estimations of the real and the faultily annointed

this week’s book of grievances is in approach of presence. reading texts from niels bohr, werner heisenberg, emmanuel levinas, jacques derrida, and st. augustine, i will attempt to miscontrue our auspices of immediacy. topics include,

sensible and insensible collapse
complementarity and the shades of present
quantum postulate
vulgarity of gaze and yields of shared space
mirror, superego, interpellation review
presence as illusory in chain of reference
trace as simulcrum of presence
inability to describe what may be known (echoes of ambiguity and discontinuity!)
confession: may the tumults of variety cease toward an ever-present opening

try the audio: Presence

Spivak

THE QUESTION OF SUBALTERNITY

A two-day seminar with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak at CENDEAC (Murcia, South Eastern Spain)  

1st and 2nd December // 5 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: The Question of Subalternity

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak will lead an intensive seminar at CENDEAC on the 1st and 2nd December 2009. It will be a unique opportunity to engage with Spivak’s thought, through a detailed analysis of some of her most influential texts. 

The seminar will discuss the history and usefulness of the elusive concept of the subaltern based on questions emerging from three texts by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak available in Spanish translation: “Can the subaltern speak?”, “Subaltern Studies: deconstructing historiography” and “Displacement and the Discourse of Woman”. The two sessions will be entitled: “The Subaltern: Use and Abuse” and “Women, Subalternity, and Strategic Essentialism”.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, is University Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University and holds honorary degrees from the Universities of Toronto and London and Oberlin College. She has published, Of Grammatology (translation with critical introduction of Jacques Derrida, De la grammatologie, 1976); Thinking Academic Freedom in Gendered Post-Coloniality (1993); In Other Worlds (1987); Outside in the Teaching Machine (1993); A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (1999); Death of a Discipline(2003), Other Asias (2007). And the forthcoming An Aesthetic Education in an Age of Globalization. She has also translated from Bengali, Mahasweta Devi: Imaginary Maps (1994); Breast Stories (1997), Old Women (1999); Chotti Munda and His Arrow (2002) and Ramproshad Sen’s (eighteenth century Bengali mystic): Song for Kali (2000). The texts “Translation As Culture” (2005), “Translating into English” (2005), and “Rethinking Comparativism” (2009) reflect her concern for the task of the translator.  “Righting Wrongs” (2001), and “Ethics and Politics in Tagore, Coetzee, and Certain Scenes of Teaching” (2004) give a sense of her dedication to supplementing vanguardism. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1983) has become a controversial classic.

Information and enrolment:

Attendance is free unless a certificate is required, in which case fees will be 30€ standard, 15€ for the unemployed, full-time students and OAPs, and free to Friends of CENDEAC. 

Language of the Seminar: English with simultaneous translation into Spanish. 

CENDEAC is accessible for wheelchair users and people with diminished mobility. Whenever possible, we will strive to provide on request a transcript of papers for users with impaired hearing. Auditorium Capacity: 140 people

For more information, including assistance with travel and accommodation, please visit our website: http://www.cendeac.net or contact yhernandez[at]cendeac.net

CENDEAC
Pabellón 5
Antiguo Cuartel de Artillería
C/ Madre Elisea Oliver Molina, s/n
30002-Murcia (España)
Tel.: +34 868 914 769
Fax: +34 868 914 149

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Jacques Derrida – Teama de scris

I’ve just spent a lovely week with the excellent folks at the Critical Theory archive at UC Irvine.  I’ve written on the (idea of the) archive before, but this was my first visit to a “proper” archive – where you have to order up boxes, duplications are controlled, reading is done in a special reading room, and so on.  I had a good week, and, so here are a scattering of reflections on the archive experience.

Handwriting. Frustrating!  And even worse when in another language.  Given my French is still slow and stuttering, and that deciphering handwriting requires some “intelligent guessing”, having to guess in another language adds a whole new realm of difficulty.  It was… not comforting, but I was at least somewhat reconciled to the idea, when I discovered that just about everybody has difficulty with Derrida’s handwriting.

Quotidian. (Everyday, usual, commonplace)  Somehow, for some reason, (perhaps because I work in a history department, perhaps I was thinking of Michelet), I had expected some kind of hushed, hallowed experience–beyond that usually experienced in libraries, that is–at the archives.  Not so.  It was a workplace; staff wondered through with coffee cups to talk with each other, there were staff meetings, no one scowled when my mobile phone went off.  I had expected these amazing books and files to whisper their thoughts to me from their shelves, that I would smell their ideas, and breathe the heady brew of their author’s thoughts.  But no.

Translation. I transcribed quotations in French, roughly translating in my head as I went, while transcribing in order to translate sections more carefully later.  By the end of the week, I think my feel for the rhythm in Derrida’s French, and the way he went about his seminars had improved a great deal.  Not that I got far in a week: you could spend years reading this stuff.

Econocrisis. On the last day I was there, I found out that the hours of the archive, and the hours of the library, had been cut due to funding cuts.  Talking to a professor, he mentioned that they had four open positions, but couldn’t hire, and that every department’s programs had been down sized, while undergrad numbers ballooned.  It reminded me that an archive requires a luxury of space.  Without it, things are consigned to destruction.

The Bible does not exist as such. In opposition to the question, “Why drag the Bible in on a subject [Cyborgs, Hauntology, and Spectrality] with which it has absolutely no concern?”, I could ask, “What makes you think the Bible exists – except as hauntology – as that which haunts some current discourse, being both repetition and first time, thing and simulacrum?”

There are so many such current discourses from which to choose an illustrative example. But here is one concerning a chimpanzee, or more precisely, the naming of a chimpanzee.

In an expedition which is frighteningly reminiscent of the New World’s slave-trading past, in the 1950s, the U.S. Space Program sent an expedition to Cameroon, Africa to obtain baby chimps to train as the first astronauts to be sent into orbit. According to some reports, their chimpanzee mothers were slaughtered to obtain their babies. The chimps themselves, of course, were chosen because they were considered dispensible, less than people. And many of them died in space or in training.

What did they name the first African chimp to be sent into space? Ham. Officially, “Ham” is just an innocent name, merely the acronym of the Holloman Aero-Medical laboratory in which the chimps received their training to be astronauts. So there would be no equation of the African monkey with the ancestor of the cursed race of (Black) people of Christian tradition. But the apparent innocence of the acronym is shown to be haunted by centuries of racism when we consider that the name given to the second chimp in space was also chosen from our primeval ancestors. His name was Enos (the Hebrew term for “man”).

So here - at the pinnacle of human achievement, among the most scientific of men, and barely a decade after those previous most scientific men of Nazi German had achieved their scientific acme - is the spectre of a racist and biblical  past. It is also a racism thoroughly integrated with science. The implied progression from chimp to black to man (that is, white man) is inherent in the names used within the U.S. Space Program, just as it was among the early evolutionists and anthropologists. The three steps could easily have been derived from Edward Tyler’s own text-book. The pattern is already there in the Table of Nations, dividing the world into three parts, and providing a foundation myth to naturalize the inferiority and servitude of thousands upon thousands of other peoples. Modernity added the scientific nature of the racism, but the teleological ideology of science also has its traces in biblical apocalyptic.

Donna Haraway (she of Cyborg fame) identifies the link between space-chimp and biblical tradition:

“HAM’s name inevitably recalls Noah’s youngest and only black son.”

(The Haraway Reader, By Donna Jeanne Haraway, Published by Routledge, 2004: 92.)

Haraway understands the deep influence of the Bible in Western society. In this regard, she also notes that another chimpanzee in the U.S. Space Program, Chimp #65 was given the delightful name of Chop Chop Chang, “recalling the stunning racism in which the other primates have been made to participate” (94).

Today, as urgently as ever, we must speak with ghosts – engage in a spectral discourse - in order to identify injustices and in particular to identify the unfolding role of the Bible in creating injustice. In Jacques Derrida’s own, now spectral, words:

“No justice—let us not say no law and once again we are not speaking here of laws—seems possible or thinkable without the principle of some responsibility, beyond all living present, within that which disjoins the living present, before the ghosts of those who are not yet born or who are already dead, be they victims of wars, political or other kinds of violence, nationalist, racist, colonialist, sexist, or other kinds of exterminations, victims of the oppressions of capitalist imperialism or any of the forms of totalitarianism.”

(Specters of Marx: The state of the debt, the work of mourning, and the new international. Translated by Peggy Kamuf. New York and London: Routledge, 1994: xix.)

For if scholars refuse to recall ghosts, then the work may be left to others with much less critical memories, such as the memory-producing machine that is Hollywood. In the 2008 animation, Space Chimps, Ham III (the grandson of Ham) is picked by NASA for a space mission in which a group of chimpanzees must overcome the evil dictator Zartog on an Earth-like planet on the other side of the galaxy. Evil has been transferred to the other side of the galaxy, many light years from any association with NASA itself, who now appear on the side of intergalactic peace. That is one big transference of guilt! It need not be said that there is no explanation of the pejorative origins of Ham’s name and no appearance by Chop Chop Chang III the grandson of Chop Chop Chang. The institutional racism of NASA and of U.S. scientists has been forgotten and erased, purified and written out of the script. Wonder why? Perhaps somebody asked, “Why drag the Bible in on a subject with which it has absolutely no concern?”

The ruins at Désert de Retz were built on the eve of the Revolution, between 1774 and 1789 by François Racine de Monville.  They present a rich and playful, temporally complex example of the Romantic obsession with ruins, close to Schlegel’s famous observation, “the works of the ancients have become fragments; the works of the moderns are fragments at their inception” (quoted in Levinson, 1986: 10). With over 17 follies packed within just 35 acres of landscaped garden, Monville juxtaposed the ruins of a gothic church with an Egyptian pyramid, a decaying Greek temple, and a series of rustic altars.  Although Diana Ketcham might call the Désert an “architecture of fantasy” (1994: 1), it is a fantasy rooted in the figures and forms of architectural history and rehearses in stone what Panini and Piranesi achieved in paint and acid.

The Broken Column, Désert de Retz

At the centre of the garden lies what is known as ‘The Broken Column’ an enormous Doric column 55 feet high and 50 feet wide.  Inside, a spiral staircase connects 5 floors and approximately 20 rooms making Monville’s column a ruin that functions, a ruin in which to dwell.  The formal, antiquarian response to the column might be to follow the proportions of the Doric order, imaginatively reconstructing the 400-foot temple that the column suggests was once existent.  Nevertheless, the column demonstrates a demand for time, however gargantuan, fictional or fantastic; it demands time and a narrative explanation of its presence.

Cross-section view of the Broken Column

“Let us bring to our gardens the changing sets of the opera,” writes Louis de Carmontelle, contemporary of Monville and originator of the term ‘pay d’illusions’, “let us see there, in reality, what the most able painters could offer as decoration, all times and all places” (quoted in Bandiera, 1989: 83).   As an attempt to synthesize all times and all places, Monville’s pays d’illusions generates and discloses the narrative frames we impose upon objects of ruin.  The ruins are allegorical in Walter Benjamin’s sense, generating their allegorical content through, what Benjamin called, “the highly significant fragment, the remnant” (2003: 178).  The allegorical provocation rendered by Monville’s follies goes some distance in foregrounding their narraratological, semantic productivity.  It is the untimely nature of the ruin, an “untimeliness […] evident in how past, present, and future conspire to converge,”  that gives the ruin its allegorical force (Trigg, 2007: 131). The Broken Column and the follies that surround it stages a performance of this convergence; not only does the Column suggest a time of use and a past that could never have existed, but it wilfully confuses our attempts to divide the time of architecture according to notions of waste and want. Monville’s Column demonstrates the fundamental noncoincidence between the ruin’s outer appearance, the fragmentary distance between past, present, and future, and our narrative attempts to reconcile this noncoincidence.  The ruin demands an impossible narrative, an impossible reconciliation between these dispersed and converging times, disrupting our sense of the contemporary and the security of the ‘now.’  The Désert becomes spectral in Derrida’s sense, prompting the “disjointure in the very presence of the present, this sort of non-contemporaneity of present time with itself (1994: 25). If we make sense of ruins by imposing the temporal frames, the time of use and waste, for example, then Désert de Retz frames those frames and brings their plastic imposition to our attention.

Andre Breton's Surrealist Group, among the Ruins at Désert de Retz

So the time of ruin is a time that generates narrative.  We might explain some of the Romantic obsession with ruin by pointing towards ruin’s temporal malleability and intractability, its capacity to symbolise both the transience and endurance of material things.  The narrative multiplicity of ruins is a response to and translation of objects that seem, by their very nature, to lie in fragments.  We have seen how ruin-narratives do not simply resolve the rents and fissures of the ruin, but, by displaying their narratological tricks and tensions, these narratives can simultaneously display the fragile terms by which we compose and decompose meaning.  Indeed, the fabrication and projection of ruin puts the distinction between waste and want under particular scrutiny, disclosing how the time of architecture depends on whether buildings coincide with the projective time of human activity.  Whilst the ruin makes and narrates the passing of time, the making of ruins reveals how materiality is always matter both in and of our time.

