Re: [-empyre-] creative powerlessness, expressive violence, performance
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Dear Pier: The violence of communication/language: The subject is constituted by language and other forms of communication. This is why speech acts and other forms of communication are not only performative in the sense of Austin, they do not only create social facts, they have a direct impact on the subject. Therefore language is powerful, but it can also be violent, it can hurt. It can deprive the subject from its place, it can rob it the possibility to express its life. Judith Butler’s book on hate speech gives a good first idea about this. Primo Levi remembers as one of the first experiences after his deportation to the Concentration and Extermination Camp Auschwitz that he opened the window of the barack to break an icicle. He was thirsty. Immediately a watchman appeared and snatched the icicle out of his hand. „‚Warum - Why“, did I ask in my simple German. ‚Hier ist kein Warum - Here is no why/reason‘‚ he answered and pushed me away.“ Language can be violent by depriving the other from what is his cultural ground: f.e. that there is always a reason. The language of antisemitism in Germany was violent. But there was something perhaps even worse than the hate speech of insult and abuse: the language that organized the attempt of extermination. This language actually killed. It killed by denying and organizing the crime at the same time. Look and listen to Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah, the documents the historian Raul Hilberg is analyzing in this film, or, especially, the long conversation that Lanzmann has with Franz Suchomel, SS-officer in Treblinka. The communication of violence: To understand the dynamics of (political) violence it is crucial to see that (political) violence is always staged, an act of communication not necessarily with the direct victim but with the third part. The message can be different, depending on the relation the witness has to the victim and the perpetrator. Killing someone in front of a videocamera is a performative act. All sorts of terrorism are speech acts addressed to the witnesses. Catharsis: I really would like to know how you understand the mechanism of catharsis and if you think performance art can be part of catharsis. As long as I have no idea how catharsis works I would prefer to speak of re-enactment or other forms of confrontation with violence that happened in the past. Reinhold Am 17.11.2014 um 19:19 schrieb PierMartonGmail piermar...@gmail.com: --empyre- soft-skinned space-- In my eyes, Peter Kassig’s beheading yesterday makes the topic of powerlessness more salient and urgent. The expressions “my heart goes out to… or RIP, as heartfelt as they are, represent easy ways to say something (the phatic function? cf. below) Speaking of “inhumanity” does the same. Speaking of the opposite of passivity - which is not powerlessness (was it Jon who brought up “creative powerlessness?) - I would recommend a film I saw yesterday about, Alaa Basatneh, a 19 year old US/Syrian woman who is coordinating the resistance from Chicago: — http://www.chicagogirlfilm.com/ _ In response to an earlier post: Thank you to Reinhold Görling for: - stating how slowly the “I” emerges - a vital element to our being able to approach otherness (animals, trees, you name it - those that are not part of our UNIverse) - bringing up re-enactment (in TRCs, Act of Killing) - pure catharsis. - quoting Rosselini (“université du vol et de l’assassinat”) - I often speak myself of the “eduCUSHIONal” system - and that fiery text by Godard that shows how messy it is to try to extirpate ourselves from where we reside. It will be my time to be “quite direct” - while among the left it is generally accepted that national liberation struggles often take the path of violence to be heard, or as my brother recently wrote: The only time I´ve found it good to wave a flag is when someone else is stepping on it.” ** As I consider my grandmother’s death in a gas chamber, it is impossible for me to approach the language of violence . Violence and annihilation as languages? My father was involved in the WWII resistance but it happened to be one without standard weapons: he hid a German deserter, made flyers, false papers… Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel” - Samuel Johnson - what about weaponry? Are we only working with weapons of the spirit, we the “cultural workers”? By asking these questions, I am only asking for a certain complexity. And to respond to jon (below), and, as the expression goes, opening a can of worms, while aware of Shannon’s communication model (and having enjoyed teaching Jakobson’s overlapping structure - phatic….), I wonder whether, outside of the sciences, any solid communication ever takes place. When we say “blue we mean different things
[-empyre-] Empathy, film, re-enactment
