address:  "look at this! watch me !" This to me is an
> antidote to the death cult of Genet and the Republican guard.
> Politically the twists and turns are so important because, as Tara's
> work shows, the powers who want to humiliate and torture the 'weak'
> must be confronted with a 'twisted' or torqued (twerk) display of
> largesse , even nonchalance (coolness),
> and a slight smile at the edge. " RC: I just wonder whether Bobby
> would look better in a tennis dress . . . better than the shorts maybe."
>
> -christina
>
>
> Judith wrote,
>
> "
> >  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.
>
> David wrote
> >
> > he explained again for him it was a class thing--and gave me a great
> > many more examples of al kinds of things he had learned to work on
> > since he began chrusing the bus station bathroom  at age 15 to find
> > marks--some of the things he told me of were more sublte yet just as
> > vioent in other, more aesthetic ways--
> >
> > on the rare times our days off somewhat converged we wd work on his
> > autobio and i wd read Genet aloud to him and hims mangy dog--while
> > he cut up the meth--
> > the cutting it was also a form of violence against the middle and
> > upper class customers-
> > working kids and women like ourselves got the good stuff--
> >
> >
> >
> > Genet's fascaintion with the beauty of the vioent aspectsof State
> > and Men--Burroughs noticied with horr that while the two were
> > covering the Chicago 1968 Democtatic Cnvention for Esquire--that
> > genet was fascainted by the area of the crotch of the police men's
> > uniforms--and inhis pieceon the "pigs" genet finds an eroticism in
> > these violent State sponsored thugs--
> > this attraction to viooence as an erotic imagery rather than acts--
> > that is the fantasies of the cocksof criminals pasted to the
> > insideof lockers or tiny mirros i one's cell--islinked with the
> > fascation for the outer images which give evidence bybulgesof the
> > interior life of the trousers so to speak-
> > itis the surfaces which indicate depths thatcontradict the surfaces
> > that genet enjoys pullingout fo the hat continually for the reader--)
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > In life, the rebellions of the Black Panthers and Palestinians are
> > only aesthetic-erotic as long as they take place as a form of
> > theater--and when the play suddenly bursts in to life, it no longer
> > interests him, in fact he refuses it. he walks out just like any
> > other person leaving the theater, ironically "playing" on the "play
> > being finished,punkt, fin fine over-- having reached its end."
> >
> > leaving the theater "like any one else" yet bringing the vision of
> > the theater, a Queering vision, into the streets with him.as
> > himself, his living being.
>
>
> Tara wrote
>
> > In Putting the Balls Away, I reenact the 1973 tennis match between
> > Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs in the famed battle of the sexes.
> > Formally Putting the Balls Away is executed in three distinct ways:
> > an interactive performance, a single channel video, and a video
> > installation. During the performance video of one player is rear-
> > projected opposite the live performance of the other. I perform both
> > Billie Jean and Bobby.  After each game the competitors "switch
> > sides" (contruction/deconstruction of gender). The match is enacted
> > shot for shot. It's is important so that the action can match the
> > commentary. The Battle of the Sexes was the most-watched live
> > sporting event of all time in 1973 that pitted chauvinist against
> > feminist when women tennis players demanded equal pay to that of
> > their male counterparts.  Excerpts from the sports commentators,
> > Howard Cosell and Rosie Casals, exemplify the spirit of the match:
> >
> >
> > HC: There’s the velocity that Billie Jean can put on the ball and
> > walking back she’s walking more like a male than a female.
> >
> >
> > RC: I just wonder whether Bobby would look better in a tennis
> > dress . . . better than the shorts maybe.
> >
> >
> > HC: Billie Jean of course won the first set, to the absolute delight
> > of all of the women in the arena. They actually stood and gave her
> > an ovation and I suspect many in their living rooms did the same
> > thing.
> >
> >
http://www.taramateik.com/index.php/projects/details/putting_the_balls_away_performance/
> >
> > This footage is from a performance at the Guggenheim. I also
> > performed it one other time, in Houston, the original site of the
> > match.
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> Davin wrote
> >
> > violwrite this, a pacifist), I wonder what
> > the implications of an abstract pure violence would have for my
> > opposition to the forms of violence that we are familiar with (from
> > physical force to threats of force).
> >
> > Peace!
> >
> > Davin Heckman
> > <www.retrotechnics.com>
> >
>
> Robert wrote
> > ertain *violence* to/of queer(ing).  In
> > > the words of Sedgwick, "'[q]ueer’ is a continuing moment, movement,
> > > motive—recurrent, eddying, troublant. The word ‘queer’ itself means
> > > across -- it comes from the Indo-European root -twerkw, which also
> > > yields the German quer (transverse), Latin torque (to twist),
> > English
> > > athwart” (_Tendencies_, 1993: xii).  This *speaks* of a certain
> > > violence (*torque* can also be traced to torture, which is an act of
> > > violence), and to queer (or queering -- which I want to also use
> > as a
> > > transitive verb, which would violate/torture rules of grammar) *is*
> > > violence against the normative (and queer _does_ do/enact more than
> > > just this), and we can *see* a certain *queering* as a certain
> > > *violence* when Derrida states, in a way that shows the slippage
> > > between binary oppositions, *... a caress may be a blow and vice
> > > versa. … And let us not exclude either that certain experience of
> > > touching (of 'who touches whom') do
> > > not simply pertain to blows and caresses.  What about a kiss?  Is it
> > > one caress among many?  What about a kiss on the mouth?  What
> > about a
> > > biting kiss, as well as everything that can then be exchanged
> > between
> > > lips, tongues, and teeth?  Are blows wanting there?
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
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[-empyre-] Apology I sent uncorrected- draft just now-thisis the right one)Queer *Is* Violent: Response to Part of Judith's Position/Statement

[-empyre-] Apology I sent uncorrected- draft just now-thisis the right one)Queer Is Violent: Response to Part of Judith's Position/Statement