[A longer version of this text was presented in June to the Romantic Realignments series, Oxford]

DRAFT

It started with a metaphor: The El-Zekkum is a thorny tree which symbolizes a very severe punishment and bitter remorse for those who lack spiritual discernment. By deceiving themselves and choosing an unhealthy path, they prefer an illusion of reality— a tree whose fruit resembles the almond but is extremely bitter– to the delicious, merciful and spiritual food of Divine Reality.

So I tried to map the metaphor.

See My Google Map entitled Mapping Metaphors: Zeqqumhere. This map will be updated as I find new relevant links.

View Larger Map

Metaphor (metapherein Gr. meta: between phero:to bear) the description of one thing as something else, can be traced as far back as Ur. Since the 1960s and 1970s continental philosophers such as Derrida and Ricoeur have revisited the term.

A friend who has lived in Saudi Arabia has seen this plant which is also referred to in the Koran the as Tree of Zaqqum ( Surah 44 verse 43). And she found this photo of of a Zaqqum Tree in At Ta’if by Naseem Najd whose site includes great travel photos of Ta’if.

Then I found this photo of the similar Eltham Indian Fig, or Sweet Prickly Pear (Opuntia dillenii) with the fruits. Coastal semidesert altitude zone, Teno peninsula. North-west coast of the Tenerife Island, Canary Archipelago taken by Alexander Bogolyubov, January, 2008.

In wikipedia the reference claims that Zaqqum (Arabic: زقوم‎) is a tree that Muslims believe grows in Jahannam (hell). The Khati’un are compelled to eat Adh-Dhari, bitter fruit, to intensify their torment (Qur’an 69:36-37). The Khati’un may eat only the fruit or Ghislin (foul pus from the washing of their wounds) (Qur’an 69:36). Its fruits are shaped like devils’ heads (Qur’an 37:62-68). According to Shaykh Umar Sulayman Al-Ashqar, a professor at the University of Jordan, once the palate of the sinners is satiated, the fruit in their bellies churns like burning oil. Some Islamic scholars believe the fruit tears their bodies apart and releases bodily fluids. The Qur’an says: [44.43] Surely the tree of the Zaqqum, [44.44] Is the food of the sinful [44.45] Like dregs of oil; it shall boil in (their) bellies,
[44.46] Like the boiling of hot water.[1] The name zaqqum has been applied to the species Euphorbia abyssinica by the Beja people in eastern Sudan.[2] In Jordan, it is applied to the species Balanites aegyptiaca.[3]

“Is that better entertainment or the Tree of Zaqqum? For We have truly made it (as) a trial for the wrongdoers. For it is a tree that springs out of the bottom of Hellfire: The shoots of its fruit-stalks are like the heads of devils: Truly they will eat thereof and fill their bellies therewith. Then on top of that they will be given a mixture made of boiling water… (Surah Al-Saffat Those Ranged in Ranks Surah 37:Verse 62 – 67)”

“Verily the tree of Zaqqum will be the food of the sinful, -like molten brass; it will boil in their insides, like the boiling of scalding water. (Surah Al-Dukhan – Smoke – Surah 44:Verse 43 – 46)”

“Then will you truly, O you that go wrong, and treat (Truth) as falsehood! ‘You will surely taste of the Tree of Zaqqum. Then will you fill your insides there with. (Surah Al-Waqi’ah-The Inevitable Event-Surah 56:Verse 51 – 53)”

Zakkum is listed by L. J. Musselman (2003) in his publication entitled “Trees in the Koran and the Bible.” Of the 22 trees of the Bible, the date palm, fig, olive, pomegranate and tamarisk are also included in the Koran. Unique to the Koran are the talh (scholars are undecided as to whether this is the banana plant, which is not a tree, or a species of the widespread genus Acacia), the sidr (a thorn bush, probably Zizyphus spina-christi) and the mysterious and foul “tree of Hell”, or zaqqm (As-Saffat 37:65, Ad-Dukhn 44:49, Al-Waqi’a 56:51): “Is this not a better welcome than the zaqqm tree? We have made this tree a scourge for the unjust. It grows in the nethermost part of Hell, bearing fruit like devils’ heads: on it they shall feed, and with it they shall cram their bellies, together with draughts of scalding water. Then to Hell shall they return.” Musselman also noted that “Similarly, in eastern Sudan, the Beja people call the large, arborescent cactus Euphorbia abyssinica “zaqqm” after the tree of Hell mentioned in the Koran. It is unlikely that the conception of the zaqqm in the Koran was based on this succulent, since the zaqqm fruit was described as resembling a devil’s head, for instance. It is perhaps owing to its very bitter sap that Euphorbia abyssinica has been likened to the zaqqm.” He also added that, “In the Koran, trees are most frequently cited as gifts of a beneficent Creator, with the notable exception of the tree of Hell, zaqqm. In both scriptures, fruits from trees are highly valued (Musselman 2003:45-7) .”

Notes:

1. Jean Léonard, whose work (1981-1992) entitled “Contribution à l’étude de la flore et de la végétation des déserts d’Iran (Dasht-e-Kavir, Dasht-e-Lut, Jaz Murian)” was published by the Jardin Botanique National de Belgique (The National Botanic Garden of Belgium) may have insight into the plant referred to be .

2. maps work on the basis of a totalizing classification (Anderson 1991 [1983]).

3. In her book entitled Naming Nature: the Clash between Instinct and Science, (2009) biologist, science writer (New York Times, Science, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times Carol Kaesuk Yoon calls for a reclamation of the scientific field of taxonomy, the ordering and naming of things. As science educator-consultant (Cornell University, Microsoft) she encourages critical thinking in biology.

4. “O thou who art partaking of the Heavenly Food! Know thou verily the Divine Food is descending from heaven, but only those taste thereof who are directed to the light of guidance, and only those can enjoy it who are endowed with a sound taste. Otherwise every diseased soul disliketh the delicious and merciful food and this is because of the sickness which hath seized him, whereby the El-Zekkum [1] is sweet (to his taste) while he fleeth from the ripe fruit of the Tree of the Living and Pre-existent God — and there is no wonder in that. [1 El-Zekkum -- a thorny tree so called, which bears fruit like an almond, but extremely bitter. Therefore the tree symbolizes a very severe punishment and bitter remorse for the unbelievers.] In a similar way, thou beholdest some women who have abandoned the Testament, and to them the bitterness of discord is sweet. They keep aloof from the Extended Shadow and dwell under the shade of a “black smoke.” Alas for them and grief for them! They will surely lament and find themselves in loss. Verily, this is but an evident truth! (Abdu’l-Baha, Tablets of Abdu’l-Baha v1, p. 130-1).

5. “Yet I had planted thee, a noble vine, wholly a right seed. How then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto Me?” Jeremiah 2:21. 21st Century King James Version. Try <a href="“>also

 ²¹Yet I had planted thee, a noble vine, wholly a right seed. How then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto Me?

6. For an image and botanical description of Euphorbia abyssinica [zaqqum]:“Montane vegetation of the Red Sea hills: Up to 2 260 m high, these hills are situated in the north-eastern edge of the Sudan. The seaward facing slopes of the hills have a winter rainfall, while those not facing the sea have a very low summer rainfall. Mist and clouds have an important effect on the vegetation. A few localities enjoy both summer and winter rains. Near the Eritrean border, forests of Juniperus procera are found, with a few well-stocked areas but most ravaged by fire and overgrazing. Associated with Juniperus is Olea chrysophylla. Characteristic plants of the drier parts of this range include Dracaena ombet and Euphorbia abyssinica [zaqqum].” (www.euphorbia.de/e_abyssinica).”

7. For a botanical illustration of Balanites aegyptiaca [zaqqum]

Paradeiooj Greek? – Garden

My Webliography and Bibliography

Tigay, Jeffrey Howard. Paradise.

Léonard, Jean. 1981-1992. “Contribution à l’étude de la flore et de la végétation des déserts d’Iran (Dasht-e-Kavir, Dasht-e-Lut, Jaz Murian). Jardin Botanique National de Belgique.

Jeffrey Howard Tigay’s Bibliography

J. Frazer, Folklore in the Old Testament, 1 (1919), 45–77; Th. C. Vriezen, Orderzoek naar de paradijs-voorstelling bij de oude Semietische Volken (1937), incl. bibl.;

P. Humbert, Etudes sur le rMcit du paradis et de la chute dans la GenIse (1940), incl. bibl.; U. Cassuto, in: Studies in Memory of M. Schorr (1944), 248–58;

J. L. Mc-Kenzie, in: Theological Studies, 15 (1954), 541–72; E. A. Speiser, in: BASOR, 140 (1955), 9–11; idem, in: Festschrift Johannes Friedrich (1959), 473–85;

R. Gordis, in: JBL, 76 (1957), 123–38; B. S. Childs, Myth and Reality in the Old Testament (19622), 43–50; N. M. Sarna, Understanding Genesis (1966), 23–28;

T. H. Gaster, Myth, Legend and Custom in the Old Testament (1969), 6–50, 327–71; J. A. Bailey, in: JBL, 89 (1970), 137–50. See also Commentaries to Genesis 2:4–3.

R. H. Charles, Eschatology (19632); K. Kohler, Heaven and Hell in Comparative Religion (1923);

H. Strack and P. Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament, 4 (1928), 1928), 1016–65.

http://wp.me/p1TTs-iV

[health warning: much of what follows is absolute gibberish]

Bewilderment is, I think, quite an easy thing to write about. I have often observed how writing can operate as the writing of the bewildered, for those that are not sure what they are doing but must somehow resolve this unknowing through acts of description. Not only can we belittle what is wild about these confused moments, but we assume to know what is meant by a misunderstanding that is caught in the writing act. Writing is, I think, a wild thing that can never safely assume a wilderness but it seems to need and want this place. We find a text – occasionally of our own making – and we say, ‘text! There you are!’ We tend to treat it like a reluctant and rather stubborn hound (Snoopy and other beagles spring to mind). We call to it and we come to it with love, despair and anger, but the thing neither cares for you nor does it care about your fits of rage. If, as Beckett once said, habit is the ballast that chains a dog to its vomit, then, in writing, there comes this maddening urgency about how long that chain is and what kind of vomit is being consumed. Writing is the habit that chains us and frees us, to the ballast of vomit that we cannot help but sign in writing.

[...]

I’m worried (how can I not be?) that writing is an odd sort of mania that cannot find a proper home. One might write on tablets or on paper, but a sense of exodus and exile will always prevail. Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud and Maurice Blanchot all posed this problem at different times and in different ways. And if we searched for what is common to these writers we might construct a single question that encapsulates but does not exhaust the problem; ‘Whither the Logos?’ But to even ask this question one must assume the wilderness and exile of uncanny acts of inscription. Describing our confusion is symptom, cause and cure but writing does not and cannot have a home that can be of its own making. There is no cave on earth that carries the secret key to this spider’s web. I might mix my metaphors but that’s because metaphor can never be singular, hence the unhomeliness that writing gives and takes in equal measure.

[...]

Someone once said, ‘every act of thought is an act of misunderstanding’; every ‘ism’ is a misdirected act since it assumes to know what action assumes.  If this is true – and I’m not sure that it is – then what do we do about our confusion? Do we seal it, wrap it, or put it in a newspaper? Yes, always. We always want to make our uncertainties a public and, if we are canny creatures, a rather spectacular occurrence. Writing, like architecture or ballet, is one of many explications of an interior. What follows is an explication and exposition of bewilderment. But if I might make a simple claim, I do not think that the way I describe waste (i.e. the thing that currently bewilders me) is any more or less reducible to other types of enquiry. Waste, its effects, and the way that we scribe those effects  relates to broader issues that touch and are touched by countless lines of flight. So this thesis is not a mockery of discipline, It assesses things without leaving at home the notion of time, narrative and objects. It is this self-satisfied trinity that will help us understand what perplexes us, about the meaning of waste, and its relation to time.

[...]

Foucault searched for the basic unit of the source, and he found nothing. What he did find is things but he was searching for one and by not finding the one found the many. This problem of the one and the many is not false, nor is it a ‘false problem’. It is inherent in the falsification of the problem in its entirety. Falsity is neither one nor many but one and another. And falsity is a matter of accretion not loss, things but not ‘mere nothings’. Satre described something, he never understood what nothing actually was, is, or could be. This was his contribution. In consequence, waste is neither reducible to a part or a whole. It is a material consequence of the idea of the problem. What should we do with this position? Well, I don’t think we can do what Foucault attempted in the Archaeology of Knowledge, we cannot search for the sake of searching. This is the road to mania upon which Nietzsche made such a heavy impression.  We should search for an adequate description of the impressions that waste creates, and, against the inevitable moans about its outmoded and dogmatic associations, it is my view that ‘belief’ might be a good way to describe the effects of waste. Without an idea of belief we cannot chain the dog of writing to the vomit of writing’s effects. If we are to approach waste in a way that is intellectually appropriate to the theoretical premise of this thesis, that is, that things ‘can come to be by ceasing to be’, then we should ignore the templates to reduce what is beyond reducibility.

