Some Notes on Affect
A lot that’s happening on this site right now, in posts and in comments, has somehow coalesced around a few themes and texts that I first explored seriously in a college course I took, called Excess, that focused on, well, the literature of excess, or transgression: Sade, Bataille, Sacher-Masoch, and films like Irreversible. It was taught by Paul Mann, poet and author of Masocriticism, which, as its title suggests, radically exposes the viscera gaping from the act of reading and interpreting texts. He writes,
The text never recognizes us. It neither assents to nor dissents from our reading, our desire. Whatever validations we establish, it remains silent throughout our reading.
At the end of each reading, it returns as a Greek.
At the end of each masocritical scene, one is abandoned to the absolutely otherness of the other. One suffers an utter loss of agency, out of and against which a new scene or new reading must be projected.
This formulation of the text recalls Bataille’s vision of the sun burning itself up with no consideration for the life that its combustion nurtures, a concept that is central to much of Bataille’s work (including the essay whose title I stole for the reading series I run w/ Blake and Jamie Iredell in Atlanta, Solar Anus). The way Mann equates the sun with the text deepens this idea of reading as hyper-sensory experience.
The first or second class session, Mann told us that he would be asking us to think about affect as we read. That is, he’d ask us how we felt. He recognized how squishy it sounds to ask someone, “How does this poem make you feel?” but requested that we forbear and consider the possibility that an engagement with affect can transform the critical enterprise (and of course, an act of reading is in itself an act of criticism, even if it’s never articulated). After we read the first part of 120 Days of Sodom, he asked us if we were disgusted/aroused/bored/afraid/annoyed, and it was a great discussion starter.
He referred us to Barthes, who argues in The Pleasure of the Text that Sade wrote and redistributed language to death, or at least attempted to. Insofar as sex and death are the original friends-with-benefits, the best kind of text flirts with us, Barthes says: “The text you write must prove to me that it desires me” [emphasis his]. And “these terrible texts are all the same flirtatious texts.”
For Mann, sometimes the proper response to these language incubi is silence. Thus after watching Irreversible we did not discuss it; we sat in some silence. And if Sade’s destructive project involves a kind of relentless expenditure of language, our only mode of resistance–and submission–may be to refuse to utter, both to accept and to block Sade’s limiltess ejaculation with a soundless, languageless, porous wall.
We’ve talked about writing prompts; these are, perhaps, reading prompts. For Barthes, the reader participates in the extreme. Lots of people say the reader is a participant, though; the point here is that the participation isn’t just mental or even psychological, though it is those things too (Barthes was particularly interested in the idea of neurosis–not sanity or madness–as the cite of the language act for writers like Bataille and Sade). Our participation must be emotional and bodily as well.
This isn’t a metaphor (nod to Blake). Barthes and Mann both focus on texts that draw forth these reactions in a kind of extreme or at least noticeable way, and that’s a great place to start. But affect could always be useful to consider, not just when reading the transgressive text.
We always have a mood, and we always feel a certain way. A text may change our mood or the way our body feels; if it changes neither, that is kind of interesting too. A lot of criticism happens well after reading, in reflection, when we collate and shape our thoughts about what we’ve read. Thinking about affect is quite a lot more immediate, in terms of time and space.
It’s hard to think about affect and language–at least for me. Most of my emotions register physically, and not consciously, so that when I have stomach pain, for instance, I try to figure out what I’m sad/confused/anxious about–but then realize that it could just be something I ate. So it’s difficult to sort out whether emotions and sensations originate from what I’m reading or from some other source entirely. But it’s perhaps all the more necessary for the difficulty.
(nb if you’re not as into the sex and death part of affect, there’s always the $$ side of Sade and Bataille’s notions of expenditure)
Tags: georges bataille, marquis de sade, paul mann
Loved this post, Amy. Jealous you got to take a course with Paul Mann. I’ve studied his book The Theory-Death of the Avant Garde, which I think taps into an important (if under discussed) aspect of the relationship between the avant-garde and theory and the avant-garde as theory.
This particular course you took sounds awesome! I’m gonna go to the library and hunt down Mann’s Masocriticism. Was it an undergrad class? I couldn’t imagine teaching Sade and Irreversible to undergrads. I once taught Simon Pummell’s film Bodysong, in a course on non-verbal cinema, and I got real uncomfortable during the ten minute birthing montage. Talk about affect!
Loved this post, Amy. Jealous you got to take a course with Paul Mann. I’ve studied his book The Theory-Death of the Avant Garde, which I think taps into an important (if under discussed) aspect of the relationship between the avant-garde and theory and the avant-garde as theory.
This particular course you took sounds awesome! I’m gonna go to the library and hunt down Mann’s Masocriticism. Was it an undergrad class? I couldn’t imagine teaching Sade and Irreversible to undergrads. I once taught Simon Pummell’s film Bodysong, in a course on non-verbal cinema, and I got real uncomfortable during the ten minute birthing montage. Talk about affect!
There’s a pretty good piece on transgressive lit in the latest LIES/ISLE, here: http://www.liesisle.com/hisforhajde.html
Great post, Amy. I love Bataille’s idea of the sun which consumes itself–like the eye which cannot see itself, like Reason’s blindspot. That said, I can’t really read Bataille’s theory/philosophy, because it is mostly nonsense to me.
For the ultimate sex/death almost-transgressive experience–though the sex finds its place only in omission–read Blanchot’s DEATH SENTENCE, if you haven’t. Death, silence and writing are one.
That said, Barthes’s hedonistic notions of play and flirtation have always struck me as the result of extreme privilege, especially in PLEASURE. But the objectification of the “I”–the loss of self–is some self-sacrifice to “otherness” that I can get down to.
There’s a pretty good piece on transgressive lit in the latest LIES/ISLE, here: http://www.liesisle.com/hisforhajde.html
Great post, Amy. I love Bataille’s idea of the sun which consumes itself–like the eye which cannot see itself, like Reason’s blindspot. That said, I can’t really read Bataille’s theory/philosophy, because it is mostly nonsense to me.
For the ultimate sex/death almost-transgressive experience–though the sex finds its place only in omission–read Blanchot’s DEATH SENTENCE, if you haven’t. Death, silence and writing are one.
That said, Barthes’s hedonistic notions of play and flirtation have always struck me as the result of extreme privilege, especially in PLEASURE. But the objectification of the “I”–the loss of self–is some self-sacrifice to “otherness” that I can get down to.
Also, I’m currently reading Ben Marcus’s NOTABLE AMERICAN WOMEN (I come to things very late), and it’s transgressive in a way I’ve never seen before.
Also, I’m currently reading Ben Marcus’s NOTABLE AMERICAN WOMEN (I come to things very late), and it’s transgressive in a way I’ve never seen before.
I too loved this very much. I remember the first time you brought up masocriticism, and I was intrigued by it then. Excited to be learning more about this–and Mann–now. It seems especially applicable to Sade- so much of Sade is about story-telling, and this neurotic narration of the experience that eclipses the experience even in the midst of the experience itself. What I remember feeling the most viscerally, reading the 120 Days, was a kind of meta-reaction to my own increasing boredom in the face of Sade’s endless repetition. It seems impossible to raise any kind of sufficient response to Sade- you can’t equal him, you can’t invert him, and you can’t outlast him (he couldn’t outlast himself, in the end, which is why the 120 Days trails off into notes for future composition…)
Chris- I’d be interested to hear more about the book you mentioned. It sounds like something I would want to learn enough about to convincingly agree with.
