- Reading Julia Kristeva -- Black Sun -- frustratedly because the first four chapters (as far as I read until the weekend) address melancholia/loss/depression from such a psychoanalytically linguistic perspective that the communique was all but utterly obscured to a 'layperson' such as myself... reminding me of other linguistic frustrations (switzerland) but that this is supposedly my mother tongue. So - arguments for accessible theory - that isn't written like an AP address, either, but doesn't presume such elaborate prior education of the reader. Is that possible? It's a translative problem that I experience... psychoanalysis being both a rigorous academic discourse (and precise language) and a 'lingo' that has been extensively disseminated via pop-culture 'ensures' that terms such as autoeroticism / oedipal / narcissism / libidinal / neurotic / subject ... etc etc have double meanings, are actually unsure. And I have no patience to learn the true language of Freud and his readers - prefer summaries of Lacan to the man himself. (Much as I had no patience for German grammar... oh woe. Oh, failure.
- Talking to Joey from downtown to Division - his suggestion that one possible route (of all these many) to 'take' would be researching inhabiting the liminal - the divisions, as it were - the personal vs. the academic. the professor vs. the friend. the presentation vs. the conversation. acceptable vs. the invalid(ated). Meaning (I'm thinking) investigating the vs. itself - the ring time. When and where they meet and merge and how bloody fuckin emotional that space is - because we have no rules there, in the border (drag).
- I don't know if I can do this. There is no 'this' yet, really. I told our class today I was considering a leave of absence. I probably won't, I don't know what else I'd do. But I have no critical distance from my research now - to even call it research is ridiculous. I gag on Chris-lessness. I'm resisting my positioning because even though I wear the dark hair and Calaveras earrings / all in black I hate to be the poster girl for dead.
- The bartender tonight (sweet woman) thought I was her age. I knew she was older but propriety doesn't allow me to say that, does it? She's 35. I'm 27. She checked my ID and the joke was on her / on me - god I hate having a body these days.
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
danzare con la tue morte
Contributors
Blog Archive
-
▼
2007
(36)
-
▼
October
(28)
- on the Obscene
- To what Degree can the Horror of Death be rendered...
- responding to the community (in part)
- collective mourning
- expulsion
- decision.x
- more books (and reading)
- apple+shift+4
- snippets
- Languages of Loss
- key concepts
- (chant)
- Abstract I
- quilting
- Bodies of Work
- filespace
- "so what is the decay, actually?"
- to add to fresh bookmeat...
- fresh bookmeat
- dis/integration
- inventory
- Acéphale
- also available:
- Ambiconti's last post (patterns or premonitions)
- Posted by to joaovalenteaguiar to under Citations,...
- Red October
- intention tension (rough)
- regarding the fragmentation compulsion
-
▼
October
(28)
2 comments:
I think that sounds really iteresting, the 'vs.' It is also a space which depends on comparison, right? It cannot exist without the binary understanding of things, and the polarization filter that we see so many things through.
I understand about having distance from research and the *fucking* impossibility of that sometimes. I just got to a point where I have chosen something (a topic, a question, a WORD) so specific for my first chapter that I can focus my research to be relevant only to that thing, which has made it a hellof a lot easier.
Of course the tough thing, especially for people who are working with loss, is to not feel that narrowing down is also limiting, that losing scope is a dire loss. It isn't in the end, I am almost certain, but one never knows until that bloody thing is finished.
Like any good poststructuralist, I'm wary of the dyad or binary opposition -- all of these things are co-constituting, right? And studying any of them means (based on the terms you've already established) putting yourself in one or both of the positions, which seems a little too reflexive/narcissistic/egotistical (which might seem paradoxical coming from me).
Which all has me wondering: Can we think about loss as environmental (rather than personal)? Can mourning be a collective rather than a state of being? Does it make a difference (or any sense)?
===
Heard Brian Rotman give a talk last week (and then spent the night with him at dinner & drinks) and his new argument is that ghosts come into being through the use of written language. It might be worth tracking him down...
Post a Comment