[...]

Whither the logos? Well, we cannot approach this question without commanding waste, knowing what it is and does, and cannot be. This does not abdicate responsibility in offering an answer to plastic questions. It merely designs the laboratory of enquiry towards the inevitability of defeat.

[...]

So defeat, error, irreduction is the default position of our enquiries but we cannot help but delight in our answers to the questions we pose to ourselves. The text, that thing of our passions, does not yield to our desire, nor does it resist all our advances. We are the text insofar that our thinking must have an external consequence to the positions we impose upon it. Foucault did not lead the way in these ethics. He did not give it a name. The torch is a scorched-earth technique that is made by the marking and making of umarking and unmaking. If we unmake the narratives that we tell, we can only hope to look for the constructions that the waste gives us. This is no construction in the normal sense. It is an inductive, speculative form of realism – a speculative realism. There is satisfaction to be gained from things as they occur before us. But this satisfaction cannot be taken upon the terms that we permit it. We must – if we are committed to the world as it appears to us – they offer nothing but the time we make and take by the time we offer. Time is the guardian of narrative, waste is the guardian of time, and the mobility of these things cannot be collapsed into one another. Waste, time, narrative; time, narrative waste; narrative, waste, time: the first and the last and the middle-term shall never become the past, present or future.

]]> http://nuovayorkoutpost.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/consider-the-werewolf/ Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:07:19 +0000 Nicola di Bowery http://nuovayorkoutpost.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/consider-the-werewolf/ http://rasmuslandstrom.wordpress.com/2009/11/05/claude-levi-strauss-in-memoriam/ Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:07:43 +0000 Rasmus http://rasmuslandstrom.wordpress.com/2009/11/05/claude-levi-strauss-in-memoriam/

I dagarna har en legend gått ur tiden. Den 100 år gamla Claude Lévi-Strauss; världens mest kända antropolog och en centralgestalt inom strukturalismen. Lévi-Strauss var mest känd för sin bok “Det vilda tänkandet” (1962) där han skrev om vetenskap och s.k. primitiva kulturer men har även skrivit en mängd essäer och reseskildringar. Han betraktades därför både som ett vetenskapligt snille och en stor skönlitterär författare. Vissa anser till och med att han var en stor stilist. Stefan Jonsson exempelvis föreslog honom som nobelpriskandidat; något som förmodligen var ganska främmande för akademien. Lévi-Strauss stora insats gjordes nämligen på sextiotalet.

Man brukar vanligtvis prata om Ferdinand de Saussure som strukturalismens fader men själv skulle jag snarare säga att han var strukturalismens farfar. Istället var det Lévi-Strauss som var fadern. Det var nämligen han som tog de Saussure idéer om språket och applicerade dem på samhället. Eller rättare sagt på myten, vilken utgjorde en underliggande struktur i samhället. Enligt Lévi-Strauss var myten strukturerad som ett språk och precis som de Saussure talade om språkets godtycklighet talade han om mytens godtycklighet. Dessutom försökte han i likhet med de Saussure, som sökte efter språkets minsta beståndsdelar (fonem), hitta mytens minsta  enhet (mytem). Detta kan man läsa om i hans till omfånget största verk “Mytologiques I – V” (1969 – 1981).

En annan av hans viktiga insatser gjorde han i “Det vilda tänkandet” där han undersökte kopplingen mellan magiskt tänkande och vetenskap. Där konstaterade han att magi var ett slags förvetenskapligt tänkande, pga. att det liksom vetenskapen utgick från klassificering. Detta var vetenskapens kärna, ansåg han. I en rad exempel visade han hur kastsystem, totemiska föreställningar och magiskt tänkande hängde samman med biologers och zoologers klassificeringssätt. Till och med hur vi döpte våra djur här i Europa hamnade under luppen och visades hänga samman med stammar i Afrikas sätt att tänka. Underliggande, men aldrig uttalat, var en föreställning om att människan inte utvecklas. Detta bekräftade han även själv i intervjuer. På så sätt knöts han samman med den vid tiden stora existentialismen i Frankrike, med Sartre, Camus och de Beavoir i spetsen.

Något bör väl sägas om Lévi-Strauss arvtagare också. Många av dem blev på sätt och vis hans motståndare: Derrida, Foucault, Bourdieu. mm. Det var framförallt för hans vetenskaplighet och stenhårda tro på strukturens stabilitet. Samtidigt blev de i mångt och mycket fullföljare av hans projekt: den dekonstruktion av människan som inleddes med Darwin och avslutades med Derrida hade Lévi-Strauss som mellanled. Någon har sagt att denne betraktade människan som en automat som följde ett visst rörelsemönster – och dessutom ett ganska förutsägbart sådant.

Så vad ska man läsa av Lévi-Strauss? Själv har jag bara tagit mig igenom “Det vilda tänkandet” i sin helhet och det var inte precis enkelt. Lévi-Strauss har visserligen inte det där knepiga franska sättet att skriva, med fyrtio bisatser mellan varje punkt, men han skriver ändå akademiskt tungt. Det är mycket abstrakta teorier och mycket antropologisk jargong och dessutom fullkomligt dignar varje påstående av exempel. Det är därför en ganska tung bok att ta sig igenom. Istället skulle jag föreslå att man läser någon av hans reseskildringar; förslagsvis “Spillror av paradiset”, där han besöker indianstammar i Brasiliens urskog. Jag har läst utdrag ur den och den är bländande vacker. Tyvärr finns den bara i en stympad version på svenska så  behärskar man franska ska man nog läsa originalet istället.

En mycket gammal Lévi-Strauss.

Ever since my girlfriend made a speech at my 21st in which she mentioned that I was particularly fond of Jacques, I’ve been copping a lot of shit about him. Lately it’s reached a kind of crescendo, and I feel as if I can barely walk out the door without being subjected to snide jokes about Continental philosophy. So, in an attempt to deflect attention from my love of deconstructionism, here’s a list of other nerdy things I enjoy which you can tease me about:

- Noise music

- Arsenal FC

- Human Rights

- Computer games

- Cycling

- End-of-the-world movies, especially ones with the scene where someone volunteers for the almost-certain-death-save-the-planet mission and then they ask who for anyone who will come with them to step forward and then everyone does, at the same time

- Coming-of-age films, especially ones revolving around high school sports teams in which a boy earns his father’s respect by almost winning the same trophy his father had won as a boy

- The internet, especially the badly spelt parts

- General low-brow procrastination which doesn’t revolve around ontology, epistemology, the limits of language, or the human condition

PS

I <3 JD 4 eva

La Escuela de Bauhaus fue un laboratorio de la modernidad a principios de siglo XX donde se crearon los oficiones de diseño gráfico e industrial.

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El término posmodernismo o posmodernidad designa generalmente un amplio número de movimientos artísticos, culturales, literarios y filosóficos del siglo XX, definidos en diverso grado y manera por su oposición o superación del moderno. En sociología en cambio, los términos posmoderno y posmodernización se refieren al proceso cultural observado en muchos países en las últimas dos décadas, identificado a principios de los 70, esta otra acepción de la palabra se explica bajo el término postmaterialismo.

Las diferentes corrientes del movimiento posmoderno aparecieron durante la segunda mitad del siglo XX. Aunque se aplica a corrientes muy diversas, todas ellas comparten la idea de que el proyecto modernista fracasó en su intento de renovación radical de las formas tradicionales del arte y la cultura, el pensamiento y la vida social.
La postmodernidad, por más polifácetica que parezca, no significa una ética de carencia de valores en el sentido moral, pues precisamente su mayor influencia se manifiesta en el actual relativismo cultural y en la creencia de que nada es totalmente malo ni absolutamente bueno. La moral postmoderna es una moral que cuestiona el cinismo religioso predominante en la cultura occidental y hace hincapié en una ética basada en la intencionalidad de los actos y la comprensión inter y transcultural de corte secular de los mismos. Es una nueva forma de ver la estética, un nuevo orden de interpretar valores, una nueva forma de relacionarse, intermediadas muchas veces por los factores postindustriales; todas éstas y muchas otras son características de este modo de pensar.

La crítica posmoderna, cuyos orígenes se encuentran en el trabajo de los postestructuralistas franceses (Derrida, Foucault y Barthes, principalmente), puede resumirse en cuatro puntos fundamentales:

• Textualismo: Todo conocimiento inserto dentro de un discurso no puede escapar a la condición de su propia textualidad.
• Constructivismo: Todos los fenómenos sociales son de naturaleza artificial.
• Poder/conocimiento: La legitimidad de un cuerpo de saber no depende de su contenido de verdad, sino de las fuerzas institucionales y las matrices disciplinarias que regulan la producción y autorización del saber.
• Particularismo: La crítica debe contestar a las peticiones universalizantes o totalizadoras de los discursos hegemónicos mediante conceptos que particularicen las situaciones planteadas.

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernidad

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La trilogía Matrix son tres películas de ciencia ficción escritas y dirigidas por los Hermanos Wachowski entre 1999 y 2003. Están basadas en el libro “Cultura y Simulacro” del frances Jean Baudrillard; un filósofo y sociólogo, crítico relacionado con el análisis de la posmodernidad y la filosofía del postestructuralismo.

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The Beast and the Sovereign, Vol. 1

Description from Amazon.com

When he died in 2004, Jacques Derrida left behind a vast legacy of unpublished material, much of it in the form of written lectures. With The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume 1, the University of Chicago Press inaugurates an ambitious series, edited by Geoffrey Bennington and Peggy Kamuf, translating these important works into English.

The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume 1 launches the series with Derrida’s exploration of the persistent association of bestiality or animality with sovereignty. In this seminar from 2001–2002, Derrida continues his deconstruction of the traditional determinations of the human. The beast and the sovereign are connected, he contends, because neither animals nor kings are subject to the law—the sovereign stands above it, while the beast falls outside the law from below. He then traces this association through an astonishing array of texts, including La Fontaine’s fable “The Wolf and the Lamb,” Hobbes’s biblical sea monster in Leviathan, D. H. Lawrence’s poem “Snake,” Machiavelli’s Prince with its elaborate comparison of princes and foxes, a historical account of Louis XIV attending an elephant autopsy, and Rousseau’s evocation of werewolves in The Social Contract.

Deleuze, Lacan, and Agamben also come into critical play as Derrida focuses in on questions of force, right, justice, and philosophical interpretations of the limits between man and animal.

Looking forward to this one!

Le Off

“Toujours choisir l’humour”, promettait le numéro zéro de la CultEnews, perdu à jamais mais pas pour les amours. Alors, la tendre Emma, qui parfois observe, elle ferait mieux de rester myope, en a bien aperçu une ou deux trouver amusant d’égarer ses talons dans quelque grille peu ragoûtante. Emma n’a pas souri, a appliqué de l’ombre sur ses paupières, et s’en est retourné réviser les déclinaisons et le monde selon Jacques…

Discrimen Scriptoris

Côté joies de vivre, les Doctorantes et Brillantes Eminences du Comité de rédaction tiennent à chaleureusement remercier le lecteur Canadien qui a gratifié la CultEnews d’un tweet flatteur. Et oui, elles sont au courant, un tweet c’est un peu comme un courant d’air, ça se glisse partout. Elles se sont aussi amusées d’un joli regard étonné qu’elles lisent vraiment le grec, oh, de très loin tout de même il faut bien le dire, qu’il se rassure, et seulement quand elles ont leurs faux-cils sous la main. Mais “elles aiment”, ah oui, y compris les concours virtuels de thème latin, et la machine désirée de Friedrich.

***

Les jolis contes offerts de nos veilles

Des Témoins ordinaires - Vue de la scène

Des Témoins ordinaires – Rachid Ouramdane

Certes, Gabriel-Péri est une zone 2 aux limites de l’exotisme pour l’abonnée à l’Est parisien, qui a supplié pendant 30 minutes de trajet que le Grand Paris mérite un jour son arrogance. Votre Reel so Emma avait rendez-vous avec un Casse-Tête qu’elle aurait bien serré dans ses bras. Mais pas de sentimentalisme, c’est loin, Gennevilliers, pigistes et rois à peine à l’heure, jarretelles dégringolées dans les escaliers accourus quatre-à-quatre vers la salle de spectacle.

