Joy Kogawa’s Obasan is a dramatically powerful examination of the interpelative possibilities of textual discourse. The text quite pointedly interrogates the cultural and historical assumptions of the reader in order to emphasize its attempts to give voice to those who were denied even the citizenship required to do so. As the protagonist of the text in an endeavour to localize her identity invokes her own past, I would like to begin by quotation. A fragment of the archive, from page 256: “There are incebreaker questions that create an awareness of ice”. So my icebreaker is as follows: Can we examine the conceptualization of remembrance in Obasan as a reinscription of original trauma onto a new space of subjectivity occupied by the reader? This is not done in any negative sense in terms of the value of pleasure within the text, for indeed in many respects pleasure lies at the heart of the narrative. To my eyes this formulation of using history, of refracting the past into and through the present, reflects Josef Hayim Yerushalmi’s statement / question, “Is it possible that the antonym of ‘forgetting’ is not ‘remembering’, but justice?” Certainly such seems to be Kogawa’s project with Obasan as objet sui-même in the archive of cultural memory.
Like Proust’s madelaine, Naomi’s walk to the coulee opens the seal covering her memories. It also serves to bookend the narrative, structurally and thematically enclosing histories and events which the reader ostensibly pieces together by the final chapters. In a similar manner, Obasan’s statement “Everybody someday dies” serves this function, although I will reflect her Zen-lie reticence by dealing with it latter, and not here. Before the reader can properly situate itself in the present of 1972, Kogawa uses the somewhat uncontrollable entrance into Naomi’s past as a strategic differal which serves to dislocate the normative subjectivity associated with reading historical prose as ‘of the past’. 1972 contains few narrative events and captures about a month of time, yet nearly three dozen chapters of extra-temporal narrative are required to resolve the present. This dislocation of reader’s subjective sense of the present in the text reflects the similarly fractured notion of identity that Naomi has herself experienced. The present is used as an ordering device for the past, as various traumatic events are examined and ‘unforgotten’: sexual abuse by a neighbour; the fracturing of Naomi’s family, perhaps best demonstrated by her increasing distance from her brother, Steven, who seems particularly comfortable in his conformance to Canadian racism; and the maggots, abused animals, and nightmare dream sequences which seem structurally informed by the horrors of the description of the bombing of Nagasaki, to which they lead in the text.
This connection between past and present is made most elaborate by the ‘walk to the coulee’ sequence. The first, which opens chapter one, seems innocuous enough, and indeed the reader is soon made aware that Naomi and her Uncle have been performing this ritual, repeating this journey, for years. It is not until the end of the text that the significance of this walk becomes apparent, as then it is evident that the trips to the coulee began shortly after Uncle and Obasan learned of the death of Naomi’s mother. The journey at the end of the text also stands as Naomi’s eulogy for the passing of her Uncle. Consequently, the walk prefigures a recurrence of the moment of trauma transposed into another subjective temporality through repressed and projected remembrance. This can be understood as certain obsessive routines demonstrated by Freud to be the repetition of the moment of traumatic immanence displaced into a more controllable action to allow the conscious mind to legitimate the trauma (trauma as not-negating-the-self) while simultaneously rejecting it (trauma as the non-self which needs to be overcome). For Naomi’s uncle, this differal is the acceptance of fate: “what will be will be”, as he says on page 220. And yet with his death, Naomi comes to understand the duplicity – in the sense not just of falseness, but of doubleness – of the pain experienced by herself and her family. To remain silent on the matter is to underline, to repeat, the violence against the self which was the initial trauma.
That for Naomi this rejection of self-violence occurs as an unveiling, a flood of memories and traumas unearthed, is within Derrida’s sense of the archive as elaborated in Archive Fever, the pleasure of censorship enacted by the guardians of history. It is the re-subjectification of the initial trauma to a present always-already in crisis, which for the Naomi of 1972 is the simultaneous death of her Uncle and the realization through external sources – letters, government documents, etc, in Aunt Emily’s package – of her “true” history. This realization itself requires a death, but I must differ the death of hermy mother for the present, as any good Derridean should.
The invocation of a “true” self, one with which to ‘come to terms’, is of course emblematic of the more broad concerns that Canada, and indeed in even broader terms the historical archive itself, must negotiate with the fascist control of the undesirable Other, which manifests most prominently during times of war, despite any claims the Other might make to have / perform citizenship. That the book ends with a memorandum from the Committee on Japanese Canadians to the senate and legislature of Canada is Kogawa’s gesture to the archive itself, in terms of both its responsibilities and its silences. Importantly, most of the historical documents come from Aunt Emily who, in opposition to the rest of the family, loudly challenges the silences and differals which constitute “respect through suffering” which characterises some forms of traditional Japanese culture as remnants of Buddhist and Shinto principles. In a very real sense, it is Aunt Emily who is the voice of the archive, her activism signifying the repressed guilt felt by the historical record (or by the archon s themselves, to humanize the concept). The historical notes contained in her package serve as a ghost structure, an homunculus summoned by the projected psychological trauma felt by the collective population and inscribed – or marked as in Cain, instances of stigmata, and other manifestations of psychophysiological trauma – on the archive proper, here in the form of news media. Unlike in Stalinist Russia, for example, such traumas are not ‘forgotten’ by the media in Canada. There is no conspicuous censorship which denies even the archive a voice to speak. Consequently, the media can properly act as Marshall MacLuen’s extension of the human nervous system into the public sphere. That an otherwise dusty collection of old papers is anthropomorphized to the degree stated above is made clear by its importance (in the sense of biopower espoused by Negri and others) to Naomi for the ordering of her memory and the realization of a sense of identity. Her memories and the historical documents enter the same subjective space, a region where silences speak and voices are muted.