--empyre- soft-skinned space-- Hallo, sorry for being very occupied during the week and responding therefore with delay: Empathy: I often have the impression that discussions about empathy are running in the wrong direction. All living being is open, in constant exchange with the world, with persons, other species and things around, with what is his Umwelt or his living-world. A newborn is in an extremely intense exchange with his environment. Just read what Daniel Stern 1985 wrote in his „The Interpersonal World of the Infant“ about the vitality affects: Long before there is any experience of an „I“, there is an intense communication of forms of feeling, of affects taking place. Or to say it in a more philosophical way: The „I“ always comes late, the encounter with the other always already has taken place before the „I“ notices it. This feeling of being addressed by the other, of being affected therefore is never free of a certain uncanniness. These points of encounter with the other are always already present, inside of me, passive synthesizes. The „I“ that comes late - in the history of the individual development as well as in every daily encounter - reacts to this, tolerating it, loving it, rejecting it. Violence, I assume, has always to do with this rejection. It tries to denial the presence of the other. There are probably two dynamics that can be been interwoven but can determine the process in a different manner: there can be a kind of violence that is to be understand as a way to deny the vague presence of the other. This is a violence that cannot be „explained“, it tries to answer to a diffuse feeling of an uncanny presence of something unknown. And there is the violence that can be understood with the psychoanalytic concept of identification and projection. This violence has a kind of inner representation of something that one tries to deny. In racisms the second form often is dominant. In the chapter on anti-semitism in their „Dialectics of Enlightenment“ Horkheimer/Adorno make clear that often hatred is accompanied by a mimetic play to imitate the other. (Taussig quotes this in his „Mimesis and Alterity“). Empathy then is giving room for the other inside me, yes, but for the other who already has touched me. Loss of empathy on the other hand is a dissociative process. I still believe that art has the power to weaken dissociative processes - not by confronting me with what I already have seen and want to denial. If there is such a power it comes from shifting the modes of perception, shifting it’s automatism. What we consciously know about our constant exchange with our environment is just a small part of what is this multifold relationship. It is constructed by automatisms and dissociations, changing in time and always determined by media: the little toy the infant plays with and is played by it (Freud’s grandson playing fort-da), the theatre, the film, this space we are in talking right now. Film turns the men’s alienation to its environment productive, that’s the key thought of Walter Benjamin’s „The Work of Art“. Pier Marton already mentioned Joshua Oppenheimer’s film „The Act of Killing“. Two months ago a published a book (in German) about „Scenes of violence. Film and Torture from Rossellini to Bigelow“. Roberto Rossellini’s „Roma città aperta“ is the first film, Oppenheimer „The Act of Killing“ is the last film I’m talking about. Perhaps both films mark a period of filmmaking. Rossellini’s film was key to the emergence of Italian Neorealism and to its grounding question: Is film able to help to reconstruct social and empathetic relationships. And the key scene to put this question was the 16 minutes long torture scene near the end of the film. Rossellini is completely conscious about torture being an act that always takes place before a third part. He offers these images of violence to the spectator, the torturers, the bystanders, the ignorant: in the room or in the threshold that is the threshold to the torture chamber as well as the threshold of the cinema. There is a lot of hope in this film but Rossellini also shows how easy it is to denial what one has seen. And Oppenheimer’s piece confronts us with exactly the fact that film can be a means that helps to denial what one does and that even offers methods to kill. Rossellini wrote in the 70ties about his fear that cinema „est transformé en université du vol et de l’assassinat“. For Anwar Kongo, Herman Koto and others that formed a death squad during the massacres in Indonesia in 1965/66 - when between 500 000 Thousand and 2 Million people were killed after the General Suharto’s putsch (which was supported by the USA and other Western States): film was their university. And 40 years later they try to make a family film out of it. Oppenheimer worked for (I think) eight years with them, a long time; but this documentary shows that step by step
Re: [-empyre-] ethology?