I too loved this very much. I remember the first time you brought up masocriticism, and I was intrigued by it then. Excited to be learning more about this–and Mann–now. It seems especially applicable to Sade- so much of Sade is about story-telling, and this neurotic narration of the experience that eclipses the experience even in the midst of the experience itself. What I remember feeling the most viscerally, reading the 120 Days, was a kind of meta-reaction to my own increasing boredom in the face of Sade’s endless repetition. It seems impossible to raise any kind of sufficient response to Sade- you can’t equal him, you can’t invert him, and you can’t outlast him (he couldn’t outlast himself, in the end, which is why the 120 Days trails off into notes for future composition…)
Chris- I’d be interested to hear more about the book you mentioned. It sounds like something I would want to learn enough about to convincingly agree with.
another fantastic one. i’ve been thinking about this a lot, and especially in the context of deleuze’s cinema 1, and the affect of film, and spaces in film, and how that relates to sleep and to text. there’s so much experiential going on in these certain kinds of books that is a great overlap with immersive film like Irreversible, which kind of demands that you feel it, or else get up and leave (as many did). Noe was brilliant to go further in that by even acknowledging visually that cue, with the onscreen countdown telling you to leave the theater in the middle of it, because something was coming, and therein somehow even more deeply worming up that air, even tho it supposedly ‘disrupts the dream’… it actually deepens the dream, which i find fascinating. not to mention the way he used the camera not as an observer, but as a presence in the room the film creates, a kind of third layer to that air.
this to me is the big problem i have with metaphor, as you smartly noted, in that so many of these affects can be downplayed by calling them constructs, when to give them real air, despite the way the language works, does so much more. even the basic idea of saying ‘the leg of the chair’ as metaphor, if switched to not a metaphor, in that the chair actually has a leg like we do, and the slew of reactions that erupts, is way more interesting to me than observing the text, as you say, as just language, and fireworks within.
definitely agree that the best criticisms happen in the body, in a way that can’t be tended, especially with this kind of brutal-based stuff, that means to work off the body even more than narrative or even sound. noe’s first film ‘i stand alone’ might be even more in that way than ‘irreversible’ despite being less on its face shocking, if you haven’t seen that, i’ll let you borrow. it’s huge.
but those blank spaces, and that kind of demand of the reader, to get into the space and be reckoned, that to me is why i read. there are so many terms to do this (alec’s mentioning ben marcus is interesting, in that i do find him immersive in the same way, but with a whole different set of prods and cues than someone like sade).
i’d be interested to hear thoughts from people on books that have this kind of consume you, bring you into me, mode, especially as they reckon with space. it’s pretty much the core of what i’ve been writing about for the past 3 months in the mouth of this no sleep book.
thanks amy.
another fantastic one. i’ve been thinking about this a lot, and especially in the context of deleuze’s cinema 1, and the affect of film, and spaces in film, and how that relates to sleep and to text. there’s so much experiential going on in these certain kinds of books that is a great overlap with immersive film like Irreversible, which kind of demands that you feel it, or else get up and leave (as many did). Noe was brilliant to go further in that by even acknowledging visually that cue, with the onscreen countdown telling you to leave the theater in the middle of it, because something was coming, and therein somehow even more deeply worming up that air, even tho it supposedly ‘disrupts the dream’… it actually deepens the dream, which i find fascinating. not to mention the way he used the camera not as an observer, but as a presence in the room the film creates, a kind of third layer to that air.
this to me is the big problem i have with metaphor, as you smartly noted, in that so many of these affects can be downplayed by calling them constructs, when to give them real air, despite the way the language works, does so much more. even the basic idea of saying ‘the leg of the chair’ as metaphor, if switched to not a metaphor, in that the chair actually has a leg like we do, and the slew of reactions that erupts, is way more interesting to me than observing the text, as you say, as just language, and fireworks within.
definitely agree that the best criticisms happen in the body, in a way that can’t be tended, especially with this kind of brutal-based stuff, that means to work off the body even more than narrative or even sound. noe’s first film ‘i stand alone’ might be even more in that way than ‘irreversible’ despite being less on its face shocking, if you haven’t seen that, i’ll let you borrow. it’s huge.
but those blank spaces, and that kind of demand of the reader, to get into the space and be reckoned, that to me is why i read. there are so many terms to do this (alec’s mentioning ben marcus is interesting, in that i do find him immersive in the same way, but with a whole different set of prods and cues than someone like sade).
i’d be interested to hear thoughts from people on books that have this kind of consume you, bring you into me, mode, especially as they reckon with space. it’s pretty much the core of what i’ve been writing about for the past 3 months in the mouth of this no sleep book.
thanks amy.
Excellent thoughts here. I first started thinking about affect critically in a cultural studies class and it was really exciting to have new language for discussing this additional dimension of experiencing texts, both written and visual.
Creative work that affects its audience through their bodies is so powerful and complex. When I read Matt Bell’s The Collectors, for me the writing was such that I felt like the walls of my room were pressing down on me. The prose was so dense and the subject matter so overwhelming that I literally felt the book.
Irreversible is another excellent choice for discussing affect as is the work of de Sade. I’d love to see more of your thoughts on what you discuss toward the end of this post about how we know the difference between how we are affected by a text and what our body is naturally experiencing. Does the origin of sensation even matter?
If you’re looking for an interesting, really challenging book on affect, you might check out Parable of the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation, by Brian Massumi. In a different class, the professor assigned it and we went home and “read” the book and in class the next week, we were all pretty shell-shocked and expressing different versions of WTF and the professor laughed and said, the best way to experience this text is with a bottle of whine, which he then proffered. It’s a little ridiculous how much I enjoy grad school.
Excellent thoughts here. I first started thinking about affect critically in a cultural studies class and it was really exciting to have new language for discussing this additional dimension of experiencing texts, both written and visual.
Creative work that affects its audience through their bodies is so powerful and complex. When I read Matt Bell’s The Collectors, for me the writing was such that I felt like the walls of my room were pressing down on me. The prose was so dense and the subject matter so overwhelming that I literally felt the book.
Irreversible is another excellent choice for discussing affect as is the work of de Sade. I’d love to see more of your thoughts on what you discuss toward the end of this post about how we know the difference between how we are affected by a text and what our body is naturally experiencing. Does the origin of sensation even matter?
If you’re looking for an interesting, really challenging book on affect, you might check out Parable of the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation, by Brian Massumi. In a different class, the professor assigned it and we went home and “read” the book and in class the next week, we were all pretty shell-shocked and expressing different versions of WTF and the professor laughed and said, the best way to experience this text is with a bottle of whine, which he then proffered. It’s a little ridiculous how much I enjoy grad school.
It might be obvious, but DFW envelops me in DFW-space. Completely and forever. “Good Old Neon” is the most affective and immersive work that’s ever been put before my face. And like you said, it didn’t come out of sound or plot. Even though it wasn’t “transgressive” according to tradition (though perhaps it is a tradition that demands revision), GON climbed into my mouth and stayed there. I’m still trying to parse how DFW did to me what “transgressive” art intends to do, but without any tropes of transgression.
It might be obvious, but DFW envelops me in DFW-space. Completely and forever. “Good Old Neon” is the most affective and immersive work that’s ever been put before my face. And like you said, it didn’t come out of sound or plot. Even though it wasn’t “transgressive” according to tradition (though perhaps it is a tradition that demands revision), GON climbed into my mouth and stayed there. I’m still trying to parse how DFW did to me what “transgressive” art intends to do, but without any tropes of transgression.
Thanks for this, it was fascinating and I think I will seek out some of these texts. Was already hoping to read Sade sometime later this year.
The overlap or indistinguishability (that is surely some kind of language crime I just committed) of visceral/embodied sensations and emotions interests me. I relate to this comment of yours:
“Most of my emotions register physically, and not consciously, so that when I have stomach pain, for instance, I try to figure out what I’m sad/confused/anxious about–but then realize that it could just be something I ate.”
…I’ve also never totally understood the distinction people make between intellect and emotion because I feel like I feel them in the same place.
…I like sex and death.
Thanks for this, it was fascinating and I think I will seek out some of these texts. Was already hoping to read Sade sometime later this year.
The overlap or indistinguishability (that is surely some kind of language crime I just committed) of visceral/embodied sensations and emotions interests me. I relate to this comment of yours:
“Most of my emotions register physically, and not consciously, so that when I have stomach pain, for instance, I try to figure out what I’m sad/confused/anxious about–but then realize that it could just be something I ate.”
