The following concepts, and the pleasure I take in them, are the impetus for this blog. But, quite frankly, I am hopeful that the breadth of this apparently philosophical and literary introduction will allow me to write here whatever the fuck I want. Take pleasure!
aporia: “a difficulty encountered in establishing the theoretical truth of a proposition, created by the presence of evidence both for and against it”; “a figure of speech in which the speaker expresses or purports to be in doubt about a question”; “an insoluble contradiction or paradox in a text’s meanings.” (all definitions from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/aporia)
negative capability: John Keats’ concept of a state of “being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.”
jouissance: For Jacques Derrida (that silver fox!), jouissance is the pleasure with which a deconstructionist approaches a text. For Luce Irigaray, jouissance is feminine sexual pleasure, in all its plurality. For me, an American girl (not sexist—my age may say woman, but I am in arrested development), the pleasure of reading and the pleasure of sex are inseparable. When deconstructing, I rarely reach orgasm (come to a meaning), but the foreplay is the most fun, rebelliously, perhaps sometimes pugnaciously, contrary to a linear conception of ‘progress,’ moving toward an end. Instead, there is an Eastern meditative principle at play, where a ‘goal’ is insignificant and a sustained state of enlightenment is preferable.
And so:
When, for example, J. D. Salinger’s Buddy Glass writes so lovingly of his dear brother Seymour, who shot himself, he cannot help but answer when he asks, perhaps in Socratic, perhaps in Yeatsian, form, but certainly inhibited by a two-dimensional kind of meaning (even if it requires a metaphysical leap) like we all are:
“Isn’t it plain how the true artist-seer actually dies? I say… I say that the true artist-seer, the heavenly fool who can and does produce beauty, is mainly dazzled to death by his own scruples, the blinding shapes and colors of his own sacred human conscience.”
I am looking for a place, and I hope this is it, where I can reconcile without reconciling the hideous world of academic thought with the equally hideous worlds of the aesthetic, the mundane, the bodily, the colloquial.
At the interstices of truth and aporia, I hope to find an uneasy tantric peace, the Chaos of Home. I hope to write this blog with all my stars out, and have it mean, all at the same time: a. the stars are out and burning clearly, b. the stars are out as in "off," dimmed, hiding, and thus, of course, c., which means, quite stubbornly, with a satisfying finality, "?"
aporia: “a difficulty encountered in establishing the theoretical truth of a proposition, created by the presence of evidence both for and against it”; “a figure of speech in which the speaker expresses or purports to be in doubt about a question”; “an insoluble contradiction or paradox in a text’s meanings.” (all definitions from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/aporia)
negative capability: John Keats’ concept of a state of “being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.”
jouissance: For Jacques Derrida (that silver fox!), jouissance is the pleasure with which a deconstructionist approaches a text. For Luce Irigaray, jouissance is feminine sexual pleasure, in all its plurality. For me, an American girl (not sexist—my age may say woman, but I am in arrested development), the pleasure of reading and the pleasure of sex are inseparable. When deconstructing, I rarely reach orgasm (come to a meaning), but the foreplay is the most fun, rebelliously, perhaps sometimes pugnaciously, contrary to a linear conception of ‘progress,’ moving toward an end. Instead, there is an Eastern meditative principle at play, where a ‘goal’ is insignificant and a sustained state of enlightenment is preferable.
And so:
When, for example, J. D. Salinger’s Buddy Glass writes so lovingly of his dear brother Seymour, who shot himself, he cannot help but answer when he asks, perhaps in Socratic, perhaps in Yeatsian, form, but certainly inhibited by a two-dimensional kind of meaning (even if it requires a metaphysical leap) like we all are:
“Isn’t it plain how the true artist-seer actually dies? I say… I say that the true artist-seer, the heavenly fool who can and does produce beauty, is mainly dazzled to death by his own scruples, the blinding shapes and colors of his own sacred human conscience.”
I am looking for a place, and I hope this is it, where I can reconcile without reconciling the hideous world of academic thought with the equally hideous worlds of the aesthetic, the mundane, the bodily, the colloquial.
At the interstices of truth and aporia, I hope to find an uneasy tantric peace, the Chaos of Home. I hope to write this blog with all my stars out, and have it mean, all at the same time: a. the stars are out and burning clearly, b. the stars are out as in "off," dimmed, hiding, and thus, of course, c., which means, quite stubbornly, with a satisfying finality, "?"
P.S. (post-script AND post-structure AND just p.s.!): the image here is a version of the ouroboros, or "tail-devourer," inspired by a painting belonging to my office mate, whom I'll call The Guru Dr. Drew.
1 comment:
You go girl.
:)
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