Noir. Spots. Des spots multiples, jaunasses, allumés à tour de rôle comme pour des essais lumière, clignotaient comme une boîte de nuit défunte, vous savez, celles où les doctorantes pouvaient fumer, et aussi de la narine droite, dans les années 1990. La correspondante chanceuse d’un rock n’in en Avignon a songé à Mouawad, oui Wajdi le chéri, mais c’était juste une interférence. Un récit évoquait le tournant d’un siècle à donner le vertige des dégoûts, mais les expertes sémio cherchent encore le pourquoi d’une guitare électrique comme métonymie d’une machette, au fil de récits tentant de saisir l’indicible des tortures. C’était malheureusement un peu trop joli pour une révolution, tout ça, entre une derviche étourdissante, et une musique qui faisait songer aux grandes heures d’un petit label nommé FCom.

Qu’est-ce qu’elles fabriquent? – Beaubourg, 14 octobre 2009

La fidélité de la CultEnews aux Revues parlées n’est plus à prouver, bien antérieure, même, aux découvertes des frasques de la Chouchoute Avital Ronell louée dans les éditions confidentielles chuchotées au printemps dernier. C’est en particulier pour une autre aimée, Laure Murat, dont nous avions adoré Passage de l’Odéon, que la Renvoyée spéciale au rayon Essais se déplaça cette fois-ci. Bien lui en prit: les chercheuses, de la scène (il y avait aussi Elizabeth Ladenson, dont nous avons adoré le Proust Lesbien, Giovanna Zapperi – et bien sûr Elisabeth Lebovici, alias El.L en modératrice) dialoguaient avec la salle (Think rien moins que Patricia Falguières ou Anne F. Garréta), autour de l’actualité de leurs travaux, mais aussi des conditions pour que la Recherche soit possible, et enfin de la tenue même de l’accrochage Elles@Centre Pompidou dont on aime bien plus le site Internet intelligent que la muséographie, chut. Il fut beaucoup question d’argent, d’une “pute de lettres” Colette racontée par E. Ladenson, à la dure loi du loyer à payer: “On n’innove pas en période de pénurie”, rappellait Anne F. Garréta, à qui une Biche osa juste dire “J’aime vos livres”, et surtout La Décomposition, sans lui préciser qu’une certaine forme de pénurie lui avait offert quelques idées joyeusement subversives, dont prendre en photo son frigo rempli de livres… et écrire la CultEnews, puis retrouver du travail… parce qu’il fallait financer la CultEnews, un projet beaucoup plus excitant que remplir un frigo, etc. etc.

***

L’interlude classique de la semaine

Batsheba, Rembrandt (1654)

“A présent, je décrirai l’expérience de l’émerveillement
devant l’existence du monde en disant: dans cette expérience, le monde est éprouvé comme un miracle.
Mais me voilà tenté de dire que l’expression juste, dans la langue, du miracle qu’est l’existence du monde – bien qu’elle n’exprime rien dans la langue – est l’existence
du langage lui-même.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Conférence sur l’Ethique, 1929.

***

La Fun Fair de l’Automne

Carten Höller - Mirror Carrousel - 2005. Photo: E.R.

Alors, le 21 octobre, il fallait être partout, sauf si on y était déjà le 20, privilège ou pas, et si on était ailleurs. De toute façon, on y était d’une manière ou d’une autre, sur Twitter aussi.

La CultEnews avait dépêché deux petites souris sur le terrain. L’une a vu la FIAC, s’y est ennuyée, a dû changer trois fois de paire de chaussures (les frais de représentation d’une Doctorante, après les bas couture, c’est le cordonnier), et en plus le champagne était trop chaud (3° de plus qu’au Salon du Livre, c’est dire si la survie fut rude). Son bilan déçu: “Conventionnel et institutionnel”, et double aspro, aussi. Une autre, en revanche, a beaucoup ri devant l’exquis ballet de la compagnie du Zerep pour l’ouverture du Nouveau Festival de Beaubourg(-la-Reine), qui rejouait la scène “des positions” d’El Coup du Cric Andalou que nous regretterons donc infiniment de ne pas avoir vu lors de sa création en 2004, Shame on CultEnews, Xavier and Sophie we love you. Pour que l’expérience soit complète, la bande-son était assurée par une troupe d’accordéonistes masqués et quelques copains traînaient dans la place. Fun, comme dans “Fun Fair” ainsi qu’y invite le déconcertant manège de Carsten Höller, et peut-être foire, aussi, qui s’est close par quelques bals joyeux où une demoiselle Simonet se fit remarquer.

A noter qu’une dissidente a voulu le même soir aller se frotter à Tim Etchells, mais là, non, it was not the place to be d’ailleurs il n’y avait pas grand-monde c’est plus surprenant, elle n’a pas trouvé ça drôle du tout et a quitté les lieux en 35 minutes… alors qu’elle avait payé son billet mais résiste définitivement au concept de Forced Entertainment.

***

If Only

La Réd’Chef exceptionnellement débordée par les nécessités de l’automécénat – et égarée par une guichetière, ça arrive, qui ne pouvait deviner quel spectacle l’une voulait réserver puisqu’il s’agissait de l’autre, regrette beaucoup d’avoir oublié de se rendre au Théâtre de la Ville pour Do You Remember, No I don’t, qui a reçu de très beaux éloges.

Le seul endroit où ça parlait vraiment d’art mercredi 21 octobre au soir, était peut-être l’EHESS, so chic so élitiste rentrée pour le séminaire Something You Should Know, oui ce sont un peu les mêmes qui assuraient l’animation de la Revue parlée de la semaine précédente, et elles n’ont même pas besoin de jarretelles pour s’arroger le droit d’avoir une cervelle, pas comme nous, hein, mais nous grandirons, c’est dans cet espoir que nous portons des talons…

Brèves de Trottoir

Le Nouveau Festival du Centre Pompidou continue jusqu’au 23 novembre, c’est gratuit, il s’en passe, c’est CultEnews, et notamment dès demain, oh c’est lundi, Emma fait l’école buissonière, avec un hommage à Philippe Thomas qui permettra autant d’enfin vous renseigner sur la mythique conférence qu’il donna (en 1988, pas 1981, pan sur la claviste et honte à la CultEnews) que d’épancher de doux-amers souvenirs.

Les Belles iront danser place du Châtelet le 30 octobre en espérant que le public tousse moins que d’habitude (elle est pourtant pas si mauvaise, la clim’ du théâtre de la Ville), pour la mise en lecture du Roberto Zucco de Bernard-Marie Chéri par Georges Lavaudant.

Meeting Masséra, c’est bien tentant, on en avait parlé là, et ça se passe du 26 au 31 octobre 2009 au Théâtre de la Cité internationale. “United Emmerdements of New Order” a beau avoir été écrit en 2002, il était oh… en deçà de l’indécence de 2009?

Il semblerait qu’une très belle expo de la collection de Jean-Jacques Lebel soit à découvrir à la Maison-Rouge.

Les Pompes Funèbres ont tourné à plein régime ces dernières semaines, et la CultEnews a été particulièrement attristée d’apprendre à la suite le décès d’Alain Crombecque, suivi de Nancy Spéro.

***

Le Baiser de la fin

“Ce n’est qu’aimer, que connaître, qui compte ;
non d’avoir aimé, ou d’avoir connu.”

Pier Paolo Pasolini, Les Pleurs de l’Excavatrice.

L'Evangile Selon Saint Mathieu - P-P Pasolini.

***

Crédits phonographiques de cette édition: Enjoy the silence, Depeche Mode.

Remerciements particuliers: Mathieu P.B, Sébastien G., Emmanuel T., Laure M. et vous aussi, bien sûr.

Cette édition de la CultEnews est dédiée à ce que notre identité ne soit jamais nationale et nos talents multilingues toujours aussi doux.

]]> http://lyrikzeitung.wordpress.com/2009/10/21/120-friederike-mayrockers-projekt/ Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:54:41 +0000 lyrikzeitung http://lyrikzeitung.wordpress.com/2009/10/21/120-friederike-mayrockers-projekt/

ENTGRENZTER TRAUM

Michael Hammerschmid : “ich schreibe jetzt figural” – Zur Ästhetik von Friederike Mayröckers “Und ich schüttelte einen Liebling”

Ausschnitt (komplett bei in|ad|ae|qu|at)

Friederike Mayröcker schreibt an einem literarischen Projekt, von dem sie verschiedentlich angedeutet hat, es bräuchte eine Lebensdauer von mindestens 150 Jahren, um die Wunschkräfte, die darin arbeiten, an einen befriedigenden Punkt zu führen. Diese 150 Jahre sind zweifelsohne als Chiffre für die Überschreitung gewöhnlichen Menschenalters zu verstehen, wie man es etwa aus der Bibel oder von Mythen her kennt. Mit diesem Wort ist aber auch der Umgang mit den Rahmungen sogenannter Wirklichkeit angesprochen, durch die sich Friederike Mayröckers Schreiben bewegt: über Grenzen hinaus, in den entgrenzten Raum und Traum der Sprache. Angesichts des Jandlschen Schreibens und seiner Grundhaltung, die im vorliegenden Kontext das Bezugsfeld bildet, stellt sich daher die Frage, wie sich die Ästhetik der Überschreitung bei Friederike Mayröcker genauer beschreiben lässt. Wie gestaltet sich das Verhältnis der scheinbaren Höhen ihrer Prosa zu den scheinbaren Tiefen der Jandlschen Dichtung ? Wo ergeben sich signifikante Vergleichspunkte und Differenzen in der Grundtendenz ihrer literarischen Arbeit ?[2] Anhand von Friederike Mayröckers letztem Buch UND ICH SCHÜTTELTE EINEN LIEBLING , gewissermaßen dem opus magnum seit Ernst Jandls Tod, lassen sich erste Antworten und Perspektiven auf diese Fragen formulieren.

Zunächst fällt auf, dass UND ICH SCHÜTTELTE EINEN LIEBLING in einem sehr einfachen und luziden Ton geschrieben ist, der so manche Räudigkeit und Skizzenhaftigkeit früherer Arbeiten zurücknimmt. Vor allem im Vergleich mit dem Vorgängerbüchlein “Die kommunizierenden Gefäße“ wird dies deutlich, das einem mit Kurzabsätzen und schillernden, geballten Capriccios begegnet, währendUND ICH SCHÜTTELTE EINEN LIEBLING längere Episoden und eine flächigere, weitgestrecktere Erzählweise entfaltet. Aber auch in diesem letzten Buch sind die Brüche und Schichtungen Grundbestandteil der Mayröckerschen Prosa. Diese doppelte Haltung der Vereinfachung und des entgrenzenden, brechenden Selbstbezugs laufen auf die Frage nach einer eigenen Ästhetik des Herunterkommens bei Friederike Mayröcker hinaus:

Zuallererst könnte man dieses Buch so behandeln, wie die Autorin die Bücher und Kunstwerke, die Menschen und Phänomene ihrerseits behandelt, um sich so unmittelbar wie möglich auf den Gestus des Buches einzulassen:

und ich lese jetzt Gertrude Stein und Jacques Derrida und ausschlieszlich und ich lese sie immer wieder und ich gerate an Stellen die ich schon gut kenne und manchmal habe ich sie auswendig gelernt, und ich kann nur visuell denken, und ich bin Zärtlichkeit gar nicht mehr gewohnt, … (186)

QUELLE

Michael Hammerschmid und Helmut Neundlinger : “VON EINEN SPRACHEN”. POETOLGISCHE UNTRSUCHUNGEN ZUM WERK ERNST JANDLS – Innsbruck – Studienverlag 2009 , 173 – 184

Ryuichi Sakamoto - Derrida

It is of a certain regard that french philosopher Jacques Derrida didn’t accept to be photographed until 1979, at the age of 49. By the way, few years before his death in 2004 he agreed to a movie almost fully centered on his own figure.
“Derrida” by filmmakers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman, 2002, put an eye on the philosopher in the attempt to discover the man and close the circle; showing from everyday life to symbolic episodes such as the visit to Mandela’s prison, conferences and teaching activities as well as private camera-talks, the movie (re)presents the algerian born thinker as a person and not only as a philosopher.
But there is an unpredictable depth in Derrida’s eyes, enigmatic as his writing, glances that cross the evidence, always mesmerising and not analising.
The soundtrack composed by Ryuichi Sakamoto was not inspired by this everyday person, neither by his books.
I think he pointed exactly at his eyes.

Aware of the limits of language Sakamoto displays only small and penetrating sound portraits, sharp forms of conversations without words, beyond human language and its duality. The result goes far beyond the soundtrack role itself, fully responding to a listening-only experience and at the same time improving so much of the focus searched in the movie.
Divided into 29 tracks engineered by Fernando Aponte and published by KAB America, this record presents Sakamoto at his best, a passionate scientist and a cold lover, electronic, acoustic and acousmatic.
Mainly worked on piano solo and effects balancing, with the precious collaboration of Phil Romano as piano-tuner, it also includes concrète materials, worked with a cut similar to Akira Rabelais’ Satie re-treatment.
Tracks from a fluid approach more than a deconstructured process.
Luminous connections for enigmatic traces.

sitesakamoto
derridathemovie

PEZZULLO XXIV
DERRIDIANA

[il testo e la spiega prossimamente su www.secretum-online.it]

***

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PEZZULLO XXV
INCIPIT

“Da piccolo volevo diventare invisibile: ora lo sono.”