…I’ve also never totally understood the distinction people make between intellect and emotion because I feel like I feel them in the same place.
…I like sex and death.
Thanks for recommendng that Massumi book. It sounds like the real thing.
Thanks for recommendng that Massumi book. It sounds like the real thing.
yes. the texts in Oblivion seem the most true of that, even more than IJest. Mr Squishy in think in fact caps that list for me as immersion without me knowing exactly how, and that is why that story for me is one of the biggest monoliths of short fiction
yes. the texts in Oblivion seem the most true of that, even more than IJest. Mr Squishy in think in fact caps that list for me as immersion without me knowing exactly how, and that is why that story for me is one of the biggest monoliths of short fiction
yes thank you, i am going to buy that Massumi now
yes thank you, i am going to buy that Massumi now
Borges kind of has a similiar style of immersion to Wallace, I think, in that it is idea based, but bigger than fictional ideas, they are ideas that blur the lines between the fictive state and some philosophical, humanly accessible zone. that is the big boom for me.
Borges kind of has a similiar style of immersion to Wallace, I think, in that it is idea based, but bigger than fictional ideas, they are ideas that blur the lines between the fictive state and some philosophical, humanly accessible zone. that is the big boom for me.
“After we read the first part of 120 Days of Sodom, he asked us if we were disgusted/aroused/bored/afraid/annoyed, and it was a great discussion starter.”
I can imagine it would be a great discussion starter, but I hope the discussion developed from there. I’m puzzled about what silence could have to do with criticism. It sounds like a retreat to a pre-critical response, almost like a religious thing.
“After we read the first part of 120 Days of Sodom, he asked us if we were disgusted/aroused/bored/afraid/annoyed, and it was a great discussion starter.”
I can imagine it would be a great discussion starter, but I hope the discussion developed from there. I’m puzzled about what silence could have to do with criticism. It sounds like a retreat to a pre-critical response, almost like a religious thing.
Agreed re: Squishy. And I think the comparison to Borges is apt. Squishy is a labyrinth.
Agreed re: Squishy. And I think the comparison to Borges is apt. Squishy is a labyrinth.
And they both form, in a way, a hand extended ‘unto the infinite.’
And they both form, in a way, a hand extended ‘unto the infinite.’
It seems interesting to note, also, that as readers (or as audience more generally), we’ve developed this kind of skepticism with regard to art that affects us, where we’re determined to determine whether or not the emotional response, if felt, was actually “earned.” We speak of “unearned” emotion as that which distinguishes melodrama from drama. And yet when someone calls a particular piece of art “melodramatic,” they’re not saying the art didn’t affect them (necessarily)–they’re challenging the validity of that impact. I remember, for instance, when Dancer in the Dark came out, a lot of people were having this conversation. Most agreed that it was a highly affecting film, but many thought the emotion was “unearned.” Actually, people feel this way about many of Lars von Trier’s films. I wonder what, finally, lets one determine whether affect is earned or unearned, and how private that decision-making is, or rather, how easily influenced it is by the witness of affect on/in others.
It seems interesting to note, also, that as readers (or as audience more generally), we’ve developed this kind of skepticism with regard to art that affects us, where we’re determined to determine whether or not the emotional response, if felt, was actually “earned.” We speak of “unearned” emotion as that which distinguishes melodrama from drama. And yet when someone calls a particular piece of art “melodramatic,” they’re not saying the art didn’t affect them (necessarily)–they’re challenging the validity of that impact. I remember, for instance, when Dancer in the Dark came out, a lot of people were having this conversation. Most agreed that it was a highly affecting film, but many thought the emotion was “unearned.” Actually, people feel this way about many of Lars von Trier’s films. I wonder what, finally, lets one determine whether affect is earned or unearned, and how private that decision-making is, or rather, how easily influenced it is by the witness of affect on/in others.
You will really dig it, Blake. It’s an insane book.
You will really dig it, Blake. It’s an insane book.
It definitely is, Alec. I’ve always wanted to do some kind of reading group with the book but I haven’t really had the time.
It definitely is, Alec. I’ve always wanted to do some kind of reading group with the book but I haven’t really had the time.
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Thanks, I’m glad you liked it. Yeah it was undergrad….Mann ran it more like a grad serminar, even more so than most professors at pomona. one day when i meet you i will tell you more about him..on the minuscule chance that he ever googles himself i wouldn’t want to say anything uncool about him here, for he is the coolest of cool..ack already this is uncool….
Thanks, I’m glad you liked it. Yeah it was undergrad….Mann ran it more like a grad serminar, even more so than most professors at pomona. one day when i meet you i will tell you more about him..on the minuscule chance that he ever googles himself i wouldn’t want to say anything uncool about him here, for he is the coolest of cool..ack already this is uncool….
Thanks Alec. I will have to think more about this Barthes/privilege thing. I’m inclined to disagree just because he seems too smart to not filter whatever is the result of his privilege. I don’t really see him as a hedonist at all, more like a sensualist, which I think can be usefully distinguished. But I’d be interested in hearing you elaborate on your position.
Thanks Alec. I will have to think more about this Barthes/privilege thing. I’m inclined to disagree just because he seems too smart to not filter whatever is the result of his privilege. I don’t really see him as a hedonist at all, more like a sensualist, which I think can be usefully distinguished. But I’d be interested in hearing you elaborate on your position.
oh and I will check out that Blanchot. We read some Blanchot in the class, some essays, but i haven’t returned to him since then…high time.
oh and I will check out that Blanchot. We read some Blanchot in the class, some essays, but i haven’t returned to him since then…high time.
Boredom is so important, affect-wise, in 120 Days. In Masocriticism, Mann writes a lot about the very common critical position of stating an inability to respond to Sade or Bataille and then proceeding with the critique. I had to reacquaint with the Maso via google books so my understanding of where Mann goes with that is a bit sketchy, but he’s investigating this very claim of yours, that you can’t equal or invert these writers.
Boredom is so important, affect-wise, in 120 Days. In Masocriticism, Mann writes a lot about the very common critical position of stating an inability to respond to Sade or Bataille and then proceeding with the critique. I had to reacquaint with the Maso via google books so my understanding of where Mann goes with that is a bit sketchy, but he’s investigating this very claim of yours, that you can’t equal or invert these writers.
Thanks Blake. I like the term immersion–I think it’s a useful shorthand for describing what some of these texts are doing. Though I’d say that we need to be careful with it. Like, what are we being immersed in? Not necessarily the text–certainly not in the case of 120 Days, at least not for me–I feel the opposite of immersed in the liquid sense, even if the liquid is blood/semen/shit..the very exhaustiveness and monotony and of the text prevents me from feeling in it..perhaps against it, or under it. It’s not that those qualities mitigate the horror of it, but they do transform the horror into something very different from most horror. Which is of course what makes Sade transgressive while your average super-violent erotica transgresses precisely nothing. So again, sometimes immersive texts immerse me, sometimes they do other things to me, but I think it’s a good way to distinguish any texts that do anything to me, in a bodily way, than any text that doesn’t.
Another problem with this idea of leg of chair being metaphor–if it’s a metaphor, who is to say what the ur-leg is? Are legs things that stand up straight under other things, or things that walk, or things that spread? Why is a chair leg any less of a real leg than a human leg?
Thanks Blake. I like the term immersion–I think it’s a useful shorthand for describing what some of these texts are doing. Though I’d say that we need to be careful with it. Like, what are we being immersed in? Not necessarily the text–certainly not in the case of 120 Days, at least not for me–I feel the opposite of immersed in the liquid sense, even if the liquid is blood/semen/shit..the very exhaustiveness and monotony and of the text prevents me from feeling in it..perhaps against it, or under it. It’s not that those qualities mitigate the horror of it, but they do transform the horror into something very different from most horror. Which is of course what makes Sade transgressive while your average super-violent erotica transgresses precisely nothing. So again, sometimes immersive texts immerse me, sometimes they do other things to me, but I think it’s a good way to distinguish any texts that do anything to me, in a bodily way, than any text that doesn’t.
