On Wed, 24 Oct 2012, Maria Damon wrote:
Dear all,
Alan, Peter, thanks for your comments. I'm in a slightly awkward position of
being in MLA-DAOC meetings through Friday, so my ability to really post with
an appropriate fullness of attention is somewhat compromised right now.
Peter, this is really powerful. Biting the hand that feeds one?that is, ones
own hand?seems an angry rejection of a life that has betrayed one?an
appropriate response to an overwhelming loss.
Alan can you say more about what you mean by the "ultimate collapse" in
relation to the "ultimate risk/control of the body by the self"? there seems
to be a tension between these two concepts, control and collapse.
The word "smart," btw, also is related to "mord," with the sharpness of
intelligence apparently a very late development in the word's history
compared to the sharpness of stinging or other pain.
Is intelligence a kind of suffering, pain and death?
"Si on sait tout, c'est la mort."
I think of ultimate control as leading (as in category theory, which I'm
trying now to understand) to a _terminal object,_ which absorbs everything
- cutting is among many other relevant things, an exerting of control over
the body, but it also reduces the body to a cipher; catatonia is another
example. I knew an anorectic artist years ago who was going with someone
incredibly wealthy; she said that her greatest joy was to have him take
her to an expensive restaurant; she'd then go into the restaurant bathroom
and vomit everything up; this was control; she was also on heroin; this
was cipher. Vito's piece demarcated and imagined the control-space of the
mouth on the body; it also reduced the body to meat with an uncanny
relationship to eating.
On a light note, MLA - I was invited years ago to speak in San Francisco -
they - someone - flew me out. I couldn't relate to anyone there - so I
ended up staying up to 3-4 am - roaming around the meeting rooms and
gathering up the graffitied napkins - I felt I was a ghost haunting the
conference. I felt I didn't belong - the control was in taking the rooms
over in the night - the cipher was in the non-entity I felt and knew I was
at the event. So it veered between 0 and 1 or 1 and 0 or null and non-null
- but there was also incredible pleasure in the roaming - as there may be
in cutting as well.
To return the question - does knowledge bring pain? Are they en/tranced?
- Alan
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