There is a difference among the silences in the text, however. Initially, Naomi seems to think that Obasan’s silence represents a strategic forgetfulness: “Some memories, too, might be better forgotten. Didn’t Obasan once say ‘Is it better to forget?... If it is not seen it does not horrify. What is past recall is past pain” (45). While this curvival strategy does indeed work for both Obasan and Uncle, it should be noted that they were already of middle-age during the war, and thus were consequently, as my father will attest, more stubbornly set in their ways and resistant to change. Their silence is not forgetfulness, but rather the mantra kodomo no tane – for the sake of the children – explains their lack of communication. For this older generation, silence is a manner in which racism and other traumas are sidestepped. Obasan, for example, does not wish to provoke the men in the restaurant in chapter twenty-eight by acknowledging them or defending Naomi from their sexual advances. Much like the silence concerning the fate of Naomi’s mother, this is a self-imposed silence, and not an unconsciously unwilling forgetfulness or physical damage in the sense of amnesia. Indeed, Obasan seems to be quite specific in her collection of domestic objects, and taken as a whole they can be interpreted as material signifiers for memory, they are the textural artefacts of a lost temporality. Much as Aunt Emily kept the ‘public’ record intact, likewise Obasan retains the personal archive of the family. In this capacity, both Emily and Obasan represents in a sense the inversion of Derrida’s use of Freud’s pleasure principle in relation to the historical archive. Together Emily and Obasan can be pictorialized as a Janus figure, creating a present by looking simultaneously to the past and to the future. The violence done to them – and of course to Japanese Canadians as a whole – was itself the jouissance of exclusion and purposeful omission, of white (empowered) Canada restoring a sense of order and security to their formulation of self and citizen by promoting disorder and fear amongst a minority Other. Both Obasan and Aunt Emily are figurations of the unconscious guilt experienced by white Canada and marked into the archive as a silence, a negation which realizes a physical presence by degree of negative dialectics. The pretense of war in the 1940s may have alleviated such feelings to a degree, yet those who experienced those years had their sentiments recontextualized and dislocated, made non-immanent, by the passing of the ‘yellow-threat’ into memory after 1945. The speaking-silence of Obasan and the overt political activism of Aunt Emily signals the archive re-inscribing trauma back to its proper location: within the general body politic of the country (and to the reader by extension, or in a more precise sense by an implosion, as it becomes the site for archival conflict). It is for this reason that the book focusses on the historical documents, and indeed quite rightly ends with one. The outrage felt by many Canadians when the novel was initially published in 1982, and the subsequent movement to formally redress financial losses and otherwise give justice to Japanese Canadians who suffered from officially sanctioned racist policies is reflective of the re-infliction of the initial scar fundamental to the healing process. To use an anatomical metaphor, when scar tissue remains around certain internal mechanisms it frequently damages the organism; surgery, the calculated infliction of new wounds over old ones, must be performed in order to properly heal the patient.
Perhaps the most interesting point Kogawa’s text makes is in regard to the importance of silence, and indeed the agency which can be found within such a unique space of what I hesitatingly refer to as negative discourse (a term used partially to reflect Adorno’s elaboration of negative dialectics). On a more general level, Obasan’s speech-through-silence is analogous to the archive displacing itself, its previous ontological function, in order to create one anew. The previous jouissance was realized by the mark upon the space of archivization (here, as mentioned above, a people as well as a physical database cataloguing a history, for Kogawa does not delineate the two – again, this is affirmed by Naomi’s continual re-subjection of her identity to the historical process). As de Sade most famously wrote, there is little to differentiate pain from pleasure as distinctly opposing categorical imperatives, and thus the realization of pain, the vocalization of trauma, itself becomes the pleasure used to inscribe itself into the ‘new’ archive, which for Naomi is 1972 and for the reader is an always 1982. Naomi’s search for her mother is emblematic of this process, and is of course at the heart of the narrative. Like many other traumatic events in the text, this quest is relayed largely by differal, in particular by metaphoric means:
The dance ceremony of the dead was a slow courtly telling, the heart declaring a long thread knotted to Obasan’s twine, knotted to Aunt Emily’s package. Why I wonder as she danced her love should I find myself unable to breathe? The Grand Inquisitor was carnivorous and full of murder. His demand to know was both a judgement and a refusal to hear. The more he questioned her, the more he was her accuser and murderer. The more he killed her, the deeper her silence became. What the Grand Inquisitor has never learned is that the avenues of speech are the avenues of silence. To hear my mother, to attend her speech, to attend the sound of stone, he must first become silent. Only when he enters her abandonment will he be released from his own.
(228)
The Grand Inquisitor alludes to Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov to be sure – an intertextual discourse above the scope of this present examination – but also figures Naomi’s own psychological defences. The reader does not have to wait long for Naomi to be silenced and for her mother to speak; there are six pages between this narration and the exposition of the two letters describing the atomic blast at Nagasaki. These letters signal the jouissance of the archive destroying its past and (by) creating its present, for the extreme violence and traumatic consequences of Canadian racial oppression reach their most logical extension in the brutal description of the bombing and destruction of a city and its inhabitants. The utter dehumanization required to carry out this act transfers metaphorically to the atomization of many of those present and subjected to ground zero.
