[-empyre-] discussion on track again

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

Christina, much of our American culture also arose from the cultural
extermination of the American Indians (which luckily did not occur with the
black culture) rather than integrating that culture into the American
mainstream, an integration which I think occurred in a country like Brazil.
This extermination occurred in the 19th century simultaneously, if De
Tocqueville is to be believed, when the seeds of a vibrant middle class was
being sown.

I want to be clear the integration I am referring to occurs independently
from the suppression of one group of another. Historically, the defeated
have often left big imprints over the triumphant. The only cultural echo I
see of the American Indian in the United States is in place names so many
of which derive from American Indian language. I refer to one of them
"Oklahoma" (as in Kafka's "Theatre of Oklahoma") in my essay "Questions of
Accent."

On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 3:41 PM, Christina Spiesel <
christina.spiesel at yale.edu> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>  Thank you Ana for the links to the French exhibition! Ana raised many
> issues and this is only a partly, and personal, reply. There is a point
> where grown men beheaded and little girls sexually exploited meet in the
> common theme of the exertion of absolute power over the bodies of others.
> These are demonstrations of what the group can do/get away with. And it is
> terrorism,  meant to create fear and compliance in others.  I think this is
> distinct from the far more common theme of the maintenance of patriarchal
> social power through control of sexual information. A very influential book
> for me is Walter Kendrick's *The Secret Museum, Pornography in Modern
> Culture* (1987)*. *He makes many arguments but the most compelling for me
> is that erotic materials actually convey sexual information and that
> protected classes -- women and youths, poor men -- are kept in subjugation
> by denial of sexual information.  (We can see the latest iteration of this
> in the United States where some people are trying to put the genie back in
> the bottle  by trying to repress birth control, sexual education, abortion
> rights, etc.) Traditionally, young warriors (and athletes before
> competition) are taught that their prowess will be diminished if they have
> sex before battle. It is not hard to imagine that having sex would reaffirm
> life's pleasures and make one less inclined to risk life and limb in
> warfare. Upper classes have always had access to materials forbidden to the
> rest of us -- hence the "Enfer" sections of  libraries that have become the
> repositories of materials once held in private collections. "L'origine du
> Monde" was painted for Khalil Bey, Ottoman diplomat, who had a collection
> of erotica.  Reportedly he kept it behind a curtain which would be pulled
> back to show particular guests -- performance as display. Circling back, I
> do wonder what  particular cultural arrangements has produced ISIS. Yes, of
> course, official propaganda might talk about rejection of western
> colonialism, etc.  but what of the psychological factors local tpo that
> culture?  And somewhere in this discussion we might ask about DeSade who
> would probably assert that we are dealing with the human condition. And one
> more circling back -- Alan is writing about what happens to humans when
> their culture is going off the rails. In the case of the United States,
> much of our culture arose from the existence of a middle class, now under
> extreme threat.
>
>
> CS
>
>
>
>
> On 11/26/2014 10:02 AM, Ana Valdés wrote:
>
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> I was trying to find a red line in our discussion, reading what others
> wrote, Aneta, Monika, Murat, Alan, Johannes, Christina, Aristita,
> Andreas, Simon, Rustom, Alicia, Leandro, others...
> I go always back to Modernity. Yesterday we discussed with Alicia
> about Bataille and all the French writers and painters using erotic as
> a kind of rebellion against the power, again the etablished norms. In
> the French National Library there is a place called "Enfer" (Hell)
> where erotic texts written by Voltaire, Diderot and many other are
> hidden from public view. They can only be consulted and peroused by
> researchers with several degrees of clearing.
> Why are these texts so revulsive today? In a society where pornography
> is an industry with millions of people employed these texts are still
> so revulsive and must be kept secret.
> The same with the paintings. Gustave Courbet "L'Origine du Monde",
> showing the vulva of a woman, was censored by Facebook several times
> only a few years ago.
> Bear with me, I am trying to find paralleles here between beheadings
> and naked women. The beheadings are shown in You Tube and can be seen
> by anyone with a screen nearby, the real erotic seems more powerful
> and more dissident and must be kept from the public.
> Isis marriages with small girls and the selling of women as slaves are
> for me more horrific than the beheadings.
> Ana
>
>
>
>
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