Another problem with this idea of leg of chair being metaphor–if it’s a metaphor, who is to say what the ur-leg is? Are legs things that stand up straight under other things, or things that walk, or things that spread? Why is a chair leg any less of a real leg than a human leg?
Yes. Boredom. Right there is another link between DFW and “transgressive literature.”
Yes. Boredom. Right there is another link between DFW and “transgressive literature.”
i had mann and one of wallace’s workshops in the same semester…i think wallace was def intimidated by mann…all i ever heard mann say of wallace, in response to I don’t know what about something someone repeated that wallace said about writing: “well, dave plays the game”
i had mann and one of wallace’s workshops in the same semester…i think wallace was def intimidated by mann…all i ever heard mann say of wallace, in response to I don’t know what about something someone repeated that wallace said about writing: “well, dave plays the game”
let’s do it. i have been daydreaming about giant reading group…
thanks for your thoughts, Roxane.
let’s do it. i have been daydreaming about giant reading group…
thanks for your thoughts, Roxane.
No. silence is not a retreat to a pre-critical response, for a couple reasons. first, speaking or writing is not the only possible critical response, as i’ve tried to explain in the whole post. second, it has a lot to do with the nature of this kind of transgressive text in particular–the expending kind that attempts to exhaust language the way the sun exhausts itself. thus silence is a radical response to this attempt. Mann writes, “Everything must be said over and over again. It is not only the brute proliferation of crimes that characterizes Sade but the fact that in transgressing every limit he must repeat himself ceaselessly; and the only way to put an end to this discourse lies in the entre-dire, the interval of silence between the words of an utterance, a between saying that functions only because the discourse goes on forever, emptying itself out, destroying itself as it goes along, cancelling itself in a movement in which everything is lost, including the writer himself, precisely because everything is always said.”
No. silence is not a retreat to a pre-critical response, for a couple reasons. first, speaking or writing is not the only possible critical response, as i’ve tried to explain in the whole post. second, it has a lot to do with the nature of this kind of transgressive text in particular–the expending kind that attempts to exhaust language the way the sun exhausts itself. thus silence is a radical response to this attempt. Mann writes, “Everything must be said over and over again. It is not only the brute proliferation of crimes that characterizes Sade but the fact that in transgressing every limit he must repeat himself ceaselessly; and the only way to put an end to this discourse lies in the entre-dire, the interval of silence between the words of an utterance, a between saying that functions only because the discourse goes on forever, emptying itself out, destroying itself as it goes along, cancelling itself in a movement in which everything is lost, including the writer himself, precisely because everything is always said.”
thanks, Tim. are you by chance an INFJ?
thanks, Tim. are you by chance an INFJ?
that was supposed to happen with lady maximum gaga – what happened to that?
i will put this on my list of books to buy with christmas money if you guys srsly want to do it
cool essay amy, but i need a while for my thoughts to coagulate before i actually say comment on it
i’m glad that alec mentioned the essay in LIES/ISLE – it’s a dooOzzy
my mind has been on a magic carpet ride for days on end
that was supposed to happen with lady maximum gaga – what happened to that?
i will put this on my list of books to buy with christmas money if you guys srsly want to do it
cool essay amy, but i need a while for my thoughts to coagulate before i actually say comment on it
i’m glad that alec mentioned the essay in LIES/ISLE – it’s a dooOzzy
my mind has been on a magic carpet ride for days on end
I wish I had my copy of Eagleton’s Literary Theory with me. If you have it, try to find the passage where he addresses Pleasure of the Text. He says something, I think, which lines up with me. I admire the hell out of Barthes, don’t get me wrong, but basically it takes privilege and leisure to read sensually rather than provide for a family or whatever. Barthes writes that the text strips “me” of selfhood, in an ahistorical and apolitical move. But all readers and writers are socially and politically conditioned. Etc.
I wish I had my copy of Eagleton’s Literary Theory with me. If you have it, try to find the passage where he addresses Pleasure of the Text. He says something, I think, which lines up with me. I admire the hell out of Barthes, don’t get me wrong, but basically it takes privilege and leisure to read sensually rather than provide for a family or whatever. Barthes writes that the text strips “me” of selfhood, in an ahistorical and apolitical move. But all readers and writers are socially and politically conditioned. Etc.
No, I’m ENFP… or I think so, anyway, I’ve only ever done dumbed-down internet versions. But I definitely feel most confident abt the N and F being accurate, so I have speculated my tendency to not really understand feeling and abstract thinking as wholly separate things might stem from that.
No, I’m ENFP… or I think so, anyway, I’ve only ever done dumbed-down internet versions. But I definitely feel most confident abt the N and F being accurate, so I have speculated my tendency to not really understand feeling and abstract thinking as wholly separate things might stem from that.
i bet you are right. i’ve only taken internet versions too. but yeah my N and F are the most extreme, whereas I’m only a 1% J compared to P, and i’m not hugely introverted either. the feelings/abstractions/viscerality things was the thing that rang the most true for me out of the INFJ profile, so it probably is the NF part
i bet you are right. i’ve only taken internet versions too. but yeah my N and F are the most extreme, whereas I’m only a 1% J compared to P, and i’m not hugely introverted either. the feelings/abstractions/viscerality things was the thing that rang the most true for me out of the INFJ profile, so it probably is the NF part
things was the thing…yikes
things was the thing…yikes
You should. He’s Bataille without the repression and hostility, and his prose is some of the most beautiful I’ve encountered.
You should. He’s Bataille without the repression and hostility, and his prose is some of the most beautiful I’ve encountered.
Er, he isn’t exactly Bataille without those qualities, but I think they share a certain spirit.
Er, he isn’t exactly Bataille without those qualities, but I think they share a certain spirit.
‘some of the most beautiful I’ve encountered’ is probably the lamest thing I’ve ever written.
hmm, i haven’t an eagleton. so how is that different than any other critical activity? as in, wouldn’t any engagement with art be privileged compared to providing for a family? why is it more privileged to engage sensually rather than just cognitively? if anything it almost seems to go the other way..to deny that the text has any affect on us seems a bit apolitical. but i don’t have the barthes essay at hand, either, all this is largely from memory of what i encountered in a class taken 6 years ago.
‘some of the most beautiful I’ve encountered’ is probably the lamest thing I’ve ever written.
hmm, i haven’t an eagleton. so how is that different than any other critical activity? as in, wouldn’t any engagement with art be privileged compared to providing for a family? why is it more privileged to engage sensually rather than just cognitively? if anything it almost seems to go the other way..to deny that the text has any affect on us seems a bit apolitical. but i don’t have the barthes essay at hand, either, all this is largely from memory of what i encountered in a class taken 6 years ago.
okay ordered it. very excited. how shall we do this reading group? set a date, drink some wine alone in our respective apartments and have a comment thread about it, or something more intensive? roxane, what kind of wine pairs best with massumi?
okay ordered it. very excited. how shall we do this reading group? set a date, drink some wine alone in our respective apartments and have a comment thread about it, or something more intensive? roxane, what kind of wine pairs best with massumi?
look forward to hearing your coagulated thoughts, reynard, though not at the expense of your magic carpet ride having to end. thanks for reading
look forward to hearing your coagulated thoughts, reynard, though not at the expense of your magic carpet ride having to end. thanks for reading
Out of curiosity, what of bataille’s theory/philosophy are you basing that opinion on? as part of a “personal seminar on bataille” that i basically invented and am participating in as the sole participant i have been reading everything written by bataille that’s available in english, in order (though i’ve fucked up and didn’t read the encyclopedia acephalica while i was reading visions of excess). i guess my point is this: my bataille obsession grew out of my lust for his fiction. when i tried to jump into his theory before, shit was opaque and i had no idea how to read it, but i know that it sounded lovely. so i thought “hey, maybe i’ll read this shit in order,” and it’s clarifying things, revealing changes, making everything most complete. though honestly i think i need some capacity to read in both directions, because later stuff clarifies earlier stuff as much as earlier stuff clarifies later stuff? all i know is that bataille’s somme atheologique moves me in such a way that the impossible does, and that way is how i want to feel all the time: i am, perhaps, ‘the emptiness of caskets’-becoming.
