Category Archives: postmodernism

Remakes in literature II

Back story:

Last August I had wondered if there is such a thing as remakes in literature. I stumbled on the the case of Régine Deforges rewriting Gone with the Wind.

In my previous posts (one where I quote Kierkegaard saying that Faust is a reproduction of Don Juan and one which contends that horror fiction and erotic fiction do not need great writers to perpetuate themselves) I tried to prove a theory by Georges Bataille which says: “If, as it appears to me, a book is communication, then the author is only a link among many readings.” These positions are summarized at my intertextual page.

Today I stumble across a document which parallels the 19th century social adventures saga novel to 21st century software. The page states that today it would be impossible/forbidden to write such novels if they had been patented in the 19th century the way much software is patented now:

“… if Eugène Sue, with Les Mystères de Paris and Le Juif Errant, Alexandre Dumas, with Le Comte Monte Cristo, or Honoré de Balzac, with Splendeur et Misère des Courtisanes, had patented [the social adventures saga novel] being based for example on very broad claims like those:

- Communication process between a writer and a reader characterized in that the narration runs on numerous pages.
- […] in that its structure sometimes seems to be like a fugue, even like improvisation.
- […] in that the intrigue is articulated around the confrontation of some characters setting traps in turn.
- […] in that the narration has the ambition to describe all the layers of the society and also its hidden wheels, leading to topics of conspiracy, leading also to social exoticism. —http://wiki.ffii.org/LiteraryPatentsEn

Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel (1928 – 2006)

French psychoanalyst Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel died in 2006. She was Freud Professor at the University College of London, and Professor of Psychopathology at the University of Lille. She is best known for her connection of the ego ideal to primary narcissism, her extension of this theory to a critique of utopian ideology and her theories on the relationship between art, creativity and perversion.

From Jahsonic:

Lifespan: 1928 – 2006

Related: abnormal psychology – psychoanalysis – creativity – perversion

By the time of the student rebellions of May 1968, she had become a political conservative. In their anonymous 1969 book L’universe contestationnaire (reworked and published in English in 1986 as Freud or Reich? Psychoanalysis and Illusion), Chasseguet-Smirgel and her husband/co-author Béla Grunberger argued that the utopian political ideology of the student demonstrators, as well as of their Freudo-Marxist avatars Herbert Marcuse and Gilles Deleuze, was fueled by primary narcissism, the desire to return to the maternal womb. Further, that the very term “Freudo-Marxism” was oxymoronic–one could not reconcile the reality principle with the Communist utopia. Chasseguet-Smirgel’s analysis of Wilhelm Reich, the Freudian dissident who became an insane systematizer of the libido, explains why his orgonic theory collected followers despite its apparent wackiness.

Creativity and Perversion (1996) – Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, Otto Kernberg Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

…the number of perverts involved in the field of art is probably much greater than the average for the population in general…. It can be supposed … that the pervert inclines in some particular manner to the world of art. –Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, Creativity and Perversion, 1984

And at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janine_Chasseguet-Smirgel [Dec 2006]

What is hauntology?

Spending time on Padraig’s Subject-barred brought the concept of hauntology to my attention via this piece titled The Gramophone’s Technological Uncanny which furthers Mark K-Punk’s investigation of sonic hauntology. In its origins hauntology is Jacques Derrida‘s neologism which is, in French, a pun on ontology and refers to, in the words of the Halflives website: “the paradoxical state of the specter, which is neither being nor non-being.”

Besides by K-Punk (here in a piece on Kubrick), hauntology is also used by Simon Reynolds here and by Woebot here.

No doubt the term goes back 1848 when Marx and Engels stated “A spectre is haunting Europe, the spectre of Communism.” Haunting is about ghosts, and one of the first people to use the word haunting in a musical context was David Toop’s Haunted Weather : Music, Silence, and Memory (2004).

About four weeks ago, The Existence Machine also wondered just what is hauntology.

K-Punk thinks this is a good summary of the concept.

Someone wrote an Wikipedia entry on hauntology in October of 2006 but it was deleted by consensus. It finally passed Wikipedia stringent notability criteria in August 2007.

See hauntology at artandpop.

