File spoon-archives/bataille.archive/bataille_1999/bataille.9902, message 307


Date: Fri, 26 Feb 1999 05:12:04 -0800
From: Don Socha <347hqx7-AT-cmich.edu>
Subject: Re: leap into the unknown


It is probable that you have not read Foucault, Marsha Faizi.  If you did you
might run across the term discipline.  Who is not constrained or otherwise
prohibited by discipline?  Am I?  Yes.  Are you?  Not to my mind.  But you are
not from around here are you Marsha Faizi?  One could look and look and never
find another such as you for years and years.

I imagine that certain people I have read about are like you; unconstrained by
discipline.  How is it that such folks, born in the same simple conditions to
which we all are born have found a way to appear as if they have slipped the
clutches of the constraints that every 20 seconds seem to jerk the rest of us
mostly out of whatever  hope, awe, interest, desire, appetite, pleasure, joy,
goodness, and even sometimes love itself that we have dreamed up like a hot air
balloon to put the world in the giddy perspective in which it belongs?

Hamlet was like this, though he pretends he is not.  Larry Sterne and the Sufis
are like this.  Hank Miller was like this, Rabelais, Kathy Acker, Rolland
Barthes, Blanchot, de Sade, Bataille, and Duchamp.

There are others, of course.  To my mind, Foucault was not one of these
himself.  Of course, D & G are of this nature, Lyotard, and Genet.  Les
Surrealists tried to make a space anyone could enter and dance about, pretending
that they were cut of this cloth even though they were not.  Artaud was not.
What do you think of the constraints of Artaud?  Are they not real?  Is this
what you think Marsha Faizi?  That the constraints identified by Artaud were
just an illusion?

Perhaps you think Artaud should have been more like Wittgenstein?

Well, it doesn't matter.  I am getting off the subject.  This happens when I am
over worked.  Some people think I can just be their pack mule.  Every morning at
8:00 three times a week there are 50 students who want me to take them down into
the grand canyons of their imaginations even while they sleep.  I have to gear
up with a ton of climbing equipment to do so each of these mornings.  But you
don't want to hear about this do you Marsh Faizi?  You do not want to hear about
the thesis I am working on, or the writing center in which I try to demonstrate
to everyone I come in contact with that life is full of holes; that it is not
all about constraint; that they are free if only they utilize any of the nine
items I've listed above.

We are free if we write.  Wouldn't you agree Marsha Faizi?  Writing is a kind of
dance you can do with the insides of your head.  To resist the constraints of
the world we need only think of Harry Houdini.  When we wake up in the morning
we should take a deep breath and hold it in.  We should hold this breath in
until the constraints of our lives are again wound tightly about us, and then,
only then should we begin letting the air out slowly.

Is this the way you do it yourself Marsha Faizi?  Is this how you are able to be
so clever?  You say you recognize no constraints, but surely you see the sort of
thing that cuts into the flesh of those around you.

I am not asking you to dispense a magic pill or anything.  I am only writing
this because I can.  I was glad to read your "private" message to Ariosto.  I
think I learned something from it that I will not soon forget. I am also glad
that you point out how Ariosto must give your young man a chance even though he
is not a young woman.  This I think says something about Ariosto that needed
saying.  A certain someone whom I shall not name, needed to hear this about
Ariosto.

While he goes on and on about uninhibited expenditure that asks for nothing in
return, he is very selective nonetheless.  That's all I want to say.

With interest,

Donaldo


   

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