Out of curiosity, what of bataille’s theory/philosophy are you basing that opinion on? as part of a “personal seminar on bataille” that i basically invented and am participating in as the sole participant i have been reading everything written by bataille that’s available in english, in order (though i’ve fucked up and didn’t read the encyclopedia acephalica while i was reading visions of excess). i guess my point is this: my bataille obsession grew out of my lust for his fiction. when i tried to jump into his theory before, shit was opaque and i had no idea how to read it, but i know that it sounded lovely. so i thought “hey, maybe i’ll read this shit in order,” and it’s clarifying things, revealing changes, making everything most complete. though honestly i think i need some capacity to read in both directions, because later stuff clarifies earlier stuff as much as earlier stuff clarifies later stuff? all i know is that bataille’s somme atheologique moves me in such a way that the impossible does, and that way is how i want to feel all the time: i am, perhaps, ‘the emptiness of caskets’-becoming.
I do happen to have Eagleton handy. I’m not sure if this is the passage you mean but Eagleton writes:
“The approach of Barthe’s The Pleasure of the Text (1973) is about as different from Iser’s as one could imagine–the difference, stereotypically speaking, between a French hedonist and a German rationalist. Whereas Iser focuses mainly on teh realist work, Barthes offers a sharply contrasting account of reading by taking the modernist text, one which dissolves all distinct meaning into a free play of words, which seeks to undo repressive thought-sytems by a ceaseless slipping and sliding of language. Such a text demands less a hermeneutics than an erotics: since there is no way to arrest it into determinate sense, teh reader simply luxuriates in the tantalizing glide of signs, in the provocative glimpses of meanings which surface only to submerge again. Caught up in this exuberant dance of language, delighting in the textures of words themselves, the reader knows less the purposive pleasures of building a coherent system, binding textual elements masterfully together to shore up a unitary self, than the masochistic thrills of feeling that self shattered and dispersed through the tangled webs of the work itself. Reading is less like a laboratory than a boudoir. Far from returning the reader to himself, in some final recuperation of the selfhood which the act of reading has thrown into question, the modernist text explodes his or her secure cultural identity, in a jouissance which for Barthes is both readerly bliss and sexual orgasm.
I do happen to have Eagleton handy. I’m not sure if this is the passage you mean but Eagleton writes:
“The approach of Barthe’s The Pleasure of the Text (1973) is about as different from Iser’s as one could imagine–the difference, stereotypically speaking, between a French hedonist and a German rationalist. Whereas Iser focuses mainly on teh realist work, Barthes offers a sharply contrasting account of reading by taking the modernist text, one which dissolves all distinct meaning into a free play of words, which seeks to undo repressive thought-sytems by a ceaseless slipping and sliding of language. Such a text demands less a hermeneutics than an erotics: since there is no way to arrest it into determinate sense, teh reader simply luxuriates in the tantalizing glide of signs, in the provocative glimpses of meanings which surface only to submerge again. Caught up in this exuberant dance of language, delighting in the textures of words themselves, the reader knows less the purposive pleasures of building a coherent system, binding textual elements masterfully together to shore up a unitary self, than the masochistic thrills of feeling that self shattered and dispersed through the tangled webs of the work itself. Reading is less like a laboratory than a boudoir. Far from returning the reader to himself, in some final recuperation of the selfhood which the act of reading has thrown into question, the modernist text explodes his or her secure cultural identity, in a jouissance which for Barthes is both readerly bliss and sexual orgasm.
Amy a complex red wine is definitely the way to go.
Amy a complex red wine is definitely the way to go.
“…I’ve also never totally understood the distinction people make between intellect and emotion because I feel like I feel them in the same place.”
yes yes yes
this is it for me. always. hard, but i love it. makes me never bored ever.
“…I’ve also never totally understood the distinction people make between intellect and emotion because I feel like I feel them in the same place.”
yes yes yes
this is it for me. always. hard, but i love it. makes me never bored ever.
massumi and malbec
massumi and malbec
Well, criticism is by definition a form of discourse. If reading is “itself an act of criticism,” that’s only because there’s internalized discourse going on, i.e., thinking. The distinction between affective response and reflection is a false binary even on the level of private aesthetic experience.
I suppose ritualized silence can be a form of discourse too. But it is not critical discourse, precisely because, as you’re showing me, there is no way to argue against it. It is rather a kind of ideological gesture.
Well, criticism is by definition a form of discourse. If reading is “itself an act of criticism,” that’s only because there’s internalized discourse going on, i.e., thinking. The distinction between affective response and reflection is a false binary even on the level of private aesthetic experience.
I suppose ritualized silence can be a form of discourse too. But it is not critical discourse, precisely because, as you’re showing me, there is no way to argue against it. It is rather a kind of ideological gesture.
Could go with the ‘all language is metaphor’ argument here.
Mike: could you please recommend an order for me to read Bataille’s work in? His theory pretty much only works on a very abstract level for me.
Mike: could you please recommend an order for me to read Bataille’s work in? His theory pretty much only works on a very abstract level for me.
which destructs the value of a metaphor, no?
which destructs the value of a metaphor, no?
Thanks Roxane. I think the passage in question might be right after that one.
In any case, well, I mean theorizing about desire and the text might reflect a privilege in a way that, say, theorizing about the how the text/desire complex functions historically/politically does not. If Barthes argues that “I” am taken out of myself by the text, he argues that I am freed as a political and temporal subject, that I am somehow freed from being. It is less an immersion than an escape.
By privilege I don’t mean luxury in terms of capital, I guess, because to write at all, theoretically at least, demands a certain capital. I’m actually not sure why I used the word privilege.
Thanks Roxane. I think the passage in question might be right after that one.
In any case, well, I mean theorizing about desire and the text might reflect a privilege in a way that, say, theorizing about the how the text/desire complex functions historically/politically does not. If Barthes argues that “I” am taken out of myself by the text, he argues that I am freed as a political and temporal subject, that I am somehow freed from being. It is less an immersion than an escape.
By privilege I don’t mean luxury in terms of capital, I guess, because to write at all, theoretically at least, demands a certain capital. I’m actually not sure why I used the word privilege.
If that makes any sense at all.
If that makes any sense at all.