[con questo pezzullo si conclude la serie, che mi poneva qui nella posizione fastidiosa di primus inter pares, quand'io per tutta la mia vita e con tutte le mie forze ho teso a esser par inter dispares. buona fortuna a tutti. db]

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On October 22,  New York University will host a truly impressive group of contemporary thinkers for a symposium discussion.  As part of NYU’s Rethinking Secularism series, Judith Butler, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, and Cornel West will meet to give talks on secularism.

Four of the biggest thinkers alive today will be together for one night in New York.  Open to the public with photo ID. Not to be missed.

As much respect as these giants deserve for their continued efforts and devotion to intellectualism,  I generally don’t condone the particular brand of intellectualism they practice. Over the next few blog posts, I’ll take them one at a time.

Judith Butler, for one, I can’t understand.  Nor do I really understand the schools of thought she’s associated with, like continental feminism, continental philosophy, and post-structuralism.

This could be due to my own intellectual shortcomings.  Indeed, Butler’s been called “probably one of the ten smartest people on the planet” by English Professor Warren Hedges.  I’m not likely to have accolades heaped upon me anytime soon for the weight of my mind,  but my inability to get my head around Butler’s ideas and possible genius, I suspect, is due less to my limits and more her bad writing and bad thinking.

William Zinsser, who I personally consider an authority “on writing well,” said, “Writing and learning and thinking are the same process.”  Put another way, soundness of thinking and soundness of writing are inseparable.  One cannot think clearly if he or she isn’t writing clearly; one cannot write clearly if he or she isn’t thinking clearly.

So let’s keep that in mind as we read a now infamous quote of Butler’s:

The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.

For that gem, Denis Dutton awarded her first place in the Bad Writing Contest in 1997.  He aptly explained, “To ask what this means is to miss the point. This sentence beats readers into submission and instructs them that they are in the presence of a great and deep mind. Actual communication has nothing to do with it.”

And that’s why I can’t abide Butler’s perspective and perhaps the entirety of the intellectual movements she’s a part of.  There is no soundness to the writing, the thinking, or the learning. It’s a mishmash of nonsense passed off as brilliance and has sadly created a generation of uselessly irrelevant academic careers.

Zinsser identifies four elements to the writing/thinking/learning craft:  clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity. I won’t deny Butler’s striving for humanity, but after reading the confusion that is her process, I’ve little regard for her achievements at clarity, brevity, and simplicity.

Of course, Butler “bit back” in reaction to Dutton’s admitted rudeness. On the pages of The New York Times, she explained the reason she and other academics write in such obscure language is because it’s necessary to overthrow existing power structures.  Quoting fellow critical theorist Herbert Marcuse, Butler explains academics like her don’t use traditional, linear writing and thinking because their entire intellectual enterprise “presupposes the collapse and invalidation of precisely that universe of discourse and behavior…”

This hits at the heart of my problem with Butler, et al.  I’m using her as an example of what has been called “French Theory” by Stanley Fish.  The basics of French Theory were most famously espoused by Jacques Derrida in the ’60s.  It’s been called many things, like postmodernism and deconstruction.  There are many nuances and inconsistencies among the various thinkers who’ve come to be lumped fairly or unfairly with the movement. But there is a uniting thread among everything Fish calls French Theory as it was practiced in America.  Namely, that human knowledge is a social construction and should not be confused with an the actual external reality it claims to describe.  Furthermore, language itself is a construct and should not be confused with the concepts it claims to describe.

On its face, I don’t disagree with this perspective.  Indeed, similar ideas were expressed by Friedrich Nietzsche at the end of the 19th century, and I hold them to be among the most important moments in Western thought.

But Butler and a cadre of other American academics latched onto the idea that “there are no facts, only interpretations,” and took it into untenable, useless, silly territory.  Perhaps the funniest moment in the movement was a joke made by the physicist Alan Sokal and the ensuing vitriol now known as The Science Wars.  Sokal published a paper in a postmodern journal, arguing reality itself was a construct and that modern physics proved this.  Postmodernists loved it, until Sokal published another paper explaining he was just kidding.  Those who liked his first paper became the butt-end of an academic hoax.

Now, I’m not sure about Judith butler’s take on the subjectivity of physics. It’s unfair for me to take her to task for the sins of her colleagues. And my complaint with her isn’t really over science, per se.  Rather,  I’m troubled by what I see as a fundamental hypocrisy within her line of thought.

Butler’s academic work has tried to, in her own words, question the “presuppositional terms” of thought, mostly within feminist and gender theory.  Like her French Theorist counterparts, she believes there are no facts, just interpretations, and that interpretations should bear scrutiny for bias, assumption, racism, sexism, patriarchy, colonialism, etc.

Fair enough.  We’re all biased people.  No harm in exposing that. The harm comes in when one tries to replace those biases and interpretations with other biases and interpretations.  What I see as the central hypocrisy of Butler’s thinking is her up front, immediate claim that there is no such thing as capitial “T,” Platonic Truth, followed by the zealous commitment to her own set of irreproachable truths.

If we’re going to challenge the presuppositions of how we organize society on the basis there are no truths, just constructs, what makes those criticisms anything but constructs themselves? And constructs laden with bias, at that? Butler cannot ground her own perspectives in any epistemology because she has outright rejected epistemology.  Her own perspectives are as justified as the ones she seeks to challenge and overthrow.

I see this as hypocrisy at a deep level.  She’’s trying to have it both ways by claiming limits to reason prove her own brand of reason.  I would be granting it legitimacy if I called it dishonest, disingenuous, or inconsistant.  It doesn’t deserve these compliments.  Rather than take Butler on with the philosophy she seeks to destroy, we can use the rules laid out by Zinsser.  Her poor writing is evidence of poor thinking.

Though Butler likely has no respect for him, another great thinker made this matter clear in the early 20th century.  Ludwig Wittgenstein provided us final words on all thought when he wrote,  “What can be said at all can be said clearly.” I find these sentiments congruous with was Zinsser promotes, and solid grounds to reject the entire enterprise Butler has engaged in. 

If you can’t say anything clearly, don’t say anything at all.

[GIUSEPPE ZUCCARINO]

Scrivere la ferita.