--empyre- soft-skinned space-- Dear Alan, it’s always problematic to argue that there is a difference between human beings and other species. The longer one looks at it the smaller the difference become. But I think the use of violence is in fact quite different. It is true that violence between animals often has a kind of theatrical or performative element. What decides a fight is not always being strong: to intimidate the rival is crucial. But I doubt that torture can be found between animals: the object of torture is torture, George Orwell wrote this in his Nineteen Eight-Four. The object of torture is not to intimidate the other but to traumatize the victim, to traumatize the victim’s psyche. And the problem seems to be that this is taking place on the basis of a kind of split: a torturer often develops quite an intense relation to the victim and a quite complex knowledge of his psyche. Is this empathy? Probably yes. Empathy is no guaranty against cruelty. It never was. Shakespeare made it already very clear. From Titus Andronicus till Othello: who is more conscious about the singular psyche of the other thanShakespeare’s cruel heroes? Reinhold Am 14.11.2014 um 20:54 schrieb Alan Sondheim sondh...@panix.com: --empyre- soft-skinned space-- I read with great interest, Reinhold's post; he states All living being is open, in constant exchange with the world, with persons, other species and things around, with what is his Umwelt or his living-world. A newborn is in an extremely intense exchange with his environment. Just read what Daniel Stern 1985 wrote in his ?The Interpersonal World of the Infant? about the vitality affects: Long before there is any experience of an ?I?, there is an intense communication of forms of feeling, of affects taking place. Or to say it in a more philosophical way: The ?I? always comes late, the encounter with the other always already has taken place before the ?I? notices it. I then read the news: US led strikes hit Islamic State, al-Qaida-linked group in Syria Jerusalem Post - 57 minutes ago WASHINGTON - US-led air strikes hit 10 units of Islamic State fighters in Syria in recent days, as well as militants with the al-Qaida-linked Khorasan Group, US Central Command said in a statement on Friday. Islamic State sets sights on Saudi Arabia BBC News - 20 minutes ago In a 17-minute audio message, purportedly from its elusive leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the group sets its sights firmly on Saudi Arabia, birthplace of Islam and the world's largest oil producer and exporter. Militants seize hometown of kidnapped schoolgirls Businessweek - 1 hour ago MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (AP) - Islamic extremists in Nigeria have seized Chibok, forcing thousands of people to flee the town where insurgents kidnapped nearly 300 schoolgirls in April, a local official said Friday. Student Found Unconscious at WVU Fraternity Dies ABC News - 19 minutes ago A West Virginia University student found unconscious and not breathing at a fraternity house died Friday, a day after the school ordered a halt to all activities at fraternities and sororities, officials said. Capital Wired Male Infanticide -- Male Mammals Kill Rival Babies To Endure Own Offspring Capital Wired - 18 minutes ago When it comes to the animal kingdom, it's the survival of the fittest and his offspring. To endure their own offspring, some mammals kills the babies of the rivals. Bullying Increases Mating Prospects For Male Chimpanzees [STUDY] ValueWalk - 45 minutes ago A 17-year study of chimpanzees in Tanzania reports that bullying may be of benefit to males of the group. More specifically, males that exhibited long-term aggressive behavior towards females, up to and including physical assaults, significantly increased. - And I wonder, why isn't sociobiology on the table here? It seems to me that violence is ingrained in being-human; although there are exceptions, most of human history seems bathed in blood. For me, part of the question does involve empathy - how can we so identify with the other, that the torture stops? And almost everything I've read, from Amery through Scarry through the Nuremberg War trial transcripts, presents against this possibility, that in fact torture has its own perverse logic, its own closure. I realize that sociobiology is considered problematic; on the other hand, I don't know how other-species evidence can be overlooked (even sea anenomes have (for us, slow-motion) wars). Comments appreciated here. Thanks greatly, Alan ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
Re: [-empyre-] concerning violence, and more Antigone's bones
