Today's women's studies' seminar - "Technology, Gender, Embodiment" - dealt with male fluids, the male abject, and the (white, able-bodied, heterosexual) male discomfort with their own leakiness. Of course we had to speak in generalizations for the sake of clarity; I know and have known men who are more or less comfortable with such things. But this is a topic that, in my opinion, is vastly under-theorized and extremely important - not only because it provides a more rich understanding of how female bodies are typically signified as "abject," but because it allows a certain queering of the "male." This is one reason I shirk away from programs entitled things like "women's studies" rather than "gender studies" - both binary stereotypes should be reassessed and re-theorized. Why not? The title "women's studies" also suggests that it is primarily the role/interest of women to redefine or challenge gender - and I don't think that this is the case anymore. Nor should it be supposed that only women or "othered" sexualities have a stake in these topics. Everybody does, or should.
In any case - one of the main topics brought up in the readings is the fear of contamination between men, of seminal fluids, and others - [heterosexual] men didn't want to talk about their semen or come into contact with other men's semen, and the possibility sparked tons of "humorous" comments not-so-subtly tinged with homophobia. When I refer to "the men" here, I'm specifically referring to the men who were interviewed for a series of case studies conducted by scholar Robyn Longhurst, particularly in her book "Fluid Bodies." In any case - men were only comfortable talking about solid excretions (shit, shaving), and not fluid excretions, unless of course the latter was either 1) sexualized, made to demonstrate virility in some way or 2) made into a joke. Heaven forbid the tightly sealed universal subject becomes obscured by its own (particular) decay, by its own proclivity to "leaking." Leaks, excretions, anything "abject" produces anxiety in [heterosexual] men because male bodies are produced as functional, social bodies, rather than as sites of pleasure. The desire to control these flows suggests a desire to maintain control over one's body, social position, as well as ones own desire - leaks are "feminized" - and therefore, must be suppressed.
One of the more interesting theories (Elizabeth Grosz's) is that straight men see themselves as active "givers" of fluid, rather than as passive "receptacles." Thus, flows between men are terrifying, not only because they threaten the self-contained "hardness" of the masculine, but because the vertical hierarchy of giver/receiver, passive/active is obstructed and replaced by circuitous flows (or what Deleuze and Guattari or Kristeva call heterogeneous flows). Desire is "queered" when it is transferred from a Deleuzian "striated space" to that of a "smooth space," or plateau.
In any case - interesting topic, and one that I will probably return to while researching for my thesis.
I've kind of abandoned this blog because it feels trivial, and I am busy. I've been in a good place. My brain feels full and I have come to terms with where I'm going - for my thesis I'm probably going to focus on virtual and material (sexual/gendered) prostheses, particularly in relation to queering desire and subjectivity. I have a shit-ton of Deleuze to read, basically.
Back to reading - Shopenhauer (sp?) and Schelling, McLuhan and Baudrillard.

Classic Rant on Gender Relations! Excitement!

Aw, "boys will be boys." This is an issue I frequently get fierce about. And - I have no idea how I cam across it in my google reader, magic fluke, apparently - Amy King (who is a super awesome poet) wrote this fierce blog post on the topic, probably much more eloquently than I:

Ye Olde "Boys Will Be Boys" Plea

Since starting my MA I've been observing the gender dynamics that exist in the program. And by "observe" I also acknowledge my own complicity in the parade of displays, no one is exempt, sure. Despite this it is frustrating to talk to genuinely intelligent men (boys?) who, despite theoretically recognizing the constructedness of gender, despite being at least to some degree self-reflexive and aware of how silly most gender-related performativity is, still partake in it and reproduce certain rituals.
I was talking to someone [male] about the "trade-off" required when they enter into a monogamous relationship; the male "sacrifices" a particular social position in relation to other men. I.e. they sacrifice the freedom/ability to display their potential power to possess multiple women when they want. But the "difficulty" of this sacrifice is not so much the "giving up" of indiscriminate sex per se but rather, the influence this restraint has on their relation to other men, and the power dynamics between them. Basically, restrain from being promiscuous as (what I consider) a sign of respect. Win the girl but give up the ability to constantly reiterate your alpha-male prowess to your fellow men. The irony of the conversation was that he was trying to be "positive" by saying that "winning" the right girl is a good enough "trade-off" to make the loss of status (in the exchange economy of the boys club) worth it.
Predictably, I have a few things to say about this. On one hand, this kind of male behaviour is usually acknowledged (by men) as stupid and juvenile, and yet I can't count the number of times men have tossed off "boys will be boys" (or an equivalent statement) as justification for their behaviour, as though this counts as a real argument to disqualify residual negative or objectifying effects of their behaviour. It is taken as a given that women should just accept the way that the male social economy works, which, inevitably, also implicitly suggests that women should just accept the position that they are given within that economy. Women can't accept the statement "boys will be boys" as self-contained, pertaining only to men's issues; it inevitably involves women taking on a certain object position/self-perception. When men say "boys will be boys" they not only essentialize "masculinity," but simultaneously place women in a position of virtual powerlessness (it is not a rational statement, so there is no rational response, it is a statement taken as unqualifiable justified/true, hence the manner in which gender difference is conceptualized becomes deterministic, etc.). Unfortunately the male social economy is structured around a barred petit object a /woman (not exclusively, obviously, but in this context, yes), which means that no discourse on men in society can ever be separated from how women are positioned in that relationship.
Implicit in the statement "boys will be boys" as an "excuse" is the demand or statement: "all men do certain things, we work in certain ways, and you not only have to accept this but also understand that you can't understand us." It is also simultaneously an attempt to neutralize the discourse: i.e. essentialize it. In this way, women are alienated from that discourse because they are given no way out of it. Women are alien within the discourse of "boys will boys" as circulating objects of desire, and then they are (generally) expected to just stay silent and accept that this is the way men are. In both situations (i.e.: 1. "winning" the right girl and 2. playing catch-release, catch-catch with multiples to prove your "manhood") woman is relegated to an object used in the service of the male libidinal/social economy. Woman is barely even taken as a sexual object herself! Only an object of display to aid in the circulation of desire between men.
And heaven forbid I take issue with this or voice criticism. Unfortunately the taboo against speaking out against these so-called "neutral" statements about masculinity keeps women (and men) silent. Usually my rants of this nature get called out as "uber-bitch-feministy" man-hating tirades, when in fact I am equally concerned with how these ways of being/speaking influence and oppress both men and women. "Boys will be boys" is not neutral. That's my main point. And neither "women" nor "men" can be reduced to categorical grab bags of bad habits and stupidities. I'd like to think we're more responsible than that.