And yet even the dead speak as witnesses to the beautiful and sublime atrocity which is warfare; this is especially true when those alive remain silent. Metonymically, this is reflected by the author’s repeated use throughout the text of imagery concerning eyes and the process of sight, with descriptions of looking and not looking frequent in the narrative. Importantly, Naomi herself sees these instances and remembers them, even over other details. If we are to believe that the eyes mirror the ‘soul’ of individuals, then it is obvious that while Naomi “cannot tell about this time ... the body will not tell” (196), then the eyes speak with their silence in the most profound manner. One of the most striking details in Grandma Kato’s description of this horrific event is also the first given to the reader, and outside of the temporality and subjective space produced by the full description proper: “Like in a dream, I can still see the maggots crawling in the sockets of my niece’s eyes.... There is no forgetfulness” (234). In dreams as in life, eyes usually have sexual connotations, and the maggots here described are certainly feeding on the generative function of dead flesh. Thus the productive healing provided by speaking what was once seen, of reinstating the children of traumatic memory to historical (and in a sense ontological) legitimacy.
To return to the act of jouissance inherent in the process of archivization, Kogawa’s novel is successful precisely because this horror which ends both the novel and Naomi’s quest for self identity is the fate of her mother. Simultaneous to this is her arrival in chapter thirty-nine to the coulee that she had always traversed with her uncle. With the termination of the narrative at this point, Kogawa underlines the cyclical nature of memory and identity (a designation perhaps more aptly termed as fluid, to use the sea metaphor which the author herself does). In this context, the archive, be it personal, communal, or historical, must like every good compost be continually turned in order to keep it generative. In symbolic – and carbonc-cycle – terms, we must all return to our mothers in order to achieve meaning with this, the present, identity. Thus the past, and ostensibly the future, remain insurmountably tied to the present, and indeed give it the (tragic) immanence required for the recognition of meaning.
Friday, March 21, 2003
Tuesday, March 18, 2003
Lightning Bolt - Wonderful Rainbow
LIGHTNING BOLT
Wonderful Rainbow
[Load, 2003]
So you picked out the right jacket, found yourself some killer spiked jewelry, and got the boots to end all life. Now, finally, now you are punk! Yo, don't mess with me cuz I'm counterculture. Well, not that 25 year old trends hold any degree of legitimacy in the opinions of the truly with it, but if you're going to be punk, at least go in a non-MuchMusic direction.
Here's the album to start the revolution. A drummer / vocalist and a bass player? How the hell can two people make The Noise that puts the right people against the wall? By playing their goddamn heads off, that's how. After all, how rebellious can you be in a traditional four or five piece? No more fucking punk than the Archies.
You know what punks do? They beat up on shit like the Archies. Wonderful Rainbow pummels you right from the start and does not let go. Intense only begins the qualifying adjectives. "Dracula Mountain" will have you crying in your sleep. Don't expect nice singable vocals. If they ever grew teeth and listened to this disc, those Sum 41 kids would put on rabbit pants and meth out to crappy trance mix cd's for weeks.
MP3: Lightning Bolt - Dracula Mountain
Sunday, March 16, 2003
Jameson's Four Maxims: A Singular Modernity
A Singular Modernity, or Jameson’s Four Maxims
the term itself: “everything modern is necessarily new, while everything new is not necessarily modern” (18)
First Maxim:
We cannot not periodize.
“What is at stake here is a twofold movement, in which the foregrounding of continuities, the insistent and unwavering focus on the seamless passage from the past to the present, slowly turns into the consciousness of a radical break; while at the same time the enforced attention to a break gradually turns the latter into a period in its own right” (24)
Second Maxim:
Modernity is not a concept, philosophically or otherwise, but a narrative category.
“the ‘correct’ theory of modernity is not to be obtained by putting [the origins of modernity] together in some hierarchical synthesis....what we have to do with here are narrative options and alternate storytelling possibilities, as which even the most scientific-looking and structural of purely sociological concepts can always be unmasked” (32)
Third Maxim:
The narrative of modernity cannot be organized around categories of subjectivity; consciousness and subjectivity are unrepresentable; only situations of modernity can be narrated.
“It is not to be understood as an ontological proposition, that is, it does not affirm that no such thing as subjectivity exists. It is rather a proposition about the limits of representation as such, and means simply that we have no way of talking about subjectivity or consciousness that is not already somehow figural” (55-6)
Fourth Maxim:
No ‘theory’ of modernity makes sense today unless it is able to come to terms with the hypothesis of a postmodern break with the modern.
