Date: Wed, 10 Sep 1997 10:07:58 +0930
From: "9309629n-AT-magpie.magill.unisa.edu.au"
Subject: Re: Interview Request



You are right, of course ... silly of me to ask if we knew Diana
personally. 

After all, I'm someone who wept when "Cheryl" died in the Aussie soap
opera "Neighbours".

Brigid Venables
9309629n-AT-magpie.magill.unisa.edu.au

*****************************************************

On Tue, 9 Sep 1997, D. Diane Davis wrote:

> [nods vigorously with gary.] 
> 
> I agree, Gary. To say, ah well, just simulation, is to miss something
> else going on. The 'communal fabric' is always already a simulation,
> always already NOT there. But when the myths of community take a hit, we
> feel it. Bataille calls it laceration. 
> 
> When someone we care for dies, leaves us, or whatever, there is a
> rrrrrrip in the communal fabric from which we have made meaning out of
> our existences. It's not WE who are lacerated...it's the myth. But we're
> the ones who feel it b/c we're the ones who build our reality
> (emotional, physical, etc.) on they myth. And, say Blanchot, Nancy, and
> Agamben, it's in the rip (not in the fabric) that we recognize our own
> finitude, that what we really do share (finite existence) is exposed.
> Community itself gets experienced in lacerations of the myths of
> community. Nancy: "A community is the presentation to its members of
> their mortal truth."
> 
> So maybe it doesn't matter if that so-called communal fabric is the
> result of the hyper-real frenzy of mass communication; maybe it doesn't
> matter whether we KNEW Diana persoanlly or not. We were spoon-fed
> Diana--she became part of the lives of many because it felt as if she
> was 'there.' She was a very real aspect of the communal mythology in
> which millions of people operated every day. When she died--Laceration.
> RRRRRRRRRRRRIP. An exposition of finitude...that is, communication. 
> 
> So many experienced the laceration at her death because the media had
> made her part of their lives. The services are attempts to make meaning
> out of it all, to get a sense of order re-established--to cover over the
> recognition that the laceration itself prompts. But I don't think we
> should be so quick to hop on the cynical bandwagon here. A good chunk of
> the world just experienced their finitude, just communicated, just
> witnessed an interruption in the myth of common-being: the mythation
> machine slamming to a screeeeeeetching hault. 
> 
> ddd
> 
> 
> Gary Yuen wrote:
> > 
> > Perhaps,
> > 
> > But then was there ever a time where we felt real grief?
> > 
> > Does our relation to the other, whether through participation in the
> > personal and intimate or hyper-real and temporary ever transmit anything
> > other than simulation? Does our need to connect and legitimate our
> > subjectivities ever allow us to feel anything truly ours?  Was there ever a
> > time where our experience was not a product of a de-individualizing virus
> > hyper-transcribing us with a normalized real?
> > 
> > Perhaps it shouldn't be our task to discern a real grief or anything for
> > that matter from the intersection of tv images, pop icons, top 40 hit
> > songs, and wired magazines.  Maybe what we perceive as grief was the only
> > that ever existed?  Does that make it any less felt or real?
> > 
> > Gary
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
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> 	D							D
> 	D	D. Diane Davis					D
> 	D	Department of Rhetoric				D
> 	D	University of Iowa				D
> 	D	d3davis-AT-earthlink.net				D
> 	D	http://www.odu.edu/gnusers/davis/ddd.htm	D
> 	D							D
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>