Love you men, love you women, love anyone in between or on the borders.
xo

Conceptual Art and Philosophy.1

My recent adoration and interest in Marina Abramović’s performance piece “The Artist is Present” has encouraged a lot of personal research about conceptual and performance art, and in particular, “feminist” and queer performance art. “The Artist is Present” has received a lot of blog/internet attention, deservedly. I think a lot of people feel that it is important, seminal, beautiful. A post on performance art will come later (I’m trying hard to avoid always reading works from a Lacanian perspective; maybe I should just give up and start calling myself a post-Lacanian feminist). In the meantime, I’ve been prompted to revisit conceptualism so that I can actually form educated arguments about it instead of whining, as per usual. I’ve been awake since 5.30 furiously reading a book called “Philosophy and Conceptual Art.” The following are some notes concerning problematic issues and my general responses.
Firstly, there seem to be two main camps of conceptualists: the first and the most “true” (i.e. Lippard straight from the 1966-1972 period) promotes the dematerialization of the [art] object; implies that the “idea is king” and that conceptual art should be non-perceptual (and thus, has a linguistic correlative so that description can be substituted for perception). This view also considers conceptual art to be “non-aesthetic” and a radical break and subversion of modernist codes, incorporating elements of banality, kitsch, repulsion, etc. The second is a little bit less radical. It suggests the work of art is not primarily an “object for viewing,” although sight is still a necessary part of experiencing the work. Basically, the perception of the art work is inferior and necessarily informed and guided by cognition. There is no “essential” or unified meaning to be worked out; all interpretations are legitimate and work art can/should provoke diverse responses.
First off, no work of art can be non-aesthetic, or non-perceptual. Part of what defines art is the fact that it is presented (even an empty room as “art” is a presentation of absence, a negation of space that is presented as something more that the thing in-itself, as something that provokes a response). As Lamarque notes in his essay Perceiving Conceptual Art, art can be anti-aesthetic, but never non-aesthetic. If the purpose of conceptual art is to subvert traditional modes of aesthetics, it does this not by abandoning aesthetics, but by creating an entirely new code of aesthetics in dialectical opposition. This is why, in my opinion, conceptualism is obviously an extension of, rather than a break from, modernism. Danto says, for example, that a work of art is only a work of art in that it is in some way distinguishable from the “mere real thing,” and thus, the work always has an “end” in sight realized through aesthetics as the means. Aesthetics are not confined to “harmony and beauty,” aesthetics can equally provoke less unified and traditional responses. I would argue that conceptualist aesthetics are the new normative guide for what counts as “good” or “bad” art. Conceptualism is responsible for the establishment of a new set of aesthetic “guides” appropriate to the time, place, historical period, etc. We’ve seen this time and time again – new codes subverting old ones that subsequently become standard.
It is also an illusion to think that conceptual art can be non-perceptual. Especially taking into consideration the fact that a lot of conceptual art depends on the re-contextualization of common objects situated in controlled environments to produce a certain experience. This experience is necessarily both cognitive and phenomenological, involving the body of the viewer in relation to the space. As a big Merleau-Ponty fan, I would argue that nothing is purely cognitive, and our experience of art depends on a specific mode of being-in-the-world. Reading a description of a concept-art work may invoke similar cognitive responses, but the sensory experience of the work in its specific environment will change the viewer’s experience, and most likely their intellectual experience of the work. In this case, I feel like conceptual art is equally “perceptual” (albeit, in a totally different way) as, for example, an 18th-century painting. Often the ideas are produced from the perceptual context, and not vice versa. Repositioning the art object or placing a work in a museum or other space is not an act of removing narrative; at most, it is an act of changing what counts as narrative, and creating a new perceptual space/relationship. And the desire to do this reflects the ideologies of post-modernity as much as modernist paintings reflect the oft-hated ideologies of that time.

And finally (for now), there is an illusion of subjectivity and the denial of normativity. Curry writes:
“The idea is that the process of engagement with the work, while it essentially involves knowledge not made available by vision alone, is a directed process: directed, that is, towards a visual engagement with the work. Works are intended to be looked at, but they should be looked at in the right way, with a proper understanding of the work’s circumstances. It is not, on this account, the agglomeration of the looking and the knowing that constitutes a proper engagement with the work: there is also a relation of priority that holds between them. The knowing is the necessary means to achieve the properly informed looking.” (Curry 42)
If this is true, then there is present in conceptualism a biased prioritization of the cognitive, the “knowing” quality over the “looking” that looks a lot like the modernist prioritization of the “looking” over the “knowing.” I guess that is pretty straightforward. But, this also implies that the conceptualist’s alleged support of completely relative interpretations is an illusion – as soon as you establish a hierarchy of experiential modalities, you enforce a normative way of looking, knowing, experiencing the work. The modernist extreme is replaced by the conceptualist extreme, and both enforce at least some degree of objectivity by privileging one type of interpretation over its opposite. The alleged encouragement of unlimited subjective responses to a conceptual work is undermined by this privileging of one kind of interpretation/experience over another.

I was ready to apologize for the length before I realized – this is my blog, and if you want to read, read. If not, that’s okay, too. As much as I appreciate readership support (I really do!) I sometimes miss not having to worry about writing for an “audience,” however loving and unintimidating the audience may be. And yet, I still post this, because I am interested in what people (if any) have to say in response. My next post will be a [shorter] take on (de-) historicization, conceptualism and Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Are you all signed up on MUBI (formerly The Auteurs)? I’m obsessed.

rockets/entropy

Reading Martin Amis' Times Arrow and Dead Babies to complement (or, take a breath away from) Gravity's Rainbow. To give some brief background before I dive into this post - Time's Arrow is written backwards. So we start with a man at his death and slowly move backwards through his life. All dialogue is reversed. Amis is really easy to read compared to Pynchon. In case anyone hasn't read GR - its a clusterfuck of a narrative, switching back-and-forth between characters, POV, and time periods.
Yes. So, I've been doing some research into the concepts of entropy/physics because both the Pynchon and the Amis tap into and use these concepts. I've always been vaguely aware of these ideas but I've never done legitimate research about it. According to thermodynamics, energy is always exchanged between regions of a "closed space." Heat flows from warm regions to colder regions, but not vice versa (yes, yes, grade school science makes a comeback). As a result, there is always a consistent increase of unusable energy building up within a particular system (you can think of this in terms of a room, an individual - but also, obviously, the world-at-large). This unusable energy is entropy - and entropy and disorder in any particular space increases simultaneously. Leading to fears of an energy-world-death and all out anarchy. *Here I'm reminded of that scene from Godard's "Two or Three Things I Know About Her," when we're watching the coffee spinning in the cup...I need to watch that again*
Tied in with this is the concept of time's arrow, which is a philosophical concept superimposed onto thermodynamics to describe how humans view ourselves in relation to this energy exchange/increase process. Typical anthropomorphizing - we have an innate understanding of time as linear, moving forward as entropy increases, like a wire sliced through a wave of steadily-increasing energy. Essentially, "the inescapable increase of total entropy in a closed system marks the direction of time." So, in a fucked-up way, "progression" is the expulsion of energy that propels humanity forward, towards an unknown "target." And all of history is a rush into anarchy fuelled by the skittish paranoia produced by entropy. I think these concepts are so interesting in relation to the po-mo attitude - which is characterized by a kind of blasé inertia coupled with a manic desire to fragment, to destroy creatively. The symbol of the rocket in Gravity's Rainbow perfectly illustrates these concepts - the ambiguity, Slothrop's desire to move but his lack of a direction or destination, the paranoia, the frustration caused by the lack of any real "self" transferred into sex as violence or violence as sex, or "just" violence, plain and simple. And the immanence of the rocket except as a symbol, except when embodied with the energy of a bunch of sexually-frustrated men rushing into a new period because they have nothing better to do and not enough self-awareness to understand what's making them so impatient. Insert comments about phallic symbols here.
So of course it makes sense that po-mo lit disrupts the linearity of time's arrow, as though post-modernism itself is the "destination" that we've been leading up to since the modernist period. Anarchy has arrived when time is no longer a legitimate or trusted marker.
I love reading about bodies bodies bodies decaying, moving, fucking, shitting, hurting, standing still momentarily to take a breath, incapable of doing anything but creating - mostly by accident. I don't know why I love being reminded of my corporeality so much. But I think the whole process is brilliant, horrific and a little bit dissapointing, all at the same time. Just being human is the most mundane and incredible feat possible.

I got my science info from Richard Menke - "Narrative Reversals and the Thermodynamics of History in Martin Amis's Time's Arrow"
Illustration: Tilman Faelker

Yet another incredible post from transversalinflections. This is Deleuze (and Badiou, Pasolini and Foucault) used well.

Heidegger, and other things.