Amy, this was a really, really wonderful post. It has me thinking a lot. At the moment, I’m just finishing up an essay on horror film and spectatorship that touches on some of these issues: particularly, that of affective register and the interaction of immersion and abstraction. I’ve not read Masocriticism and will absolutely have to get ahold of it, sounds really fabulous. But from the clip here it reminds me somewhat of Steven Shaviro’s The Cinematic Body which seems to mount a very similar claim – esp. “One suffers an utter loss of agency, out of and against which a new scene or new reading must be projected” – in relation to film. Two things strike me: the first has to do with a wonderful phrasing Blake has coined (or which I first read via him ages ago and which he still uses) which is “brain ate”. To speak of a text ‘eating’ your brain is to assert both a visceral and an abstract reaction to it at once and as one and the same thing, I think. To say the brain has been devoured by a textual encounter (as opposed to having devoured the text itself) is to also say that the brain has become the meal of an exterior hunger, has been gulped or swallowed or chewed or portioned, yes, but also sourced for nutrition, absorbed for energy and fat and kept excess, even excreted, turned to waste. In all of this, the metaphor matters not because it’s ‘only’ metaphor (because the leg of the chair is, indeed, a leg, as Blake says) but because the metaphor is what the experience of the brain itself becomes. The other thing that strikes me is that I don’t think the work of criticism can be said to have a history that comes later. More often that not, it has a history that precedes reading, in ways we’ve been made ‘ready’ (or unready, or misled or overprepared etc.) for a text. I’ve tended to think of the intuitive – that complex nodality of how and what we feel as we feel – as itself a type of capillary criticism that channels both the known and the not known in us through the circuitry of the text that is our extra-sensory organ for the time of reading (and, beyond, to the time of ‘digestion’ of the reading). For that reason, I don’t find language counterpoised to the emotivity that comes over in the time of reading but rather that affect the very sign of critical language’s instantiation in and as our being. Having said that, I don’t mean that being itself is thereby ‘linguistic’; rather, I mean that ontology is critically oriented all the way down, so that it has no experiential basis without critical process. Instead of silence, in short, I think there’s always a type of interrogative chatter going on. And what I think transgressive texts do (although not only transgressive texts; perhaps a better term would be conceptual texts) is not so much elicit silence from us as invent it in us. They instill silence as an affective reactor, as the structure of feeling, a kind of artificial affective outer space, in which we tack across the abstraction of message’s exterior like astronauts on the outside of dysfunctional space stations, and from which we recoup all the many things to be ‘said’ about a text (our view of the whole earth) but which also allows is an enduring sense of the unsaid or the unsayable, of its openness to impact, essentially (the other side of the earth we cannot see from any one place in its orbit and the space around and infinitely beyond it). For Bataille, the sun burning itself up without concern for the life its combustion nutures does not just burn indifferently but burns all the way through: there is literally no darkness in reason’s blindspot, which is, of course, the darkness of its blindspot. That impossible aim of being able to think life from the perspective of the dark cavity that is not in the sun – the solar anus – is the type of critical conceptualism transgressive texts will tend to aim for. In doing so, it works on that tie between the heart in our skulls (the facticity of ourselves that informs our critical consciousness) and the brain in our chests (the criticality that informs our facticity).
Amy, this was a really, really wonderful post. It has me thinking a lot. At the moment, I’m just finishing up an essay on horror film and spectatorship that touches on some of these issues: particularly, that of affective register and the interaction of immersion and abstraction. I’ve not read Masocriticism and will absolutely have to get ahold of it, sounds really fabulous. But from the clip here it reminds me somewhat of Steven Shaviro’s The Cinematic Body which seems to mount a very similar claim – esp. “One suffers an utter loss of agency, out of and against which a new scene or new reading must be projected” – in relation to film. Two things strike me: the first has to do with a wonderful phrasing Blake has coined (or which I first read via him ages ago and which he still uses) which is “brain ate”. To speak of a text ‘eating’ your brain is to assert both a visceral and an abstract reaction to it at once and as one and the same thing, I think. To say the brain has been devoured by a textual encounter (as opposed to having devoured the text itself) is to also say that the brain has become the meal of an exterior hunger, has been gulped or swallowed or chewed or portioned, yes, but also sourced for nutrition, absorbed for energy and fat and kept excess, even excreted, turned to waste. In all of this, the metaphor matters not because it’s ‘only’ metaphor (because the leg of the chair is, indeed, a leg, as Blake says) but because the metaphor is what the experience of the brain itself becomes. The other thing that strikes me is that I don’t think the work of criticism can be said to have a history that comes later. More often that not, it has a history that precedes reading, in ways we’ve been made ‘ready’ (or unready, or misled or overprepared etc.) for a text. I’ve tended to think of the intuitive – that complex nodality of how and what we feel as we feel – as itself a type of capillary criticism that channels both the known and the not known in us through the circuitry of the text that is our extra-sensory organ for the time of reading (and, beyond, to the time of ‘digestion’ of the reading). For that reason, I don’t find language counterpoised to the emotivity that comes over in the time of reading but rather that affect the very sign of critical language’s instantiation in and as our being. Having said that, I don’t mean that being itself is thereby ‘linguistic’; rather, I mean that ontology is critically oriented all the way down, so that it has no experiential basis without critical process. Instead of silence, in short, I think there’s always a type of interrogative chatter going on. And what I think transgressive texts do (although not only transgressive texts; perhaps a better term would be conceptual texts) is not so much elicit silence from us as invent it in us. They instill silence as an affective reactor, as the structure of feeling, a kind of artificial affective outer space, in which we tack across the abstraction of message’s exterior like astronauts on the outside of dysfunctional space stations, and from which we recoup all the many things to be ‘said’ about a text (our view of the whole earth) but which also allows is an enduring sense of the unsaid or the unsayable, of its openness to impact, essentially (the other side of the earth we cannot see from any one place in its orbit and the space around and infinitely beyond it). For Bataille, the sun burning itself up without concern for the life its combustion nutures does not just burn indifferently but burns all the way through: there is literally no darkness in reason’s blindspot, which is, of course, the darkness of its blindspot. That impossible aim of being able to think life from the perspective of the dark cavity that is not in the sun – the solar anus – is the type of critical conceptualism transgressive texts will tend to aim for. In doing so, it works on that tie between the heart in our skulls (the facticity of ourselves that informs our critical consciousness) and the brain in our chests (the criticality that informs our facticity).
Oh Blake, would it be entirely obnoxious if I emailed you with a couple of things I was thinking about lucid dreaming? I noticed you called for input on that topic on your blog but that call was for direct experiences and this is to do with some thinking that happened when I was watching (of all things) The Lawnmower Man the other day. So I didn’t want to just interpose. Also, you might know about this already but have you come across a book called Insomnia by Gayle Greene? It’s published by Uni of California Press. Pretty great book, kind of authoritative, a cross between medical reference and lit-philsophy. Greene’s a professor of Literature and Women’s Studies and an insomnia sufferer. From what I’ve gleaned of your (entirely awesome sounding) book, it may provide some helpful data fodder for your no sleep explorations.
Oh Blake, would it be entirely obnoxious if I emailed you with a couple of things I was thinking about lucid dreaming? I noticed you called for input on that topic on your blog but that call was for direct experiences and this is to do with some thinking that happened when I was watching (of all things) The Lawnmower Man the other day. So I didn’t want to just interpose. Also, you might know about this already but have you come across a book called Insomnia by Gayle Greene? It’s published by Uni of California Press. Pretty great book, kind of authoritative, a cross between medical reference and lit-philsophy. Greene’s a professor of Literature and Women’s Studies and an insomnia sufferer. From what I’ve gleaned of your (entirely awesome sounding) book, it may provide some helpful data fodder for your no sleep explorations.
I’ve had the same problem, Mike. I tried to read Visions of Excess and most of it just went right over my head. But I know something’s there and, fuck it, I want to learn it!! I want to fully grasp Bataille. So I should read them in order sometime soon. I just have to get the rest of them. I love his novels but I feel that the key to everything lies within his theories.
I’ve had the same problem, Mike. I tried to read Visions of Excess and most of it just went right over my head. But I know something’s there and, fuck it, I want to learn it!! I want to fully grasp Bataille. So I should read them in order sometime soon. I just have to get the rest of them. I love his novels but I feel that the key to everything lies within his theories.
ha, thing was the thing was the thing was the thing… (I kinda dig it)
ha, thing was the thing was the thing was the thing… (I kinda dig it)
Just want to add to all the positive feedback ; great post! I’ve also been thinking about affective reading and tomes and Twitter:
http://tinyurl.com/y9xbnge
Damn, now I feel like reading Bataille, but my to-read pile is about to collapse
Just want to add to all the positive feedback ; great post! I’ve also been thinking about affective reading and tomes and Twitter:
http://tinyurl.com/y9xbnge
Damn, now I feel like reading Bataille, but my to-read pile is about to collapse
alan, i think there’s plenty to argue against in what i’m saying, and i’m positive that i’m not simply making an ideological gesture. nor was the silence “ritualized.” i’ll start by arguing against what you are saying. 1) why couldn’t the attempt to resist discourse be part of the critical act? 2) if you have to say “critical discourse” then it seems you are either being redundant, or that criticism is NOT by definition discourse or else why not just say criticism? 3) as to “if reading is ‘itself an act…’ that’s only because..” well, i’d say yes–it IS criticism because there IS critical thought. i guess be your “that’s only because” you are implying that is…obvious? dull? maybe so, i said it because i wanted to show the usefulness of thinking about affect even for those readers who don’t think of themselves as critics qua criticism, or who don’t like the idea of being involved in literary criticism. 4) but the silence thing is different. silence is just one critical method that i am talking about here. whether you want to call it critical or not (i think it is, but the meat of what i’m saying is not about how you label it), it is a response that engages with what is happening in the text. i don’t think it makes sense as a response to every text, just texts like 120 Days that force their will on the reader by expending words ceaselessly. perhaps then silence works as a kind of foil, a contrasting background via which we can better discern the text.
