From: "Juha Rainio" <JRAINIO-AT-KATK.helsinki.fi>
Date:          Sat, 13 Jan 1996 17:25:30 EET DST
Subject:       Re: Practice-free living/Suicide


On Fri, 12 Jan 1996, Erik D Lindberg <edl-AT-csd.uwm.edu> wrote:

> At the risk of beating a dead horse (ha ha), I agree that the 
> poeticization of death makes more sense that its "theorization."
> 
> What I was trying to say in my last sentence was that if this is what we 
> have "really" been doing, all the discussion about the consequences of 
> theorizing pauvre Gilles' death were misplaced.  I was hoping to get a 
> discussion about the poetics of death going--so that its consequences 
> might be discussed.
> 
> Erik

Very good point. It's kind of poetic affair anyways to look down to 
the pavement through the open window just before jumping. I'd 
guess pauvre Gilles wasn't thinking about deterritorialization or 
theory of falling - which of course doesn't mean that we shouldn't 
but perhaps that we shouldn't _forget/suppress_ the "poetic dimension" 
especially when there _is_ that kind of dimension (very 
probably from D's point of view and surely from for example mine). 

Before his jump he must have thought something like "these are my 
last glances of the world". And whatever kind of feelings he had it 
must have been something _big_ to live those last moments before the 
end of all theorizing and everything else. 

Poetry is something that should move faster than thought, 
reach something that (other kind of?) thought cannot, somebody has 
said. Perhaps, perhaps not. But however it is "the poetics of 
death" might be helpfull for theorizing too, no? 

And where is the theory of the actual _experience_ of death?

I remember Foucault who was asked, just before his death, what he 
thought about his forthcoming death. He said something like "i cannot 
say anything at all". (perhaps somebody has a better memory?)

J


 


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