So, yesterday was amazing. My boyfriend is amazing. I realized today during my psychiatry appointment that I feel ashamed when I communicate positive news to people. I'm not really sure what that means. Most of what I dwell on is negative, which frustrates me. I'm not a negative person, per se, but I feel more invested in unravelling and delving into so-called negative emotions. I've always assumed there is more to uncover and more to learn from more difficult things, but the more I ponder the less I think that is true. There is a lot to uncover from positive emotions as well, and significant room for self-discovery in that arena. I think its partly an age/maturity thing that makes me dwell so heavily on the negative-dialectic side of the existential dilemma.

I got out of the shower yesterday to find a beautiful 1953 typewriter wrapped up in a gorgeous vintage case on the kitchen table as my birthday gift from Andrew. Finally, a typewriter! And we spent the rest of the afternoon in High Park at the mini-zoo and basking in the sun by the pond. Then popsicles red wine and horror movies. Toronto surprises me, often.

The point of this post, however, is this quote from Heidegger, which made me smile this morning on the subway:

"Truth, as the clearing and concealing of what is, happens in being composed, as a poet composes a poem. All art, as the letting happen of the advent of the truth of what is, is, as such, essentially poetry. The nature of art, on which both the art work and the artist depend, is the setting-itself-into-work of truth. It is due to art's poetic nature that, in the midst of what is, art breaks open an open place, in whose openness everything is other than usual" -from "The Origin of the Work of Art"

One of my problems with conceptual art (conceptual in the purest, po-mo sense) is that there is no opening up, no "revealing" in confrontation because the "thing-ness" is entirely immanent, like a case for ideas only accessible via the cognitive. I am conflicted because in a sense conceptual art performs what Heidegger talks about when he differentiates between the object-side and subject-side (the "thing-ness" of the work vs. its "work quality") but in his words, those two sides are collapsed together in our experience of the work. But in conceptual art those lines seem strict. The "thingness" of the work is maintained as thing, as purely representational. That seems to be how conceptual art works, but that kind of separation is counter-intuitive to how humans experience things, or how we would if we weren't all only semi-aware of our bodies. Maybe this paradox of contemporary art is itself an expression of our historical time, and thus a revealing of "truth" in a sense. But it seems more and more the phenomenological component is downplayed purely for the sake of the purely cognitive. A lot of conceptual art is just "thing-ness" without the beauty, until you sit and think about it for a while, and then it opens itself up. Sometimes. And maybe that is also the fault of the whole "exhibition value" theory from Benjamin. But I find less and less inspiration from contemporary art and more and more inspiration from being-in-the-world. Sitting on the side of a grassy hill and watching people touch each other, watching old men shift their weight on park benches, watching the way light moves across water. Sometimes, contemporary art feels dead to me. At most, an interesting diversion, but never something truly beautiful. I am definitely old-fashioned and nostalgic, and maybe all those modernist-theorists and their ideas aren't applicable to art "now." If that is true, I am disappointed, because I think art and poetry should still be about revealing something new, and feeling, and beauty. Authenticity, sure, but sometimes what passes as "authentic" now is just dead-ness, it doesn't add anything to our experience of life. Art should be accessible and we should be accessible to art.

There are, of course, great and interesting things going on. But very rarely do I sense that "rift" Heidegger goes on about. And I am nostalgic for that, even if being 23 in 2010 in North America means that I've only ever experienced echoes and reproductions of it.

Mullen, Merlea-Ponty, new stuff to read in near future.

Reading Harryette Mullen's "Recycolpedia" and I'm really, really enjoying it. The first two sections, in Mullen's words, "are serial prose poems that use playful, punning, fragmented language to explore sexuality, femininity, and domesticity...[that] began as my response to Gertrude Stein's simple yet elusive poetic prose." Here are my favourite bits from "Trimmings:"

Opens up a little leg, some slender, high exposure. Splits a chic sheath, tight slit. Buy another peek experience, price is slashed. Where tart knife, scoring, minced a sluttish strut. Laughing splits the seams. Teeth in a gash, letting off steam.
-
Chaste, apprehended, collared and cuffed. Kept under wraps, as bridal veils visually haze precious, easily torn, gauzy romantic tissues. Thin threads lace into delicate, expensive fabrics woven and unwoven at night by patient spinsters with needles and scissors. Laced in, as fate would have it. Knots and tiniest holes. Surgical cutting and sewing. Peeking as usual. Skin under lace. A thread, a net effect, a web to sleep in. A white nightgown, girl, child, baby, laced and unlaced. A ruffle, a frill. A pale piece of something, almost made of air.
-
Thinking thought to be a body wearing language as clothing or language a body of thought which is a soul or body the clothing of a soul, she is veiled in silence. A veiled, unavailable body makes an available space.

That last bit reminds me (both as a response to/engagement with/argument against) of the section from Phenomenology of Perception (shock!) that I read on the subway this morning:

"It has always been observed that speech or gesture transfigure the body, but no more was said on the subject that that they develop or disclose another power, that of soul or thought. The fact was overlooked that, in order to express it, the body must in the last analysis become the thought or intention that it signifies for us. It is the body which points out, and which speaks. [ie. speech is not 'sourced' from thought, from the intellect removed from its lived-body; rather, speech is gestural, and is "wholly motility and wholy intelligence"]
-Merleau-Ponty from "The Body as Expression, and Speech" (part 1 of PoP)

And then my brain bounces in two different directions:
1) Black Mountain poetics seem very influenced/informed by phenomenology/Merleau-Ponty and I'd like to explore this more.
2) I can't wait to start reading feminist/queer responses to Merleau-Ponty. I'm anticipating problems but also great collaborations.

And finally...two forthcoming publications - flash-fiction in April decomP and 2 poems in March Negative Suck. I'm happy about this.

Sometimes I stretch my body's limits to see how much it will take before it revolts. I'm pretty sure its a bad thing that I can separate the cognitive and the sensible so easily, wilfully. Over the past year I have developed a very difficult relationship with my body, which is what makes reading existential phenomenology so interesting. I like to tease my body into corners. The prof teaching us Merleau-Ponty quoted Pere Ubu today, which instantly makes him even more awesome. After the lecture, my friend said somthing like "we don't talk with language games; every body has its gestures" etc. So the problem that comes to my mind, especially in the context of feminist philosophy and post-feminist theory like cyborg theory is how to reconcile phenomenology - consciousness as/of your body in-the world - with technological advancements that continue to redifine what it means to be "embodied." Although Merleau-Ponty would probably say that computer-communications are an extension of our bodies, incorporated into our bodily experience like other "habits," I'm kind of worried about the implications. Haraway and Merleau-Ponty go really well together. I guess the main question on my brain is, if my consciousness necessarily involves my body in relation to the world, what happens, phenomenologically, with internet-communications? My body cannot interact with yours, so there is always this inability to communicate, purely on a bodily level (in addition to every other theory that posits an irreconcilable divide between the subject and other). And how does this affect the subject-object dialectic? If you - reader - are never more than an object to me on the other side of a screen (because, by virtue of you being a 'conceptual/imaginary' rather than 'real' audience) how can I ever write honestly to other individuals not as objects, but as lived-body-consciousness'? I'm rambling and anxious. I feel restless like I'm waiting for something. There is way too much shit to write and research and so little time/life to do it. And (this is especially what I love about Merleau-Ponty) it is also necessary to just be in the world, to just sit down and shut-the-fuck-up. A lot of philosophy majors seem resistant to Merleau-Ponty, I think its because he is very simple. His dialectics are circular and always point back to the same simple advice for living. I like that he de-emphasizes the cognitive....(which is ironic considering his method...). Whatever, its a weird paradox.