alan, i think there’s plenty to argue against in what i’m saying, and i’m positive that i’m not simply making an ideological gesture. nor was the silence “ritualized.” i’ll start by arguing against what you are saying. 1) why couldn’t the attempt to resist discourse be part of the critical act? 2) if you have to say “critical discourse” then it seems you are either being redundant, or that criticism is NOT by definition discourse or else why not just say criticism? 3) as to “if reading is ‘itself an act…’ that’s only because..” well, i’d say yes–it IS criticism because there IS critical thought. i guess be your “that’s only because” you are implying that is…obvious? dull? maybe so, i said it because i wanted to show the usefulness of thinking about affect even for those readers who don’t think of themselves as critics qua criticism, or who don’t like the idea of being involved in literary criticism. 4) but the silence thing is different. silence is just one critical method that i am talking about here. whether you want to call it critical or not (i think it is, but the meat of what i’m saying is not about how you label it), it is a response that engages with what is happening in the text. i don’t think it makes sense as a response to every text, just texts like 120 Days that force their will on the reader by expending words ceaselessly. perhaps then silence works as a kind of foil, a contrasting background via which we can better discern the text.
oops, i guess BY your “that’s only…”
oops, i guess BY your “that’s only…”
David, thanks so much for reading and for your commentary. Your reading of Bataille here is so welcome, for I’m always getting mixed up about what exactly the solar anus is, esp. in comparison to the pineal eye, but now I think I’ve got it. Also, I’d love to read your horror essay, any chance you’d send it my way when it’s done? my first and last name at gmail.
i think what you say about silence and being is probably right on. It makes me wonder if Mann knew that silence was ultimately unrealizable, but that it is something to at least struggle toward, even if always futilely, maybe if only to recognize the interrogative chatter’s permanence.
David, thanks so much for reading and for your commentary. Your reading of Bataille here is so welcome, for I’m always getting mixed up about what exactly the solar anus is, esp. in comparison to the pineal eye, but now I think I’ve got it. Also, I’d love to read your horror essay, any chance you’d send it my way when it’s done? my first and last name at gmail.
i think what you say about silence and being is probably right on. It makes me wonder if Mann knew that silence was ultimately unrealizable, but that it is something to at least struggle toward, even if always futilely, maybe if only to recognize the interrogative chatter’s permanence.
Thanks, Jeroen. Right back at you–I like what you are doing w/ a trans-formal look at affect.
Thanks, Jeroen. Right back at you–I like what you are doing w/ a trans-formal look at affect.
Cool. I look forward to that discussion!
Cool. I look forward to that discussion!
Hey Justin, I’ll try to put together some thoughts and do a post on that Mann book, The Theory-Death of the Avant Garde.
Hey Justin, I’ll try to put together some thoughts and do a post on that Mann book, The Theory-Death of the Avant Garde.
Yes! Massumi rocks! He’s the fella who translated D&G’s 1000 Plateaus, Lyotard’s Postmodern Condition, and Soshana Feldman’s Writing & Madness, among other things. I’ve only encountered snippets of the book in question, but would very much be interested in a Massumi & Malbec reading group.
Yes! Massumi rocks! He’s the fella who translated D&G’s 1000 Plateaus, Lyotard’s Postmodern Condition, and Soshana Feldman’s Writing & Madness, among other things. I’ve only encountered snippets of the book in question, but would very much be interested in a Massumi & Malbec reading group.
I’d love to be in on that too, really great idea.
I’d love to be in on that too, really great idea.
No, I don’t think I was being redundant, because in that sentence I was contrasting critical discourse with another kind of discourse. All criticism is discourse, but not the reverse.
I used the word “ritualized” because you’re describing a situation where someone says “I am being silent” or a class is told to sit in silence, rather than one where someone simply doesn’t say anything without calling attention to the fact.
I know reading involves thought and is therefore a kind of criticism. That’s what I’m saying too. So there’s really no point that’s prior to reflection. And further thought and discussion need not distance one’s affective appreciation of a work but can enhance it, among other aims.
If all you’re saying in the post is that in thinking about a work of literature people should take account of how it makes them feel, I don’t know who would disagree.
The idea that Sade in particular and in that work especially leaves the reader with nothing to say is an interesting one. One I might like to see further discussed. But not enacted.
I don’t know why I feel compelled to argue with your posts, I really do like them.
No, I don’t think I was being redundant, because in that sentence I was contrasting critical discourse with another kind of discourse. All criticism is discourse, but not the reverse.
I used the word “ritualized” because you’re describing a situation where someone says “I am being silent” or a class is told to sit in silence, rather than one where someone simply doesn’t say anything without calling attention to the fact.
I know reading involves thought and is therefore a kind of criticism. That’s what I’m saying too. So there’s really no point that’s prior to reflection. And further thought and discussion need not distance one’s affective appreciation of a work but can enhance it, among other aims.
If all you’re saying in the post is that in thinking about a work of literature people should take account of how it makes them feel, I don’t know who would disagree.
The idea that Sade in particular and in that work especially leaves the reader with nothing to say is an interesting one. One I might like to see further discussed. But not enacted.
I don’t know why I feel compelled to argue with your posts, I really do like them.
David, yes yes please do email me. all input would be hugely helpful. i will check out that greene, sounds perfect
David, yes yes please do email me. all input would be hugely helpful. i will check out that greene, sounds perfect
Maybe… I think I’m still affected by metaphor, though, even knowing, or believing, that everything is a metaphor. Maybe extracting metaphor, it’s just the language, but I still think language (through metaphor) can be powerful, but maybe what I’m saying is that language is powerful. I will think about this some more.
Maybe… I think I’m still affected by metaphor, though, even knowing, or believing, that everything is a metaphor. Maybe extracting metaphor, it’s just the language, but I still think language (through metaphor) can be powerful, but maybe what I’m saying is that language is powerful. I will think about this some more.
here’s the order i’ve gone in so far (including some ancillary texts)
-Story of the Eye (if you’ve read it before, reread it until you have it memorized, and think of it throughout everything you read by Bataille)
-Visions of Excess (a lot of this is sort of opaque, but becomes clearer in retrospect, if that makes sense. it’s also a really good corner stone for the Somme Atheologique, which I think is a necessary cornerstone for Bataille’s fiction)
-Madame Edwarda (I read this between parts II & III of Visions of Excess)
(-Encyclopedia Acephalica [I didn’t read this here but I wish I would have])
-Inner Experience (this is hard, really hard. but it’s also poetic. so read it for how it sounds, but try to let it wash over you so when you’re reading parts II & III of the Somme Atheologique it can come back)
-Guilty (this is, thus far, my favorite of Bataille’s non-fiction stuff. It’s a weird document, it’s the center piece to the Somme Atheologique in terms of theory [it certainly clarifies some of Inner Experience], it’s a memoir-esque document of war torn France, and how Bataille responds to that [with his whole body], plus some poetry, fictional fragments, the assemblage stylistics here are amazing. this is out of print, but cheaply available)
-Dirty (a mediocre translation of this is included in Creation’s Divine Filth slightly retitled, I think [I’m not at home to check right now], and Harry Mathews translation [the better one] is ostensibly the opening to the Marion Boyars Blue of Noon. I went ahead and read all of Divine Filth at this time, despite the fact that I know it’s just various ephemera throughout his entire ouevre.)