Geoffrey Bennington riceve l’incarico di redigere, per la collana «Les contemporains» delle Éditions du Seuil, una monografia su Derrida. I libri di questa serie vertono normalmente su narratori e poeti, non su filosofi (tra i dieci titoli apparsi fino a quel momento, solo uno fa eccezione, essendo dedicato a Wittgenstein), e presentano inoltre un piccolo corpus di fotografie relative allo scrittore oggetto del discorso. Nel caso specifico, il contratto prevede una clausola aggiuntiva, quella che nel volume, oltre allo studio di Bennington, sia incluso uno scritto realizzato per l’occasione dallo stesso Derrida. Il filosofo però, invece di limitarsi a redigere una premessa o postfazione, sceglie di procedere in modo assai più inventivo: il suo testo, Circonfession, si presenta infatti come una lunghissima e autonoma nota a piè di pagina (stampata in caratteri piccoli su fondo grigio), che accompagna dall’inizio alla fine il testo di Bennington(1).
     Non è la prima volta che Derrida adotta una soluzione del genere: uno scritto del 1979, Survivre, apparso dapprima in un volume collettivo americano e poi ripreso nell’opera Parages, era ugualmente associato a una nota, leggibile come un testo a parte (dal titolo Journal de bord), che scorreva in basso lungo le pagine(2). Ci si può chiedere cosa abbia fatto sorgere un’idea tanto inconsueta. Ciò dipende da un atteggiamento teorico generale, che Derrida ha cercato di chiarire in più occasioni, ad esempio dichiarando in un’intervista: «Quando scrivo qualcosa, anche un testo di filosofia molto classico, quel che m’importa di più non è il contenuto, il corpo dottrinale, ma la messa in scena, la messa in spazio»(3).
     Circonfession è un neologismo molto efficace, perché salda in un unico vocabolo due temi ben presenti nel testo: la circoncisione e la confessione. Quest’ultimo implica a sua volta il richiamo ad un classico del pensiero occidentale, le Confessioni di Agostino, libro con cui Derrida intesse un fitto dialogo. La lunga nota risulta composta da una serie di brani, più precisamente da «cinquantanove periodi»(4). Il numero non è casuale, perché corrisponde all’età dell’autore nel 1989, anno in cui il testo viene iniziato, ed anche il termine «periodi» va preso alla lettera, nel senso che ciascun brano, pur occupando diverse pagine, si presenta in termini grammaticali come un solo periodo, senza alcun punto fermo tranne quello conclusivo. In tal modo, benché le virgole vengano mantenute, si crea quasi l’impressione di uno stream of consciousness, procedimento del tutto insolito nell’ambito della scrittura filosofica.  Quest’opzione non è di ordine meramente formale, ma rientra nel più generale intento derridiano di costringere il discorso filosofico ad aprirsi a tecniche espositive, a tematiche e a tonalità nuove e impreviste.
     Da qui anche l’emergere, in Circonfession (come del resto in altri scritti dell’autore), di una forte pulsione autobiografica, che in questo caso non dà luogo a racconti ordinati, bensì a lampi di memoria, cronologicamente discontinui e inseriti nel flusso di linguaggio in cui consiste il testo. Per alludere a tale flusso, il filosofo trova subito un’immagine: quella del sangue che scorre dalla vena alla siringa al momento di un prelievo, quasi volesse manifestare il desiderio di esteriorizzare ciò che è più intimo e corporeo. Allo stesso ordine di fenomeni appartiene del resto la circoncisione, di cui Derrida (in quanto ebreo che l’ha subita da neonato, secondo il rituale religioso) può parlare a titolo personale. Ma l’elemento soggettivo è presente anche nell’evocazione delle Confessioni: infatti, se in quell’opera Agostino accennava fra l’altro al comportamento della madre nell’imminenza della morte e all’affetto che provava per lei, Derrida intende fare la stessa cosa in relazione alla propria madre, a sua volta morente. Anzi, il problema è per lui ancor più complesso, poiché la genitrice, Georgette Safar, è in quel momento più e meno che morente. Più, in quanto è come fosse già morta, essendo ormai poco cosciente e incapace di riconoscere persino i familiari; meno, perché, dopo aver fatto temere un rapido decesso, sopravvive ad oltranza, senza che si possa prevedere per quanto tempo potrà resistere(5).
     Un altro aspetto insolito del libro è dato dal rapporto che si instaura fra i due scritti (di Bennnington e di Derrida) che lo compongono, rapporto che viene chiarito da un’avvertenza iniziale: «G. B. ha tentato di descrivere, secondo norme pedagogiche e logiche a cui tiene, se non la totalità del pensiero di J. D., almeno il sistema generale di tale pensiero. […] Ma, dal momento che la posta in gioco nel lavoro di J. D. consiste nel mostrare in che cosa tale sistema deve restare essenzialmente aperto, quest’impresa era votata in anticipo allo scacco […]. Per dimostrare la necessità ineluttabile dello scacco, il nostro contratto ha voluto che J. D., dopo aver letto il testo di G. B., scrivesse a sua volta qualcosa che sfuggisse alla sistematizzazione così proposta»(6). Si tratta appunto di Circonfession, in cui Derrida polemizza, sia pure in modo scherzoso, con lo studioso della propria opera, negandogli, così sostiene, «il diritto di privarmi dei miei eventi, di abbracciare, cioè, la grammatica generativa di me, di fare come se questa grammatica fosse capace, esibendola, di impadronirsi della legge che presiede a tutto ciò che può accadermi attraverso la scrittura»(7).
     Il filosofo spiega di sentirsi preso fra due sensi di colpa: quello in cui incorrerebbe se non dicesse nulla di ciò che sta accadendo alla propria genitrice e quello suscitato dalla scelta «di esibirne gli ultimi respiri e peggio ancora, per fini che alcuni potrebbero giudicare letterari, a rischio di aggiungere un esercizio dubbio alla serie “lo scrittore e sua madre”, sottoserie “la morte della madre”»(8). È uno dei motivi per cui sceglie di innestare nel proprio discorso numerose citazioni in latino dal filosofo di Tagaste, mostrando così che, molti secoli prima, anche Agostino aveva osato esporsi, ed esporre sua madre, in maniera analoga, sia pure rivolgendosi idealmente a Dio.
     Tuttavia, al di là di ciò che Derrida può dire di sé, della propria infanzia o della propria famiglia, ci interessa di più una confessione di tipo diverso. Egli rivela infatti di aver ormai accumulato una massa di «documenti, iconografia, appunti, sia dotti che ingenui, i racconti di sogni o le dissertazioni filosofiche, la diligente trascrizione di trattati enciclopedici, sociologici, storici, psicoanalitici, di cui non farò mai nulla, sulle circoncisioni nel mondo, quella ebraica, e l’araba, e le altre, e l’escissione, in vista della mia sola circoncisione»(9). Apprendiamo dunque che per molto tempo, e in particolare fra il 1976 e il 1984, il filosofo ha lavorato al progetto di un volume su questo argomento, redigendo dei taccuini da cui, in Circonfession, trascrive vari estratti. Diviene chiaro così, a posteriori, a cosa alludesse quando, in un’intervista del decennio precedente, spiegava il proprio sogno di redigere una sorta di opera totalizzante, e per ciò stesso quasi impossibile da realizzare: «È probabile che io non la scriva, ma non ci rinuncio. Il desiderio di scriverla non è ancora interamente morto. Tutto ciò che leggo […], che si tratti di filosofia, letteratura (leggo anche testi sacri, testi di etnologia, di scienze umane, di psicoanalisi), tutto ciò che leggo è direttamente o indirettamente orientato, travagliato, calamitato dall’idea di questo libro. Ho solo un’idea di libro, un progetto. Ciò che è stato pubblicato sotto forma di raccolte di testi, e anche Glas o La carte postale, persino quei due volumi, non è stato dapprima concepito come libro. Di progetti di libro ne ho solo uno, quello che non scriverò, ma che orienta, attira, seduce tutto ciò che leggo. […] Prendo appunti, a seconda dei momenti ho delle coazioni di scrittura attorno a questo libro, e poi, per lunghi periodi, niente. […] Sarebbe quanto meno un incrocio di molti generi diversi. Cerco una forma che non sia un genere e che permetta di accumulare, di potenzializzare, un enorme numero di stili, di generi, di lingue, di livelli… Ecco perché quest’opera non si scrive»(10).
     Gli estratti dai taccuini presentano, in forma ancor più accentuata, gli stessi caratteri stilistici di Circonfession, ossia l’assenza di punti fermi, l’andamento in forma di stream of consciousness e una tonalità a tratti ironica e persino burlesca. L’opera progettata avrebbe dovuto intitolarsi Livre d’Élie, o Le Livre d’Élie(11), con un doppio riferimento al profeta biblico e al «nome segreto» dello stesso Derrida. È noto che i bambini ebrei di sesso maschile ricevono alla nascita, oltre a quello consueto, un altro nome, che viene usato solo nei documenti religiosi e nel culto sinagogale. Nel caso del filosofo, questo nome era appunto Élie, come egli stesso ha già rivelato nel 1984 durante una conferenza su Joyce(12). Quanto al profeta, la tradizione lo considera una specie di custode della circoncisione e denomina «sedia di Elia» quella su cui siede il mohel mentre pratica l’atto ai danni del neonato. Derrida riproduce in fotografia nel libro sia una «sedia di Elia», sia la copertina di uno dei propri taccuini, sulla quale ha trascritto in caratteri ebraici la parola milah, che significa circoncisione(13).
     In effetti, come ricorda Bennington, questo tema era già ben presente nell’opera del filosofo(14). Per spiegare in che cosa esso abbia attratto Derrida, inducendolo a progettare un intero libro sull’argomento, conviene ricordare ciò che egli dirà parecchi anni dopo, nel corso di un film su di lui realizzato da Safaa Fathy(15). In una sequenza, egli asserisce: «Dovunque l’iscrizione lascia una marca nel corpo, e una marca che lavora nell’inconscio, che non è semplicemente una memoria, una rammemorazione conscia, dovunque ciò che ho chiamato la traccia porta al di là della presenza e della coscienza, in certo modo essa rinvia a qualcosa come una circoncisione. In quel luogo, che non è un luogo qualsiasi – ciò che circonda il pene –, che è ad un tempo un luogo di desiderio e di erezione, è evidente che la scrittura come scrittura del corpo trova il suo luogo, un evento in cui il soggetto, dissimmetricamente, riceve la legge. Prima ancora di parlare, di scegliere la propria appartenenza, viene marcato dalla comunità e, quale che sia il movimento di denegazione, di emancipazione, di liberazione che potrebbe eventualmente avere nei riguardi di tale comunità, la marca rimane. Ci sono degli equivalenti, la mia ipotesi è che ci siano degli equivalenti (ma su questi equivalenti ci sarebbe da fare un lungo discorso) in ogni cultura, e in quel caso si potrebbe parlare di una specie di circoncisione metaforica, allegorica, tropica. Ma non ho mai smesso di sottolineare che dovunque ci sia traccia, taglio, incisione, iscrizione, marca nel corpo, si trova una figura della circoncisione. Ciò significa che, in tutti i testi in cui parlo di marca, di data, di schibboleth, di traccia, d’iscrizione, un segno viene fatto in direzione della circoncisione, anzi della mia circoncisione»(16).
     L’insistenza sul corpo, su cui vengono ad iscriversi anche ferite dolorose, è ben presente in Circonfession, come si può vedere ad esempio da un brano relativo alle piaghe della madre: «Non ho una lingua mia, soltanto false escare, falsi focolai (eskhara), quelle croste nerastre e purulente che si formano attorno alle piaghe sul corpo di mia madre, sotto i talloni, poi sull’osso sacro e sulle anche, numerose, vive, brulicanti di omonimie, tutte quelle escare, focolari d’altare per dèi e sacrifici, braciere, fuoco di bivacco, sesso femminile, l’escarosi della parola stessa che genera un’enorme famiglia di bastardi etimologici, di progeniture che cambiano nome e la cui escara omonima, la squadra del blasone quadrato, dà luogo alle genealogie en abîme di cui non abuserò, ma non mi fermo qui senza notare il legame con la cicatrice inglese, scar, o con il taglio dell’alto-tedesco, scar, l’escatologia della mia circoncisione, poiché questo termine invecchiato, escara che viene da scar, significa lo spacco, la violenza dell’effrazione»(17). Verbalizzare gli aspetti segreti del corpo non è solo un modo per provocare, stupire o eventualmente irritare chi legge, ma comporta anche una nuova responsabilità assegnata alla filosofia, chiamata a considerare ciò che finora è rimasto non detto.
     Il riferimento alla circoncisione, e dunque al quadro religioso entro cui tale rito si colloca, spinge Derrida a interrogarsi sui propri rapporti con l’ebraismo. La formula che trova per definirli non è priva di ambiguità, in quanto evoca la figura del marrano, termine che, nei secoli XIV e XV, designava quegli ebrei spagnoli o portoghesi che, per sfuggire alle persecuzioni da parte dei cristiani, simulavano la conversione, pur continuando a praticare di nascosto la religione ebraica: «Io sono una specie di marrano della cultura cattolica francese […], sono uno di quei marrani che non si dicono ebrei nemmeno nel segreto del loro cuore»(18).

Torniamo però al progettato libro, visto che in Circonfession Derrida riproduce un estratto dai taccuini nel quale si parla dei problemi che ne rendono difficile, se non impossibile, il compimento: «Supponendo che – Glas o La carte postale abbiano un “selettore”, un principio di scelta o di discriminazione (tematico o formale), per esempio le due colonne, Gl., o il numero 7, ecc., invece in Le Livre d’Élie il principio di selezione, senza cui nessun libro e nessuna forma potrebbe apparire, non sarebbe forse il principio di selezione stesso, la circoncisione come taglio, marca, determinazione, esclusione, da cui l’impossibilità di scrivere, la riflessione interminabile, il ritardo infinito?»(19).  Anche questo aspetto utopico e irraggiungibile dell’opera viene spiegato in maniera efficace nel film. Il filosofo dichiara: «Ho accumulato per decenni dei materiali, testi, documenti, in vista di quel grande libro sulla circoncisione, ma ho saputo fin dall’inizio che non l’avrei scritto, che non avrei mai potuto commisurare ad esso un testo soddisfacente, per ragioni contingenti ma anche necessarie: il progetto era così illimitato, da un lato, che sarebbe stato necessario scrivere un libro […] in duecento volumi, e dall’altro lato – e questa è la ragione non contingente – perché era come un libro sull’ombelico dei miei sogni, un libro che sarebbe non soltanto arrivato alla radice dell’inconscio, ma avrebbe in qualche modo esibito, rigirato, in un movimento di verità. Dunque sapevo fin dall’inizio che, proprio a causa della circoncisione stessa, di questa marca inconscia che è fatta per rimanere più forte di qualsiasi presa di coscienza, mai potrei, e neppure dovrei, esibirla in piena luce. Dunque sapevo fin dall’inizio che si trattava di un progetto che correva verso il fallimento, e che, in qualche modo, non avrei lasciato altro che una specie di rovina o di archivio disperso, di segnale luminoso che mostrasse da lontano ciò che avrei potuto voler fare»(20).  Resta il fatto che Circonfession testimonia dell’esistenza potenziale di questo libro sognato, visto che ne cita dei frammenti, ne illustra i temi e ne suggerisce idealmente lo sviluppo, destinato a rimanere infinito.
     Neppure la lunga nota scritta per accompagnare il saggio di Bennington conclude la propria esistenza con la pubblicazione del volume in cui è inserita, ma ricompare e si protrae in varie forme. La prima è di carattere sonoro: nel 1993, infatti, ne viene messa in commercio, sotto forma di cassette audio, una versione letta dall’autore (a conferma dell’importanza che egli attribuisce a questo testo), nella quale i cinquantanove periodi sono, a volte, intervallati da brevi frammenti musicali tratti da antichi canti religiosi ebraici(21). All’inizio, Derrida ricorda all’ascoltatore la storia di Circonfession e spiega di aver accettato l’invito ad effettuarne una sonorizzazione. Osserva fra l’altro: «Come tutti coloro che scrivono, suppongo, e nel momento in cui scrivono, io pronuncio in me ogni parola, prima e dopo la sua iscrizione. In me, cioè al tempo stesso in silenzio, a voce bassa, e per simulazione a voce alta […]. Ciò che si mette così alla prova di quest’improbabile dizione è soprattutto – non solo ma soprattutto – il ritmo, e il respiro»(22).
     Qualche anno dopo, anche il film D’ailleurs, Derrida risulta strettamente legato a Circonfession. Basterà ricordare due sequenze importanti: in una, si vede il filosofo leggerne un brano nella chiesa di Santo Tomé a Toledo, proprio davanti al celebre quadro del Greco El entierro del Conde de Orgaz; nell’altra, che è poi quella finale, si sente la voce off del filosofo che recita un altro passaggio del proprio scritto(23). Il film trova a sua volta un prolungamento con la pubblicazione di un libro realizzato in collaborazione da Derrida e dalla regista(24). All’interno di esso, il contributo derridiano, Lettres sur un aveugle, pur essendo riferito alla pellicola, presenta al tempo stesso non pochi riferimenti ai temi del testo precedente.
     Circonfession desta non solo la curiosità, ma anche l’attenzione degli studiosi. Lo dimostra il fatto che dal 27 al 29 settembre 2001 l’università di Villanova, in Pennsylvania, incentra su di esso un convegno, cui partecipa lo stesso Derrida(25). Il caso vuole che tale incontro abbia luogo a pochi giorni di distanza dall’11 settembre, data segnata dall’attentato alle Twin Towers di New York. Il filosofo esordisce ricordando il tragico evento, che ha causato la morte di migliaia di persone(26). Arriva poi a parlare di Circonfession, per ribadire l’intento da cui era partito, ossia quello di attuare uno spiazzamento rispetto allo studio scritto da Bennington. Spiega anche perché, ed entro quali limiti, ha scelto di far riferimento ad Agostino: «Ho una grande ammirazione per Agostino, naturalmente, e ho la sensazione di non conoscerlo a sufficienza; non lo conoscerò mai abbastanza. È un motivo di più per chiedergli perdono. Ma, d’altro canto, cerco non di pervertirlo, ma di “farlo smarrire”, se è lecito dire così, in luoghi in cui non potrebbe né vorrebbe andare»(27).
     Anche il modo in cui Derrida intende la confessione è diverso dal consueto. Il suo metodo consiste (in rapporto a questo come ad altri concetti che caratterizzano l’ultimo periodo del suo lavoro filosofico: il dono, il perdono, la testimonianza, l’ospitalità, ecc.) nel riprendere una categoria di natura etico-religiosa per fornirne una versione che sia ad un tempo iperbolica e sottratta, nei limiti del possibile, al contesto tradizionale: «Una confessione deve rimanere priva di senso. Se una confessione è significativa, non è niente. Vuol dire che è una confessione fatta in vista di riconciliare, di trovare qualche riconciliazione, qualche redenzione, per emendarmi, cambiarmi, così che esista una teleologia della confessione. Se la confessione è guidata da una teleologia, non è una confessione. È solo un’economia, una terapia, è tutto ciò che volete. La confessione deve rimanere vuota di senso»(28).
     Il convegno si conclude con un dibattito, nel corso del quale vengono rivolte a Derrida domande che lo spingono a chiarire meglio le proprie posizioni. In particolare, gli interlocutori non mancano di interrogarlo sui suoi rapporti con la religione. Gli chiedono fra l’altro come vadano intese affermazioni del tipo «l’ultimo degli ebrei, che sono io», oppure «io passo a giusto titolo per ateo»(29). Le risposte del filosofo, però, non sono certo tali da fugare ogni dubbio: «Quando dico: “l’ultimo degli ebrei, che sono io”, ciò significa, come sapete, che non ci sarà ebraismo dopo di me; io sono dunque il migliore, e sono l’Ebreo esemplare. Al tempo stesso, sono il peggiore, davvero l’ultimo. Tutt’e due. Ecco esattamente quel che penso. Io sono quanto più possibile non-ebreo, quanto più possibile ateo, dunque tutto ciò che dico può essere interpretato come se dipendesse dalla migliore tradizione dell’ebraismo e al tempo stesso come un tradimento assoluto»(30). E più oltre: «Se lo sapessi, direi che sono ateo o che non lo sono, ma lo ignoro. […] Ci sono dei contesti comunitari in cui mi si considera ateo, altri in cui non è così, e io stesso non ne so nulla. […] Dio esiste nella misura in cui delle persone credono in Dio. C’è stata una storia, e ci sono delle religioni. Per me, le religioni sono la prova che Dio esiste, anche se non esiste»(31). Il filosofo vuol far capire che sarebbe impossibile cancellare dalla nostra mente l’idea di Dio, dopo che millenni di storia ci hanno indotto a familiarizzarci con essa; perciò, quand’anche conseguissimo, sul piano individuale, la certezza di non essere credenti, dovremmo comunque confrontarci col fatto che altri la pensano diversamente e attribuiscono ai dogmi religiosi un valore di verità.
     Vedere il filosofo costretto a pronunciarsi, sia pure in termini di sospensione del giudizio, su un tema caro alla tradizione come quello dell’esistenza di Dio suscita l’impressione che egli si ritrovi ad essere vittima, non del tutto innocente, di una specie di contrappasso. Circonfession, da lui scritto per sorprendere e provocare, per offrire una nuova immagine di sé, per trascinare il discorso teorico fuori dal suo terreno abituale, una volta proposto alla fruizione di un gruppo di esperti in filosofia o teologia, non soltanto non suscita scandalo, ma finisce col dar luogo ad un recupero quasi completo. In effetti il pensiero dell’ultimo Derrida, così prossimo a tematiche etico-religiose, si espone al rischio di rimanere in parte invischiato in quello stesso lessico e apparato concettuale da cui, almeno nelle sue mosse iniziali, intendeva prendere con risolutezza le distanze. La decostruzione si rivela dunque non come un processo i cui risultati possano considerarsi acquisiti una volta per tutte, bensì come un compito interminabile, perché il sistema di pensiero che essa prende di mira, tentando di smantellarlo, si ricostituisce di continuo. Da questo, però, sarebbe erroneo ritenere di poter dedurre l’inutilità dei tentativi di rinnovamento attuati da Derrida. Anzi, il suo ruolo nella storia filosofica, e culturale in genere, tende sempre più ad apparire essenziale.

