[-empyre-] 'deceleration' and dark matters

[Johannes Birringer]

dear Dee,
midnights are not real deadlines, ever.  

that was just a way saying we somehow have to be still, just as the little thing on top of the Hong Kong tower in Igor Štromajer and Brane Zorman's "Ballettikka Internetikka Stattikka --- Almost Static but Still Transitive Net Ballet"

and excess is productive, I remember Bataille saying something to this effect, and you help me to think through this idea of the political of corporeity and affective empathy, and i take it that empathy then has clearly an ethical dimension as well.  

not quite relevant footnote:   i was also reading about the histories of Kabuki today, and the kind of tribal game that the actors played with other actors (see Taylor for the ethnographic textures, the other day, via "Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of The Senses"), and in the Histories book this is referred to as "mimetic excess."   Dancing out and (as Fabrizion has written), un-dancing, thus becoming (also laughing and making you laugh), but in a most creative and most amorphous manner, perhaps on occasion vertiginously.    Ah, Branden's cockpit allegory, i have to dream it. 

so good night for now

regards
Johannes


Dee Reynolds schreibt:

Johannes, you always ask probing questions! you have been a great choreographer of these discussions, always pushing things further in interesting ways.
I'll try to respond - a bit improvised, as the midnight hour draws nigh . . .
I think that the potential of the notion of 'corporeity' lies largely in its link with history, both singular and collective. This is how I would like to see it developed. Pre-movement, which founds corporeity, is a kind of kinesthetic affect which becomes culturally and politically significant when it registers in and across bodies, causing sensation to become reflexive, through excess which is not 'captured' as a concept but registers as escape.
This reflexivity of  sensation, I would suggest, is distributed across bodies (in kind of affective empathy) at historical moments of particular intensity and crisis. When this happens, the registering of affect can produce behaviours of resistance, which is what we are seeing at the moment, ranging from the political with a big to a little p and across a spectrum inbetween, and whose effectiveness remains to be seen.
I didn't manage to finish by midnight so I don't know if this excess will be effective or not so will attempt to send and see what happens!!
in any case, many thanks for this invite, Johannes, and to all for inspirational sharings . . .
best
Dee

On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 6:33 PM, Johannes Birringer <Johannes.Birringer at brunel.ac.uk<mailto:Johannes.Birringer at brunel.ac.uk>> wrote:

Dee, thanks for this very interesting response, on Godard, and what you have now described as analogies of "Impulse",  through singular and collective 'economies' and depending on how indviduals and collectivities work on "our 'corporeities'"
-  assuming that they can be worked on (consciously) and are also worked on (unconsciously), yes?  I am trying to wrap my head around this, to see whether the gravitational theory is a humanist/anthropocentric body-mind theory or a somatic theory, and i do not know enough about somatic concepts to understand where they locate issues of choice, will, decision making, understanding, in relation to other organizations (organisms, and we are back to Artaud and Deleuze and the Body without Organs, yes?, and the hieroglyphics) that you refer to as "corporeities'  (= the body in terms of how it organises intensity and intentionality), how does "it" organize" and what is that it?   what if there was no id? and no anima?

where do these intensities come from, are they similar to Deleuze's "flows" and Lyotard's libidinal economies and pulsations? (I think Lyotard speaks of undifferentiated libidinal pulsations when discussing life and death drives, and this discussion takes place when he looks at art & the sublime, I think).  I worry as usual about pure affective intensities, but you seem ti indicate that >>actions and interactions are specific to given situations and 'balances of power', >> ah
what balances of power?  in gravitational sense or socio-political sense?  I think there are no balances of power, and I fear the predatory in capitalism overwhelms.

regards
Johannes


Dee schreibt:
>>
This also opens up an area of communication between subjects, notably in contact improvisation where one can enter the gravitational system of another, leading to 'singular and moving geographies, comprised of and in flux' (same interview).
There is much more of course - and this clearly has implications for how shared kinesthesia can be a driver for empathy
I find this very suggestive in terms of the implications and repercussions of how we manage what Laban called Impuls (approximately translated as effort) through singular and collective 'economies'. The emphasis on the singular means that there is no question of universalism or totality - this is in answer to the last part of your question
'to what extent is a "theory" of energetics  (unconscious / uncontrolled) liable to be misunderstood, if we think back/recollect again, through our collective trauma corpus, the fascist and totalitarian collectivizing movements of the 20th century?  a very bad dream time.'
The way I see it, the pre-movement, the unconscious 'economy' which gives the impetus to our actions and interactions is specific to given situations and 'balances of power'. It is open to being worked on, to being modified - it is not a blind force which drives us (unless we allow that to be the case) - change is possible through how we work on our 'corporeities', and change is always both specific and provisional . . .
>>

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Dee Reynolds

Dee.Reynolds at manchester.ac.uk<mailto:Dee.Reynolds at manchester.ac.uk>
http://www.watchingdance.org/
http://watchingdance.ning.com/

School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures
University of Manchester
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UK
tel: +44(0)161 275 3212