Mediazation, experience and aura

Prompted by this post by The Reading Experience blog on John Dewey’s Art as Experience (1934) I started thinking about the concept of mediazation, a word to which one only finds 344 references on the web. A much more common word that denotes the same quality is mediated, of which there are 77 references on Jahsonic alone, most prominent of which are the references to mediated sex and mediated violence. Mediatedness and mediazation are key concepts in modernism and postmodernism. One might even argue that if modernity started after the Middle Ages and the arrival of print culture for the happy few, postmodernity started with the advent of the mediazation of mass society, with the replacement of aura and direct experience by the media (which coincides with the arrival of print culture for the masses). If one follows this through it would appear that the shift from modernity to postmodernity is only one of degree.

From the web:

For Shaviro, Cronenberg is not simply an illustration of postmodern media theory. Rather, “the brutally hilarious strategy of Videodrome is to take media theorists such as Marshall McLuhan and Jean Baudrillard completely at their word, to overliteralize their claims for the ubiquitous mediazation of the world.” Footnote But the difference between Cronenberg and (for example) Baudrillard is Cronenberg’s insistence on the palpability of mediated experience: –William Beard via http://iceberg.arts.ualberta.ca/filmstudies/Videodrome.htm [Nov 2006]

Experience, quipped Oscar Wilde, is the name one gives to one’s mistakes. Does aesthetic experience then name the central blunder of modern aesthetics? Though long considered the most essential of aesthetic concepts, as including but also surpassing the realm of art, aesthetic experience has in the last half-century come under increasing critique. Not only its value but its very existence has been questioned. How has this once vital concept lost its appeal? Does it still offer anything of value? The ambiguous title, “the end of aesthetic experience,” suggests my two goals: a reasoned account of its demise, and an argument for reconceiving and thus redeeming its purpose.

[…] Modernization and technology, Benjamin likewise argued, have eroded aesthetic experience’s identification with the distinctive, transcendent autonomy of art. Such experience once had what Benjamin called aura, a cultic quality resulting from the artwork’s uniqueness and distance from the ordinary world. But with the advent of mechanical modes of reproduction like photography, art’s distinctive aura has been lost, and aesthetic experience comes to pervade the everyday world of popular culture and even politics. Aesthetic experience can no longer be used to define and delimit the realm of high art. Unlike Adorno, Benjamin saw this loss of aura and differentiation as potentially emancipatory (although he condemned its deadly results in the aesthetics of fascist politics). In any case, Benjamin’s critique does not deny the continuing importance of aesthetic experience, only its romantic conceptualization as pure immediacy of meaning and isolation from the rest of life. –Richard Shusterman via http://www.artsandletters.fau.edu/humanitieschair/end-aesth-exp.html [Nov 2006]

Arcades Project blogathon

Volute

Galeries St. Hubert (1846), Brussels

Arcades Project (1927 – 1940) – Walter Bejamin

3. One book you would want on a desert island? Something large, omnivorous, digressive, its curiosity knowing no boundaries, a sort of uber-Merzbau that might serve as a microcosm of the world I left behind, “the theater of all my struggles and all my ideas,” Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project. –girish
The Arcades Project site was created and is maintained by Heather Marcelle Crickenberger.

“It is part of a doctoral dissertation that is scheduled to be completed May 2006 at the University of South Carolina. Much of the bibliographic infomation required of such a project is yet to be included.” [Oct 2006]

Here is the list of convolutes she features.

Convolute is a multifaceted word that connotes “To make something unnecessarily complex; to fold or coil into numerous overlapping layers; to twist someone’s words to fit a desired meaning that was not intended by the speaker.”

If I understand correctly (without direct access to a paper copy (mine is on the way from Germany)), Walter Benjamin used the concept in his Arcades Project ; konvolutes were sections in a collection of thousands of index cards on which he transcribed quotations and notations. It was a cross-referenced system not shying away from ambiguity and ambivalence; seeking its power in opposition and confusion, an early version of fragmented modernity and harbinger of postmodernity.