--empyre- soft-skinned space-- Hola Ana, la traducción alemana del „Laberinto de la soledad“ (1950) de Octavio Paz se publicó 1969, poco después de la matanza en la Plaza de Tlatelolco. Paz añadió un capituló que después apareció en el libro „Postdata“, editado por siglo XXI. Es titulado „Olimpiada y Tlatelolco“. El 2 de octubre de 1968 entre 50 y 300 estudiantes fueron fusilados por el ejercito mejicano en esta plaza central de la ciudad. Paz habla de la intra-historia (so se como es la expresión en el texto español) entre la matanza de 1968 y otras actas de violencia en Mexico, especialmente la caída de reino de las Aztecas. No estoy convencido del simbolismo de Paz, pero creo que sociedades o culturas tienen una imaginario cultural especifica de la violencia, es como un espectro, un fantasma que vive en el sueños y se actualize en situaciones de crisis. El fantasma no es algo en el más allá, es parte de la historia. Pero tiene la forma del trauma. Se repite pero no se cambie si no se encuentre una forma de expresarlo públicamente y de actualizarlo en formas que son simbólicas y únicas al mismo tiempo. Es arte y es el jurídico que participan es este. La cultura de la impunidad que reina en Mexico como en muchas otras sociedades es un elemento importantísimo. Impide el trabajo elaborativo social (Durcharbeiten, working-through) del trauma. Y ademas hace que una sociedad cree mas en la violencia que en la negociación y el acuerdo como forma de reglar conflictos. Lo importante del trabajo elaborativo quizá es menos el proceso memorativo que la dramatization que permite situar las fantasmas flotantes. 43 vidas muertos, 43 vidas singulares. 43 asesinatos más crueles, más violentas contra la singularidad de cada uno. Familias y amigos heridos por esta violencia. Antigone sepulta a Polinices diciendo que su vida singular vale más que la ley y la violencia. Reinhold Am 08.11.2014 um 18:56 schrieb Ana Valdés agora...@gmail.com: --empyre- soft-skinned space-- Octavio Paz, Nobelprize in literature from Mexico, was Mexico's ambassador in India several years and come very near Hinduism and Buddhism. He wrote some superb books discussing the differences between Christianity and the Oriental philosophies from the Eastern parts of the world. He said our Christ, the figure of a man being tortured, tense between spikes and the arms of the cross, is a violent archetypical image of our civilization, based in rape, torture and conquest. In the Eastern the image of God is a wheel, no beginning, no end, a circle, Nirvana. Today with the sad confirmation about the Mexican students burned to death and ash becoming ashes the circle ends, again, but not in a Nirvana but in the paroxism of mothers and fathers crying their anguish and their dispair. I was this morning in the funeral of a dear friend, his wife was in jail with me, he was in another jail. Among the mourners was several jail comrades, male comrades to him, mine female friends. Among my female jail comrades were many raped and heavily tortured they went today straight happy to be among the survivors I was one of the youngest and was saved from heavy torture and from rape the women I met today are over seventy years old they were not old ladies asking for permission to live they were still the strong and brave women I met in jail and it's to their solidarity and warmth I own my life today Ana On Sat, Nov 8, 2014 at 3:13 PM, Johannes Birringer johannes.birrin...@brunel.ac.uk wrote: --empyre- soft-skinned space-- Several participants have now raised the idea of terror (event, representation, or the 'graphe,' the visual scaffold that Jon had implied) as cliché, and as kitsch. Alan however has always insisted here that the abject (experience and image) invades and destroys, it causes extreme anguish. And we have not fully addressed it yet – such dissolution, falling apart, within and among the abject, that self and other are uncomfortably bound, felt as such, repulsive (Alan) –- when we seek recourse to the narratives and theories and philosophies. (Though the notion of the abject comes, as well, via Kristeva and an anthropological analysis of dirt, impurity, and the repulsed). A performance, however (and thanks Erik for sharing your cryptic epilogue of Woman/Raven, to 'Mother Courage'), when/where? how would it respond? for whom? And relate to what Alicia names the orientalized Debord, an other spectacle? Plenty of dust from the actions of the porn erotic of the masculinity of a populist maleness, vital, organized and lethal, like gangs like mass graves, symmetric rituals? (I extrapolate from Alicia, and her brief account of a more surreal sequence even, one disappearance to another finding - estudientes/federales/narcotraficantes: en México, 43 estudiantes desaparecen
Re: [-empyre-] concerning violence, and more Antigone's bones
--empyre- soft-skinned space-- Thanks Ana. Here comes a version in English The German translation of Octavio Paz most read book „The labyrinth of solitude“ (1950) was published 1969 - only a short time after the massacre on the Plaza del Tletelolco in Mexico City. Paz added a chapter that afterwards was also published in his book „Postdata“. The chapter has the title „Olimpiada y Tlatelolco“. October 2 1968 between 50 and 300 students were killed by the Mexican army on the central place of the city. Paz speaks of a intra-history between the massacre of 1968 and other acts of violence in Mexico, tracing this back to the fall of the rein of the Aztecs. I’m not convinced of the symbolism of Paz’ concept but I agree that each society or culture has its own imagination, its own historically coined nightmare of violence, it is like a spectre, a phantasm