“[there] is at least one clear dividing line between the modern and the postmodern, namely, the refusal of concepts of self-consciousness, reflexivity, irony or self-reference in the postmodern aesthetic and also in postmodern values and philosophy as such, if there can be said to be such a thing. I imagine this also coincides with the disappearance of the slogan of freedom, whether in its bourgeois or anarchist sense” (92-3)
Points of reference:
“As for the ontology of the present, however, it is best to accustom oneself to thinking of ‘the ,odern’ as a one dimensional concept ... Foucalt, Les Mots et les Choses which has nothing of historicity or futuricity about it. .... Radical Descartes, Meditations alternatives, systematic transformations, cannot be theorized Heidegger, Nietzsche; Basic Writings or even imagined within the conceptual field governed by the Weber, The Protestant Ethic word ‘modern’” (215)
Annotated Bibliography
Chefdor, Monique. “Modernism: Babel Revisited?”, Modernism: Challenges and Perspectives. Ed. Monique Chefdor, R. Quinones, A. Wachtel. Chicago: U of Illinois P, 1986. 1-6
This article focusses on the confusion surrounding the term ‘modernism’ itlsef. Anglo-American critics capitalize the word, as it symbolizes a “historically and conceptually defined movement in literature and arts”, while continental critics do not, as they see the term as a catch-all for the numerous ‘isms’ or movements of the “period”; the latter prefer ‘modernité’. There is also dispute amongst Latin-American critics: for some modernismo refers to a type of symbolism, whereas for others it is the avant-guard reaction against symbolism. Chefdor points out that the use of terms like ‘High Modernism’ demarcates a certain tension in the umbrella term to contain the varieties of artistic expression for the “period” in question.
Chiari, Joseph. The Aesthetics of Modernism. London: Vision P, 1970.
An older volume specifically chosen to demonstrate the narrative of history countered by Jameson, leading from Aquinas’s critique or Aristotle, through the scientific rationalism of the Enlightenment (specifically the Copernican revolution) which increased the trend toward secularism and the immanence of the human subject (Cartesian self-awareness), to late-eighteenth century nihilism of Nietzsche and Baudelaire. Chiari seems halfway to Jameson’s ‘truth’ in his statement that “every age is a kaleidoscope of conflicting elements, rationalized and categorized into shapes, according to the sensibility, taste, and fashion of the day” (16).
Frisby, David. Fragments of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity P, 1985. 1-37.
In this section, Frisby looks at the paradoxes inherent in the critical study of the modernist project. He begins by quoting Lyotard’s implicit coordination of modernism with fascism, and that the failure of such a project is precisely the destructured forms of post-modernity. The first ‘phase’ of modernity Frisby describes as Baudelaire’s flaneur seeing himself continually anew in the masses; the artist must look to the ‘now’ rather than an eternal timelessness in the past. The second ‘phase’ emerges with a sense of history impacting upon consciousness; the ‘cult of the self’ was reified in the aestheticization and decadence of the late 19th century. Frisby then summarizes Marx’s main works, perhaps best with the phrase: “the commodity form not merely symbolizes social relations of modernity, it is a central source of their origin” (22). Modernité in the materialist sense is the continuous production of new commodities, which serves to distract the masses from the reproduction of the same fundamental relations of production – thus it is an inversion of the conception of modernist aesthetics, namely as an everchanging signifier for permanence, and thus ironically it is itself transitory. Frisby then sides with Nietzsche in believing that art serves as a counterculture for such forms of human decadence. Art is the examination of every minute moment as representing the eternal.
Isaak, Jo Anna. The Ruin of Representation in Modernist Art and Texts. Ann Arbor: UMI Research P,
1986.
Examines the two notions of modernism popular at the book’s publication, namely ➀ self-consciousness is equal to an artistic gesture towards non-representationalism, ➁ self-consciousness equal to intense realism. She then posits Joyce’s Ulysses as a text which contains both the art of style (non-realistic representation) and the art of (realistic) representation. Isaak then continues her examination of the modern with a one-hundred page critique of the conflation of the visual and literary arts. This inter-media fusion of aesthetic influences reflects Marinetti’s dictum: “There is no such thing as painting, sculpture, music, or poetry; there is only creation!”
Larsen, Neil. Modernism and Hegemony. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1990. 3-31
Larsen begins by invoking Jameson’s afterword in Aesthetics and Politics where Realism and Modernism are conjoined within a single hermeneutic process. He then himself problematizes this, stating that such a creation does not explain “the specific appropriateness of an aesthetics of representation as such to the problem of history” (5). Larsen falls back on Adorno’s position that one cannot truly represent any historical occurrence, for that precise re-presentation brackets its subject in an entirely different manner – which a priori reveals what was not there and hides what was – in other words, aesthetic realism is the realism of the singular representation, not of the subject in its original authenticity. A similar extension can be made with Jameson’s beliefs concerning ‘periodization’, namely that one cannot not periodize, and thus the past is solely the present seen a a specific manner, and consequently the term ‘Modernism’ cannot truly signify the totality of occurrences in art during the 20th century. Thus the power of naming is displaced from the agency of culture producers to culture readers who then rewrite their own history as anterior fact. The empowered subject represents itself in modern art by means of a fissure or crisis in representation, whether that of style or content; in political terms, art redeems the failure of the proletariat by opening up fissures “in a history without revolutionary agencies”.
the term itself: “everything modern is necessarily new, while everything new is not necessarily modern” (18)
First Maxim:
We cannot not periodize.
“What is at stake here is a twofold movement, in which the foregrounding of continuities, the insistent and unwavering focus on the seamless passage from the past to the present, slowly turns into the consciousness of a radical break; while at the same time the enforced attention to a break gradually turns the latter into a period in its own right” (24)
Second Maxim:
Modernity is not a concept, philosophically or otherwise, but a narrative category.