-Blue of Noon (I guess I should point out, at this point, that something that is extremely helpful is to intersperse the fiction with the non-fiction, in chronology, to see how the theory works in the fiction: this, I think, is key to aiding understanding. I had already read all of Bataille’s fiction [a lot multiple times], but rereading in a larger context is more rewarding)
-On Nietzsche (The final part of the Somme Atheologique, not actually “about” Nietzsche, but rather Bataille responding to Nietzschean ideas, further helps to clarify the ideas of inner experience & the practice of joy before death)
-Orestia (this is the final section of what was published as The Impossible)
-Dianus (the middle section of The Impossible)
-The Accursed Share Part I(after somme atheologique, the second major “area” of Bataille’s thought is the part maudite, which helps to cement his economics of excess that he began exploring in Visions of Excess [which is of course just collected articles from Documents & stuff]. This is hard at the beginning, but Bataille actually brings in concrete examples to illustrate what’s going on)
-Story of Rats (the first part of The Impossible)
And that’s where I am in terms of straight up Bataille chronology. Here’s the order I have lined up to finish:
Accursed Share Vol. 2 & 3
Theory of Religion
L’Abbe C
Lascaux / Cradle of Humanity
Manet
Erotism
Literature and Evil
Tears of Eros
Trial of Gilles de Rais
My Mother
The Dead Man
Then these I don’t really know for sure where they sit in terms of chronology, so they’re going at the end:
[Encyclopedia Acephalica: though I might move this up]
Absence of Myth
Unfinished System of Nonknowledge
Then when I’m done with all the Bataille texts, I will read Georges Bataille: An Intellectual Biography as a summation, and Denis Hollier’s Against Architecture, which is, from my understanding, an essential cornerstone of applying Bataille’s thought to practice/further theory.
After reading Accursed Share & Story of Rats I read Nick Land’s The Thirst of Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism, which is remarkably intense and difficult, but really amazing, and sort of brought a heightened understanding of where I’m at so far. I’m currently, before returning to the primary texts, reading Formless: A User’s Guide, which is ostensibly an art historical approach to Bataille’s concept of the formless (informe) as expressed in the Encyclopaedia Acephalica.
Hope this helps!?
here’s the order i’ve gone in so far (including some ancillary texts)
-Story of the Eye (if you’ve read it before, reread it until you have it memorized, and think of it throughout everything you read by Bataille)
-Visions of Excess (a lot of this is sort of opaque, but becomes clearer in retrospect, if that makes sense. it’s also a really good corner stone for the Somme Atheologique, which I think is a necessary cornerstone for Bataille’s fiction)
-Madame Edwarda (I read this between parts II & III of Visions of Excess)
(-Encyclopedia Acephalica [I didn’t read this here but I wish I would have])
-Inner Experience (this is hard, really hard. but it’s also poetic. so read it for how it sounds, but try to let it wash over you so when you’re reading parts II & III of the Somme Atheologique it can come back)
-Guilty (this is, thus far, my favorite of Bataille’s non-fiction stuff. It’s a weird document, it’s the center piece to the Somme Atheologique in terms of theory [it certainly clarifies some of Inner Experience], it’s a memoir-esque document of war torn France, and how Bataille responds to that [with his whole body], plus some poetry, fictional fragments, the assemblage stylistics here are amazing. this is out of print, but cheaply available)
-Dirty (a mediocre translation of this is included in Creation’s Divine Filth slightly retitled, I think [I’m not at home to check right now], and Harry Mathews translation [the better one] is ostensibly the opening to the Marion Boyars Blue of Noon. I went ahead and read all of Divine Filth at this time, despite the fact that I know it’s just various ephemera throughout his entire ouevre.)
-Blue of Noon (I guess I should point out, at this point, that something that is extremely helpful is to intersperse the fiction with the non-fiction, in chronology, to see how the theory works in the fiction: this, I think, is key to aiding understanding. I had already read all of Bataille’s fiction [a lot multiple times], but rereading in a larger context is more rewarding)
-On Nietzsche (The final part of the Somme Atheologique, not actually “about” Nietzsche, but rather Bataille responding to Nietzschean ideas, further helps to clarify the ideas of inner experience & the practice of joy before death)
-Orestia (this is the final section of what was published as The Impossible)
-Dianus (the middle section of The Impossible)
-The Accursed Share Part I(after somme atheologique, the second major “area” of Bataille’s thought is the part maudite, which helps to cement his economics of excess that he began exploring in Visions of Excess [which is of course just collected articles from Documents & stuff]. This is hard at the beginning, but Bataille actually brings in concrete examples to illustrate what’s going on)
-Story of Rats (the first part of The Impossible)
And that’s where I am in terms of straight up Bataille chronology. Here’s the order I have lined up to finish:
Accursed Share Vol. 2 & 3
Theory of Religion
L’Abbe C
Lascaux / Cradle of Humanity
Manet
Erotism
Literature and Evil
Tears of Eros
Trial of Gilles de Rais
My Mother
The Dead Man
Then these I don’t really know for sure where they sit in terms of chronology, so they’re going at the end:
[Encyclopedia Acephalica: though I might move this up]
Absence of Myth
Unfinished System of Nonknowledge
Then when I’m done with all the Bataille texts, I will read Georges Bataille: An Intellectual Biography as a summation, and Denis Hollier’s Against Architecture, which is, from my understanding, an essential cornerstone of applying Bataille’s thought to practice/further theory.
After reading Accursed Share & Story of Rats I read Nick Land’s The Thirst of Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism, which is remarkably intense and difficult, but really amazing, and sort of brought a heightened understanding of where I’m at so far. I’m currently, before returning to the primary texts, reading Formless: A User’s Guide, which is ostensibly an art historical approach to Bataille’s concept of the formless (informe) as expressed in the Encyclopaedia Acephalica.
Hope this helps!?
i will look forward to this as well
i will look forward to this as well
Amy, I’d love to send it to you when I finish it, absolutely. It’s pretty much done atm but I’m in protracted tinkering mode. Anyway, thanks so much for your interest! And again, wonderful post, I think yes, the creation of silence is a way to phase out noise (and all things can be noise, I don’t implicitly mean whatever we’d call ‘junk’, but rather the noise of the informational more broadly) and in so doing create an environment for feeling and thinking in. But nothing sculptural necessarily, like Brooks’s well wrought urn, more like a hemispherics of the text, in which said environment could, of course, itself be “noisy” or fractious but which would work and develop the specific noisiness it works and develops by virtue of the silence – something like the semi-detached world – of the text itself.
Amy, I’d love to send it to you when I finish it, absolutely. It’s pretty much done atm but I’m in protracted tinkering mode. Anyway, thanks so much for your interest! And again, wonderful post, I think yes, the creation of silence is a way to phase out noise (and all things can be noise, I don’t implicitly mean whatever we’d call ‘junk’, but rather the noise of the informational more broadly) and in so doing create an environment for feeling and thinking in. But nothing sculptural necessarily, like Brooks’s well wrought urn, more like a hemispherics of the text, in which said environment could, of course, itself be “noisy” or fractious but which would work and develop the specific noisiness it works and develops by virtue of the silence – something like the semi-detached world – of the text itself.
Awesome! Will email soonishly. Thanks, Blake!
Awesome! Will email soonishly. Thanks, Blake!
Thanks for the link to the essay, Alec, I just finished reading it.
Thanks for the link to the essay, Alec, I just finished reading it.
No problem, Tim. Some interesting ideas in there. Thanks to Mike for putting it out there. And for the wonderful list. I have a lot of brain-eating ahead.
No problem, Tim. Some interesting ideas in there. Thanks to Mike for putting it out there. And for the wonderful list. I have a lot of brain-eating ahead.
Phenomenal post! Thanks, Amy.
Shit. I should go sleep now, but this has me zoned and locked in my current mss again… damn you. ;)
Phenomenal post! Thanks, Amy.
Shit. I should go sleep now, but this has me zoned and locked in my current mss again… damn you. ;)