that lives in the dreams and actualizes in times of crises. A phantasm is anything beyond, it is part of history. But in form of trauma. It repeats itself but does not change and it does not get a form of public expression or of actualization which would be symbolic and unique at the same time. Art and the juridical take part in this kind of actualization. The culture of impunity that governs Mexico and many other countries is a crucial element. It forecloses the working-through of traumatic experiences on the individual as well as on the collective level. Furthermore it makes a society believe in violence as means to solve conflicts and not in negotiation and agreements. The important moment of working-through perhaps is less the process of recollection itself than a certain dramatization that allows to find a place for the floating phantasms. 43 murdered lifes, 43 singular lifes. 43 most cruel assassinations, violence against the singularity of each of them. Families and friends injured by this. Antigone buries Polyneices saying that his life was unique (and therefore more important than the law). Reinhold Am 09.11.2014 um 15:57 schrieb Ana Valdés agora...@gmail.com: --empyre- soft-skinned space-- Wonderful text, Reinhold, and I am very pleased and grateful to all working hard to work in several languages. But I think it's also important to choose a lingua franca who can make me understand what Olga, born in Ucrania and Fereshed born in Iran, want tell us. If I can ask all of you to duplicate the messages in English and in Spanish. Cheers Ana On Sun, Nov 9, 2014 at 8:00 AM, Reinhold Görling goerl...@phil.hhu.de wrote: --empyre- soft-skinned space-- Hola Ana, la traducción alemana del „Laberinto de la soledad“ (1950) de Octavio Paz se publicó 1969, poco después de la matanza en la Plaza de Tlatelolco. Paz añadió un capituló que después apareció en el libro „Postdata“, editado por siglo XXI. Es titulado „Olimpiada y Tlatelolco“. El 2 de octubre de 1968 entre 50 y 300 estudiantes fueron fusilados por el ejercito mejicano en esta plaza central de la ciudad. Paz habla de la intra-historia (so se como es la expresión en el texto español) entre la matanza de 1968 y otras actas de violencia en Mexico, especialmente la caída de reino de las Aztecas. No estoy convencido del simbolismo de Paz, pero creo que sociedades o culturas tienen una imaginario cultural especifica de la violencia, es como un espectro, un fantasma que vive en el sueños y se actualize en situaciones de crisis. El fantasma no es algo en el más allá, es parte de la historia. Pero tiene la forma del trauma. Se repite pero no se cambie si no se encuentre una forma de expresarlo públicamente y de actualizarlo en formas que son simbólicas y únicas al mismo tiempo. Es arte y es el jurídico que participan es este. La cultura de la impunidad que reina en Mexico como en muchas otras sociedades es un elemento importantísimo. Impide el trabajo elaborativo social (Durcharbeiten, working-through) del trauma. Y ademas hace que una sociedad cree mas en la violencia que en la negociación y el acuerdo como forma de reglar conflictos. Lo importante del trabajo elaborativo quizá es menos el proceso memorativo que la dramatization que permite situar las fantasmas flotantes. 43 vidas muertos, 43 vidas singulares. 43 asesinatos más crueles, más violentas contra la singularidad de cada uno. Familias y amigos heridos por esta violencia. Antigone sepulta a Polinices diciendo que su vida singular vale más que la ley y la violencia. Reinhold Am 08.11.2014 um 18:56 schrieb Ana Valdés agora...@gmail.com: --empyre- soft-skinned space-- Octavio Paz, Nobelprize in literature from Mexico, was Mexico's ambassador in India several years and come very near Hinduism and Buddhism. He wrote some superb books discussing the differences between Christianity and the Oriental philosophies from the Eastern parts
[-empyre-] concerning violence
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Dear All, thank you for being here with you and being able to take part in the discussion. The violence we are talking about is not a spontaneous act, it is an act of intended traumatization (to use a concept I found in the books of French ethno-psychoanalyst Françoise Sironi). All examples that came up, historical as well as current ones, were realized not by singular persons but by groups. They were part of a political will or strategy, part of an attempt to empower the own group and to kill others and destroy their subjectivity, the integrity of their life, their body, their psyche, their social and material environment. Political violence, I think, always is as much a material as an theatrical act: in wars between nations as well as in civil wars, in the terror against groups of a society that a state organizes or tolerates as well as in violent acts by people who consider themselves as liberation fighters. The first chapter of Frantz Fanon’s „Les damnés de la terre“, which is not exactly translated by „The Wretched of the Earth“, is titled „De la violence“, the English translation is „Concerning Violence“. Fanon describes the colonial world as dominated by violence. Violence