Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 08:47:58 -0500 (EST)
From: Marsha Faizi <mfaizi-AT-rbnet.com>
Subject: Re: The Nobility of Sadism and Depravity


Ariosto wrote:

>Shaheena,
> You are going mad, 

Not going mad, dear Ariosto, but gone. The trick with madness is retaining
one's equalibrium, so to speak. You know, *maintenance.*

>don't worry it will pass and then there is this
>oasis full of sacred insects whose coulourings and camouflage abilities
>are in excess of their survival or utilitarian value. 

Well, yes, there are tons of those things. You can't avoid them. They're
everywhere--big ones, little ones. I think that you are right: They serve
little purpose at all unless there is value in crunching. If you listen, you
can hear that particular sound of crunching everywhere you step. There's no
avoiding it.  
>No function
>governs their telos. 

Well, they are meant to be crunched, certainly.

>I have goodies from the library, scraps blowing
>with the sand, a torned piece of that black hole of a cloth that you
>see as hell happens to land in my hand--

Well, I liked that piece of black cloth--not for any reason other than for
the visual and textural fascination; the hands and hearts and razors and
knives embroidered in blue and white silk.  

>written on it is Caillois
>fascination with the sadism of the Mantis religiosa, a way of giving
>marvelous content to the little a like the sword and scissors. But turn
>around in autoreference and you get the masochistic desire of Bataille. 

An interesting mantle to wear, no doubt. 

>I
>was reading the first part of the accursed share this morning and now
>in the bataille reader he is writing that the festival or Maffesoli's
>orgy for that matter, liberates not only animality but the sacred or
>the negation of nature. 

If it is truly nature, I cannot see that any of it can be negation. It is
nature. 

>Negation in this sense gives erotic value to
>that which is pressed under through the seriousness of work and
>prohibition. The festival shatters the ordinary rules and functions,

That is fine but I wonder why it must take a ritual in order to accomplish that.
Maybe, just for fun.

>Bataille writes that it is "a leap into the unknown, with animality as
>impetus." 

Is animality required to make a leap into the unknown?

>I don't have to talk to you but I want to and here is your
>child playing around with a carnivalesque language swirling like
>before and you are getting all upset for nothing just as I am waking up
>again, you can't take advantage of me while I am this alert.

That's pretty funny, Ariosto. 

Faizi
>You fool,
>Ariosto
>
>
>
>-- 
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