BLAH

I'll start posting poems here soon.
To, you know, "lighten" shit up.
Although 90% of my poetry is anything but "light."

Can't you just feel the self-derision emanating from me tonight?
Sweet dreams and such. x

christmas brain food.

I had a terrific Christmas. Once everyone is gone and there is no longer any pressure to be a "happy family," I realize that I am indeed part of a relatively happy family and enjoyed my day. The day itself always feels anticlimactic and emotionally draining. I really enjoyed seeing my Dad for the first time in a long time. He was really really nice which made me feel guilty about the prior post and my general bitterness. People surprise me, sometimes. My favourite presents: the Sartorialist book, "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" by Jonathan Safran Foer - which I read in a few hours and want to read again - and the origami crane my sister made for me. Here is a portion of an essay I just wrote that I am incredibly pleased with. On Whitman and Heidegger's "Thinker as Poet" and of course I had to throw some Lacan in there:

Whitman's manic desire to consume and be consumed by everything - and his inability to achieve either - exemplifies Heidegger's quote: "Thinking’s saying would be stilled in its being only by becoming unable to say that which must remain unspoken" (Thinker as Poet). Part of the function of language is to play within and expose its own limitations. Language does not only function superficially as self-contained and transparent, but also in relation to this limit or its ability to expose this limit. Formal experimentation is one strategy of playing with and around the inability of language while simultaneously exposing the lack underlying what is made visible. The malleability of poetry in particular draws attention to this semiotic and material limit. That which visibly manifests itself is also the symptom of a residue, of something that cannot be expressed in language. For Heidegger, "What is spoken is never, and in no/language, what is said" (Thinker as Poet). A similar thought is expressed in Whitman: "Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,/Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn" (Whitman 22-23). Thus, what is said includes the content of the language as well as what is lacking in the language; Leaves of Grass performs this relation and the inability of language. This discourse reveals the limit of the language (what is lacking, what remains unspoken because it is untranslatable) in dialectical relation to the words used and the relationship to the speaker as creator and conduit of 'Being.' What is seen (the content communicated) emphasizes the absence of the unseen (that which necessarily underlies what is visibly and materially taking place). The inability of language to succinctly express experience and realize this desire results in a struggle with and against this limit; therefore, the subject matter of the poem is not only what is said but the issue at stake in saying or not saying, and the problems of language as a system of representation. This reality motivates Heidegger's statement that "such inability would bring thinking/face to face with its matter" (Thinker as Poet). Thinking is a process that struggles to explicate itself through saying; however, the subject of thought cannot be confronted directly, in language. The best and only strategy for negotiating this problematic is to play within the limits of the language itself in order to expose the contradiction inherent in the process of thought and its communication. Thus, Leaves of Grass succeeds because it communicates the vitality of life while sustaining the contradictions inherent in the process of channeling thought into language.

Lacan's distinction between the symbolic and the imaginary realms exposes the function and 'inability' of language within Whitman's poetry. The Lacanian reading reveals the misrecognition that occurs through linguistic expression. Whitman's desire is expressed in language that cannot grasp what he desires and how he desires. Explication of desire in language results in a hierarchical systematization of that desire which results in the subsequent annihilation of that desire. Desire fails when it is [mis]recognized, and thus the untranslatable essence of Whitman's experience - the component that underlies what is communicated - must remain unspoken in order to for the 'Being' of the poem to be realized. This process reveals that desire itself is structured; desire is not free of form. If, according to Lacan, "the unconscious is structured like a language," desire too is structured like a language, but is not a language and cannot be explicated via language. This desire "is without name - it is a word unsaid,/It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol" (Whitman 68). Whitman swings between a desire to consume and a desire to release (sensually but also within language and the construct of the poem) because he recognizes that desire is extinguished through explication. This is one reason why Whitman advises against "tak[ing] things at second or third hand...looking through the eyes of the dead...[and] feeding on the spectres in books" (Whitman 22). His attempts to mediate his desire through verse to the reader necessarily fails. This is the "paradox of desire at its purest: in order to sustain itself as desire, to articulate itself (in a song), a piece must be missing" (Zizek xviii).

Rape Tunnel/Rape as Fetish

But rape is way more extreme than a punch to the face. Is your intention to ruin people’s lives?

Possibly. I’m not necessarily concerned with the positive or negative effects of this project so long as there is some effect on people’s lives. I’ve merely set up a situation where there is potential to impact people in meaningful ways. Maybe I won’t be able to rape everyone who crawls through the tunnel, but the door is open for all kinds of scenarios; rape, serious injury, maybe even death. I might even get arrested. Right now the installation isn’t even complete, and I’ve riled up a substantial portion of the local population. The installation as an idea is powerful enough itself.

- Richard Whitehurst interviewed by Sheila Zareno for Artlurker

The enigma is that of an object which offers itself up in total transparency, and hence cannot be naturalized by critical or aesthetic discourse. It is that of a superficial, artificial object which succeeds in preserving its artificiality, in shaking free of any natural signification to take on a spectral intensity, empty of meaning, which is that of the fetish. The fetish object has no value, Or rather, it has an absolute value; it lives off the ecstasy of value.

-Baudrillard, "Machinic Snobbery" from The Perfect Crime

This article fills me with so much distaste and anger and resentment on so many levels.
What the fuck is going on with the post-pomo art scene? How does a rape tunnel in any way contribute to art becoming 'meaningful' again within contemporary society? If anything, this kind of..."installation" contributes to the increasing meaningless of contemporary art, which has become a scene of increasingly 'weird' people invested in maintaining identities as 'crazy' artists making as much noise as possible to promote increasingly boring ideas about irony and absurdity and the death of the artist, blah blah blah. I think as soon as art took a turn towards absurdity for its own sake, all of its social purpose or 'meaning' disintegrated except as a vehicle for personal self-promotion, under the guise of the artist as a 'non-entity.' Baudrillard talks about this, it is not new. But I think it is an illusion to say that the artist has disappeared, because I think all that remains is the artist as some stupid laughing asshole throwing shit around and demanding an audience.
Why, if art is indeed meaningless, are we only reinforcing this message by focusing more and more on the absurdity of art? Wouldn't it be more radical at this point to create art with a purpose and some sort of social intent, with values and a particular aesthetic manifesto in mind? How does more shock = a return to meaning? Doesn't this method actually result in the opposite? Art is reduced to publicity stunts for attention that evoke little else but shock value. If you read his interview, he doesn't actually give a shit about what is actually going on here, in terms of interpersonal relationships (if you can call it that), hyperreality, any sort of message, etc. The 'artists intent' is literally "evoke a response." Never mind what kind of response or the irrevocable damage it could cause; any response will do, and apparently, the only thing that even evokes mild discontent or concern within our society currently is a pseudo-staged strategized rape scenario. The really frightening thing is that the public becomes increasingly desensitized as a result, and this phenomena produces shit like this asshole's 'rape tunnel.' What the fuck is wrong with our society that makes us so fucking numb to everything except the thrilling possibility of "consensual rape"? And doesn't this whole installation trivialize the experiences of actual rape victims? Doesn't this trivialize the experience in general by turning it into a hyperreal simulacrum of violence? Are people so numb and dead and unaffected that they would enter this tunnel knowing full well that it will lead to sexual assault? It is sad the lengths people will go to feel anything, and the associated absurd attitude that all experience is good experience, which corresponds to the whole paradox of more shock = more meaning. Meaning is not a quantitative value; you can't measure meaningful experience according to its severity or, in this case, the degree to which you are possibly psychologically and physically damaged. There seems to be a general attitude of 'fuck it, I'll try anything once, why limit my experiences' hence, 'fuck yeah, sure, I'll enter a rape tunnel.' There is enough sadness and destruction and rape and violence going on in the 'real' world; why the fuck do we seek out simulated hyperreal versions of this in (of all places) the art scene? I thought art was supposed to detract from this, not contribute. Why do people feel that excess is required to achieve any sort of meaningful existence? Our widespread existential groundlessness results in this compulsion to fill ourselves up with 'new' experiences but the irony is that all of these so-called 'authentic' experiences are manufactured for consumption, they are not genuine, authentic or meaningful experiences. Everyone wants to 'live life to the fullest' but no one ever thinks about picking and choosing experiences in terms of their positive or negative effects. For example, I find it incredibly ironic that people feel they are living 'fun and exciting lives' by going out to bars and drinking their asses off every fucking weekend. I mean, really? This is exciting to you? It all just seems very manufactured and simulated and repetitive to me. And so fucking easy. Art and bars and social situations in general are all laid out for us to pick and choose from (for a price, of course). Everything - 'contemporary art' 'live music' 'the bar/club scene' - are designated spaces purchased and purchasable, we can pick and choose pre-fabricated experiences and then pretend like we've earned it and have some free choice in the choosing. And apparently rape is now on the board of possible experiences produced for easy consumption.
When I read early post-modern poetry, poetics are still meaningful, the artist has a method, a system of values that guides their creative process. When I read this kind of poetry I respond strongly, in ways that I never really do when I read most current contemporary poetry. I mean, there are amazing moments when I read something new and think 'fuck yes, this means something' but for the most part, I just feel kind of bored with the cynical post-ironic, blase tone (of some, dare I say most) of the literature being produced by my generation. Call me old-fashioned or romantic, but I'd like to reinvest some real values into art. Some passion, some ethics. Nobody works hard at anything any more, everybody wants everything to come easy. And, voila, it does. It just doesn't mean anything.