I would like to call for an Arcades Project blogathon. There is no deadline. By way of inspiration I offer you the following concepts

in praise of convolution

in praise of variety

in praise of flânerie

in praise of juxtaposition

in praise of multifacetedness

and …

“Method of this work:
literary montage.
I have nothing to say only to show.”
(Passagenwerk (1927 – 1940) – Walter Benjamin)

The “rhizome” allows for multiple,
non-hierarchical entry and exit points
in data representation and interpretation.
—Mille Plateaux – Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari,
volume 2 of Capitalisme et Schizofrénie (1980)

The Assault on Culture (1988) – Stewart Home

The Assault on Culture: Utopian Currents from Lettrisme to Class War (1988) – Stewart Home
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Stewart Home (born 1962) is a British fiction writer, subcultural pamphleteer, underground art historian, and activist. His mother, Julia Callan-Thompson, was a model and hostess who was associated with the radical arts scene in Notting Hill Gate. She knew such people as the writer and situationist Alexander Trocchi. Stewart was put up for adoption soon after his birth.

The Assault on Culture, originally written but rejected as a B.A. thesis, is an underground art history sketching Stewart Home’s ultimately personal history of ideas and influences in post-World War II fringe radical art and political currents, and including – for the first time in a book – a tactically manipulated history of Neoism (including character assassinations of individual Neoist) that was continued in the later book Neoism, Plagiarism and Praxis. Despite its highly personal perspective and agenda, The Assault on Culture: Utopian currents from Lettrisme to Class War (Aporia Press and Unpopular Books, London, 1988) is considered a useful art-history work, providing an introduction to a range of cultural currents which had, at that time at least, been under-documented. Like Home’s other publications of that time, it played an influential part in renewing interest in the Situationist International. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Home

See also: Lettrism – Situationism – assault – culture – 1988

Critical Theory is dead

Peter Sloterdijk’s texts read as a thriller, his philosophy has the potency of sending shivers down your spine, much like Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Deleuze before him.

The rationale for this post is Sloterdijk’s audacity of his 1999 declaration that critical theory is dead.

Rules For the Human Zoo is a speech delivered by Peter Sloterdijk on July 20 1999 on the occasion of a symposium dedicated to the philosophy of Heidegger. He had held that same speech two years before but nobody had taken offense. The speech is on biogenetics and its implications (think Gattaca).

I lent the Rules article today at my local library in a Dutch version called Regels voor het Mensenpark, Kroniek van een Debat. The subtitle translates as history of a debate. The debate is between Peter Sloterdijk and Jürgen Habermas. Sloterdijk accuses Habermas of intentionally misreading him and calling upon Assheuer as a proxy to attack Sloterdijk. The attacks basically called Sloterdijk a fascist:

In the eyes of Professor Habermas, a left-wing philosopher, this secret agenda makes his fellow academic a “fascist.” Professor Sloterdijk, also a left-wing philosopher who once travelled to Poona to seek enlightenment from the Bhagwan, thinks his critic is resorting to “fascist” tactics to discredit him. —http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2000/2000-March/005176.html [Oct 2006]

In the 37th issue of 9 Sept 1999 of Die Zeit, Sloterdijk replied to his adversaries Habermas and Assheuer with Die Kritische Theorie ist tot (EN: Critical Theory is Dead).

From the web:

According to a recent article in The Observer (10 October 1999) the fashionable dinner tables of German society are buzzing with controversy over `the death of critical theory and the future of metaphysics’. The article refers to a debate provoked by a conference address given at Elmau in Bavaria last July by Peter Sloterdijk. His paper, `Regeln fur den Menschenpark : Ein Antwortschreiben zum Brief ber den Humanismus’ (Rules for the Human Theme-Park: A Reply to the Letter on Humanism), was addressed to an international conference on `Philosophy after Heidegger’. Copies of the address began circulating among academics shortly after the conference. Subsequently, two heavily critical articles were published in the national press. Sloterdijk’s bad-tempered response to these articles (Die Zeit, 9 September 1999) has generated an animated quarrel, whose participants have included Manfred Frank, Ernst Tugendhat, Ronald Dworkin and Slavoj Zizek, among others. —http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/print.asp?editorial_id=10101 [Oct 2006]