“the ‘correct’ theory of modernity is not to be obtained by putting [the origins of modernity] together in some hierarchical synthesis....what we have to do with here are narrative options and alternate storytelling possibilities, as which even the most scientific-looking and structural of purely sociological concepts can always be unmasked” (32)
Third Maxim:
The narrative of modernity cannot be organized around categories of subjectivity; consciousness and subjectivity are unrepresentable; only situations of modernity can be narrated.
“It is not to be understood as an ontological proposition, that is, it does not affirm that no such thing as subjectivity exists. It is rather a proposition about the limits of representation as such, and means simply that we have no way of talking about subjectivity or consciousness that is not already somehow figural” (55-6)
Fourth Maxim:
No ‘theory’ of modernity makes sense today unless it is able to come to terms with the hypothesis of a postmodern break with the modern.
“[there] is at least one clear dividing line between the modern and the postmodern, namely, the refusal of concepts of self-consciousness, reflexivity, irony or self-reference in the postmodern aesthetic and also in postmodern values and philosophy as such, if there can be said to be such a thing. I imagine this also coincides with the disappearance of the slogan of freedom, whether in its bourgeois or anarchist sense” (92-3)
Points of reference:
“As for the ontology of the present, however, it is best to accustom oneself to thinking of ‘the ,odern’ as a one dimensional concept ... Foucalt, Les Mots et les Choses which has nothing of historicity or futuricity about it. .... Radical Descartes, Meditations alternatives, systematic transformations, cannot be theorized Heidegger, Nietzsche; Basic Writings or even imagined within the conceptual field governed by the Weber, The Protestant Ethic word ‘modern’” (215)
Annotated Bibliography
Chefdor, Monique. “Modernism: Babel Revisited?”, Modernism: Challenges and Perspectives. Ed. Monique Chefdor, R. Quinones, A. Wachtel. Chicago: U of Illinois P, 1986. 1-6
This article focusses on the confusion surrounding the term ‘modernism’ itlsef. Anglo-American critics capitalize the word, as it symbolizes a “historically and conceptually defined movement in literature and arts”, while continental critics do not, as they see the term as a catch-all for the numerous ‘isms’ or movements of the “period”; the latter prefer ‘modernité’. There is also dispute amongst Latin-American critics: for some modernismo refers to a type of symbolism, whereas for others it is the avant-guard reaction against symbolism. Chefdor points out that the use of terms like ‘High Modernism’ demarcates a certain tension in the umbrella term to contain the varieties of artistic expression for the “period” in question.
Chiari, Joseph. The Aesthetics of Modernism. London: Vision P, 1970.
An older volume specifically chosen to demonstrate the narrative of history countered by Jameson, leading from Aquinas’s critique or Aristotle, through the scientific rationalism of the Enlightenment (specifically the Copernican revolution) which increased the trend toward secularism and the immanence of the human subject (Cartesian self-awareness), to late-eighteenth century nihilism of Nietzsche and Baudelaire. Chiari seems halfway to Jameson’s ‘truth’ in his statement that “every age is a kaleidoscope of conflicting elements, rationalized and categorized into shapes, according to the sensibility, taste, and fashion of the day” (16).
Frisby, David. Fragments of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity P, 1985. 1-37.
In this section, Frisby looks at the paradoxes inherent in the critical study of the modernist project. He begins by quoting Lyotard’s implicit coordination of modernism with fascism, and that the failure of such a project is precisely the destructured forms of post-modernity. The first ‘phase’ of modernity Frisby describes as Baudelaire’s flaneur seeing himself continually anew in the masses; the artist must look to the ‘now’ rather than an eternal timelessness in the past. The second ‘phase’ emerges with a sense of history impacting upon consciousness; the ‘cult of the self’ was reified in the aestheticization and decadence of the late 19th century. Frisby then summarizes Marx’s main works, perhaps best with the phrase: “the commodity form not merely symbolizes social relations of modernity, it is a central source of their origin” (22). Modernité in the materialist sense is the continuous production of new commodities, which serves to distract the masses from the reproduction of the same fundamental relations of production – thus it is an inversion of the conception of modernist aesthetics, namely as an everchanging signifier for permanence, and thus ironically it is itself transitory. Frisby then sides with Nietzsche in believing that art serves as a counterculture for such forms of human decadence. Art is the examination of every minute moment as representing the eternal.
Isaak, Jo Anna. The Ruin of Representation in Modernist Art and Texts. Ann Arbor: UMI Research P,
1986.
Examines the two notions of modernism popular at the book’s publication, namely ➀ self-consciousness is equal to an artistic gesture towards non-representationalism, ➁ self-consciousness equal to intense realism. She then posits Joyce’s Ulysses as a text which contains both the art of style (non-realistic representation) and the art of (realistic) representation. Isaak then continues her examination of the modern with a one-hundred page critique of the conflation of the visual and literary arts. This inter-media fusion of aesthetic influences reflects Marinetti’s dictum: “There is no such thing as painting, sculpture, music, or poetry; there is only creation!”