A good man is hard to find...

say Sufjan Stevens, Flannery O'Connor, Sophie Tucker and Micah: "The good man is perished out of the earth: and there is none upright among men." (Micah 7:2)

Spinoza's one Substance/non-anthropomorphic divinity 'sees' all the possible manifestations of the universe, all infinite variations, down to the most minute differentiations. God allows only one of these variations to unfold, and, according to Spinoza, this is the best possible variation, the best possible coming-into-being of the universe. For whom and according to what master plan, though? If this is indeed the best way for my life to unfold according to some abstract concept of divinity or 'essence' and a deterministic model of order...well then, I suppose thankfulness is in order, even if happiness for me personally is sacrificed for the sake of some more general 'order.' I'm not an altruist but the idea of my life and its events fitting into some 'larger,' essential and intrinsic order appeals to moi.

I don't enjoy Stoicism but I think it can be useful. It's useful when applied to suffering. And when Epictetus says, "Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well," my gut response is a 'fuck dude' groan of exasperation but then, sure, I get it. Stoicism requires you form no attachments to avoid all excess and pain. Recognize that everything is temporary and perishable. Extreme self-discipline to the point of repression. This kind of restraint is not only difficult for me but also seems like a ridiculous approach to life. But its starting to look like a good option. I'm so tired, tired, sad, sad.

I am not a practical or matter-of-fact person, which is why I am drawn to some mystical notion of (shall I say) fate, maybe because of my Christian upbringing, maybe because I am a softy-idealist not far beneath the surface, maybe because I want certainty and direction and a reason not to throw my fucking hands in the air and say 'fuck it' as is so fashionable with my generation. Fuck, I think that I gave up God and replaced it with philosophy, which is essentially the same thing. And now I'm reeling at philosophy, angry at having discovered its tendency to continously point back to God, with subtlety and patience and occasional urgency. All philosophy speaks of a certain kind of 'faith.' I have a deterministic streak. Which is why, when I looked at you that day and I felt something very strong, I knew you were important to me, and I still feel that way. And no, I don't want to give this up. Shit sticks with me, people stick with me. This is my curse and blessing. I feel lonely most of the time because I miss everybody, always. I miss that boy I punched on the school yard in kindergarten and later kissed. I miss the person who taught me how to smoke. I miss God sometimes.

I spent this evening curled up on the floor infront of the fireplace. It is getting cold here. Talking to my brother about his eventful sex life, laughing at and with my Mother, watching home renovation shows, reading Robert Duncan. Family is all I have and all I want to be surrounded with right now.

Movies.

Lots of people ask me why I take cinema so seriously, why I can't "let myself be entertained" and chill out. Zizek says something in part 3 of "A Pervert's Guide to Cinema" that is so perfect.

"Our fundamental delusion today is not to believe in what is only a fiction, to take fictions too seriously. It's, on the contrary, not to take fictions seriously enough. You think it's just a game? It's reality. It's more real than it appears to you. For example, people who play video games, they adopt a screen persona of a sadist, rapist, whatever. The idea is, in reality I'm a weak person, so in order to supplement my real life weakness, I adopt the false image of a strong, sexually promiscuous person, and so on and so on. So this would be the naïve reading. But what if we read it in the opposite way? That this strong, brutal rapist, whatever, identity is my true self. In the sense that this is the psychic truth of myself and that in real life, because of social constraints and so on, I'm not able to enact it. So that, precisely because I think it's only a game, it's only a persona, a self-image I adopt in virtual space, I can be there much more truthfully. I can enact there an identity which is much closer to my true self."

Images are very very important. Watching a movie is like re-experiencing the mirror stage over and over: the formation of primary identifications, the literal and metaphorical articulation of the symbolic and imaginary registers in opposition to one another, the projection of Self onto a screen and the introjection of the imago. The images that seem harmless are actually the ones we should pay most attention to; the 'easy' entertainment that doesn't require any sort of conscious deciphering is potentially dangerous. Not because the content of these images is any more or less revealing or complicated, but due to the way we approach them. So, yeah, I refuse to believe that anything should be easy. That images can be easy and opaque. I want to condition myself to see as clearly as possible.

So the quote brings up a lot of problematic issues for me. The cause and effect relationship between the producer and product. In the case of the cinematic apparatus, which is which? This dichotomy exemplifies the illusion of the Subject-Other relation in general: neither one is entirely stable or grounded in either position. Thus, the instability of the mirror image - we form an identity based on the stability of an image reflected on a screen before us, but that image is really only the distorted and idealized vision of our own 'reality' - the 'reality' is formed from a fiction and the fiction is simultaneously a reflection of that inevitably fractured and inconsistent Self.

Where do these cinematic tropes develop? The fact that we take certain motifs and character types for granted tells us about ourselves and our vision of 'who we are.' Why is a lame stock comedy even entertaining unless we can form identifications with the characters on some level? Do we all want to identify with these characters? Is this, as Zizek says, a form of enacting or experiencing an identity much closer to the 'truth' because we can't submit to the excesses of cariacture in reality as a result of social constraints? And what does that say about us, taking into consideration the stock characters we choose to identify with and indirectly produce and reproduce in popular films?

Cinema is important because it is like a threshold between the imaginary and the symbolic registers, or, in any case, the closest we can get to a threshold. Zizek: "Illusion persists. There is something real in the illusion, more real than in the reality behind it." Oi. Watch "A Pervert's Guide to Cinema" if you have not, I think my brain short-circuited due to the sheer amount of amazing going on.

I'm probably in love with him. Zizek, that is.

I watched Pasolini's 120 Days of Sodom (Salo) last week. The full effect of the film didn't really hit me until last night, while watching The Last House on the Left. If you've watched both, you'll understand, I think.

