Craft Notes
A Bullshit-y, Obscure Post: Literature as Violence
From Walter Benjamin’s essay “Critique of Violence”:
If the rule of myth is broken occasionally in the present age, the coming age is not so unimaginably remote that an attack on law is altogether futile. But if the existence of violence outside the law, as pure immediate violence, is assured, this furnishes proof that revolutionary violence, the highest manifestation of unalloyed violence by man, is possible, and shows by what means. Less possible and also less urgent for human kind, however, is to decide when unalloyed violence has been realized in particular cases. For only mythic violence, not divine, will be recognizable as such with certainty, unless it be in incomparable effects, because the expiatory power of violence is invisible to men. … Divine violence, which is the sign and seal but never the means of sacred dispatch, may be called “sovereign” violence.
Benjamin distinguishes between two species of violence: mythic violence, which founds and preserves law for the sake of law, and divine violence, which washes away law, expiates, and which emerges from outside of law, without bloodshed–divine violence is wholly other to the law. “God is the name of this pure violence,” Derrida writes in “Force of Law,” “and just in essence: there is no other, there is none prior to it and before that it has to justify itself. Authority, justice, power, and violence are all one in him.” According to Derrida, mythic violence is the undecidable–law itself–which is instantly readable, whereas divine is the decision which is always yet to be read, the unreadable decision. The anarchy to-come.
Of course the issue, as always, is much more complex, but I would like to ask: is the task of literature to embody this divine violence? To abolish law in secret–and because it cannot be read as such, because it resists being targeted as what has dissolved the law, is it always an abolition to-come, a task for the future, a task which names, or renames, but escapes all naming? Only after, for instance, Ulysses has founded a new law is it really revealed as a destroyer of law, as a force of revolution–only after its revolution is it revolutionary. It was the seal of immediate violence but neither the means nor a means.
As we know, language and literature / = / representation. They name, and re-name.
Is the task of literature an infinite task to erase its own law?
Tags: killing, terrorism, walter benjamin, www.youtube.com
Hi Alec. I’m using this essay for a thing I’m writing at the moment actually so very much appreciate this post. It’s an interesting idea, the task of literature to embody divine violence, erase its own law. Makes me think of that great Kafka quote about the book as an axe for the frozen sea inside of us. I’ve always liked how forceful with emancipation and yet how framed in despair that aphorism is. You have the axe, yes, but there would be no end to chopping away at a frozen sea. If it is a frozen sea what would be beneath it? So where does the inspirational power of that quote arise from? I feel like it must be in the prospect that the book is to the frozen inland sea a kind of infinite axe, where everywhere in it is felt the blunt work of the blow. The point of thinking of it as a frozen sea is precisely to account for how little the book seems to alter anything in relation to reality at first. Everything looks as it was. There is an axe mark, at best, in a sea that is still frozen, all the way down. Yet the breach against it has begun. What is read cannot be unread even if it is always yet to be read. The violence itself is sovereign.
Hi Alec. I’m using this essay for a thing I’m writing at the moment actually so very much appreciate this post. It’s an interesting idea, the task of literature to embody divine violence, erase its own law. Makes me think of that great Kafka quote about the book as an axe for the frozen sea inside of us. I’ve always liked how forceful with emancipation and yet how framed in despair that aphorism is. You have the axe, yes, but there would be no end to chopping away at a frozen sea. If it is a frozen sea what would be beneath it? So where does the inspirational power of that quote arise from? I feel like it must be in the prospect that the book is to the frozen inland sea a kind of infinite axe, where everywhere in it is felt the blunt work of the blow. The point of thinking of it as a frozen sea is precisely to account for how little the book seems to alter anything in relation to reality at first. Everything looks as it was. There is an axe mark, at best, in a sea that is still frozen, all the way down. Yet the breach against it has begun. What is read cannot be unread even if it is always yet to be read. The violence itself is sovereign.
I’ve recently been wondering about the ethics of doing violence to language – because that’s still violence, isn’t it?
I’ve recently been wondering about the ethics of doing violence to language – because that’s still violence, isn’t it?
N9o.
N9o.
why?
why?
Ross, I like that you consider that violence to language is an ethical problem. I like this since too many violate their language for its own sake. We have to be conscious of the fact that we are always doing violence to language on a formal scale, so then interrogate what it might mean for violence to be opprobrious, playful, disastrous, repugnant, when enacted on language. This is not to say we don’t have free reign over our violence to language, part of what I’m saying is alongside what is now a commonality in avant-garde literary works. What I’d like to see, though, is a more complex violence to language that is thoughtful of its consequences. Oulipo is one of these thoughtful outfits (not that their violence to language isn’t sometimes a failure) where violence is constraint, the amputation of an e, for example. I think I’m looking for a language violated that thickens and ramifies the question of its own violation, the lengthening of the ethics of linguistic violence themselves.