Larsen, Neil. Modernism and Hegemony. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1990. 3-31
Larsen begins by invoking Jameson’s afterword in Aesthetics and Politics where Realism and Modernism are conjoined within a single hermeneutic process. He then himself problematizes this, stating that such a creation does not explain “the specific appropriateness of an aesthetics of representation as such to the problem of history” (5). Larsen falls back on Adorno’s position that one cannot truly represent any historical occurrence, for that precise re-presentation brackets its subject in an entirely different manner – which a priori reveals what was not there and hides what was – in other words, aesthetic realism is the realism of the singular representation, not of the subject in its original authenticity. A similar extension can be made with Jameson’s beliefs concerning ‘periodization’, namely that one cannot not periodize, and thus the past is solely the present seen a a specific manner, and consequently the term ‘Modernism’ cannot truly signify the totality of occurrences in art during the 20th century. Thus the power of naming is displaced from the agency of culture producers to culture readers who then rewrite their own history as anterior fact. The empowered subject represents itself in modern art by means of a fissure or crisis in representation, whether that of style or content; in political terms, art redeems the failure of the proletariat by opening up fissures “in a history without revolutionary agencies”.
Friday, March 14, 2003
Jan Jelinek - La Nouvelle Pauvreté
JAN JELINEK AVEC THE EXPOSURES
La Nouvelle Pauvreté
[~Scape, 2003]
Those unfamiliar with the downtempo, dub-influenced glitch-techno that has been most notably perfected by a few German producers would be advised to pick up Jan Jelinek's new ~Scape full-length. If none of those descriptors above rings a bell, try imagining stuttering, granular sounds atop hypnotic deep bass lines and mid-tempo drum patterns.
This CD very adroitly captures the degree to which this sub-genre has progressed since the early Pole releases in '98 (oh, to be young again...). Melodies are tightly focused yet remain abstract; notable are the higher synth frequencies of "Music to Interrogate By" and the oscillating tones of "My Favourite Shop". Throughout, Jelinek meticulously pulls solid rhythms and intricate sample patterns from his analog detritus. A wonderful intro to the genres of both glitch and dub-techno: great both for dancing and for thoughtful reflection. Be hip already!
MP3: Jan Jelinek avec the Exposures - Music to Interrogate By
Wednesday, March 12, 2003
Mouse On Mars - Rost Pocks
MOUSE ON MARS
Rost Pocks: The EP Collection
[Too Pure, 2003]
So I'm working at the Unyon store and in walks a man promising me the sky if only I let him record in our studios. Jeff's about 45 and looks like a poorly-dressed cross between Eric Dolphy and Michael Moore. Before I can say anything he breaks in with the American Idol and gives me everything: MJ, Temptations, Whitney Houston. "I can take any song, and BOOM! it's up a notch. See, it's about lovin' the women. They're ready for something like this. Becoming lesbians cuz they're looking for love. Low self-esteem, cuz you and me with the dicks, we're all assholes. I have a mind that can get the feelings of the people, before they have them. Reachin is preachin!! A photogenic mind: inspiration, a REVOLUTION!!! a nuclear bomb to stop other music. Movement of red mist over the land, freeing people. I'll set you free." Before I could be his Magdelena, my sweet Hobo Jesus was out of my life.
This collection of old Mouse on Mars tracks simply cannot touch the genius which is Jeff, no matter how essential they might be to 90's post-techno.
MP3: Mouse On Mars - Bib
Sunday, March 02, 2003
iraq? eye-wreak
Why does America think it has the right to dictate terms to the international community. The UN is the only forum for civil negotiation between countries. That Bush said "if the UN doesn't follow our lead, it will be irrelevant" simply reinforces the beliefs many non-Americans have concerning America: gung-ho, ignorant, blindly nationalistic, and very dangerous when provoked. None of these characteristics are positive; don't think that you need to look "tough" to the international community, as such prexsentations are immature and emotionally insecure.
War should never be taken lightly; neither should it be precipitated by simple emotional reactionism. Iraq has done no harm to the international community, but rather the reverse is true, as sanctions have decimated the poor and vulnerable within the country. There has been absolutely no proof provided to the international community to demonstrate the contrary. Weak appeals such as "Iraq is building weapons of mass destruction" ignores the fact that most western nations, especially the US, already *have* weapons of mass destruction. A bit hyprocritical, no? Once again, America demonstrates that it only likes playing by its rules, and then doesn't play fairly within them. If nuclear and chemical weapons exist, then either everyone has them or no one has them, from a nationalistic point of view. Anything else will be deemed violent action by the have-nots.
Violence will not solve this or any other issue, it will just lead to more hate, isolationism, and more violent action. NO WAR IS EVER JUST
The US needs the UN precisely to check the greed, ignorance, and arrogance which many American leaders display. America does not run the planet. America is not morally or ethically superior to the rest of the planet. America's "freedom" is neither free nor universal, and consequently many people in the world reject American imperialism. Just the other day Prime Minister Chretien publicly spoke out against the greed which the West demonstrates -- and which leads to desperate actions by poorer people who are humiliated and oppressed by the West -- and was lambasted for it. We need more such talk within public discourse.
If America leads the world into violence, we need to hit them where they will most feel it: the pocket book.
DO NOT BUY AMERICAN PRODUCTS. Check your food, your clothing, your electroncs, and your cars for their origins. Do not allow the only democratic power available to the average person in western 'democracies' -- namely the use of your money -- to be paid in taxes to this violent and greedy government.
WHAT AMERICA CALLS FREEDOM OTHERS CALL GREED
Watch out that your facts are indeed "facts", whether any such truths ever hold relative meaning.