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NOTE

(1) J. Derrida, Circonfession, in G. Bennington – J. Derrida, Jacques Derrida, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1991 (tr. it. in Derridabase – Circonfessione, Roma, Lithos, 2008; si avverte che i passi delle traduzioni italiane cui si rimanda vengono spesso citati con modifiche). Del libro esiste anche una seconda edizione francese, aggiornata nell’appendice bio-bibliografica e col nuovo titolo Derrida, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 2008, ma nelle citazioni faremo sempre riferimento a quella del 1991.
(2) J. Derrida, Survivre, in Parages, Paris, Galilée, 1986, pp. 117-218 (tr. it. Sopra-vivere, in Paraggi, Milano, Jaca Book, 2000, pp. 175-271).
(3) J. Derrida, in Artaud, oui… Entretien avec Jacques Derrida, in «Europe», 873-874, 2002, p. 38.
(4) Circonfession, cit., p. 5 (tr. it. p. 5).
(5) In effetti, benché la stesura di Circonfession si protragga dal gennaio 1989 all’aprile dell’anno successivo, la madre morirà ancora dopo, il 5 dicembre 1991.
(6) Jacques Derrida, cit., p. 3 (tr. it. p. 10).
(7) Circonfession, cit., p. 33 (tr. it. p. 34).
(8) Ibid., p. 38 (tr. it. p. 38).
(9) Ibid., pp. 58-60 (tr. it. p. 60).
(10) J. Derrida, Dialangues (1983), in Points de suspension. Entretiens, Paris, Galilée, 1992, pp. 151-152.
(11) Per le due versioni del titolo, con e senza articolo, cfr. Jacques Derrida, cit., pp. 87 e 255.
(12) Cfr. J. Derrida, Ulysse gramophone. Deux mots pour Joyce, Paris, Galilée, 1987, pp. 104-105 (tr. it. Ulisse grammofono. Due parole per Joyce, Genova, Il Melangolo, 2004, p. 83).
(13) Cfr. Jacques Derrida, cit., pp. 209 e 87 (nell’edizione italiana del volume mancano sia le foto che l’apparato bio-bibliografico finale).
(14) Cfr. G. Bennington, ibid., p. 301: «J. D. mi avrà sorpreso meno di quanto crede o finge di credere esibendo qui la propria circoncisione: da molto tempo non parla d’altro, come potrei mostrare con citazioni, e per limitarmi ai luoghi in cui la nomina, in Glas, La carte postale, Schibboleth (soprattutto), Ulysse gramophone».
(15) Il film, D’ailleurs, Derrida, è stato proiettato per la prima volta in pubblico nel dicembre del 1999, ed è ora accessibile in forma di DVD (Paris, Éditions Montparnasse, 2008).
(16) D’ailleurs, Derrida, trascrizione dal sonoro del film.
(17) Circonfession, cit., pp. 90-91 (tr. it. pp. 88-89).
(18) Ibid., p. 160 (tr. it. pp. 156-157). La comparazione è destinata a riapparire sovente nei libri successivi dell’autore. Cfr. ad esempio J. Derrida, Marx & Sons, Paris, P.U.F. – Galilée, 2002, p. 91 (tr. it. Marx & Sons, Milano, Mimesis, 2008, p. 294): «Ho spesso giocato, nel modo più serio possibile, a presentarmi, segretamente, come una sorta di marrano. L’ho fatto in particolare, e apertamente, in Apories, Circonfession, Mal d’archive – e senza dubbio altrove. E l’ho fatto meno apertamente dappertutto, ad esempio in Le monolinguisme de l’autre».
(19) Circonfession, cit., p. 255 (tr. it. p. 245).
(20) D’ailleurs, Derrida, trascrizione dal sonoro del film. L’immagine dell’«ombelico dei miei sogni» allude a un passo freudiano: «Anche nei sogni meglio interpretati è spesso necessario lasciare un punto all’oscuro, perché nel corso dell’interpretazione si nota che in quel punto ha inizio un groviglio di pensieri onirici che non si lascia sbrogliare, ma che non ha nemmeno fornito altri contributi al contenuto del sogno. Questo è allora l’ombelico del sogno, il punto in cui esso affonda nell’ignoto» (Sigmund Freud, L’interpretazione dei sogni, in Opere, 3, tr. it. Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 1966; 1989, pp. 479-480).
(21) Cfr. J. Derrida, Circonfession, Paris, Éditions Des femmes, 1993; la registrazione è stata in seguito riproposta dalla stessa casa editrice su CD. La scelta dei brani musicali si deve a Marie-Louise Mallet.
(22) Trascrizione dal primo dei cinque CD.
(23) Cfr. Circonfession, cit., pp. 248-249 (tr. it. pp. 238-240). Un’illustrazione a p. 141, invece, mostra un particolare del dipinto di Theotokopoulos.
(24) J. Derrida – Safaa Fathy, Tourner les mots. Au bord d’un film, Paris, Galilée – Arte Éditions, 2000.
(25) Gli atti sono apparsi dapprima in edizione americana (AA.VV., Augustine and Postmodernism. Confessions and Circumfession, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2005), ma noi faremo riferimento alla traduzione francese del volume: AA.VV., Des Confessions. Jacques Derrida, Saint Augustin, Paris, Stock, 2007.
(26) Cfr. in proposito J. Derrida – Jürgen Habermas, Le «concept» du 11 septembre. Dialogues à New York (octobre-décembre 2001) avec Giovanna Borradori, Paris, Galilée, 2004 (tr. it. Giovanna Borradori, Filosofia del terrore. Dialoghi con Jürgen Habermas e Jacques Derrida, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2003).
(27) J. Derrida, in Des Confessions, cit., p. 52.
(28) Ibid., p. 58.
(29) Circonfession, cit., pp. 145 e 146 (tr. it. pp. 142 e 143), ma la prima delle due frasi si legge anche a p. 178 (tr. it. p. 172).
(30) J. Derrida, in Des Confessions, cit., p. 82.
(31) Ibid., pp. 84-85.
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***

Sendai Anonymous picks up the ball from where my post on “Smug Atheists” left off and draws some of the further implications.  She kicks off her post with an illustration from recent intellectual history.

Many years ago, Alan Sokal epically owned stupid pomos* by submitting a ridiculous parody article* to their prized journal, Social Text. The article was titled “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity”. Its most characteristic features was that it was stupid, ridiculous and also completely idiotic as long as taken seriously.

When it was finally revealed that the article was a parody of pomo “thought”, all hell broke loose in the pomo virtual reality, and Sokal was  criticised by the numerous disgruntled pomos, who were, naturally, wounded to the core***.

Among the vapid and spurious criticisms of Sokal the stupidest was that “wah wah wah HE IS SO SMUUUUG“.

(By the way: I read Sokal’s Beyond the Hoax, but not his first book — yet. I too, thought he was rather full of himself. However:)

Allow me to enlighten you: he pwned the pomos* epically. It was a one-in-a-hundred-years, Iliad-scale epic pwnage. Probably no one will get to pwn anybody like that for years, if ever.  It was awesome. It was spectacular. It was effective.

Therefore, Sokal has a right to be smug.

Read the rest of her hilarious corrective in favor of deserved self-satisfaction.

In my own pomo days I remember reading a book that whined a great deal about the Sokal hoax without offering any substantive counter to the obvious inferences about what it meant about the credibility of postmodernism.  Unfortunately it still took me a couple years to give up on that philosophical dead end anyway.  There are some good and important things going on in the texts of Derrida and Foucault and some of the other postmodern giants from whom I have retained valuable influence.  But ultimately I think whatever of value is there in their critical insights and in their critical example can be reformulated in less obfuscatory, more rigorous, more productive, and eminently less punkable ways.

Your Thoughts?

Quisiera con este último post terminar las líneas referidas a este tema, antes de eso, sin embargo, quisiera aprovechar este espacio más visible y revisado para agradecerles sus visitas. Desde que empecé a publicar estas entradas, que hoy terminan, al menos en su primera versión, he recibido un número inusitado de visitas que han superado cualquier número de lectores previo. No sólo eso, sino que los comentarios (agradezco a Fray Gustavo Moreno, a Emilio Novis, a Lucho Bacigalupo y a todos los demás) han sido de una calidad tal que me han ayudado a matizar posiciones y a explicar, espero, mejor mis ideas. Creo que el tema tocado aquí, independientemente de que la mía sea su mejor formulación, implica un asunto de gran valor práctico que debemos atender y analizar con detalle. Ojalá que el blog mantenga la calidad y el número de sus últimos visitantes para seguir en esa tarea.

[...]

Por ello, a la pregunta: ¿los dos niveles se complementan? La respuesta rotunda es sí. A la otra,  ¿el ser-católico depende de la aceptación integral de todos los elementos del segundo nivel?, en cambio, podemos responder con un no. Esta pregunta incorpora una falacia y el no notarla indica la incapacidad. Este punto creo que ha sido suficientemente esclarecido en las líneas precedentes, pero valgan algunas anotaciones más. Michael Walzer en su importante libro “Interpretación y Crítica Social” nos puede resultar útil a este respecto. La idea es que uno puede ser parte de una tradición sin que esto implique que ello anule la perspectiva crítica. Cuando yo digo que el dogma de la infalibilidad papal me parece un contrasentido, tengo argumentos de fe y de razón para sostenerlo. Mis argumentos, además, provienen de mi propia tradición católica. ¿Objetar ese dogma me hace ajeno a mi confesión religiosa? Yo declaro con fuerza que no. Hay personas, algunas son muy buenos amigos míos, que consideran que esto es incorrecto y que el apartarme de este dogma, por poner un caso, me aparta de la fe del católico. Sin embargo, ese tipo de argumentación parte de un supuesto que yo niego y que ellos no logran ver. A saber, un dogma del catolicismo. No puede haber unidad categórica en una religión que es esencialmente la interpretación de la Revelación. Como ya lo enseñó Gadamer, la interpretación es siempre mediación y por tanto no hay contenidos absolutos extra-históricos. Ergo, decir que un creyente ya no es católico por objetar ciertos postulados tradicionales parte del dogma del catolicismo y creo que sobran razones para objetarlo.

