[-empyre-] week four: Pain, Suffering, and Death in the Virtual

[Peter ciccariello]

Maria,

Your mord and mort and referencing remorse strikes directly to the heart of
the conversation for me. I remember after the death of my son, biting my
hand over and over again in a futile attempt to focus or (re)locate the
pain, an attempt to understand and process the pain that lies outside
ourselves, to that that occurs inside. I have been working on a series of
images with that as the title, not sure if it is appropriate to post links
on this forum but here it is - http://tinyurl.com/9ehkz52



On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 10:53 PM, Maria Damon <damon001 at umn.edu> wrote:

> Dear all,
> I've been very moved by the range, quality, and seriousness of the
> inquiries and revelations here in these past weeks. The intensity of the
> participants' commitment to exploring these questions posed by Sandy, Alan
> and us guests has left me wondering what I can add.
> I keep returning to the experience of remorse, which I first mentioned
> some time ago. The bitingly anguished regret that often has no basis in
> wrongdoing, that is, no precedent (but that doesn't mean no cause) for
> which remorse is the appropriate response, is one of those existential
> enveloping conditions that swoop down like a weather system but that feels
> personal.
> Remorse is connected to death, it is a wanting to follow someone into the
> grave, a form of survivor guilt. Remorse, etymologically to "bite again,"
> or "re" in the sense of emphasis, redoubled self-biting, only one letter
> (mord) away from death (mort), and a very close letter at that. Biting
> oneself as a symptom of mourning or grief. Somehow remorse is connected to
> abjection, to "bare life," to stripping away the comforts of denial,
> creature comforts that enable a turning-away from the basic unease and
> suffering that characterizes our experience of life. As if we were to
> blame. Are we?
> Remorse is a hangup, a habit, a deceitful friend that tears your flesh at
> the first opportunity, just so s/he can comfort you afterwards.
>
> On a different but related note, I read an account of Brian Kim Stefans's
> talk at one of the EPoetry conferences, in which he exhorted epoetry and
> digital arts to "embrace the dark side." Yes, yes, and yes. Fewer slick
> surfaces, more abrasions, more acknowledgment of wounds.
>
>
>
> On 10/22/12 8:29 PM, Alan Sondheim wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> The fourth week of October's -empyre- discussion will start tomorrow,
>> continuing with the topic of Pain, Suffering, and Death in the Real and
>> Virtual. The guest will be Maria Damon. Her biographical information is
>> below. I've followed Maria's work for a long time, and it has always amazed
>> me; it has a poetics all its own, brilliant and surprising.
>>
>> - Alan
>>
>> Week 4 - Maria Damon (US)
>>
>> Maria Damon teaches poetry and poetics at the University of Minnesota. She
>> is the author of The Dark End of the Street: Margins in American Vanguard
>> Poetry and Postliterary America: From Bagel Shop Jazz to Micropoetries,
>> co-author of several books of poetry and online projects with mIEKAL aND
>> (Literature Nation, Eros/ion, pleasureTEXTpossession, E.n.t.r.a.n.c.e.d)
>> and one with Jukka-Pekka Kervinen (Door Marked X), and co-editor, with Ira
>> Livingston, of Poetry and Cultural Studies: A Reader.
>>
>> ______________________________**_________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>
>
> ______________________________**_________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>



-- 
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