LHotL - torture porn, very short shots, 'documentary' style, unstable cinematography, washed out sepia colour tone, the illusion of a narrative that functions to justify the viewer's investment, the drawn-out high-intensity emotion that reeks of melodrama and only evokes indifference, inane and trite dialogue that exposes 1) the importance of dialogue 2) the complete insufficiency of dialogue in film, stock characters, typical score. The scary part for me in watching movies like this is that I feel nothing while watching a girl brutally raped and her friend sexually assaulted and murdered. I don't like watching rape scenes in film because I don't want to be confronted with the brutual reality of my own indifference to that image. I don't like the games that the director plays on the viewer: we're all aware that we're watching this for entertainment, that we obviously enjoy on some fucked-up level watching people die simulated brutal deaths. And the directors add some stupid shit like an upper-class family with a dead kid and marital problems to ease our minds and soothe us into thinking we watch because its a story that we are invested in with characters and real people who somehow overcome their suffering. We may as well cut out all of that shit and just be honest with ourselves. We just want to watch people suffer. We want to see girls victimized and see the rich white people overcome their complacency and seek revenge. It's a sadomasochistic viewing experience; we punish ourselves for the desire to see these acts played out for us by following through with it and feeling nothing, not horror or enjoyment or anything but a numb void. And what the characters say means little to nothing. The dialogue doesn't really change our experience of the film at all. The voice is on mute, words are nothing, just glossed over decoration necessary but not vital in terms of the viewing experience. We're here for the images and movies like this expose the degree to which dialogue is superfluous in most popular films. I think most people could watch Transformers 2 with no dialogue and still enjoy the movie.

Salo - long, painfully drawn out shots, very stable cinematography, mainly wide and mid shots, high attention to framing and composition, an absurd score that contrasted the content of the screen images, a degree of surreality, severe emotional disconnect, almost like an aloof indifference of the camera in relation to the action, deliberate dialogue consisting mainly of pornographic stories and demands or rules given to the victims, a lack of a typical narrative structure in that there is no introduction that cushions our perspective of the violence - it starts immediately. The characters are blank slates with no identity except as archetypes - but no one is pretending otherwise. This includes the director, the actors, and thus, as a viewer, we can't form these connections because they are not provided and manufactured for us. We remain suspended at the entrance to the image, struggling for something 'human' within the narrative, wanting a flimsy security blanket to maintain some degree of illusory moral security. This film forced me to feel uncomfortable with my position as 'audience.' The film involves you while remaining disengaged, it pushes you into the events; you are victimized by your own curiosity, while the camera maintains a particular distance from the characters and the horrific acts going on. So basically, this film does the opposite of what typical, contemporary 'horror' films do. I could write about this film forever, it is so fascinating and has had such an intense impact on me.

I've been writing a lot recently but I don't feel comfortable on the interwebs at the moment. I feel like writing for a blog conditions my creative process in a negative way. Like I assume I am writing for an audience immediately, which is usually a bad way for me to start.

I am so so happy with my life. The last few weeks have been insane with new experiences people images and ideas. And a new year begins.

"I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess."
-Donna Haraway

"If you don't understand, so much the better, that will give you the opportunity to explain."
-Jacques Lacan, XX The function of the written

I am feeling a little bit better these past few days. It's amazing what a day of wine, relaxation and shitty tv can do for a person's mental health. Plus, I think I forgot my meds for a good few days. I tend to forget things like that and then go crazy.

I am trying to reconcile myself with Lacan's belief that woman is 'not-whole,' that we cannot speak of woman in language so it is necessary to cross her out (literally, he crosses out the word woman a lot of the time). Woman is the empty signifier that structures the jouissance of the male. She is a signifier of nothing, there is no content, only a framework by which the signifier 'male' is constructed.

As such, the sexual relationship is impossible for Lacan. Men seek the 'object' of jouissance, but in the actual relation of love, of physical love, they are stopped short. Phallic jouissance necessitates fusion with the object but when this occurs, the woman 'castrates' the male (according to pyschoanalysis). So there is always that limit reached by the male, and really no place at all for female jouissance within a phallocentric, symbolic discourse whatsoever. The woman only has access to jouissance (which, according to Freud, is always masculine, because libidinal energy is always masculine) when mediated through the male, or through a child.

But then, ta-da, Lacan brings in this notion of an "extra" jouissance, only capable for women. There is always a limit, in which women refuse to participate in the game of phallocentric jouissance. A holding-back, so to speak, that prevents full submersion within the discourse. As a result, this jouissance cannot be articulated. It cannot be articulated in language, just as the woman has no place within language except as Other, and as such, doesn't exist, making "sexual relationship impossible."

But in order to cover his ass, Lacan relates this "extra" feminine jouissance to a notion of God. He can't just say that 'woman' doesn't exist without making up some bullshit theory that doesn't make him look like a complete ass. So, he mystifies it. Because apparently, if men can't understand female sexuality or find a place for it within their discourse (heaven forbid your reconstitute it or re-think its foundations), then there is no choice but to put female sexuality behind a "screen" of mysticism and divinity that pretends to relegate to women some privledged place close to God and somehow puts them 'above' language and the paltry discourses of tradition. Unfortunately, positioning women behind this screen (because men like Lacan, self-admittedly can't understand female sexuality) is just another way of idealizing femininity and placing female jouissance within the framework of some patriarchal male deity (literal or not, the 'Divine' is always masculine). It's basically like shoving woman behind a veil and then worshipping her from the other side as something unknowable. Ironically, Lacan shifts back and forth between glorifying this 'extra,' 'unknowable' jouissance and saying that it doesn't exist, and sometimes goes so far as to say that women are holding back, they are not "telling us everything." Fuck, yo. How the fuck can he blame women for 'not telling him everything' if, after all, according to him, there is no way to even communicate and speak female desire? Isn't this a fault of your discourse?

The annoying thing is, even Irigaray positions female sexuality somewhere within 'the divine.' She thinks women need to accept their corporeal nature and sexual difference, but also spouts off about how women must recognize the "divinity of their sexuality."

Even fucking Haraway talks about female sexuality as something "divine, close to God."

What the fuck are we doing here?
There is no place for female sexuality except as pure archaic, primitive body, or, as sexual beings somehow related to 'the divine'?
I don't want to be divine. There is nothing special or divine about female sexuality, any more than for men. Thinking of my sexual identity as something that brings me closer to 'the divine' makes me want to throw up, actually.

Come on, people.
I love you, but...come on.

(I'm pretty sure maybe 1 person will read this whole post. Thanks if you did.)

Also, the image above is by Leonardo daVinci. Need I explain and rant about its portrayal of sexuality? Jacqueline Rose already did this for me.

One of my philosophy seminars is called "Topics in Contemporary Philosophy." This is a vague title. The course deals with social constructivism, relativism, and deliberation, plus the political effects of these issues. The professor is a tall, broad English man who says things like "we English are real toppers" (whatever that means) and "imagine if I came to class naked one day. This would be a transgression of unspoken social rules. Imagine if I came to class wearing a ladies dress. You would probably think I was gender-fucking but I could probably get away with it." I like him, his sardonic jokes and straight delivery, the way he pauses to think about things said. He also makes snide jokes about first year undergrads and most people laugh heartily in a self-righteous and pretentious manner, poking each other in the ribs, sharing the secret of our obvious superiority. Fuuuuck.

Good things have been happening today. I feel pleased with life. I am thinking about social constructivism and Wittgenstein.