always means: to refuse the recognition of the other as human subject. There is an inherent double-bind or performative contradiction in it which seems to engender a necessity to be explicitly enacted: Lacking any legitimation for his attempt to occupy a world inhabited by others the colonizer tries to refuse and denial the subjectivity of the other, to dehumanize her. But before this attempt to dehumanize the other begins the already took place a certain recognition, a recognition that the other is human, that she is a living being that already has addressed me and even has touched me. In my view this notion by Emmanuel Lévinas that the other always already has touched me and that I’m therefore always already in the position of answering (of responsibility) is key for the understanding of violence. There is a threatening moment in all social relations, at least as long as we think ourselves as „one“. (And here certainly can be found a reason why violence is practically always gendered.) Concerning violence is also about the question how to overcome this double-bind, how to deal with traumatization, how to deal with it without only repeating the violence. Fanon’s book is about the impact of violence on all human beings that get in touch with, on the perpetrators as well as on the victims, of the impact it has on their psyche and on their bodies, on their affects and emotions, on their thoughts, their dreams, their longing. And one important reason of this lasting impact of violence is exactly the denial of recognition and the lack of mediation that is in the core of the theatricality of violence. Violence aims to produce an image of negation that occupies the victim, that colonizes the space of its subjectivity. (Isn’t subjectivity first of all a free space to relate images, thoughts, emotions, memories of being affected in an always and continuously new way, to dramatize, as Gilles Deleuze calls it his „Difference and Repetition“). It is part of what Michel Foucault called the „Reason of Torture“ that violence is public but unspoken. That it is exposed, performed and hidden at the same time. Diana Taylor speaks of percepticide when she analyses the strategies of terror in Latin America during the 70ties and 80ties. The first resistance then against violence is: to speak about it. To find images and words to communicate and to bind it, to symbolize it. In our discussion Jon McKenzie already referred to Walter Benjamin’s statement that there is no document of civilization that is not a document of barbarism at the same time. It is a figure of thought, a truth that includes art: poetics, images, theatre. If there is a theatricality of violence: can we really be sure that theatre, art, film, literature does break with the repetition compulsion? Reinhold Görling ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
Re: [-empyre-] concerning violence
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Thanks for the question and the possibility to try to say it more precisely. To ways to describe this come into my mind. The first follows Fanon and his rewriting of the master-slave-dialectics in Hegel’s „Introduction“ to his „Phenomenology. The master denies the recognition to the slave. But working for the master the slave gets able to develop a consciousness of herself by seeing herself producing things and changing the world. In the colonial situation of continuously performed cruelty, in a world strictly separated departed in two, the constant pain or negation prevents this possibility. But I doubt that this this model of subjectivity is still useful. We no longer can think of mediation mainly in the logic of production of things: that the subject sees itself in the product, recognizes its abilities. Mediation perhaps is always new and changing, it is becoming of the subject itself. There is no subject before it emerges out of a scene, a dramatization. But this is a continuous process. When subjectivity is what emerges out of the indeterminacy of a play than it is possible to destroy the subject exactly by destroying this room to play (Spielraum in German). Am 07.11.2014 um 20:50 schrieb simon s...@clear.net.nz: --empyre- soft-skinned space-- On 08/11/14 04:48, Reinhold Görling wrote: this lasting impact of violence is exactly the denial of recognition and the lack of mediation that is in the core of the theatricality of violence. Violence aims to produce an image of negation that occupies the victim, that colonizes the space of its subjectivity. (Isn’t subjectivity first of all a free space to relate images, thoughts, emotions, memories of being affected in an always and continuously new way, to dramatize Does violence at its core possess a theatricality which lacks mediation? Perhaps it places the victim - and the victim of its images - at its core. Where there is - and the 'there is' would constitute the moment of action taking place in its 'theatricality' - a negation that occupies the victim... by overcoming the individual? The mediation is the impossible act of the subject, impossible to perform. Is this why it is lacking? best, Simon ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