Ross, I like that you consider that violence to language is an ethical problem. I like this since too many violate their language for its own sake. We have to be conscious of the fact that we are always doing violence to language on a formal scale, so then interrogate what it might mean for violence to be opprobrious, playful, disastrous, repugnant, when enacted on language. This is not to say we don’t have free reign over our violence to language, part of what I’m saying is alongside what is now a commonality in avant-garde literary works. What I’d like to see, though, is a more complex violence to language that is thoughtful of its consequences. Oulipo is one of these thoughtful outfits (not that their violence to language isn’t sometimes a failure) where violence is constraint, the amputation of an e, for example. I think I’m looking for a language violated that thickens and ramifies the question of its own violation, the lengthening of the ethics of linguistic violence themselves.
I try to think about the impications – sometimes a calousness can be an ethical/revolutionary position; especially if one looks at it from the perspective of competing creative/destructive impulses. The question is whether the violence is done to the text (and what that impies) or the linguistic system as a whole (with the same considerations). Then there is the conflict between intentionality and result…..
I try to think about the impications – sometimes a calousness can be an ethical/revolutionary position; especially if one looks at it from the perspective of competing creative/destructive impulses. The question is whether the violence is done to the text (and what that impies) or the linguistic system as a whole (with the same considerations). Then there is the conflict between intentionality and result…..
Ah…………….
First we have to define what we mean by violence. The problem I have is that I can’t think of meaningful way that ‘violence’ could be done to ‘language’ because language is immaterial. I can understand ‘violence’ (in the conventional sense) towards people and useful objects as unethical, but what can a person even DO to language? Language is a set of words with definitions and a set of rules of grammar, syntatx, etc? Something like that? I can only really understand morals/ethics in the framework of what is good for people (and possibly animals). So, the only way I could think that DOING something to language (whether it is ‘violence’ or not) would be unethical is if it somehow hurts PEOPLE, maybe by making language less useful or efficient or something. This doesn’t seem actually possible, though. (Unless you could destroy every dictionary, burn down libraries and databases, or something.) I don’t think any text (a book, poem, whatever) could be thought of as doing ANYTHING in meaningful way to this idea of language that exists external to it. A book does nothing. It is completely ineffectual. You could write a book that ‘deconstructs conventions of language’ or some shit, but the only like .01% of English speakers will read it at most.
If we define ‘violence’ to be something outside a humanist framework (like in some literary sense), then maybe ‘violence’ to language could be possible. I don’t know how it could be unethical, though. It’d be just a game. It doesn’t matter how you arrange words on the page. The words don’t care. No one else cares. It doesn’t hurt anybody or anything. I suppose you’d have to define some sort of ethics within this literary framework if ‘unethical’ is to be used in a meaningful way. But even if you do these things (define the concepts of ‘literary violence’ and ‘literary ethics’ or whatever), I think it would be sort of misleading to refer to these things as ‘violence’ and ‘ethics’ since they would bear no resemblance to how we understand ‘violence’ and ‘ethics’ in a conventional sense. It might be less abstruse if one used terminology like ‘manipulations’ and ‘conventions.,’ instead. I dunno.
(Maybe ‘literary’ is not the correct adjective. Maybe ‘textual’ or ‘semantic’ or ‘linguistic’ would be more appropriate.)
Ah…………….
First we have to define what we mean by violence. The problem I have is that I can’t think of meaningful way that ‘violence’ could be done to ‘language’ because language is immaterial. I can understand ‘violence’ (in the conventional sense) towards people and useful objects as unethical, but what can a person even DO to language? Language is a set of words with definitions and a set of rules of grammar, syntatx, etc? Something like that? I can only really understand morals/ethics in the framework of what is good for people (and possibly animals). So, the only way I could think that DOING something to language (whether it is ‘violence’ or not) would be unethical is if it somehow hurts PEOPLE, maybe by making language less useful or efficient or something. This doesn’t seem actually possible, though. (Unless you could destroy every dictionary, burn down libraries and databases, or something.) I don’t think any text (a book, poem, whatever) could be thought of as doing ANYTHING in meaningful way to this idea of language that exists external to it. A book does nothing. It is completely ineffectual. You could write a book that ‘deconstructs conventions of language’ or some shit, but the only like .01% of English speakers will read it at most.