Most people associate social/moral constructivism with increased freedom. If nothing is objectively or universally true, then we are free to construct our own realities, engage in whatever language game we choose, play within discourses. Social constructivism is linked to relativism in that it seems to be a justification for relativism. "If this way of seeing the world is contingent on a particular socio-historical context, I am justified in believing that all knowledge is relative." But I disagree. The fact that "reality" is socially constructed limits us. According to Wittgenstein, language games that we unconsciously partake in are a "form of life." Language games are not free discourses, they create limits and structures within which discourse is possible (and only within this structure). Form implies limits, and language creates limits. So the games propagated by language or institutions are manipulated and in flux, yes, but this does not mean we are not constrained within the game as players who have learned rules and have a stake in maintaining them. We are either feeding into already-existing sources of power that are invested in enforcing the already-existing system, or we subvert this system in order to establish or support new sources or forms of power. We create systems in order to delineate 'us' from 'them;' to control what it means to be 'human,' even. And these games, like the multi-faceted, layered city Wittgenstein describes, do not allow us the freedom (and tyranny) of relativism. Why and how did language develop the way it did? Think of the infinite possibilities and alternatives that could have developed and think of the various forms of power that have manipulated the way that we speak, communicate, and thus, live in the world. I'm reminded of that kid in White Noise who is mute but cries all the time. Crying is the closest we have to a universal language, really, in terms of sound. There is a girl crying outside my window, big, weepy sobs. A man is trying to talk to her and she doesn't want to go with him. He sounds intimidating. She sounds desperate, animal.

Rambling and shit.

I really dislike a lot of words, they leave a bad taste in my mouth, or mind, or whatever.

God Feminist Postmodern Modernity Woman Man Poem Lover Friend Addiction Love Sex

All the big ones, really. I would like to throw out language so that I can create new words or sounds for these things, and maybe redeem them.

Wittgenstein talks about logical propositions, or assumptions, that underlie discourses. These logical propositions are constructions of language, if we start to doubt them, we would be undermining rationality, and undermining language. These foundations are like the river bed, discourse flows on top of this foundation, and the river bed slowly changes over time. The riverbed - language and the way it constructs meaning - changes over time due to the pressure of the water, but it is a slow process. And as the river bed changes, the direction and nature of our thought changes.

For Lacan, language is the only way we become social subjects, language enables the transition from the imaginary into the symbolic. The articulation of the 'I' is a social movement, and hence a linguistic movement. So if we throw out language, which is social because of its universability, then we can never really become a true 'Subject.' And the fucked up shit is that language is the only way to live with others and articulate the self as subject but it is also what alienates us from others and our own desires.

Dismissing language altogether is solipsistic. But restructuring it is daunting. In the words of my favourite prof, we can try to restructure language but we're really just moving around the same furniture in the same room. Does the meaning really change? I guess I would say yes, that the shift in emphasis from content to form results in new meaning. But...not really? I'm not sure. And how does language, its subjectivity or lack thereof, relate to intersubjectivity between individuals, and on a grander scale, between cultures that use different languages? Translation is hard enough between two people speaking the same language, never mind different languages.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that language is so necessary and lovely at times but it also turns around and fucks you in the ass when you least expect it. He's my prison guard and I give him free blow jobs all the time. Because language is definitely a man.

All of this is motivated by my reading of Luce Irigaray. She brings gender into the equation. Interesting shit. I still need to wrap my mind around it.

On a lighter note, things that have made my day a happy one:

great sex
little italy and college street on a sunny weekday morning
marvelous italian bakery full of bitter, dignified old women
strawberry custard tarts and fresh chocolate croissants
shooting zombies (left 4 dead...video game splendour)
margaret christakos (top 5 poets)
of montreal (sunlandic twins)

quote of the day:
"we made love like a pair of black wizards, you freed me from the past, you fucked the suburbs out of me"
-Kevin Barnes

The world is an old canvas painted over many times.

I watched American Psycho again. I feel really violent after watching it. Predictably, I think of Freud; the fine construct of the ego as an overlay that pushes down a surplus of aggression. Sex is essentially violent, just as violence is essentially an expression of love. And love is really just a construct of the libido that allows us to fulfill our drives in a socially acceptable way. Or is it? Freud thinks so. Who gives a shit, right? What the fuck do I think? Part of being a critical thinker is to wade through the bullshit and decide what is good or bad, valid or invalid. But these are just value judgements. This is an entirely subjective process. It comes down to: what is useful for me? Is this item of knowledge going to reinforce what I want to believe about myself and my relationships and everything outside of me or is it going to challenge my assumptions? Freud makes me want to throw myself in front of a subway car due to the meaninglessness of all existence. Not really. Sometimes.

I think it is significant that Patrick Bateman’s character is defined as a “lack.”

Humans are like eggs. Our insides covered by protective, translucent shells. These shells are prone to cracking under pressure. Often very little pressure is required to instigate a break. The surface splits open and the yolk drips out. The yolk is unfertilized, suspended in fluid. Unrealized potential. Identities leak out of shells, exposed, vulnerable against hot pavement. Frying like eggs in a pan. Individuals as breakfast.

We are only fit for consumption. We are commodities bred of psycho-analysis, post-modern fragmentation, post-structuralism, post-, post-, post-. I identify with John Lennon when he sings “everybody’s talking about this-ism, that-ism, ism ism ism” and the fucking fatigue all this shit produces. I feel so heavy and infected by all this theory, turning me into a pretentious intellectual fuck. At what point does knowledge become completely destructive rather than productive? Universities are telling us to become unique, original thinkers but we’re all learning the same shit, we’re all products of the same intellectual movements, we’re all just unoriginal, pretentious fucks. I try really hard not to be self-deprecating or pretentious. I’m failing on both accounts.

Does somebody want to move to the country with me and start a farm? This is a fantasy of mine.


I like when things like this happen, like a chain:

First of all there was a third sex, the androgynous, combining the two, with four arms and legs, and the rest to match. Men had become very strong, and troublesome to the Olympian gods, yet they could not afford to annihilate them; so Zeus resolved to cut them in half to humble them. He declared that they shall walk upright on two legs, but each forever desiring his other half, so they will come together, and throwing their arms about one another, be entwined in mutual embraces, longing to grow into one. Each of us when separated is always looking for his other half.

-Plato, “Symposium”

It seemed that our two natures blent
Into a sphere from youthful sympathy,
Or else, to alter Plato's parable,
Into the yolk and white of the one shell.

-Yeats, “Among School Children”

Somewhat disturbing is the sound of birds singing
when you know you don't deserve it
You’re not here today
and I feel just like an empty eggshell,
My yoke is heavy.

-Daniel Johnston, “My Yoke is Heavy”




Be happy, y’all.
xo

My shitty brain leaking shitty thoughts.

I am the perpetual melancholiac
mourning prematurely severed object cathexes
and lack of sleep
hungry cats on windowsills
watching the rain
devour nothing like
humans do

I walk through glass
holding a bright room together
convening words
stab my face
bouncing around boxes
like the screen-saver
of a paused life

I escape
pounded by the heaviness
of a thick foggy night
ripped apart
by orange street lights
and subway trains.
the city is colonized by light sources.

I blame the buses:
give me back my darkness!

aureoles surround your stoned faces
under fluorescent lights.
there is light in your hands
that denies
the empty imago.
Your face is a Gestalt.

I'll be the Innenwelt,
if you be the Umwelt
I'll show you mine
if you show me yours
wink wink

Sometimes I think my body is a lie.

These pictures remind me of my old bachelor apartment. Perpetually full of smoke and sunlight. Hello Hands owns these photos.

I wrote in a notebook years ago that when an intimate relationship ends, we must formulate a new self not defined in relation to that person who is now absent. All of these selves are stacked against one another, each one linked to a particular person, a particular relationship. The result is a compound of selves, some in conflict, all of which form a discordant unity that is defined by the sum of its parts.

Then I read Lacan: “The ego is constructed like an onion, one could peel it, and discover the successive identifications which have constituted it.” Every time the Subject projects its desire into the Other, every time the Subject seeks to define himself in relation to the Other, that Other is taken in to the Self via an identification. But in the process, the Other loses its potency and becomes an empty signifier. This dialectic is not a choice, according to these dead rich white dudes.