In [the open letter], Sloterdijk wonders if Assheuer has the same text as he does at all, since they read it so differently – Assheuer thinks he’s a Nietzschean, where he explicitly said that Nietzsche’s concept of the overman can have no meaning for us any more. The press is once again alarming people for alarming’s sake. The second part of his letter is addressed to Habermas, because Sloterdijk has heard that Habermas has spoken about him to many people (!) but not spoken with him. He claims that Habermas has mobilized an international attack against him, making photocopies of his lecture and sending them everywhere. Sloterdijk goes on at length how Habermas has thus reified him – it’s a hilarious read. With Habermas, critical theory has become a sinister Jacobinism that liquidates its opponents through mass media. Its claims are based on the “forceless force of the quicker denunciation (and worse reading)” instead of what Habermas calls the “forceless force of the better argument”. Critical theory was the answer for the children of the Nazi era. With this debate it has shown itself to be unsuitable for our needs: critical theory is dead. —http://mail.architexturez.net/+/Heidegger-L/archive/msg22054.shtml

Heidegger’s Letter on Humanism (1947)

The Letter on Humanism, written in 1947 in response to questions circulating about the relationship of Heidegger’s philosophy of Being to humanism, Christianity, Marxism, and the new “philosophy of existence” expounded by Sartre, Jaspers, and others, has been called Heidegger’s “greatest effort.” It was written at a time of great personal struggle for Heidegger: he had just been indefinitely banned from teaching following the Nazi war-crimes hearings, and he had undergone a kind of emotional breakdown as a result. Nevertheless, the Letter on Humanism virtually catalogues the most important strands of Heidegger’s entire later philosophy – the meaning of the history of Being, the way Heidegger sees to the re-awakening of that history, its relation to the philosophical tradition, the meaning of action, the role of technology, art, and language in the historical destiny of Being, and above all the need of a new thinking to prepare that destiny. The essay contains some of Heidegger’s most memorable language. In it, we can see especially clearly the role of reflection about language in preparing a new consideration of Being that will make the leap outside the tradition of metaphysics, which has hitherto determined all of our language. The quest for a new language will be so important to Heidegger that he will even spell important words, like Being, in antiquated and strange ways, to show that he uses them outside the closure of metaphysics. —http://www07.homepage.villanova.edu/paul.livingston/martin_heidegger%20-%20letter%20on%20humanism.htm [Oct 2006]

See also: 1999 – German philosophy – Peter Sloterdijk – Critical Theory

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) – Chan-wook Park

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) – Chan-wook Park
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

I saw this on MTV Europe (an Asian cinema feature) yesterday evening. Impressive, but not as good as for example Alex van Warmerdam. All in all a surreal, film noirish, arty affair.

The previous Korean film I had seen was the 1999 Lies, which I had chosen because of its subject matter (although the respresentation of which disappointed me). What I liked best about Lies was its breaking of the fourth wall: excerpts from interviews with the author and cast are sometimes inserted between scenes and we see a girl filmed after the ‘cut’ signal of a particularly emotional scene (she continues crying).

After having seen these two films it appears to me that these two Korean filmmakers take the art of art film as seriously as European filmmakers did in the sixties.

Wikipedia: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

See also: revenge – film – 2002 – Korea

The following are a set of rules

The following are a set of rules for the giving of academic papers in philosophy (especially continental philosophy). The rules recall those of the Danish film movement, Dogme 95, or even Oulipo. A primary aim is to break with the veneration of master thinkers not because it isn’t worthwhile studying a philosopher in great depth and over a number of years, but that this, by itself, is not philosophy. —Spurious

Lee Siegel suspended for sock puppeting

Lee Siegel, an American cultural critic was fired for commenting on his own work pseudonymously by using a so-called sock puppet.

Lee Siegel, writer for The New Republic magazine, was suspended for defending his articles and blog comments using the user name “sprezzatura“.

More: International Herald Tribune

Lee Siegel in other blogs:

In the most recent issue of The Nation, Lee Siegel laid into Camille Paglia’s newest barnstormer, Break, Blow, Burn. His article, Look at Me, is a magnificent blast of snark against the self-maligning agitation that Paglia seems to fall more & more victim to. —Poetry Snark, 2005

And the final sentence of Lee Siegel’s review (which also features a very good analysis of Paglia’s zeitgeist and work) of Paglia’s Break, Blow, Burn:

To invoke two other writers from the past, Paglia used to come on like Byron; now she is like some cynical version of Dickens’s Oliver Twist, trampling on her very own standards, stooping as low as she can go in order to get a second helping of attention from the public that has forgotten her. But bullies always end up being reduced to their inner weakling. It’s called poetic justice. –Lee Siegel in Look at Me [June 13, 2005 ]