As for the wars that were ennumerated in a grocery list manner, try not to forget that their "justness" was written by those who emerged victorious. Viewed objectively, there is no "justice" by killing others. (By the way, it was the Russians who helped France more than the US, try some more research...)
Interestingly, some have pointed out that my pacifist attitudes are in fact hate filled pedantisms; perhaps these people should question their notions of hate and love, for the people of Iraq will not be saved by bombs. Even more astonishing is the violent reaction to violence: does that not appear ontologically hypocritical? More importantly, what right do countries like the US and others have to dictate terms to countries in which their legislatures do not apply? For not having "legal" governments, perhaps? Or for not agreeing to outside trade terms on products such as oil. Or maybe that the people of such countries are too ignorant to understand their plight; maybe they shouldn't even be allowed to vote until they can vote in *the right people*.
Let's not forget that good ol' Dubya was illegally voted into office and the recount which was published in the NY Times on Sept 15 demonstrated that the democrats won. (Not that they are better than the republicans, but frankly their recent history has been much less tarnished by corruption and immorality, presidential sexual lives excepted...)
It's sad that the most violent country on the planet wishes to export its "freedoms" in a violent manner to those it deems inferior. Let the voices of the 85 million poor and homeless in America be counted. Let the 70% non-white prison population have a voice. Let those who fall through the porous cracks in the health and educational systems have a voice. The only agendas that mainstream Americans listen to anymore are the news media, which are controlled by 0.00004% of the population. Maybe some "facts" on this conflict need to be gathered from sources other than CNN or NBC.
How many still believe desert storm and the present day situation in the Middle East have "justice" as their aim and not hegemonic control over oil reserves. Buy another SUV ignorant American and drive until the planet chokes (in the instance of commodity fetishism, we're all American on this continent, north, south, and south again).
Maybe we need a war on our own soil in order to learn what war really is, and what are the resultant consequences. Death is not pretty, violence even more abhorant. Violence is mutually destructive; there are never any victors, as those who emerge from the fighting as just as scarred as those they killed.
Freedom = Democracy
the problem with this argument is that the exemplification is outside of what you wish to say. what i mean is that you are indeed correct in your relation of freedom to human dignity and achievement, but you do not address the issue of its application. Therefore you convince yourself of the validity of the first statement "freedom" and equate that with a positivce correlation to American capital democracy. That's called a CNN napalm death, mi amigo.
Where does this mystical "freedom" exist? Not within western democratic states, although they have come the closest to perceived ideals. Neither is it extant whithin the "less powerful" nations, which are almost universally economic colonies controlled by certain imperialist impulses within governmental policy. Freedom does not exist in a country in which there is poverty, for we are all bound by its repressive claims upon certain segments of our population. Do the rich not modify their behaviour in relation to the poor? Crime invariably follows the centralization of wealth, and the poor in relation to the rich within such circumscriptions may react in desperate manners. And so can the rich, as I hope you might see from whats emerging as corporate criminality within popular discourse. Nothing has chaned except the means to dissipate wealth more efficiently to every member of a population. If such is what creates robust and healthy economies, then it seems natural to desire a state-politik in which such conditions are formed.
Is American-of-anywhere-or-anything-else free? Not to muddy the discussion with philosophical debate, but freedom certainly cannot exist within a consumerist culture in which the vast majority of people spend their time working to buy cars to get to work.
(N.) American freedom should include:
1. The freedom to achieve the greatest developmental potential during youth; universally accessible education does not exist in America.
2. The freedom to bear tides of uncertainty when the immediate needs of the individual can be averaged amongst the population, thus greatly reducing their statistical occurence. I mean in this manner an insurance of food, health, education, and shelter despite exterior fluctuations such as job loss or personal crises.
3. The freedom to study any information which impacts the greater culture. Films, books, plays, radio, games, music, televison, are all censored by hegemonic and closed cultures which exclude broader democratic inclusion.
4. The freedom to denounce any public object-subject which threatens the stability of the political system. This would allow critisism of personal as well as governmental institutions. Capitalist culture as reified by corporate hegemonic exclusionism procludes the possibility of criticism and the exchange of free information.
5. The freedom from violence and imprisonment, which are themselves mutually inclusive in an ontological manner.
6. The freedom to allow difference of opinion and representation. Most North Americans have interiorized the institutional racism, sexism, and "otherness"-ism which proliferates amongst hegemonic political structures.
7. Freedom for open discussion.
Peace and understanding,
"Annabelle Partager"
War should never be taken lightly; neither should it be precipitated by simple emotional reactionism. Iraq has done no harm to the international community, but rather the reverse is true, as sanctions have decimated the poor and vulnerable within the country. There has been absolutely no proof provided to the international community to demonstrate the contrary. Weak appeals such as "Iraq is building weapons of mass destruction" ignores the fact that most western nations, especially the US, already *have* weapons of mass destruction. A bit hyprocritical, no? Once again, America demonstrates that it only likes playing by its rules, and then doesn't play fairly within them. If nuclear and chemical weapons exist, then either everyone has them or no one has them, from a nationalistic point of view. Anything else will be deemed violent action by the have-nots.