So, the Self is formulated in relation to a lack. No objects can ever fulfill us, there is no way all the libidinal energy of the id can be exhausted in the symbolic realm, because this essentially violent energy is filtered into socially acceptable ‘wants.’ The result is a mistranslation of desire that can never be satisfied. The result is that we seek to fill this lack and each identification results in the construction of the ego. The ego is built through relationship with the Other, through this attempt to seek out what we lack, this attempt to locate ourselves in something external to us. But it’s a power struggle that is at once a negation and an affirmation…sublation.

And then Freud says that when a loved one is removed from us, we descend into melancholia, which is a process of introjecting the loved object, so that they are preserved within us. We take the lost object inside of us. And as such, our Self is formed through loss, through these introjections and identifications. The ego becomes empty when we lose someone, due to the dialectic of Self-Other, and so in order to persist as Self we bring the Other inside of us and carry on this dialectic internally. This conflict takes place unconsciously and only appears symptomatically as melancholia.

So what about the people we pass every day and project our desires onto? The ‘objects’ we covet/fuck/reject/love/hate, those people we talk to or don't but connect with on some fucked up level? Do they become a part of us, too? When I dismiss the man on the subway but feel a loss at having not talked to him, do I take in this lost object, does he become a part of me? Freud would say no, these projections and identifications are not significant enough. But what if they are?

Then I am a mess of identities swimming inside my head. Everyone I have ever looked at is still a part of me. The immensity of this gives me vertigo. Nothing and everything is insignificant.

Missed connections don’t frighten me as much as the loss of connections. Sitting beside people and looking into the eyes of men who once loved me like we’ve never hit one another, like we never touched each others bodies, like we didn’t share things, like I don’t know exactly what your body looks like naked. I want to rip open people’s brains. Let’s tell secrets all the time. I want to be wrapped up in strangers bodies.

I'm afraid of the dark unless I'm in a forest.
I'm afraid of the noises televisions make on mute in dark empty rooms.
I faked an orgasm only once. I felt inadequate and I didn't want to make you feel that way, too.
I bought a pumpkin for Halloween that is now rotting on my kitchen table. It's hard for me to throw out colourful things. I love observing decay. I have started to document the process with pictures.
I may be going on a mini road trip in a few weeks. I must fix my SLR so that I can finally take good photos again.

I'm going back to sleep.



"Life is a process of taking away"

Exploding Head Movie.

I feel uncomfortable associating people with things and sounds. And things with people. I think it's unfair to the people, and unfair to the objects.

My favourite prof, sexy Loebel, was comparing Descartes' and Hegel's versions of the Self in relation to Other. He described Hegel's Self as a cubed prison; portions of the Other, of alterity, are embedded in the walls. The construct of the Self cannot exist without the Other encased within it as an essential component of its form. Yet we try to pretend that the Other does not exist within us. And occasionally, we hear the Other screaming at us, hidden from sight within the walls.

He said that this is the root of paranoia and anxiety, when we hear these noises and are forced to confront the fact that the Other is a part of us. We are not safe and self-contained within this prison of Self, although our whole existence is occupied with perpetuating this illusion. The Self is a prison of our own construction that simultaneously limits and preserves us. He said the entire pharmaceutical industry is based on this collective desire to keep the Other at bay, separate from the Self we construct. He also said that paranoia is pure consciousness, not limited by self-consciousness. Everything comes at us, and we are unable to filter what is harmful to the construct of Self. Self-consciousness is awareness of consciousness. Consciousness is purely receptive, not reflexive. When we are reflexive, this is when the editing occurs, we start to monitor. We can choose what to believe or what not to believe about ourselves and other people, we can start forming an identity. But this identity is a fiction. We attempt uniformity of self, when in reality we are a multiplicity. We contain multitudes. Who said that? Walt Whitman. Is there any reason to feel afraid?

Anyways. This image has been floating in my head since yesterday's lecture. And I dreamed that I was trapped in a cube with a former lover. The walls were covered in little drawers. The cube would rotate and we were forced to adjust our bodies accordingly. The drawers would all slide open as the sides moved and the objects they contained fell on us. There were so many different things, covering our bodies, filling the cube. In one drawer there were tiny pieces of glass that got stuck on the top of my feet, and I picked each one out and ate it. The cuts made a pattern that I found beautiful. I eventually escaped. I cried because I knew the man never would.

This dream is a combination of that Hegel analogy and this ridiculously awesome but poorly-acted pseudo philosophical movie called The Cube. My psyche works in ridiculously obvious ways. At least I'm not dreaming about luggage that is too heavy for me to carry alone anymore. That went on for three months. Ha.

My dreams are the only thing that hinder happiness. It always takes me a few hours to recover, and usually they set the tone of my day. Anyone who has ever slept/napped with me knows this.

"And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel'd universe,
And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed
before a million universes."

"This hour I tell things in confidence,
I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you."

Bon soir, lovers.

xo

Hegel and deBeauvoir are hugging and punching each other in my head.

My university has been on strike for the past 3 months, but it looks like this conflict will be “resolved” (aka: the concerns of the union and everything they have been fighting for will be dismissed by the government with a back-to-work legislation). The only thing holding them back is the good old NDP party. The NDP is protecting me from responsibility. So basically, the pleasure reads have been set aside and I am back to writing seminar presentations and papers.

I re-read part two of Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy yesterday on the subway, the quintessential post-modern novel. Part two is called "Ghosts." This is one theory I extracted from the relationship between a private eye named Blue and the man (Black) he is commissioned to follow.

Blue first comes to Black in disguise. At this point, Blue comes to Black as Other. At this point, Blue sees Black as Other and Black sees Blue as Other. When Blue comes to Black without a disguise, he comes to Black as Subject. But when we confront another individual as Subject, our initial response is to reduce them to Other. We seek to negate their Subjecthood. So Blue goes to Black. Blue’s desire to kill Black is implied. In order to remain a Subject, he must kill that which is in opposition, that which threatens to transform him to Other. But when he confronts Black, Black seeks the same thing. They are both Subjects. There is conflict. Blue kills Black, Black is reduced to Object again; Black is negated, the conflict is neutralized. But as a result, Blue ceases to be. Because we are only Subjects when defined in relation to the Other. We only exist in opposition, in conflict with what we are not. This tension, regardless of how destructive it can be, forms a unity that affirms both individuals through conflict. When the Other is killed, Blue fades out of the picture. The story ends, because it cannot continue without this tension; we cannot exist in isolation. Individuals cannot live as islands. We cannot exist without relationship, because it makes us real. And in Auster’s world, this metaphysical fact becomes quite literal. With no other character to define himself against, Blue ceases to be.

We are all afraid of confronting the Other as Subject. Because in some way we recognize that one of us will be negated. One of us will fade a little bit; a power struggle will take place. It is no wonder relationships rarely work. We are all trying to relate to someone as Subject, yet the nature of relationship requires tension between a Self and Other. This dynamic is clarified by the observation that in most relationships, clear roles are defined. One is dominant, the other is submissive. Active/Passive. And when these roles are ambiguous, shitloads of conflict seems to ensue. It seems to me that the only relationships that really work are the ones in which this dynamic is never challenged. People who can be happy with one role or the other, which is perhaps a sort of intelligence I will never know. It is frightening to come to someone as Subject, and have the courage to accept them as Subject. It is a delicate, difficult balancing act.

My brain feels sticky and detached from my body, like a marble floating around in my head, bouncing freely and joyfully against my skull.

Illustration by Josh Cochran. This morning, I feel like that woman.