Sigamos con Walzer. Nuevamente, aquí no se trata de que un agente externo y extraño venga a imponernos formas de entender nuestra fe (como arrinconarla sin más a la esfera de lo privado como podría sostener un liberalismo ingenuamente formulado). Se trata de una crítica que emerge de la propia tradición y que da cuenta de que ella no es unitaria, sino que, como todo proceso de interpretación humana, implica tensiones y cambios según la época. Así, la Iglesia primitiva vivía a escondidas y bajo persecución y martirio. La iglesia post romanización se volvió una institución fuerte y claramente más extendida y proyectiva. Los primeros Padres de la Iglesia y la escolástica medieval se encargaron de tratar de poner en juego la razón y la fe. Y así, sucesivamente, la Iglesia ha ido modificando posturas, matizando afirmaciones y corrigiendo procedimientos (varios de ellos criminales, como el Santo Oficio). ¿Por qué sucede esto? Obviamente por la dimensión autocrítica, aquella que emerge de la asimilación de estos problemas por los propios miembros de la tradición.

¿Qué se concluye? Pues que Walzer tiene razón y que la crítica es un elemento constitutivo del progreso histórico. O, en palabras de Vattimo, que si la capacidad auto-crítica no existiese quizá lo que tendríamos hoy es un grupete de fanáticos religiosos en el siglo XXI. El problema, es que de hecho, ese grupete existe (yo conozco a varios en Perú y fuera de nuestro territorio) y, muchas veces, se cree poseedor de la denominación de origen, para usar una categoría común con el pisco peruano. En suma, se concluye que el catolicismo como confesión religiosa no es, ni debe ser una unidad monolítica. Todo lo contrario, el cambio le es inherente y necesario para su perduración. ¿Qué implica esto? Pues vivir la fe, pero conscientes de la necesidad de transformarla en las categorías de cada tiempo.

Dicho todo esto, espero haber contribuido, al menos débilmente, a poner sobre el tapete una cuestión que es fundamental. No digo en estas líneas nada que a mí me parezca suficientemente novedoso; sin embargo, sí algo que me parece necesita ser más examinado y explorado. Al menos, estoy seguro porque las preguntas y comentarios han sido recurrentes, que se trata de una cuestión que genera dudas, incluso en mentes bastante preclaras. Los conflictos, creo, se derivan de la aceptación del dogma. Lo que habría que pedir, entonces, es que este dogma sea objeto riguroso de análisis y que pase, justamente, por el filtro de las categorías conceptuales de nuestra época. Así, Nietzsche, el pragmatismo, la hermenéutica y la deconstrucción deben ser herramientas cardinales en este proceso de análisis y de aprendizaje. Este blog, en realidad, es un esfuerzo, más articulado de lo que puede parecer a veces, por tener una perspectiva crítica de la tradición sin dejar de ser parte de ella.

A section of Hart’s book The Beauty of the Infinite which I really like is his critique of both Derrida’s gift argument (“Etant donne: Essai d’une phenomenology de la donation” – Paris” Presses Universitaires de France, 1997) and Nygren’s conception of Agape (Agape and Eros, trans Philip S. Watson – London: SPCK, 1982). Here are some highlights:

“After all, there is no reason why it is more correct to say that the gift forces a return than to say that the gift allows or even liberates a response, and so is the occasion of communion. One’s self is perhaps nothing but the gift of the other’s otherness, defined by what one receives from the other and by what style of receiving one adopts: received as gift or as burden, eliciting delighted response or merely guilty indebtedness (or ingratitude), the gift is the occasion of the self, the event of a self, and to consider first the self that is obligated by – rather than the self that is born in – the gift is to invert the order of what is given and what restored. One becomes a “person”, one might say, analogous to the divine persons, only insofar as one is the determinate recipient of a gift; one is a person always in the evocation of a response…it is in the priority of the gift that a giver is born into the measure of charity and a recipient is born into the measure of delight and gratitude, because God has given out of a charity and a joy that is perfect in the shared life of the Trinity, and in him desire and selfless charity are one and the same…” (p. 263)

Similarly drawing on his own theological ontology and conception of analogia entis Hart responds to Nygen’s conception of Agape as follows:

“But in what sense, precisely, is an agape purified of eros distinguishable from hate? Or utter indifference? In what sense is the bounty of such a love distinguishable from the disposal of the superfluous?… The emaciated agape that gives without reserve but also without desire of return can never be anything but the energy of an absolute debt… but if divine agape is generous in another sense, if it is actually charitable by giving way to otherness, by desiring the other dearly enough to give in a way that liberates the other even as it “binds” the other – by desiring the other, that is, as the very impulse of charity, and thereby relieving the other of any debt of pure and disinterested return – then the idea of the gift may yet prove resistant to too astringent an ethical purism. Truly, only when a giver desires a return, and indeed, in some sense desires back the gift itself, can a gift be given as something other than sheer debt; only the liberating gesture of a gift given out of desire is one that cannot morally coerce another, and so can reveal the prior, aneconomic rationality of giving that escapes every calculation. Absolute “selfless” gratuity, which will not submit to reciprocation, is pure power; but interested exchange – even though sin inevitably corrupts all exchange with the shadow of coercion and greed – is not simply an economy over against which the impossible gift stands as dialectical counter, but is able rather to manifest a more primordial free gesture (free because it seeks a return and is not simply “necessary”) that underlies and ultimately exceeds any economy. In simple human terms, a love that is inseparable from an interest in the other is always more commendable, more truly selfless, than the airless purity of disinterested expenditure, because it recognizes the otherness and delights in the splendour of the other. (p. 264-5)”

“I think it’s important to recognise that hip-hop has a historical and cultural status that’s undeniable, unavoidable, and as big and as strong as any other genre of music. The Beatnuts are as important an influence on my life as The Beach Boys.”  Green Gartside

Back in the late ’80s, I clocked a video for Scritti Politti’s ‘Wood Beez’ and promptly decided that Green Gartside was the man. This wasn’t the UK promo, with some hideously dated expressive dancing from punk rock types (the tribute to Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s black power salutes was fresh though) that was Jarman-lite, but a slightly more acceptable, but still dated US-promo. I can’t recall whether it was to tie-in with a 1988 re-release to give the follow-up LP, ‘Provision’ a push.

The track name seemed clever, and the lyrics, depicted onscreen seemed to have a little more gravitas than any Pete Waterman produced tosh. Importantly, the production seemed so genuinely funky. Not just funky for some blue eyed soul wannabe whiteboy, but genuinely so, with a synthesised sheen that was nicely at odds with Green’s expressive vocal range. I was sold on Scritti. Beyond that song title, I sussed the clever integration of structuralist theories and linguistics within the heart-on-sleeve pop sensibilities a lot later.

To shift from residing in a Camden squat making music to sit alongside the work of post-punkers like Pere Ubu to taking early morning phone calls from Miles Davis fishing for ideas is an incredible evolution. And that’s just their first decade. To have worked with Miles, Robert Wyatt, Roger Troutman and Mos Def is proof of a deeply respected and continually shapeshifting vision that’s reflected in Green’s choice of outfits too.

Circa. ‘78/”79 - Green and the original lineup’s recordings like ‘Skank Bock Bologna’ might sound a long way from the pristine sheen of what was to come, but equally, that slightly muffled voice feels a great deal more accomplished than the defiantly British D.I.Y. vocals of the era.

The eventual musical evolution isn’t quite as far fetched as say, Penny Rimbaud taking on Ashford & Simpson as Crass producers.The outfits of the time are your standard politicised student attire, subverting a few elements of formality – hair plays its part, and while it’s dwindling, the cut and paste spirit of punk is evident.

Circa. ‘81/’82 - After an ‘Off The Wall’ induced musical epiphany, things just got a whole lot cleaner. The Rough Trade release of the ‘Songs To Remember’ LP includes ‘The Sweetest Girl’ with its Wyatt-assisted skank as well as some folky, melodic inclusions.

The philosophies are still overt too. Panic attacks and big hats plus polo necks lead to suits and ties by way of slicked-out peasant chic to visually capture this professional-sound.  Shades of casual looks enter here too, but the jelly sandals are not a good look.

Circa. ‘84/’85 - Prior to ‘Cupid & Psyche’ dropping, the ‘Absolute’ video captures Green riding the era’s sportswear craze, with what looks like a Nike Windrunner, matching track pants and high tops. It sounds better than it looks. Hair gets bigger, and contrary to his fear of live performances, the sleeve of the LP captures Green in narcisstic mirror stare alongside his newly recruited NYC-dweling bandmates in what looks like a shirt and chinos combo.

The sound gets smoother and the outfits keep formalising. There’s some big coats employed too. Simon Reynolds caught a little flack for his ‘Cut It Up And Start Again’ preoccupation with Scritti, but on the strength of such a remarkable journey in just over half a decade, I’d wholeheartedly back up his statements.

Circa. ‘88 - ‘Provision’ might have performed, but ‘Oh Patti’ and ‘Boom’ are superb.Synthetics blended with utter sincerity gives him an edge over fellow UK export Phil Oakey’s Human League and their work with the mighty Jam & Lewis. The video to ‘Boom’ again, seems at odds with the stage fright, until you watch it again and see how uncomfortable/ Green seems.

Big suit, big shoulders and a hat seems to nod to the smooth soulboy look of the time with a hint of the man’s leftist politics. Or he could just really like big hats. Still, you can’t fuck with Marcus Miller on bass. Green rocking a sweat from the adidas Run DMC collection hints at that mooted hip-hop love and what comes next.

Circa .’91 - Preoccupied with the new generation of ragga sounds, sonically this isn’t Green’s best year. “Grrrreeeen! Step up!” shouts Shabba on a cover version of ‘She’s A Woman’ by The Beatles, managing to slaughter more sacred cows in three and a half minutes than many do in a career. It’s hardly essential and the video isn’t great. Nor is a cover of Gladys Knight’s ‘Take Me In Your Arms’ .

From the same sessions a suited and sunglassed cover of Stevie Wonder’s ‘I Don’t Know Why I Love You’ is better, with Heaven 17 spinoff B.E.F. Given the proliferation of cover versions, it’s a good thing that an album from this time netever appeared, but for praising Teddy Riley as a genius at the time and preempting the UK’s summer of ragga by well over a year, Green’s habit of staying ahead of the curve is clear. Pinrolled trousers, Filas and Stussy caps reflect the UK’s look at street level -in line with the sound there’s more than a little raggamuffin to Gartside’s outfits.

Circa. ‘99 - That hip-hop habit goes full-blown for ‘Anomie & Bonhomie’ – rock and rap fusions are often ill-advised, but Green’s softly-softly approach works well, apparently informed by the soundtracks to skate videos he copped on London visits from his retreat in Wales. In his early forties, Gartside sports a ruck sack, chin stud, Spiewak tee and shelltoes. The backpacker look – you’ve all been there. While he doesn’t seem to be hiding from the world using a hat, sunglasses are very much present

‘First Goodbye’ is a fantastic record, and while the LP underachieved commercially, especially considering the lengthy gestation, it’s a solid follow-up to ‘Provision’. In 2000, BBC Wales screened a great documentary about the making of ‘Anomie…’ with contrbutions from no less than Harry Allen and Jacques Derrida, plus Defari of all people. It’s worth watching.

Circa. ‘06 – After touring as the distinctly hip-hop sounding ‘Double G and The Traitorous 3′, Scritti Politti’s fifth album ‘White Bread, Black Beer’ sees Green on Rough Trade again. The sound feels like a mix of all thats gone before – Brian Wilson harmonies, Run DMC references, beats, guitars and a touch of folk. 1999’s goatee remains, and Gartside seems more comfortable in his own skin than ever before rocking checks, band tees, untucked shirts and ties.

A suit gets broken out, but there’s less hair, and no sign of a hat. Hypsters might clock the W)Taps ‘Philosophy’ sticker on his guitar during the performance of ‘Snow In Sun’ below. In the hands of many, it’s an empty piece of sloganeering, but on the guitar of a man who was friends with the father of deconstruction, TET’s message makes far more sense.

Assets pillaged from the obsessive Scritti Politti resources, www.aggressiveart.org and www.bibbly-o-tek.com