If we define ‘violence’ to be something outside a humanist framework (like in some literary sense), then maybe ‘violence’ to language could be possible. I don’t know how it could be unethical, though. It’d be just a game. It doesn’t matter how you arrange words on the page. The words don’t care. No one else cares. It doesn’t hurt anybody or anything. I suppose you’d have to define some sort of ethics within this literary framework if ‘unethical’ is to be used in a meaningful way. But even if you do these things (define the concepts of ‘literary violence’ and ‘literary ethics’ or whatever), I think it would be sort of misleading to refer to these things as ‘violence’ and ‘ethics’ since they would bear no resemblance to how we understand ‘violence’ and ‘ethics’ in a conventional sense. It might be less abstruse if one used terminology like ‘manipulations’ and ‘conventions.,’ instead. I dunno.
(Maybe ‘literary’ is not the correct adjective. Maybe ‘textual’ or ‘semantic’ or ‘linguistic’ would be more appropriate.)
(yawns)
Deep, M. That’s deep.
(blows nose into hand and wipes on knee)
Thanks for that riveting explanation.
(yawns)
Deep, M. That’s deep.
(blows nose into hand and wipes on knee)
Thanks for that riveting explanation.
I think people do absolutely care what you do with language, since what you do with language in fact colours that which you read anyway. What about the prohibition of an aboriginal language? What about Wittig’s refusal to use gendered pronouns? The force-feeding of commercial nouns into ‘American Psycho’? The lack of metaphors in ‘Scorch Atlas’ and the literalising of visceral receptivity in the place of them? Are you saying these aren’t violent to language? Are you saying that these don’t have consequences for thought itself? Oh, and it’s ridiculous to make the argument about the number of readers and fiction that tends to do contain linguistic practices of violence. That’s a variable that’s impossible to track, and denies the vernacular violence of language, the great many things we do to it endemically, everyday. For example, the poetry of african-american vernaculars, which is a kind of productive violence to language as it was formerly known.
I think people do absolutely care what you do with language, since what you do with language in fact colours that which you read anyway. What about the prohibition of an aboriginal language? What about Wittig’s refusal to use gendered pronouns? The force-feeding of commercial nouns into ‘American Psycho’? The lack of metaphors in ‘Scorch Atlas’ and the literalising of visceral receptivity in the place of them? Are you saying these aren’t violent to language? Are you saying that these don’t have consequences for thought itself? Oh, and it’s ridiculous to make the argument about the number of readers and fiction that tends to do contain linguistic practices of violence. That’s a variable that’s impossible to track, and denies the vernacular violence of language, the great many things we do to it endemically, everyday. For example, the poetry of african-american vernaculars, which is a kind of productive violence to language as it was formerly known.
Is this really a photo of Walter Benjamin?
I don’t think so. Ok, he has dark hair, glasses + moustache… but this is it!
You might compare it to this one: http://www.gdw-berlin.de/db_images/gross/15661.jpg
Is this really a photo of Walter Benjamin?
I don’t think so. Ok, he has dark hair, glasses + moustache… but this is it!
You might compare it to this one: http://www.gdw-berlin.de/db_images/gross/15661.jpg
“…violence is constraint, the amputation of an e, for example. I think I’m looking for a language violated that thickens and ramifies the question of its own violation, the lengthening of the ethics of linguistic violence themselves.”
you don’t do violence to language, it does violence to you. or you use it to hurt another person.
You’re going to need to think about the category of ‘law’ if you want to apply this sort of schema to literature. but i’m not sure it’s possible to do that. also, “Less possible and also less urgent for human kind, however, is to decide when unalloyed violence has been realized in particular cases.”
“…violence is constraint, the amputation of an e, for example. I think I’m looking for a language violated that thickens and ramifies the question of its own violation, the lengthening of the ethics of linguistic violence themselves.”
you don’t do violence to language, it does violence to you. or you use it to hurt another person.
You’re going to need to think about the category of ‘law’ if you want to apply this sort of schema to literature. but i’m not sure it’s possible to do that. also, “Less possible and also less urgent for human kind, however, is to decide when unalloyed violence has been realized in particular cases.”
word
word
Related: “Literature and evil” The only TV interview that exists with Georges Bataille (1958). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WiwNekNJGA
“Are evil and literature inseparable?” – “Yes, I think so. (…) If literature stays away from evil, it rapidly becomes boring”
Related: “Literature and evil” The only TV interview that exists with Georges Bataille (1958). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WiwNekNJGA
“Are evil and literature inseparable?” – “Yes, I think so. (…) If literature stays away from evil, it rapidly becomes boring”
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