Violence will not solve this or any other issue, it will just lead to more hate, isolationism, and more violent action. NO WAR IS EVER JUST
The US needs the UN precisely to check the greed, ignorance, and arrogance which many American leaders display. America does not run the planet. America is not morally or ethically superior to the rest of the planet. America's "freedom" is neither free nor universal, and consequently many people in the world reject American imperialism. Just the other day Prime Minister Chretien publicly spoke out against the greed which the West demonstrates -- and which leads to desperate actions by poorer people who are humiliated and oppressed by the West -- and was lambasted for it. We need more such talk within public discourse.
If America leads the world into violence, we need to hit them where they will most feel it: the pocket book.
DO NOT BUY AMERICAN PRODUCTS. Check your food, your clothing, your electroncs, and your cars for their origins. Do not allow the only democratic power available to the average person in western 'democracies' -- namely the use of your money -- to be paid in taxes to this violent and greedy government.
WHAT AMERICA CALLS FREEDOM OTHERS CALL GREED
Watch out that your facts are indeed "facts", whether any such truths ever hold relative meaning.
As for the wars that were ennumerated in a grocery list manner, try not to forget that their "justness" was written by those who emerged victorious. Viewed objectively, there is no "justice" by killing others. (By the way, it was the Russians who helped France more than the US, try some more research...)
Interestingly, some have pointed out that my pacifist attitudes are in fact hate filled pedantisms; perhaps these people should question their notions of hate and love, for the people of Iraq will not be saved by bombs. Even more astonishing is the violent reaction to violence: does that not appear ontologically hypocritical? More importantly, what right do countries like the US and others have to dictate terms to countries in which their legislatures do not apply? For not having "legal" governments, perhaps? Or for not agreeing to outside trade terms on products such as oil. Or maybe that the people of such countries are too ignorant to understand their plight; maybe they shouldn't even be allowed to vote until they can vote in *the right people*.
Let's not forget that good ol' Dubya was illegally voted into office and the recount which was published in the NY Times on Sept 15 demonstrated that the democrats won. (Not that they are better than the republicans, but frankly their recent history has been much less tarnished by corruption and immorality, presidential sexual lives excepted...)
It's sad that the most violent country on the planet wishes to export its "freedoms" in a violent manner to those it deems inferior. Let the voices of the 85 million poor and homeless in America be counted. Let the 70% non-white prison population have a voice. Let those who fall through the porous cracks in the health and educational systems have a voice. The only agendas that mainstream Americans listen to anymore are the news media, which are controlled by 0.00004% of the population. Maybe some "facts" on this conflict need to be gathered from sources other than CNN or NBC.
How many still believe desert storm and the present day situation in the Middle East have "justice" as their aim and not hegemonic control over oil reserves. Buy another SUV ignorant American and drive until the planet chokes (in the instance of commodity fetishism, we're all American on this continent, north, south, and south again).
Maybe we need a war on our own soil in order to learn what war really is, and what are the resultant consequences. Death is not pretty, violence even more abhorant. Violence is mutually destructive; there are never any victors, as those who emerge from the fighting as just as scarred as those they killed.
Freedom = Democracy
the problem with this argument is that the exemplification is outside of what you wish to say. what i mean is that you are indeed correct in your relation of freedom to human dignity and achievement, but you do not address the issue of its application. Therefore you convince yourself of the validity of the first statement "freedom" and equate that with a positivce correlation to American capital democracy. That's called a CNN napalm death, mi amigo.
Where does this mystical "freedom" exist? Not within western democratic states, although they have come the closest to perceived ideals. Neither is it extant whithin the "less powerful" nations, which are almost universally economic colonies controlled by certain imperialist impulses within governmental policy. Freedom does not exist in a country in which there is poverty, for we are all bound by its repressive claims upon certain segments of our population. Do the rich not modify their behaviour in relation to the poor? Crime invariably follows the centralization of wealth, and the poor in relation to the rich within such circumscriptions may react in desperate manners. And so can the rich, as I hope you might see from whats emerging as corporate criminality within popular discourse. Nothing has chaned except the means to dissipate wealth more efficiently to every member of a population. If such is what creates robust and healthy economies, then it seems natural to desire a state-politik in which such conditions are formed.
Is American-of-anywhere-or-anything-else free? Not to muddy the discussion with philosophical debate, but freedom certainly cannot exist within a consumerist culture in which the vast majority of people spend their time working to buy cars to get to work.
(N.) American freedom should include:
1. The freedom to achieve the greatest developmental potential during youth; universally accessible education does not exist in America.
2. The freedom to bear tides of uncertainty when the immediate needs of the individual can be averaged amongst the population, thus greatly reducing their statistical occurence. I mean in this manner an insurance of food, health, education, and shelter despite exterior fluctuations such as job loss or personal crises.
3. The freedom to study any information which impacts the greater culture. Films, books, plays, radio, games, music, televison, are all censored by hegemonic and closed cultures which exclude broader democratic inclusion.
4. The freedom to denounce any public object-subject which threatens the stability of the political system. This would allow critisism of personal as well as governmental institutions. Capitalist culture as reified by corporate hegemonic exclusionism procludes the possibility of criticism and the exchange of free information.
5. The freedom from violence and imprisonment, which are themselves mutually inclusive in an ontological manner.
6. The freedom to allow difference of opinion and representation. Most North Americans have interiorized the institutional racism, sexism, and "otherness"-ism which proliferates amongst hegemonic political structures.
7. Freedom for open discussion.
Peace and understanding,
"Annabelle Partager"
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